#dashreplies

[etirabys]

Apologies if this is personal and you don't want to answer (or you don't want to answer for any other reason!); if that is the case no worries. But anyway by virtue of the fact that I am (sort of) a linguist I often get curious about people's language situation. You speak English obviously but spent your childhood in Korea, and often went to the English language book store while there? What is like, your personal linguistic history? Like, what language(s) did you grow up speaking, which ones did you learn later and when, etc? How fluent do you consider yourself in both English and Korean? If you don't mind my asking.

Haha, this is a dream scenario for me (someone asking about a situation I find fascinating about myself because I've never met anyone else with that background, but is probably boring to most people). Here's a longer story than you probably want:

My parents emigrated to the US before I was born, stayed for a decade, and moved back to Korea right after I was born. They're conversational in English, and my sister (12 years my elder) is fluent. Speaking English is valuable in Korea, so they raised me to be bilingual. They taught me the alphabet, bought me English language children's books, and sent me to an English language school run by Christian missionaries for preschool, kindergarten, and part of first grade.

My sister left the country when I was three to go to a boarding school in the US, but she came back every year for holidays, spoke exclusively in English to me, and refused to let the conversation move on if I mispronounced a word.

When I was six, my parents moved further away from the missionaries' school and switched me to a neighborhood public elementary school. At this point I was mildly more fluent in English than in Korean. Reading (English books) was a self-sustaining reaction I spent every free hour on. There were fewer interesting Korean books for children. Korea had industrialized ~30 years prior, and the hangeul writing system had only been in full use ~50 years at that point. As far as I knew, there was no CS Lewis of Korea, no Tolkien, no Diana Wynne Jones. In Korean bookstores, many of the prominent books on display were translated – The Little Prince was popular for children, and there was a children's fiction fad around another French author (who afaik never made a splash in the States) whose name I forget.

So I'm reading like 10 hours a day, at the dinner table, on the escalator when my mom takes me while she's shopping, sometimes under the desk at school flipping the pages with my toes, because the teachers don't care. (This is a huge W as far as I'm concerned for Korea – public school teaching is a somewhat competitive and standardized government job, it attracts people who lack great passion for either teaching or controlling children.) Meanwhile my peers don't like me much because my vibes are rancid: I have a compulsive laugh tic I haven't gotten under control, and I don't seem to understand their preferences very well or actively seek to understand them. Fair enough. I have one friend at any given time and she's usually on the fence about me.

When I'm old enough to take the train on my own, some weekends my mom gives me 5000 won for the train ticket + lunch, and I go into Seoul to visit one bookstore that has a 10-shelf English section. I pick a book, spend the day finishing it, and go home. Instead of my English language skills lapsing and being overtaken by the language I'm immersed in, I'm going deeper into English. Which increased the disconnect between me and my peers. I remember overhearing a conversation about an anime (The Black Cat) and eagerly asking if they'd also read the Edgar Allen Poe short story. I wanted to much to talk about shared interests, but it didn't occur to me to "invite myself into their interests" by picking up the manga they talked about.

...this all made my childhood weird in ways that have shaped me hugely but are difficult to describe. I was isolated and not, happy and not, stimulated and not, developing unevenly...

At eleven I discover fanfiction.net, probably one of the most impactful events of my life. I'm running out of physical books, I've read everything five or ten times, but then the computer! has made a deal with me! It contains INFINITE LITERATURE, although sometimes people seemed to misspell things on purpose and I didn't know why. (I had, approximately, never encountered misspellings in written material before.) In return the internet would take MY SOUL FOREVER although I didn't realize this at the time. I post a 100K Harry Potter epic over the next year where Harry is trained by a special assassin cult that lives under a mountain.

My parents have no idea what is on the internet. They're on a new temporal continent with no clue there's a parasite that can turn your daughter into a fujoshi. They do know that they have a worrying child. But! Her grades are really good, especially when she's testing in English. Good enough that although they originally intended not to send me to the US (my sister got depressed and burned out, and they attributed it to sending her to a different country for school), it made much more sense for me to go. I was on track to get a full ride at an Ivy, a carrot they were Not Immune to, and I obviously despised Korea and wanted to leave.

When I arrived in the States, I was terrified of speaking English to real native speakers. My language experience was "reading/writing: 95% English, speaking/listening: 90% Korean". I could perfectly pronounce any English sentence when I tried, but I'd occasionally and bizarrely mix up R and L, or the vowel sounds "ih" and "eeh" if I weren't paying attention. This went away after a year but I felt extra shy and didn't talk much. I'd guess 80% of my social cachet in freshman year came from writing funny Facebook posts.

I remember my time in Korea without feeling bothered by any single aspect, but overall I still have a big sense of "wow I didn't like that", have avoided non-Americanized Korean people since getting here (ten years ago), and now speak Korean haltingly. I'll try to teach it to my children so that they have the option of that cultural connection, but I don't think I can do a good job. It's feels 90% true thinking/speaking Korean is just a normal skill, a thing I do sometimes on the phone – and 10% true that the happier and more whole I become in the US, the more unsettling it feels to speak Korean at all.

[mischiefxmuses]

Closed starter for - Ben X Dash @thetorturedmusesdept

Ben was training, now remembering he was keeping his strength up. Force training was one thing but he needed to be physically fit. He heard keys and the door open. "Hey, man. Didn't expect you home." He took his headphones off and focused his attention on his roommate.

[mischiefxmuses]

"Called it." Ben chuckled and took a drink from the beer that was handed to him. "You know how I kept saying you clearly are more interested in Zola. I am rarely wrong." He was teasing his friend and roommate while being glad that the other was happy. "It will suck for Sidney probably. Never been in a proper relationship myself or with anyone so I cannot say for sure. However, like you said it was better that you ended things with Sidney if your heart wasn't in it. She deserves to be with someone who is completely in love and devoted to her. If you couldn't be that for her, then yes it was the right decision. As painful as it might have been."

@mischiefxmuses Dash & Ben

"So it turns out, this whole time, Zola had feelings for me! That's why she'd been acting so weird!" Dash yapped away at his roommate while getting them each a beer. Popping off the tops, he walked over and held out one for Ben. "Anyways, that's why I broke up with Sidney. But I feel like shit about it, you know? I liked Sidney, she was really awesome and everything... She just wasn't Zola. It wouldn't have been fair to her to continue on, and it wouldn't have been fair to me or Zola either to hide our true feelings forever. So it sucks, but it's good at the same time? I don't know man, I'm having a hard time with how to feel most of the time. I'm so excited that I can be with Zola now, but I feel bad for hurting Sidney in the process."

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Please design me a pride flag for transvampires

[image description: transvampire pride flag]

[joannalannister]

@cosmonauthill replied to your post:

If anything, Joanna’s approval could have read as a mark in her favour - a sign that he chose well when he selected his wife

Yeah, Joanna’s approval is not something driving Tywin’s horrible actions so much, but Tywin Approves(TM) of Joanna’s Approval 😂

[etiragram]

blindalchemistblog replied to your post “tough decisions to make while writing down rubik’s cube magic moves:...”

https://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/3x3x3_notation

hhrrrrmmm

I hated this at first but actually, sure, it works.

[lesbianincelsnape]

what are good harry potter as voldemorts apprentice fics

As far as I know, there are none

I like the trope but have never found an instantiation good enough to bookmark, reread, or recommend. Have a dim memory of one that was decent, but I can’t find it again.

[asoiafedit]

@mallosoar reblogged your post and added:

I’m sorry. Rereading this it came out a lot stronger than I had intended. I didn’t mean to make it sound so attack-y.

What I meant was that a lot of the show gifs that are included in gifsets have included more things that have not happened/probably will not happen in the books (as far as we know, obviously nothing is certain). I think it’s just that a lot of the new season stuff is a little jarring to see in book edits.

But yeah, I can see how this just gets harder and harder as the show continues. I definitely understand that most of the fanart will have at least some show influence. Sorry again if this sounds like I’m attacking… I think I’ve just gotten more nitpicky over time.

Hi, it’s ok, I knew you weren’t trying to sound hostile. 

I (@joannalannister) am mostly the person who is reblogging things here rn, so maybe it would help if I explain my reasoning behind the things that I reblog? 

Like, with everything that I reblog here, I’m trying to ask myself things like, ��Does this fit with the spirit of the books?” or “Does this post show one of the themes of the books?” or “Or is this further illustrating something from the books?” or “Does this show something that I strongly believe will happen in the books?”

For example, this gifset uses footage from the new season (and older seasons) to illustrate the quoted caption. Personally I don’t think that Arya is going to murder any Freys in future books, certainly not like that, but I did think that the gifset was great at depicting her revenge fantasy in that moment in the books, like, what was Arya imagining when she told herself in the books, “One day I’ll know, and then I’ll kill them all.” In that moment, she was thinking of her lost family and imagining Freys dying because she was in pain, and I thought that gifset really illustrated all that. Obviously some people might not agree with me on that, maybe other people feel that Arya was imagining something different, but I can only do my best with what I see and how I feel about it. 

There’s another gifset in the queue where the gifmaker used footage of Dany at Show!Dragonstone, except the gifmaker fancasted it as Dany’s garden high in the pyramid in Meereen, which I thought was pretty cool and pretty clever because the gifs do look garden-ish. Like I said previously, the show is all fancasting material to me. 

As a counter-example, like, what about Dany wearing red and black? It’s super popular for people to depict Dany in the colors of her house, and supposedly that makes it an #asoiafedit ... but Dany doesn’t typically wear red and black in the books. iirc she most frequently wears pastels, purples, violets, blues, etc in the books. (Hence, gifs of Dany in purple.) So should I not reblog the gifs and graphics and fanart where people work so hard to identify Dany with House Targaryen and to show her Targ-ness? Maybe some people would disagree but I’m gonna still reblog it. 

And what do I do with Missandei? Obviously the show actress is much older than the Missandei of the books, so some people have told me not to reblog her. But I would rather reblog her because she is an important character of color in the books, and I think that diversity is an important theme in the books. (I think that the books could benefit from more diversity, but I do think that GRRM believes that diversity is important.) And yes, there are problems with using infantilizing book quotes with an adult actress, so I totally believe that it’s a difficult issue. I would prefer to have more representation of poc, women, disabled people and other underrepresented groups on the blog so I am going to reblog things like show!depictions of Missandei. I think this is in line with the spirit of the books. 

Other people ask why I’m reblogging art that looks more like Tyrion from the show, or Bran that is obviously show based, and it’s the same thing, I think it’s important to have representation of disabled people on the blog. I’m trying to be very careful not to reblog things like Tyrion watching a battle with Jaime charging, or Bran talking to Sansa and Arya in the godswood in Winterfell, while still finding depictions of these characters to reblog. 

And like ... this gifset. It’s obviously using a lot of show footage, but I think that the captions are strongly in line with the feminism of the books. And I know that Sansa isn’t wearing that heavy winter clothing yet in the books, but I assume she’s gonna be wearing it soon. And obviously Cersei’s bald at the end of ADWD but I believe her hair is gonna grow a bit in future books. So some of these things are me projecting my TWOW feelings on them, and maybe not everybody gets the same feelings I get from a post, but I can only do my best here. 

Some people have asked why there’s Jon/Dany stuff on the blog. Well, for one, I ship it. Two, I shipped it and reblogged it long before the show ever went there, and my shipping is entirely book based. Three, I will bet anyone $20 American dollars that Jon and Dany will have some sort of romantic feelings for each other in TWOW/ADOS as they work to save the world together. (I have offered this bet on my personal blog and no one will take me up on it.) Four, I reblog other book-based Dany ships and Jon ships too. I reblog a lot of book-based ships here, for a lot of characters, a lot of whom I don’t even care about, some ships I actively dislike, but if it’s related to the books, I reblog it, cuz that’s what the blog is about. The Jon/Dany stuff might seem a little prominent on asoiafedit right now because the show is going there (I’ve said on my personal blog, D&D are just hitting targets in GRRM’s outline) and it’s easier for people to make stuff for it, but I’m not reblogging show scenes and show dialogue, etc. 

I know you didn’t ask for all this explanation, idek if you’ll read it all, but if you do read it, I hope that explains that I really, really am trying to keep the books in mind for everything that I reblog. 

Because believe me, I don’t like the show. When people put things into the asoiafedit tag that don’t jive with the books for me, I just scroll past them. 

If I could make this blog have only ASOIAF gifsets and only pure book art that was not influenced by the show, I would. 

But I can’t. 

I’m doing the best that I can with what I have, and honestly I’m trying to walk a very fine line here. I agonize over this more than I should. 

[incentivuscarus]

I know you don’t. I’m pretty sure you don’t even sneeze neurotoxin.

[draganchitsa]

apparently we can @ mention people in replies now I’M READY I’M SO READY

[etirabys]

What were the major factors for you in deciding whether to have kids?

Unwillingness to forego one of the most intense and unique human relationships possible: "The key to the sociobiology of mammals is milk. Because young animals depend on their mothers during a substantial part of their early development, the mother-offspring group is the universal nuclear unit of mammalian societies."

When I was younger, my major objection to having kids was that it would interfere with my career. I cared a lot about my career and looked forward to transitioning from a student who worked really hard and excelled in classes to a professional who worked really hard and excelled in the workplace and also earned a boatload of money. But then it turned out that I wasn't a hard worker, I just loved studying and taking exams. I don't have a career or the relationship to a career I envisioned, so that's the major obstacle removed.

Seven years ago, I went to a meetup hosted by an economist who liked historical reenactments. His three adult children were in SCA garb, served the guests food from a medieval Persian cookbook, and sat around arguing with him (and the rest of us) about economics. It was my first encounter with a family where the children shared interests with their parents and talked like peers. It fundamentally changed my mind on what families could look like.

Similar story: I visited my friend's family two years ago, and stayed in his teen daughter's room because there had been an in-house auction to determine whose room would go to the guest. She won and was monetarily compensated for it. In addition to having another example of a Relatable Family Where The Members Actually Like Each Other, I found my friend and his spouse's financial philosophy appealing and will be compensated for pregnancy and childcare by my spouse. 20% of my objection to having kids was objection to the financial arrangements of traditional marriage (which imo fucked over both of my parents when their relationship broke down... but more so my mom), so it shifted me on the kids issue to see & adopt a financial arrangement that to me feels more autonomy-preserving, egalitarian, and respectful of my labor and opportunity costs.

I knew I didn't want to be pregnant, didn't particularly like infants, didn't want to interact with toddlers for more than an hour (I like them but get very fatigued and have to go lie face down to recharge), which seemed like a good argument to not have kids. But I also simulated being 70 and childless and it felt distinctly bad. Among other reasons I noticed for the first time that I want a connection to the coming generations, which was startling.

It was hard not to notice that the giant would make an excellent dad, and also that we have complementary skill sets and preferences qua parents.

I read "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids" after I'd already decided to have kids, but when I was discussing the decision with friends, multiple of them brought the book up. Its basic argument is that we (I suppose I mean Americans and East Asians here) invest in our children well past the point where it matters, which increases the quality of life difference between parents and nonparents, which sucks because lots of people would enjoy raising kids if the unnecessary expectations were dropped. Once I actually read the book I found it suspect (I stopped reading when Caplan described a study and then drew an inference that didn't logically follow), but the conclusion seems true based on observation and common sense. My own parents and I had a lot of conflict over piano lessons because proficiency in an instrument was expected in their milieu. My mom regularly fought me to make me eat breakfast (to this day I don't eat in the morning, my body just isn't made for that) even though it would have been fine to send me off to school with a banana to tide me over until lunch. People trade away health and career points to breastfeed even though the evidence is shaky that it matters. My sister is pursuing a zero screen policy with her child and said this choice significantly increases work and emotional toll. Once I noticed I was the type to be an overworked neurotic parent and that I'd priced my own terrible personality in when simulating how hard childrearing would be, I also noticed I could (with effort) not be that person and have an easier time. So my expectations of parenting changed.

[mischiefxmuses]

closed starter for @thetorturedmusesdept (Dash x Ben)

Ben was looking at his lightsaber. He every now and then just thought about home. Thought about everything that happened. With the family here, his mother alive again, Jacen back to normal for the moment. There was a lot on his mind. He hadn't realized Dash had come home. His mind was so deep in his thoughts, wondering what would happen. He couldn't shake the feeling something bad would happen.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Today I found someone on Twitter who had porn in their profile banner.

That's just Tumblr's official logo, dude

[joannalannister]

@thingscactuslikes said:

#joannalannister's metas are the keystone in the arch that is my continued enjoyment of asoiaf tbh [x]

wow, this is very flattering, thank you!

[etiragram]

@discoursedrome replied to your post “hey dude i know this is a weird ask but hows the sleep setup going ?...”

if you wore a slightly less tense strap this could allow you to gradually train your jaw in your sleep until you have superpowered bite strength, though! that...that could be useful I guess

1. that is a beautiful idea

2. hmm, would training myself to have jaw-opening superpowers also train the jaw-closing superpowers?

[chviminhv-blog]

    i will do dashreplies/threads tomorrow-now only smol replies