#this is pretty much a comprehensive list of everything I've read so far

[reasonsforhope]

Hey cactus! I wanna say I am really greatful for all the hopeful post cause it is really is a big relief to know good things still happen. I also am curious how far you go to do fact checking to see if something actually happened or gives a positive impact cause I personally have problems in doing that myself and would like to know your take on it. Again, thanks for everything and keep on fighthing :)

My fact-checking protocol is that whenever I use a new source, I vet them, primarily by checking their home page to see the focus/tone of their coverage, and more importantly, by running them through one of the best sites ever, Media Bias/Fact Check.

They do report on history of bias and history of accuracy in detail, with sources/examples, and run their own fact-checks regularly. They're a massive time/life-saver.

From their home page: "We are the most comprehensive media bias resource on the internet. There are currently 8600+ media sources, journalists, and politicians listed in our database and growing every day. Don’t be fooled by Questionable sources."

Other than that, I mainly go off context, sourcing, and level of specificity in the articles. I don't go through and check all of the sources of my sources, or anything, unless I genuinely want to read more. That said, I've been doing this for a while, am fairly caught up on science and politics. I also literally work as a freelance fact-checker, sometimes. So I'm pretty good at figuring out when something doesn't smell right and needs more verification. I also have a couple sources that I have mentally asterisked as "90% good, but double-check just in case."

Generally, the bigger and more impactful a claim is, the more I verify it.

I also appreciate when people post corrections and/or more info, which is usually in the notes. I wish I could say I've never posted anything that turned out to be untrue, but unfortunately that is not the case! On the rare occasion that happens, I generally delete the post and sometimes make a separate post about it, or reblog it with corrections, depending on how much the inaccuracy impacts the story as a whole.

[angevinyaoiz]

Hiii, I'm a newbie :') Could you recommend me books and documentaries about Richard and Philip, and that period in general (12th century)? I read somewhere that a new book about their relationship came out recently. Thank you <3

Hi! Thanks for asking. Its funny since I still think of myself as a "newbie" in a lot of ways since I just got into this whole mess of 12th Century England/France drama probably around like last December, so there are definitely lots of people who know more (ppl, feel free to suggest anything if I haven't mentioned it)

To my knowledge there aren't any specific books or sources that are just about their interactions (aside from That One Recent Fiction book that is. Well that's it's OWN thing lmao) but since the family affairs of the Angevin-Plantagenets and the French kings were very closely entwined with the rest of the family and various other parties, there's lots of overlap.

I personally love it because on one hand it's Free Soap Opera Entertainment, and on the other, a look at a time and environment that is very fascinating and extremely different than the time we live in now. Here I've listed the different books and video I've gotten around to, my thoughts on them, as well as some of my thoughts on uhhhh historical RPF shipping in general:

Books:

The Plantagenets by Dan Jones - An overview of the dynasty overall. A good general read, and available as audiobook! Should be available in most libraries. I haven't finished it since I've only read up to the reign of Henry III, but it presents the overall timeline in an entertaining and straightforward way, with a lot of general context and room for showing the colorful personalities of these Messy Bitches

Henry the Young King by Matthew Strickland - this is probably my FAVORITE of the books I've read so far! Sadly out of print, but it's available to borrow on The Internet Archive, and copies can be found pretty easily on eBay :) It focuses on Henry II's original heir, the titular Henry the Young King, eldest of his son who was co-crowned with him, rebelled against him, fought against Richard in Aquitaine, and died early. It goes into a study of his person and role in the politics of the day, how kingship and war were viewed in the 12th century and a lot about the weird lord/vassal relationship between the French and English Kings that made up the bulk of the conflict and drama. Very long and comprehensive, but very readable. I came away with a much better understanding of everything from this book especially.

Richard the Lionheart: King and Knight by Jean Flori. Flori has a very entertaining writing style that somehow is very funny to me when he's talking about the interpersonal dramas, especially with Philip during and after the crusades. The first half is a biography, the latter half of the book is devoted to exploring the concept of chivalry and how it developed, and also exploring subjects of Richard's legend and image

He has many amusing but overall respectful beefs with fellow historian John Gillingham's scholarship throughout, especially in regards to the much debated subject of his sexuality.

Richard I by John Gillingham - haven't finished this one yet but enjoying what I've read so far. Gil is more detailed in some aspects, which is pretty fun. Apparently he has a reputation (from Flori) for being a bit too much of a Richard fanboy which I haven't come across yet but he is informative, including accounts from Muslim historians during the Third crusade.

I haven't read as much specific media/biographies about Philip and the Capetians, and thus all my media is very Plantagenet-biased. there is an educational graphic novel in French that looks interesting but I don't have access to it (and also I don't speak French but. Ah well). For my purposes however since the role of Louis Vii and Philip II are very entwined with the story of the Angevins we do get a pretty decent look into people's personalities, decisions and behaviors, and how they viewed loyalty and kingship in a lot of the books above.

VIDEOS

"Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty" timeline documentary centering about King Henry and his drama with Becket and his sons and hosted by Dan Jones (who also wrote The Plantagenets, which I listed in the books section) It's a pretty fun and understandable intro, even if the overly dramatic faux Game of Thrones reenactment is really corny and also hard to see because the lighting is SO dim. It's a little oversimplified and focuses a bit too much on analyzing Henry's Personality as the source of his Issues rather than maybe looking at a wider picture, but it's fun and very beginner friendly.

Confessions de l'histoire - french web series in a reality show "confessional" style about historical figures, there's a video on the 2nd crusade (focuses on Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII's relationship), and one on the 3rd crusade (with Richard and Philip) It's very comedic focused but from what I've watched includes a LOT of detail. It scratches my itch for that goofy edutainment but good quality.

Secrets de Histoire - Alienor d'Aquitaine - this one is also french only but documentary focusing on Eleanor's life . It also has very goofy Reenactors in it with one of the worst wigs I've ever seen, as well as reusing footage from the earlier documentary and other movies loool

"The Place of Battle in the Context of Civil War c. 1100-1217" Lecture by Matthew Strickland about how people viewed (or avoided) Battles specifically in the context of civil wars and dynastic contexts. - I love watching lectures by the authors of books ive read, and this one is both very watchable and provides some great context!

On Shipping

My approach to my yaoi delusions (both in general fiction and in perceptions of historical people) is mostly that i am less concerned about "was XYZ queer FOR REAL," since while I do find serious discussions of historical queer history etc very interesting, a lot of this is more separately blasting my problematic sicko radioactive beam of perception in any direction lol. I like seeing characters who are tied up in a web of context (especially familial/dynastic context) and I love knowing familial-cultural background since it gives me a lot of fun material to work with for characterization. Learning more details the better for me, since a lot of the reality is stranger and more fortuitous than fiction , and thats what makes the characters unique, having so many angles to them. But also in the end, it really is all a delusion informed by my very 21st century fujo inventor taste, and I like keeping that in mind, as a sort of separate category from being informative haha. I could write about my headcanons and how I make things interact with the fictional portrayals, as well as thoughts on eh various problematicisms. But this has gone on long enough. Those are posts for another day...That being said I'm weak for both serious drama behavior and really silly drama behavior and the way people come across in these books especially lend itself well to both .

Hope this was somewhat helpful! I enjoyed reading a lot of this a lot, it's a fascinating subject, thanks for giving me a chance to ramble about it.

[olderthannetfic]

yuletide anon here! thanks for the advice, I've been flailing a bit with the sheer volume & variance of 'how to do yuletide' posts. a more specific query: do you recommend writing a letter vs. just keeping everything to optional details? the big 'advice on prompts' post claims that vague prompts are better, but the letters from this year so far (kudos to all on getting them up so fast) are a nightmare of ambiguity for me personally, but I don't want to step on any toes w/too much specificity.

--

If you want to write like... 200 words max, you can just use the optional details.

My letter is already thousands of words, though shorter than most years, and that level of detail just makes one's eyes glaze over if it's in the signup form.

A letter can also be posted somewhere that respects more html formatting. If you want to have a bunch of sections or embed graphics or explain where to consume your canon or anything else that takes lots of space and possibly better formatting than the AO3 signup form, a letter is superior.

People also post letters before the requests are revealed, so some treaters default to looking at letters to find people to treat.

(But if you're hoping for treats, you do want some level of interesting hook in your actual signup because people do look through the requests on AO3.)

--

Taste in prompts varies so much that people have opposite opinions. You will never make everyone happy.

I hate vague-ass prompts. Fuck that advice. Though anything's better than "Just write me anything! :D :D" which guarantees I'll phone in 1k and then write my real fic for someone else.

I love ultra detailed prompts that are nearly an outline... but only if they match my pre-existing tastes. It's dangerous to only have this type of prompt, especially if you only have one for a fandom because writers tend to freeze if they don't like the prompt itself. It's a "don't think of a polar bear" situation where now all you can think of is the polar bear.

It's safest to also have a section on tropes and story elements you generally like, whether that's dubcon or casefic. This helps a writer extrapolate from a "too detailed" prompt to other things you might enjoy instead of feeling like it's that exact prompt or nothing.

Frankly, vague sucks.

Specific but open to modifications is great.

No prompts but a list of fairly specific tropes like "sex pollen" or "hanahaki" or "undercover as a couple" is good too. These are open to going in a lot of directions, but they come with specific plot ideas attached in a way that "fluff" or "angst" do not.

TBH, as long as you don't threaten suicide over not getting the story you want, you're pretty much fine though.

(I wish I were joking, but yes, this has more or less happened.)

--

You don't actually have to do anything in particular. If writing a lot of details is stressful or boring, you could leave it blank. You'll get a worse-for-you fic most likely, but you can do this. There are even weirdo writers who prefer it.

The best case scenario is to write details and/or a letter that make a potential writer understand your taste. It's really as simple as that.

And no one style of prompt or particular kind of detail will guarantee that someone understands you.

At a certain point, it's down to your writing skill in the signup/letter itself and your writer's reading comprehension.

[an-inky-fingered-lass]

A Love Letter to the Thursday Murder Club.

I just finished The Last Devil to Die. Book 4, and the last for a while. Mild spoilers for the whole series ahead.

This is not likely to be coherent, because I just finished the book about half an hour ago and I am a Wibbly Mass of Feelings. It is also, despite the spoiler warning, unlikely to have much to do with the actual plot, because my reading comprehension skills are rather terrible for anything that is not character arc and theme and worse when I am as invested as I am. Which is helplessly, hopelessly, far more invested than I have been in anything for a while.

I will be rereading for the actual plot, because I have an inkling it was genius. I was very confused, if I'm being honest, by the time we got to some of the big reveals, because I lost track of one or two of the major players at some point... I will also be destroyed all over again, but this book will be worn and tattered and so well-loved and I am so grateful it has found its way into my life.

This is a story of such kindness.

I mean, they all are. That's one of the things that struck me from the very beginning. But this book especially. I didn't cry, but it was pretty damn close, and that doesn't happen often.

This series has been everything I have been longing for for so long. And it was everything. A story about people from different backgrounds, who have lived very, very different lives, coming together with all the skills and perspectives they can each uniquely contribute to solve crimes -- that is actually a story concept that has been sitting on my to-write list for a really long time. I'm crossing it off now. I've found everything I hoped for and more.

It never would have occurred to me to make the crew a gang of pensioners, the ends of their lives a visible end of the tunnel, but that's what makes the whole thing work. It gives them such a unique approach to everything -- the kind of compassion and rationalism, wisdoms and sorrows and kindnesses that can only truly be represented by people who have seen so very much.

Every single person in this story is given the chance to be a person. Drug dealers and murderers, mothers and daughters, spies and nurses, builders and psychiatrists and people who were someone else, once. People with their whole futures ahead of them, people with too much past weighing them down. The broken, the hopeful, and the rebuilt. Some that are more than one. Each with their own lives and stories. Their crimes are not excused, nor even forgiven -- consequences come for everyone; the best and the worst of us alike. Is there such thing? Right and wrong, kindnesses and cruelties, choices and consequences. Mary Oliver is my favorite poet, and I think of Dogfish often --

And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason. And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the fires to stay in this world.

(Yes, I'm quoting Mary Oliver in this disaster of a ramble. I'm in that deep.)

I don't know where I'm going with this. But I am not sure I have ever seen a story treat its inhabitants with such kindness. There is room for laughter and grief, love and sorrow alike, nestled comfortably in side by side, in a way that diminishes neither one or the other. More than most things, to me, at least, this story is about the way we each choose to live our lives. They are all we have.

"Grief doesn't need an answer, any more than love does," says Elizabeth. "It isn't a question." "Did you get milk?" says Stephen. "People will want tea." "Let me worry about milk," says Elizabeth.

It's probably not as significant without context. But when I tell you this passage destroyed me...

I fell utterly in love with Elizabeth from the very first book, to the surprise of absolutely no one. I don't love Joyce, Ron, Ibrahim, Stephen, Bogdan, Donna, Alan, and everyone else any less, honestly. I love them all with my entire heart. I am probably the most compromised over Elizabeth, because again, I'm me. Put a retired, terrifying, loyal, somewhat morally grey old spy with an abundance of sarcasm and humanity and a bushel load of bravery and heartache both in front of me and I'm doomed, apparently.

Joyce and Elizabeth have officially become my duo of all time, which is saying something, because I have a special love for duos. I also have a special place in my heart for Joyce and her courage and kindnesses now, and probably always will. IBRAHIM AND BOGDAN especially also have my heart. Oh, what am I saying, I'll keep going like this until I've listed the whole cast. I love them ALL. Have I mentioned Chris? And Viktor? I DIDN'T MENTION CHRIS.

OH AND PATRICE.

Ugh. Ugh, I love them.

Also, it might be hard to tell from this essay, but I do have to mention that every single one of the books in this series is hilarious. I read the entirety of The Last Devil to Die with a goofy little grin fixed on my face, except for the parts where I was internally bawling. This book broke my heart and glued it tenderly back together. I finished it with my heart full to bursting, aching and happy and grateful.

I will have to come back again sometime, and write something more coherent. But I am so very grateful to have found this series. I am used to falling in love with things, with stories, and occasionally sighing over the things I might have personally done differently (I'm a writer, I can't help myself). But to find a story that is everything I've wished for, that I wouldn't change for the world, is a certain kind of gift.

I think I lost my point somewhere. My grandmother's cat is keeping me company, I'm about to go get a drink of water (I'm been forgetting to hydrate, absolutely terrible), and I really need to go to bed -- but, well. I have got to quote something. I was going to use the last line of The Bullet That Missed, which has been stuck in my head ever since I finished it, and but it's a little lonely without the rest of the book. This one, then.

"[The museum in Baghdad] has pieces from six thousand years ago, can you imagine? And on these pieces you can see fingerprints, you can see scratches where someone's child has come in and distracted them. You understand that these people are still alive? Everyone who dies is alive. We call people 'dead' because we need a word for it, but 'dead' just means time has stopped moving forward for that person? You understand? No one dies, not really." - The Last Devil to Die, Richard Osman

This was long. To the Thursday Murder Club, and to Richard Osman, thank you. It's been an honor.

Until next time.

[lovelyhan]

asking this purely for research purposes, would u mind sharing the johnny content in ur bookmarks please? thank you 🥴

OF COURSE! everything's under the cut <3

P.S. i'm sorry i just got to this now TT i wanted to sit down and take the time to curate the stuff i've read so far + write down my useless opinions abt my favorites HEEHEHE

𖤐 Strange Love by missnoona

I will start this list with the Johnny fic that I have NOT STOPPED TJINKING ABOUT since I read it, but it's on ao3 ueueue TT reader is curious about bdsm play and Johnny is more than willing to healthily guide her through the process. It's such an amazing fic, and I usually steer clear of bdsm fics bcs the pain aspect wasn't for me, but THIS!!! it was honestly so informative n I got to see the trope in a different light :^)

𖤐 Set-Up and Marks by @smileysuh

I will never stop singing praises about Nova's fics, EVER! Every single one of their Johnny fics is a banger, but if I had to choose favorites, it would be these two!

Set-Up is a frat au where you're besties with a bunch of guys from NCT, but for some reason you could just never see eye-to-eye with Johnny, aka the friendliest guy in the world, apparently. Lots of fun bickering and banter, I laughed way too much while I was reading this.

Marks is a pretty interesting spin on the soulmate AU bc your soulmate, Haechan sells your soul to two devils Johnny and Jae in exchange for fame. It isn't as daunting as it sounds bc ur two new devil soulmates actually let you adjust to the drastic change in your life until you come to them on your own volition <3

𖤐 I Hit It Like It's All Mine by @neopuppy

Besties Johnny and Jae go to [somewhere in America] to catch some waves, and Jaehyun warns Johnny about his hot stepmom and basically tells him to keep his distance. Ofc Johnny does not do that at all <3

That's it for now! I'll make sure to update this every now and again if I ever find more Johnny fics that'll ruin my life <3

OR: you could just make a better, more comprehensive recs list, kai you silly goose

[shrimpella21]

what does shardick's brand represent? How did he get it? How does he feel about it?

Ohmygosh that's such a good question!! You really made me think on this one bc I didn't have anything written out yet. I like to think his brand represents his freedom once he's out of captivity. It's a good measure of what he's been through. Even though he's got plenty of scars most of them are in tough spots to see and none cover as much skin as the brand does (so far, at least). I do have to make a somewhat comprehensible list of his larger scars but that's for later. I hop back and forth between two different causes depending on what my mood is like and partner's preference. By default, the branding was created by scientists doing scar testing. They wanted to test the extent to which his body would heal 'clean' and undamaged. As we know, it didn't and instead of fading like they expected it scarred into a brand. The secondary route for the scarring is self-mutilation. They had him so physically and emotionally numb for such a long time that he snapped and started carving, all to make himself feel something again. He wasn't born in a lab so I like to imagine it resembles a vine/plant/fruit he was hoping to have tattooed when the experiments were over. Buuuut they pushed him to his limits and he snapped before that could happen. If Shardik's story goes this route, this is also the event that sparks his breakout. Depending on how soon it is after he's freed, he can be insecure about it. If it's close enough in timeframe (probably a year or two) he'll go out of his way to cover it with clothing bc he thinks it's ugly + he doesn't like looking at it. If it's long enough (5+ years), he's much better adjusted and it's water under the bridge. But here's thing. Here's the thing. In complete sincerity, here's the full truth: Shardik's original design inspiration already had the markings on it's chest. I acquired a bear-ish design that I thought was cool as hell and was inspired by a book I was reading at the time to make it into a new character, which mixed together into what Shardik is today. The original design is hidden on his th pf now because I've since redesigned him to look more like a werebear. But honestly I just never had the heart to change the brand. I liked it as it was! And I figured I could turn it into a pretty sick feature of his character. Hopefully that answers everything <33333

[groovy-rat-man]

I dont know if it's because I'm autistic or didn't learn it as a kid or I'm just not putting in the effort or what, but music is one of the shittiest most overly complicated artforms I have tried to learn thus far. (Kind of became a vent post on accident, but feel free to read.)

Now i will preface this by saying that i am easily the second least disciplined person I know and when I try to "learn" how to do something I'll just look up tutorials online, quit when I dont succeed on the first couple tries, and try again sometime later (maybe). It took actual years of doing this on and off for me to learn how to knit, and not being able to understand those shitty diagrams brought me to tears more than once. I still can't even knit anything besides scarves!!

I don't care if i sound like a whiney bitch baby because I KNOW I'm a whiney bitch baby. I grew up GENUINELY thinking I was better than my peers because I was sooooooooo smart then got throat punched by long division and middle school math. (I'm pretty good at algebra now, but having to memorize all those formulas for geometry is bullshit and I STILL can't do long division lol.) I am THE most whiney little bitch baby on the face of the planet and everything i say after this is probably gonna sound so fucking stupid to anyone who took even one band class in school, and I'm okay with that.

That being said, WHAT THE FUCK??? Another thing I should probably lead with, I don't know SHIT about how music works. I feel like if someone quizzed me on my music knowledge they'd think I was fucking with them, that's how little I know. Here, I'll make a list:

The dots with lines on them are called notes

The strings on a guitar are E, A, D, G, B, and E, in that order (because elephants and donkeys grow bigger ears <3)

I know the order the do re mi's go and you start at the lowest pitch and go to the highest (relative to what, I don't know)

The main melody of a song is like the part people would map lyrics onto if it was an undertale song in the 2010's but idk if there's like a formula or method to identify it other than vibes

There's some PEMDAS shit for remembering the letters that go on each line of sheet music but don't ask me what it is

There. That's it. That is the most comprehensive list of stuff i know about music as of writing this. There's other stuff too, I guess, but it's all like "those fractions(?) next to that sexy shape at the beginning of the sheet music are time signatures, dunno what that means tho lol," so I just didn't include them.

And like,, what the fuck am i supposed to do about that?? I could find stuff online but that'll either take too long, cost actual money, or be for literal children. And like I guess a child's music lesson wouldn't be so bad seeing as I am literally below an elementary school level when it comes to this shit but FUCK ME i feel stupid enough as is. I guess I shouldn't be so harsh on myself cause like if someone were talking to one of my friends like that I'd be pissed, but that's not what this post is about. I don't wanna have someone to try and teach me this in person either cause like I said, I can get easily frustrated about this sorta stuff and I dont wanna upset someone or embarrass myself ya know?

I only wanna learn this sorta thing cause I think playing an instrument or making music on my computer using one of those programs I've seen online sounds neat!! I also just dont wanna sound like a dumbass around my friends who actually know music stuff. But I genuinely don't know a single thing about any of this and trying to learn makes me want to claw my fucking skin off and break my own bones. (I wouldn't, just so you know, but I don't think I'm exaggerating too much when it comes to wanting to. Idk feelings are hard.)

Idk man, i just need to fix myself. Whatever that means. Might make a separate post listing all the shit I don't know about music in case anyone wants to help with that. Y'all don't got to tho, just thinking about it.

[internetgremlin-writes]

I see you’re doing some recommendations 👀👀 what about for Seb and Danny ric??

Okay before we get into this one: I actually don't read many fics for the other drivers (aka those who are not Carlos Sainz) and because I read Maxiel on AO3 I've barely read ANY Daniel x Reader/OC works so this list is BY NO MEANS exhaustive and I would recommend checking out @sgkophie who has just done a bunch of excellent recommendations for more detail

Anyway

SEB:

005 by @daniel-ricciardhoe OH. MY. GOD. This is hands down the BEST smutty one-shot I've ever read. It has everything including Seb and a James Bond party. It's fun and sexy and perfectly in character

Paddle to the Metal by @daniel-ricciardhoe this one is... HOT. A little bit different and featuring our favourite flirty, competitive Seb and a game of table tennis

Not a single fic rec because there are far too many to choose from but if you like Seb just do yourself a favour and follow @kates-dirty-sister for the absolute motherload of fantastically written Seb fics

Rekindle by @enchantestuff another smutty one... this time featuring Nightclub!Seb and when I say I was sweating at the end of it hhooo BOY

DANNY RIC

I've said it before but Champagne Problems by @tiredbuthappy is a must. I will admit I read it because of Carlos and not Danny, but this was THE fic that made me go "Oh wait I love Daniel too"

Swimming Lessons (but also literally everything by @harley-sunday) is so fun and lighthearted and the flirting in it is top tier

Bucking Bronko by @daniel-ricciardhoe (im such a fangirl for you haha) an astounding smut set during an Austin race weekend

Mile High by @enchantestuff is also a chef's kiss horny masterpiece which I never knew I needed

[gellavonhamster]

Hi! I know almost nothing about Arthuriana, except some few stories that we read ten years ago in Middle School in English class. I would want to know a little more about the historical context, the origins, the meanings and the orders of all those legends, but I don’t know where to begin. Do you study them in school/uni or do you research about them on your own? Thank you!

Hi! No, I've never really studied Arthuriana, though we touched upon it a little at university during some of our English Literature classes, but in very broad strokes. Plus our professor made us read the book she wrote on the similarities between Arthuriana and the Latvian epic Lāčplēsis (don't know about my classmates, but I read it - it was pretty interesting, but I still found it funny that she was essentially forcing people to read her book). Frankly speaking, I wouldn't say I do research about it now either - I just read whatever works I find available online, choosing them based on what I've heard about them and what links I find floating around on tumblr. Regarding the historical context and origins, some years ago I read a pretty comprehensive book that was like a summary of previous research on the historical origins of Arthuriana, but it was in Russian - "Меч короля Артура. Так рождалась легенда" (The Sword of King Arthur. So the Legend Was Born) by Vadim Erlikhman, so I don't think it will be of much use because it is hardly translated into English. It has a long bibliography which includes a lot of books and research works in English, but I don't know which of them are the most useful.

As to where to begin... it’s a difficult question, especially since a lot of these legends contradict each other more or less because they belong to different traditions. I think it helps if you already have an idea which characters or events in particular you would like to read about, because then you can start with the texts focused on them and then move to other characters or events if you decide that you enjoy these legends in general. @fuckyeaharthuriana has a lot of useful rec lists (links in blog description), including those sorted by character. I can also suggest some works that I enjoyed the most, but please bear in mind that I am far from being an expert - I read several texts last year in the wake of watching BBC Merlin and The Green Knight, and this year started devouring basically all texts I could find after reading Le Morte d'Arthur, but I haven't read the Vulgate, for example, and some other things that, I believe, are considered basics, while having read some more obscure texts that caught my attention but are not as fundamental. Anyway...

Yvain: Knight of the Lion by Chrétien de Troyes - this one has everything: adventures, love, friendship, active female characters (Lunete my best friend Lunete), an Animal Sidekick, and a happy ending after a lot of tribulations. The main character is Sir Yvain, son of King Uriens and Morgan Le Fay, and the story is about him falling in love with a widow of a knight he killed, managing to win her affection but then losing her trust and having to win it back while doing a bunch of heroic deeds on the way. Quite long but I found it a lot of fun.

The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell for Helping of King Arthur - I’m linking the translation I read, but there are many of them available online. It’s a short and fun romance in which a knight captures King Arthur and challenges him to find out what women desire the most or lose his head. His nephew Gawain decides to help him and ends up having to marry an ugly lady who helped him find the answer, but then it turns out that her ugliness is actually a curse, which the answer he discovered helps him undo. 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - I read it in translation by Bernard O’Donoghue, for the simple reason that it was the one I stumbled upon in a bookstore, but I can’t find it online. There are several other available, however; the one I’m linking is by Jessie Weston. With a movie recently being out, you probably know the gist of the plot: a green stranger arrives at king’s court and challenges Arthur’s knights to give him a blow of an axe and then, a year later, receive the same blow in return. So Gawain accepts the challenge and chops the Green Knight’s head off, but he puts the head back on, and now Gawain is due to lose his head in a year. As he rides off to meet his fate, he stays at a castle belonging to a married couple, where his honour is tested (and things get pretty gay). 

The “Arthurian” Portion of the Roman de Brut by Wace - this one is not one of my favourites, to be honest, even though the language is really beautiful in some parts, but I think it’s important. It tells about Arthur’s ancestors, Uther’s rise to power, Merlin’s origins (which I found the most interesting part), Arthur’s rise to power, various conquests and death. Mostly conquests, which is why I wasn’t too engrossed. 

Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (Volume 1, Volume 2) - this is one of those foundational works, a XV century attempt to put all the main Arthurian legends together. Arthur’s birth and the start of his reign, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde, the quest for the Holy Grail, the fall of Camelot - it’s all here. There are various editions, but I don’t know which to suggest, because I made a questionable decision to read the original (the one I’m linking) which is not very easy to read because of the old language. 

Prose Tristan and Povest ‘o Trystchane - I love the Tristan and Isolde stories not so much because I like the main couple but because they’re usually a lot of fun. Shenanigans, wild adventures, horniness, the “everyone’s a little in love with everyone” vibes... My preferred version of all I’ve read is Tristan’s part of Le Morte d’Arthur, but these two are also cool. They’re pretty similar until the second one (the XVI Belarusian version) starts diverging greatly (there’s a whole subplot where Tristan, Isolde, and Guinevere travel to save Arthur from captivity, it’s wild).

Morien - a Dutch romance about a young Moorish knight who goes on a quest to find his biological father and ends up having some adventures with Gawain and Lancelot. I like it because searching for one’s father is such a... normal reason for a quest, something perfectly understandable to a modern person, unlike many of the more outlandish ideas that appear in some other romances. 

[lizzibennet]

i need that decolonial rage reading list girl

br to br

so these are just some of the ones i've read, not comprehensive in any way but:

"discours sur le colonialisme" by aime cesaire. the handbook is it not lol i think this is just required reading for anyone to understand anticolonialism at all. i can't even think of a way to describe it bc i can't do it justice. it's the brutality of the history of colonialism laid out plain and simple, and it is painful to read. this one i read in french but it's pretty widely available online as "discourse on colonialism/discurso sobre o colonialismo". the one u should read if u read nothing else in this list at all

"ensayos en torno a la colonialidad del poder" by anibal quíjano. this is huuuge, but it's a comprehensive outlook on processes of colonization and how perceived notions of race played and play a part in our current understanding of the (colonized) world. it is distinctly south american in the sense it's very angry and calls for revolution quite strongly hehe we love to see it. basically also the handbook for me imo

"Colonialidade e gênero" by maría lugones. what it says on the tin: gender as it pertains to colonialism from a south american perspective. also required reading imo

veias abertas da américa latina, obviously, this is the book that radicalizes everyone in latam, if you haven't read it you should remedy that asap

"colonialismo e luta anticolonial: desafios da revolução no século XXI" by domenico losurdo. this is super abrangent and traces clear links between colonialism and racism to capitalism and us hegemony throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. dense but informative

"modernidade e colonialidade: uma crítica ao discurso científico hegemônico" by marcelo rodrigues lemos. this one is a little more theory heavy but it is basically about how the hegemony linked to the west and northern hemispheres permeates society including scientific thought, about how that is a legacy of colonialism and how science itself is not as pragmatic as it likes to appear because it is racist in and of itself and therefore silences certain currents of thought based on sociological issues. basically this is the definition of decolonial right lol it questions just how much scientific theory suffered/suffers bc of colonial thinking. fuckin great!!!!!!

"revolução africana: uma antologia do pensamento marxista" by jones manoel. a pretty comprehensive read about african politics, past and current, that touches on the resistance aspect of african society and some theory on how to actually effectively organize against current day neocolonialism. as someone who admittedly doesn't know too much about african history besides the independence wars in the 20th century this was super enlightening

"a ditadura" series by elio gaspari, there are five volumes. obviously in br history we don't have to go far to find Colonial Meddling but the dictatorial regime is the one that really like. does things to me. not only bc it's so recent and close to my family history but also because of how glaringly open (escancarada, to steal from gaspari) the us influence over everything that happened was. this is more relevant to brazilians than latams in general ig but it's great, super well written. it is very critical but also very informative in nature. makes u mad. puts the rage in decolonial rage if u will

i'll shut up now lol

[meimae]

Language Learning Through Immersion: One Year Japanese Update

11/03/2021

I did it, you guys! I’ve successfully reached my very first year of Japanese language immersion! I honestly thought that I would have given up by now, but this really has been a fun and ultimately rewarding endeavor.

Studying the language has been at the back of my mind for years since elementary school, I just never really knew how to go about it before, and I always thought that I could learn it in a classroom setting someday. That someday for me was in two elective courses in university, and while those were fun as well, it did not give me the same gains that I have achieved in this past year.

It’s probably easier to quantify learning a language in a classroom setting, especially when going through a program to earn a language degree. Learning through immersion, however, I had to really consider what my goals should be on my own. Eventually, I stumbled upon an article saying that for an English speaker, Japanese was exceptionally difficult to learn and that at least 2,200 hours must be spent with the language to reach a certain level of proficiency. So I said to myself, “well okay internet, if you say so!”, and set that as my long term goal going forward.

Spoiler Alert: I did not hit that goal in my first year. I am not crazy and will never listen to Japanese in my sleep regardless of what Khatzumoto (the creator of All Japanese All the Time) says. 

I did, however, hit a total 1,226.65 active immersion hours in my first year, so I guess I’m still a bit nuts. That is 874.96 hours of active listening and 351.69 reading hours. I also did 270.59 hours of passive listening, also known as the time in the very beginning of my immersion where I was using Japanese subtitles (therefore not really concentrating on listening alone). That’s a cumulative 1,497.24 hours spent with Japanese. That’s more than halfway towards my goal! 

To further break that down for curious animanga fans out there, that’s 973 episodes from 109 anime, 765 episodes from 33 dramas, 7 movies, and 967 chapters from 107 volumes of manga (21 series). Here’s my anilist and mydramalist to see what I’ve read/watched.

During all this, I was also doing my daily Anki reps and now I have a 530 day SRS streak (includes the time prior starting immersion and only doing RTK and some vocabulary cards) and a total 8,857 sentence cards. I’ve been averaging 406 cards daily (because I’m trying to cure my leeches) and I spend about an hour per day doing reps and learning new cards. I don’t really track my time on Anki, but I do have a set timer that goes off after 1-1:30 hours.

What I haven’t touched upon at all is output. I have not gone out of my way to find a tutor or a language partner. There’s still plenty of input out there to immerse in before I even consider outputting.

Graphs, stats, and more thoughts:

Here's my current card count in my main deck (minus the cards in my new/learning queue and leeches I've been relearning which are in separate decks):

That one day in 2019 where I did not do my cards because I was seriously doubting whether I can actually stick with language learning this time around will forever haunt and inspire me to keep going everyday.

Workflow and Tips

You might be wondering, how do I have a lot of time? I started this whole endeavor in the middle of a pandemic, which eliminated the option of me going to a language school, and a slew of other things I were considering doing last year became impossible (and if anything, very scary to do in a pandemic). All I can say is that, things work out eventually if it is His will, and if I can learn a skill before everything properly settles back down again, then why not? 

I wake up at 5 in the morning everyday to either do my Anki reps or read until the time when I need to get up and I listen to compressed audio throughout the day. The biggest tip is to switch the time you spend watching/reading in your native language to your target language instead. Listen to a podcast during your commute, watch an episode during lunch break, read before going to bed, do your Anki reps in the bathroom if you have to. 

But, if you’re feeling burnt out, there is no reason for you to not take a break! I have been watching a lot of Among Us streams before bed, and I chat with my friends from time to time. Language learning is not a race.

More Stats

Here are a couple of grids of the kanji characters that I have encountered at least once in my immersion and how well I have answered them in my vocabulary/sentence cards.

It's interesting that after almost 9000 words, I have yet to encounter every single character from the Remembering the Kanji 1 (RTK 1) book by James Heisig, which teaches you the most common use characters that are part of the 常用漢字. Which brings me to the question, was writing down every single character being taught in RTK worth it every time it came up in my reviews for the first 3-ish months I was reviewing them? Maybe, maybe not. It certainly removed my anxiety whenever looking at blocks of text in Japanese, but the longer I think about it, the more I feel I should have switched to Recognition RTK earlier. Still, being able to write in proper stroke order is cool I guess, and it also helps me when looking things up in the dictionary.

Here’s the same grid but in JLPT order:

I clearly need to grind those N2 and N1 level cards! Speaking of which, I have apparently almost covered every single character that could possibly appear in the JLPT (except for the N1 which I have only covered half of) in just a year's time. If the JLPT word frequency lists I’m using are accurate, I have about 2,000 words more to go to to cover most vocabulary that could appear in the test. This makes the "10,000 sentences/words to fluency" argument a reasonable milestone to aim for for Japanese learners if said aim is only to pass the test. That said, 10,000 words is just that, a milestone. It's more akin to a comfortable level of comprehension, but not my own concept of fluency which is being able to read with ease, speak articulately, and write comfortably.

READING IMMERSION GRAPHS

My biggest motivation for tracking my stats is for the purpose of seeing whether my reading speed is improving over time. Reading speed is also easier to measure than listening comprehension which is kind of subjective, so I had a lot of fun making these. What I found is that for the first volume or chapter of whatever it is I’m reading, I always take the time to get used to the writing style of the author. My speed really improves whenever I keep reading the same topic over and over again. On the other hand and quite obviously, looking up many new words in a row and trying to parse sentences slows me down.

Manga: Reading Speed Progression per Volume

I clearly love ちはやふる and I am not ashamed to admit it.

I need to start reading longer manga. When I do, I’ll probably split this graph into less than and greater than 20 volumes. Imagine if I start reading something ridiculously long as 名探偵コナン or ワンピース, these graphs will start breaching the bounds of time and space.

Novels: Time Spent Reading per Chapter

#neverforget the time I read chapter six of Norwegian Wood for 9 hours when it took me less than half that time in English RIP. Also, my interest in Kitchen plummeted LOL. Still planning to finish it don’t worry. 

I also need to start branching away from manga and start reading more novels and light novels, too just so I can make more pretty graphs.

Visual Novels: Time Spent Reading and Daily Word Count

Also known as images that clearly show that I’ve already spent several days only reading the prologue of Island. I’m not sweating. 切那 needs to stop using words I don’t know in succession. More thoughts on this VN far into the future.

Thoughts on Immersion

I can’t really say anything else other that that it works for me, and needless to say if you’re considering this method, remember that the SRS is your friend but immersion should be your one true love.

Prior to all this, I couldn’t even read a sample paragraph from Genki without being confused to my very soul. Yes, I know, it’s embarrassing, but that’s the truth. I was way more scared of failing my Japanese classes than my actual thesis for my bachelors degree, I kid you not. I would quite literally spend all my free time in university trying to understand grammar, memorize vocabulary, and answer my workbook exercises with little to no success. 

I tried so hard to get all the grammar “formulas” into my head for 1.5 years and it only brought me more confusion. I’m never going back to traditional classroom study for language learning, but I will still refer to grammar books when I need to, and not because I feel like I need to answer 4783342 different workbook exercises like my life depended on it.

I still can’t believe it, but with immersion this statement is actually true to a point, don’t try shadowing anime/or calling your boss anime language slurs, use your common sense:

study anime to understand Japanese > study Japanese to understand anime 

Future Goals/Plans

2,200 immersion hours was my initial goal, but honestly I feel like that number could be much higher. There’s still a lot of stuff I don’t understand (news, politics, sciences, etc.), so I’ll make attempts to cover more of those things in my immersion. 

I’ll continue reading more, because that’s a natural SRS in itself. Try to read longer manga, more novels, visual novels, and light novels, and maybe news articles. 

I’ll try to mine as much “JLPT vocab” as I can before making any attempts at taking the JLPT. I noticed that a lot of the words I know don’t appear in the JLPT word lists as much, even though they appear a lot in media/daily conversation. 

Continue mining all words I don’t know because all words are useful anyway. There is no such thing as useless words. I never really understood mining only “interesting words” or words that “pop up” in your immersion. As I said in my previous blog post, 美人局 is an interesting word and I certainly caught it being said in my immersion, but in the three languages I know, I wouldn’t know when I would be able to use such a word, as compared to something like ジャガイモ which is a significantly less interesting word, but is certainly useful to know. 

_

I have managed to talk up a storm, but if you have any questions regarding my process or recommendations for new immersion material, please feel free to send an ask/reply to this post. I love hearing about other people’s language learning/immersion journeys. 

See you on my next post!

[echo-bleu]

hello! I saw one of your previous asks and I was wondering if I could ask you for some writing help too! I have an autistic character that i love, but I'm not sure how to convey that this character is autistic in a way that feel aunthentic and organic instead of stereotyped, specially since she's a girl and I haven't seen many (accurate) representations of autistic girls in the media. I've seen videos about autistic people and they've been very helpful on what not to do, but + I would still love

to get some of the 'do's' what i have so far is that she has a Fixation on the sea, she has a hard time reading sarcasm and/or emotions in others, and she has an overall seemingly 'detached' personality (even if I wouldn't call her that, since she cares about the people she loves, she's just bad at putting it into words). I jsut want to make sure i'm on the right path! thank you so much for listening and I hope this is not a bother!

Hi Anon! I’m not bothered at all and I’m happy to answer this kind of ask. As always, I can only speak for myself, but I’ll try to give you a few pointers. (The previous ask mentioned is this one.)

First, it’s lovely to hear about an autistic girl! I’m not sure if you’re speaking about an adult or a child/teenager, but either way, it can be interesting to read about how autism can look a bit different in women. The gender distinction that has often been made is something I don’t agree with because I feel that it’s an unnecessary shortcut, but a number of autistic people, in majority women and people socially perceived as female, learn to “adapt” more to neurotypical standards by masking their autistic traits a lot, and might not be detected as autistic until adulthood. Masking takes a lot of energy, which can translate as feeling “socially exhausted” all the time and lead to burnout. This article list traits that can be found that are less common and obvious. It is far from perfect imo, but it can give you new ideas!

You didn’t really say if your character is a main or a side character (which changes the amount of detail you’ll want to go into) but so far to me you seem to be on the right track! Having a hard time reading people is something a lot of us struggle with. It might not just be sarcasm, btw, understanding metaphors and jokes can also be hard. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have a sense of humor: it’s entirely possible to be able to use sarcasm and struggle with noticing it when it comes from other people, and a lot of autistic people have a very developed and specific sense of humor that can be seen as odd.

The “detached” personality is something you may have to handle with care because lack of empathy is a harmful stereotype. Maybe look up the difference between cognitive and affective empathy. Some of us do struggle with empathy, many of us struggle with expressing it in a way that’s comprehensible to neurotypicals, but it doesn’t mean that we lack it. It’s fine for your character to struggle with it, but be careful that she doesn’t end up seeming cold/robotic if she’s not the POV character.

Now for some “do’s”: I’m only going to talk about autistic traits here and assume that you’ve fleshed her out with an actual personality outside of her autism, just like you would any other character.

- I agree that it has to come up organically, but it would be a lot better in terms of representation to make her explicitly autistic, ie use the word autistic. It doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the story. If you’re in a fantasy setting or for some other reason you can’t use the actual word, then describing something like neurodiversity would be a good way to make it explicit. In fanfic, I personally think that tagging “autistic [character]” is enough if the fic is short(ish) and the word isn’t used in the story but the character’s autism is fairly clear, but in an original story, you don’t really have that possibility.

- Something I like to do when coming up with original autistic characters is to choose a few specific stims from them, that regularly come back in my descriptions. It falls under the same umbrella as choosing mannerisms, it gives characters their own specific flavor. You can choose a happy stim, a nervous stim and a bored stim, for example. Autistics stim a lot and in a lot of ways, but I think most of us have a few stims that come back often. It can be things like chewing on a toy/finger, flapping in a specific way, rocking on their heels, twirling hair, fidgeting with a toy or jewelry.

- Sensory differences. It’s also something that you can choose for your character: maybe she likes to listen to music very loudly, and often speak a little too loudly, or on the contrary she’s hyperacusic. She might wear sunglasses outside, or need lights on all the time. She might need subtitles to understand a movie, or be super distracted by sparkly things. She might not make eye contact, or make it too much, or seem to make it by looking somewhere close to the person’s eyes. She might find touch painful or difficult, or seek it constantly, or both (can depend on the moment, how tired she is, or if she trusts the person).

- Like I’ve said before, meltdowns/shutdowns are a delicate thing to portray if you’re not autistic yourself, but overloading can and does happen without going all the way to either of them. It’s actually fairly frequent, and happens when there is too much sensory (or emotional) stimuli at the same time or a too long day or something. From the inside, it can look like struggling to think, feeling like your skin is crawling, feeling like everything is too much, and struggling to initiate actions/figure out the steps to do something. From the outside, it can look like the person is rejecting touch, needs to isolate themself, is irritated, might struggle to speak/be very quiet. As long as the character isn’t mocked for their behavior, I think it’s something you can portray without too much risk.

- A specific interest about the sea is a nice idea! The sea is a very large subject, though, so she’ll probably have a predilection for some things. Is it water currents? Fish species? Underwater plants? Beaches? There’s a lot of options to choose from here.

- Maybe think about co-occuring conditions, because most of us have at least one. Some are very hard to distinguish from autism itself, like dyspraxia or ADHD, because they’re linked or similar to autistic traits. A lot of us are also disabled in some other way:  for example there’s a clear (though unexplained) link between autism and hyperflexibility, which can lead to joint pain, gut issues and chronic illnesses like EDS. Many of us have mental illnesses, growing up autistic in this world is honestly traumatizing and it’s hard to find autistics without some kind of C-PTSD or anxiety (on that subject, this post points out that the current diagnostic criteria can probably only diagnose traumatized autistic people anyway).

- A pretty good portrayal of an autistic girl (and to my knowledge the only one where the actor is also autistic) is Matilda in Everything’s Gonna be Okay. I didn’t actually watch until the end and I’ve been told the last episode isn’t great, but the start was pretty good. She’s a teenager, and at one point gets a girlfriend who is also autistic and has a service dog. In Elementary, while Sherlock is only autistic-coded, there is at one point (season 4 I believe) a recurring character named Fiona who I thought was a pretty good portrayal as well. She’s an adult, and she’s stereotypical in some ways but it’s better than most portrayals I’ve seen or read.

I would advise you to have a look through the blog @cripplecharacters. They answer asks about disabled characters, and I know they have answered a number of questions about autism and have at least one autistic mod. Their answers are usually very interesting!

[maryellencarter]

So: up until now, in ACNH, your island furniture shop would only sell one color of any particular piece of furniture. If you wanted something in pink but your shop sold it in orange, you had to try to trade with other players to get the colors you wanted. It was a pain in the ass and I had pretty much given up on getting the colors I wanted for a lot of things.

The new update has introduced the option to turn any piece of furniture you own into any of the colors it can come in, for a fee. So I have spent the last several days making a comprehensive list of all the shit I own in-game, all the shit I *want* in-game, and busily turning one into the other.

I've been thinking for a while now that what this game needed was more ways to spend Bells. This update delivers, with a vengeance, and I am chuffed as hell. :D I don't have to pester @camshaft22 to look for specific colors of furniture anymore!

...I'm also feeling more than a little overwhelmed, because I was figuring "okay I'll build out my island with this that and the other" and now I suddenly have access to literally thousands of new item looks. I don't know where I'm going to put everything. I don't want to go through all the hassle of creating secondary fake accounts on my Switch and building and expanding houses for them, just to have more rooms to decorate.

I did go ahead and buy the Happy Home Paradise paid DLC, which I am enjoying greatly because the game tells you you're decorating e.g. a bathroom and gives you a curated selection of items you can use, as well as 2-3 items you *must* use. So a lot of the decision-making and overwhelm is taken out of the equation, and the only initial choice I have to make is picking out the character I want to decorate for next, from a randomized selection of available characters that changes per day. Each character will have a specific theme they'll request when I choose them.

(I decided a while ago that I was going to aim to have an all-lesbian island. So far I'm eight and two, and once Static and Julian leave I plan to replace them with Poppy and Rhonda. I figure I may as well also recruit lesbians for the 48 vacation home slots in the DLC, because god knows there are enough pretty girls in ACNH to fill it up. So far I have a brown elephant named Eloise with a reading room, a white pig named Lucy with a doll collection, an aqua penguin named Sprinkle with an ice palace, and a purple horse named Cleo with a white marble bathroom.)

I have no idea what happens in the DLC once you fill your 48 slots. I know it's hypothetically possible to have villagers share the vacation homes you decorate, but I don't know if there's a maximum or if you can ever kick any out. So I'm not sure if I should invite my home island lesbians to also have vacation homes, or if I should try to have all different characters.

[mintchocolatemika]

What I use to learn Korean

Masterlist // Home // Ask

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Hello everyone! This is a master list of what I personally use and recommend for anyone wanting to learn Korean

Happy studying~

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Textbooks

Integrated Korean textbook

                      ↳ This textbook is actually more of a supplemental book meant for in class. Sometimes it's not very useful because of that reason. There are exercises that ask to do with a partner and such. As far as grammar though it's really useful.

Integrated Korean Workbook

                       ↳ This workbook isn't necessary for the textbook but it really helps. The supplemental exercises really help if you are struggling with something. (especially if you aren't using this in a class.)

Korean Verbs Guide

                        ↳ This book is honestly a lifesaver. Its a dictionary crossed with a textbook. It gives you the dictionary form of the verb and shows you all the possible conjugations for that particular verb.

Korean at a glance

                        ↳ Korean at a Glance is a travel/phrasebook. These phrasebooks are really useful not just for travelling, but also for learning basic sentences and phrases. pretty much everything in this book is useful for living in Korea and speaking Korean.

Korean Stories for Language Learners

                          ↳ This is super good for beginners. You start out with a few simple sentences and work our way up to stories that are a few pages long. The English translation is below/on the next page and they have a vocabulary list at the end of each story. At the end of each story, there is also comprehension questions and a writing activity you can do.

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Apps

(All links for ios)

Naver Dictionary

                       ↳ Ok, not much to say except its a dictionary.

Quizlet

                       ↳ I like quizlet bc it's easy to use and free unlike Anki *cough* *cough*. As far as I know, it’s not space repetition but it still works because you can add pictures and sounds to your cards. It’s also really cheap for a subscription which allows you to save sets to study offline, add pictures, scan documents, and some other things for only about 20USD a year. Click here to go to my quizlet.

Hi Native

                         ↳ This app is really cool. I like to compare it to Twitter. It's basically an app where you ask questions about language or a country and people who are native to that language and country respond to it. You can scroll through multiple different feeds of different countries and languages. You actually pick up quite a bit from this app.

Rakuten Viki

                         ↳ This app is just to watch dramas on tbh. I learned most of what I know in Korean through watching dramas so I utilise this app a lot. There is also a learning mode where English and Korean subtitles are displayed. You can also click on the subtitles and it will show you the translation of the word/ sentence.

Pimsleur

                         ↳ Pimsleur is a lifesaver. I am reading at a beginner intermediate level but I can only comprehend and speak like an absolute beginner. This app, while expensive, is good if you are having trouble with comprehension and speaking. The biggest downside to this app it that it comes with no transcribes and it is 15USD a month. 

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Websites

Talktomeinkorean.com

                         ↳  I mainly use this app for little tidbits of information. I believe they have their textbook lessons on their website as well but I personally don’t like their lessons. But they have lots of good videos and blog articles that you can watch and read.

Gobillykorean.com

                      ↳ His website and youtube channel has been my recent obsession. He makes the best explanation videos and best live lessons out 9of anyone I've  watched.

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Click here for a list of my supplies/ stationary.

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My methods for learning

Contextual learning

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

[unluckyxse7en-moving]

Can I ask a question? I have been wondering stuff about myself and in the panel where it says "before 'me' disappeared." it stuck out to me. I've never had a good grip on who I am and figured I had to build it. Idk hat that is. Nor do I expect you to answer that. My question is, could you explain it more?

Yes, absolutely, you’re totally welcome to ask! and idk how well I can explain it but I’ll do my best based on my current personal understanding and experience! obligatory disclaimer, many systems have unique experiences and it’s not always consistent or cut and dry from system to system, but if something about this does hit home I encourage you to look into researching it more as you feel comfortable! Also a heads up, I’m going to probably overexplain terms and concepts since I’m not sure what you do know, plus if someone else reading this isn’t familiar I figure that may help them too, so bear with me! ^^ (this got incredibly long and incredibly personal, I hope that’s ok! We’ve found hearing about personal experiences from others always helped give us a way to compare our experience better in ways that medical definitions don’t help with, so we got detailed in hopes it’ll be helpful to someone. heads up, there’s some references to feelings of unreality.)

Gonna try to put this under a cut since it got so long, let’s hope tumblr cooperates!

So admittedly, I was intrigued when you sent this line in, because while I’ve reread this comic a couple times before posting it, I didn’t remember writing a line exactly like that. As it turns out, the writing was meant to say “when ‘He’ disappeared” but it’s really oddly unclear whether it’s an H or an M at first glance compared to the rest of the script? If I’m honest I actually prefer your interpretation better, especially because the ambiguity lends more to the comic’s meaning in retrospect. I’m not gonna say something like ‘oh one of my alters must’ve done that on purpose’ because back then our handwriting was just an inconsistent mess in general and the most involvement we could probably credit to the alters was just one person tried to write that H in their handwriting when someone else was supposed to be writing it. But I thought that was an interesting case of serendipity so I couldn’t help pointing it out lmao 

 That said, I think your reading actually makes just as much sense in the context of the comic, and is a phenomenon I think I can readily explain that I have had a little experience with. Currently, my system setup is a little bit like an archeological dig. The alters that have surfaced the most, who have been the ones in charge of actions/words/emotional responses/etc, aka ‘fronted’, are all the ones who have formed in more recent years. The ones from years past are further back, and harder to access because we’ve developed a protective setup where the newer alters act as barricades to keep the older ones from being more exposed to trauma, or anything else they can’t handle. At its core, that’s what the function of a system is - to develop other alters who can handle situations more vulnerable parts can’t - but not all systems are built with an onion-layer setup like mine either, so just keep that in mind.

That said, since I’m built with an onion-layer setup, that means most of my system experience is based upon those older alters being shielded and walled up. When you add enough layers, we can’t dig them out again and for us that’s where most of our ‘disappearance’ comes in that we know of.  There’s another phenomenon that could cause the ‘disappearance’ effect but we’ll touch on that in a moment. In our case, we just eventually feel so distanced from who “I” was supposed to be, whoever that is. Very few of the ones who have been out in recent months are from older times. We’ve had a small handful who are from our high school years (we’re 25 now), and maybe caught a glimpse of alters older than that once or twice. We very rarely remember much of the time from that far back, and what we do remember feels incredibly detached. Almost more like we saw it in a first person pov movie rather than actually been there. We’ve gone through name changes a couple times by now, and I highly suspect that those name changes are further reflective of our archeological layers and who we decided to try to model our collective behavior around, to try to seem like one whole person. 

“Erika” was a girl who behaved one way. “Erin” was someone who behaved another way. and “Cleo” has been our current blueprint for who we’re supposed to be on the outside when being incognito. And what’s interesting is that you mentioned feeling like you had to ‘build’ yourself, because while it’s not so precise or in our control, we’ve approached it much the same way. For each name change it was like different models. out with the old model and in with the new, now introducing Cleo v2.0, with these personality patches and old bugs fixed. Around the time we changed to Erin, we had firmly decided we wanted to put our ‘old self’ behind us and improve ourselves. We had come out of toxic experiences eyes open, and we were terrified of reflecting that internalized toxicity outward. So we took ourselves to the metaphorical workshop, and spent many many years scrutinizing who ‘Erika’ was under a microscope for our faults, our flaws, what made us work that way, so that we could iron out the kinks when introducing ‘Erin’. As we took ‘Erin’ for test runs in college, we would find different flaws and faults that needed fixing, so once we’d accumulated a comprehensive list of those we took Erin in for workshopping and shortly after we dropped out of college, out came Cleo. Our entire life experience from the outside has been a long-running fixer-upper project, and for a while we were proud of ourselves to see the long strides in improvements we’d made upon “myself”, for being so quick to see our flaws and find ways to manage them. 

But what was really happening under the hood was, we weren’t actually changing as an individual, cohesive person.  We were adapting and forming new alters, or at the very least reassigning them based on who handled what better - so if we had become sick of our short temper, we swapped that alter out so that what normally caused them to respond, would instead elicit someone less volatile and slower to anger. If one of us froze up at the sight of blood, they would be swapped out of the front for someone who had no problems with it. This is why we ended up onion-layering ultimately, to lower the risk of the other alters being in front at poorly timed moments.

So tl;dr for us, a lot of our ‘Disappearance’ of our selves was us trading them out or hiding them away, and most likely encouraging a state of alter dormancy - when alters become inactive for long periods of time. (for some of us we describe it like sleeping - I think it tires us out on a physical level if one alter is active too long, it probably works certain parts of the brain more depending on the alter, but that’s all speculation.)

Backtracking a little - there is another experience that would cause a more definite and permanent ‘Disappearance’ effect. We haven’t experienced it since coming out as a system to ourselves. But we’re pretty sure we experienced it once, or twice, way back when. It’s formally known as Fusion. Fusion is what happens when two or more alters end up “physically” (for lack of a better word) merging together. They cannot separate, and they become an entirely different alter. The new alter often has some elements of their components in terms of personality traits and memories, but also isn’t a complete merging of everything. Memories and emotional attachments can often get lost in the process. This is where the other Disappearance can occur.

We know it happened to us at least once. Somewhere around middle or high school, for no apparent reason, we had developed an acute awareness and fear of Amnesia, and the identity death that would inevitably come with it. We were always scared, what if we hit our head and lost our memory? What would we remember, if anything? Would we get it back? Media always dramatizes amnesia, where amnesiac characters have some twinge, some spark, where they get drawn to things super important to them from before the memory loss. Would that happen to us? What if it didn’t? What if we never remembered the things that mattered so dearly to us? Would we even be the same person anymore?

If you compare that to the concept of fusion, it’s almost uncomfortably spot on. But we had no idea about systems or fusion back then. Which can only mean we had experienced a fusion, and somehow that caused a disturbance in the system that led to that latent fear to hang over our heads, along with the constant feelings of unreality and dreaming that followed us all through high school.

But somewhere along the line, just as suddenly as that fear developed, it just. Dissipated. It’s still a terrifying concept for us. But we no longer obsess over it like we did back then. We also suspect that’s probably related to another fusion of sorts. We have no clue who they were, or who they are now though. 

So to tie it all back in, in the comic the ‘Me/He’ disappearing would be parallel to an alter going dormant, or possibly fusing. The characters the protagonist and Tormenter are built around were originally part of a storyline of two separate identities that ended up ‘fusing’ to form a different whole, and while I can’t say the comic is faithful to the scientific or actual experience in a system, since I didn’t know about it at the time, I’m pretty sure it was based on what I had picked up on in my subconscious, so that’s the implications there, inaccurate representation though they may be.  I have heard from a few sources that fusion is often the result of a necessary function, to help protect or help an alter that can no longer function or cope the way they have been by creating a new alter that can cope better, so with this understanding, and the direction of the comic, it makes a sort of sense. 

These are my thoughts in regards to your question about ‘disappearance’ in the context of the comic based on my personal experiences, I hope it helped! Feel free to ask more or send in followup questions or statements, hopefully now that I’ve given a lot of context I won’t be quite so long-winded haha

[sineala]

I want to read the Infinity Warps/Secret Warps stuff, but I don't even know where to begin... is there a comprehensive list somewhere? I've seen you do a few of those...

Okay, so. The idea is that this all started with last summer’s big crossover event, Infinity Wars (which had another event, Infinity Countdown, preceding it). As you can tell from the name, it involves the Infinity Gauntlet again. The Infinity Warps miniseries (note the p) happen directly after Infinity Wars #3 and the best I can offer in terms of reading order is my own Infinity Wars: A Guide for the Apathetic, which I wrote up covering everything up to Infinity Wars #3 so you don’t have to read any of that yourself. I don’t have a comprehensive list but that’s the best I can do. So what you might actually want to read is the Infinity Wars main series, and you can ignore the preceding series and most of the tie-ins (except the Warps, because that’s what you’re here for).

The short version is that Gamora shows up, kills Thanos, grabs the Stones (because most of them are Stones now, except Soul) and basically uses the power of Infinity to shove all the Avengers and everyone else who had been opposing her into Soul World, the world inside the Soul Gem, and furthermore into Warp World (within Soul World), a world she makes by pasting everyone together into pairs.

So this is where we get the Infinity Warps miniseries, and there are five of them: Soldier Supreme (Steve Rogers + Stephen Strange), Iron Hammer (Tony Stark + Thor), Weapon Hex (Laura Kinney + Wanda Maximoff), Ghost Panther (Ghost Rider + T’Challa), Arachknight (Peter Parker + Moon Knight). As far as I can remember, these are all standalone miniseries and can be read in pretty much any order you want, and mostly what they are doing is retelling the respective characters’ new smooshed origin stories. 

All of these Warped characters then continue appearing in the Infinity Wars main series in the fight against Gamora (this is why I said you might actually want to read Infinity Wars) -- and, crucially, when the conflict is over, they decide to stay in Warp World and form the Defenders together, which is what happens at the end of Infinity Wars. So they are now all superhero BFFs.

The Secret Warps annuals coming out now are basically direct sequels to... that. There are also five of them, they’re all written primarily by Al Ewing (but each one has a backup story about the specific character, by someone else), and they tell one continuous story so you have to read them all, and you have to read them in order. So far we’ve had Soldier Supreme, Weapon Hex, and Ghost Panther -- Arachknight is coming out tomorrow, and Iron Hammer is next week. It starts out with Steve and Tony getting in a fight, but that gets resolved pretty quickly and then the whole thing starts getting... really complicated. It’s a lot of fun , though.