#sorry guys it's a hard word for a non-native english speaker :(

[tastetheblame]

a few months back I found out that lazy town was created by the actor of sportacus to spread the message of fitness and healty living to children which i think is lovely. i'm just in tears because i checked that there are over 1k of sportacus/robbie rotten fics on ao3 and i'm sure that wasn't part of the original plan.

[awkward-imaginations]

| Reunions and Rivalries |

tetsuro kuroo x f!reader

The first time Kuroo saw you was when he noticed you sitting with Kenma, happily playing video games together. He would have been lying if he said he wasn’t surprised when Kenma mentioned he had made a friend on the first day of the new school year. He didn’t share much about you, but Kuroo knew you had just transferred to Nekoma High and somehow you had piqued his interest.

warnings/notes: highschool romance, fluff, slight angst, I do NOT write fanfictions or storys normally, this is a first, so I am generally sorry for everything. CRINGE. def will be cringe in some parts. I'm a big sucker for Kuroo, him and Kenma may be ooc but I don't care this is my silly story and I just need to get it out of my head so I can finally write my Master's Thesis in peace. Also, english is not my first language. This has been "proofread" by my friends (who are also non-native speakers, enjoy).

word count: 2659

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The familiar sound of Karasuno players shouting to each other filled the air as the Tokyo team approached. You walked next to Yaku, chatting casually, when suddenly two familiar figures came sprinting toward you.

“Y/N!” Nishinoya shouted at the top of his lungs, while Sugawara waved enthusiastically from behind him. Before you could even react, Noya wrapped you in a tight hug, nearly knocking poor Yaku off his feet in the process.

“Noya! Suga-Chaaaan~!” you grinned, pulling Sugawara into the hug as well. Noya, now gripping your arm dramatically, suddenly shifted his expression to one of exaggerated misery.

“Y/N!” he whined, pushing you away just enough to meet your eyes, still holding onto your arm. “You have no idea how terrible school is without you. It’s been torture!”

You laughed, playfully pushing at Noya’s shoulder. "Oh, come on, Noya. It can't be that bad."

"It is that bad!" he insisted, throwing his head back in exaggerated despair. "Ever since you transferred, it's like the life has been sucked out of our classroom. I can't even focus on anything anymore!"

Sugawara chuckled, shaking his head at Noya's antics. "I think you just miss having someone to cheat off of during tests."

Noya pouted, clutching his heart as if he’d been gravely wounded. "How could you say that?! I would never cheat! I just… I mean, maybe I miss having Y/N to help me out once in a while, but that's totally different!"

You smirked, crossing your arms. "Uh-huh, totally."

Nishinoya groaned, burying his face in his hands. "You don’t understand! It’s like no one else gets me. The energy in class is so dull now, Y/N! I'm completely doomed."

You rolled your eyes affectionately, patting Noya on the head. "You’re being a bit dramatic, don’t you think?"

"Not dramatic enough!" Noya cried, throwing his arms wide for emphasis. "It's been painful without you. Seriously, how do you survive at that new school? Do they at least let you sleep through class?"

You chuckled. "It’s not so bad, actually. I’ve made some new friends, and I still get plenty of sleep."

Noya looked betrayed, his eyes wide. "New friends? What, and you didn’t miss us at all?"

"Of course I missed you guys!" You reassured, smiling. "But you know, life moves on. Besides, we still get to play Guild Wars together."

„Yeah, nice raid yesterday,” Nishinoya exclaimed, fist bumping you.

Kuroo, watching the scene from a few steps away, furrowed his brow slightly. “So, she's close with the volleyball team at her old school too?” he asked casually, glancing over at Kenma.

“Hm?” Kenma blinked, only half-listening. “Obviously,” he said with a shrug. “Why? You jealous or something?”

Kuroo scoffed, his expression tightening for a moment. “What? No,” he replied, though his gaze drifted back to you, now laughing a bit too hard—at least from his perspective—at something Sugawara said. His jaw clenched involuntarily.

“You sure?” Kenma muttered, still not looking up. “Because it kind of seems like you are.”

“I’m not,” Kuroo grumbled, crossing his arms defensively. “Why would I be—”

His words trailed off as Daichi approached you, a calm but warm smile on his face. He greeted you with a firm hug, his arms wrapping around you in a way that spoke of years of friendship. “It’s been too long, Y/N,” Daichi said, his voice soft. “It’s a nice surprise you’re here.”

You smiled, your face lighting up. “It feels like ages.”

Kuroo watched the exchange, feeling his heart sink just a bit. Daichi’s hug wasn’t overly affectionate, but there was a sense of familiarity between you two that stirred envy in him. He tried to brush it off, forcing a smile, though it felt stiff on his face.

“The third years used to be in the same class as her brother since Kindergarten,” Kenma said quietly, as if reading Kuroo’s thoughts. “They’ve known each other for a long time.”

Kuroo exhaled, rolling his eyes, though the slight tension in his shoulders didn’t ease. “Great. Old friends,” he muttered, his smile feeling more and more strained.

Kenma smirked. “You’re terrible at hiding your feelings.”

"Wait… she has a brother?" Kuroo asked, his tone sharper than he intended.

Kenma gave him a surprised look. "You didn’t know? Yeah, L/N Ryouta—he goes to Nekoma too."

Kuroo’s mind raced. "L/N Ryouta? I don’t think I’ve met him."

Kenma shook his head. "Probably not. You’re in the university prep class, and he’s in regular courses. Still, kind of strange she didn’t mention him during one of your study dates."

Kuroo’s lips tugged into a slight frown. "We’re studying, not chatting." The fact that you had a brother he didn’t know about made him feel a little out of the loop. He didn’t like it.

Kenma shrugged. "It makes sense she'd be close with them. They’ve been hanging out since she was little."

Kuroo watched you laugh with Daichi and Sugawara, Noya had left you to help Tanaka “protect” Shimizu. You clearly had a lot of history with these guys. The way they greeted you, how easily you fit into their circle—it was obvious you were used to attention from boys. It bothered him more than he cared to admit.

Just as he was about to look away, you caught his eye and waved, your smile brightening. For a split second, you seemed to hesitate, a faint blush coloring your cheeks as if you hadn’t expected him to be watching. Kuroo smirked, feeling a little more at ease now.

Daichi, noticing your reaction, raised an eyebrow. "Who's that?" he asked, his tone casual but curious.

You turned back to Daichi, still smiling. "Oh, that’s Kuroo, Nekoma’s captain. You should probably go introduce yourself."

Daichi nodded, though his expression became a little more guarded. "Right. I’ll go say hi."

As Daichi walked over, Kuroo straightened up, masking his emotions behind his usual confident grin. Daichi extended his hand, his smile polite but strained. "Daichi Sawamura, captain of Karasuno."

Kuroo grasped Daichi’s hand, matching his too-firm grip with one of his own. "Tetsurou Kuroo. Captain of Nekoma."

Both captains forced smiles, but in the back of their minds, they had the same thought: I don’t like this guy.

“So… you’re not their manager?” Sugawara asked, giving you a playful nudge as he leaned against the wall next to you in the gym, a soft smile playing on his lips.

“Nope,” you chuckled. "I’m just here for moral support.”

Sugawara laughed. “Then I can support you supporting. We've got a cracking new setter, so I'll probably be on the bench the whole time.”

There was an ease between you and Sugawara that came with familiarity. You caught up on everything—school, mutual friends, and volleyball, of course. Time slipped away as the two of you talked, oblivious to anything else happening on the court.

Except someone was paying attention.

From across the gym, Kuroo’s gaze flickered toward you more than once. He tried to brush it off, but the more you laughed with Sugawara, the harder it was to ignore the twist in his chest.

“Oi, Kuro,” Kenma muttered, not even looking at him as he noticed the subtle tension radiating off his captain. “What’s up with you?”

Kuroo blinked, dragging his gaze back to the court just in time to see one of Karasuno's players miss a spike. “What do you mean? Nothing's up.”

Kenma sighed. “You’ve been staring over there for the last ten minutes. You’re distracted.”

“Distracted?” Kuroo scoffed, though his eyes flicked once again in your direction—watching as Sugawara leaned in to say something that made you laugh. Why does he get to make you laugh like that? Kuroo felt his jaw tighten. “I’m not distracted. Just… keeping an eye on the competition. You know, strategy.”

Kenma raised an eyebrow. “Sugawara isn’t even playing.”

Kuroo rolled his eyes, “You mean Suga-Chaaan~,” he mocked your greeting only to feign indifference afterwards. “I’m not watching him. Why would I care about some third year who isn’t even in starting lineup?”

Kenma looked at him blankly for a moment before shrugging. “I don’t know. Why would you care?”

“I don’t,” Kuroo huffed. “As I already said, it’s not like I’m jealous or anything.”

Kenma eyes flicked toward Sugawara, then back to Kuroo. “I didn’t say you were.”

“I’m not,” Kuroo added, a little too quickly. “I mean—”

“Kuro,” Kenma interrupted, his deadpan expression growing sharper.

“I—" Kuroo hesitated, suddenly aware of how ridiculous he sounded. “I’m just looking out for her.”

Kenma’s lips twitched into the slightest hint of a smirk. “Sure.”

Across the court, Sugawara was finishing a story, his eyes twinkling as he spoke. You laughed, leaning in a little closer. Kuroo’s eye twitched.

“It’s not like they’re flirting,” Kuroo mumbled under his breath, though his voice lacked conviction.

“What was that?” Kenma asked, not bothering to look away from the ball on their side.

“Nothing!” Kuroo snapped, a little too loud, drawing some curious glances from nearby players.

You and Sugawara, still chatting, were blissfully unaware of Kuroo’s growing frustration. Every time Sugawara made you laugh, it felt like a small jab, not because he disliked Sugawara, but because… well, he wasn’t entirely sure why. Or at least, he wasn’t willing to admit it yet.

The match was in full swing, as Shimizu joined you and Sugawara at the side, observing as the teams went back and forth on the court. You’d fallen into an easy rhythm with Sugawara, catching up and making jokes, but now that Shimizu had joined you, the conversation was a bit more reserved.

After a moment of comfortable silence, Shimizu turned toward you. “You’re not their manager, yet you’re wearing their jersey,” she remarked softly, her eyes following the ball.

“Yeah, it actually belongs to Kenma, we're about the same size, thought it would boost the team spirit” you replied, smiling fondly.

Shimizu nodded thoughtfully, glancing between you and Kenma on the court. “He seems to enjoy your company.”

You blinked, catching the subtle implication in her tone. “Wait, do you mean…?” You hesitated, feeling a slight blush creep up your neck. “You think I like Kenma?”

Sugawara, who had been listening in with a bemused expression, chuckled under his breath. “Oh no, Shimizu,” he said, shaking his head, “you’re way off.”

Shimizu tilted her head slightly, giving Sugawara a questioning look. “Really? I thought—”

Sugawara waved her off with a smile, clearly amused. “Trust me, I’ve known Y/N for a long time. She doesn’t go for the quiet, brooding type.”

You narrowed your eyes at Sugawara, half-embarrassed. “Hey, I can like quiet guys,” you defended, though it came out more as a weak protest than anything else.

Sugawara gave you a teasing smirk. “Maybe, but not that quiet.” He leaned in a little closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Kenma’s great and all, but your type’s always been more… I don’t know, bad boy. The kind of guy who’s a little rough around the edges, gets under your skin.”

Shimizu blinked, her curiosity piqued. “Bad boy…?” she repeated thoughtfully, then her gaze drifted toward the court where Coach Ukai stood, arms crossed, observing the match with his intense focus. She nodded in his direction. “Ah. You mean someone like Ukai?”

You nearly choked, waving your hands in protest. “What? No way! He’s… hot, sure, but he’s way too old!”

Sugawara burst out laughing, and even Shimizu’s usually calm expression cracked into a smile.

“Nah, I wasn’t talking about Ukai,” Sugawara chuckled, nudging you playfully. “I had someone more… age-appropriate in mind.” He pointed subtly across the court to where Kuroo was setting up for a block, his sharp gaze focused on the game, his usual smug grin tugging at the corners of his lips. “I was thinking more along the lines of that bad boy.”

You froze, suddenly feeling like all the air had been knocked out of your lungs. “Kuroo?” You hadn’t even realized it, but the moment Sugawara mentioned it, something clicked inside you—like a light had been switched on.

Sugawara’s grin widened as he saw the realization dawning on your face. “There it is,” he said, his voice smug but not unkind. “Ryouta told me you just can’t shut up about him.”

You could feel the blush deepening, the heat spreading up to your cheeks. “I… I don’t…” you stammered, not quite sure how to deny it now that it was out in the open.

Shimizu watched you carefully, her quiet gaze perceptive. “So, it is Kuroo?” she asked softly, her voice neutral as ever, though there was a trace of curiosity.

You glanced at her, feeling a little trapped but knowing you couldn’t lie, especially not with Sugawara there, reading you like an open book. You sighed, defeated, and ran a hand through your hair. “Okay, fine,” you muttered, embarrassed but kind of relieved to admit it. “Yeah… I think I like Kuroo.”

Sugawara looked like he’d just won a game. “I knew it,” he said triumphantly. “I could tell from the beginning.”

Shimizu gave a small nod, her expression thoughtful. “He does seem like someone you’d get along with,” she said quietly.

“Well…” you began slowly, a shy smile creeping onto your face, “he is pretty great. He’s been really nice to me, even when he’s annoying.”

Shimizu gave you a small, knowing smile.

Sugawara’s grin softened a bit, turning more genuine. “Sounds like you’re smitten.”

You shot him a playful glare. “Don’t make it sound so cheesy.”

He chuckled. “Hey, no judgment here. I’m just glad you finally realized it.”

You groaned, half embarrassed but secretly hopeful. “Great, now I’m going to be overanalyzing everything he says to me.”

Sugawara laughed, clapping you on the shoulder. “That’s part of the fun. Just keep me updated.”

Later that night, the team piled into the bus, the soft hum of the engine filling the silence as the Nekoma players settled into their seats. You slid into a spot next to Kenma, Kuroo sitting in the row just ahead, his head tilted back against the seat.

As the bus started to roll down the road, you pulled out some flyers Sugawara had given you earlier and turned to Kenma and Kuroo. "Hey, by the way, Sugawara invited me to a festival nearby. His and my brother’s band, Secondhand Youth, is opening." You held out the flyer so they could see. "You guys listen to pop-punk, right?"

Kenma glanced up from his DS, raising an eyebrow, but before he could say anything, Kuroo replied a little too quickly, "Sure!" His voice was overly enthusiastic, and his eyes darted to you for a reaction.

Kenma blinked, clearly unimpressed. He gave Kuroo a sideways look, stifling a smirk as he mimicked, "Sure." His tone was flat, dripping with sarcasm.

You snorted, trying to hide a laugh, but Kuroo shot Kenma a mock glare. “What? It’s not like I don’t listen to it.”

Kenma couldn’t resist. “Name one band.” He leaned his chin on his hand, watching Kuroo with a blank stare, knowing full well his friend didn’t have a clue.

Kuroo paused, clearly stumped, his mouth opening and closing as if searching for a band name. “Well, Secondhand Youth, obviously.” You couldn’t help but giggle, and Kuroo turned to you, his expression a mix of mild panic and frustration.

"Okay, fine, maybe I’m not a huge fan," Kuroo admitted, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, "but I’d still go. For the experience, you know?"

Kenma rolled his eyes but kept a small smile on his lips. “Yeah, the experience of pretending to like music you’ve never heard of.”

You nudged Kuroo’s seat playfully from behind, your smile softening. "You don’t have to, Kuroo. But… you’re welcome to come, if you want."

Kuroo’s eyes met yours, his expression softening as well. “Nah, I wanna go,” he said, his voice sincere this time. “Could be fun.”

Kenma returned to his game, though he couldn’t hide the amusement in his eyes as he watched you and Kuroo interact.

[zeldaelmo]

🧩

🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

Several things:

The author obviously doesn't care about their own work. Red flags are no formatting at all, no sentence structure, deliberate/lazy abuse of grammar rules (no capitalization after a period, things like that). Either you care enough to make it readable or I don't read it. Non native English speaker mistakes obviously excluded.

Everything that is AI written. You don't care about the fic and so don't I.

Sex scenes that overly use weird words. I know, I know, writing good sex scenes is hard, so I'm letting slide a lot if the overall vibe is okay.

Sex that comes out of nowhere. Sorry, I'm aware it's a pet peeve, but I don't deal with things that don't have a proper build up. I don't mean porn without plot, I mean things where they go from, "I think he doesn't even like me" to five orgasms in three different positions in a matter of a couple of paragraphs. Do you homework, guys. Sex is a pay off for the hard emotional work the characters have been doing. Or any other plot device, there's a lot more. Things can get hot and heavy quickly but it has to make sense.

Fics where an OC steals the limelight. It's just not my thing, sorry.

Pointless violence and overly gory scenes. If it's a long fic I enjoy, I skip the scene.

If a fic is just telling and no showing in the first chapter.

Only for BotW: of the memories are in the wrong order. And by that mean the completely wrong order with the don't follow me memory at the end or something like that. Another pet peeve, I know.

[thesunisrising]

hard period

fem!reader x non idol!jake

TW: +18, mention of self-harm, the reader is mentally unstable; lmk if I forgot something.

w.c: 447

Inspired by: Die for you - The Weeknd and Golden hour - Jvke

(the songs are not related to this at all, but I listened to them while I was writing)

By reading this, you confirm that you are of legal age and take responsibility for reading it yourself.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・

The bulb flickers, the light dims, illuminating the room in a dirty gray. The cold tiled floor is covered with transparent drops. A girl has been lying near the bathroom for more than half an hour. Holding tightly to her hair, she tears it out, trying to find solace in the pain. Prior to that, she broke the mirror over the sink after a dialogue with her reflection about how worthless, incapable, stupid, insignificant she is. Even earlier, she destroyed half of the apartment: chairs, candlesticks, dishes, everything that first came to hand. The only thing that could help her, or rather who is her boyfriend, but he is simply not aware of what is happening. Alone, unhappy, she shudders in silent sobs, with thoughts that her life is meaningless, that it would be nice to end it right now, but she has no strength and is scared. The realization of death is terrible, it’s scary what Jake will think when he sees the disfigured body, the reaction of the family is terrible - they won’t survive what happened, and the mother will completely go crazy.

“Maybe no one needs me?” It flashes through the girl's head, and she, taking a piece of the mirror, climbs into the bathroom, turning on the cool water. Clothes get wet unpleasantly and she takes them off, throwing them somewhere to the door. Gently, without pressure, she runs the shard along her thigh, still pondering her decision, then runs it over her stomach and shoulder. Tears again accumulate in the eyes and the small one rolls down the cheek. The front door slams inaudibly, after a couple of minutes a quiet knock on the bathroom, but the sound of water and concentration blocked everything. The light from the corridor enters the room and the guy first stops on the threshold in a stupor, and then flies up to the girl. He does not know what to do. First, he tries to bring her out of a trance, then pick up a sharp fragment, the second is successful. He touches the water - it is icy, so he first lowers it, and then takes out the girl, wrapping her in a towel. Everything happens without words. He tries to draw her attention to himself, holds his beloved by the cheeks, which with a defocused look looks somewhere at the wall. He finally takes her to the bedroom, laying her on the bed, dresses her, and lays down next to her, drawing her to him, warming her.

"Honey, why are you doing this to yourself? Why did you want to leave me, your family?" - whispers in the top of her head. Hands as tightly as possible clasp the exhausted body.

"I'm sorry. I just can't do it anymore. It's hard for me." - is heard in the chest area and he moves away a little.

"Baby, why didn't you tell me? After all, we talked about this - to share if something oppresses us." He meets her red eyes and can't help but let out a sob. "Please don't do this to us. Speak up if something is bothering you and maybe together we will come to a solution to the problem. Just don't leave us, everything is solved." - in response, she nods and again cuddles in his arms, inhaling the soothing perfume. She is surrounded by the warmth and care of a loved one, and his head is filled with thoughts of how to get her out of this state. Sleepless nights and busy mornings ahead. After all, if this is repeated again and again, it's time to resolve the issue in a more global way…

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・

Well, this is my first post here. I hope there are not so many mistakes in the text, because actually I am not a native speaker, although I have an advanced level of English, anyway you can help me by correcting me. And please tell me if it was good or bad and thank you for reading.

[magicalmanhattanproject]

Okay sorry to like just infodump on your post but I have so many thoughts about languages and language learning and QSMP language learning specifically so here goes.

So the thing is that if you grow up monolingual, talking in a language that isn't your native one is like.. the most unreasonably and irrationally terrifying thing possible. Like I'm comfortable in my Spanish abilities. I can follow along with most of the Spanish streamers on the QSMP. I am confident enough in my abilities to do translation into Spanish for fic authors. I am not confident enough to like. Have a conversation with a native speaker. This is not something exclusive to me. It's just a Thing.

Most of the non-native English speakers are comfortable in English enough that they use it as a common language even between each other instead of relying on the translation mod because the mod is buggy and hard to troubleshoot mid conversation. That means that in most cases, most of the non-native English speakers are gonna be defaulting to English when they want to talk to the English speakers anyway with maybe some falling back on the translator mod for specific phrases or if they're struggling a bit. Maxo in particular uses the translator a lot more than the others from what I've noticed and Forever seems to just like. Need to get some fluent words out of his system when he gets frustrated with his English.

So between adding the translator mod (which people could lean on as a crutch even though it would be inevitably buggy and imperfect) and adding more languages (it's harder to learn three languages than one and the Portuguese and French speakers are using English for cross-language communication anyway) I expected a lot of the English speakers' language to stall out entirely.

The fact that Foolish has kept progressing at a frankly ridiculous pace is a testament to his own drive and desire to learn. It's easy to write him off as just a himbo. And to be clear, he is a himbo. But he's also really smart and really willing to learn. And I think there's two main reasons for this.

One, he's willing to be uncomfortable and look stupid. Like, his name is literally Foolish. You don't name yourself Foolish if you need everyone to know that you're always the most knowledgeable guy in the room. If I recall correctly, he actually specifically asked Leo to only speak to him in Spanish so he could practice. Sometimes, she does need some English to help him understand, but he's willing to back himself into a really uncomfortable and difficult corner to force himself to learn. And he is learning so much! So quickly! And it's so impressive!

The other reason is Vegetta. So I mentioned how most of the non-native English speakers are comfortable enough with English? Vegetta is the exception. His English vocabulary and expression are much more limited than anyone else's (though still much less limited than like, Bad's in Spanish, for example) and he asks the other Spanish speakers to translate pretty often. He just doesn't seem to have a head for language learning. Before the translation mod, he and Foolish had to communicate through the medium of "hopefully our chats can translate". He and Foolish are also egg husbands and have a lot in common and a lot they want to be able to talk about.

I haven't actually seen Foolish and Vegetta interact recently because Vegetta streams too early for me, but I'm sure Foolish will be able to speak to him in Spanish soon and it will be super exciting for everyone involved.

The other thing is that I wouldn't hold the not learning languages against the others too bad. For one thing, they are making progress, just not at the absurd speeds Foolish is. For another, the translation mod probably did slow them down some. Translation is like. The direct opposite of language learning. It's also an essential tool for cross linguistic communication.

So like, if you view the goal of the QSMP as "teach people new languages to the point of fluency" then the translator is a questionable decision.

But if you view the goal as "enable my monolingual friends to hang out with my differently monolingual friends and potentially make new friends" then it's been a massive, unprecedented, runaway success.

The most interesting egg is leo because she speaks majority spanish with foolish, and she's mentioned a few times that she doesn't understand english super well. Overall its been good for foolish because he's getting pretty good at reading and its been fun to watch him improve. I just wish the other english eggs did that too i want to see bad learn spanish or something ☹️

Yeah, I agree! I love how much Foolish has been learning with Leonarda, he's getting to the point where he's picking up snippets of Portuguese from Richarlyson's signs because written, the languages aren't dissimilar. As a point for multiculturalism and diversity, this is a major win and it's exactly what the QSMP was meant to do! I'm very proud and happy because of that. :)

As for the others, it would be very neat if Bad or Philza worked harder to learn languages outside of English too, but I'm not sure either would go for it. I will say that they do have semi-reasonable excuses though.

Philza isn't on long enough or with enough regularity to learn much, and Badboyhalo is often so entrenched in lore and quick, snappy communication that the time it takes to translate a Spanish sign could seriously affect how things go. Bad's self-assigned purpose seems to be keeping the lore going- he drops in to keep others up to date, furthers the plot, and farms resources so all players are on a level playing field and no one is excluded because they get killed by mobs every few minutes or can't sprint to keep up with a group bc they have no food. That doesn't leave much room for sitting there for a while translating and learning.

I will ALSO say, however, that given how long he streams for and how late, a Spanish learning section would be lovely late night content. Cross your fingers and hope, lol.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Do you have any sort of, words of encouragement, for a Greek-American who is struggling to learn Greek? My family is pretty connected to our heritage but I was never taught to speak Greek. I am an adult now, and I know I'm at an incredible disadvantage trying to learn a new language. The most discouraging thing is when I try to pronounce a word with a sound that isn't really in English (like γ) and I KNOW I am not saying it right, but no matter how hard I try I can't pronounce it correctly.

Hello! I'm very sorry for delaying this answer for some days, but as we see here, Zeus was fucked this week 😅

I will pin my answer so you can see it when you return, and the rest will be under the cut.

I believe there are MANY reasons for hope in this situation. Of course it feels very discouraging that you don't know the language already and you might feel left behind in this process. Plus, learning a new language is not an easy thing to learn. But worry not!

You are grown, and that means you can learn a language better and with more consistency and discipline. Have trust in your skills as an adult. What is more, you have grown up around Greek speakers and you will pick up certain things faster.

You are not alone in feeling this way. Most of the world has to learn a second language (and a third, as it's usual for many) and that would be the language most dominant in the wider area. Almost every person in the West who is not an English speaker has to learn English and learn it well, otherwise we feel embarrassed every time we try and form a sentence. For example, we apologize to each other about our accents in English German and French, even though we speak Greek.

Surely there are some differences between your situation and ours, but I mentioned this to show you that most people will be very understanding with accents because they have the same struggle. I mean, I'm not going to make fun of someone for having an accent in Greek when I sound like a demented chicken in German, despite taking years of lessons 😵 I have more confidence in my English but even now that I'm writing to you in this language I have to quadruple-check my sentences and phrasing. The amount of times I apologized in advance for my accent to English speakers is higher than my credit.

I relayed your situation to other Greek speakers and non-English speakers, and ALL agreed the accent is not anything they would pay attention to and told me to write you that you shouldn't feel bad about that. I did that because I knew they would have words of encouragement for you. And it turns out they believe exactly what I'm writing in this answer.

Accents are natural. You cannot expect not to have an accent when you have been speaking a different language all your life. Beating yourself up for having difficulty with the Greek pronunciation is like beating yourself up for something normal like walking or laughing when hearing something funny. You lack practice with the pronunciation due to circumstances beyond your control. You are doing what you can to change that, and every small win is worth celebrating!

I found this post the other day:

The notes? The likes?

And NO disagreements in the comments and reblogs for OP’s statement! Look how many thousands are supportive in this! (And that’s a small fraction of people who understand accents are natural.) And some of the responses:

Sure, some mention they have met native speakers who made it more difficult to feel comfortable with their accent and phrasing. But those people are assholes in general, and not the people you want to surround yourself with. If a relative expresses disgust about your accent remind them you didn’t have any control of how much and how well you were taught Greek when you were a kid, and then tell them that if they are a true friend and relative to you, they should support you in your journey. And even if you had some control and chose not to learn, you are learning now. So they should leave their resentment behind because, honestly, what do they have to lose from you learning the language better??

For the embarrassment you feel for yourself: you wouldn't make fun of a Greek for having trouble with the “r”, "s", “ch”, and possibly the "h" when speaking English, so extend that kindness to yourself when you speak Greek. Not to mention that with enough practice and time you can nail the accent!

Worst case scenario, if the accent never leaves, that's no problem whatsoever. Anyone who thinks badly of you for your accent is probably a PoS and they don't deserve your time. No matter where you are from, if they make you feel bad for having an accent in Greek, block them from your mind forever.

But chances are that (from experience) if anyone laughs with how you said something, I guarantee they are not laughing at you but because of how strange the sound or phrasing was. The person doesn't think badly of you because of this. Making mistakes of any kind when learning a language is very natural and it's something everyone must accept. If you are not willing to make mistakes and expose your language vulnerabilities to people who know the language better, might as well not try improving at all.

If anyone corrects you, they are not doing it out of pity. The majority of Greeks do it because they are very happy you speak the language and want you to be even more fluent. Like, they are doing it as an act of backing you up, they are feeling like they are giving you that extra XP to reach the next level! Others - like me - get that rush of happiness when they get to share their language with others 😁

I remember a guy on Tiktok who was learning Greek and ordered a coffee "without sugar" in a Greek cafe but instead of saying σκέτο ("without") he said σκατά ("shit"). I mean damn that was funny! I remember it weeks after I saw the video of him telling that story and it always cracks me up. Do I still appreciate him the same as before and follow him? Absolutely! He just had an unfortunate - and funny - incident, not something that lessened his integrity as a person.

From tiktok again: An American girl wanted to pronounce γύρος correctly when ordering it, and she was mumbling to herself on camera: “yeero, yeero, yeero!!” When her time to order came she shouted “May I have a gairow? FUUUUCKK FUUCK FUCK I SAID IT WRONG” 🤣

Another example is Athena from the Bachelor 2! She has given some gems throughout the show because she doesn't know the language that well, but everyone still loves her because she spreads positivity and is so cute!! If we, as viewers, disliked her it would be because of her character, not because she doesn't know the language well. And if some of the other girls in the show don’t take her seriously is because she laughs too much and mentions feta too often, not due to her Greek level of literacy. Athena, even when she is hurting someone else’s feelings, is always so genuine and you just can’t be mad at her!

I really can’t stretch enough how people laugh at the mishap, not the person! Please don’t feel discouraged if you ever see a Greek laughing with the pronunciation of an English speaker when it comes to Greek words (which I have done as well) because we never laugh at the speakers. We don’t even know them! We might laugh at one mistake but then instantly want to become this individual’s friends because we think they are amazing (see the three examples I mentioned above, the sugar guy, the gyro girl and Athena). Because that’s the normal thing to do; laugh at fun stuff and not judge people for their small mishaps. (In a casual setting, and not to an uncomfortable degree ofc!)

There are so many things to a person other than their accent and the accent becomes old news really fast. What remains is how the presence of a person makes you feel and if they are a good individual. If an English speaking friend says yatakai instead of γατάκι that opens the way for sooo many jokes! Greeks will laugh, do some YATAKAAIIII screams - ninja style, and then continue being friends with that person!

Greeks makes these mistakes as well... A Greek once said "arrive arrive" (φτάνει φτάνει) instead of "enough" when an English speaker was filling his glass. A Lower English degree caught fire that day 🤣 I have many bad examples of Greeks’ mistakes in English but I can’t remember a lot. But I’ve seen many videos of Greeks mocking themselves for how they sound in English. You can take a look at Tsipras’ (our former prime minister) mistakes on youtube if you are feeling brave 😂 (Ο Τσίπρας μιλάει Αγγλικά)

So, own your possible mistakes, laugh at them and move on because everyone makes them and we better have some good while we are struggling!

(( For the record, we are not making fun of Tsipras because of his accent, but because 1) he doesn’t know γρι English and yet he rarely brought a translator with him in international meetings with world leaders, 2) he could absolutely not hold a conversation with negotiating or discussing 3) he didn’t take steps to improve or fix the situation (like bring a translator). 4) Instead, he chose to torment us all with mind-numbing hours of reading English texts and making other world leaders struggle to explain to him what they meant for the nth time and meetings move at a snail pace.))

Alright, now that I cringed with the memory of Tsipras speaking English, I’ll go though the recommendations for improving the Greek pronunciation.

1) Go to my resources for learning Greek (#learn greek) where I have many videos where you can hear the sounds individually or withing other words very clearly. Easy Greek on youtube has excellent videos about pronunciation!

2) Seek practice as much as possible. Some Greeks switch to English when they hear an English accent to make the conversation smoother for the other person. If Greek speakers insist on talking with you in English tell them that you would wish to speak in Greek. I've seen that people often mirror the accent of the native speaker when they speak to one, so this might work for you as well with hours of practice. If no Greek speakers are available to you now, you can find Greek Americans online – or go to their festivals – and start talking to them.

3) Listen to Greek podcasts, songs and shows. (In my blog you’ll find them at #greek youtuber #podcast #greek tv #greek movie #short film #greek music). You know when you hear a catchy foreign song and then it’s stuck in your head and you say all the words perfectly without even knowing what it means? Well, this helps with pronunciation!

4) If you had Spanish in school or have Spanish friends mimicking the Spanish accent might help you. (Our accents are extremely close! The Spanish are the best at Greek pronunciation, and vice versa!)

5) Find sounds in your native language that sound close to the sounds you want to say in Greek. In German lessons I had trouble with “ch” in certain words because I made it sound like χ and it was horrible. My Greek teacher told me to remember how χ sounds in χήνα (it sounds a bit flatter) and make that sound when I encountered “ch”. It worked actually!

To people who have English as their native language I often suggest they remember the sound of w for γ because, although not used the same in the word, at times they have the same intensity. Γ is pronounced more “to the front” of the mouth, so if you can bring that sound forward in your mouth you’ll be very close, if not accurate, to γ. (But don’t bring it too much forward, sometimes it can sound like a “y”, unless you are saying a word where γ sounds like “y”).

Greeks pronounce σ more closely to “sh” than to “s”, so you also might want to keep that in mind since σ often distinguishes the Greek accent in English for me :p

That’s all! If you have more questions or want to tell me anything else about your experience with learning Greek, feel free to send another ask or a DM!

[beetlebethwrites]

1. I'm an American who only fluently speaks English, but I was in a triad at one point with 2 people who were non native English speakers (a German person and an Israeli person, whose first languages were German and Hebrew respectively) and they would occasionally use pet names for me and each other in their native languages, but they a) still regularly spoke those languages, even around me, and b) it tended to be reserved for more tender and intimate stuff, not just thrown out randomly, so it's really really contextual in my experience.

2. Babe is definitely more casual and cute imo, whereas baby feels creepy and kind of syrupy sweet to me?? I think that's just because my friends call me babe and stuff though, whereas I've only heard baby used towards me by creepy sexist and transphobic cis men that I don't even really know (I'm a trans guy so it happens like a lot).

As a side note, I know that this wasn't your intention and the posts weren't originally written by you, but as an arospec person who is very distinctly *not* acespec, arospec people have different concerns in relationships that the posts about A's demisexuality don't really acknowledge, so treating it as a universal aspec issue, when it is very distinctly an alloro acespec issue, felt a little bit alienating, which happens a lot (aspec people are marginalized even from other queer people and then alloaros have no space in the aspec community most of the time). Besides for that, I agree with the posts though and there's a reason I won't touch TWC and its fandom with a 10 foot stick lmao.

Context is key and that's how I'm going to approach it. In an ideal coding world there would be different pet names depending on how well the MC spoke the language of the RO I think, but that sounds like something that might be above my coding level atm. Maybe by the time I get to it, that'll be different and I'll be more confident in my coding abilities.

That's a context for 'baby' I've never considered so thank you for your input! It's definitely creepy when used like that and I'm sorry that anyone has used it to you in that way, let alone multiple people :/ If I could fight them for you, I would 😅

That's 100% fair and ofc it's true and arospec people are something those posts don't take into account at all. I think part of it is that if those posts do get read by their intended market (not people who are arospec or acespec or even properly informed tbh) then it's easier not to break it down and make it sound like it's a really tiny group of people who are hurt and therefore easier to overlook. So as a result they simplify the situation, if that's the right word? I completely agree with you though, and it's why I'm working quite hard to make sure that in my game you can build meaningful relationships that aren't romantic and/or sexual if that's what you want and prefer.

Thank you for your opinions, they really are valuable to me! <3

[fairycosmos]

do you understand spanish when you hear it? i understand english when i hear it just fine except when ppl speak too fast OR WHEN THEY'RE BRITISH LMAOOOOOOO i can't understand a word you're all saying i'm convinced it's just gibberish to fuck with me sadajskdasd i love you but why are you guys like this

it highly depends on the situation fhjdksdksz like ok so i understand enough to watch youtube in spanish right. but then sometimes when i watch documentaries in spanish and its just normal ppl talking to each other without a mic its hard to understand. just noises and the rolled rrrrr and it’s so fkn fast 😭 and theres sooo many different words for the same thing bc of the different dialects and countries. chilean accents r difficult to grasp love them but idk what the fuck is going on!! spanish from spain is also p insane with the lisp first time i heard it i had no clue what was happening. i would prob have to go really slow talking to a spanish speaking person irl, but i would mostly understand and get the gist i think. if they were patient w me lmfao. GOD jdkaksz i can imagine how crazy the english accents sound to non native speakers. we must sound insane?? idk i cant even conceptualize it.  search up a strong scouse accent if you really want to lose it. i am so sorry i have legit no explanation lmfaoooo other than maybe the US american accent sounds more normal to you bc you were exposed to it more in the media. i’ve had ppl think i’m speaking norwegian with my accent even other english native speakers 😭 sometimes i hear myself speak and im like this is not english is it. we’re just making things up i reckon

[avenger-hawk]

(1/3)HELLO! It's me, Anon who loves you again(lol). But you can call me Zera since I feel like we are going to interact more now (if u want to of course). But Damn, I just went back to finally read your response and I agree so much with what you say. I have an entire essay to write back and this shitty ask will not let me express myself lmao. Anyway, those past few days I felt so shitty just because of how degratory people can be on the internet because they think they are anonymous.

(2/3)Tumblr at this point is so…f*ucked. Constant slandering denigration, muckraking and aspersions. Some people try to negate the toxic and keep it alive but this platform is a breeding place for mob mentality. I’ve seen so many people bullied out of the place just for having a differing opinion. And so many people being all woke trying to “spill tea”, “expose” real people. They tarnish people’s feelings and reputations all behind their safe anonymous cocoon.

(3/3) And they justify this abuse/slander with “I am allowed to express my opinions so gtfo if you don’t agree bitch”. They play the victim when people tell them that opinions do not mean denigrating real people for bullshit reasons with no real proof. At this point sweetie, I am just ranting. Sorry if I am bothering you with those negative thoughts but I felt so shitty those past few days and you are pratically the only one I can get behind in this hellhole tumblr shit. Also, I am writing out-

(Last Part) As I was TRYING TO SAY before the limit bullshit cut me off, I am writing out a response to your previous response to my previous ask. It’s way too long already so I will either need to send you through dm or cut it out into pieces after I have fully written everything out. Thankkk you so much for talking to me despite me being so sudden with you. I appreciate you so much and I hope you are taking care out there (both physically AND mentally). Also, loving those art reblogs

Hello Zera and nice to meet you by your name (or nickname, it’s cute anyway~) and I’m glad you like my fanart reblogs.

I am sorry that you are feeling shitty…it’s frustrating, to say the least, to see people hide behind anonymous and slander blogs, names, real people who are behind them, for an opinion, a taste, whatever. I find irritating even the words/expressions they use, maybe because as a non native English speaker I saw them for the first time used in this bad context so they are only associated to tumblr fake woke idiots and their ‘that’s the tea’ shit. And it’s ironic that they can talk shit about people however they want but when people do the same to them they justify with not only the reasons I listen in my last reply but also with this thing you mentioned, that they are allowed to express their opinion…like, what about the person they slandered? oh but they are not ‘valid’ (I hate this word too) because their opinion is wrong. Says them, ofc. Then ofc they start playing the victim because poor kids, everyone is a bully to them.

It’s ok to rant, I understand your feeling well and I’d like to tell you that if you ‘stop paying attention’ to this it will be ok, but I do fall into the frustration & irritation pit too sometimes. But it happens less often, cause I channeled my fandom time and interested on positive stuff instead and so I want to stay. I don’t want to be preachy or belittle this problem because I know how hard it is (and you can see in my blog that I struggled with these problems directly too, both from dumbasses like those you describe, and from a different kind of creep lol, and even in my other fandom there is slandering and calling out and horrible things), but recently even more, all this coronavirus lockdown (my country is in quarantine since more than a month now) and something horrible that happened to the person I love, made me reconsider certain things. At least for me, at least for now, their importance is dulled down now…Even more than before where I was already detached from fandom dramas.

And since I can see things from a detached perspective I might try ‘suggesting’ something to not let this shit get to you…because life is a b*tch and you can’t allow yourself to suffer for f*ckers who don’t even show themselves, hiding behind an anonymous, or running a shitty blog where they just shit on people, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t engage in fandom discussion (or, like they call it, ‘discourse’, another word I hate) anyway, and I recommend everyone to not engage in anything with those f*ckers. Not because you (not just you Zera but you guys in general) are scared of them but because what they want is attention, and receiving replies, reblogs, attacks, everything, is what they want. blocking them, even making fun of them like they do to others, is ok, cause it’s repaying them with their same treatment. But cut communication. Block people, everyone. These idiots, their friends, those who put likes on their shit, those who put likes on their shit but also to your stuff because they can’t pick a side and maybe they’re good people who don’t think much about these things. Block every single person who irritates you even just a little, and everyone around them. Unfollow people, but mostly block them. The fanarts I post now has little notes compared to the ones I had in the past when I posted them, because I blocked everyone who annoys me, everyone whose opinions annoy me, everyone who starts shit even though I don’t want to speak to them, like every SN/SI/canon stans and puritans and more. I unfollowed friends who followed one of those fake woke b*tches, who reblogged their stuff I didn’t want to see, and made them unfollow me. Marie Kondo my a** lol

And make it clear, so that those who’ll see these people shitting on someone who clearly said they blocked them, will realize who’s bullying who. Maybe it won’t change anything in the short period but in the long run it will, because these assholes have their same behavioral pattern, being overt or even more, covert narcissistic b*tches in need of attention, so if their target ignores them they’ll move to another, in the same ‘area’.

The temptation to check their blogs and see if they attack you, your friends, or what they do in order to protect yourself is strong, but it won’t help getting over this. I know it’s hard and I fell into this a lot, but we all should use fandoms in a positive way to get distracted when we feel like shit because of fandoms…like looking at fanarts, fanfiction or using some private chat group that you know it’s a safe space, even though I read that a dischord chat became moralistic hell unexpectedly, for some the people who joined.

Anyway, sometimes we (and I include myself) fall into this ‘addiction’ where we consider fandom things so important, and we neglect real life people and things…and negative shit like bullying, slandering and all this makes us feel horribly and it’s not different from real life bullying. Sometimes it’s even worse because we join a fandom as a distraction, an escape route sometimes for real life problems, and instead we end up feeling like shit because of it. But, as someone who spent a whole year trying to expose a very bad person who did bad things to me online, and as a person who was slandered many times and always fought back, I can say that letting this affect our real life is bad. Because real life is even harder and we don’t need more weights on our shoulders. And if something like illness or death get close to your circle of people, you realize how all this is pointless, how these f*ckers have no purpose in their pathetic lives other than making others feel bad, and how we can and must fight back everything, but not let it get inside our heads and hearts, where we must keep things we like, our fave characters, ships, dynamics, kinks, people, whatever.

Because, and really everything I say I tried and try on myself first, there will come a time where you’ll look back at this and you’ll realize you might have missed something more important in your life, real or online it doesn’t matter, both are important…Life, I was saying, sometimes is cruel in big and small ways, taking something or someone away from you when you least expect it, making it hard to do the things you like because some a**holes decides it’s wrong, online and offline (like, try feeding crows in my area and see how much hate you can get, and being hated for something so harmless is really horrible, and it’s like the real life representation of online shit imo) is too short to worry about shitty blogs run by shitty people or shitty anons~

I really hope you’re feeling better Zera, and if you celebrate Easter I wish you a happy one!

[chaneomma]

An About Me Tag!!

I was tagged by @jinsseo I’m so sorry it took so freaking long I forgot about it.

First Name: Molly

Last Name: None of your business

Nicknames: Squish, Moo

Pronouns: she/her

Zodiac: Oof strong Leo

Age: Newly 20, baby!

Height: About 5 foot 5, or 165 cm.

Hair color: Right now it’s red, but I’m naturally blonde

Time: 7:54 CST

Fave fruit: Blackberries!

Fave season: I really flourish in the winter.

Fave animal: chickens. They’re so stupid and I love them.

Fave fictional character: Ummm?? Probably. . .Buffy? From Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Fave TV show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

cats or dogs: mmm cats.

Do you have a crush on Tumblr: My heart belongs to @chittaphongot-my-ass

Fave Artists: For Kpop, NCT, Seventeen, The Rose, Stray Kids (I love my lil baby Felix). For Non-Kpop, recently I’ve been really feeling the newest 5 Seconds of Summer album, and I’ve really been into this kind of 80′s reminiscent pop group called joan. I recommend their song called Tokyo.

Song stuck in my head: I’m currently switching between She’s in the Rain by The Rose and Babylon by 5 Seconds of Summer.

Last movie I saw: I honestly can’t remember. I think it might have been Ready Player One. I have a hard time sitting through movies.

Last thing I googled: Um, the last thing that I googled that I can tell you about without ruining the plot line of my current AU is “Second Chechen War”.

Other Blogs: my photography blog, which is @spacepatrolphotography and I’m in the process of setting up a blog that’s completely separate from this one that’s specifically for my non-fanfiction writing work.

Do you get asks: I used to, but I don’t really anymore. . .I miss you guys. . .please come back. . .

Why did you choose your username: I’m basically Taeyong. I’m also the mom friend who loves to cook and is kind of particular about how things are cleaned, and then Eomma is the Korean word for mom, so it’s fitting.

Following: a bunch

What are you wearing: A black t-shirt and pajama pants

Dream job: An English teacher overseas, or a translator.

Dream trip: Thailand

Fave food: Probably sesame chicken

Play(ed) any instruments: I used to play cello. I wish I had kept up with it.

Fave Song: Hello by SHINee

Play(ed) any sports: I have never been healthy enough to really participate in real sports, but I love swimming and being in the water.

Languages you speak: I’m a native English speaker, but I speak halfway descent Spanish and I’m teaching myself Korean.

Random fact: I’m terrified of masks, mascots, and mannequins. I don’t really have a good reason. They just freak me out.

UMMMMMM I’m gonna tag @chittaphongot-my-ass @peachannies @softforeveryonecuzimsoft @ismycapsloudenoughforyou @soggy-leaves

[sleepymarmot]

A couple of months ago, after finishing COUNTER/Weight, I spent about a week in a total hangover, relistening to scenes and having feelings. I took some notes, but procrastinated posting them, and then finally got distracted. But, a) I hate leaving things I intended for tumblr unposted, even if they have value only for me, and b) I also hate posting things out of order, and there's a big TM liveblog incoming. So, here's a bunch of really random thoughts about C/w from past me.

The gnosis virus did go nowhere huh. I was hopeful for a minute when one of the finale intros mentioned it, but that was it. What was the purpose of that arc even. [Note from present me: Lol. At least I feel better about this one!]

Oh, and the patch AuDy left never reappeared either. And the idea from the faction game that Aria's images owned by EarthHome/Petrichor transmit Rigour code… That's the flip side of the coin. On the one hand, it's really cool to see the creative process – on the other, it sometimes feels like you're listening to people write a script for the tv show, but only get to see a half of the finished product. It's fascinating to see the universe grow organically and the players to come up with new ideas and get excited about them – but that means numerous retcons, some of them not even presented as such, because the creators forgot what the previous revision was or didn't thought it was important. It's a unique feature of the medium that player choice directs the narrative and it's not bound by railroading – but that means some roads lead nowhere, and some branches dry and fall off.

It's a bit harder to make peace with something that could have easily been developed more within the existing plot of the show. How come there's a player character whose consciousness consists of three different people in various combinations, but nobody seems to be curious how that works? No PC or NPC ever asked “Which one of you is speaking right now?” or something. The final episodes made a lot of things clearer, but it still felt too little, too late. Hard not to be reminded of that gripe about certain two characters sharing one character sheet one of whom was left underdeveloped and half-forgotten… Both are very ambitious concepts that require a double amount of work from the player, so I feel bad complaining they weren't realized to full potential, but…

Speaking of L&D… I still want to know how the hell did that one engineer all by herself design 4 gods, one of which became a basis for technology that was advanced even for the civilizations 80,000 years later? This woman singlehandedly surpassed any technological achievement of humanity before and after. Who Is She

I saw a “Wake me up: before you go go / when september ends / wake me up inside” meme and thought “heh, this sounds relevant, which member of the Chime is which?” and it already made me sad, but then I realized that I'd never actually heard the september song and looked it up and. The lyrics fit so well. What the fuck. It's an old song everyone keeps joking about. Why is it appropriate for a legitimate fanmix. What. I guess the word “September” will never be the same again for me.

I looked up the rules for Firebrands, the game used for the finale. Oh my, challenges for the dance minigame are so overtly romantic when you see them in a list together! Imagine this cast of characters having to answer to “do you place your hand upon my elbow, shoulder, waist, or hip?” lmao. Also I didn't realize “May I?” was part of the rules for “stealing time together”. (And I found out there's a party version of that minigame with bug-themed challenges. I might have dug too deep…) "Tactical skirmish" is a really fascinating concept, I've never seen such a masochistic combat system! Really faces the player with the violence they're inflicting: sure, you can always fight on, but are you ready to live with what you'll have to do? But for it to work fully, you need a lot of non-expendable NPCs on both sides. The one with the most likeable team wins! (Like Mako did.)

I'm relistening to Three Conversations and it's pretty interesting that Ibex has a bunch perfectly lifelike android bodies, right? There is no such technology seen anywhere else. Did Righteousness develop and privatize that? Are they so complex that only a Divine would have enough computing power to successfully mimic organic life? Can Aria convince Righteousness to help her perform on stage without leaving her duties? Also, like with AuDy, I wonder how Ibex & Righteousness' consciousness works. Is it a single mind, spread across every body he has, or even anything Righteousness is running on, having a bunch of different conversations at once if he needs to? Or is the original Ibex just gone, and what's left is a personality imprint hanging on to the connection to his still living body, imitating his former self like the automated recording Cass saw wore his face? In other words, has Ibex completely fused with Righteousness, or assimilated and destroyed by it? Does he not exist anymore as an independent singular being, or does he not exist at all? Most info indicates the former, but there was also “You’re not in there anymore” “No”.

If Orth and Jace are anime fans with their Kingdom Come and Panther, then Ibex is the guy who's way too into dinosaurs or paleontology. It's as if the heads of various confessions were called Triceratops, Stegosaurus etc. and only one of them knows wtf that means, and also he compares his Divine to… Were there scavenging dinosaurs? I'm looking at an article that suggests T. Rex might have been a scavenger, so yeah he would compare Righteousness to a goddamn T. Rex.

Hey what do you think is the most thematically aproppriate part of the Hieron anime for Orth to watch alone at night during the Kingdom game. What's the best thematic parallel for when he turns off the episode and thinks he made a mistake. Do you think that he once, after a long day and a long month and maybe a long year of feeling helpless and doomed, sits down for a distraction but ends up sobbing “How could they let this happen to Mother Glory”

On Joypark, there are definitely statues of Eidolons, ancient and holy, that were repainted and repurposed as Hieron deities. Imagine a giant Greek or Roman style marble statue of Apote – and it’s painted over as Samot, with an anime face and in really bright plain colors like these “reconstructions of original coloring” that actually only use base colors so they look like cheap action figures.

I was reading Austin's top ten games of 2016 list on Waypoint and he gave first place to The Sprawl! Aww!

The Downloads folder in my phone gallery is funny bc it mostly consists of every freely available f@tt map and also that one photo of Tristan Walker (because I tried to redraw it, very unsuccessfully). I go check a map and every time am met by Ibex just. staring at me. It's unsettling

Some of the many options for how Apostolosian gender could have been presented:

Apostolosians prefer to be addressed by the most neutral available human pronoun, represented as "they" in English, because the human languages don't have anything close enough

Apostolosian pronouns are represented in English by a set of real-life common pronouns and neopronouns

There's a list of Apostolosian pronouns and they're just used in English verbatim (Really impractical because the players need a cheat sheet, but the most fair)

Humans apply human genders to Apostolosians. Apostolosians may be offended, may find it convenient, or something else

As Austin said in the post-mortem, the Eidolon system is not gender. It's represented in English by titles/honorifics/etc

Any of the above, and the creators are aware of the difference between personal pronouns, grammatical gender, and social gender

And that’s not even touching the core problem of what the concept of gender in a futuristic, techonologically advanced society would look like. Yes, I'm complaining about this for the third time but I'm just. So tired of native English speakers' takes on gendered language. They could have made Apostolosian gender look like anything and they made it look like that fucking mess... God, I really hope TM is good enough to make me forget and forgive the experience of listening to “he... sorry, they” for 100 hours. [Note from present me: Well… mostly]

Here’s my take on this: eidolons in Apostolosian language are absurdly broad noun classes with associated classifiers (which fits both the idea that they’re gender but not actually, and that each of them is a patron to several unrelated aspects of life) Apostolosian: the word “(Apo)thesa” is used to refer to people who follow the corresponding eidolon, as well as for counting buildings, heavy machinery, military units, specific strategies and tactics, log entries, historical documents and chronicles, history textbooks and monographs, and eras :) Human: what the fuck

Very critical, imaginative worldbuilding in which 80,000+ years into the future humanity somehow has 21st century gender and 21st century capitalism! TBH, I find any sci-fi set in the far future inherently silly – we can’t really imagine the future technogy and its effect on society. But it feels like C/w barely even tried, and to hear it boast about “critical worldbuilding” is kinda strange. I assumed that meant they build the world critically, not that they recreate modern society or some aspect of it and criticize that! It’s just another Star Trek then! And it was already clear right during the setup when they said “We don’t want Star Trek aliens” and immediately created Apostolosians.

I haven't seen a single piece of fanart with Taako and Mako. Come on, does nobody want to see these two next to each other! Especially considering the outfits artists like to put Taako in!

I really don't understand how and why people do fandom activities on Twitter and Discord where the creators also have accounts. It gives me so much secondhand embarrassment. I can barely peek at Twitter posts before running away. Old-fashioned opinion apparently but I strongly believe the main fandom space and the interaction-with-original-creators space should be separate. I need a space where I can voice my opinions, especially negative ones, with complete freedom. I need to be able to say exactly what's on my mind. But I wouldn't want any of the people on the podcast to read something unfiltered like my complaints above. Being in the same space as the source content creators obliges any decent person to be diplomatic and constructive. And the creators, in turn, need a space where they don't come across complete randos yelling at them about something they said in a podcast three years ago. I'm already feeling uncomfortable because hearing to strangers pour their hearts out for hundreds of hours gives me way too much insight on who they are as people. Of course, nothing’s stopping them from lurking on Tumblr or AO3 and even reading this very post, but a platform where they have official accounts is still a different thing! I even feel uncomfortable talking about the podcast creators using their first names so much. To my ear, referring to a total stranger by first name, especially if it's a shortened form, sounds so rude! I'm not their friend, I don't have that right! But, of course, writing something like “Mr Walker” in my liveblogs would have been even weirder, nobody does that...

Is it a common experience to not even think about fanfiction after listening to Hieron, but going straight to AO3 after C/w? I feel like since Hieron is still a work in progress, writing/reading about it is stepping on the GM&players' toes, and C/w is finished so it's like they gave us the keys to the playground, it's the fandom's turn now. This story has so much blanks and they must be filled! In one of the early episodes they joked that something cute they said would encourage people to ship Mako/Cass and I was like "Bold of you to assume they aren't already" and, indeed, I was right and it's the most popular C/w ship on AO3. Too bad I’m so indifferent to it…

It’s a shame we never had a full scene with Ariadne or even learned what they were up to during the finale.

I still don't understand how Ibex went from “evil CEO” to “leader of a proletarian revolution”, these sound like completely opposite concepts to me

I probably have talked about this too much and have pretty much given up on ever getting a clear picture due to all of these reimaginings but… Righteousness and Voice… Ibex takes Righteousness out of Mako but he still has Voice, that was pretty much openly stated, correct? So how does that work? I’m guessing Righteousness is hidden somewhere in Voice’s code. But if so:

Did Maryland know? On the one hand, she’s too competent not to. On the other, why would she ever allow or accept that?

How did Righteousness not get corrupted by Rigour too? Maybe it did, but broke off the connection with the rest of itself to contain the damage? Or maybe, on the contrary, it kept in contact and was sending intel to Ibex the whole time? But in that case he would have provided more help in the finale.

[give-me-inspiration]

I need you !

First, don't get mad at me for tagging this wrong, I just want a lot of people to see it, and it's very hard with no notoriety! So I tagged all my fandoms, because I knew I could find nice people there!

Let me explain : I'm trying to write a book. And I have a lot (a LOT) of characters, which are all from different countries, have different sexualities, genders, some are disabled, in short: I have a lot of characters that are part of a community I know nothing about, and that live things I never lived!

SO that's why I need you guys! If you want to, of course, and if you're comfortable doing it, you can contact me to talk to me about your experience, your country, your sexuality, how it feels to live with your disability etc.. And maybe I'll have some questions for you, if you agree!

I would need people to talk to me about :

- Sexuality (bisexuality, asexuality, homosexuality...)

- Gender identity (non-binary, trans...)

- What it's like to live in these country and explain me the customs : India, Egypt, Senegal, Russia, Italia, Australia, Chile, South Korea, Thailand, and basically every country would interest me!

- Living as a disabled person (I currently have a deaf-mute character and a boy who lost a leg, but I would be interested to learn about anything), with a mental disorder etc..

-Religions, basically every one of them is interesting

Basically, everything interests me, and I also want to learn more about all the different people in the world. Also I'm sorry for my english, I'm not a native speaker, that's why I hope I didn't offend anyone with this post by using the wrong words or anything

Thanks if you agree to help me, and even if you don't want to, rebloging or talking about this to someone you know that might want to do it would help me a lot!

Or you can just ignore this post.

[fleur-de-violette]

Reading about fandom history on this website made me realize how much different it was for us non-English speakers. Like, maybe I always knew it but consider this:

I started interacting in fandoms around 2007/2008 (so relatively speaking not so long ago) to give a standard, I started learning English in 2006, and everyone who tried to teach a language to a class of not-interested 11 years old knows that in two years with less than two hours a week you don’t really go past the basics. I knew how to present myself with like, two sentences, and briefly describe an image maybe? Well far from fluency.    

So here I am, little fanfiction writer, with an internet access on the family computer, and no knowledge of English. And here is a non exhaustive list of things I knew:

-          The long, long, long, really long research for content. Any content.

-          The small fandoms. And when I say small fandoms I’m talking about something like 20 people on the popular ones. 20 people who all read each other content and leave review. No one else read it. We all knew that. It was cool.

-          Finding content in English, not understanding it but consuming it anyway because content!

-          The ‘bilinguals heroes’ who translated stuff

-          Learning new words that I probably shouldn’t have because there was no warning/I didn’t understand it anyway.

-          Did I mention no content?

-          Reading fanfiction that didn’t make sense because you copy/pasted it in google translate. Leaving a review that probably didn’t make sense either.

-          Not being picky about things like ships or character interpretations. There is like five fanfictions in my language, three of them aren’t porn, I’ll read it.

-          Being so jealous of native speakers because you guys have so much more content.

-          Understanding the comics/doujin because they are images to help you.  

-          Reading your first drabble in English and the sheer satisfaction of “I did it. Now I can access to all this content.” And then realizing you really can’t, because it’s different to read a drabble and a 10k words fic.

-          Add “Sorry for the bad English” to all your reviews, even if the review is just one sentence.

-          The fear whenever you write something in English (Still have that one)

-          The super nice native speakers reassuring us about our language level. Like seriously. You guys are awesome. Keep doing that.  

-          Wanting to be a ‘bilingual hero’ and then realizing translation is really hard.

-          Going from “I will look up this word I don’t know in a dictionary!” to “oh well, that’s probably unimportant” on the 20th word you didn’t understand.

-          Going back to the fic and look it up anyway because, yes, that was important.

-          This sentence is probably super beautiful, but it’s lost on me because I didn’t understand half of it. Sorry.

-          And there are probably so many things to add to this list (feel free to add if you want to)

[androgynousblackbox]

He was a 14 year old non native english speaker. That is important to note too. Do american ever realize how many words their language has and how long does it take for non natives to pick on what is the “right/wrong” thing to say? I am sorry if this comes across as a shock for people, but american slurs are not universal, we don’t hear about them in other countries, we don’t know what they mean or why they are bad. We only learn that talking with people and being told. On 2013 the internet was much less filtered place, and this is not to say “those were the times”, but it’s important to notice that this 14 year old non native english speaker probably saw a lot of kids his own age or even adults using the words and recieving no backlash for it. Should he have known better? How. Literally how do you expect a non native english speaker, a fucking 14 at that, to just KNOW these things unless they are taught? HOW. Where the fuck in Indonesia was he supposed to know about the actual impact of that word? I personally didn’t even know that the americans had so many words to insult latines until I started to hang out in more leftist spaces, which only happened on my 20s. I was a full grown ass adult and I didn’t know a lot of shit. It took a lot of hard work to be able to just hold an actual conversation, and if you want to hate on a 23 because of fucking it up unknowingly ONE TIME at 14, something he realized was wrong and never repeated again, then get the fuck out of here with your ethnocentrist ass. The fucking audacity. You all grow up on that environment with those words. The rest of the world didn’t. And yet you still expect us to be aware of all of them? Yeah, we are going to learn and we are going to care not to hurt anyone with our words, but that is going to take some fucking time, jesus christ. The rest of this is frankly garbage. “Some of the phrases are stereotypical”. What phrases. How it’s bad. What stereotypes. Do you all realize that the point of why stereotypes is bad is because they happen to be the ONLY way of representing a group, not because of the stereotype itsel? A lot of gay men are flamboyant, who the fuck cares. Having one character be like that in the middle of other queer character showing otherwise doesn’t have the impact you all think it does. Stereotypes about poly relationship? As someone that actually read the comic, they show poly relationship as a loving one where they constantly reinforce communication and consent. The guys ask each other to kiss, to pet ech other’s head, to hug, to just touch. They communicate their feelings and constantly support each other through their hardships, they share interests, they establish clear boundaries early on and they follow through with them. Please tell me how the fuck is that wrong. I will wait. About “negative stereotype about transness”, I will call right now bullshit. The only mention of transness in the whole ass comic is the character saying “I am still recuperating from my surgery”, talking about top surgery, and then they having scars when they go to the beach. I didn’t even know that this character was supposed to be trans until he goes to pride wearing a collar with the trans flag colors. Plus, he was written by a transmasc queer person so, you know what, fuck any possible justifcation or excuse, they can write their own fucking transmasc queer character how the fuck they please as a fucking transmasc queer author. OP, I know you don’t want to discourse about it, and me neither, but I just want to say that this whole backlash behind this person is absurd, unwarranted and frankly disgusting. None of this is directed at you, it’s directed to the people sharing “call outs” and going on about how much they hate this author/his comic. The kind of negative attention around this one author on twitter is balls to the wall homophobic and transphobic garbage, and although that is not everyone who has a problem with the author I am sure, it does enables it on such a pervasive way that it doesn’t matter that he apoligized, it doesn’t matter that he stopped making that content, it doesn’t matter that he clearly didn’t made the same mistake again. It only matter to trash him to the ground for past mistakes and because people think it’s “cringy”. Fuck this shit.

the boyfriends webtoon drama: myths and facts (NOT a callout)

for those of you who are unfamiliar with the name 'refrainbow,' here's a quick rundown of basic information:

Ray, aka refrainbow on twitter, is a 23 y/o gay transmasculine comic artist. there is no easily accessible publicly available information about their race or ethnicity in their carrd.co link (or bio) aside from the words "based in Indonesia."

you may recognize his art style from this fan animated short on youtube, which went viral mainly for being... less-than-well-received. the comic's gratuitous usage of internet slang and flashy pastel overtones (some of which clash with each other to the point that it irritates my scotopic sensitivity syndrome), and barely-there character development (to the point where readers have to go out of their way to look up any of the character's names) have given it a notorious reputation for representing "everything that's wrong with fandom culture and LGBTQ+ rep as a whole."

the premise is simple: four guys who go to the same university decide to start dating each other. each represents a different character trope--goth, jock, prep, and nerd.

some users have gone so far as to argue that the webtoon perpetuates harmful stereotypes about gayness, transness, and polyamorous relationships. (while I can't really agree or disagree since I haven't read the comic, from the few panels I've seen, it does seem to take a strangely infantilizing approach to the discussion of top/bottom dynamics.)

I think we all most of us can agree that just because something makes us cringe doesn't mean it has no right to exist. at the end of the day, this comic has very little influence on mainstream media, even less so after its controversial public reception.

unfortunately, the controversy didn't stay fictional.

on May 13, 2021, Ray confirmed that they used to create non-SFW comics featuring members of BTS, which fall under the category of RPF ('real person fiction'), and later stopped doing so, citing "I've come to realize that it is a violation of their consent" as the reason why.

on October 10, 2021, Ray quoted a tweet from 9 years ago (October 5, 2013) where they had, at age 14, called a character from the competitive swimming anime Free! the n word, saying "I'm very sorry for ever using it ... I'll make sure that I will never use it again."

while I'm glad they apologized for the harm they have caused and are attempting to make amends, it's not my place to forgive them (I'm nonblack and not east asian), and the same goes for many of you who are reading this post.

for anyone who skipped to the end of this post looking for a TL;DR or waited patiently for me to finish, without further ado, here's the 'boyfriends' webtoon/refrainbow discourse summarized.

Myths* ❌

refrainbow is white

he fetishizes asian men

they're a troll trying to make the LGBTQ+ community look bad

he genuinely intends to perpetuate queerphobic stereotypes and harmful beliefs about polyamory

they intentionally slutshame/are anti sexworker

*when I say "myths" I mean we currently don't have sufficient information to determine whether or not they are true, and anyone spreading this information very likely has no real basis for it.

Facts ✔️

refrainbow is nonblack

they used the n word at age 14, when they should have been old enough to know better than to do so

he used to create smutty comics featuring real life members of BTS

since then, they have apologized for both

some of the phrases his OCs use and ways they act are stereotypical of gay/trans men and polycules, especially when related to their sex lives

anyway. I'm tired of looking at this post and I have better things to do with my time, so I'm gonna sign off now. do with this information what you will.

[riah-reads]

The Black Company: Review

The Black Company - Glen Cook

“Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself.

The hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead.

Until the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more.

There must be a way for the Black Company to find her.”

*CONTENT WARNINGS: Blood/Graphic descriptions, R/ape, Torture

The Black Company is a huge group of mercenaries. That’s... that’s all they are. And they become the personal militia of whoever holds their paycheck. In this first novel of the Chronicles of the Black Company, they are sworn into service of “The Lady”, because people can’t have names to be mysterious. (I know the whole “names have power thing” is in this book, but come on... The Lady? That’s the best you can come up with.? Her husband is called the Dominator, their wizards are the Taken. But nooo the Lady. Terrible name.) The Lady and the Taken want to crush the rebellion, because the rebellion doesn’t want to live under the rule of evil bastards like them. But whilst the rebellion is happening, the Black Company are mostly used as pawns for the Taken to kill each other. So while they’re squabbling, the Rebels are looking for a child called the White Rose to kill the Lady, The Dominator, and the Taken. (Because “the chosen child” is totally not overused. Though this book gets a free pass, since it’s actually super old (1984.)) And yeah... that’s the book...

Grading time!

Worldbuilding: 2/5

I found very little world building in this novel. The book starts in the city(country?) Beryl. When it is overthrown by rebels, the company moves north. Don’t know where north, just north. A map would really be helpful... The cities visited get the same treatment. We don’t learn where they are, or their distance in relation to each other. And it’s hard to tell if the city is controlled by the Rebels or the Empire. All the places have names like Roses, Lords, Opal...

There’s also magic in this series, with no explanation of how it works. I couldn’t tell if the creations were illusions or real, and if there was any cost to casting spells. Some wizards are more powerful than everyone else. No idea why. They also never say what the spells DO. They just say “he cast a spell. watch out, she’s casting a spell.” It’s dumb. Some spells need to be spoken, others just use their hands, with no distinction as to what spells need which.

There were a few names I liked, specific locations. Things like “The Stair of Tear” “Cho’n Delor” “Gate of Dawn” “Pillar of Anguish.” These were rare...

Characters/Development: 2/5

None of the characters have names. Yeah. It’s the whole “once you join the company, you leave who you were behind.” And it’s so dumb. I did say before that the “names have power” thing is in this book, but you can seriously make up a name. But noooo, everyone needs to have names that describe them instead. Croaker. Goblin. Silent. One Eye. The Captain. The Lieutenant. Raven. Darling. Whisper. Raker. Limper.

The only people who had cool names were the Taken. And I accept them having fake names, because they worry about each other knowing their names to control them. Soulcatcher. Stormbringer. The Hanged Man. Bonegnasher. Moonbiter. But you don’t learn anything about these guys.

Everyone just feels flat. Like they’re not allowed to show any emotion. And they all want to keep their lives secret. The most expressive person in the book is a 9 year old deaf girl. Characters make or break stories, and these guys felt so fake.

There was also a creature called a forvalaka, a were leopard. It’s only in the book twice. I feel cheated.

Plot: 3/5

The plot could’ve been super interesting, if there was more of it. It honestly felt like this entire book was exposition for the rest of the series. And it wasn’t properly balanced. Combat was glossed over, but their card game “Tonk” was explained in great detail. And the back cover made it seem like the company was activly searching for the White Rose to undermine their boss, but nope. That comes later... I think...

Prose: 3/5

The writing was bland, but not bad. There was a subtlety to it that I actually somewhat enjoyed. Stuff that was described in great detail you can tell is relevant to the plot. Except the card game. I really loath that card game.

Anyways, it’s direct and casual. The story is being told by Croaker, the Annalist. It’s his job to write down the adventures of the Company. So I forgive it for not being epic level prose. I still thought it somewhat lacking though.

Overall rating: 3/5

I wanted to like this book, I really did. I read it because it’s called one of the pioneers of Grimdark fantasy, which intrigued me. But it fell short. The plot, though interesting, was buried deeply beneath politics, stupid names, and lengthy descriptions of the people’s card games.

It started out as evil bastards working for a larger, evil bastard. And I thought that would be really cool, them working for someone they despised. Nope. They seem to enjoy working for the The Lady.

Another thing: it seems like the author kept forgetting he wanted this book to be dark. And since his main characters are assholes, he needed to make the enemy worse assholes so we don’t feel sorry for them. And to do that, he made the rebels take turns r/aping a 9 year old. And then he forgot about that and had a Black Company member r/ape a woman too.

I myself wouldn’t recommend this to my friends. If I didn’t enjoy it, then I highly doubt they would.

There are also quite a few words I didn’t recognize especially in the beginning of the book, so I wouldn’t recommend it for non-native english speakers.

It’s also not for lighthearted people. It is technically a grimdark, which means: blood, gore, torture, r/ape...

I don’t know if I’ll finish the series or not. Whatever I decide, it won’t be part of BaW 2018, just something for my spare time.

[willswalkabout]

Ho Chi Minh, El Nido.

I can guarantee this blog will be the hardest to write of my travels. These have been the toughest and most unforgettable 9 days of my trip so far, but not without some great moments thrown in. (On completion I’ve also just done a word count and it’s really long again, sorry, but maybe one to print!)

When I left off last time I had just landed in Ho Chi Minh. It was about 11pm and although I was shattered, I really didn’t want to pay £15 for a taxi, so after some searching I found the 80p bus, which would drop me off 5 minutes from my hostel. On arrival the place seemed closed, though only because the reception desk didn’t function after 10pm. A security guard who spoke zero English met me in the lobby and took my passport in exchange for a key. Other than that he just motioned for me to go up the stairs, with no further direction. Unlike most hostels my bed number had no correlation to the floor number, which led to some confusion before eventually finding my mattress for the next 3 nights.

The next day was to be my touristy day, though it didn’t start till quite late due to tiredness from Thursday’s travel. I walked to the Independence Palace first. Ho Chi Minh’s attractions have odd opening times, as I discovered the palace was not to open till 1pm. It was around 34'C and so I decided to sit outside in the shade for about 40 minutes watching Vietnam’s most crazy city fly by. The palace itself is quite odd. It’s very typical 60s architecture, after its rebuild in 1966, and doesn’t really resemble a palace at all. On top of this it has never been inhabited by a King, and now only functions as a tourist attraction. It did play a pretty symbolic roll however in the “fall of Saigon” something that coincided with America’s evacuation of the country, so was a good reinforcement of my grounding in the events of the war. I find it sort of crazy that it doesn’t make up even a small part of any history course taught in school, despite it being the most monumental post-WW2 ideological war.

After this visit I engaged in culture of a different form, heading to the nearest Starbucks so I could stream Ed Sheeran’s latest album, which had just been released. I have been playing it practically nonstop since, through some incredibly arduous journeys which will be described later in the blog.

I then visited a very old post office, and Ho Chi Minh’s attempt at the Notre Dame, though, as mentioned earlier, odd timings prescribed that this building closed at 4, preventing me from going inside. I went back to the Hostel, which is effectively run solely by travellers who ran out of money and thought they’d chill in Ho Chi Minh for a bit. Although Flipside Hostels is Kiwi owned, the only staff I met were Canadian, British and Vietnamese. My route back to the hostel is actually a mini story in itself, as I had my first and last experience on a ‘Grab MotoTaxi’. Grab is Asian uber, and for 25% of the price you can sit on the back of a driver’s moped (helmet included!). It was more like a thrill ride than a taxi, as my driver swerved through non-existent gaps, and used the pavement as a 'shortcut’ when he got bored of the traffic. At one point during the ride he asked me to rate him 5 stars on the app at the end of the trip, to which I replied that I would do, if we made it that far. Beers at the hostel were cheap, and I spent most of the evening with a Canadian girl, and 2 Norwegian guys, all of which were in my dorm. It is fair to say we were all feeling the effects of the previous night on Saturday morning, but it was to my delight when at about midday a hilarious English guy called Joey, with a helicopter hat (baseball cap with the spinny thing), burst into our room announcing that we were going to a pool party. At this point I will admit that there many more cultural options in the city that I didn’t explore. For example the war museum, or tunnels. On the other hand I liked the people in the hostel, and in the past I thought pool parties only existed in LA, Vegas, or movies set in LA or Vegas, so I went. I would definitely like to return to see more of the city in the future.

It was a good laugh, and a very relaxing way to spend the day, with good food, and some fun conversations with one girl who was half Russian half Swedish, but about to go to University in Spain so she could be fluent in 4 languages by the age of 20. As well as a French man who decided we should try and have a conversation where we could only speak our native languages. This was a stupid idea, albeit with amusing consequences, given I got my French GCSE over 2 and a half years ago, and he was 30 and working in English. It did however give me the smallest of glimpses of how possible it could be to learn a language if you were forced to speak it full time.

I went out again that night with the same guys, and spent much of it playing ¾ rounds of pool with 2 Indian guys while discussing the IPL.

I left Ho Chi Minh the next morning with an English traveler who was heading to Sydney, my next stop being Manila. I hijacked his pre-booked taxi, my 3rd time doing so on this trip, however due to his nerves about missing his flight I did arrive at the airport 3 and a half hours before my own. Something I was prepared to take for the ease and cheapness of getting to the airport. El Nido is impossible to reach from an international destination in less than 2 days realistically, unless you align everything perfectly and don’t take a single rest. It is 7 hours drive north of Puerto Princessa, the island’s only airport, which is an hour and 50 from Manila. Therefore I spent Sunday night in Manila, in a small hotel about 15 minutes from the airport. People generally don’t hang around in Manila, I can’t honestly pass judgement on the claims of dirtiness and roughness, however my hotel’s location was certainly not somewhere you wanted to spend any time. I was able to locate a McDonalds a 10 minute walk away, but that was enough of Manila for me in this case.

The next day I had to leave at about 5 to get my 7am flight. I got a van from Puerto Princessa at 11am, getting me to my El Nido hostel at about 5pm. The bus journey is infamously horrific, not a view I can personally attest to. The road itself is reasonable for South East Asia, and my driver was fast and very friendly. The ticket was 1000 pesos return, about £16. I also managed to persuade a girl that had somehow booked the front seat of the minibus next to the driver, that with long legs in comparison to her stature of no more than 5ft1, my need was greater. I think the driver had in fact invited the woman to that seat, no reservation had been made, and she was quite relieved to move.

To reach my hostel you had to tramp 50m along the beach, to a view I don’t think I would ever get tired of. There are maybe a couple of photos of it on here, but I may have taken close to a hundred. My roommates were Catie and Lucie, recently qualified nurses from Northumbria.

I haven’t planned how to write this next paragraph, but am aware I would like to print this entire blog on its completion as a permanent memory of the adventure. El Nido is somewhere I will never regret visiting, with crystal clear waters, stunning sunsets and perfect weather. There are factors however that take a little away from the paradise, these being next to no internet connection and frequent power cuts. For these reasons notifications come in sporadically and in clumps. On Monday evening I suddenly had missed calls from mum and dad across 3 different platforms. This is a sight that truly does make your heart skip a beat. The connection was not strong enough for us to attempt any of the video calling methods of the last 5 or so weeks, WhatsApp, FaceTime or Google Duo. I slipped in my UK SIM card to the phone and made an international phone call from the beach, where I found out my Granddad, mum’s father, Reginald Flatman had passed away. Reg first got ill around Christmas, and had been in and out of hospital since, with various issues that were increasingly hard to diagnose.

I visited Reg a few days before I set off when he was in high spirits. I discussed my trip with him, and witnessed him as his trademark jovial self, as he laughed at mum’s gardening course exam, where she had somehow managed to hit the pass mark exactly…

Reg was possibly the kindest man I’ve ever known, with hardly a bad word to say about anyone. His only criticisms were directed at the attitude of the Ipswich Town football team, something I always found odd given his total indifference towards competitive sport of any kind. I’ll never forget walking the fields of Zoe and Des’ farm with him and the dog, when I would go down to Suffolk to work in the summer. I also had a memorable conversation with him 18 months ago at the reception of James and Vicky’s wedding, where he was utterly bemused by the 'racket’ coming out of the speaker system during the reception. I was delighted to be able to invite him to our school’s big band concert at Chelmsford cathedral last year.

Reg was a man of simple pleasures who would always refuse as best he could to trouble anyone for anything. We would rarely be able to contain our amusement at dinner, as when Reg was asked “would you like some more food”, he would reply with “that was great thanks”. Nana’s firm toned “Reginald”, uttered when he made a funny face across the table, nudged one of us under it, or tried to steal a roast potato, never failed to make myself or Kate laugh. Reg was to us polo mints, shredded wheat, and a day concluded with cheese and biscuits. Reg never bothered taking life too seriously, a characteristic summed up by a set of four photos in a frame at home, of him and Nana. He is screwing his face up in an effort to make the photographer laugh, in three of the photos. If this was a school photo session with a 10 year old, you would pretend the first 3 didn’t exist and just print the fourth large. The first three however said far more about Granddad than a composed shot ever could.

I will fly back from Melbourne to London on Sunday 19th to be with family for the funeral on Thursday 23rd. Then fly back out on Friday 24th to Auckland, NZ.

So El Nido. The nights are all very boring here as I did not have the energy or desire to go out. On Tuesday I accomplished a goal I’ve had for a long time, to visit a particular beach by the name of Nacpan. There is a particular travel blogger on YouTube by the name of Christian Le Blanc. While I was doing my exam revision last year, Christian was traveling the Philippines, and his trip to this particular beach was one that really drew me to the area. You have to drive 45 minutes north of the main town via scooter to get there. This is 25 minutes of glorious winding road up the coast, before a horrific 20 minutes along an unpaved dirt track to the beach. The reward is one of the largest and most untouched spots along the coast. Fine white sand and beautiful water. However I imagine it is becoming less and less 'secret’ by the month. Even in comparison to the video I saw 8 months ago there are now a few more food and drink stalls, a relatively organised parking scheme, and a far bigger sign from the main road. The one way in which El Nido has developed impressively is in its number of high end restaurants run by Europeans, in order to serve those visiting the town from nearby resorts. This did mean I enjoyed a great pizza that night, with about 10 others from the hostel.

The next day I did the hostel’s combined package of Tour A&C. The El Nido bay is very comparable to Halong Bay in Vietnam, except for more islands with beaches, as well as individual lagoons, in comparison to Halong’s mystical 1969 limestone rocks. At some point the tourist board must of grouped different combinations of the lagoons, beaches, islands, viewpoints etc, into tour A, B, C and D. There are now dozens of outlets selling these tours at prices from 1000-2000 pesos, (£16-£32). In the vast majority of cases you should try not to book tours and other items through your hostel. They will rarely be providing the service themselves, and will therefore be taking a cut simply for making a phone call to one of the companies on the street on your behalf. For example hiring a scooter from the hostel was 700 pesos a day, though I found one in town for 350. Saying all this the hostel ran their own in house tour which was a combination of tour A and C. It was 1700 which was nearer the pricier end, but the advantages were that it left from the hostel’s own beach, and you could do it with people you knew. I did love the experience, the videos of which online were another draw for me visiting the area. I snorkelled and got some decent GoPro footage of a small jellyfish that went on to sting me as I swam away. Taking photos on my phone and proper camera though was a more hap-hazard venture, with the boat being occupied by 16 soaking wet passengers constantly walking up and down around the kit. I also started to wonder if I was really getting the most out of the day, when seeing it partially through a lens. I was never going to get the greatest of photos, for that you’d need a chartered boat where you could specify time in each place. So I put the camera away for the most part of the trip, and enjoyed just sitting on the edge of the boat and taking it all in. Sunburn was the only tarnish on the day.

Thursday started with a torrential storm, which in typical Philippines style concluded with the weather returning to normal service in the space of 5 minutes. Myself, Catie, Lucie and a Swiss guy called Kevin went to do a zip line which was pretty awesome. I’d thought at the start of the day that I would be riding, and so brought my bike helmet with me. This meant rather embarrassingly this was to be my head protection for the experience, complete with visor. I managed to fashion my camera bag shoulder strap into a way of securing my phone to my harness, so I could film and photograph the ride. After this I returned to the hostel to relax a bit before planning to return to Nacpan to try and capture the sunset. This plan in hindsight was rash. Though cloudy, I was overly trusting on one German guy’s words that “his app said the sunset would be good”. It was not, with the clouds concealing nearly the entirety of the sun. I still enjoyed seeing the light shade of pink that took over the bottom third of the horizon, but it was not something I managed to pick up on the camera. What made the decision particularly stupid was that I then had to go back down the entirely unlit gravel path in the dark. I dropped off my scooter in town before meeting the girls for a meal at a traditional Philippino restaurant that had been recommended.

What followed was one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life, something I think I am only now really coming back from 2 and a half days later. Food poisoning hit me bad all night, as it did Lucie also. The plot thickens however, when we both awoke in the morning to find at least 7 others in the hostel had experienced identical symptoms overnight. I could not join up any dots with any of them leading some people to wonder if there was something airborne going around. I don’t think we’ll ever know, but it made Friday’s van journey even more daunting.

As mentioned earlier I had booked a return trip with the company that had brought me up, however the way it seems to work is that nobody drives if their vans are not full. This meant when I arrived at the bus terminal all the other companies that were present were enquiring about my departure time. My theory is that they knew my provider wouldn’t show. So at 1:35, five minutes past my supposed leaving time, a bidding war ensued. I was eventually bundled onto someone’s minibus. I can only assume after they took photos of my ticket, that they will get a refund off my people. This was not the main frustration of the journey unfortunately. The driver still had 4 free seats, and so he transformed into a hop on - hop off service for the whole island. This meant stopping for every random person on the side of the street, negotiating a price for their destination before letting them on. We must have made around 15 stops, something my stomach was not pleased with. 6 hours later we had arrived at Puerto Princessa airport. Advice I am giving myself for the future is not to book the cheapest hotel for short 1 night stopovers. This decision on Friday night involved a 20 minute tuk tuk ride to an area I was advised “not to walk at night”. The only pleasant anecdote in this experience was the fact my driver’s sister was a nurse in Ipswich, probably at the hospital granddad was receiving such good care. It was an incredibly odd and heartwarming meeting, as the driver spoke enthusiastically about his new brother in law, who runs a barber shop on the Woodbridge road. My room itself would be more accurately described as a cell. The bed was like a roll mat, and my troubles were furthered in the morning, when the building “ran out of power”. This was an impressive feat in itself as I was the only occupant in the entire 12 room hotel. I’ve got no idea how it copes with more than 5 customers… The power cut meant I woke up with no air con and no running water. I think I may have left without paying but the owner was so confused and I was so angry at the whole situation, I think the 600 pesos might remain in my pocket.

The next day I took a flight to Manila, then another to Kuala Lumpur. I’m writing this from the final couple of hours on what’s been a pretty grim overnight flight into Melbourne. I think when flying west-east you’re supposed to sleep, something I’ve completely failed to do.

I have a 2 hour domestic to Sydney and then the 47 hours from El Nido are complete. I think I have 14 hours to Abu Dhabi and then another 8 home next Sunday, so will try and summarise my week in Australia then.

Till the next time.