#i don't want to like. break immersion for people. and also if someone accuses me of Not Trying i will be very annoyed.

[eisthenameofme]

was trying to look up acting advice ahead of going to a larp for the first time and all of this advice is So Incredibly Neurotypical

[magicalara]

A Letter to Toxic Fans

Hi there!

You don't know me, and I don't know you, but somehow, we have found ourselves in a similar enough situation where the circles on the diagram have overlapped enough to where I'm taking the stage and addressing you directly. Fandoms are already a crazy enough space (heck, I'm addressing you from a blog dedicated to fandoms I'm in) and I'm sure it's quite a shock that this is where we're at. Yet, somehow, it also makes complete sense. Tumblr itself is a gold mine for fandoms and fan creation so at the very least, I know I'm hitting my target audience. Thus, we've made it to the big questions: who is the "you"; why are you already labeled as "toxic"; what is the whole point of my being here? Great questions, really, and all will be discussed under the cut. So, to make it simple for you all, I sum up the whole purpose of this letter in one sentence: due to the negative behavior that fans exhibit, there is an associative negative reputation throughout the media on fandom culture, and it's up to you whether you want to solve it or not.

To begin, I think the best place would be defining who "you" are in the given context.

"You" are a person who enjoys a certain piece of media (be it anime, a video game, a streamer, a show/movie, or anything of the like) and talks about it online. By doing such, you become apart of a "fandom" (though I'd hope you know this already considering you are on Tumblr and Tumblr is a huge platform for fandoms).

But let's be honest, that's a bit general and, considering the title of this post, we need to get a bit more narrow than that. To which I introduce the one concept that no one fan would ever truly like being accused of being: a toxic fan.

A toxic fan is considered to be "admirers of popular culture who act in ways that are seen as inappropriate and unpleasant", according to Victoria Taylor in a Medium article. While not all fans are toxic, a large enough amount of them can result in the blanket usage of calling the fandom entirely toxic which can cause a lot of problems down the line, something I'll discuss more in full later. However, it is these bad apples which take on a form so harrowing in certain situations that I am almost hesitant to make this post public (aka, please don't dox me). The toxic fan may do milder things such as making a rude comment or insult to things more criminally offensive such as the aforementioned doxing, the publication of someone's personal information such as address, phone numbers, etc. (CNN), and death threats. As one can imagine, instances of this won't garner the best of connotations in the media with a lot of people harboring negative ideas based on the behavior of these toxic fans.

Now you know the "you" I am referring to. At this point, if you are still here and thinking "I am not the toxic fan you are accusing me of being" honestly, I'm quite glad. If you are a person who does dox people or make death threats, I am breaking the immersion to ask that you kindly get off my blog and block me after reading this post; especially if you wish to keep doing such acts. Thank you. Continuing on: I ask you to keep reading if you might fit the more milder aspects of a "toxic fan" as I bring up some instances of it and how it can be harmful to those in the same community as you, outside of it, and those who used to be a part of it.

From causing people to leave fandoms and being rude about it, to leaving people almost expecting for the toxic fans to be unstoppable, toxic fans have caused a lot of damage to their reputation and the overall representation of fandom all together.

So then we get to the damaging portion. Of course, it is only natural that a person being accused of something to want to argue back. Thus, I have instances which I'd like to bring up of which caused turbulence to a person's experiences with fans and fandom; the first of which being an article written by Matt Miller on his experience in the Star Wars fandom.

Miller's experience of being a large part of a fandom and then leaving because of toxicity is one known all too well by many people, myself included. The article begins with his remembrance of two memories he has with the fandom with the first being a positive one where he's playing pretend with his father and the other being "getting harassed and threatened by legions of anonymous toxic Star Wars fans on the Internet." It is quite the difference and can really put into perspective just how powerful our words, even on the Internet, can be.

Miller leaving the Star Wars fandom wasn't just from the harassment he was getting, however, as he later goes on to say how seeing how others were getting a worse treatment also influenced his decision. There were constant tweets, videos, comments, and the like all flooding anywhere he might look and, while it is true that he would get all this to an elevated level in comparison to someone who didn't write articles about the franchise, that is a reality that many people in a fandom, especially the more popular ones, come to have to deal with. It's a no-brainer as to how draining that can be for a person and why something like that might cause a person to take a step away.

Similarly, a string of comments on a TikTok starting with the user Em [@thatonegrellestan] (no relation, I assure you it's actually a coincidence) touches on the BTS Army. The original TikTok by user M [@joonnerd] is about their opinion as to why ex-Army's may have left the fandom and Em gives their take in their comment. Em says, "I stopped liking bts [because] armies ruined it for me. the songs aren't horrible and I'd listen if they came on shuffle, but the bad people ruined it for me" to which multiple users left their own responses under. While some of the comments were nicer, others quickly took on a passive-aggressive tone, with some coming across as just aggressive.

It is cases like this with Miller and Em which show a fandom's colors most with the bad apples floating to the top anytime something negative is said as they are quick to defend their behavior without taking into account what really happened. In both cases, it is those negative people that caused for someone to leave a fandom. While I couldn't reach out to Em for any further comments, I had a similar experience in many fandoms I've been in and can heavily relate to what they said. Regardless of the toxic fans "being in your ears", the community of fans can make or break the experience as a large portion of the fan experience is participating in the fandom itself.

The last example I'd like to bring up here is an article by Jade King The Gamer website. In it, she addresses the reactions to the release of the game The Last of Us Part 2, calling it "a nightmare", and hoping that, when a season 2 comes for the show, the same actions don't repeat themselves. To anyone who has only watched the first season of The Last of Us television show on HBO, I suggest you skip over this part as this includes spoilers for the second game and future seasons of the show; this has been your friendly spoiler warning.

The Last of Us Part 2 garnered a lot of heavy criticism due to death of beloved character, Joel (told you there were spoilers), and the dual playstyle between Ellie, one of the protagonists to the first game, and Abby, a new character introduced in this second installment. While the game is masterfully done, in my own personal opinion, there were many people who vehemently disagreed with me, and others who thought the same, on this.

As King mentions in her own article, Joel's death was essentially the instigator which garnered a lot of harassment towards Laura Bailey, the actress behind Abby. She also mentions how she hopes the fandom has matured enough to not cause a repeat of this when the storyline following Abby does eventually arrive in the show. This is yet another case where it is evident that the fandom caused a significant amount of damage to where it is almost expected that something is going to happen. If that wasn't the case, King wouldn't need to hope for us "all to have grown up a bit."

"It's up to you whether you want to solve it or not."

Now, my dear fan reading this, we get to this elusive portion of my original thesis. What do I mean by this? The answer is simpler than you might think.

In the last section, I confronted you with situations where toxic fans have left a bad reputation enough to cause people to leave fandoms they heavily associated with at some point and thoroughly enjoyed and leave an expectation for poor behavior to continue. Also good to mention are the unsolicited passive-aggressive and rude comments left under comments where nothing negative is really said. Of course, the internet can be a brutal place and while there will always be those who won't agree with you, there is no reason why it has to be so intense where death threats and doxing have become something almost normal to see every time someone wants to open Twitter.

Back to the heading for this section, then: it is up to you, the fan, whether you want to solve this issue, the negative reputation of fandom in media, or not. It shouldn't be up to people like King and Miller to make articles on how they hope for better to have people realize their actions and change due to it, rather, it should be up to the toxic fan itself. If you as a fan who participates in a large group of people can not look at the comments that you might notice are similar to some things you have said and think that you are not a problem and don't need to change, I urge you to turn off your device and kindly go touch some grass. Internet comments can hurt just as much as real life comments and I guarantee that you wouldn't like to have been in the same place as Em, who just wanted to give their opinion only to be told they're a hypocrite and childish.

In order for this negative reputation among fandoms to be changed to a neutral or even a positive one, it is up to the toxic fans I am writing to now to change their behavior and grow up. You can have your opinions, you are entitled to that much, but there is no reason to have to portray them so harshly. Running people off the Internet because they said something you do not like (WITHIN REASON, within reason. this does not include things such as racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. do not take my words out of context).

Fandom is wonderful. As someone who has been participating in it since before I was ten on little online forums and multiplayer games on the original Nickelodeon website, I have seen so much good. Some of my best friends who I care about more than anything I have been able to meet because of fandom. If it weren't for those who made the fandom world a little darker, maybe everyone else would be able to see that too.

With all well wishes,

Em.

"The only thing that works in this world, is that you treat others as they treat you." - Alex "Technoblade", 2020

[imperiuswrecked]

I truly don't know how you deal with people because after someone tried to say some shit about Tenoch admitting they didn't know Spanish I just had to leave a whole discord server before exploding like god damn.

I don't know anything about the man but how are you going to admit to not knowing what he said and still accuse him of shit???

A lot of my patience stems from the fact that I would rather put positivity into the world rather than just spew hatred.

I've dealt with a lot of racism and harassments in the past, and I took a break from my older fandoms because of it before fully immersing myself in comic fandom and slowly over time I found a small group of wonderful people whom I can speak honestly with and it's very freeing and helps a lot to know my friends are there to chat with.

I would suggest finding people or mutuals that understand cancel culture is a toxic thing and understand that some stuff will be taken out of context and have the maturity to understand that not everything online is true facts and often times there's stuff we don't know what's going on. Honestly like the people I speak with everyday mean so much to me and I love them.

It also helped that a majority of my friends are latino/spanish speakers and were able to point out right away what was going on, and I had more internet people who follow me for Namor on tumblr/twitter also dm me to let me know the context.

The sad fact is the second I saw who Tenoch was, I already had my guard up because I knew, I just knew, that fandom would explode and hate him right away and find anything to cancel him with while ignoring how racist/sexist/etc. their fave white actors are because; he isn't a light skinned pretty boy they can either project their fantasies onto or turn him into their white male fantasy self insert. I've seen this kinda racism against POC happen alot and still see it happen in the MCU/Marvel fandom most because that's where I spend my time. Darker skinned characters are often shoved aside for the next white boy ship, just look at Falcon and the Winter Soldier; so many people were shipping Zemo/Bucky and ignoring Sam who is a lead character.

I'm not sure if you have followed me long but I was a very big advocate of a POC Actor for Namor and while my fancast were East Asian actors because I felt from the coding in the comics Namor does look East Asian, and I will probably continue to have that image of comic Namor as such in my head, I was also very open to the idea of any POC actor playing Namor, such as Native, Pacific Islanders, etc. So I am supportive of Tenoch as a casting if indeed he will be Namor.

If you ever want to join the Namor fandom discord just dm me for details! We are being positive about Tenoch there.

[dayables]

Gonna braindump about yttd very quickly, I just need to share my thoughts with someone, hope it's not a bother haha this is so long, I'm so so sorry. You don't have to read this, I'm just hyperfixating. I think the whole emotion vs logic route choice is very interesting and I love seeing people's reactions and analysis of it so I kinda wanted to share some other aspects I think most people overlook. (Preface by saying that I'm pretty biased because I'm a huge Shin kinnie and I really really really love his character) Most youtubers/streamers or just players in general I watch play the game have already their mind made up before that choice is even presented to them. Yttd is game that has plenty dialogue choices but at that point we are already aware that our choices in those instances make no real change in the story's outcome. The only choice prior that would lead to a different route was Alice or Reko's death which I think was a choice a lot less explicit and even then you the storytelling itself suffers basically no significant changes. What I mean is that, unlike what could happen in a real situation, we have no reason to believe that by choosing to spare Shin there will be a different ending where he aids us in escaping and the rest of the participants survive with no repercussions (we, at least from what we have learnt through the gameplay so far, don't have that much control on the story's outcome). Also most players I've talked to are more often than not annoyed with Shin (understandably so), so very little choose to kill Kanna over Shin.

But when I had to choose I was also divided for other reasons. Like you already developed in one of your posts Kanna is already a girl hurt and clearly emotionally exhausted from a very young age and although she has been growing stronger through the chapters you can still see the weight everything has on her. On the other Shin is supposedly fated to die, he has a 0% win rate and the odds are not in his favor. But besides the fact I heavily relate to him (sorry breaking the ambiance but, cute boy pretty pretty kiss kiss) I tend to root for the underdog and him believing from the start he's playing a game he just can't win no matter what hits different. And people tend to judge his actions in a very unfair light as in, when he accuses Sara, Keiji and other characters of various things we know that isn't true but Shin does not have that trust in us. Often his suspicious seem odd to us because we as the player (and as Sara) know things he doesn't. We know out motivations aren't harmful or manipulative but what Shin knows is that we're a girl with 15.5% win rate in a game about manipulation and deception. A game where him (as a naive, shy guy was doomed to fail unless he changed his ways). His distrust is perfectly reasonable (and if we consider how Sara was undeniably desperate to pass her Sacrifice card to someone else in Chapter 2, something she tried to but couldn't do because of her stolen wallet, even justified).

Anyways quick add on that I think the Logic route has a way more realistic and interesting path for Sara's character she's still a teenager put into a leadership position where the lives of her new found allies (I don't like calling them allies and I also find it odd how unopenly opposed she is of calling them friends) are depending on her. I think having her have a moment of clarity and hope in the emotion route is cute and nice for us as players but breaks a bit the immersion in the universe, her doubts and declining mental and emotional stability in the Logic route make for a lot better opportunities and character development.

Again I'm so so sorry I wrote a whole essay I just saw your posts some time ago and really liked them and wanted to share other things I've been thinking about. This isn't proofread or anything hope it makes any amount of sense hahahaha

:0 OP C’MERE I LOVE YOU! /p

you have just put my whole entire head into words! 

I love the logic route so much because I too root for the underdog and Shin is just doing what he wanted. The route seems so much more alive. Especially because Sara is also mentally exhausted, her sudden awakens from seeing Joe is refreshing and nice and dandelions and stuff but it really did break my immersion. Especially because my first move was too kill Kanna. 

I had not decided what I was doing first. My choice was never made. As you said, we have no reason to believe when playing blind it will make such a huge difference which make the choice so easy. Just kill the annoying one. 

My split choice was for the exact same reason as you, people are too unfair on Shin. We don’t have nearly enough time to process his reasons before we are shoved into voting. I could not come to kill Shin because as I have covered, Kanna is mentally exhausted, which was my final push but I sat on call for a good hour thinking that choice over. You summed it up perfectly, his distrust is reasonable. I want to see Shin push past that 0.0% chance and he deserves it. He deserves to realise he is more than a number etc... I may not kin Shin and yes, go pretty boy go >///<. (/hj). but i want to see him succeed and I want to see him alive. 

I was so immersive in the logic route my first run. I never really broke out and most importantly, everyone’ reactions seem genuine. Shin is angry,  Sara is even more stressed  (even if one of the main causes of exhaustion no longer exists) 

For me to the two routes contradict each other because the logic route proves the issues with Sara’s truama does not stem from Joe. It stems from the exhaustion of leading others. And like you said, that leaves so many many opportunities  for others development. Will Shin stand up to save everyone else? What will Keiji do now big strong Sara isn’t so strong?

In terms of story writing, I much prefer the logic route but I understand why people prefer the emotional route. 

Thank you so much for dumping this on me. Please come back to my inbox any time! Don’t be sorry. I love this! 

[lesbian-ed]

How do you move on? I've been in love with this girl for years and I only recently realized we'd never truly be in a committed relationship and it broke my heart. I miss her and I think about her everyday. I joined Her and I've gone on a few dates, but nothing has stuck. I don't really want it to or expect it to, but it still sucks.. I'm completely emotionally unavailable. I feel like I could sleep around and feel nothing. I've never felt like that before. How can I move on?

First and foremost, Anon, I think we need to dispelthe notion that moving on and getting over a broken heart necessarilymean jumping on to the next woman in line. If, as you said yourself,you are emotionally unavailable, my experience is that trying to bewith someone else to break the spell won’t aid you in the least.

See, moving on isn’t about moving on to the nextgirl, but moving on with life, with ourselves. You shouldn’t be attempting toerase the mark this girl has left on you by inviting lots of other women into your bed because it won’t have any effect if youhaven’t done the proper ‘digesting'—it’s no use to strain your bodyto fit in with another while trying to mend your heart and change yourmind. There’s a whole process involved, one of letting go and‘enjoying’ one’s solitude.

I know 'enjoying’ might seem a bit inappropriate whencoupled with the word 'solitude’ in light of an unsuccessfulrelationship, but there are elements of enjoyment to be found inbeing alone once one has surpassed that initial moment of disbelief,hurt, possibly despair. There is nothing novel in recommendingsomeone time in dealing with issues of feeling, I’m sure, andthere’s a reason why people will tell you to wait and let timeflow, but what most fail to tell you is that you cannot sit idly bywhilst consumed by the thought of this one girl, the errors orproblems that led to this outcome, wishing things were different—onthe contrary, I think one must use this moment to assess things asrealistically as possible. If it didn’t work out, then it wasn’tmeant to be—otherwise, logically, it wouldn’t have broken, wouldit?

There is a difference between grieving what we thinkmight have been amazing and condemning ourselves to misery by believing that that was the one chance for happinesswe’d get in this life. The first is a feeling that comes and goes,for, even in the future, when we have left this wholly behind (and itwill happen if you let it, if you make it happen), we still do findourselves wondering 'well, what if?’ but we don’t lose sleepover it anymore; it’s casual, human curiosity. Whereas the second option can lead us to a statevery close to what you’re describing, in which we become somehow verydependent on the memory of what was and on the desire of what couldhave been (or should have been, in our minds), dependent onthe idea of the woman that does not want us back. And that is bad.

It’s common in the first weeks following a break-upor another kind of romantic disenchantment, but to suffer years ofthis, of being shackled to one person who is clearly not at allshackled back to us?

You ask, Anon, how to move on. One must allow time tosweep away the dust of our sadness—but, and many will not like mesaying this, one must also give oneself permission to move on; onemust, at some point, actively pursue the overcoming of our sentimentif time by itself won’t do the trick. And to do that does not mean topursue someone else—but, perhaps, to pursue ourselves.

Now, personally, I dislike psychology and I do notwish to present myself an expert on the matter (Sappho forbid!), butthese sorts of issues, of over-dependence on an ex-girlfriend, onwanting what didn’t come to pass or what has already ended (or neverbegun, depending on the case) always seem to me linked to issues ofconfidence and self-esteem, as if one found it hard or unfeasible toimagine oneself without that person in one’s life. But the truthgenerally is that the person in question is already out of ourlife and we have not yet accepted that reality. For fear, perhaps; ofnever being loved again, of never loving someone to thatdegree again, of never settling down and finding happiness in thearms of any other woman… Reasons abound.

But we tend to feed on a handful of illusions and allof these motives for fear are just that: illusions. Nobody losesvalue by not being corresponded in love; nobody ceases to beimportant because one person in the world suddenly thinksdifferently; nobody is doomed to sadness because we believe ourselvesunloved and/or unloving. I wager we put too much value upon others’perception of us, that we base too much of our happiness on otherpeople—wonderful people, sure, women who stand out in a crowd,otherwise we would not have loved them, but even so we should notforget ourselves to their benefit. We should have the courage to facelife as it is; to choose to move forwards, to leave behind that whichgives us nothing.

Someone might argue that to love a woman still,albeit she loves us not, might give us some strength here and there;that this ideal, romantic, self-sacrificing love is ‘inspiring’; thatit is the only force driving us onwards, that it compells us to make something outof ourselves so those cherished eyes will once again befall us… And I would be forced to respond that livingfor someone else, and especially to that degree, is no way of living.It shouldn’t be difficult to verify that these circumstances are farfrom healthy—and to cling to a love with so much potential for harmis masochistic to say the least. We build prisons out of our owndreams, sometimes, and pain from our joys. With all the romanticismwe tend to use in approaching relationships, it’s a fairly commontrap to fall into.

You might accuse me of being unromantic or unfeelingto speak of these things in this tone, but I assure you I know allabout seeing no way out, about being chained to someone I loved whowould not bat an eyelash towards me. We all have at least oneexperience with this kind of thing and we must find ways to breakfree from this conundrum.

I said earlier that moving on might have something todo with finding ourselves rather than someone else to replace thewoman we loved. That’s also got to do with self-esteem. Many will saythey are incapable and unwilling to love themselves because theybelieve the 'love yourself and others will love you’ line a fallacy;whether it is true or not is completely negligible, because you don’tneed to love yourself, just accept and, perhaps most of all,respect yourself.

Respect your faults and qualities, the time you needto get back up again. Get to know yourself a bit better, enact a bitof harmless selfishness (as in 'I want to see that film in theatresand so I shall, regardless of company’ rather than 'fuck mum and dad,I can spray paint my room and turn up the heavy metal to full volumeif I want to’, mind you), spend time with yourself.

That is, I think, the best and only way to trulyheal. Talk to yourself, listen to yourself. What do you like doing?What are your wants and needs? What are your dreams? What’s yourfavourite smell, food, colour, book, film? Maybe you enjoy walking orswimming or sculpting or meditating or writing. Immerse yourself inyourself. Amidst the chaos of contemporary life, despite thepressures of study or work or peers or family, take a few minutesoff to be with yourself. No, you will not find a void there—and ifyou do, who better to fill it with something nice than you?

You mentioned putting yourself out there, trying toget in touch with other women, but I think sometimes we need to getin touch with ourselves first. And not just when getting over abreak-up or something of the sort, but as much as possible.

It well may be that this is nothing but my own,hyper-individual view on the matter and that many people willdisagree, but, alas, I was the one to answer your question on thisblog today. These are methods by which I have risen again afteradversities of the heart. For we rise again always, Anon. We mustsometimes help ourselves to do it, occupy our hands and muscles andthoughts with something other than our perceived failures, dosomething with ourselves for ourselves rather than for others, wantto be better for ourselves rather than for a partner. In theend, there are few people we can rely on in life apart from thatperson we see in the mirror staring back at us every day.

To finish this (and spare you any more of myphilosophy of life), you will get through this, Anon. It might seemlike a dead end right now, it might seem like you will never leavethis spot of stagnation, but you will. You must want it, as well, ifjust a little bit; be courageous and shed this shell. Breathe. Letyourself be alone for a little while, let it sink in that it did notwork—and that you are not obliged to make anything with anyone elsework at the moment. Focus on you. Find what brings you pleasure anddo not insult your own intelligence and spirit by thinking only shegives you pleasure in life; it isn’t true, not for you, not foranyone. We are made for more than to serve as partners to others,adorable as they might prove to be. If you are currently unable toopen yourself up, then don’t. Don’t go looking for women you’re notyet ready nor willing to bring into your life. Take what you have atthe moment and make the best of it for the time being.

The pressure to find a new girlfriend might even dieout. And that’s a good thing, because we tend to find the mostfantastic and remarkable partners precisely when we aren’tlooking—when we’re ready to live a life with them ratherthan for them, if you know what I mean!

Be patient with yourself and listen to yourself. Bekind. Be to yourself what you’d like others to be. You’ll do just fine.

/Mod T

[magistralucis]

I don't know if you're the same person, but I think I came across your old DeviantArt account. The reason why I bring this up is because I found your translations of Till Lindemann's poems, and in them you mentioned that you were just a beginner when it came to the German language. As someone who is trying to learn German myself, I was wonder if you had any tips on how to learn the language. I'm finding it quite difficult to get the hang of. Again, please ignore this if I have the wrong person.

Hi, it’s the same anon who asked you advice about learning German. It’s a bit off topic from my last ask, but the reason why I want to learn is mostly due to becoming a huge fan of Rammstein. Mutter is my favorite album, it’s so good!

Hello anon. I am definitely the person you’re looking for. I was working on this message when I initially received it and it was beginning to get rather out of hand - then I received the second one, and so I’ll meld the two responses into one and cross my fingers and hope for the best!

I started learning German about six years ago, when I first got into R+ and Till’s poetry. The motivation you have is pretty much the same one I had (same favourite album too! High five) and this is how I went about it. Apart from the standard ‘take it slow and steady, practice often’ advice that applies to every language, I’ve also added some German-specific advice beneath the cut:

1. If you can attend a beginner’s class, try to attend at least a year’s worth, especially if German is your first attempted foreign language. If you’re not used to learning languages, this is probably the most helpful advice I can give, because languages are by definition social constructs and you need people to speak it to and keep it alive with; this is also the place where they’ll teach you the basics of grammar, enough for you to begin navigating textbooks and be able to pick out the advice that works for you. 

This applies regardless of whether you want to learn ‘fully’ (in all capacities) or more ‘academically’ (reading + writing + information gathering prioritized) or if you literally want to be able to ‘speak’ it (listening + speaking prioritized). I may or may not be against the advice of langblr when I say this, but there is absolutely a limit to self-study, especially if you have no one else to talk in German with. I’d be hesitant to advise that going to classes for the entirety of your German learning will be helpful, because those things differ and there are very real concerns like money to consider, but they do make for an invaluable foundation.

2. If you are committed to self-studying for whatever reason, research your resources thoroughly. I’d recommend finding a textbook that works for you and sticking with it, because some grammar terms can and will differ across media. This isn’t a fix for knowing the correct grammatical terminology in all cases, because there are multiple ways to refer to a concept, but knowing what process is involved in what you’re referring to and being able to refer to it by a consistent name will help when you’re looking up resources elsewhere. 

This is an example of what I mean: the ’Subjunctive II’ in German used to be called ‘past subjunctive’ as an interchangeable term, when in fact the Subjunctive II is a class of subjunctives that utilize simple past/imperfect, pluperfect, and conditional tense forms to form themselves - they are not merely subjunctives that are only meant to be used in past tense sentences, as the term ‘past subjunctive’ can imply. I mean, simple past/imperfect subjunctives are meant for unreal events taking place in the present or future.

Took me a while to wrap my head around that. 

The books in my arsenal are Essential German Grammar by Martin Durrell, Katrin Kohl and Gudrun Loftus (very grammar-oriented and strict, but helpful), a verb conjugation book of the 500 most common German verbs (useful for reference), a German dictionary, a translation theory book (you won’t need this, necessarily, if your focus isn’t on translation), and some textbooks with translation segments in them. When I was going to classes, I used the Wilkommen! series of books by Paul Coggle and Heiner Schenke, and I have a GCSE German textbook from CGP Books for when I tutor German to younger students (because that’s also a thing I do, haha). I gathered all of this in the UK, so this list may or may not be helpful to you; but in the end, the language isn’t going anywhere, so some research will help you make the right choice.

3. Brush up on your grammar terminology. If the above Subjunctive II example induced in you a case of math_lady.jpg, the problem you’ll first run into isn’t a German problem - it’ll be a problem of what you understand of the grammar of your native language, or at the very least, the language your resources are written in. Even if you are a bilingual or residing in multilingual territory already (e.g. you are from somewhere like Canada where monolingualism isn’t standard, already know some foreign languages, etc.) it’s worth brushing up on the grammar. Terms such as ‘copula’, ‘adjective’, ‘preposition’, ‘gender-based inflection’, ‘accusative case’, ‘indirect object’, and ‘adverbials’ absolutely need to make sense to you in order for you to understand your resources. 

I mean, I have to be honest. You don’t really need grammarspeak in order to be fluent in a language, because you also pick those things up via immersion; but if you are using textbooks and learning at a later stage of life, you are going to come across heavy use of grammar terminology at some point. And German grammar is painful, I won’t lie. When I tutored German from scratch, it took a full year just to get the fundamental grammar down. German is very logical, save for when there are exceptions - and there are always exceptions, thousands of them - and when the underlying structure of the language hasn’t begun to make sense yet. To my experience, you sort of break eventually and accept it. It’s, uh… always best to be prepared. If you’re adept in grammarspeak already you may ignore this section, save for the bit about German grammar being hard, because that is absolutely true.

4. Practice, practice, practice. I can’t stress this enough. I actually have no one method to recommend, because I had only a very specific goal in mind when I was first learning German: I was going to finish translating Messer. My practice involved translating German texts into English (not the reverse!), regardless of what they were, and listening to German music and radio. This will not work for everyone. What matters regardless of what you do is consistency - 10 mins every single day revising is far better than two hours of revision weekly. Don’t let the stigma of being a beginner get you down. You want to have a go at a German poem, but it’s too ambitious-seeming for you? You won’t know it unless you try. Don’t let the naysayers get you down. You will make a boatload of mistakes and embarrass yourself constantly, and this is a sign that your learning is going well - patience and tenacity is the key here.

5. Penpals and Tandem/speaking partners can be helpful. This may not be immediately applicable advice, because it can be intimidating for a beginner to write to or talk to native speakers, but once you reach a certain point in your studies it’s important for you to be acquainted to the way native speakers do things. It’s how you pick up slang and other quirks of the language, for one. Same for total immersion.

6. Don’t trust Till’s ‘r’ when it comes to the German ‘r’ sound. The strong rolled ‘r’ is a feature of sung German and has nothing to do with the rhotic, throaty ‘r’ of German and French. Please ignore this section if you’re already familiar with the rhotic ‘r’.

7. In fact, look up proper pronunciations for everything. Sung German is its own territory, and not the best thing to refer to when you’re learning Standard German. The two ‘ch’s especially - they’re their own sounds, not just e.g. ‘ich’ -> ‘ish’ and e.g. ‘ach’ -> ‘ack’. The former is closer to ‘i-hh’ sounded at the front of the mouth, while the other ‘ch’ is pronounced like the ‘ch’ of the Scottish ‘Loch’ (make ‘hh-’ sound with the back of your tongue touching or near to the soft palate). Again, please ignore if you have the pronunciation down pat already.

8. When you learn words, make sure that you learn the article that comes with them. ‘Das Mädchen’, ‘Der Tisch’, etc. It is absolutely more work, but if you are not acquainted to grammatical gender, knowing the appropriate ‘der/die/das’ that comes with a noun is extremely useful. There are three main grammatical genders in German - this may not be the case for you even if you already speak a gendered foreign language (like French - no neuter gender), so this is absolutely vital advice I plead with you not to ignore.

9. Don’t shy away from compound nouns. I unironically love this feature about German and have never had problems with it personally, but I know sometimes it can be intimidating to be faced with a huge string of words that pop out at you from nowhere. 

I tend to break them down to their components to figure out what the singular word means, approaching them like a puzzle rather than a singular concept to just know firsthand: ‘Fallschirmspringen’ means ‘to parachute’, but its components literally boil down to ‘fall-umbrella-jumping’, for one; compound nouns are rather whimsical concepts, and also very literary, and I think there’s a real beauty in them! Take it slow and listen to what the compound noun is trying to tell you.

10. Verb conjugation tables are your friends. Especially for the strong verbs. I got nothing else to add to this.

11. Like in every other language, beware of false friends. These are words that look alike to those in your native language, but do not mean what you think they mean. ‘Also’ in German does not mean ‘also’ in English. (It’s closer in meaning to ‘so’ in English.) The German ‘bald’ means ‘soon’, while the English ‘bald’ is ‘kahl’ in German. ‘Kritik’ in German is referring to the act of criticism, not the ‘critic’. It is because of this that you must resist the temptation to do literal translations from English/[insert your native language here] to German, unless you know what you’re doing.

12. Read up on grammatical cases. German has four, which is one more than English, and the four cases are nigh universally called the nominative, accusative, dative, and the genitive. There are none of the ‘subjective/objective/possessive’ stuff that English uses, or worse, the ‘I-me-mine’ relation that doesn’t name anything helpful. 

These four are also true grammatical cases, which means that full inflection of nouns, pronouns, and noun phrase elements (e.g. adjectives/numerals…) need to be learnt in German. At its extreme, this can mean learning up to 48 adjectival endings for each adjective - accounting for gender, number, case, and strong/weak/mixed endings. All because case inflection is a thing.I make that sound a lot more intimidating than it actually is, because said endings usually follow a pattern and sometimes don’t even change that often. Inflections are just things that you get used to. If cases are already your bread and butter because you’re familiar with a language with true cases, you can go ahead and ignore all of this; let us be thankful that German only has four. We could be… like… talking about Russian or something.

13. You are learning a new way of thought, not a new way to put words together. This is applicable to every language you might wish to learn. This is why you ought to look up words in both directions to verify the exact sense that you need, and why you can’t rely on [native language] -> [target language] translations forever in order to become familiar with the target language. The old way of thought will absolutely cling on and try to impede your progress; language learning is about unlearning this process as much as it is about learning new things. 

I’m six years gone, and if you stuck me in Germany I’d still be stammering and blushing and nonfunctional. We don’t consider eight-year-olds who’ve grown up speaking a language all their life ‘fluent speakers’ of that language; it can be easily another eight years for you, too. You’re in for the very long haul, and that means you can take as much time as you need. Don’t be down if you don’t get it right soon enough, or if it’s taking a very long time.

14. [SHAMELESS SELF-PROMO] I also tutor German. Contact me if you wish clarification on certain things or if you feel that you may require actual tuition. [/SHAMELESS SELF-PROMO]

I don’t post so much about R+ anymore, but German remains a very strong and integral part of my life. I am glad that my attempts at contributing to the fandom have led you to the same interest I developed all those years ago. I hope that the advice above is helpful, but if it is not, I would love to hear feedback from you on what parts of German you are struggling with so I am able to give more specific advice. My inbox is open whenever you want to ask me questions; I wish you luck on your journey and would love to hear from you, wherever you may be in your pursuits!