#for example with nanon (don't kill me) there's scenes in bad buddy where i have a lot of positive things to say about his performance!!!!

[airenyah]

hi!! i'm the struggling with trying to get my point across in english anon!

SO i just woke up and read your answer on gillian's blog thank you so much???? i feel SEEN you totally get what i mean, "because how do i say "anspielen" in english?" that's exactly it!!! my first language is actually spanish but that's literally how i feel when i try to write anything

there's always that one thing i really want to say but i struggle with because even though i'm writing in english and thinking in english this very specific word or this very specific feeling is in spanish for me, the very core of it, and so the whole sentence in my head doesn't make sense, there's actually not a sentence anymore. it can be really overwhelming because thoughts keep piling up but there's nowhere/no way to put them out there!

what you said about trying to describe it feels like a good idea honestly, it can be chaotic but at the same time maybe it ends up making even more sense than i originally planned

(you talking about all this with your mom is the cutest thing! actually TALKING about this, not just writing about it has to be so cool!)

you have no idea how much your words and advice helped me and just how much sense they make to me, you seem like such an articulate person, if those were your thoughts spilling out as they came to you well you are really good at this! would love to read more about them and all the interesting things you have to say about acting!

i'll try to share my thoughts for it to become a habit, baby steps, short sentences in the tags feels like a good place to start

thank you again <3

heyyyy anon!! sorry i'm replying only now, i was out with a friend all day yesterday and when i came back in the evening i had no energy for any more socializing...

aaaaanyway, glad to hear my thoughts helped!! i was a little worried no one would read my addition since it's so long, but i'm really happy to hear that this was exactly what you needed <3

(this is getting long again, so read more it is hahaha)

re: english is hard

yes, expressing oneself is really difficult, isn't it? in my experience, i've learned that sometimes i just have to accept that i simply can't say this one thing in that exact moment or at least i can't say it exactly in the way i want to...

it's really sad, depressing, and frustrating but!! as i said, sometimes you can get around it by simply explaining what you mean and giving examples. it takes much more effort that way, of course, but at least you'll get your point across!! you can make people understand this way!!

and sometimes there are words that are similar enough so you can use those instead. a little bit of what you REALLY want to say is likely to get lost this way, but again, at least you're communicating something

this is actually done in translation sometimes. when there is a word or a concept where there is no equivalent in the target language then translators might go either with the closest one there is (for example, in german there is no word that has the exact same vibe as the word "awkward". so depending on the context a tranlsator might go with the word "unangenehm" instead which actually means "uncomfortable", or the word "peinlich" which means "embarrassing"). or if that doesn't work then a translator might simply just explain the word/the concept (i know this bc i study translation at uni and my profs have talked about this hahaha)

and as i said in the other post, i promise it will get easier over time! it's just important that you actively keep trying

and yeah, i think the tags are a great place to start! you can reblog a gifset and you can start with saying specific things like "i like [insert aspect] of this scene because [insert reason]" or "this line is making me feel [insert emotion]" or "[character]'s expression in the 3rd gif looks like they're thinking [insert thought]" or "this scene reminds me of [parallel scene] because [insert reasons]"

and another thing that is important: keep your eyes and ears open! pay attention to the words/concepts that you struggle to express in english and keep a look-out for how other people would talk about this thing in english. this is why it's also important to also keep reading other people's things, because some day you might stumble across a word or a phrase that will make you go ohhhhh so THIS is how i can express this thought

as i also mentioned in the other posts, sometimes you can take a shortcut 😆 but that only works if it's a specific topic that you don't know how to talk about in a different language... then you can go look for "parallel texts": at my uni that means if i have to write an article about the topic of car-free cities for an exam but i don't know how to talk about car-free cities in italian then i'll go read articles on car-free cities in italian so i can see exactly what words and phrases they use and i make a list (yes i had an exam about this topic last month and yes i ended up with a six a4-page word list for italian hahaha), "parallel text" basically means you look for the exact text type that you want to write/say (can be an oral text as well) but in your target language so you can compare and find out what the most common words/phrases are to express specific thoughts and concepts of this topic. which is the exact thing i need to do in order to solve my problem of not being able to talk about acting in english, actually.... (someone get me off my lazy butt and make me go read about acting in english 😩)

plus if all comes to worse: your native language is spanish, right? many people speak spanish in the world, not just as native speakers but also as a 2nd language! so why not simply make the post in spanish? sure, it might reach less people but there will definitely be a few that will understand what you're saying (and you might end up making good friends and some of them might be able to help you figure out how to express certain topics in english)

re: talking about bl with my mom

yeees, it's a thing we do! sometimes i'll make my mom sit down and make her watch a drama with me and then sometimes she'll sit me down and make me watch a drama with her

it actually started in like 2018 or so? i happened to watch a japanese drama i stumbled across on netflix and i happened to watch it in the living room via our projector and my mom came home and walked past and was like "what are you watching?" and i was like "wanna join?" bc i was only about 4 eps or so in and my mom did join and was really intrigued bc the japanese had a different acting style from what she was used to in western media

and so a while later netflix recced a chinese drama to her and so she got curious and that's how my mom got into chinese drama 😆 at some point i also managed to get her into kpop (despite not listening to kpop myself -- this is a whole other long story hahaha) and so she also got into kdramas and then lockdown happened and i got super obsessed with why r u (my very first thai drama rip) and my mom was like "i want to watch this show you're obsessed with, i want to know how the thais do it in comparison to the other asian countries" and so in the end i did watch it with her and since then thai drama has been on that list too 😂

and since i had started drama school about half a year before the pandemic happened i was starting to really understand how acting works and so it's been super interesting taking apart dramas with her. my mom has an insane eye for things and i've learned incredibly much, in fact i'm STILL learning from her, it's amazing

and yes, it's fantastic being able to actually talk about it!! it's so much fun (and hilarious sometimes, because we'll be sitting on the couch, completely tearing apart a drama and my brother will walk past and he'll be all confused and go "why are you even watching it if you hate it so much????" and we'll be like "cause it's GOOD!!!!".... it happened with the eclipse, for example. there were many things that just weren't working out in the show, especially the longer it went on and so we'd thoroughly discussed these things and my brother happened to only ever walk past when we were talking about the bad things and was never around when we talked about the good things, like for example anything that first kanaphan does😆😆😆)

re: me talking about acting

okkkk yes, i understand that you would love to hear my thoughts on acting! i think a lot of people would like to hear them! but to be honest, i wasn't telling the entire truth when i said that not having the words in english was the reason why i don't talk about it

yes, not being able to properly express my thoughts is a big part of it but there are other reasons too why i avoid talking about acting publicly in fandom spaces...

1. insulting fandom faves is like opening a can of worms

i don't like conflict and i like the thoughts of arguing with strangers on the internet even less. however, while there are many positive things to say about the acting in dramas (whether it's bl or not, whether it's the main cast or not) there are also many, many negative things to say about it. and you know, sharing anything negative about someone's faves in fandom spaces..... that's not gonna go well 😅 so i'm a little scared of getting murdered if i dare saying one negative thing about some of the most popular actors. plus, i don't want to ruin other's enjoyment of the dramas and so i think especially on a platform like tumblr where people come to have fun my criticism on acting may not be the right place for it (no one likes negativity in the tags of their fave show, do they...). (yes, i have considered making a youtube channel hahaha)

2. for some concepts you need experience and a trained eye

ok the 2nd reason why else i don't talk about acting is just... it's a whole thing that you actively need to study! where you need to make your own experiences! and if you don't have experience then it can be really difficult to understand what the hell i'm going on about. which is why it's so fantastic that i have my mom, because i can just go up to her and show her a scene and say a single sentence like "this scene isn't working out because [actor] is always doing the same thing, nothing changes". or i can say "did you see all the pictures [actor] has managed to create in the span of two seconds, isn't that amazing????". or i can say "this moment was bad bc the actor is missing the thought that inspired this line". and my mom will understand, you know? (in fact, i don't even have to say that something is bad or good, i can just say things like "nothing changes here" or "look at the pictures" or "the thought is missing" and my mom will immediately understand whether it's a good or bad thing just from that 😆)

and yes, i can try to explain these concepts to a non-experienced person! but this is just really hard to do via a simple tumblr post....

i can explain when i can sit you down next to me and i can talk to you and i can pull up different scenes on my laptop and discuss them in detail, when i can show you different examples to really showcase what i mean. i could pull up good examples and bad examples of a specific concept to make you understand what it means (what "having a thought" means for example)

i actually currently have an analysis project going on with a friend where i'm showing her a sequence of scenes of a korean drama and then that very same sequence of scenes of its taiwanese remake. one has good acting and one has bad acting and so i've been making her look at both sequences and think about how they make her feel and why they make her feel like that and what she can take away from those sequences. my friend has already realized that one version is less fun to watch than the other version and exactly why that is and what the one actors are doing better than the others is what i'll be telling her next time we hang out 😆

but yes, i have an easier time giving her that crash course on acting because we can actually hang out and i can show her so many things. last time i was explaining the concept of "Dringlichkeit" (in english i would call this something like "urgency") to her and she didn't understand and so i was able to show her myself, in person, what it looks like when someone talks with low urgency and what it looks like when someone talks with a lot of urgency and how that has different effects

or when one of my acting teachers explained the concept of "sending" to us he did it by going to the far end of the room, standing in front of the wall with his back turned to us and talking to us, his face turned towards the wall. and at one point he talked to us while sending and at one point talked to us without sending and it was an eye-opening experience

but yeah, i just can't do that on a tumblr post, unfortunately

in conclusion:

so yeah, not having the right words in english, struggling with explainig the concepts to non-experienced people, and not wanting to insult anyone's fave and getting angry anons about it are the three reasons why i don't talk about acting publicly (or at least only rarely)

i have considered making a reaction youtube channel where i talk about these things together with my mom, but the big problem is just our lack of the right vocabulary (and my mom doesn't have much practice in speaking english, so she would struggle even more) and of course, copyright laws. i'd have to figure out how to deal with those first, as well...

if you're still curious about my opinions on acting, if there's anything specific you want to know you can of course come ask me about it, though!! however, i would prefer you do that off anon and come directly into my dms

i don't really mind talking about acting in general, in fact, it's one of my favorite things to do! and i certainly wouldn't mind trying, you know! but as i said, i just don't want to do it publicly. i don't want just anyone being able to see my opinions and get offended. i prefer doing it in the privacy of a private chat with selected people where i know they won't immediately get offended and can take my negative criticism about their faves