#a lot gets lots with the translation the website creates‚ I'm afraid

[true-blue-sonic]

In the Elise ice skating story Silver goes from a skater to a coach because he's afraid of his powers coming out during contests. So Silver still doesn't have complete control of his powers and worries about them activating when he doesn't want them to.

Also in that story he pulls a Katara and COMPLETELY STOPS THE RAIN.

That suits Silver, I feel; he is quite concerned with justice and honesty, and having his powers come out during a match would definitely give him an unfair advantage compared to the normal participants. That, or he gets disqualified immediately. Both of them would be quite bad for him! Since the translation of the story seems to focus a lot on the emotions felt by Elise (how she associates the song with her parents to the point she cannot perform to it, her doubts while practicing, the courage Silver gives her etc.), maybe they wanted to use that sentence to describe something similar to Silver and his own emotions that his powers are linked to? Otherwise, I can't really think of a reason why Silver's powers would suddenly activate during a competition.

And I believe he stopped the rain through forming a dome around the skating rink with said powers, which is quite impressive! Mundane utilities are one of the more fun things powers like Silver's can be applied to, in my opinion. Sure, Silver can stop Elise from landing wrong in her triple axel, but he can also make sure the skating rink stays dry. Best of both worlds!

[sisterssafespace]

Assalamu alaykum🤍

Im the 🤍 anon :)

I just wanted to get something off my chest: my mother is muslim like me and dresses modestly but when i want to got to school wearing, long, modest clothes she forces me to wear jeans and a shirt or something like that.

She lets me wear the headscarf tho and approves of it, so I do not see why she behaves like that - or rather, I see why, but I don't understand it: she thinks I look ridiculous and out of place with long gowns and such things, and that "every place has its own dresscode" (though there is no ruling that prohibits long gowns at school) and she cares about what will people say. Also she seems to think that just because I am skinny and with no curves I don't have to dress modestly - my sister, who is far more curvy, gets the opposite treatment: what looks halal on me looks haram on her, and my mom always tells her that she dresses shamelessly and that she should put on larger, longer clothes.

I don't understand that and it makes me so ashamed that I've not been able to win this argument and that day after day I go to school in skinny jeans, astaghfirullah.

And I am just 15 (in a few months I'll be 16) so I have no credit card and no money to buy my own wardrobe, I really don't know what to do.

For now I am wearing the headscarf and see what she does, I don't know what she'll do when/if I tell her that I feel like becoming a munaqqabah, that it is the scholarly opinion that is more believable to me (for this at least I'm grateful for COVID-19, i can just put mask and headscarf and feel like I have a half-niqab).

Wa alaykum assalamu wa rahmatu Allahi wa barakatuhu dear 🤍🤍

I hope you are doing well and that you are staying strong and patient steadily walking your way on Allah's path 🤍🌼

So when I first read your ask, this came to my mind:

لا طاعة لمخلوق في معصية الخالق

‘There is no obedience to any created being if that means disobedience to the Creator.’ - The Messenger of Allaah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Saheeh al-Jaami’ #7520

And on my way to Google the English translation for it, I found this detailed fatwah on this website, I attached the link so hopefully you get to check it and ponder upon it. I have a question tho, is your father or older brother or grandfather maybe present in the picture? If yes, what does he/ do they think? Do they support you or your mother's perspective? Because you can get the support of someone who hopefully can talk to her and convince her to change her position towards your issue.

And I know you said you just wanted to get this off of your chest, but I have a few ideas that I hope you can try, and hopefully in shaa Allah they'll work out for you:

1) Make duāa for her! You have already said that she approves of you wearing the headscarf, and that's great, so the next step is that she accepts the more modest style of clothing, and for that make duāa that Allah swt soften her heart towards the idea.

2) Some things can't be accomplished at once, some changes need to happen gradually. How about you switch to long skirts first, when you go to school, but keep the shirts? Maybe she can accept that? And then you start wearing longer shirts? How about your sister's clothes? Because you mentioned that you can't afford to buy your own clothes, how about you borrow your sister's larger longer items and make a nice outfit that can at the same time be accepted by your mother's standards and be comfortable for you. Some girls wear very baggy shirts with jeans. I say that you can be patient with your mother and take her slowly through the transition so that when it finally happens it won't come as a shock? But tbh as a Muslim girl who gave up jeans not so long ago and who has been facing resistance from her "quite religious" family, I feel you sis and I know how hard it must be for you. And I am so sorry, being forced to wear jeans and whatnot must be making you feel uncomfortable, sübhanallah, but at the same time, honey, you are only 15, legally you are still a child, and technically, you are still under your parents' custody.. it is a tough situation, and Allahuma barik you sound very mature for your age, and it is very clear the level of faith and love for Allah swt and for His beautiful religion in your heart, Allahuma barik laki 🤍🤍

However, I could tell you to pull something radical, like tear all your jeans or burn them or sth, but I am afraid that won't end well and it will only upset your mother more and lead to more complicated problems and conflicts. So, that's a no, I definitely do not recommend it .. 😅

3) my third and last idea would be to actually try and win her over? Try to get closer to her? I think some mothers (please read: most of them) they just want to seem and feel in control of something. Like, she just wants to feel powerful? Like she has some sort of control? So she is controlling the weaker members of the family that are you and your sister (it's a hypothesis not a fact, Allahu aālam). So how about, you make her your friend, you show her outfits that are both modest and cute, there is a lot of content online, modest websites (especially Turkish products) that are at the same time cute, fashionable, and modest in a very pleasing way. I also follow an modest Instagrammer who lives in Scandinavia and who wears long sleeved dressed from European brands like Zara or H&M (which could be ankle length or a bit above) but wears a long black skirt under them so that she is all covered up. It is a very creative hack. So my point is, maybe show her that modest dressing can still be cute and age-appropriate, show her outfits, designs, dresses, ask for her opinion like " oh what do you think of this dress...? Or what about this long skirt with this long shirt, I think they would look cute on me, what do you think? .. " Oh but you know your mother best so you know she needs to be very chill, in a good mood, when you want to bring up something like that 😅

Allahu al'mustaān habibty, Allah swt has given you a very challenging task at such a young age, which only reflects that He swt loves you just as much and considers you to be capable of taking this challenge, Alhamdulillah! 🤍🤍

I will be looking forward to an update, a positive one in shaa Allah! Don't forget to make duāa that Allah swt change and soften her heart!

May Allah swt fill your beautiful heart with patience and persistence, to keep steadfast on his path, ameen 🤍🤍

Stay safe my dear.

Fi Aman Allah.

- A. Z. 🍃

[liu-anhuaming]

Do you have any tips for studying a large amount in a short period of time? Because I have been learning chinese for 2 1/2 years, but i really haven't gotten far and this August 29 (50 days!!) I'm leaving for a 10 month exchange to ZhengZhou!

i’m gonna start out by saying there’s really no fun way to cram a bunch of knowledge into your brain in a short amount of time (i know this really well bc i was a shit student in high school and i still a shit student now, even though i have improved slightly)

but here are my suggestions:

make some kind of schedule. if you do this you don’t need to have a super regimented study plan but just have an idea of what you need to study and make a basic timeline. you leave in 50 days, so that’s about 7 weeks. while you don’t necessarily need to know what you’re going to study every single day, maybe have a general idea about what you want to cover each week so that you can have a general idea of what your goal is

if scheduling isn’t your thing (cuz it sure as hell isn’t mine), form a list of what you want to accomplish in these 50 days. gather up the resources you’re gonna use (i’ll put some suggestions for that below) and figure out what you want to accomplish with them. this list can be as general or specific as you think it needs to be.

whether you make a schedule or a list is really up to you and how you prefer to study and stay motivated, but it’s important to remember to take a few days off (at least once a week). 50 days of straight studying is not an easy thing and if you don’t rest in between you’ll eventually burn out. so yeah, take some days off. but if you still want to get some mandarin practice in, listen to music in the background. here’s some links to music master posts, as well as my mandarin music tag (my personal suggestions for music are, naturally, 苏运莹， 张震岳 （AKA A－Yue，Waa Wei, Hello Nico, Haya 乐团, Frandé/法蘭黛, and 宇宙人). also take a look at the blogs @chinese-lyrics and @fyeahcindie. they have a bunch of great music that you can look through 

so now that you know what you’re gonna be doing, here are some suggestions for how to drill vocab and grammar:

the first is memrise. there are a bunch of memrise courses for mandarin that cover useful vocab from every level of the HSK among other things. since it uses spaced repetition it’s a great resource to help beat vocab into your brain. it is, however, not the best for grammar (imo)

if you need to, take sticky notes and label everything in your house. and make it really visible. when i did this, i didn’t write the pinyin on the sticky notes, just the tone marks but if you feel that you need to write the pinyin, then go ahead and do it. when you do this, you are forced to see the vocab every day and will learn it after having seen it so many times

it is my opinion that the best way to learn vocab (and their corresponding characters) is to write. when i study mandarin i always try to write out my vocab lists and then use this method to practice the characters. depending on how long your vocab list is, this can be an incredibly time consuming method (i’ve had lists that have taken me an hour and a half to finish drilling using this method) but it really pays off

for grammar i’d use websites like this one or this one bc they give examples of the grammar in use. also, the first one (allset learning) has their grammar organized up to B2 (HSK 4) so it’s easy to find grammar by HSK levels. the second one is also organized by level, but they don’t have as many articles yet. if you want to practice by making your own sentences but are afraid of messing up, just hop on over to HiNative. you can ask native speakers of mandarin if something you wrote in mandarin sounds natural or correct, as well as ask for help with translating difficult words or sentences and more.

more than anything, i recommend you find some resources created by native speakers to help you learn

slow chinese 慢速中文 is a podcast series written by native speakers for people learning mandarin. they are a few minutes long each and are spoken at a slightly slower speed than normal, and they cover a variety of topics including chinese culture and food. you can download the podcasts on iTunes, but you can also find them online along with the transcripts. it’s an amazing resource

快乐汉语 (this playlist only goes to episode 75): this is a video series created by CCTV for mandarin learners. it’s basically about an american girl who runs away from home to stay with her family friends in beijing. the acting is super cheesy and the plots are downright weird at times, but it’s an excellent resource because the videos are subbed in both mandarin and english. since susan (the main character) is american, there are a bunch of episodes where the family explains chinese culture to her so it’s pretty cool. warning: a lot of the characters have thick beijing accents, so just watch out for that. they also have a couple of short breaks in each episode to explain certain grammar or vocab that was used in the episode

what i’d do with these and any other native resources you find (song lyrics, blog posts, books, etc.) is break them down sentence by sentence and study the vocab and grammar. once you get that vocab, drill it like you do with all of the other vocab. what my teacher would have us do with 快乐汉语 was listen once nonstop, then go scene by scene and write down what the characters were saying using what we could hear and the chinese subtitles. we’d then go over the scene and find any vocab and grammar patterns that were new to us and make notes on them. once we’d finish with that, we’d listen to the scene once more.

after we’d done that for every scene, we’d watch the whole video again and again to get the hang not only of the new vocab but also of the way the characters said each sentence. when learning a new language, a lot of what makes someone sound unnatural is not only accent, but also rhythm. so my teacher would have us listen to the video over and over and then make us perform certain scenes. she did this so we could practice listening not only for pronunciation but also for the rhythm of each sentence. so i highly recommend you try this (sans the performing). you can just pick a scene or two and listen a bunch and eventually try to repeat after each character until you feel you’ve got the rhythm down.

so that’s really all i can say for now. cramming requires a lot of work so what you’ve got to do is find a way to apply the methods that work best for you and keep plugging away at them until the very end. i hope this helps you in some way, and i hope you enjoy your time in china! 加油!!!

[probablyintraffic]

Hey, so question! Read your "Fandom is not radical" post and am kinda waffling between agreeing on most of it while I'm also not sure if the premise is always applicable? Anyway, actual question: How would you fit "the personal is political" into "Fandom is not radical"? (Maybe you will just shrug and say you don't think the personal is political but...) Or do you hold that the personal fandom politics are in general not radical? I'm very interested in hearing you respond.

I actually borrowed the title of that post from Yamin Nair’s essay, Your Sex Is Not Radical, in which she argues that what people do in their bedroom has nothing to do with their politics. You can be a conservative and be trans–I mean, that’s Caitlyn Jenner. Nair writes (emphasis mine):

In many ways, when it comes to sex and sexuality, the Left makes the same mistake over and over again: it imagines that simply having violated the rules of the Conservative Right means that it is now setting about creating a new world order.  This has led to the Left’s greatest blind spot in social issues, Gay Marriage, which it fervently supports because it believes, in the most wrong-headed fashion, that the very fact of gays marrying each other is somehow disruptive to, well, something: Capitalism, perhaps, The World Order, the Christian Right.  Something.

And: 

Should we think about sex at all? Yes, absolutely.  Let’s all think and agitate collectively around how sex is deployed against the most vulnerable bodies, like people in prison.  Let’s all think long and hard about whether we really want to keep reifying the idea that sex offenders deserve to be raped in prison (and about the oppressive framework of the category of “sex offender” itself).  Let’s consider how to create a world where sex work and sex trade can flourish without coercion and demeaning people.  By all means, please, let’s not stop having sex, which can be riotous fun, and let’s not stop thinking about sex in all its multiple forms. But stop pretending that sex is anything more than sex.

Your sex is not radical. Your politics can and should be.  Consider the difference, and act upon it.

I’m quoting her in such length because she’s both such a gifted writer and says such insightful things. I would encourage folks in fandom to read that essay and read her (and other leftists’ writings) a lot more than we do now.

To your larger point: I think that in theory, yes, the personal can be political, but in practice, that theory has really devastated the left. In the kind of politics that’s practiced in the real world, we have to question what’s effective organizing and what’s just your personal life.

It’s such a conflicting issue for me too. On the one hand, I agree that the personal and the public spheres should not be separated. On the other hand, we politicize so much of our daily interactions (both online and offline) now, that the word politics may well have become meaningless. The distinction now, I think, is with “doing” politics. What does it mean to do politics, as opposed to just calling someone out? Doing politics requires organizing people to work toward a definable goal, a la Fight for 15; calling somebody out is, you know, calling them out.

Doing fandom is not doing politics until it involves organizing. I am skeptical of fandom’s real capacity for that, though, even with what the Harry Potter Alliance does, which is not that much. (I am more sympathetic toward it than many leftists would be, because this can be some young fan’s gateway into politics.) But organizing around a specific fandom is not a good idea, especially since Harry Potter has very questionable politics, as any single media thing would, and because, basically, that is just not how politics work. You only need to look at any successful movements/revolutions in history.

The difference between “fandom is not radical” and “the personal is political” is that fandom is mostly entirely online, where the personal needs not be. Online organizing is another topic I tried to touch on with that original post, in that I am not convinced of its effectiveness either. On The South Lawn, “Frank Little,” a “union organizer in the Midwest,” writes (emphasis mine):

If [online organizers] want to Instagram their lunch (which is likely volunteer pizza or stale donuts) –that’s fine — but they should not be organizing around hashtags, online petitions, or Twitter storms because even successful social media organizing can give organizers a false sense of winning. 

In the formative years of organizing, understanding a win is crucial.

I’m an online organizer and one of the first things I tell people is that my work can only bolster the work on the ground. If I make a huge mistake, it could tank it. However, I am not winning campaigns behind a screen. I have made hashtags trend. I’ve made Thunderclaps explode. I have gotten important information on the news by organizing activists to tweet about it. But even some of my most “successful” campaigns have been parts of campaigns the organizations ultimately lost.

We seldom talk about this in the post-mortem. When we lose, field organizers self-flagellate while the digital organizers continue to pat themselves on their backs.

I go to a lot of digital conferences where we talk a lot about “building community.”

“Well, we lost the campaign, but we built a great community.”

Again, I’m quoting so excessively because what they said is so good.

But back to your point. The original promise of “the personal is political”–now a dogma–was to invite people to look into their own lives and their own relationships to find reflections of various oppression. That’s great, but I am more concerned about what this means in practice. How does that translate to action and to real political gain? Currently it translates to calling out microaggressions. 

Like Frank Little said, I’m afraid that many Tumblr teens may not know what winning a political battle means, what taking political power means, and may believe whatever they’re doing on this website is already politics. 

There is a greater concern too, that we have placed too big an emphasis on culture as a political space (I have an essay in the works about this actually). Is it a political win to have a person of color star in a Hollywood blockbusters? Yes, but not nearly, nearly as meaningful a win as say, if we ever get around to make healthcare universal. More in that post, but this combined with “the personal is political” means that personal consumption choices, what you watch on Netflix, what movie merchandise you purchase, have now become political too. Remember when Buzzfeed told us to buy Ghostbuster merch to be feminist or something? I do. That’s that theory, in practice.

Hope that terrible rambling answers your question lol!