#level 0 could be 30 minutes of studying a day | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

almostwisegalaxy · 2 years ago

Text

The glory

Ha Do Young x reader

Part 3

Two weeks later

Dong-woon and I left enough clues for Ha Do-yeon's mind to question her child's paternity. Normally he should come today and collect the results. I don't think I'll be there when he comes. I work nights, my shift ends at 8am and I have 30 minutes to drop Chin off at school.

Ha Do Young's point of view

My hands are sweaty and I'm stressed. It's only 6:30 in the morning, but I'm going to the clinic to get the results of this damn test. Find out if Ye-sol is my blood, if my marriage is based on a complete lie. As soon as you arrive, I go to the reception and ask for documents.

“Yes, here are the results of the genetic test, Mr. Thank you for using our services.”

I sat down in the waiting room and decided to open the envelope. I try, but nothing works. My vision is blurry and my hands are shaking. "Excuse me, is there a doctor who can read the results now?" »

"Yes, of course. It's the third door on the right."

When I opened the door, I saw Mr. Yu concentrating on what appeared to be a patient's medical papers.

"I'm sorry to disturb you this early."

“Oh, I'm fine. "What should I do for you?"

"Can you read his results? I'm afraid of misinterpreting them."

"Yes, please sit down."

"These results demonstrate 0% genetic identity between the two individuals."

“………… Thanks, I think I should go..."

Pov pov

Yes but no

he fainted

“Mr Ha, can you hear me?

I have no response. I expected him to be shocked by the news, but not so shocked as to faint. . He should wake up soon, right?

later in the day

It is 10 p.m. when I return to resume work with one of my colleagues. When I left this morning, Mr. Ha couldn't wake up, so I left that to the nurse, and he was very pale, so I asked him to give me an IV. And when I came back to my office, it was still as inert as it was hours ago.

The clinic isn't very busy tonight, so I'm going to see a few patients first. Some get a prescription and leave immediately, while others are kept in a room overnight due to their condition. I will go back to Mr. Ha. I stopped noticing his upper body movements, so I lowered myself to bed level to check for lice. I put my hand on his neck and looked at the clock. Yes, he is breathing quite normally. And at that moment he decided to wake up, put his hands on his neck and looked into mine. From this point of view, it looked like two people about to kiss.

"You're finally awake. I'm starting to worry."

"Why am I here?"

"You came for tests and due to lack of food, I guess you passed out"

He let go of my hand and we both sat down

" What time is it ?"

"11:40 p.m."

He tried to pull the IV out of his hand but I stopped him by putting my hand on it.

"Don't do this, you don't have enough iron and you could fall at any movement"

"You don't understand. I have to fix something at home"

"I know you must be worried about your daughter, but I don't think confronting your wife about it right now is good for your health."

"Because in addition to being a doctor, you are a marriage counselor?" I don't think a single mother knows what to do in this situation!

"Forgive me, I-"

"Okay. Take that needle off if you want so much you hit your face on the next stairs you'll see later. Get out of here" I said as I left the room.

"Miss Yu wait" but there was no time. I slammed the door in his face.

Dong Eun I hope you manage on your side because what I have is rat bowl

I slipped away 2 hours later and found him STILL there, lying staring at the ceiling. Let him do what he wants. I sat in the chair behind the desk, with my back to him, to study the somewhat complicated case of an undiagnosed woman.

Ha Do Young pov

"Miss Yu, I sincerely apologize to you. I should never have talked to you like that, especially since you were trying to help me"

" Hmm"

"And I also apologize for yelling at you. It was anger but I know it shouldn't have been directed at you"

" Hmm "

"You still won't talk to me?"

" Hmm"

"Can I at least ask you a question?"

" Hmm "

"How did you know I took a paternity test?"

"I was wondering what was the cause of your sudden unhealthiness and I got the information from the lab technician"

I say nothing more to collect my ideass. I don't know if I'm angry or sad right now. Well I blame yeon jin for lying to me but I don't know. From the beginning I suspected an extra marital relationship but I didn't dwell on it more than that. After all she fit the but gender standard and my mother had happily given her approval to the wedding announcement so I thought it was already good enough to live out the rest of my life. But I was seriously mistaken.

"What...what would you do if it was you in this situation?"

"I will do everything to keep my child. If eventually I still love him so much"

" But how to do it ?"

"It's simple. I turn his brain over to him in order to acquire proof of any mental instability of my spouse and the other in case he wants to recover the child following the divorce. But after that it's not that the opinion of a mother who raises her child alone does not take it into account "

"Sorry again for-"

" Excuse rejected. What do you think? Raising a child alone is easy? I have no one to trust my son to when I'm not around. I'm carrying my child just to have enough money to give him what he deserves. So I don't allow anyone to judge me. Is that clear?" She is now facing me speaking. I decide to get up to talk to him

"I can't say otherwise. I see how hard you are working for both of you and my words were very inappropriate. I don't know if you could forgive me"

"I think you'd better leave if you feel up to it"

" All right." I gather my things and get ready to leave. " Bye"

After leaving the hospital at dawn, I just went home to change. Ye-sol and her mother are still sleeping. It's better this way, I don't know how it's going to end if we talk. I am working at the moment. I just finished one and I'm so tired. I have too many thoughts swirling around in my head. But I don't want to think about anything. I just want to have my daughter with me, even if she's not really mine.

And this conversation with Ms. Yu ohhh. I hate this tension that has set in. I can understand his reaction to my comment. Basically, I always avoid unnecessary arguments, especially with those around me, so this situation makes me sad.

I decide to pick up Ye-sol from her school to spend some time with her and see if I still love her as much as before. The road from the company to the elementary school passed by the path of Ms. Yu's son Chin, I looked around not expecting to see anything special except for the little one sitting under the tree in front of the school. But what can he be doing at this hour outside. I got out of the car to go see him but noticed a few other kids around him.

"See, I told you. No one will come looking for him because he doesn't have a father."

“Bouu has a little chin without a father bouuu” “yes a bastard”

"Fuck bastards!" They screamed in their hearts but upon noticing me they ran away.

Chin was lying on the ground, his back to me. Looks like they pushed him. He tries not to cry, it shows. I leaned over to him and started a discussion with him.

“Did you hurt my little one?

"No...... Just a little crack on the knee"

"Okay, and can you tell me what you do outside of school?"

"The teacher has to go there urgently. The director called all the parents to come and take us home but mum didn't answer"

"but why aren't you in the yard, safe."

"It's them...... They like to bother me and hurt me. And I don't want to wait with them"

" OK. Uhh how about I take you to see your mom?

"You would do that?"

"Of course. I just need to take my daughter and go. Do you trust me?"

"No, But I Want to See Mom"

"so let's go see her"

I took her hand, bandaged her knee and we were on our way. Once at the hospital, I drove two toddlers across the street. Upon arriving, he knocked on the door and we heard a voice

"Yes who is it?"

"Hello, it's me momma" he says running to throw himself on the mother who has just caught up with him

"Yes and us too" ye-sol greeted her from inside the room

“Hey kids, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in class? "

"Madam must have come home early"

"My father came to get me"

"And he scratched his knee" I said

"Pardon ?"

Then she examined his wound, disinfected it and put a bandage on it. Meanwhile, ye-sol fetches snacks from the vending machine further away.

"How did you do that? Honey"

"Other kids push me"

"And why are they doing this?"

"He just likes to annoy me. It's nothing serious, momma."

"No, from what I could see, it's not just adispute. This is harassment", I said

"And maybe you know why he harassed you?" He immediately bowed to his mother's words, as if he had been mistaken.

"Chin answers mom" she told him, she gently grabbed his shoulder "my chick?"

"........They say I'm a bastard......That I don't have a father and that's why I'm going to end my life in school. I'm sorry mom, I know this is wrong. Anyway, I only need you” and he hugs her.

"You don't have to apologize for that. It's not your fault"

Then Ye-sol came back and offered to take the kids to lunch and bring her son back around the afternoon. She agreed and we left her alone. She really needs it.

___________________________________

hey hi. I don't have many ideas to continue the story, so I prefer to wait for season 2 which comes out soon to get an idea. I hope you like the story. and if you have any ideas. Help me

A perfect family 🫣

Part2:

#ha do young #ha do young x reader #moon dong eun #park yeon jin #the glory #the glory kdrama #the glory x reader #ju yeo-jeong

267 notes · View notes

nowtoboldlygo · 11 months ago

Text

korean comprehensible input update 1/30

this update has been months in the making!!!!! i am so excited to be here!!!!!!!!!!!

after pausing on grammar study, i never went back. planning to do a purist 100% immersion, 0% translation or english explanation, forever and ever.

i have officially consumed one hundred hours of korean language comprehensible input! i'm following pablo roman's og immersion method, and fall well within the model:

You understand some common words, even if you are not 100% sure how to pronounce them. You can now guess the meaning of some 2-word sentences, like "go home", or "eat cake". There are only a few words that you could produce yourself. For many words, you’re still not sure what sounds they’re made of.

for the first hundred hours, i watched the easiest stuff i could find. mostly that meant someone pointing and saying this is a woman, this is a man, she eats this, he likes this &c. my resource list got to around 80 hours, so basically i rewatched my favorites and slowly went for harder content.

from my notes over the last few months: i did feel like i hit the above capability around 30 hours, where i was able to recognize some nouns, some verbs, some past tense. around 50 hours i felt like i covered everything in videos that i learned on lingodeer or with other traditional resources (see update zero).

this will be my hardest hundred hours, as with CI ease of comprehension exponentially increases with additional input. it often sucked really terribly - the content isn't complex enough to be interesting, and it was difficult to pay attention for any long stretch of time. i watched about 5-15 minutes at a time even on days where i logged a sum of hours.

general check-in notes:

immersion: still not watching any adult-level tv shows or movies at the moment! i did read a couple of translations: very delightful scifi novel, and a psychological thriller. both are very short!

plans for the future: mostly focused on getting to peppa pig ASAP! it's supposed to be high beginner low intermediate (re reddit threads) so we'll see 🐷🤞🤞

timeline notes: i kept condensing my etc of 3000 hours from 2031 (eight years) to 2026 (only thirty more months!!). expecting to require adjustment, but it's been very easy to hit my hours so far even with my increasing spanish goals.

next update eta is this spring!

#korean update for future reference #comprehensible input #korean notes #nowtoboldlygo posts #⏳

4 notes · View notes

rigelmejo · 3 years ago

Text

Some September 1st Updates

the READING SPEED difference of a novel at my level! I read the first chapter of 撒野 yesterday and this author is at exactly my reading level right now. I hit 0-2 new words each pleco page, which is usually the sweet spot to either guess the word or if I look it up I can pretty quickly adapt to recognizing it in context. Its also the sweet spot where if I only rely on guessing for new word meanings, on a second pass through I can fairly well guess the meaning quickly.

It was a 32 page chapter in pleco and I read it in 20 minutes. Compared to the 20 pleco page per chapter pingxie fic i just finished (like 124k characters! WOW I read and FINISHED that much!), which was taking 30-40 minutes per chapter (mainly because of number of new vocabulary per chapter being a bit higher). If I’d wanted to speed read saye I could have, I’d have missed some small details but I could have tried if I wanted.

Then I did a second pass later in the day with the audiobook just following along with the text. Realized 1. I knew most words in the audiobook and did not follow as well as i thought - but those first listen throughs without having seen the chapter I did manage to figure out the main character just broke up, just travelled somewhere, ran into a girl and somehow the girls brother showed and the two guys interacted a little and someone was being somewhat helpful, then the main guy met his father trying to ‘pick him up.’ Which is a true but very rough summary of what happens in the first chapter. By reading I could confirm the words I thought were names AS names, figured out WHY the girl was interacting with the main guy and that there were actually two girls in chapter 1, and figure out who helped who and who was the girl’s brother. Also somehow before I looked at the chapter text I never caught that the audiobook mentions a motorcycle despite me knowing that word and it SOUNDING like mota-che/motorche! it sounds like the word and i knew it and didn’t hear it! Then later following the audiobook with the text I realized another issue I had, is I’m not used to listening to soft voices with such faint pronunciations of the final sounds. I’m much more used to deeper crisper pronunciations and being able to rely clearly on initials and finals AS much as tones to recognize the words, whereas this particular audiobook i needed to mainly rely on tones and initials to figure out what word was what - that probably threw me off a bit. It’s probably good for me to get practice listening to such a different voice to what I’m used to. I have definitely learned the deeper the voice, the more I have a far easier time figuring out what’s being said. Also standard accent more like beijing but without a huge amount of ‘er’s just some, and taiwan accent are the easiest for me to hear when i’m not pa

For anyone curious, here is the audiobook for SaYe I’m listening to: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2w27tfjeeaySbMK272NpXwUtsBc-e3YN

Also here’s a chinese audiobook youtube I found: https://www.youtube.com/c/%E6%9C%89%E5%A3%B0%E5%B0%8F%E8%AF%B4%E5%90%AC%E4%B9%A6%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8Cyoushengxiaoshuo/playlists

Which includes The King’s Avatar: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTJaWZoVPdT1ZhIQIKxVci7fVEHr-oX6k

And ErHa: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsxEOGKlBMaFa6CS6Hf5ndy6qTtUL0Au_

Anyway, its a great book right now for reading practice. It’s very much around my level. I will probably stick with this author for a little while and solidify what I know/my base reading level.

IN OTHER NEWS:

I am apparently living proof listening-reading, heavy emphasis on re-listening a TON in the background as you work or type or walk/drive whatever, works for learning new words.

I re-listened to guardian chapter 1 audiobook at least 20-30 times by now, just a tremendous amount. Chapters 1-10 I’ve listened to at least 5 times by now random chapters at random days, and some probably also 20 times.

I have listened to these chapters enough, that I can officially follow so much that I know nearly every freaking word I hear, I know it immediately on hearing in at least 3 different audiobooks, and the few ‘less familiar’ words I recognize a second after hearing (like hearing ‘audacious’ or ‘glum’ in english it just takes me a second to re-remember), and the very few still forgotten words/specific details I learn From those words I can actually pick up from the context of listening.

I hear ‘powei’ and somehow forgot it AGAIN? Oh it means ‘rather’ in this context. ‘anli’ well i always hear ‘anlishuo’ as in ‘people say/generally speaking’ so ‘anli’ in this context must mean ‘generally/generally speaking.’ chuanghu? can’t remember it because i was just typing this JUST now and only hearing a few words from the audiobook in the background - well in context its obviously window, but out of context my brain said window and i just couldn’t remember if it was window or curtain but felt curtain had something more complex than ‘hu’ as the second half - just looked it up and my guess was right, even with no context which i’d have had if i’d been listening better and it had been clear it’s window, it still made me think ‘window’ immediately just hearing the sound. ‘xiang yi ge ren’ sounds like ‘looks like a person’ which is the next phrase i just randomly heard. ‘hua le yao ming’ shouted for their life/in awful terror? or that would be ‘huo’, so maybe ‘streaking toward him to take his life’? would make sense in context of a horror scene - i just looked it up and 划了要命 would be the second one. even IF i heard the wrong line, both of those are pretty close to a good guess in context and hua is the only unknown because without context i can’t place if it was hua or huo. i still confuse the words wu and wo for hold etc, but in context i can tell which one it is (wo is hold a hand, hold a face, etc).

I’m genuinely at a point where I can just completely follow the plot through at least the first 20 chapters from listening. And for most scenes, follow every detail too including stuff like guo changcheng spending half a year not working at home after he graduated, being so afraid of the phone, da qing being fawning to shen wei when they meet and rubbing against his leg, the specific conversation details when da qing runs across zhao yunlan’s car in chapter 2, what zhao yunlan’s room exactly looks like, etc. Its super cool to be able to follow the audiobook so well I can follow the story and details even when I don’t have time to read! It’s so fun! And it was not very hard!

It took 40 minutes of upfront study where you set time aside to focus: 20 minutes to have a program read the chapter aloud while you either see unknown word definitions pop up (like in Pleco) or look them up with some click dictionary as you listen. 20 minutes to go through and listen to the audiobook as you follow along with the text. Then after that, just play the audiobook chapters you’ve done this with whenever you want, either paying attention like when going to bed soon or walking, or in the background like when cleaning or doing busy work or driving. Since background listening can be done easily whenever all you have to do is remember to click play when you want something to listen to.

I’m honestly blown away by how much 3 months of studying mainly like this (which is quite fun and only requires me to carve out a small amount of actual study focused time) has improved my listening skills. I can now also listen to the 2ha audiobook okay and follow along (provided its a chapter I’ve read before so I have at least some prior context to help me out) - at least so far as that’s what I’m listening to right now. Basically, I can tell Guardian has both upped my vocabulary significantly and also improved my automatic recognition of many words I half-knew and learned since.

I recently found a new Guardian audiobook read by a deep voice and its lovely (and utilizes music and echo for effects, its lovely to listen to) I hope the poster keeps updating: https://fm.qq.com/show/rd002ED4aN0mYz2L__

I’ve been listening to it lately.

---

Also! Directions for using Pleco Android for screen reader:

1. To get any page bookmarked online:

Open a page in your mobile web browser you want to read. Click the menu, click share, click Pleco Reader (or ‘more’ or ‘...’ then Pleco Reader).

Go to Clipboard Reader. Now when you click text, dictate text megaphone will be an option.

*Since Clipboard Reader is free, you can do this to read in Pleco and have things spoken aloud with no money spent. (Though I find the Reader tool worth the money and add ons).

2. To have any text ‘dictated aloud’:

Go to Pleco’s menu, Settings, Audio, click ‘use TTS if no recording,’ then for Sentence Audio section area System TTS Setting click Speech Services by Google (you can also experiment by clicking other options I am just stating what worked for me, it didn’t work at first I had to make that my default TTS in my Accessibility-Talkback Settings menu on my main phone first and restart my phone before all this).

Then click the area right below to mess with speed and sound of the TTS voice.

(Note, to test if TTS is working you can go to any dictionary entry sentence, click the speaker next to the sentence and see if it plays audio. If it does not, you will get an error message and directions on what to change in your phone settings. That is what initially happened to me: I had to go to phone Settings, Accessibility, Talkback, TTS Engine, TTS Engine voice and settings. Pleco recommended I choose Speech Services by Google, and uninstall then reinstall the Chinese voice. Then restart the phone. That worked for me. An additional note: I have Talkback setting on ‘on’ and just have it in my toolbar to use if desired but am not actively using it. If you turn Talkback setting ‘off’ in the actual Settings area of Accessibility, I am not sure if it will affect Pleco’s ability to dictate).

3. How to put it together:

Now go to Clipboard Reader and read the page from the internet you wanted or text you pasted, or go to Document Reader and open the document you wish to read.

Click a word as a place to start. Now you should see both the loudspeaker (for pronouncing the single word) and the Megaphone next to it to start dictating all text. (If your phone is weird like me, you may need to press the megaphone a couple times before the audio works).

If you wish to change dictation reading speed, simply hold down the megaphone and select the speed desired.

Now that I’ve figured this out I really want to take pictures of my print book, make a pdf, and listen to all the changes.

(Now I just have to fix my weird dictionary in Idiom app and I’m all set on the new phone!)

---

All I’ve been doing the past august study wise is just reading pingxie fic and finishing, and listening to audiobooks. It’s been a busy time for me ToT

I do think it proved you can be lazy and still make some improvements though:

1. Reading in Pleco (or click-dictionary tool of your choice): pick something and read a chapter a day (that’s what I did, obviously the easier this is the less time you’ll need, but aim for around 30 minutes a day and reading material closer to your level if you don’t want to read too long)

2. Listening-Reading Method something above your reading level that you enjoy. Should take 40 minutes a couple times a week to several times a week to hours a week, depending on how intense you want to get with it and how much you’re going to alternate/include the reading portion. I did like 1-2 chapters a week so I was only spending 40 minutes to 1.5 hours a week doing this, or 3 hours one week no time another week. This is definitely something where you can do 6-12 hours one month then coast on it for another month just repeating older material’s audio/re-reading sections (which is what I did with guardian, doing 22 chapters then switching to just listening to audio a lot).

Once you’ve done a little L-R steps 2 and 3 (in either order, whatever works for you - and doing step 1 if you want more context prior to steps 2 and 3), then just make time during your days to play the audiobook chapters you’ve studied. You don’t need to be focusing every single time (although focusing on actually trying to follow the audio the first time you listen without text to aid you will probably speed up your comprehension a lot by giving you a lot of basic-context to help you comprehend more later). Aim to listen whenever you’ve got down time! Or time where you’d play music or some background youtube video or podcast - walks, exercise, drives, when cleaning, when browsing the web goofing off, when working if you have times when you’d listen to music with lyrics or a podcast in the background without issues, times when you don’t need to focus 100% on listening just putting it on to hear in the background).

That’s all I’ve done for study since May. It takes me about 30 minutes 5 days a week, plus 1-2 hours listening-reading actively a week. So 2.5 hours plus 2 = 4 hours of active study a week. Sometimes more like 8-10 if I got really into reading something or Listening-reading to several chapters. Then after that (very easy to fit into my life 4-10 hours per week of study) I just play the audiobook whenever I have downtime at work (that’s usually 0.5-4 hours where I just let it play because I forget its on while working on spreadsheets, updates, emails, etc, or play the audiobook while messing around on the internet in my free time at home, sometimes I put on music instead), while walking so 15-30 minutes maybe 3 days a week, while driving far so maybe 20 minutes - 2 hours per week. maybe lets say 2 hours*4 days a week (I don’t remember to listen every day) so 8 hours random listening+1.5 hours walking+1 hour driving per week. That’s 11.5 hours listening in the background or paying attention plus lets say 4 hours of active study a week. So 15.5 ‘study’ hours for chinese per week - an average overall of ~2.21 hours of chinese ‘study’ per day. This isn’t counting when I get into weibo and goof off, get into some chinese show with no english subs and just start watching it (I watched 16 episodes of Humans cdrama in August which is ~10.66 hours for a total of at least (15.5*4 weeks = 62 hours + 10.66 hours -> ~72.66 hours spent ‘with chinese’ in August at minimum. 4 weeks*7 days = 28, so over around 28 days or most of august I did 72.66 total hours/28 days -> or ~2.595 hours of chinese per day as an average. So... my guess that I spend at least 1-2 hours on chinese per day as the average was a decent guess. Looks like I’m usually 2 hours to 2.5 hours daily as an overall average. It’s not that hard to get in that much without a ton of time in the day once you get some listening skills built up ToT Deciding to build up my listening skills has been one of the funnest goals in chinese so far.

Notes on Listening Reading Actively - it also doubles as increasing your exposure to listening to your target language, and the more hours the better even if its passive in the background, just more hours adding up toward your mind getting a better ability to parse the sounds of the language is going to help your overall listening comprehension in general. So even if you don’t pay attention much and can’t follow the whole plot and only catch certain scenes, you will be improving at least comprehension of: hearing words you know, hearing colocations and common phrases and recognizing more automatically which will help with speaking/writing indirectly and reading recognition of those things, overall ability to hear things correctly in different combinations and getting used to the common combinations.

You will be surprised how much more you can pick up of plot and details the 3rd listen compared to the first, the 5th listen, the 10th listen. It’s wild. Like... I’m listening to the 2ha audiobook and even having never read it in chinese, just knowing basic context, the 2nd read through I caught so much more of the plot throughout just because I had forewarning of when scenes change a lot, what audio plays during some parts I recognized in previous listens, and so I have more focus for figuring out the new details I missed. Whereas the first listen, I didn’t always know WHAT the scene context was until I heard a familiar line or description I remembered from the english version of the scene, but on a second listen I now have a better guess at the scene the lines are probably taking place in before and after those lines I recognized in the first listen. And this continues etc each time you re-listen to something. (So yes, that initial context of knowing what you’re listening to with a previous read of its translation or target language transcript will definitely speed up comprehension pick up - but if you just wanna test what your basic listening comprehension to new content is then it works fine just going into new audio with no prior context its just more difficult at first lol until you build an idea of the context from listening).

The original Listening-Reading Method person did like 40+ hours a week, 8 hours most days, no wonder they made fast progress! They often included reading in some form (hence the name) and later translation, so they also were constantly working on listening AND some reading skills AND eventually often some speaking/writing skills. Doing it my way results in mostly listening comprehension of stuff you could already read to a degree, more automaticity in recognition, and for picking up new vocabulary both in listening and reading. I do extra reading on the side with other stuff to get more reading practice in an isolated way (since I’m trying to push my reading speed up above speaking speed). I always try to do it the way the creator originally intended, but I am not able to focus on things for more than 20 minutes at a time, 40 to a couple hours if I take a break every 20 minutes. So doing it 8 hours just doesn’t work out.

---

I’m fairly happy!

I am on plan for my main goals that started this style study plan:

1. Improving my reading level to get to start being able to extensively read actual danmei novels - we got there! I am at a reading level appropriate for SaYe at 98% comprehension when I checked, and at a bit above 95% comprehension for Guardian! I’m now continuing with that goal while adding on increasing reading Speed in general.

2. Improving listening skills so I have better automatic recognition of partly-known words from reading (working super well so far - I can tell because ability to watch cdramas in only chinese has improved noticeably and gotten much easier), and so I can start following the main plot and key details of audiobooks of things I’ve read before (working great for guardian, starting to work with other audiobooks provided I listen to the chapters a few times or several times if its brand new material I have no context for, however reading level matters and while things I have prior familiarity with are going very well - brand new materials are still quite challenging in that they require multiple listens for the full plot and several listens before I start picking up most non-plot-critical details).

#rant #september #september progress #august #august progress #listening reading method #pleco #rec list #audiobook #guardian #take all my study advice with heaps of salt #do what feels right for YOU #this is just the study plan that's been working for me recently #for my main goals: increasing base reading level and improve listening comprehension

36 notes · View notes

superworldunkown · 4 years ago

Text

Smooth Operator

AN: Back, Back, Back again. I wrote this in like 30 minutes because I had this random fixation that Bakugou most likely has super soft smooth skin from his quirk but he’s also a super softy despite being a cranky lil bean. And then I was like, ‘Lemme make a Melanin Queen OC who doesn’t take his shit one bit and teases him.’ And here we are, my friends.

Summary: Bakugou, a hard ass with smooth skin, and an equally smooth S/O Bakugou X Black! reader (Bakugou and a melanin queen is what we need in 2021 ya’ll).

Bakugou sat in the debriefing plaza outside of Ground Beta, his red eyes watching each student exit the area with looks of victory or defeat on their faces. He had a habit of visiting this place during the entry exams. Twice a year, UA offered general studies students a change to earn their way into the hero course. Rarely, very rarely did anyone make it past the exams, but Bakugou somewhat enjoyed the fanfare around it. First it was to tip his nose at all the losers and extras who dared to think they could compete with him. Now it was to await the results of a pesky little shit of a student who, despite being now 0 and 5, still thought they were better than him.

“Ugh! Vlad your class is getting sloppy. If this is what the graduating class of 3B is going to give to the hero world. I might as well ask the villain's for mercy now.”

The hero scoffed, “You tried hard, Y/N, but your scores didn’t make the cut. Better luck next time.”

“Yeah Yeah! Like your class could handle someone like me, Hah!”

Your eyes scanned the plaza, spotting your favorite gremlin hero in the making. Despite how much your body ached, you pulled yourself together to give your best hero-esque walk towards his direction, “Aww did my favorite fan come to see me today?”

Bakugou let out a huff before scooching over on the bench to let you sit. On the outside he hated you. You had this chaotic energy and an ego that should have never existed in a quirkless body like yours. But, then again, that’s what made him stick around the past two years.

You had no business being a hero, but every time the damn school had their try outs for the hero course, you were always first in line. You always talked shit to anyone who looked at you sideways for being quirkless, and more often than not you could beat them both verbally and physically. Even the first time you met him you didn’t back down, and that was when he was much, much less restricted.

“Outta my way extra! Unless you wanna get blasted into next semester!” He said you on your first meeting in the cafeteria,

“It’s always the pretty rich kids with big quirks who have the most boring threats. If you’re going to make me shake in my uniform stop relying on that big mouth of yours. Don’t they teach you how to be intimidating in the hero course?”

It was the flirting mixed with insults that he hated most about you. But also it drew him in every time.

Not to mention, the way your brown skin glowed even on the grayest of days...Needless to say it was an absolute pleasure and nightmare to be associated with you. You were just Bakugou’s type.

“I take it you failed, again. You gonna give up yet?”

“Of course not. Like I said, I think UA would lose their minds if they let quirkless kid into their hero course...they just ain’t ready yet for my level of skills.”

He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “You’re wasting your time. Quit now before you actually hurt yourself.”

“And you’re wasting my time with that negative energy, Katsuki. Not all of us have the privilege of a flashy quirk and soft ass skin.”

The blond glared, “I ain’t soft! I worked damn hard and that’s why I’m going to be the number 1 hero you idiot so don’t forget it!”

Your sound of disbelief was extra sassy with the swelling of your jaw, “Okay please. You are so soft. You lose one match or, gasp! Someone looks at you wrong and your ego looses it’s shit.”

Bakugou’s eyes instantly began to retract to tiny red orbs. Turning in your direction, he gave you one of his best, ‘Say another word and DIE’ faces. But you could see right through it. And you were pretty sure Bakugou knew that too.

“I said it. Look at you.” The tips of your fingers glided up his biceps, rolling with each groove of his muscles, “Strong, mean, and a hardass on the outside,” You made your way over his shoulders, careful around his neck as you knew it was sensitive and settling right on his cheek, “But on the inside, you're soft as pudding, pudding.” Adding emphasis to your statement you gave his cheek a pinch and quickly retracted your fingers before the blond could bite them off.

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about, dumbass!”

“I know exactly what I’m talking about softy.” You countered while resting your elbows on your knees, “I had tough skin and hard lessons the day I was born. Ain’t nobody want to see a quirkless kid thinkin’ they could be a hero, let alone actually have a shot at making it.” Your lips, despite the bruises, twisted into a smile, “But I don't care. They can kick my ass all they want but at the end of the day they’re gonna know my name. Whether they cheerin’ or screamin’ it. They’ll never be able to forget me....and on the brightside its fun to put you wanna-be heroes in your place every now and again.”

There it was. That piece of you that, despite how brute, loud, and obnoxiously cocky you were, he couldn’t get enough of. Even with a face full of bruises and defeat, you still had that fire in you, like you were somehow the secret winner of it all. And you did it all without a quirk. It was just you and your fire.

“You keep lookin’ at me like that you’re going to make me do something I’ll regret.” You warned, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“And what’s that?” He asked, leaning in just a tad.

You smirked, your eyes narrowing as you closed the gap between you two, your noses practically touching. In a swift move your lips dove into his cheek taking a playful bite at the baby fat that still lingered.

“Ooo those cheekies are so soft I couldn’t help myself!”

#bakugou katsuki #mha #bakugo #my hero academia #bakugou x black reader

74 notes · View notes

taekooktimeline · 5 years ago

Text

May 5, 2020

Taekook go on vlive together!! Almost as soon as the vlive starts, Tae jokingly says - while looking at Jk - “we can’t be friends”. Jk laughs and they continue the introduction. This sudden comment was made out of context - a “funny” way to complete Jk’s sentence, but with no apparent explanation for the chosen words - therefore we view it as an inside joke between the two that even caught Jk by surprise, letting out a small “huh?” before laughing right away. There’s a possibility Tae was alluding to the fact that they had to play along the lie of “being awkward as a result of drifting apart” and they both found it quite hilarious, probably due to the absurdity. They try to seem distant throughout the vlive (which they succeeded on judging by the general fandom thinking they looked awkward) but there is underlying humor coupled with some comical acting & slip-ups.

(Timestamp 0:37)

We can view the previous scene as Tae interacting with Jk’s sentence but it’s still made out of the blue. Jk said “we are kids today” because he got stuck on his words. He was supposed to say what Tae said after his joke: “우리 오늘 어린이날” = Today is children’s day.

This is what Jk said instead:

And Tae added “친구 안될” = “Can’t be friends” or what you see below if we take it as a single sentence (Tae ending Jk’s):

While it seems like the meaning of the combined sentence is directed towards “children”, it’s interesting that Tae’s first thought was “to not be friends” and took the opportunity to speak up as if it was swirling around in his mind. Remember they weren’t talking about anything at that moment, there is nothing within the rest of the video that could explain the joke and he adores children. If the narrative about them being precious friends that lost their deep bond & were now starting to feel awkward was true then Tae wouldn’t be joking about such a topic, or so we think, especially 3 weeks prior to the filming of the televised “reconnecting talk” that aired in September within Ep 6 of “In The Soop”). As said earlier, it seems like they find it humorous. Moving on.

They briefly hold hands. Tae offers his hand out of nowhere and Jk holds it with passion/force - as if he needed it - accidentally making them both hit the table.

(Timestamp 1:25)

Jk frowns as he tries not to laugh while asking Tae what he has been up to lately - because he already knows.

They end up cracking up anyways before Tae could even answer.

(Timestamp 1:33)

Tae says he once mentioned he was taking online courses.

Jk lets out a little chuckle and asks how it’s going.

Tae reveals he only studied for 4 days because that was the length of a course.

Jk knows what he’s doing when he asks if there weren’t any more courses to complete. Tae confirms there were many but it was difficult. Jk laughs some more, seeming like this was the reason he let out that first little chuckle - because he knew how it ended.

After the slight teasing he empathizes with Tae and normalizes it by stating that studying is not easy at all.

(Timestamp 2:35)

Less than 4 minutes after the vlive starts, Jk loudly yells “Taekook!” After reading it in the comment section. Jk says “Taekook” a total of 4 times in this specific moment, while Tae says it once for now. They say the name without discomfort. Despite the concept of the vlive Jk didn’t hide his excitement upon reading taekooker’s chants - reacting fast and sincerely to them.

(Timestamp 3:55)

Tae cutely asks Jk if he looks like a chicken. Jk agrees.

Jk smiles about it a couple seconds later and proceeds to quitely copy Tae’s words: “a chicken”. He must find him endearing.

(Timestamp 9:05)

Jk explains he had a dream in which he fought with Jin over his pants. Tae recalls & plays out a similar scene from the movie “Time to Hunt”.

Jk chuckles quite soundly.

He then reacts by copying a line from the drama “Itaewon Class” which Tae wrote & sang an OST for. He uses the right voice to say: “it’s fun”.

Tae laughs with a big smile.

(Timestamp 10:43)

In the second instance of saying “Taekook”, Tae is the one to initiate this time. He says it twice and Jk says it once this time. Again, they say it casually without appearing bothered by the name.

(Timestamp 12:15)

Tae is savage and plays a song that talks about wanting a vacation. He dances & says it’s a message for their boss. Jk smiles. As you can see Tae likes shady comments which falls in line with the initial “we can’t be friends” joke.

(Timestamp 18:25)

Tae starts telling the story of how he wrote a song for his Dad as a Parents’ Day gift.

Although Tae made it clear that he had already given the song to his dad, Jk makes a point to overly ask about it.

Tae is confused and asks Jk if he didn’t already know. It seems like Tae told him before.

Jk presses his lips

then frowns & gives Tae a pointed look without muttering a word.

Jk is also keeps pressing his lips in an irritated manner. He can’t say what he wants to say. Tae understands and tries to backtrack by saying he told someone else - not Jk. Tae momentarily forgot he was supposed to act like they weren’t close.

You can see & hear how Tae sulks.

Jk keeps that irritated face for a little longer. It’s probably due to the frustration of having to act rather than the slip-up.

He presses his lips once more before moving on.

(Timestamp 25:12)

Tae and Jk talk about the series “Itaewon Class” briefly (remember, Tae wrote the OST “Sweet Night” for this series).

Jk repeats the prior line “it’s fun”

Tae feels comfortable enough around Jk that he briefly acts out a skit, deepening his voice as he quotes the show.

(Timestamp 26:43-27:30)

Tae forgets one of his BT21 character’s names and asks Jk who remembers right away.

(Timestamp 29:18)

Tae is bothered by his long bangs and Jk is hypnotized as he looks at him.

Jk breaks out of it after blinking in excess as he softly suggests he should trim them.

(Timestamp 31:36)

Jk is once again hypnotized.

His gaze follows Tae as the latter talks with staff and moves through the room.

He forces himself to look away quite ungracefully as if he catched himself with his guard down.

(Timestamp 32:21)

There’s a funny moment where Tae pretends to get mad at Jk for using the glue gun arguing army might get hurt.

(Timestamp 32:52)

Continuation of the above ordeal.

(Timestamp 37:14)

A request in the comments asks Jk to sing Lauv’s “Never Not.”

Tae asks Jk if he has sung it before.

Then does an unnatural “ohooo” as a reaction.

Tae - still being a jokester - asks Jk to sing the Parents’ Day version as if he sang to his dad. Since it’s a romantic song Jk looks at him weirdly and they laugh together.

Tae uses a soft and honeyed tone to request.(Timestamp 40:24; 41:27 for his soft voice).

Tae says he can’t believe Jk covered this song that he loves so much (acting surprised?).

(Timestamp 41:44)

Jungkook says he received the “Never Not” instrumental some time ago but couldn’t cover it until now for “some reasons”. Not sure about the relevancy of this but it sounds strange.

(Timestamp 41:55)

Tae plays the song and Taekook get playful in dancing and singing.

(Timestamp of when Tae begins playing the song is at about 42:55; all above moments from part 1 - http://www.vlive.tv/video/189674)

The vlive disconnects so they start a second video. Part two of the vlive picks up where the first left off, with Taekook covering “Never Not” for a second time shortly after the start of the video. It appears staff may have told Taekook to sing again based on where their eyes are when they ask why they’re playing the song again. They’re told it’s due to the disconnection of the first vlive.

They play the song while singing and dancing together.

(Timestamp 1:37-3:14)

Tae abruptly stops the vlive by saying “hey hey, whoa whoa, calm down”. Jk doesn’t seem at all surprised by the sudden stopping of the music. He even repeats “calm down”. He doesn’t ask “why?” or appear confused.

(Timestamp 3:15-3:26)

This has led to speculation that there was an agreement for the song to be stopped at a certain point. Taekookers have pointed out the song played for exactly 1 minute and 23 seconds (123 theory). Based on Tae checking his phone before stopping Jk, stopping the song mid-sentence, and Jk’s unsurprised face/reaction to the abrupt stop of the music, it’s an interesting theory, but it’s one the reader must consider for themselves. Tae goes to check the phone at 1:21:

And ends it at 1:23:

(Screenshots from Peachlesslyyy - who goes into more detail in her analysis here - https://youtu.be/_28tA7MHKT8, timestamp starting at 2:52)

Jk and Tae both compliment each other. Tae discusses his hair and Jk chimes up that Tae looks best in everything.

To which Tae replies that it’s nice to hear that from Jk, who looks best in everything.

Jk chuckles in embarrassment. They both give fake playful laughs after, Tae’s being very loud as if they were playing with someone.

(Timestamp 5:11-5:31)

They’re asked to make a heart. They make individual hearts then make one together.

(Timestamp 7:34)

Tae says sorry for being late and explains it was the traffic’s fault. Jk says he could have predicted the traffic jam but then confesses he is often late & isn’t one to talk. They start talking playfully. Jk laughs.

Jk doubts it with a little “oh?”

Tae defends himself using the soft honeyed voice and rising head movements. Jk lets him win.

(Timestamp 5:34)

Tae reads out “Kiss” from the comments and plays dumb (subs censored the actual word & replaced it with “cass”). He then proceeds to sing a song with the lyrics “kiss me”. Jk is suddenly very interested in the screen. Tae also sings part of an additional love song and talks about his english level. All of this makes it obvious that the word he read was the English word “kiss” that a taekooker wrote.

(Timestamp 12:12)

For a third time, Tae and Jk say the name “Taekook”. Tae reads off the comment “Taekook forever” and Jk says in a sing-song voice “foreverrr”. Again, they seem happy to say the name “Taekook” which, keep in mind, they’re not obligated to say.

(Timestamp 15:15)

Speculation - why, when Tae’s comment clearly says “Taekook forever” does the subtitle have it as “V and Jungkook forever”? Is it part of hinting in a subtle but psychological way - BH wanting, in essence, to show Tae and Jk as people separate from their ship? By utilizing their names instead of their ship name, it does show them as real people instead of just a ship. They mention “Taekook” in two other occasions before this but the subtitle isn’t changed, only for this final one.

Tae and Jk say comments in different languages. Tae asks Jk to say “I love you” to Swedish ARMY. At first Jk says it in Korean, but Tae asks him to say it in English, which Jk then does.

After saying “I love you” in English, Jk looks back at Tae briefly.

(Timestamp 17:58-18:07).

Tae asked Jk if his experimental hairstyle looked good on him a total of 5 times and Jk always reassured him.

(Timestamp 23:00)

Jk asks Tae to say some last words and there is this moment of exchange of looks and smiles.

(Timestamp 24:30)

Jk brings up the awkwardness of the vlive for the 3rd time. He reasons it’s the lack of habit - which is probably true - but we wonder if he was also saying it to follow through with the plan of giving the viewer a certain impression.

Tae agrees with Jk.

Jk then stares at Tae.

He scans Tae’s face a bit & they silently lock eyes for a moment (which honestly comes off as a tender moment).

Jk breaks eye contact and lightly laughs when Tae ends the moment with a small “내” = “yeah”, probably finding him cute.

(Timestamp 25:27)

Tae asks if he can give a spoiler, and it appears he’s asking in regards to the upcoming personal album BTS plans to release in Oct. We can base this on him briefly mentioning Yoongi spoiling things about the upcoming album, and then Tae asks if he can say what Jimin’s role is, to which Jk whispers “say it”.

Tae still looks at Jk for reassurance despite receiving approval from staff.

Jk delicately prods him on (extremely softly).

Instead, Tae makes an interesting comment and says he is going to have a meeting after the vlive about what his image will be for ARMY (since Tae’s role for the album is being the visual director).

Jk laughs and scrunches up his nose at the change of heart -

(Timestamp 26:07)

Jk mentions he usually doesn’t dream about his group members.

Tae looks down (in both senses) and makes a sound with his mouth. This causes Jk to check up on him.

Jk then finds it necessary to justify it by softly saying it's because they always spend time together.

(Timestamp 27:20 - all moments above are part 2- http://www.vlive.tv/video/189708)

They started the vlive with a gap between them, and ended close together:

Taekook/vkook trend worldwide after this vlive and smash records. At one point, it had 2 million tweets.

Notable stats that show Taekook support is strong: 10M views on Vlive combined, over 500 million hearts on vlive, 1 million tweets in real time and counting, 1 million likes on the seleca within 3 hours, #1 trending topic worldwide, in the US, and in multiple countries AFTER ONLY BEING ON THE VLIVE FOR 15 MINUTES. They trended at #1 for almost 4 hours. They still trended in the day at the #5-6 position. Multiple names trended – Taekook, KOOKV and VKOOK being examples. Dispatch posts the selca on their Instagram. Dispatxh did NOT post any other vlive seleca, only Taekook’s. 14 hours after the two vlives were posted, they had a combined 16.4 million views and over 830 million hearts.

Seleca:

(https://twitter.com/bts_twt/status/1257577057862610951?s=21)

The vlive and seleca were iconic enough for Dispatch and other media outlets, like metro, to cover it.

(metro link: https://twitter.com/metro_ents/status/1257594769229975552?s=21)

Fun fact!

Funny fact - Vpick on taekook vlive: subtitle 😂🙈🤐🥴

#taekook #taekooktimeline #2020 #may 2020 #200505 #may 5 2020 #flirting #playfulness #fondness #nose scrunchs #hints #duets #stares #compliments

67 notes · View notes

raeynbowboi · 5 years ago

Text

The Character Forge: How to Play as Princess Zelda in DnD 5e

Since I just covered Link, it seemed only fitting to follow up with Princess Zelda. So, let’s start by discussing my goals for this build. Zelda’s powers come from religious magic, and she’s been gifted with the Triforce of Wisdom. Although she was only trained to fight as Shiek in Ocarina of Time, Zelda retained her Shiek transformation for multiple iterations of Smash Bros before they became separate characters.

The Makings of a Heroine

The first thought is to make Zelda a High Elf like Link, but the Eladrin Elf gets Fey Step for a built in Farore’s Wind. Autumn variation can charm people when they teleport, Spring variety can teelport another creature instead of themselves, and Summer variety can deal fire damage when they teleport. Otherwise, High Elf Zelda would need to throw away a stat boost to pick up the Fey Step feat.

Because Nayru is the goddess who created the laws and magic of Hyrule, Zelda is likely Lawful Good.

While Noble is the obvious background choice, there are a few other options, including Courtier, Acolyte, and Secret Identity variant Charlatan.

Powers and Abilities

First things first, Princess Zelda is the reincarnation of the goddess Hylia, so her power comes from a strong religious source. Secondly, her Smash Bros powers are the gifts of the three goddesses of Hyrule. Din’s Fire allows Zelda to throw fireballs, Nayru’s Love lets her create a magical shield that hurts those near her, and Farore’s Wind allows her to teleport. So, Zelda needs a build that allows her to do all of these things. It’s also worth remembering that Hylia is a Sky Goddess, Din is the Goddess of Power who formed the land, Nayru is the Goddess of Wisdom who formed laws and magic, and Farore is the Goddess of Courage who created life. Because she got the Triforce of Wisdom from Nayru, this means that she’s also tangentially related to law, magic, and the Zora race.

Top of Her Class

Cleric Arcana: Because Nayru is the goddess who created magic, Zelda’s link to the Triforce of Wisdom, and Nayru’s power could make her very knowledgeable of magic. Light: Many of Zelda’s spells are light-based, with her light arrows being her iconic ultimate in Smash. Order: Nayru is also the goddess who created law, and since Zelda is also the princess of Hyrule, she’s connected to lawfulness and order. Monk Kensei: Shiek could work as a Monk, but unarmed combat isn’t really his focus, as he relies heavily on the use of weapons. Rogue Arcane Trickster: Because Zelda is a magic-user, this archetype gives Shiek a clever magical counter to spells and magical trickery. Assassin: The Assassin Archetype gets to create a false identity, which she absolutely did when she created the Shiek identity. Sorcerer Divine Soul: Zelda is the reincarnation of a goddess, so she absolutely has a divine soul, and it’s the source of her magical power. Divine Soul Sorcerers can also learn spells from the Cleric Spell List. Warlock Celestial: Zelda serves at the pleasure of the goddesses of Hyrule, so Zelda does serve Celestial entities. Wizard Theurgy: More along the vein of someone studying religious magic, but because it allows Zelda to mix Cleric spells with another class.

Stats and Proficiencies

The obvious highest stat is Wisdom. Zelda has the Triforce of Wisdom, so this should be her best stat. As a rogue or monk, her Dexterity score is also important. Third being Charisma. She’s a princess, so she needs to be good at talking to people. Religion is an Intelligence stat despite no religious casters casting with the Intelligence stat. Constitution is a little lower, and strength can be dumped.

Proficiencies Animal Handling Arcana Deception Insight Investigation Medicine Perception Performance Persuasion

Name: Zelda Race: Eladrin Elf - Autumn Background: Outlander Alignment: Neutral Good Class: Divine Soul Sorcerer (11) Assassin Rogue (9) Base Stats: Strength: 8 (-1) Dexterity: 16 (+2) Constitution: 12 (+1) Intelligence: 10 (0) Wisdom: 18 (+4) Charisma: 18 (+4) Saving Throws: Strength: -1 Dexterity: +3 Constitution: +7 Intelligence: 0 Wisdom: +4 Charisma: +10 Combat Stats: HP: 111 AC: 14 Speed: 30 Initiative: +3 Proficiency Bonus: +6 Passive Perception: 26 Dark Vision: 60 feet Proficiencies and Expertise: Deception (Rogue) History (Noble) Insight (Sorcerer) Perception (Elf) Persuasion (Noble) Religion (Sorcerer) Skills: Acrobatics: +3 Medicine: +4 Animal Handling: +4 Nature: 0 Arcana: 0 Perception: +16 Athletics: +-1 Performance: +4 Deception: 16 Persuasion: +16 History: 6 Religion: +6 Insight: +16 Sleight of Hand: +3 Intimidation: 4 Stealth: +3 Investigation: 0 Survival: +4 Condition Resistances: Charmed Immunities: Sleep Racial Feature: Elf Fey Step: Teleport up to 30 feet as a bonus action. When you teleport, up to two creatures within 10 feet of where you land must make a Wisdom saving throw against 18 or be Charmed by you for up to 1 minute. Sorcerer Feature: Sorcery Points 11 Sorcerer Feature: Metamagic Empowered Spell Quickened Spell Subtle Spell Spell Slots: (12) 1st (4) 2nd (3) 3rd (3) 4th (3) 5th (2) 6th (1) Zelda’s Spellbook (Sorcerer Spells, Cleric Spells*) *Divine Soul Sorcerers can pick up Cleric spells which they cast with CHA. Cantrips Fire Bolt Guidance* Hand of Radiance* Light Resistance* Sacred Flame* 1st Level Cure Wounds* Guiding Bolt* Shield Shield of Faith* 2nd Level Flaming Sphere Misty Step Prayer of Healing* Scorching Ray 3rd Level Dawn* Daylight 5th Level Holy Weapon* Wall of Light 6th Level Sunbeam Bonus Actions: Cunning Action: Dash, Disengage, or Hide once per turn. Flexible Casting: You can convert Sorcery Points into Spell Slots Reactions: Uncanny Dodge: Halve the damage from an attacker you can see. Features, Traits, and Feats: Assassinate: You have advantage on creatures that have not taken an action yet in combat. Empowered Healing: When rolling for healing, use a sorcery point to reroll a healing die. Evasion: On a successful Dex save to reduce damage, damage becomes 0. Favored By the Gods: If you fail a saving throw or miss an attack, you can roll 2d4 and add that to the failed roll once per rest. Infiltration Expertise: In 7 days at a cost of 25 gold, successfully create a convincing false identity. Position of Privilege: You belong in high society, lowborns go out of their way to provide you with comforts, and you can get an audience with other nobility. Thieves’ Cant: You can hide covert messages in casual conversation. Trance: Trance for 4 hours, instead of sleeping for 8.

I am well aware that most would probably make Zelda a Cleric so that she’d be casting with her Wisdom modifier, but personally, I think that the Divine Soul Sorcerer covers more of Zelda’s abilities by allowing her to cast both Sorcerer and Cleric spells. Would you build Zelda differently? How would you approach her build? And as always, I do take requests, and I’ll see you guys next time in the Character Forge; where heroes are made.

786 notes · View notes

rigelmejo · 4 years ago

Text

Unrelated completely, regarding listening reading method:

I am genuinely so excited to test the listening reading method out wholeheartedly. When I looked up the method, few people were trying it with Chinese, and of the people I saw a lot were beginners with less vocabulary than I have which I think both made the task harder for them and made their progress look different than I imagine mine will.

For example, in my first attempts using listening reading method, I noticed I picked up a TON of words I could already read, and a TON of phrases I could already read but didn’t properly “chunk” until I heard them aloud. Whereas the beginners tended to document picking up entirely new words, and not understanding much of any paragraph for the first several chapters. Whereas again, because I had more vocabulary, my first chapters I listening reading method did I heard a TON of individual words/followed the main gist, and it took several chapters for me to start finally understanding full phrase chunks and sentence chunks together. I 100% think the listening reading method can work with mandarin, I just think since few people have tried it and shared the experience, I’m going to find out how much it can improve someone’s mandarin myself...

I saw people who did listening reading method with german, and Dutch, who like the creator of the method ended up going from 0 to B1-B2 listening and sometimes-reading* skill in 3-5 months (reading skill tended to depend on how much they focused on the actual text during target language audio/target language text portion). The people with the most success usually already had a foundation of several hundred or a couple thousand common words, and had seen some grammar summarized beforehand (both of which I have already done with mandarin). I’m extremely curious how far the listening reading method can take my reading skills specifically - since the method mainly improves listening, and reading is simply affected a bit as a consequence of picking up new words/reading target language text along with the audio during one of the steps. With Chinese I suspect I’ll have to do more Hanzi learning, and reading-only work like intensive reading, to supplement my reading skills. However I already do a lot of intensive reading, so maybe that will keep the skills relatively even.

I do know that only couple dozen hours of listening reading method already boosted my listening skills a TON. So listening reading method definitely improves listening skills, as it is intended to. The actual method suggests learners listen read through an entire novel in a week or two, then do another novel etc, at least 3 novels though potentially more - and redoing some novels again from the start if desired. For my kind of novels - like Guardian by Priest, that means 106+ chapters, 800+ pages, 30 minutes audio a chapter (53 hours for the English text-chinese audio portion, another 53 hours for the Chinese text-chinese audio portion, and lets say half as many hours to read it in English 26.5 hours). So that is 132.5+ hours to listen read to Guardian. The listening reading method assumes you do a few books, so let’s say around 3 books, 396 hours (roughly 400 hours). Well... no wonder people saw such improvements! 400 hours of listening to comprehensible input in a European language will get an English speaker quite far into learning. Most European languages according to FSI take around 600-750 hours for an English native speaker to learn. Listening reading method would fill a huge chunk of those hours, and if you focus on the reading portion too, then that should definitely at least be a solid foundation into B1 I can imagine.

Listening reading methods creator also tends to do these in 6-12 hour reading bursts per day - which I absolutely never do because I’m lazy and unable to focus on things for too long usually without switching things up. But like I’ve mentioned, even me just doing maybe 12 hours of listening reading method so far, in small 30 minute to 2 hour chunks, has been enough to make noticeable improvement in my listening comprehension. If someone is already intermediate and just wants to improve their listening skill, I think they’d see fast results like I have regarding their listening skill dragging up closer to their reading skill level.

When I read the listening reading method creators website, they sounded like 10 hours was about how long it took (for beginners in a language) to start parsing individual words and recognizing them, 30 hours to start hearing word chunks and phrases they could understand, and 60-100 hours to start comprehending a majority of the words.

I am therefore very curious what my rate of improvement will be. I do feel chinese study using the listening reading method at least for listening skills will see similar levels of improvement. I’m wondering if my listening skills will improve a bit faster, since I’m already past the “progress at 30 hours” mark expectations wise - I can hear many individual words, can hear many sentence chunks/phrases, and just struggle to follow some full sentences and catch brand new words until I’ve heard them several times. I do very much want to completely go through Guardian with this method - for many reasons lol. 1. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in english and I’ll have a chance to use that for study which is cool, 2. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in chinese and this makes it doable/more comprehensible for my current skill level (aka following along to the audiobook I will read at a less slow pace/comprehend more since the English will be fresh in my mind, compared to if I just read it extensively on its own), 3. Avenuex made a beautiful audiobook I adore and I’ll have an excuse to listen to it while actually comprehending everything since I’ll have the English and Chinese novel to look at while o read! So... once I’m through Guardian, I’ll be able to answer for myself what over 100 hours of progress doing the listening reading method produce, how well it works when using a book with a more complicated/high vocab style - which is sort of priest, reading challenge wise, and the kind of novel the listening reading method creator recommends using. Also, I’ll have read Guardian! ovo)/ and I will have read a full priest novel, so I’ll have picked up words by my favorite author that will hopefully make other priest novels easier to read (the same reason Tian Ya Ke may be helpful).

———-

Another thing people who have tried the listening reading method suggest doing first (particularly if studying a language much different than your native language, but for any language tbh). The creator of the method suggested: knowing a few hundred to a few thousand common words, and having looked at a grammar guide or overview prior. That’s something anyone who’s already a bit of a beginner, to low intermediate, probably has done or is doing. In addition, some people who have done this method suggested using something like sentence audio flashcards (in English and target language audio) and listening to them a few times, repeating them, until one felt comfortable with them. Generally common word/grammar ones, and you could do “listening reading” with those sentences too (reading them while listening to the audio). This would serve as a primer to learn the basics comfortably before going into listening reading novels. They suggested doing yjis would make the method work better - they got to B2 in Dutch in a handful of months of intensive listening reading by doing this beforehand and they think it helped a lot. While I think it’s not necessary, I do think of listening reading is hard, then getting a basis beforehand as a beginner and/or covering a easier basics common language material first will help. I use the Chinese SpoonFed Audio files which basically amounts to the same thing but no reading (if I used the flashcards still, it would include reading). So I do have some sentences/phrases/words I have a good listening foundation for already. Also, as mentioned, I do read, so for many common words and Hanzi I already can read them. I do think this advice is very good for beginners though, if they want to see noticable results sooner (versus 30-50 hours into listening reading before they start learning significant amounts - basically it just means they’d do 30-50 hours prestudy instead of basic common words/grammar, to make the listening reading initially less difficult). A total beginner could dive right into listening reading (just like my chaotic self first started to try to read Chinese knowing 500 words and brute forcing mdzs and guardian a few paragraphs at a time), it just means it’ll feel more difficult at first for a while, and they’ll be mostly learning basics for a while first before they build enough of a basis to comprehend more. Which is fine. It all just comes down to how much incompréhensibilty can you personally tolerate without giving up. The creator of the method? Can tolerate a TON. Me? I can tolerate a brutally large amount, surprisingly, but usually I need to comprehend had least the main idea and that’s a minimum of like 40-60% depending on which parts I’m comprehending. Most people will feel it’s unbearable until they can comprehend at least 80-90% (and I certainly PREFER material I comprehend that much of). And most people ideally are comfortable once they understand 95-98% (think reading a book in your native language with some unknown words you can figure out easily from context, or graded readers made to feel this easy with around this many unknown words for you to figure out in context, or maybe manhua/manga/comics once you’re a pretty decent intemediate level in a language etc).

#January progress #listening reading method #rant #I am genuinely like #so excited #as soon as I’m in the right mood to do it #I can’t wait to #because it’s just like a bunch of stuff I wanna do #!!!!!!#and I really do think the method has merit #since I discovered it and at the Least #combined some of its points into my regular study routine and reading #it’s improved my listening skills a LOT

18 notes · View notes

rigelmejo · 4 years ago

Text

I don’t know if this extensive reading has helped but I FEEL like it has helped lol. When I started 小王子 how long was it taking a chapter? Just under 5 minutes per page right?

Well I know I got faster than that. Today my Internet was down so while waiting for things to restart and load and stuff I read like 5 chapters of the book. I read them out loud (just a handful of words I didn’t know how to say out loud). I was reading at slow but steady speaking speed so that’s still faster than 5 minutes a page. Ok I just timed myself to test it and I am taking 2 minutes to read a page, and I would guess 3 minutes if I slowed down to consider a bit more on the sayings/less familiar hanzi. That’s better then the 4.5-5 minutes I started at! So I must’ve picked up some words from this book. So I would say... yes a little extensive reading seems to be helping reading speed. Also! I have 16 pages to go! This story is so short. It is sweet and odd and so human though maybe that is why it’s remained loved like Alice in wonderland. (Fun fact I also read 2 chapters of Alice in wonderland in French this week and it is just as bizarre to me as when I watched the movie as a kid, But I do think in book form if I were 6-9 I would’ve related more since Alice’s POV in the story is pretty relatable... and when I was a kid and watched the movie I just did Not relate aha).

Anyway from 4.5 minutes to 2-3 is great!

What I did with graded readers/extensive reading this month, that I am hoping is why this helped:

Read graded reader (butterfly lovers, Pleco, 500 unique characters) - not hard but very satisfying to finish it and read it quickly when it used to take me 40 minutes to read a few Pleco pages of it). So that was a few thousand words comprehensible extensive reading.

Read another graded reader, chinese short stories. While I think it’s good as a study companion, a lot of very specific words which I tripped on (antique coins, being scammed). Which was fine I just think it was not the funnest reading material? It was mostly graded reader though I had to look up a couple handfuls of words.

Read a little of my 500 character Sinolingua reader (2 stories). Also read through the back of it which has all the words in the book, and the HSK 3 words included in the book - I knew all those words but it was a nice refresher. Mostly it was just nice to see how much easier these stories were to read compared to when I first got the book. (I would recommend these books as readers if you want something for adults and in short segments, the short stories are simplified prose from established authors, and the quality of storytelling can therefore be felt a bit. They feel more meaningful as short stories and therefore enjoyable if a bit basic (since they’ve been simplified). You can tell though compared to the Chinese Short Stories book above, which was probably written by a teacher/language textbook maker and not necessarily a literary writer.

Read mandarin companion journey to the center of the earth. 450 unique characters. Another easy read that felt really nice, compared to when I first read a mandarin companion book.

Started reading 小王子 on paper, so extensive reading with little word look up (I’ve looked up less than 10 words so far when reading on paper - notable words I looked up because it frustrated me I didn’t know them: 悲伤，惊奇，惊讶，匆匆，逐渐，观察，测试 a lot of these because I know I’ve seen these Hanzi before I just never remember specifically like 惊讶惊奇 what the difference is or guan pronunciation 观察 or 测 I tend to forget when it’s not in 测试). I started reading it because it’s supposed to have around 2000 unique words (so not too many), and be pretty easy reading level (so a bit easier than 活着 which is the novel Chinese learners often get recommended). Basically, this was the extensive reading book choice step up from graded readers - it’s got a bit over 1000 unique hanzi, not an overwhelming amount of unique words, but it is not a graded reader so if it goes well I could jump to other stuff of similar or slightly less “ease” while still having it feel this “easy” to read (and hopefully take days to read instead of months).

Started reading 笑猫日记之会唱歌的猫 in Pleco, so clicking words I didn’t know (though this one only had a word or two a page unknown). I saw it recommended on a Chinese learners form as easy reading material after graded readers, and I agree! It’s very easy to read! I could understand it without clicking words but it is nice to understand fully since it’s convenient, and look up the pronunciation etc. I read 8 chapters so far. I also listened to a few chapters after reading, but idk if it helped at all.

15 ish chapters into 小王子 I found it online and reread 4 chapters with a click dictionary for unknown words. It was nice just clarifying the word pronunciations and fuzzy bits, also the online translation was different so seeing the difference on how they decided to word it (mostly just seeing synonyms used instead or different sayings for certain parts). I listened to a couple chapters audio afterwards, idk if it helped.

Unrelated, but I did listen read to 5 chapters of 默读 mainly following the Chinese text so, idk if that would’ve helped my overall reading at all (I want to say no but I did notice in general much more general gist comprehension of lines in MoDu then last time I read a couple months ago - although listening to the audio and being able to glance at the English for unknown words of course also makes things much more comprehensible that’s why listen reading method is the structure it is ahh).

Listened to some audio for 小王子 during work because I happened to find it, for chapters 1-4. Just playing in the background. I looked at the text while listening to one to match pronunciation to some words, since the chapter was like 5 minutes long in listening. Again interesting to see their word choice since It was yet another translation (I think I like my print books translation best).

Back to reading print 小王子 today and I think the audio beforehand did help me with being able to pronounce more of what I’m reading. Read like 4 chapters in one short break, another 3 chapters just now. While I don’t know how well the reading speed will translate to reading harder stuff like guardian (which was oddly also taking me 5 minutes a page? Why is that my default speed?), my reading speed doing extensive reading on “stuff mostly easy” to me has increased noticeably. (Fun fact when I read English technical text like psychology and physics books and educational etc I think my reading speed is it’s like 10-20 pages an hour... I do not read non fiction very fast).

So anyway, my goal with extensive reading easy material this month was to see if I could push UP what my starting base level “easy” material is.

What I used to do is practice with an “easier text” (which was still pretty hard for me tbh) and then once it got bearable (took 30-40 minutes to read instead of an hour), I’d switch to a harder material that took me 1-1.5 hours to read. Then when I’d burn out, I’d go back to that “easier” text until it got easier at 20-30 minutes to read. Then I might pick a harder base reading text (usually what used to be the hard one that would now take 30-40 minutes to read), and find something even harder. Lately that has been 寒舍 as my “easier” text, taking 20-30 minutes a full chapter (2 mini chapters), and 天涯客 as my harder text at 30-40ish minutes a chapter. And yes, at this point I could pick something harder but they’re both hard enough I was just sticking to them. You might notice none of these were actually easy for me though, my actual base easy materials were still graded readers, and manhua. So I want to push that upward until there’s some “easier” material below 寒舍 that I can be built up to and read easily Without a dictionary aid. So I can have a solid base that’s reliable. Hanshe is an “easier” practice material but it’s not necessarily something I can read extensively with ease. But if I keep pushing up the difficulty of what I can extensively read, bit by bit, I will eventually Get it to hanshe (or a little below it realistically but still firmly in regular-webnovel-exist at the reading level). I will not get faster at reading these hard things unless my base level of reading is both higher and already a reasonable speed. (I’m guessing anyway??).

Well happy to say this plan is working. I guess the advice articles I read were right somewhat. I knew graded readers could drag you from 0 beginner to some reading ability, since It’s what I originally did with Chinese (and even French sort of). But I was very quick about it because I’m impatient and easily bored by too-easy things apparently lol. I read 1 mandarin companion graded reader (the 300 word Sherlock Holmes one), a couple chapters of 2 other graded readers, then started on a random webnovel (the bl 他们的故事 which somehow thankfully is on the easier end for novels) and looked a lot of words up to get through. But I did not think to try to “match my reading level and increase gradually” in regular novels, even tho if it works for graded readers it probably works for regular stuff!

And in school in our native languages, that’s why our elementary schools had libraries, and we read books for our age group and the chapter books we read were much easier than what we read as teens or what adults read! I remember bunnicula and cat wings those were not hard but they were chapter stories. Then I remember Dracula and hg wells and mark Twain in high school and how they felt a bit Hard despite me being one of those kids rated at college reading level in 3rd grade. Now as a kid? I had the same tendencies I do now, so I’m not surprised I always jump in the deep end and Try to read hard stuff (and it must help since it’s part of why I got good at reading my native language, and definitely has helped my chinese and french). I would be like 7 and pick up a mitchner novel of My dad’s (is that the author of stuff like Alaska etc?) and I’d read a couple pages and feel drained trying to follow it and give up. Or the huge The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, or HG Wells History of the world, or the biography of benjamin Franklin, I never finished any of these or had any idea what they were about I just got curious and opened up a couple pages every now and then. Yet somehow that must’ve been part of why my reading level so early on was considered “good”? I’m guessing.

But I wasn’t actually good at reading in the sense of doing it often or fast until my dad started reading to me at like age 8-9 I think it was Harry Potter which at the time worked out since the books got harder each time, and also my dad reads out loud slow just like he tutors slow lol so eventually I read myself so he’d stop boring me (I love him and loved the bonding time I’m sure but truly i just apparently always liked jumping in the deep end). Eventually his strategy Im guessing to get me to read slightly harder stuff each time worked, because by books 4-5 I read each in 2 days. He was so impressed because before that I couldn’t read long books and not fast, and that’s when he thought I got good at reading. Looking back lol it’s actually so funny? How much work he had to do to get me to read and how what ended up working I still sort of do now. He started me on Hop on Pop as a kid as my first book cause One Fish Two Fish bored me and I thought jumping on a dad was funny, and he did that just to do something to get me to pick up a book lol. Then he got me that digital book toy they had back then where you had a real book but it was in a digital holder and if you clicked words with the pen it read them out loud. Literally how I learn Chinese now... he really got me digital equivalent to graded readers back then ToT. And just like as a kid I still pick up stuff way beyond my level and just read a couple pages at random. It’s just. Kind of funny to me how much I didn’t really change that much after all ToT

BACK ON THE TOPIC OF APRIL PROGRESS lol ok. I listened to Guardian ep 1 today just in the background so no subs etc and I was Floored by how much I completely understood. I’ve been listening to SpoonFed chinese again (15 audios listened to this month), but I’m floored if it made a difference?! Since I was mostly listening in the background not focusing and missing some stuff. Idk if it made a difference, or listening reading method just that 1.5 hours I did this month or what. Or if my listening skills have been this decent I just don’t test them since I usually watch shows with hard Chinese subs (and read the subs), or watch shows with English subs. So like. Anyway mejo back in what was it august 2019 when I started studying? Would be so happy. Back when I started watching guardian and only knew ni hao and xie xie and zai jian.

Also I can’t even remember now if I did extensive reading guardian (after reading the English translation), this month too or just last month. But I’m sure that helped and I should test general reading sometime of a priest novel. Like.. literally what kicked off the “I should extensive read more” this month is me Desperately wanting to kick up my reading speed after the horrific 25 page guardian chapter I read that took like 1.5 hours.

#rant #april #april progress #reading progress #to be honest tho truly I’m really happy with my chinese progress so far #it has yeah sooooo much farther to go #and communication wise I’m ahhhh not not anywhere much yet #but listening and reading are already significantly further than Japanese was at 2.5 years #and honestly ‘as slow progress as Japanese’ was my assumption and goal when I started #so I figured I would not read this good for 4 years at least #so just under 2 years? I’m pretty amazed

4 notes · View notes

thedankfaerie · 5 years ago

Text

i am posting this here because i am tired of burdening my boyfriend with my feelings. this is a little nsfw. and this is my call for help. i dont know who to talk to anymore about this.

i need someone to hear what i feel

or at least, a free space to say what i feel

im in a low place. i feel so awful about myself and my body and i hate this feeling. i hate that this time last year, i was so happy about the way i looked. i was working this awful job that had me so overworked and overtired and poorly treated that i skipped meals and slept through meals regularly... i lost so much weight from stress in just a year and was the skinniest i had ever been. mentally, i was not in a good place being exploited by my managers... but my self esteem re: my body was at a new level i never knew could exist for me.

last year, i felt powerful and confident about my body, and i expressed that through sexuality. i was fucking my ex that i still liked (i grew out of wanting him back, but he never did, and it was nice to have the upper hand). i was also fucking an old fwb that i stayed friends with, that was also recently single, so we reunited again at the perfect time. i was also seeing this one guy (now my boyfriend) so if ever i got tired of the sex i at least was able to calm down and settle down with someone who genuinely wanted to know me. of course, i ended up catching feelings for this guy, and cut off the other two to pursue something more serious (we are now dating and are moving in together next month!) anyways, it was so nice to be wanted. to feel... i guess sexy? sex is empowering. and it shouldn’t be taboo to say that as a woman, or anyone really. i dont want to give off the message that a woman’s validation is fueled by men’s desire - but hey, don’t you feel flattered when someone thinks you’re attractive? desire and lust aren’t everything... but they matter. and they have an impact on how you feel about yourself, whether or not you believe me when i say that is up to you.

and i hate that i would gladly put myself through the stress that i did just to feel happy about my body. before the summer ended, i finally had enough and i quit my shitty job. i was jobless for a month, but was able to enjoy the rest of the summer with my new ‘skinny’ body - last year i took my first bikini picture ... a 2 piece! i have never done that. i still think about how happy i was that summer to look and feel good about myself.

i have struggled with self esteem issues since highschool. i always felt like i was too big. i used to follow all these blogs of pretty people and try to copy their poses to feel pretty and i used to spend hours after school trying on short dresses and clothes to stare at my body in the mirror. i used to starve myself to the point of literally wanting to faint on the daily, until finally i admitted it to one of my teachers. she respectfully asked if i wanted to speak with the school guidance counsellor, and i declined. but she encouraged me to speak up to at least a friend, so i did, and it helped, and for a long time, i was okay. after i graduated that teacher still checked up on me for a few years every now and again.

4th year university was when i realized how much i had let myself go. i was the heaviest i had ever been, it was my graduating year, i was looking for a job and was always worried about my grades. every time i was stressed or every time i needed to study i bought pad thai and bubble tea. a ritual. i didnt realize how much that had caught up to me until i saw old pictures of myself. at this point, i started my (shitty) job, straight out of graduation.

i actively avoided scales, i didn’t like looking at the number because it just made me upset. and i already felt upset looking in the mirror, i didn’t need something else to make me upset. but i did. and i was 20 pounds heavier than i was in highschool - the heaviest i had ever been.

i cried.

i didnt do much about it. i was too busy. my first job out of uni was a brand new daycare and i was head teacher of a toddler class - also i was the only staff on floor since there were not as many kids. there was nobody to train me, at all. i had to teach myself everything. i had no time.

a little while before starting the job, i met this guy. he was so hot, but such a dick - we had a “thing” but it was so toxic. he started off interested in me, but i turned him down. his attitude changed and he started being a douche, but we became friends because we were seeing each other so often. i didn’t have a car yet. he was driving me everywhere. he lived 5 minutes away. he was the type of friend that would text me “im outside, lets go out”. we hung out as friends at first, we would have “study dates”, until we started hooking up. we acted like a thing but he denied we were ever one - but got mad at me whenever i tried to look elsewhere. but i guess in that time, it was nice to be wanted, especially by someone so attractive.

but again, a year in that shithole job went by fast. i would stay late after work. i would come in on weekends. i was expected to not only help new kids transition, but train new partners. and given that my supers refused to support me, i watched a lot of people quit due to pressure. i had to keep retraining. and kids kept coming. that never stopped. i can honestly say my class wasn’t settled until december, and i started in september. everyday it was ‘its fine, it will get better’.

a year in that shithole, with 0 support, and i lost all the weight i gained - and more. i was the skinniest i had ever been. even in highschool. i looked at old pictures of myself from when i started the job at my heaviest. i couldnt believe that was me. and i was so happy looking at myself in the mirror. for once!

after i quit that job, i started another job that i hoped would be a happy ending.

and it wasn’t. it stressed me out just as much. i also moved out by this point, a month after i started this job. my hours are whack. 7-9, 11:30-6. i woke up early and got home late. i never had free time. my last shift at my old job was 7-3:30 and i had the whole day to myself. im someone that needs social interaction and alone time, and by the time i got home i was so tired, i would just cook, clean, shower, and go to bed. and that was my life. sometimes i would get so tired that i couldn’t cook, i just went and ate out. i tried to make personal time with my friends after work but by the time i reached their house, it was late, and places were closed. and id have to leave early anyways because i had work early the next day... so fast food was the only way to make this work. on top of this, this was the most difficult class that i had ever had. the kids behaviours’ were so difficult and i couldn’t handle it. i would cry in my car 3x a week. i would cry 4 minutes before my shift starts in the washroom and walk out and pretend i was okay. i would have my boyfriend come over as much as i could just so i could cry in his arms. i couldnt leave this job because i had just moved out and having a consistent rent payment was a huge responsibility for me. as well, if you know anything about ECEs in canada, just know we make shit pay. but this job pays me better than most ECE jobs... by a landslide. AND gives me benefits, which is so hard to find. i am still at this job - i was at my breaking point at the time covid started, so i was rejoicing when we closed for covid. i havent worked since march, but i needed that time off so desperately.

with that being said, i gained the weight back.

not everything, but i definitely could tell i was packing on some pounds.

cue covid.

i havent worked since march. i fell back into a lazy routine of ordering fast food. lying in bed. resting. just enjoying NOT dealing with my difficult class.

but i gained it all back. and i think im back at my heaviest weight. i picked up all my summer clothes from last year from my moms... half of them dont fit me. my favourite pair of shorts won’t close. i just sat and cried in a mess of clothes on my floor in front of the mirror. this was last week.

im trying to tell myself, ‘you’re in the middle of a global pandemic, go easy on yourself’... but do you know what it’s like to finally get what you’re chasing, and have it be taken away from you? i finally had a taste of what it was like to look AND feel good about myself. something ive wanted since i was a teenager...and it’s gone. it’s my fault and i accept that, so please don’t tell me i did this to myself. i know i did. but i can still be upset about it. i look in the mirror and i try to suck my stomach in and pretend nothing changed but its not the same. i see old pictures of myself, especially that bikini pic. ironically, i captioned it “i will never have the confidence to take a bikini pic again”... and here we are. i look at the clothes i wore last year and remember how fucking good i felt wearing them. i try putting them back on and seeing my stomach bulging and my arms looking fat and my love handles, something i didn’t see last year. and i just take them off and opt to wear something frumpier that doesnt hug my figure.

i try to tell people about how i feel but i cant take those ‘love yourself and all your flaws’ campaigns seriously. i dont think i can listen to another ‘you have to just keep faking it until you make it and if u just tell urself ur beautiful u will feel beautiful!’

because if you’re me, you know you cant kid yourself. if you’re me you can’t ‘love every flaw’. you fixate on them. and you let them define you. and if youre me, flaws are all you see.

i hate myself for getting back to this point.

i have a very supportive boyfriend that knows about all this, who is trying to actively get me to go on runs with him. we are trying to go for walks more and be out and about. he reminds me of little things, like if we are getting bubbletea he will suggest i go with less sugar. he is trying, we are trying. and i appreciate him so much.

today i complained in my car about this to my boyfriend, again. for the millionth time. and he still was supportive. but i just feel like i cant keep doing this to him. he said something today, which i think was him trying to give me a reality check to show me that i cant just wish i could starve myself and overwork myself to lose weight and call it a day... but it stung. he said “i don’t want to be with someone that’s not healthy. i have standards too” and i realized then he deserves so much better than to fucking babysit my complaining ass. i am 24. and i shouldnt be putting this on him. he is an adult with problems just as real as mine and i shouldnt be burdening him with this anymore.

im scared to talk to him about how that comment made me feel, because he’s so right, and he has every right to leave me. i would honestly. the amount that i worry and fixate on all my flaws and complain and have crying breakdowns about this is not fucking normal. and it shouldnt be his problem. i just want him to be with someone that doesnt give him this baggage. he met me in my ‘prime’ days when i just started getting my skinny body last year. when we finally started dating, we were super sexually active. and i mean, having sex like 15 times a week. im not kidding. now we havent had sex in almost an entire month. i dont feel sexy anymore and its impacting my sex drive.. he tries to start it with me and i just can’t because i feel like he is probably repulsed by my body. this is a huge huge huge problem, seeing as sex was a huge part of our relationship (we are very emotionally in tune with one another, but sex was a great addon because we both love it so much). i hate the way i look without clothes on. i cant bring myself to do it because it makes me feel like shit about myself.

but we are moving in together next month. and that is a huge step. and i am worried that i will never change, and he’s going to feel like he’s stuck with me because he’s moving 40 minutes away from his hometown to live with me. i almost want us to break up so he can be with someone with less baggage but i also love him and i want to be better for him and for us.

someone please help me.

#help #lol

3 notes · View notes

mcatmemoranda · 4 years ago

Text

There was a young female pt who came in complaining of pelvic pain. So I fixated on OB/Gyn causes of pelvic pain. The pt had been to the ER before complaining of pelvic pain and was tested for and negative for gonorrhea and chlamydia. The pt actually had diffuse abdominal pain and the doctor asked more questions about GI etiologies such as PUD and gallstones. Based on the history and physical, it actually seemed more like a GI cause of abdominal pain rather than gynecologic. So he had her follow up with GI. I forgot to not be so myopic in differential diagnoses. Think of other systems that can contribute to the chief complaint. Also, the physical exam helps guide you--in this case, the pt had diffuse abdominal pain, not just pain in the lower abdominal quadrants. So it's less likely a gynecologic etiology. Then the attending asked me how you can clinically distinguish between PUD and gallstones. He said there's really no way to distinguish them clinically. Then he asked about the most common cause of gastric ulcers and I recalled that it's H. pylori and you can do non-invasive testing to diagnose it. I recall when we learned about H. pylori that it's something that the physician shouldn't miss. So it's kind of weird that the pt said her primary care doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong. But then again, the pt didn't seem to be a very good historian. That's another reason why you should think broadly in terms of the differential diagnoses. Then the history and physical can help you to narrow down which things on the ddx it could be.

The diagnosis of H. pylori can be done with a urea breath test (UBT). H. pylori convert urea to CO2 and NH3. So you can give radiolabeled carbon and then detect it in CO2 exhaled but the pt. According to UpToDate:

Noninvasive testing — Noninvasive tests for the diagnosis of H. pylori include urea breath testing (UBT), stool antigen testing, and serology. Of these, UBT and stool antigen assay are tests of active infection. H. pylori serology can be positive in patients with an active or prior infection.

Urea breath testing — UBT is based upon the hydrolysis of urea by H. pylori to produce CO2 and ammonia. Urea with a labeled carbon isotope (non-radioactive 13C or radioactive 14C) is given by mouth; H. pylori liberate labeled CO2 that can be detected in breath samples. The tests can be performed in 15 to 20 minutes and have similar cost and accuracy. The dose of radiation in the 14C test is approximately 1 microCi which is equivalent to one day of background radiation exposure [28]. Even though this dose of radiation is small, the non-radioactive 13C test is preferred in young children and pregnant women. (See "Radiation-related risks of imaging", section on 'Special populations'.)

The sensitivity and specificity of UBT are approximately 88 to 95 percent and 95 to 100 percent, respectively [29]. Thus, false-positive results are uncommon. False-negative results may be observed in patients who are taking PPIs, bismuth, or antibiotics and in the setting of active peptic ulcer bleeding [19,30]. The sensitivity but not specificity of the UBT is reduced in the setting of an active peptic ulcer bleed (67 and 93 percent, respectively) [13]. It is unclear if the reduction in sensitivity is induced by the bleeding process or by changes in the microenvironment of H. pylori to decrease the activity of urease.

The effect of PPIs, which is presumably due to suppression of H. pylori, was illustrated in a series of 93 patients who had H. pylori infection documented by UBT [30]. Treatment with lansoprazole was associated with a negative result on subsequent UBT in 33 percent of patients. Repeat breath test results 3, 7, and 14 days after stopping lansoprazole were positive in 91, 97, and 100 percent, respectively. In another study of 60 patients with biopsy-proven H. pylori infection who underwent UBT testing 7 and 14 days after treatment with lansoprazole false-negative rates with lansoprazole and bismuth were 40 and 55 percent, respectively [31]. It is controversial whether H2RAs affect the sensitivity of the UBT [19,32-34].

Stool antigen assay — The detection of bacterial antigen indicates an ongoing H. pylori infection. Stool antigen testing can therefore be used to establish the initial diagnosis of H. pylori and to confirm eradication [3]. Of the available tests, stool antigen testing is the most cost-effective in areas of low to intermediate prevalence of H. pylori [35]. (See 'Patients not undergoing upper endoscopy' above and 'Confirmation of eradication' below.)

The sensitivity and specificity of the laboratory-based monoclonal enzyme immunoassay (94 and 97 percent, respectively) are comparable to the UBT [36-47]. Stool antigen testing is affected by the recent use of bismuth compounds, antibiotics, and PPIs. Although some data suggest that stool antigen test is predictive of eradication as early as seven days after completion of therapy, to reduce false-negative results, patients should be off antibiotics for four weeks, and PPIs for one to two weeks, prior to testing [19,31,39,48,49]. In the setting of active bleeding from peptic ulcers, the specificity of the stool antigen testing may decrease [50,51]. However, the sensitivity of the monoclonal enzyme immunoassay remains high in the setting of a recent peptic ulcer bleed. This was illustrated in a study in which 34 patients underwent inpatient stool antigen testing a mean of 2.8 days (range 0 to 8 days) after hospitalization for a bleeding peptic ulcer. The sensitivity of the monoclonal enzyme immunoassay in this study was 94 percent, significantly higher than a polyclonal enzyme immunoassay and a rapid monoclonal immunochromatographic stool test (74 and 60 percent, respectively). (See 'Patient undergoing upper endoscopy' above and 'Medications that should be discontinued prior to testing' above.)

Stool antigen testing using the polyclonal enzyme immunoassay is no longer used given its low sensitivity. The rapid in-office monoclonal immunochromatographic stool antigen tests has high specificity but its adoption has been limited by its low sensitivity (96 and 50 percent, respectively) [52]. (See 'Confirmation of eradication' below.)

Serology — Laboratory-based ELISA test to detect immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies is inexpensive and noninvasive. However, serologic tests require validation at the local level, which is impractical in routine practice. In addition, concerns over its accuracy have limited its use. Guidelines recommend that serologic testing should not be used in low prevalence populations as the low accuracy of serology would result in inappropriate treatment in significant numbers of patients [2,3,11].

One meta-analysis that evaluated the performance of several commercially available serologic assays found an overall sensitivity and specificity of 85 and 79 percent, respectively [53]. Inaccurate serological tests are more common in older adults and in patients with cirrhosis in whom specificity can be decreased [54,55]. Local prevalence of H. pylori affects the positive predictive value of antibody testing. In areas where the prevalence of H. pylori is less than 20 percent, as in much of the United States, a positive serologic test is more likely to be a false positive. As a result, secondary testing with a stool or breath test to confirm the initial result is appropriate before initiating treatment. However, a negative test in a patient with a low pretest probability for infection, is helpful to exclude infection. An example would be a young individual with dyspepsia and no evidence of peptic ulcer disease, especially in an area where the prevalence of H. pylori is low.

Serology does not reliably distinguish between active and past infection. A quantitative ELISA test is generally used in research settings. It allows for determination of IgG titers of paired sera from the acute and convalescent (three to six months or longer) phase and can confirm eradication of the infection. However, this is not performed in clinical practice.

#H pylori #UBT #PUD

1 note · View note

langernameohnebedeutung · 6 years ago

Note

Would you have any recommendations on where one could hear/learn a German accent? I'm learning the language but my most recent teacher said that my accent/pronunciation is not very good despite being at a B1 level. I think this is probably due to I have not one, not two, but THREE separate American accents already because of how many times we moved when I was younger, so adding another accent is hell my mouth cannot keep up. Thanks for your time.

Hey sorry that I took my time answering this.Okay, first of, Josie’s personal opinion time (feel free to skip this lmao): It’s not bad to have an accent. Everyone has an accent - not just because of your native tongue but also because of the people around you, your class, family, friends or whoever you practice with. I have a German accent and probably always will have, because I learnt English from teachers with German accents, with partners and fellow pupils who had a German accent and now I study English at a German university and people around me still speak with the same accent. 90% of the conversations I hold in English are German-accented English. But at this point, I refuse to consider my accent “inferior” to...a Yorkshire accent or a New York accent just because those are “native” accents. Of course, it’s also not bad or anything to want to sound like a native speaker and I’m not going to tell you that if you truly want to speak like a native-speaker you shouldn’t pursue that interest - but it’s something few people really 100% accomplish, so pls make sure you’re not putting the actually important things like vocab, grammar and you know - enjoyment - on hold to pursue something really elusive that your teacher thinks is important. It is very hard to accomplish especially for someone not living in Germany and Germany is a country with a lot of different regional and foreign accents, so most of us have some experience with different pronunciations - so you will most likely be understood.

Now, the my actual answer to your question:

Listening to people always helps, so does talking. I noticed it when I was still in school. I started watching American shows and it strongly affected my vocabulary and pronunciation - mind you, we were taught to speak strictly British English, American English was an evil taboo - but later I discovered my love for British films and tv shows and I reverted to the English I learnt at school, for the most part (not regarding the language level but the variety). So I definitely recommend exposing yourself to native German-speakers bc otherwise, your main influence will be your fellow students.

There are a lot of German shows on Netflix - you can check if some of them have English subtitles, I know “Dark” for example does. (I’m not sure about Vorstadtweiber, but if you want to get a taste of a Viennese accent, this might also be fun to check out. “Extra3″ is a German satire show that puts all its episodes on Youtube and with a VPN you can also access the ZDF Mediathek and RTL-Now, two very big German tv channels).

It’s especially helpful to watch out for words you’ve so far only seen in their written form so that you know you struggle with. If you hear them, maybe stop the video and try to repeat it. If you’re interested in specific accents from specific regions (which might be a bit hard, mind you) you can also look for some source material from different regions. For example the German audio of “My Fair Lady” has her speaking with a very thick Berliner accent instead of Cockney, so that’s something you might find interesting bc it’s a film you might already be familiar with. Another tip: I noticed about myself that I easily start thinking in another language, even if I’m really far from fluent and miss words. And doing that I noticed that my inner monologue still has a German accent but it’s much weaker than when you know. my actual physical mouth is involved, for some reason. I can also imitate different English accents in my head much better than I can when I speak - you might try that and even talk to yourself. If there’s no one to tell you you are doing it wrong, it becomes much easier to experiment and have fun with language.

In my experience, it also helps to imitate the accent the speakers of your target language have while speaking your language: I noticed that when I was practising Russian on duolingo: Now, duolingo makes you repeat sentences to practice your pronunciation and my Russian pronunciation was horrible - until I purposefully tried to sound “Russian” - suddenly Duo understood what I was saying. So you might try to speak German with what feels like an exaggerated German accent to you, even if it feels weird at first. (I do the same when I want to sound British)Another thing that helped me (much more than teachers ever did) is to watch English people contemplate and imitate and play with German accents - because even if it’s something I made fun of a lot these last days, it’s interesting and helpful, because if done for comedic or storytelling purposes (I’m going to give an example of that later on), it often highlights the aspects that make it sound different from a native pronunciation and help you localise these aspects in your own language use. That said - the reason I make fun especially of British people playing Germans is that their accents are often based on other British people pretending to be German, not actual Germans so it sounds...very different from the way we speak English. So keep in mind that it’s not always authentic. (Personally, I still think I learnt how not to pronounce the word “convenience” from an episode of Blackadder but that’s another story)

Okay I threatened that I would add an example on how accents in media might help you understand your own accent better:

There are many examples of English-speakers pretending to speak German, but since you are already at B1 and probably speak better German than most of them (many just say stuff without knowing the words or even...just make up sounds that they think sound German), so I picked a film scene that I mentioned in a post a few days ago: the pub scene from Inglorious Basterds (which I saw on youtube is apparently popular for language teaching purposes).

It’s interesting because Michael Fassbender is half-German and knows the language somewhat so he at least knows what the words he’s saying mean. Also, he’s surrounded by native speakers which make for good comparison material. (mind you, Inglorious Basterds is obv. a film about the NS-era so while the German they speak sounds rather modern, I can understand if you would like to avoid that content. Especially since the second video ends in a shooting.) I couldn’t find the whole scene online but if you have the DVD, you might want to look into it, because it’s much longer than the excerpts I found online and maybe you can spot more of the language patterns I will point. (It also has Christoph Waltz in it and his Austrian dialect which might also be interesting to you)

Now, what you need to know is that Fassbender plays an English spy pretending to be a German officer - but when someone points out his accent, he tries to pretend to be Swiss. He does a pretty good job speaking German actually and a German would understand every word he is saying (unlike we do with some other actors pretending to speak German) - but it’s also very obvious with every word that he’s not a native speaker (and no one would actually mistake him for Swiss.) (btw if you want to check out what an actual Swiss dialect sounds like: (x) (I could imagine it’s very difficult for English speakers, because it has a lot of “ch” sounds and is very guttural.

Now, back to Inglorious Basterds:

The first thing that’s very interesting to look at is the first 30 seconds of the first video because it’s clear that they made Fassbender exaggerate his accent because in that scene it leads to a German soldier he’s talking to noticing and pointing out his strange pronunciation. At 0:35 in the first video it’s very, very obvious when he yells the word “zurückkehren” (which finally makes the soldier address the issue)- because he pronounces it “zurück-kerr-än” - a very typical pronunciation with an English accent. Whereas a German would usually say: zurück-kehr’n” (You can compare it to one of the Germans saying “zurückkehren” at minute 2:30) It is also interesting to compare how Fassbender pronounces an “r” vs. how the Germans do it - because he pronounces it like you would in English, while the German “r” sound is a bit harsher and produced a little bit further back in the throat. (Tip: If You can feel it vibrate in your mouth, you’re doing it rrrright).

When he says “rrrrrüpelhaft” it seems as if he’s trying to pronounce the “r” like a native speaker there - but overdoes it. (Fassbender does the same exaggerated “r” sound at 2:56 with the word “Regisseur” and at 2:33 with “Riefenstahl”) - which just sounds a bit off. Compare it to Til Schweiger at 1:00 saying “betrunken (oder völlig) verrückt”. btw If you compare the way Schweiger says “sprechen” in that sentence with Michael Fassbender saying “sprechen” at 2:35 you will also notice the difference in the way they pronounce the “ch”.In that sequence at 2:30, Fassbender also says “gesehen” a lot - and always pronounces it G-esehen, while a German would probably pronounce it ge-seh-’n

youtube

Something that many German learners struggle with - that you can observe in these videos as well - is the pronunciation of infinitive verbs. German verbs, as you know, usually end in “-en” (gehen, sagen, sprechen, hoffen. etc). Now, German speakers usually barely utter the second “e” at all, it’s often: geh’n, sag’n, sprech’n - it*s something that sounds a little off sometimes when Fassbender speaks, because he often puts more emphasis on it than a German would for example when he asks “Haben Sie den Riefenstahl Film gesehen?” or at 3:24 in the second video when he says “aufsteh.en.”You can also observe the impact of the native English - at 2:50 when he says “Brüder” it comes out as “Brüddr” which sounds a lot like “brother” - while in German, the “ü” is stressed and the “r” is almost inaudible.I think the biggest challenge for English-speakers is the “ch” (which unexperienced speakers often turn into a “k” sound - for example turning “Nacht” into “nackt”, always fun). You can see Fassbender struggle a little with that a few times as well (it’s particularly important to keep in mind that there are two “ch” sounds - the one produced in the front of your mouth like in “ich” or “frech” or the one produced farther back in your mouth like in “Nacht” or “Bach” - so if you encounter a word with a “ch”, it’s best to check out which one it is.You can also see him struggle with the long words in German - he basically forces “tausendjähriges” out very quickly which sounds very strange and mechanical and at 3:20 in the second video he has a different strategy and stresses EVERY part of the world Hauptsturmbannführer: “Haupt. Sturm. Bann. Führer.” which sounds ... strange even when done for dramatic purposes. You can compare that to the way the German actor says the same word at 3:31. (especially if you pay attention to how they pronounce “Führer” you will notice the proximity issue. “Führer” is a word that many English-speakers find difficult to pronounce and I think it’s a) because many English-speakers are familiar with the word “Führer” but never heard a German pronounce it b) because of the close proximity of an “ü” and two “r” sounds. When Fassbender pronounces “Führer” it sounds very much like an English person would pronounce the world in an English context while the German guy pronounces it like a German does - that’s something else to keep in mind, that words you might be familiar with like “Volkswagen” or “Weltschmerz” or any of the others are usually pronounced with an accent when English-speakers use them (The same is, of course, true for any other loan words)

youtube

There*s a similar scene in First Class also with Michael Fassbender sitting in a pub with Nazis (seriously that’s... a huge part of his repertoire it seems) which you might want to check out bc again, he speaks German and the other guys are native speakers so if you want to keep looking for different pronunciations and accents, it might be interesting.

(Also “Auslautverhärtung” is a big issue with English-speakers and German-speakers. The reason why German speakers tend to say things like “sayin-k” and “goin-k” and “leavin-k” is because the last sound of a word is usually spoken harsher in German than it is English. English-speakers often have the opposite problem and swallow the last sound a little. I didn’t notice particularly jarring examples of that in these scenes, but it’s still something to keep in mind)

All of that said and done and dissected, I think natural development and interacting with native speakers is much more effective and fun than just trying to avoid certain pronunciations or imitate how other people sound, especially bc I don’t want to bore you with technicalities or even worse, make you nervous about speaking because honestly? Accents are fun and everyone has them. Don’t worry too much about it

If you speak slowly, people will understand you and if you spend some time around native speakers, it will help a lot, it has a strong impact on the way you speak (so obviously i recommend listening to a lot of spoken German, watch films, shows, youtube etc.) And yes, pronunciation is important - you need to be understood after all - but having an accent is natural. Everyone has at least a regional accent and I don’t understand why foreign accents are automatically considered a flaw or a sign that someone isn’t able to communicate fully in that language they learnt.

I recommend you focus on words and grammar and listening and reading comprehension and let things grow naturally and don’t actually enjoy having an accent. There’s nothing wrong with it.

#nonfandom #languages #Anonymous

12 notes · View notes

prediabetessymptoms2-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Prediabetes: Preventable Diabetes

Prediabetes symptoms Diabetes has expanded to pandemic proportions. Roughly 8. 3% of often the YOU population, or 20. 6 million people, have got diabetic. About 95% associated with these get type 3 diabetes. Diabetes is the actual main root cause of kidney malfunction, limb blessure, and new-onset blindness with American older people. People with diabetic are generally more likely than men and women not having diabetes to produce and cease to live from ailments of the heart and soul as well as blood vessels, called being obese. Adults with diabetes include heart disease death fees in relation to two to some instances higher than grownups without diabetic. The threat for stroke is definitely a couple of to four moments bigger among people with diabetic.

Prediabetes symptoms

Prediabetes refers to the particular intermediate metabolic states concerning normal and also diabetic sugar and carbohydrates homeostasis. That term ended up being first introduced within 79 to replace 'borderline' diabetic. Pre-diabetes is becoming considerably more common plus much more recognized inside the United States. Often the United. S. Department regarding Health insurance and Human Services reports that will 79 million Tourists acquired prediabetes in 07. Around 314 million persons across the world have prediabetes, along with the variety is believed to grow to help 418 million in 2025.

The reason worry about prediabetes? Is probably the best estimated that between 35% and 65% of people with prediabetes will acquire non-insulin-dependent diabetes within six decades of typically the prediabetes identification. Even before growing directly into full blown diabetic, all these people have an enhanced charge of microvascular (retinopathy, health proteins in the pee, polyneuropathy) in addition to macrovascular (heart attack as well as stroke) risks.

How do you spot Prediabetes? Prediabetes is commonly informed they have any one or maybe more of the adhering to blood test readings: A new fasting blood glucose amount of: a hundred and ten to one hundred twenty five mg/dL (6. 1 milimeter to 6. being unfaithful millimeters, according to the Universe Wellbeing Organization criteria as well as 75 to 125 mg/dL (5. 6 mM in order to 6. in search of mM), relating to the American Diabetic Association criteria. A sugar level of 140 to be able to 199 mg/dL (7. main for you to 11. 0 mM) in late two hours immediately after taking a standardized 70 initial public offering glucose solution seeing that part of some sort of a pair of hour glucose fortitude test out. A glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) between 5. 8 and also 6. 4 per-cent.

Usually are you at risk? At this time there are certain symptoms in which you have or could be in increased chance of developing prediabetes. These kind of include increasing age, idleness, sleeping less than a few a long time per day along with being overweight or even chronically overweight. Certain races have a a increased risk, namely Wok cookware Americans, Hispanics/Latinos and non-hispanic blacks. Other risk variables include abnormal lipids, specially high triglycerides and minimal HDL (the good cholesterol) and diagnosed cardiovascular disorder. If you bought gestational diabetes (high blood sugar level during pregnancy), or perhaps gifted birth to a new child analyzing more in comparison with 9 lbs, that you are in addition at risk. Two different rather uncommon conditions, such as polycystic ovarian syndrome in addition to acanthosis nigrans also point out increased insulin resistance as well as predisposition to prediabetes and also diabetes. And finally, people having psychiatric disorders, mainly schizophrenia, on multiple psychotropic prescription drugs, also have the high incidence involving prediabetes.

Symptoms: Prediabetes can often be asymptomatic and suspicion typically breaks solely on possibility components mentioned above. If provide, the symptoms of prediabetes, are similar as those connected with diabetes: continual hunger, greater thirst along with urination, mysterious weight loss, increase in pounds, general malaise, blurred imaginative and prescient vision, slow-moving healing from trivial acute wounds like cuts in addition to craters, tingling or losing experiencing in the hands or maybe feet, frequent or repeated gum, skin, vaginal as well as bladder infections.

How complete you cure? The get in touch with for early remedying of prediabetes is gaining traction. Various recent studies have looked at the role of life-style changes and medications for any treatment of this condition:

one Exercise: Regular real activity avoids progression straight into diabetes. Inside Da Qing IGT as well as Diabetes Examine of 129, 660 adult males and women in China( Diabetes Care 1997; 30: 537-44. ), progression to help diabetes decreased from 67. 7% to 41. 1%, when comparing an unchecked set to a operated exercise team over any period of 6 several years.

2. Diet: In some sort of Finnish study (N Engl M Med 2001; 344: 1343-50), there was the incidence associated with 23% regarding progression in diabetes throughout a control party in contrast to only 11% within the intervention group over a new time period of 4 years. Compétition ended up aimed at minimizing weight 5% if not more, lessening dietary fat to a lot less than 30% of the full calorie intake and increasing nutritionary fiber to 15g every 1000 fat laden calories ingested.

three or more. In geologi large examine involving tenty-seventh clinical locations around the US(N Eng J Med, January 6, 2002), 3234 prediabetic fat participants were separated into a couple groups. One class got intensive training in eating habits, physical activity, and actions adjustment. The aim seemed to be to reduce body volume by means of 7% and maintain losing, and exercise 150 a few minutes a week. The secondly group gotten metformin eight hundred fifty mg twofold a morning. At the end involving the study, the remedy group reduced diabetic evolution by 58% when compared to 31% in the metformin set.

4. A prediabetes undertaking force (American Association connected with Clinical Endocrinologists 18th 12-monthly Meeting, Houston, Tx. 2009) suggested a more violent very worthwhile approach to these kind of patients, advising treating high-risk individuals with diabetic remedies such as metformin, acarbose, glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists and thiazolidinediones. These solutions are not yet MAJOR REGULATORY BODIES approved to get prediabetes, although are backed by robust scientific data indicating this battling insulin resistance first protects the pancreas and also prevents progression into diabetic.

The health and economical charges of prediabetes usually are not well-known. But diabetic is an high priced sickness, costing about $174 f billion annually the united states solely. Direct medical prices profile for about $116 tera- and indirect costs including disability payments, time misplaced from work, and earlier death account for often the remaining $58 billion.

Enormous amounts of lives along with tremendous of dollars can possibly be preserved by aggressive life-style in addition to therapeutic intervention with affected individuals suffering from prediabetes.

Remember: Prediabetes means former diabetes. Almost all means avoidable diabetes.

1 note · View note

chemicalmagecraft · 6 years ago

Text

The Gamer Hero, Deku Chapter 4

A/N: Again, thanks for the reviews. They sustain me. To those of you who gave encouraging words and recommended other works for me to see, thank you guys especially. Even though I don't know where to legally watch Kenichi and NEEDLESS. Just saying, this is, in my opinion, the part where this story is going to start picking up. Also please just pretend that all the math checks out. It'd be way too annoying to calculate the exact HP and MP Izuku should have based on actual math... Did I mention that I hate math? In hindsight, this was kind of a bad fanfic for me to decide to write considering how much I don't like math... too late now! (In all seriousness, though, if any of you could figure out an actual formula for me to use when calculating HP and MP and stuff, that'd make my job SO much easier and I'd be really grateful.)

Shout out to Ryuuji's The Games We Play! Again, go read it if you haven't.

xoxoxo

The next breakthrough came about three months later.

I continued to grind my mental stats and any skills I could without making too much noise in the dead of night. Turns out that part of Gamer's Mind is apparently the ability to stay up all night long without needing to sleep, which was very useful. That night, I was doing some antiderivatives in my head when I heard two pings.

Through rigorous studying, your INT has increased by one!

The skill 'Mana Affinity' has been created through INT rising above 50.

Mana Affinity (Passive) LV1 EXP 0.00%

Mana. A mysterious power that allows people to do extraordinary things. This skill increases the user's sensitivity and control with that power, granting them an affinity with mana.

10% increase in mana recovery rate.

5% increase in total MP.

5% increase to magic attack.

5% increase to magic defense.

30% increase to MP-related skill effects.

I blinked. Then, I slowly got up and silently did the "You Got The Thing!" pose from Zelda. "Dah-dah-dah-daaaaaaaah," I whispered. That was a game-changer. If I got a skill like that for increasing every stat past fifty, and perhaps even other intervals, then that would be very, very useful. I brought up my stats.

Name: Midoriya Izuku

Title: The Gamer

Level: 6

HP: 1550/1550

MP: 2100/2100

STR: 32

VIT: 36

DEX: 34

INT: 51

WIS: 45

LUK: 30

POINTS: 5

MONEY: 0 Yen

SKILL FRAGMENTS: 3500

Definitely something to look forward to. It looked like I had to get the stats above fifty, and not just at fifty. I noted that my WIS was already approaching fifty. I'd ended up using Meditation a lot, seeing as it restored my HP and MP and I could use it anywhere that I needed to wait without drawing too much attention. I decided to just grind WIS at every possible opportunity until I passed fifty. I closed my eyes and began meditating.

A few days of Meditation grinding later, I finally got it.

The skill 'Nature Affinity' has been created through rising WIS above 50.

Nature Affinity (Passive) LV1 EXP 0.00%

The power of the forces of is nature great. The wrath of nature has leveled cities and decimated towns. This skill increases the user's sensitivity and control over those forces, granting them an affinity with the elements.

25% increase to mana recovery rate.

10% increase to elemental attack.

10% increase to elemental defense.

50% increase to element-related skill effects.

I grinned. Sure, I didn't as of that moment have any elemental skills, but I knew I could get some. In fact, I decided to do just that the next day.

xoxoxo

Despite how tiring it was, those long days I spent training with All Might and Kacchan became precious memories to me. Not only was I receiving help from All Might, but I was finally getting to be close to Kacchan again. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed having him as a friend until I got him back. Sure, he was... abrasive... but you could see how much he really cared if you looked closely enough.

The thing that I loved the most about those training days, however, was that I could finally use my Quirk. True to his words, All Might showed off his teaching license and had us sign some forms that said that he'd be officially tutoring us to use our Quirks the ten months before the entrance exam. With that, we were allowed to use our Quirks on the beach so long as he was around and we didn't use our Quirks on anyone that wasn't part of the training.

Kacchan came flying towards me, sparking palm facing me. "DIIIIIIE!" he screamed. His explosion, however, was blocked by a blue barrier that shimmered into existence around me. It shattered, but not before protecting me from all of the damage. "I still think that that's fucking annoying, by the way," he said as he landed back on the ground.

Mana Dome (Active) LV 28 EXP 32.95% MP 45

A spherical barrier made of mana used to protect the user.

Protects against some damage.

Additional 45 MP used per minute.

A useful skill that I'd managed to puzzle out early on from seeing its description in the Skill Grimoir, which I'd been grateful for because I hadn't had to spend Skill Fragments on it. "If it works, it works," I told him, then adjusted my stance. "Now come at me."

"AND FUCKING HOW!" He blast-propelled himself at me, firing a second blast in just his right hand to make him spin for a punch. It would've been a good move... had a small sheet of mana slightly thicker than my Mana Dome not appeared in front of my blocking arm. "FUCK!"

Mana Shield (Active) LV 24 EXP 98.67%

An adaptation of Mana Dome that forsakes full-body protection for efficiency and increased durability.

Has higher durability than Mana Dome.

50 MP used per square meter of shield per minute.

"Again, if it works, it works," I repeated with a cocky grin. This caused him to scream psychotically and charge at me. Kacchan was still so easy to rile up. He threw more of those enhanced punches, and I blocked each one. I then shot a blue rope of mana at him, which bound around his body.

Bind (Active) LV 13 EXP 5.45% MP 5

A skill to tie an enemy with a rope made of mana. Can only be used by those who have a talent in manipulating mana.

I'd made the skill after making a sort of rope with my mana and using it to tie up Kacchan in a spar. Actually, I got a skill called Mana Rope first, but using it to tie up Kacchan gave me a skill called Bind. "You still have too much of a temper, Kacchan. That won't be too good for hero work, even if you've been improving a lot," I said as I snapped my fingers. The Bind dissolved on cue.

Name: Bakugou Katsuki

Title: Lord Explosion Murder

Level: 21

HP: 2800/2800

MP: 1750/1750

STR: 42

VIT: 46

DEX: 55

INT: 37

WIS: 25

LUC: 14

Quirk: Explosion

Emotions: Angry

Fire Affinity: 50

His stats were coming along nicely. I'd noticed that I could see a thing that said fire affinity in his stat screen after I got Nature Affinity, probably from being more sensitive to the elements. "Shut the fuck up, Deku. You of all people don't get to say anything about what is or isn't good for hero work. Now heal me, my fists feel like I just got in a boxing match with a brick wall." I sighed and walked over to put my glowing green hands on his, causing a similar glow to spread to his hands as the bruises faded.

Healing Hands (Active) LV 3 EXP 54.86% MP 50

The power of a charitable soul to channel mana into a target's body to heal them.

55 HP restored, removes minor illnesses, debuffs, and negative conditions.

The second skill that I actually spent fragments on. It'd cost me 1500 and needed me to have 55 WIS before I could get it, but it seemed like it'd be worth it at higher levels. Or I could just spam. I'd immediately tested to see what it'd do to All Might when I got it. Unfortunately, it was nowhere near the level needed to come even close to restoring him to his former glory, but he told me that he felt better and the skill got EXP off of it, so that was a plus. I'd ended up regularly using it on him as grinding.

"Thanks," Kacchan grumbled. "Now let's move on to regular old hand-to-hand."

"Though seriously, why do you know martial arts?" I asked.

"Hey, fuck you, man! Quirk Fist is a good discipline! All the kata are adaptable enough to be used in conjunction with Quirks and it teaches you the kind lateral thinking needed to use Quirks in combat! You've seen my moves! And I've already seen you improve since you started! Now get in your stance!" And so it continued.

xoxoxo

After a long day of sparring and the leveling up of multiple martial arts-related skills (as well as Physical Endurance), I walked over to All Might. "I've decided how I want to spend the rest of my Skill Fragments," I told him as I healed him.

"Very good, young Midoriya! What are you going to get?" he asked, then handed me the Skill Grimoir. I opened to book to one of the bookmarks that All Might had placed.

Summon Basic Elemental (Active) Skill Fragments: 2000

Long ago, man learned of the power of nature and learned to harness it. Some learned to not only harness nature's power, but give it life of its own and summon it at will.

Elemental's power dependent on skill level, WIS, and elemental affinity.

"I'm pretty sure that the ability to make elementals could be really useful, at least from what the skill says," I said. "I'm still not sure why the skill's at such a low price, but I'm not really complaining." I placed my hand on the skill.

You are attempting to buy the skill 'Summon Basic Elemental.' This will cost you 2000 Skill Fragments. Confirm purchase?

I hit the "yes" button. As with the other skills, the words turned into light and flew into me. I frowned. "What's wrong, young Midoriya?"

"What's Deku working on?" Kacchan came up and asked, sipping his water bottle.

"The elemental summoning one," I told him. "It looks like summoning an elemental for the first time is a lot more complex than just using the skill. There's a whole ritual that I have to do get a contract with an elemental."

"Well then let's get started," Kacchan said. "Can't be too hard."

I looked up at the sky. "Yeah, but I can also tell that the ritual will make me unconscious for several hours, and it's getting late. I'd rather not worry my mom by coming home super late."

"Okay, so let's go do it at your house. That way your mom knows where you are."

I thought about it. "Okay. I take it you want to watch?"

He shrugged. Eh, why not? I don't have anything better to do." As we walked home he asked me, "Hey, Deku. What does that elemental-summoning skill even do?"

"I can summon elemental... magic things, I guess... that can control whatever element they're tied to. If I have more than one type of elemental, then for the moment I'd only be able to have one active, though that'll change as the skill levels up."

"So you can make multiple?"

"Yeah, but I have to have an affinity for whatever element I'm using. I gained a skill called Elemental Affinity that gives me bonuses to using elemental powers and other stuff, which allowed me to make an affinity that I can use for it. Actually, my Observe tells me that you have a fire affinity that's five times as high as my affinity."

He scoffed. "Well no shit. I've got a violently pyrogenic Quirk. I'd need it to not blow my hands off. Probably." He was silent for a few seconds, then said, "I've been meaning to ask, a lot of your skills, the way their descriptions read, it almost seems to imply that other people can use your skills."

"Did you read my Gamer journal?" I asked him. "How did you even read my journal? I've kept it in my inventory except for the times I wanted to read or write in it."

"I looked over your shoulder while you read from it a few times, dummy. It's actually a really interesting read. What, didya think I snuck in while you slept and somehow got you to open your inventory and take out your journal in your sleep?"

"That wouldn't work," I told him, then sneakily snuck my journal out of my inventory without anyone seeing. "Though if you want to read my journal you could just ask."

He happily took the journal and started looking through it. "Thanks, but you didn't answer my original question. What the fuck is up with your skills?"

"I honestly don't get it. It... seems like it. Heck, the Summon Basic Elemental ritual has a mention of a contract from ages past, so who knows."

He nodded, then turned the page. "What does it feel like to use mana, then? Maybe it feels different from using a Quirk. Or similar. Or whatever."

I thought about it for a while. "It feels like taking from a well of power, then directing it in the way I need to. When I use the skills, though, it feels like the power is being directed in the way it's supposed to go. If I concentrate enough, though, I can... 'divert' the 'flow' to do something else."

"Huh," he said, then looked at his hand. "That's kinda what Explosion feels like, but it only ever goes to my hands. Weird."

"Hey, are you done with my book? I'd like to put an entry in for Summon Basic Elemental." He grumbled but handed my book over. I began writing the entry down with a pencil that I snuck out of my inventory.

"So what Elemental are you getting?" he asked.

"Huh?"

Kacchan scoffed. "You can only get one at a time, so I'm guessing you're only going to get one, even if you could probably get more."

I smiled and put my finger on my lips. "It's a surprise, Kacchan."

"It's earth or air isn't it?"

I stared at him for a second, then cleared my throat and said, "I will neither confirm nor deny your theory, but what makes you think that?"

"You said that your INT and WIS are both over fifty by now, so you're probably smart enough to know to start out with an elemental that you've always got material to work with. Sure, you could totally figure out some sort of fireball spell, but that'd be more MP used for something less versatile, so that's something you're gonna save 'til later. The only options that you're going to have a lot of are air, which if you don't have it then everyone's dead, and earth, which probably includes rocks, minerals, and maybe even refined metals. Both are more readily accessible than fire and water. Of course, if there're more elements than the four classic ones, then maybe element five is also a good option, so I don't know." Wow, he was putting his high INT score to work.

"I thought about making a cheese elemental, but I didn't think it'd be that gouda," I replied.

"Deku I swear to God."

"We're here," I said. We'd just walked up to my house. "Let's eat dinner before I do the ritual."

Mom was happy to have Kacchan over for dinner. "I'm glad to see you boys getting along after so long," she said as she set curry on the table. "If you don't mind me asking, why did you come here today, Katsuki-kun?"

Kacchan grinned. "Deku's gonna do some sort of magic thing and I wanted to watch." Mom looked at me for answers.

"I got a skill called Summon Basic Elemental that lets me use things called elementals to control the four classical elements. To use it, however, I have to perform a ritual that works as a sort of 'contract' with the elemental, and that might make me fall asleep."

"Oh," Mom said. "Okay... I guess that's okay, just brush your teeth before you do it. Also, you wouldn't mind if I watched, would you?"

"No, go right ahead," I said.

Later, after I brushed my teeth and Mom and Kacchan joined me in the living room, I laid my journal on the table and opened it up to the page on Summon Basic Elemental... or rather, the second and third pages, which were occupied almost completely by the summoning circle needed to perform the ritual. Two concentric circles, one only slightly smaller than the other, and with a five-pointed star in them positioned so that the points were all on the outer circle. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the air around me, how it felt...

Air Affinity: 10

...and on my new air affinity. "I, Midoriya Izuku, call upon the ancient contract of ages past to summon thee," I chanted, blushing at the way it was worded. Kacchan snickered. "I hope you heed my call. Come, Air Elemental!"

"Fucking called it!" Kacchan yelled. Something in the air stirred. Despite the fact that we were indoors, the wind began to pick up. It all swirled into the center of the circle, forming a miniature tornado. The tornado collapsed in on itself, the air solidifying into the form of a young boy with blue robes and short hair and wings that looked like they were made of varying types of cloud. Kacchan started laughing hysterically. "HAHAHAHAHA! HE'S FUCKING TINY!" The boy was also small enough that I could hold him in the palm of my hand. Despite his small stature, I could feel a powerful presence coming from him. He looked at me with piercing blue eyes, making me feel like I was staring into the sky.

"I'll begin in accordance with the ancient rituals. My real name is Midoriya Izuku. You have heard my true name; please tell me yours." As soon as I finished sayning it, I felt myself pull apart, scattering into millions of pieces. I flew away, soaring over hills, mountains, valleys, and even oceans. I was no longer bound to a material form. I was free to go wherever I wanted, even if it meant everywhere. I was as free as the wind!

I was the wind.

I saw the living room again, except I was gone, replaced by a swirling hurricane in human shape. As I watched, the hurricane dissipated, leaving nothing behind.

And then I was back to normal. The air elemental was sitting on my hand. "I am here," he said. "My name is Halitus. You are Midoriya Izuku?"

"Yes."

"We are one, as the ancient contract dictates."

"Our souls are one."

"I am Halitus."

"I am Midoriya Izuku."

"Until our souls meet their ends," he started to say.

"We will be forever one," I finished with a feeling of awe.

"Should you ever need wind beneath your wings, call upon my power," he said with a bow, then dissolved into the air... or back to the air.

"...Okay," I said, and then felt like I was falling as everything went black.

That night, I dreamt of a gigantic storm, ravaging the whole world.

xoxoxo

Katsuki stared at the book sitting on his desk. "This thing might as well be a fucking spellbook with how much detail Izuku put into it." He flipped through a few more pages, soaking in all the knowledge that was present. "Fuck, this thing is a spellbook." He closed it. Ever since Deku had said described his mana, he'd been curious. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the power that lay within him. He'd drawn upon it so many times, using it to ignite the sweat on his hands and amplify the blasts. He'd never questioned it. It was just what his Quirk felt like. But now, now he had a theory. He drew upon the energy, but this time he didn't let it follow the path it normally took when he used his Quirk. It took a few tries, but he managed to make it rise to his hand without interacting with his sweat. He opened his eyes.

A blue glow was emanating from his right hand. He laughed. "Deku was right," he muttered to himself. He concentrated, and the mana consolidated into a small ball hovering above his hand. He thought for a moment, then concentrated on fire. What it felt like, what it looked like. He looked at the ball of mana and tried to combine it with the fire in his mind. The mana responded to his thoughts, changing from glowing blue energy to a ball of fire. Katsuki grinned. With his free hand, he opened the book back up to the page Deku had used earlier, the one with the magic circle on it. Deku, for whatever fucking reason, had even included the incantation needed to call the elemental. Not that Katsuki was complaining. He placed his right hand on the center. "I, Bakugou Katsuki, call upon the contract of ages past to summon thee," he intoned. He'd probably have been a little bit embarrassed by having to say that if any people were around to watch him.

Though, at the same time, the fact that he knew it was going to work really helped. "I hope you heed my call. Come, Fire Elemental." The fireball in his hand shifted, then began to change. It shrank down on itself, transforming into the shape of a young girl that could easily fit in Katsuki's palm. The girl had long, flame-colored hair that flowed down her back and glowed softly, with two pointed, yellow-furred ears of some sort of animal poking out the top. She had a yellow sundress with highlighting of similar coloring and glow to her hair, and, for whatever reason, she also had a tail made of fire. The girl looked at him with glowing, fire-colored eyes that made Katsuki feel like he was staring into a roaring inferno. He gulped. "I'll begin in accordance with the ancient rites. My real name is Bakugou Katsuki. I have told you my true name; please tell me yours." He felt himself begin to burn up, but it didn't hurt at all. He didn't become consumed by the fire but became it. He raged and raged and destroyed everything in his path. Entire forests were burnt to a crisp by him. He was fire itself. He saw himself, but he was made of white-hot flames.

And then he was back to normal. The fire elemental was exactly where she was before. "I am here," she said. "My name is Pyra. You are Bakugou Katsuki?"

"Yes."

"We are one, as the ancient contract dictates."

"Our souls are one."

"I am Pyra."

"I am Bakugou Katsuki."

"Until our souls meet their ends," she started to say.

"We will be forever one," Katsuki answered quietly.

"Should you ever need me to light your way, you need only call," she told him with a curtsy, then vanished in a burst of fire.

"Damn right I will," Katuki solemnly swore. He got up, then staggered. He didn't immediately pass out like Deku did, but he felt fucking drained. "Fuck that hits hard," he griped. "But why the hell didn't I wipe out like Deku?" He closed the journal, turned off his light, then went to bed.

That night he dreamt of a titanic monster of fire burning all that was in its path.

xoxoxo

A/N: Oh, snap! Sorry for the repetition, but I felt like elemental summoning is something to savor. Anyone who figures out what the designs of the elementals are supposed to be gets ten points, by the way. I was going to make this chapter a little longer, but I felt like that last bit was excellent cliffhanger material, so here we are! Don't worry, next chapter will be longer. Hopefully. As always, I'd like to say that I'm always open to constructive criticism. Also, if anyone would like to suggest skills, I'm definitely going to include any suggestions that I like enough, so do that if you want. Thanks for reading!

#The Gamer Hero Deku #Gamer Hero Deku #fanfiction #GHD CH 4 #BNHA

3 notes · View notes

notameeksassenach · 6 years ago

Text

Dirt in the Skirt

Moodboard

Many many thanks to @theministerskat, who not only served as the best beta in the world but also took the time to make a gorgeous moodboard (link above) and the epic title graphic!

The inspiration for this beauty started while walking around the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I grew up 30 minutes from the Hall of Fame, and have spent so much time at this wonderful place. The Woman in Baseball exhibit is one of my favorite places to walk around and explore.

Dirt in the Skirt

Chapter 1 - The Beginning of an Era

With our boys overseas and off to war, baseball pitches in for the war effort! Baseball’s biggest stars say “Look out Mr. Hitler. The Yanks are coming!” And the Indians and Red Sox, too! And they won’t come back until it’s over, over there!

Baseball may be shut down for the duration of the war. Detroit Tigers owner and automobile mogul, Colum MacKenzie held meetings with other team owners to discuss the fate of their beloved sport. With fears that the sport would be shut down for the duration of the war, Colum’s younger brother, Dougal Mackenzie, has been charged with finding a way to keep baseball going. With any luck, the promotional whiz can find a way to keep the bases loaded!

Preparing for another day of chores, Claire Beauchamp-Randall quickly tied up the laces of her trainers. The simple routine of it allowed her mind to wander and she thought back on how she came to be in this exact moment. Originally hailing from England, her parents had uprooted their family when the opportunity to own the farm had arisen. Claire’s world quickly became centered around helping her parents by working on the farm.

When she married Frank nearly six years prior, she packed up the few possessions that were precious to her,, put aside the naive girl who knew nothing outside of her family’s farm and quickly learned to navigate the city streets. Claire acclimated well and was much like the other twenty-somethings around her who grew up in the sleepy suburbs of Boston.

Frank, who was a history professor at Harvard, had swept Claire off her feet from the moment they had met. She was only nineteen at the time, and he was much older and had an air of mystery about him. Settling herself into her new role as wife, Claire spent most of her days doting on Frank, ensuring all his needs were met, and that she left a good impression on his colleagues. She quickly became the model wife, putting aside any dreams she may have for the sake of her husband.

Claire never thought she would find her way back to Beauchamp Family Farm, always hoping to find something more than the routine life it offered. But life has a way of throwing curveballs at you when you least expect them. Since the beginning of the war, she found herself back home. Frank, ever the patriot, saw it as his duty to put down his books in favor of joining the fight.

After checking the chickens and cows, it was time to make her way to the garden. With it being her sanctuary, Claire could easily lose herself in the tending of her plants. Making her way through rows and rows of vegetables and flowers, she was so engrossed in her duties that she didn’t notice that she was no longer alone among the flora.

“Claire!” Geillis shouted and quickly dissolved into giggles as she startled her friend.

Claire turned to face her, clutching her chest. She shot the other woman a look of disdain as she tried to calm her heart from being nearly frightened to death. Picking up a trowel full of dirt, she flung it in Geillis’ direction.

“There’s no need to scare me like that!”

Claire should have expected the other woman to come out of nowhere. Geillis was a regular occurrence on the farm. Having been best friends growing up, it was not unheard of to find one where you found the other. Whether it was in the garden where they shared their love of plants, or on the baseball diamond where they shared a passion for the game, the two were thick as thieves. It was another benefit to being back home, Claire had been able to rekindle the friendship she once had with Geillis. As well as getting the chance to lose herself in the sport she cherished.

“Ye better get your glove, Claire. Ye ken it’s almost time for the game!”

“You seem more giddy than usual, Gellie. You normally reserve that level of excitement for the games you pitch.”

Geillis was the star pitcher for the local women's baseball league the two played for, though she wouldn’t be pitching in today’s game. It was only fair to switch off and allow everyone the chance to play the position. Their team was made up of a mixture of Scottish and English baseball enthusiasts, and they aptly named themselves the Swinging Sassenachs. There were several of these small leagues in the area. All coordinated by the players, it gave the women a chance to play a sport that was dominated by men. They made up their own seasons and played as if they were making their way to the World Series. A good time was had all around, and Claire couldn’t wait to take her place behind home plate as the team’s catcher.

Bottom of the ninth, one out, one on base. The Swinging Sassenachs were down 2-0. Geillis knew there was a lot riding on her as she grabbed her bat and made her way towards home plate.

“Gellie, watch out for those high ones!” Claire shouted over the crowd. The redhead had a tendency to imitate a lumberjack rather than Babe Ruth, trying to hit all the high balls.

“Quit naggin’ Claire. I like the high ones!”

Positioning herself, she began to focus on the task at hand. As the ball approached home plate, she swung and missed.

“Strike one!” called the umpire.

Shaking it off, Geillis tried to get her head back into the game. She took a deep breath and readied herself for the next pitch. She could see the ball coming towards her as if it were in slow motion. With a swoosh and a crack, the ball was gone. Geillis took off and successfully made it to second base before the ball reentered the infield.

As the lineup continued, the Swinging Sassenachs were still down 2-0 but had picked up another out. Making her way to the plate, Claire knew the fate of the game was in her hands. If she were to strike out, the game would be over and they would be adding another loss to their season. What she really needed was a home run. That would ensure a win, putting them at a final score of 3-2.

Claire had always been good under pressure, which earned her the spot as the cleanup hitter. Digging her cleats into the dirt, she found her sweet spot. Visualizing the ball coming straight down the middle, connecting with the bat, sending it deep into right field.

The only thing Claire was aware of was the roar of the crowd, and her feet as they made contact with each plate as she made her way around the bases.

“And the Swinging Sassenachs come from behind to win the game 3-2! Well done ladies!”

But what Claire didn’t notice was the spectator that wasn’t participating in the celebrations. Instead, he was still in his seat, silently studying the scene before him.

Upon returning to the farm, the girls busied themselves with the completion of the day’s remaining chores. The two chattered back and forth, recalling every little detail of the game, as they tended the goats, sheep, and horses.

“Ye should have seen the crowd when you hit that home run, Claire.” Geillis cupped her hands around her mouth, imitating the sound of a roaring crowd.

Claire responded with a reddening of her cheeks, and a shower of hay aimed directly at Geillis’ head. Anticipating the reaction. Geillis ducked, causing the offending hay to hit the gentleman neither of them had noticed behind her square in the face.

“Oh! I’m terribly sorry. Can we help you with something?” Claire apologized as she suspiciously eyed the man before her.

Wiping his face and untangling the debris from his beard, the gruff looking man responded.

“Aye. The name is Murtagh Fraser, baseball scout. I saw ye playing ball today.” his voice matched his gruff demeanor.

“And what of it?” Geillis asked, clearly curious as to why this stranger had any interest in their abilities. Claire could tell that this stranger had definitely peaked Geillis’ interest.

“Ever hear of Colum Mackenzie? Mackenzie Motors? Ye ken, the automobiles?”

Both women stared blankly back at Murtagh. Unfazed by their lack of reaction, he continued.

“He’s starting a girl’s baseball league while the boys are overseas.”

“And what does that have to do with us?” Claire questioned. She was running out of patience for this man in front of her. She still had chores to finished before dinner.

“It’s a real league, professional ye ken. Dinna ye want to play professional baseball?”

There was still no reaction from the dark-haired lass. The redhead, on the other hand, acted as if she would burst at the seams with excitement. Realizing that he needed to get the point sooner rather than later, he continued on.

“Look, yer country needs you. And ye can not only play ball, but both of ye are kinda dollies.”

“Dollies? Now listen here you. I’m a married woman! My husband is currently overseas!” Claire was done. Pushing past Murtagh, she made her way to the door where she was waiting for him to get the hint that he was free to leave.

“I didna mean any offense mistress. ‘Tis just that they want girls that are easy on the eye.”

“I’ll go. I’m ready right now. Do I have to sign something?” Gellis had always been the one of the two who was up for any challenge, the one who tended to not look before she lept.

Taking one final shot to make a hard sell, Murtagh left the girls with an envelope containing all the information as well as their train tickets. “The train leaves for Detroit tomorrow. What do ye say? Are ye in?”

“Ye..” Geillis began before Claire cut her off in one swift motion.

Turning back to Murtagh, Claire responded. “We’ll have to think about it. Good day sir.”

With a curt nod, Murtagh excused himself from the barn, grumbling as he made his way through a throng of chickens who were eagerly eating outside the barn.

“What are we to do, Claire?” asked Geillis.

“I’m not sure Gellie. I’m not sure what I want to do.”

“Claire, I’m going to play with or without ye. I just hope it's with ye.” And without another word, the redhead left the farmhouse, closing the door shut behind her.

Still reeling from the baseball scout’s offer to play professional baseball, Claire weighed her options in her head. On one hand, she loved the game and would love the opportunity to play and show the country just what women could do. But at the same time, she had wanted to embrace the simpler life while she waited for Frank to return from war. But maybe Murtagh had been right. Maybe her country did need her.

Hearing a knock on the front door, Claire pulled herself from her thoughts.

Who could be knocking at this hour? Mama and Dad weren’t expecting guests. It can’t be Gellie, she’d just let herself in.

Releasing the locks, Claire slowly opened the door. She wasn’t prepared for what she found on the other side. The one sight that she had hoped and prayed she would never see.

A Western Union messenger.

Claire could feel her knees go weak as she struggled to find her voice.

“M...May I help you?”

“A telegram for Mrs. Beauchamp-Randall,” he said matter of factly. “It’s from the War Department.”

“I’m…” she had to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat. “I’m Mrs. Beauchamp-Randall.”

He placed the letter in her hand before tipping his hat and turning to leave. Claire stood there staring at her hands, the letter still sealed. A myriad of thoughts went through her head, jumping from one to the next.

She wasn’t sure how she had gotten there, but Claire had made her way back inside and was seated at the kitchen table. Slowly she began to open the letter, praying that it wasn’t what she thought it was.

Maybe Frank just sent word that he was being discharged. Maybe he’s coming home.

With a rush of tears blurring her vision, she knew that the letter contained the confirmation that Frank was indeed coming home-- coming home so that he could be properly buried.

Dropping the telegram onto the table, Claire buried her head in the hands. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do now without Frank

Using the back of her hands to wipe the tears from her face, she glanced down at the telegram, nestled right next to the offer to play baseball.

#outlander #outlander fanfiction #outlander fanfic #outlander fan fic #a league of their own au #jamie fraser #claire beauchamp #dirt in the skirts

135 notes · View notes

rigelmejo · 4 years ago

Text

January Goals Update and Notes

Chapters I studied with Listening-Reading Method: Notes lol:

i do not control wtf motivates me. perhaps it literally just is i have to get really attached to a book.

anyway, february is here. i am thinking i may just start listen-reading to Guardian this month. I know I’ve been debating whether to finish Tian Ya Ke first before I started guardian, or do both at the same time. I am leaning toward starting Guardian, sooner rather than later. Even though it’s still me ‘not finishing one thing before starting the next.’

In the end, any studying is better than no studying. And I haven’t been motivated to read chinese lately. However, I have been motivated to read english - and listening-reading will be 1/3 english reading which may help push me to keep progressing. And the 1/3 chinese reading portion is more passive, since I follow along with the audio, so I can have a break from the dictionary for a while. Also... why did I initially start learning Chinese? To read Guardian. To read it in chinese, and english translation. If I’m thinking about my most prioritized goals, this task is more directly in line with what I want to accomplish than finishing reading Tian Ya Ke. Although, both ARE related.

Also, I think anything I learn from listening-reading to Guardian, will improve my reading/listening skills when moving onto any other priest novel. So it won’t be a detriment, it will only make going back to Tian Ya Ke easier afterward - since I will know more words, and recognize them in listening better (and ideally, pick up some words visually in reading better). So I think... if I do get motivated to start listening-reading to Guardian this month, then I’m just going to start doing it.

A note about Tian Ya Ke and difficulty: I am still noticing improvement. I am getting to the point where 1 page has a handful of unknown words at most, usually only 1-3 getting in the way of me easily following the plot. I am noticing I’m getting better at guessing what an unknown word is supposed to mean, guessing what the idioms that seem vaguely familiar mean (and remembering at least some of the words in them). Reading Tian Ya Ke has gotten much closer to reading Han She in terms of ease. I think I’m running into a similar number of unknown words now. I haven’t measured yet if the chapters are taking me under 30 minutes to read yet. Mainly because lately I can’t get myself to read more than 5-10 pages in short bursts at a time. So I’m not sure if reading speed has improved. But I can say that my reading recognition for Tian Ya Ke is currently better than my listening comprehension. I’ve been scanning the pages I read lately pretty fast as I read, guessing most words fine, and then just double checking their pronunciation/definition by clicking them for audio afterwards. Its currently the checking for precise sound/meaning that’s slowing down my reading of Tian Ya Ke. If I were reading it extensively, only looking up words for crucial meaning clarification, I would probably be reading it decently faster.

On a general goals note: I am still for some reason managing to focus easily on reading english books, which is not that usual for me (usually I can read 20-40 pages in a book, then can’t read more than 10 pages an hour or slower and eventually drop the book). So I’m going to keep taking advantage of this ability to focus while I’ve got the chance. It’s been really nice to finally start getting through more of my books. Right now about half are mental health related books (which I’ve been meaning to read for ages), and fiction (mostly historical romances as I’m trying to find an author that Clicks well with me lol). I’ve read 5 so far, with 2 non-fiction books in progress and 1 fiction in progress. That is a LOT in one month for me, each book being 200-500 pages. Lets say 350 pages average, I’ve read over 1750 pages so far this year in January. Yes, that might only be the same as 2 ‘big’ books... but in my defense, non-fiction is soooo much harder to focus on (like i said, i get about 10-20 pages read in an hour of non-fiction even now that i’m focusing -o- ), and I just have not managed to read anything considerable in a while. So... while I still have long term language goals, I’m not going to be upset if they end up getting sidelined again this month. Reading more is something I’m enjoying getting back into, and I truly have so many books to finally read... so I’m glad I’m doing it now.

Things accomplished in January:

Chinese novel chapters read in January: 8 (I’m on Tian Ya Ke chapter 27, page 10. I’m around 33% through the novel. I read around half as many chapters this past month compared to December... and honestly like 4 of these chapters I remember reading one Saturday that I managed to focus. I just wasn’t in the mood to intensively read very much in December).

Chapters I studied with Listening-Reading Method: 2 (Wow that’s not much... both were Tian Ya Ke chapters. Doing both intensive reading AND listening-reading to a single chapter really burns me out. Again, I just wasn’t in a reading mood, so I mostly skipped l-r to speed up how long chapters took to read).

Japanese Audio listened to: 14 (I was listening through Quicksleur - which is pimsleur but with the silences cut out, there are 3 sections, 30 audio files in each section. I completed 14 audio files in section 1. I’ve been listening to Quicksleur to try and refresh the japanese I used to know. Is it working? Yeah, I’m remembering a fair bit of what I used to know. I definitely think re-reading Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide or Japanese in 30 Hours would help reaffirm the grammar I used to know - but I haven’t been motivated to read grammar books. I was listening to quicksleur while playing video games, and that worked well as a low effort way to include listening. I will probably just keep listening to quicksleur, then change my audio to japanese and see what vocab I can refresh. Then maybe in a few months, once quicksleur is completed, I may move into using Japanese Audio Lessons and my actual grammar books. At the moment, realistically, I have 0 time for my grammar books. And I want to focus on audio primarily anyway for now - I do NOT want my kanji/spelling knowledge of japanese to affect my chinese reading skills right now. And I know, having tried, that for me they definitely do affect each other - I’ll see kanji and the pinyin pronunciation will jump in my head, or I’ll know a word in japanese and see it in a chinese novel and have to remind myself its a new word there. This mix up happened a lot when I first started studying Chinese - as I’d just come off of studying Japanese for 2.5 years. Which was very weird, it made learning chinese words harder, but the more chinese i learned the easier manga got to Read for a while. Anyway now that I’m refreshing my japanese, even Without seeing kanji on purpose - when I see them in my chinese reading i’m re-remembering the japanese pronunciation and word that hanzi also goes to. Which is already a bit awkward. So I don’t really want to add kanji included study on purpose for a while. I’ll just keep trying this audio focus for now... with the added benefit its easy to include, and doesn’t have to compete for my energy level I have to make myself read. I am well aware I’ll need to go to my long term, more well rounded, japanese study plan later on. But for now this is fine).

Chinese Spoonfed Audio: 0

Manhua chapters read: 0

Chinese shows watched: 1 (Watched anti fraud league ep 1 in chinese, and again I think some small videos and partial eps of other shows. I haven’t watched many shows period this past month though, so I’m not surprised this is low.

Personal goals met:

Personal books read: 5 (3 non-fiction , 2 fiction novels, 2 non-fiction in progress, 1 fiction in progress. This is really where my energy has been happy to focus on this past January. The non-fiction I’m particularly happy with as its a lot of mental health books I’ve been meaning to read for ages, and some of them I really think have helped me to cope with my panic attacks better. Lately my panic attacks have been less overwhelming, to a degree I think because my inner thoughts during them are having an easier time getting back to self-soothing patterns so I can calm down, and I’m more willing to openly express I’m feeling so bad which I think is helping me process the emotions faster, which helps them end sooner. I read a few as mentioned, although I literally cannot recommend complex ptsd by pete walker if the subject material is relevant to you. That book definitely helped the most, and the books he recommended within it are what I’m reading through now. The book was compassionate, informative, very supportive and encouraging of the recovery journey and its steps, and had a ton of very helpful exercises that can be put to practical use).

Continued to get my stomach to not hurt, also got it to work better without medicine. Avoiding very processed carbs - mainly white breads like biscuits, pizza, pie crust, cinamon rolls that come in those cans - has kept my bloating down and the pain down. Eating apples again every day with coffee/tea is helping, both with not needing my medicine, and with foods not hurting me/not bloating me so much. So I guess I have to keep eating apples every single day -o-. I ate pizza several times this past month (with my lactose medicine) and I only bloated a little, it did not hurt, which was GREAT. Eating biscuits from a can still hurt though - happily the bloating only happened a little, but the pain sucks, and definitely is caused by those kinds of carbs specifically. Other then minimizing dairy and that specific carb type, my stomach’s been tolerating other carbs pretty well. I’ve kept my daily bloating low even with some foods that ‘could hurt’ per day, to 1-2 lbs. Which is great. The worst I’ve bloated this month was by 4 lbs (biscuits), which hurt a bit but thankfully subsided after a day, and that is a big improvement over the 7-10 lb bloating I’d get in a single day from one ‘less tolerated’ food choice. I’m very happy I haven’t had to take my medicine daily, hopefully I’m on the way to getting my stomach as happy as it was this summer.

Goals for February:

Listen-Read Method Guardian, until I’ve gotten through the entire novel. I will probably start this in February, not sure yet if it will be postponed. This, and goal 2, are the main priorities for chinese and I don’t mind which one happens as long as I do some of either of these goals.

Continue reading Tian Ya Ke. Work on reading through my first complete novel in chinese. This goal has not changed, though I predict it may be postponed as I’m not sure how much time I will dedicate to it in February.

Optional. Audios. Keep listening to Japanese Quicksleur when there’s down time (like playing games), and Chinese Spoonfed audio if I feel like it.

Personal. Keep reading while I’ve got the motivation to. I am really enjoying getting through all these books I’ve wanted to read for so long.

So same chinese goals as last month - and I imagine these goals will remain the same into the spring and possibly as summer starts. For japanese, just continuing to progress to refresh my memory is all I am planning at the moment.

And a note to myself: it is shocking how motivating making a little line item in my notes saying “Personal books read:” managed to be. I added that to my to-do list in the middle of January, and since then have read a TON. So just as it motivates me to read chinese chapters, it looks like that particular motivator can work for more things.

#january goals #January progress #february goals #study plan #february study plan

3 notes · View notes