#i will learn i can do anything almost

[naomistares]

even though rejoice mini comic #1 ended up doing really well on twitter, i'll use tumblr to post updates occasionally ! (twitter makes me nervous)

2nd mini comic is looking to be 19 pages (but ill probably make it 20... i hate odd pages). i have finals rn but i am gods most efficient machine watch me finish this mid finals.

it's a quite linear and silly, takes place 5 ish years before main comic events. kind of meaningless to all but me, but its the type of thing that's funny to look back at once you know more.

that is all, will probably take a few more weeks... but i'm enjoying working on this one way more! there r some cool panels in there

[theblacktiecacti]

jay went to clown school. let’s talk about that

[st4rstudent]

i'll bring these out to the public actually

[milfygerard]

but fr outside of my contracted madness i absolutely refuse to give joe alwyn gold rush like how is that song at all related to their relationship the lyrics clearly spell out a relationship that either never existed or only existed in implication and fantasies and maybe-maybe nots and its so bitter and yet desperately soft in the bridge where it almost projects a sense of envy, of wanting to be them as much as you want them. It continues an interesting oft ignored lyrical trend of taylor wanting just as much to be her lover as to have them, envying their easy charisma (you were flush with the currency of cool/i was always turning out my pockets) or quiet dignity (your integrity makes me seem small) dating back to her earliest songs (the kind of flawless i wish i could be). Theres a projected self hatred and yearning to be better that twists itself into both romantic and sexual lust for her partners thats so fascinating and speaks to how all of her songs regardless of who theyre about are also an act of self reflection on who she is and who she wishes to be.

[tradingjack]

having fun with colors for once :P

thanks @creepycoffins for the awesome dtiys :D

[uncanny-tranny]

It's really frustrating being trans sometimes with cis loved ones because other cis people will go, "oh but it's such a huge adjustment for them! They're grieving for your pre-transition self/they aren't used to the change yet/it's hard on them!"

It's just so frustrating that people forget that trans people's feelings on this matter, too. Cis people aren't the only ones who have adjustments to make. Frankly, as much as I sympathize with cis people in this position, I can't help but be really jaded about it because so often, cis people jump to the defense of other cis people and they will seemingly forget to or refuse to give the same grace to trans people.

[moe-broey]

One thing they don't tell you about the Senshi tulpa that WILL inevitably manifest in your mind to tell you to eat better is that. Every time I make myself a coffee via kuerig instantly, I can hear him. Lamenting the fact that I have become so accustomed to convenience and ease that even a standard coffee machine has become foreign to me. I am thinking about how to make coffee without use of a machine in the first place, I am wondering where my french press went, I can see him. In my mind. Showing me how to make coffee in The Dungeon. Dungeon Coffee.

[scoriarose]

After a few hunger strikes and health worries, baby girl has finally started eating regularly and putting on weight. She was a very good girl and held still today while I weighed her- normally she's a wiggle worm who is unusually talented at hitting the tare (reset scale) button.

Whenever Scoria is out her sister Sakura watches us very carefully. At first, she didn't trust me and acted like she had some bad experiences with humans before I got her. At that time Scoria was the only being in existence she felt safe with and could flee to when she was frightened, so it's no wonder Sakura worried over her when I had her out, and thoroughly checked her over when I put her back in her enclosure.

Her look isn't one of fear and worry anymore though. Now she has one of curiosity. Of learning. When she sees me hold Scoria, she wants to try it too. When she watched me gently cup my hand around her sister, she wanted to try hiding in a "hand cave" too. And after seeing Scoria and I cuddle, she bravely came out the next morning, curled up and snuggled me for a few minutes.

It's quite the experience living with these two sweet girls who care so very much about each other, and seeing how they think and even change their thoughts and actions over time. It's also really neat to see how they both learn from watching, and trust each other's judgement.

Honestly I think people don't give snakes enough credit as far as intelligence and empathy/care are concerned. There's still so much about them we don't know, and I'm amazed by the things they show me.

[yorkiegregg]

On the topic of self-sustainability, I genuinely think a HUGE amount of us could benefit from this - just like in many other past situations - and especially now. The joys of being self sustainable is that you can go as deep into it as you want or just do a few things that make you feel involved or good!!! You could hone-in and build your own damn root cellar, then go the food preservation route and understand to not rely on big market chains anymore that are becoming more unreliable - or you could simply watch some people from afar who do partake in being sustainable and support them. You could understand food waste, you could contribute to making your own clothing out of your own harvested materials, you could simply have the mindset that - no matter what, there is a way… there is so much you can do. And so much of it, genuinely, will make things so enjoyable or otherwise so much more clear for you. Trust me.

[eisthenameofme]

love when it gets to the point of The Discourse where i feel the need to key word search otherwise chill people's blogs for rampant bigotry before following them. Like this isn't exactly what happened with 'ace discourse'

[soppsop]

i just rememberd adhd meds exist and now im upset because i could have that if it wasn't for that freakin neurologyst we went to see that told us it was impossible that i could have adhd because i have good grades in school. literally the ONLY question he asked me and immediately said it was impossible. we spent like 5 minutes there. he could've at least... explained something???? anything?????? and now i'd feel bad about asking my parents to see another neurologist because that costs a lot of money :((

[mejomonster]

How did you learn Chinese, like did you use a specific program like Duolingo or did you take classes? How hard was it to read Priest's novels with where you were at in your language learning journey? I want to get back into learning (been wanting to since I watched The Untamed,) but I gave up about 8 months ago 😭

Hey ovo)/ so uh. That's a big question. I have a studyblr @rigelmejo so if you really want the full on journey lol its on there, steps i took and what I studied and progress and study tools I found and used and stuff I've linked for people.

For the shortest tip I can give you? Would be to check out the Heavenly Path site if you're interested in learning to read novels. You'll need to figure out your own way to study about 1000 common hanzi, basic grammar, and basic pronunciation (I link resources on rigelmejo), but after that point the Heavenly Path site has reading resources for graded reading, easier kids novels, easier manhua, webnovels by difficulty level, all the way up! So you can at that point just follow their recommendations and use reading tools they link (like Pleco and Readibu apps which I suggest you download asap - they include tools where you can click a chinese word when reading for translation and audio pronunciation and pinyin). So yeah at 1000 hanzi, just start reading from their suggestions! (Also consider downloading Bilibili Comics app as it has English and Chinese free manhua, so you can start reading manhua earlier, and youtube/viki.com learn mode and Any platforms with dual english/chinese subs and start trying to look up 1 word every 5 minutes or more as curious and practicing reading the chinese words in subs you've learned). I suggest you check out all pages on the Heavenly site, they link a ton of resources.

The short-ish version of what I did the first year I studied chinese? I fumbled a lot, read through an entire grammar guide summary in a few weeks here http://chinese-grammar.com/, watched some YouTube tone videos and went through a pronunciation guide here https://www.dong-chinese.com/learn/sounds/pinyin which took a week or two and I'd do it every few months, read through the book Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters by Tuttle publishing in about 2 months (I really liked their mnemonics to help me remember hanzi), started Ben Whatley memrise decks 1000 Chinese common words and 2000 common words (took about 2 weeks to finish one then I took a few months break then studied the other 1000, mainly focusing on studying new words and not reviewing until the last week if I had time - in retrospect I think learners would do better with the Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck but the memrise courses I used worked fine for me). I was watching cdramas as usual most weeks, English subs with the Chinese hardsubs on the video file like most youtube cdramas, with Google Translate app on my phone to look up a word every several minutes as curious. Once I was 3ish months in and learning the memrise Ben Whatley 2000 common chinese words, I read some Mandarin Companion graded readers in Pleco app then some more 300-600 word graded readers in Pleco. That gets me to like month 6ish. Then I started reading manhua and looking up words in pleco or Google translate when I needed to in order to grasp main idea overall (or was curious about a particular word). Kept reading graded readers in pleco.

Around month 8 I tried 天涯客 and 镇魂, both brutally hard. I was reading in Pleco in the Clipboard Reader (from websites) or the Reader tool (i bought it for like $20 dollars along with handwriting recognition, OCR, and expanded dictionaries). Mandarinspot.com has a good reading tool too that can add pinyin if you need it, and Readibu in some ways i prefer to Pleco depending on your particular reading needs on a given day. Tried a few easier webnovels, tried a pingxie fanfic 寒舍 which was hard but easier than priest novels (love that fanfic). I kept bouncing between webnovels then around month 10 天涯客 novels took about 1.5 hours to read through a chapter. At that point I brute force tried to read it or 寒舍 daily with 1 chapter a day, got 28 chapters in before i burned out with 天涯客 and 60ish chapters into 寒舍. It was about a year in. I cram studied 500 hanzi in some common hanzi deck with mnemonics I found on anki over a month, hoping if I improved vocab I'd read easier. I also was gradually trying to watch more cdrama with only chinese subs, around month 6 I finally watched Granting You a Dreamlike life full episodes with no eng subs (about 5-10 word lookups an episode), watched 15ish eps, then after that shows got less daunting to try watching.

A little over a year in Word of Honor came out and I watched it in chinese first because I was too impatient for eng subs. After that went decently I got braver about reading, tried Listening Reading Method (see @rigelmejo for those experiments), more stuff etc like extensive reading with no word lookups.

In retrospect I WISH I'd started with easier novels Heavenly Path recommended. However on the other hand? I've seen people who read their first cnovel with Pleco as early as 3-6 months in which blows my mind. So me picking hard novels to start isn't the Hardest thing in comparison lol. This past year (so at start of year 3 studying lol) I actually read like 10 things on Heavenly Paths easier recommendations and it helped immensely in filling in gaps in vocab and reading fluidity I had. So if you do pick a priest novel as your first novel and manage to chug through it without giving up, be aware "easier" novels may still have stuff you can learn later so don't rule them out as reading materials later on.

I've also seen people do literally no study except maybe some curious Google searches on hanzi or grammar or pronunciation, then brute force read novels in Readibu until they improved. A brutal way to do it but possible. (I really recommend at minimum learning hanzi are made of radicals though as it makes recognizing and remembering them so much easier).

I think the best thing I did for learning to read was just being Brave and Trying to read regularly. And it gradually got less hard.

[jamboreeartsupplies]

Acorn Anne visits some Mulberry trees that are in need of healing. please send a small offering of dry, warm air through your closest fairy ring and Acorn Anne will direct it to the leaves of both trees. thank you for your cooperation 🫡

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[the-golden-dragoness]

Does anyone know how to maneuver a relationship where they are interested in dating you but you were fine being old school acquaintances who don’t speak to each other

[mellotronmkll]

Think I've finally mastered she's an angel on accordion I'm so happy