#which do you think i should choose...

[kkulbeolyeonghwa]

January language log

AINU - I started my second notebook and am already approaching its middle point (???) I love the language. I have been considering going on exchange just to study it for a while but I have no time

KOREAN - impeachment & martial law vocabulary boosted 100%

JAPANESE - I have been putting off learning Japanese for a while now as it's not as important as the other languages but I have been learning more through Okinawan

OKINAWAN - Oh my god. I have been so busy! I have been hating all the sources available so I made my own textbooks (two of them), learning as I go. I shared them with my friend who is also interested in the language. I love the verb types after years of being so confused!

R**SIAN - For my degree. It's not mandatory but I want to learn the language to have access to the amazing selection of literature from my field!

MANDARIN - I have been wanting to learn Mandarin a bit more actively for linguistic purposes. My HSK level is somewhere between 2 and 3 I think

NORTH SÁMI - I have been taking a break for a few weeks after my first exam. Now I need to pick it up again to take the second course in autumn!

[robo-dino-puppy]

the idea of home

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.

[starflungwaddledee]

participated in a "species swap" challenge with starstruck a little while back where i took some prompts to see what she might look like as a few other familiar faces!

once again posting this one as @kirbyoctournament propaganda...! trying hard, it's the final push in the final round!! can she do it?? you can vote here to help! aaa!!

[tennessoui]

I love a bitchy and petty Obi-Wan, but what about a petty Padmé; (maybe is a bit OOC, but in fiction everything is possible).

On a universe where Anakin left her/divorced her to be with Obi-Wan and yeah she is sad bc she loved Anakin, but more than that she is angry bc Obi-Wan was the one who told her after Geonosis... "please leave Anakin alone so he can follow his path as a Jedi, he has a great future in the Order and a relationship with you is a distraction" (or something like that) but now he is ok with being the distraction, he is such a hipocrite.

honestly one of my favorite flavors of padme in obikin fics is when she’s angry that her husband is drifting away slash in love with someone else and she’s not willing to give him up without a fight - I don’t think that’s ooc at all. that’s pure vintage ‘ignore the red flags and the slaughtered tusken village cause of the love story’ padme and it’s ’you just betrayed the Jedi and killed them but instead of facing any sort of justice let’s just run away together so we can be in love with no consequences’ padme and I love her messy contrary self

like in my fic a more perfect union when she invites obi-wan over for The Dinner and immediately engages in verbal fight with him basically over who knows and loves Anakin more …. That’s my padme girl ❤️ and in the next chapter when she tells anakin to cut obi-wan out of his life and she gets upset and angry and makes him choose 🙏🥰 I don’t think that’s ooc, I think that’s a flavor of a woman in love who can’t give her husband up without fighting even when she knows it’s a lost cause

[voiceofthelionhearted]

while paranoid seems to be control from an anxiety perspective (panicking about all possible negative solutions to a situation, to the point of being paralyzed or lashing out), skeptic seems to be control from a logical perspective (asking questions but never getting any answers, and so chooses inaction as a way to control the situation)

[dykedvonte]

I think Curly being fired a long with the rest of the crew even with the recommendation still invokes he did not get what he wanted through that.

Curly was feeling unfulfilled at work and in his career, yes. He was considering quitting along with sticking it out cause it’s what he’s known and feel secure in, even if not satisfied. You think getting fired would be a great thing for him, that’s a part of Jimmy’s scathing thought process and twisting of the cock pit conversation. However, the most important aspect is that Curly got to make that final decision for himself.

Curly does not get to decide if he’s actually ready to take that step and branch out and it likely worsened whatever was spinning in his head into a spiral because now he has to think of what he’s gonna do. It can’t wait and I believe his misplaced idea of Curly in telling the crew was his way of not invoking the same feeling within them. For him to be able to sit on it for months while they couldn’t, it was not fair the same way it isn’t fair to assume he would wanted that as an excuse to leave piloting.

It’s good to note that no one really got to fully choose what they wanted to do. Just a whole lot of reactions…. And inactions.

[ganondoodle]

as much as i dont like to be a constant negative voice here but man, it really is apparent that i have never actually and fully hated a piece of media before in the way i hate totk

i know know i talked about it alot but it feels almost weird to really have such a visceral hatred for something like this (and hopefully proof that i am not a guy that just hates everything or something, i dont love many things either (as in really really interested, thinking about it, writing things or drawing, possibly hyperfixation way, i do like things but thats more neutrally? idk how my brain works) but towards the vast majority of media and games i just feel neutral or a personal dislike for that just means im not gonna engage with it and nothing more)

and im now saying this bc i didnt expect that id react this strongly to seeing those weird new ... notes? or text stuff from totk (and even botw???) since the switch 2 released- maybe its a bit bc i was kinda surprised by it but boi i do NOT want to read anything of it, even if it gave me more stuff to be annoying about, its like scrolling past extremely smelly dog poo to me- and what may be the strangest thing is that .. that also goes for botw (which i used to love so so deeply)

i guess i myself missjudged just how much totk has really soured everything zelda for me, even if those notes say 'interesting' things i just .. cant take it seriously anymore, they were glued on afterwards, maybe its gonna try and fill any of the massive, continent wide gaps between the two games to try and artificially connect them after the fact, perhaps just some guys trying to think of what a character could say about a place with no real meaning to it, i dont know and i dont want to ................. everything feels insincere now, corporate.

(it feels like zelda too is turning from my beloved hyperfixation into something i dont want to engage with ever again, like its happend before, with other media, and i hated it happend, and now its happening again, i would lie if i said this isnt very distressing to me bc it is, even if it may look stupid, im feeling the best and happiest when i have something to latch onto like this, with this passion and care to work with the media- but it happens by chance, i dont control it, and losing it is really reminding me i am in fact very depressed with nothing to distract me anymore now. ... plus, this zelda hyperfixation felt like the longest running, most passionate, i ever had.)

[vaguely-concerned]

'strong poison' is high up there in the wimsey book rankings so far. most crucially for me: so much love for bunter, so richly deserved (the scene where he and peter are tiptoeing around each other like 'so uh... are you breaking up with me to get married then?🥺'/'of course not, that's -- wait what are -- are you breaking up with me if I'm getting married?? 😟😢😭'/'of course not my lord don't be silly'/'then don't scare me like that bunter oh my god!!!!'). also more bunter as pseudo-mother (/wife and very overtly so lmao the duchess directly comparing him to helen as gerald's wife... immensely favourably so.) figure, yes-tumblr-user-vaguely-concerned-you-are-so-valid textual underlining. peter literally wanting to smash his own reflection in a wild and unguarded moment. not doing it, because it would change nothing and bunter would just have to deal with a lot of broken shards before a new one got ordered. him recounting going to his mother in a State because uh-oh he's gone and love-at-first-sighted himself and if he can get her off death row and also maybe introduce himself to her the wedding is back on!! parker being a useless lesbian except he's a very well brought up boy with victorian values. mary noticing that peter's feeling low because he's class clowning it up at christmas and giving him a hugggg 🥹. harriet with the 'life is already so fucking weird. this might as well happen' vibe throughout quietly editing a novel from prison in the background because what else is there to do. ms. climpson who could set the murderous machiavel to school if she wanted to actually richard iii go home. in another world she's the moriarity of the wimsey 'verse. an honest soul with a fine criminal mind indeed. the hilarity of looking back through the ages and seeing with all the tiredness of living in the age that before there were astrology girlies there were ectoplasm girlies. peter having a pet safe cracker on speed dial who's seen the light ('allelujah) but y'know a man still has the pride of his craft. impey biggs is there. delicious. characterful. brimming with flavour and also arsenic of course

[akkivee]

i occasionally say that bat’s colours are an off shade from other characters’ colours and this is what i mean by that lol

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

this is what I've learned about the practice of politics over the past 8 years:

the time for talking about abstract political ideals is during the primary.

after the primary, the die has been cast, and your two choices are there whether you like them or not. your practical political responsibility still exists. any choice that seems to lie outside the two candidates is an illusion. to cast a vote for a third party or to not vote at all is still, practically speaking, a choice for one of the two main candidates.

furthermore, you are not voting for the candidates as people, you are voting for them as policy. voting for a person is a luxury most countries don't have anymore. you think Canadian Christian voters ever get a truly Christian ticket on either side? Norwegian Christians? Japanese Christians? America might still be able to vote for people in the primaries, but we don't have that luxury in the general election. the general election is about policy, and the candidates are only pieces in a larger game of chess.

the only thing that would persuade me NOT to vote for Trump this time around is if he had the exact same policy platform as Kamala Harris. if Trump ran on all of Harris' policies except for immigration, I would still vote for Trump, because it's materially worse for my family, friends, and neighbors to allow illegal immigration than to stop it. and as a voter, I have the power to stop it.

[gingermintpepper]

I have finished the book. It was not a very good book at all. My preliminary thoughts are as follows:

Prose is the best part about it but also one of the worst. Evocative and lovely language was used for what I can only describe as manipulating the reader. In a different book by a different writer, perhaps that would be the mark of a good unreliable narrator but this is not that kind of book and the writer, I fear, is not clever enough for that kind of narrative.

The characters - I do not think of them. Trapped as we are in Alcestis' head, she is a passive, dull thing who I do not know any better at the end of the book than I did at the start. I couldn't distinguish where her voice ended and where the author's began and it is through that haziness that all other characters are observed. Admetus is an objectively phenomenal husband but his kindness and regard is made bitter because he loves Apollo not her. Apollo is no more than a ghost haunting them both. Hippothoe and Phylomache exist as images of what Alcestis could be - a woman who dies of illness or children - and Heracles is awkward and small, quiet and passive in the way everything is in this book. Persephone and Hades are perhaps the only characters of some interest in here, but Persephone is a volatile mess of power masquerading as empowerment while Hades, like all the men in this book really, is small and passive and really only becomes worth something when out of Persephone's massive shadow.

The romance - What romance? There is no romance in this book. Alcestis imagines that what occurs between Admetus and Apollo is a romance but we do not get to see that story. The obvious regard and kindness Admetus holds for Alcestis would be romance in any other book - but in this it is described with so much apathy and loathing so as to make Admetus' actions seem unremarkable and lacking. As for Persephone and Alcestis; Alcestis wants nothing to do with her until Persephone forces her. She assaults her, like Hades assaulted her, while speaking the words of that tale into Alcestis' flesh while Alcestis rejects her and somehow this becomes the catalyst of their 'love'. There is no romance in this book.

The queer themes - I am not sure how one makes a story so easily given to a queer imagining biphobic, lesbophobic and not poly but it sure did that. Alcestis' ideas about love and sexuality and how it might possibly have different forms and fashions is unchanged from start to finish and homosexuality, for all that it is what she blames her ruined marriage on, is never explored past a few fleeting, derogatory descriptions and quickly brushed over allusions.

The Apollo Thing - Listen to me so carefully. Apollo is only in a single scene of this book. One single scene and it is the wedding scene where Admetus calls upon him to save them from the poisonouse snakes. Every other mention of him in this book is in passing, an offhanded mention of a person praying to a god, or with the underlying scorn and anger of a wife thinking of her husband's mistress. Apollo is not even there when Alcestis dies. He wasn't even responsible for Heracles eventually going down to the Underworld to retrieve her. If the author could've erased him from the wedding scene too, I'm sure she would've invented a way to do it. Apollo has no relationship with Alcestis, we do not get to see the nature of his relationship with Admetus and every other opportunity which existed to show him on their side was neatly and entirely erased. Thanatos, naturally, is completely absent from this novel.

In short, this was entirely unpleasant from essentially start to finish. I was very excited when I started this book and saw the quality of the prose and also the ambivalent character sketched of its gods but things went so rapidly and extremely downhill that I am left wondering how it was possibly flubbed that badly.

Regarding this book's feminism, I will dedicate a separate post to that entirely. To this book's credit, it did not have the superficial girlboss feminism that many of its contemporaries tend to champion but to its complete and utter detriment, the feminism it champions is perhaps the most insidious kind. The sort that excludes the disenfranchised, the impoverished and the normal woman. This book's feminism is for the privileged and the powerful and it is a deeply upsetting thing.

Lastly, I would like to thank @superkooku , @konu-d and @waterlinkedgirl for cheering me on through this absolute torment. I would not have finished this without them. Take that as you will.

If you are interested in the tale of Admetus and Alcestis or just want to read a retelling, I urge you to just read @reawakened-revenant (CiCiRose on ao3)'s God of the Golden Bow series. It is captivating, enthralling, impeccably researched and so utterly submersed in passion, love and care that it is breathtaking to read. It is a personal favourite of mine and the standard to which I hold all other Admetus and Alcestis retellings.

With all that done, I am going to stare at a wall and contemplate the horrors now. ✌🏾

[fireheartwraith]

I don't get the obsession with defining "oh i'm a dkbk" "i'm a bkdk". Guys. They're the same characters

[quatregats]

I've been thinking about how to push Hornblower to his breaking point recently and I think the best way to do it would be to put his compassion and his duty in conflict in a way where he could either be a good person and put his naval career in jeopardy, or be a tyrant but maintain his position. I think that these often come into conflict in the narrative, but he always finds some sort of loophole and manages to worm through without having to sacrifice either ideal. I think that it would be really fun to push him into a corner and make him choose, though. I can see both scenarios leading to interesting results.

[isogenderskitty]

rest in peace to barley tc macavity fluff akehurst cornstar, my good boy. the best boy i could’ve asked for.

07/08/2006 - 06/03/2025. aged 18 years, 6 months, and 27 days. he was there for me from when i was 10 years old, all the way to now, a week after my 29th birthday.

he was peacefully put to sleep at the vets after a recent decline in health. he’s been uncomfortable and stressed and probably pained for a while now, but when the time came i definitely heard one last purr. i like to think it was a “thank you”.

thank you, barley mow, mogface, beast, bubby, sweet boy, pest, barls, for everything.

[muninnhuginn]

Thinking about "your weakness is how you always want to be the hero" and how the series returns to this at the end

Li Lianhua hated how he acted as Li Xiangyi and spent years trying to distance himself from it, but ultimately he still fell back into the similar patterns, for all his added experience

His main priority was always to "do the right thing" regardless of how that would impact on those around him. And it *did* impact those around him. From Qiao Wanmian and Shan Gudao as Li Xiangyi to Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng as Li Lianhua

Giving the Styx flower to the emperor so he could use it as leverage to guarantee Fang Duobing and his family's safety. Using the last of his power to save Yun Biqiu. Constantly putting others above himself whilst actively refusing to recognise that his self-sacrificial nature would hurt those he cared about most

And sure, he thinks he's going to die anyway. They're going to be hurt regardless and he can't do anything about that. His odds are low of the Styx flower even working. But ultimately, he refuses to even consider trying. Li Xiangyi has been dead a long time and Li Lianhua is just there to tide things over. What value is the life of a ghost

To the end, he lives and dies a hero. To the end, he refuses to live for himself.