#gato you make me insane in such a good way

[notanxietygirl]

My Au of death X puss

//after final fight a week later//

Puss: (mind: why do I keep thinking of loon..? Oh well) HeyPerrito! Do you want to go to the market?

Perrito: Yes!

//at the market//

[Death was also at the market doing his job, Puss notices but thought it was some random guy trying to hurt a old lady. So Puss threw a apple at death head.] Death: ?!

Puss: oh my gosh sorry logo I didn’t know it was you.

Death:….. [This continued and puss started to do it on purpose and thinks it’s funny, soon death noticed he is doing it on purpose and gets insanely annoyed, so he follows puss into a dark alley and pinned him to the wall] Death: so… you think it’s funny to stop me from doing my job? (As death slids his knife next to puss chin)

Puss: (terrified) W-what are you talking about lobo?

Death:(gets more annoyed,mad and tightens his grip) Oh you know…

[Puss frantically trying to get away but death grip is too tight, but then puss has an idea…….He quickly kissed death on the lips, it shocked death which made him loosened his grip a lot and puss ran away as quick as possible but nearly not believing what just happened. Shocked death was but also blushing just stood like a statue….]

At night

Puss: Oh god oh god lobo is going to keell me, why did I do that..!

Death: That shitty gato…..

|| 2 months passed without seeing each other || (Puss goes to his favorite spot to relax, which is near a river and a grass patch)

*The ominous whistle*

[Puss got startled and looked behind]

Death: Well hello gato.

Puss: (shaking) Are you here for my soul….?

Death: no, just came to my favorite spot and I see you here

Puss: (relieved) Oh? Heh sorry.

Death: ,…. [ sits next to puss] *silence*

Puss: Uhh hey lobo..? Death: *glance over* what

Puss: I just want to say I’m really sorry for annoying you

Death:….. it’s fine I guess.

Puss: Can you tell me when will my time is up?

Death: …..to be honest…..very soon

Puss: oh……

Death: what your going to hide?*smirks*

Puss: *chuckles* ha , I’m puss, I don’t hide

Death: Oh so your not scared I’m taking Your soul soon?

Puss: Well kind of, but now I realized it’s just life, you come, you will eventually go, because there is no point of running when it will always still come.

Death: *kind of surprised* Oh? Thought you never would say that. After all, your just a shitty gato.

Puss: *kind of hurt* you know, about when you pinned me down, um I just had to get away.

Death: (since he is death he sometimes can tell if people are telling the truth by their face) hm, don’t lie

Puss: huh?

Death: I’m death, I can tell by your face your not telling me the truth.

Puss: ………

Death: Awww what, gato can’t speak? Ha!

Puss: (stands up) …….. Ya! What if I am not telling the truth?! Because I have this thing and. I don’t know what it is and it’s making me be nice to you! It’s making me stay awake all night thinking about you but I’m just a shitty gato! Ya! I’m just a shitty gato *starts to cry* A god dam shitty gato! *Runs*

Death: Wait I didn’t……..

|| Non of them spoke to each other though if they say each other, it continued for months, Until one day death had enough || Death:*finds puss alone in a alley* (whistles)

Puss: What do you want. If you want my soul it’s all yours, you can take it.

Death: ….*holds puss up*

Puss: Just take it aleardy

[kissed…..puss was shocked, but for since he also kind of enjoyed he just looked the other way,] Death: do you have my message clear?

Puss: *looks opposite way but blushing* clear…

Death: good*turns around and leaves

[prokopetz]

Ive played through bloodstained, chasm, iconoclasts, hollowknight, dawn of sorrow and portrait of ruin, deaths gambit, sundered, some of the momodori series, ori and the woods, and a few others ive forgotten, do you have any more metroidvania recs that are out right now, plauge huntress doesnt count cus that hasnt updated its info in almost years now. Bonus points if the game had a grapplehook swinging mechanic.

You understand what you’re getting into by asking me this question, right?

In any case, a few recent favourites (provided your idea of “recent” means ”published this decade”):

Alwa’s Awakening - This one invokes an older “vania” than most Metroidvanias, drawing primarily from Castlevania II, complete with its preoccupation with hidden passages and near-total lack of signposting.

A Robot Named Fight! - One of the vanishingly few efforts to combine the Metroidvania and roguelike genres that actually plays like a proper Metroidvania. Fair warning: the audiovisual design is… meaty.

Axiom Verge - Starts out as a nearly pure Super Metroid clone, but rapidly takes it in a very different (and very brainfucky) direction. Not quite so nonlinear as Hollow Knight, but it’s close!

Column on the Sea - The way this one plays puts me in mind of a Kirby game, though I’m not 100% sure why. Has a lot more content than you’d expect looking at the production values.

Dandara - A mobile-friendly Metroidvania designed to be played with a touch screen, though a PC gamepad will do in a pinch. Just got a big content update less than a week before I made this post.

Dust: An Elysian Tale - A hack and slash brawler that takes its cues from the old Vanillaware library, particularly Muramasa: The Demon Blade. A good one if you’re a fan of racking up big combos.

Environment Station Alpha - Another fairly straight Super Metroid clone, this one never strays very far from its brief, but manages to do some interesting things within that framework.

Even the Ocean - A nonviolent puzzle platformer with mechanics based on manipulating mass and momentum. Includes light visual novel style interludes between chapters.

The Fall - The first of two Metroidvania/point-and-click adventure game hybrids on this list. Don’t expect a lot of action out of this one – it’s mostly about gender roles.

forma.8 - A UFO-piloting game in the style pioneered by Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, though considerably less monochromatic. You do grapple stuff, though since you can fly there’s not much swinging.

Gato Roboto - A fun little one-bit retro platformer where you play as a housecat piloting a giant mech suit; think Blaster Master meets Earthworm Jim and you’ll have the right general idea.

Kunai - Play as a sapient tablet PC and fight evil robots. It’s short and has a fair bit of unrewarding backtracking, but if you like grapple hook mechanics, this is the game for you.

LostWinds 2 - Technically not actually this decade, as it’s a port of a 2009 Nintendo Wii title, but I’m invoking “it’s my post” privilege. I’m plugging the sequel because it’s the stronger game by a fair margin.

Mini Ghost - A retro MSX-style prequel to Ghost 1.0 (which doesn’t make my recommended list due to Reasons), this one’s main draw is the included level editor.

Mystik Belle - The aforementioned second Metroidvania/point-and-click adventure hybrid. Play in easy mode if you won’t want to deal with annoying inventory size restrictions.

Outbuddies - A lot of the games in this post are retro, but this one takes the unusual step of modelling itself after pre-1990 PC games rather than consoles. Wonderfully nonlinear, if you can get over the useless map.

Out There Somewhere - This one doesn’t have a grappling hook, but it does have a teleporter gun, which is… grappling hook adjacent? It enables many of the same sorts of physics puzzles, at any rate.

Owlboy - This one’s very similar to Iconoclasts, both in terms of its production values and in terms of the fact that it spent over a decade in development hell, yet somehow turned out to be good.

Seasons after Fall - An atmospheric walking simulator with light Metroidvania elements. Don’t boot this one up if you’re looking to get in a quick play session – it moves slooooow.

Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse - Gameplay-wise, it’s one of the best casual Metroidvanias of its generation; design-wise, it’s incredibly horny – like, pixel art boob physics horny. You’ve been warned!

Song of the Deep - An underwater exploration game that – like Gato Roboto, above – features both in-vehicle and out-of-vehicle gameplay. A spiritual successor to Aquaria (see below).

SteamWorld Dig 2 - A Metroidvania crossbred with an arcade-style mining game; like, imagine if Dig Dug had a plot. It’s part of a larger metaplot, but the story is mostly comprehensible by itself.

SuperEpic: The Entertainment War - Self-styled comedy games are always a mixed bag, and this one is no exception. You do get to play as a raccoon riding a llama, though.

Teslagrad - A predominantly linear puzzle platformer that needs a lot of squinting to qualify as Metroidvania; I’m including it mostly because I really like its visual style.

Timespinner - Very Symphony of the Night. Cons: doesn’t do much with its central premise of time manipulation outside of a few early puzzles. Pros: not a single character in this game is heterosexual.

Touhou Luna Nights - This one has excellent production values for a fan-game, and – unlike the preceding rec – it actually does some interesting things with its time mechanics.

Treasure Hunter Man 2 - This lightweight Wonder Boy inspired title is a sequel to a 2008 freeware game, casting you in the role of the first game’s protagonist’s mom.

Valdis Story: Abyssal City - A gothic platformer with four mechanically distinct playable characters. Look up a no-spoilers guide for the true ending – you won’t be getting it without one!

Vision Soft Reset - A run-and-gun platformer where save points are also save states: when you fast travel to an earlier save point, you also travel back in time to whenever you last saved there.

Waking Mars - If you’ve gotten this far you’re probably expecting to see weird genre crossbreeds, but get this: this one’s a cross between a Metroidvania and a gardening simulator!

Wuppo - A super-artsy exploration platformer with some very odd gameplay choices, including an entire chapter that can be completed by waiting – in real time – for someone else to fix the problem for you.

Yoku’s Island Express - Arguably more of a collectathon platformer than a Metroidvania, I’m including this one mostly for the novelty of its pinball-based gameplay mechanics.

If you’re willing to consider games that I enjoyed, but wouldn’t necessarily recommend to general audiences owing to unreasonable difficulty, conspicuously janky mechanics, and/or being old enough that getting them to run properly on modern PCs can be a challenge, you might have a look at any of Aquaria, Catmaze, Cave Story, Fortune Summoners, Guardian, Mable & The Wood (grapple hook mechanics in this one), Mech Chip, Saira, Visual Out and You Have to Win the Game.

Bunny Must Die! Chelsea and the 7 Devils would also make the latter list, but it’s been withdrawn from sale by the publisher at the time of this posting, with no ETA on when – or whether – it will become available again. I think Outland is presently in the same boat, which is a shame, because it would have given me an excuse to include another goofy genre hybrid (Metroidvania with Ikaruga-style colours swapping bullet hell mechanics, in this case).

Finally, both Blaster Master Zero and its sequel recently received PC ports, so those may be worth checking out if you didn’t catch them on consoles.

(To anticipate the obvious question, yes, I have in fact played – and in most cases completed – every game mentioned in this post. Remember when I said my taste in games is extraordinary predictable? Yeah.)

[shego1142]

Hi, um... so I saw your btd and infinity train post and just gotta say, super glad I'm not the only one that thought that! Now that season 3 is officially all out I'm really curious if you've seen it yet and what you thought.

Goes without saying but MAJOR infinity train season 3 spoilers below!

This is also discussing an 18+ horror-porn game which features a lot of gore and other potentially triggering subjects so dni if you are not 18 or older or if gore/murder/etc make you uncomfy!

I just watched the finale. I’m like... in shock?

I mean by no means was or is Simon my fave at all (he just looks a lot like my ultimate comfort character lol) but wow... just... wow

It is a lot different when like... comparing btd with infinity train too tho!

Like, I feel like the entire /point/ of btd is to let your morality go. Like, it’s a horror-porn game.

It’s meant to be like “what up u fucks, being murdered is sexy! Yes Strade daddy kick my fucking head in! Lawrence pls squeeze my actual literal beating heart you weird necrophile”

And meanwhile infinity train is like “we are all just a collection of our actions, we all deserve the chance to redeem ourselves but sometimes we may not be able to due to the trauma we’ve been put through and the finite amount of time we have”

And I personally believe that both of those facets of humanity are okay to explore in fiction. It’s healthy to explore them in fact.

That said like, yea Simon is an asshole but I still liked him. Still think he deserved to redeem himself.

Still think it’s unfair that the train even happened to him at all, because he probably would have been better off at 10 years old with people who could look at him and say “yo, kid, here’s a therapist” instead of him being led by someone who is just as much a scared kid as he is.

Him doing what he’s always been taught to do and suddenly being told it’s wrong... as someone who’s autistic I can tell you that that’s a world shattering circumstance.

Idk if Simon was autistic or not, tbh I was too freaked out by how much he looked like Lawrence to notice much else about him...

Idk personally I liked the finale even if I feel like it wasn’t fair. I like the story even if it ripped me up emotionally, even if it’s making me think about things I wish I weren’t thinking about (like whether or not I’m a good person and whether or not redemption is possible and whether or not somewhere somehow those who couldn’t redeem themselves in this life are able to redeem themselves elsewhere)

I feel hollow after watching the finale, but in a good way.

Yes I would adore beyond all belief to have like, a fic it fic or something that gives Simon a second chance... like idk, maybe he wakes up in the real world from a coma? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And maybe when she gets out (probably very soon) Grace finds him.

But maybe that’s just it. Maybe that’s the end, full stop, he died, he’s gone, he lived a shitty life from ages 10 to what? 16? 18?

Idk... you asked about my thoughts and rn the main thing I’m thinking is just how much I really do hate how the fandom is this big jumbled mess of completely missing the point.

But anyway, yea no I lost my absolute shit when I saw him in season 2

Like I was /obsessed/ because of how freaking much he looked like Lawrence. Still am, bc wow the hair down look was wild too!

Especially with the “he went insane” scene... very Lawrence.

I guess that brings me back around to what I was saying about btd and infinity train being ultimately so different too.

With Lawrence I personally am like “yes my horrible son, you are a bad socially anxious murder boy and your entire purpose is to murder. Continue your murdering. Especially if it’s me or characters I relate to because I’m dealing with some shit and imagining you murdering me helps me deal with it, you funky little weird coping mechanism you.”

With Simon I’m like “You’re an ass. It’s not your fault though. I would be an ass too if I had been taught from age ten to do things the way you were taught to do them. Your actions are horrible and if you had had a fair shot at learning personal responsibility I would argue that you should be held responsible for them. But since you didn’t, since you spent your entire time on the train without growing, staying stagnant and forcing yourself to regress because it’s what you’d been taught was right, what you thought was right, all I can do is pity you. Your purpose was to learn to be a better person and you failed and I’m sorry.”

They’re ultimately very different characters for me despite how similar they are (obviously the way they look exactly alike but they’re also mentally unstable, started killing at a young age, have anger issues, etc)

I adore infinity train, and all its characters honestly. I really do hope there’s some form of closure for Simon but I’m not expecting it either.

Right now I just wish the fandom wasn’t trying to tear apart those who want closure for him. That’s so... outside of the point of the entire show.

Idk this goes a lot into my philosophy on life in general too I think, basically I don’t think there are people who are irredeemable. Not on shows, not in real life. I think there are just people who need help. I think that people deserve to be treated fairly and with respect regardless of what horrible actions they may have committed.

I guess I’m just really irritated rn at how some of the fandom seems to think that it was Simon’s “right and just punishment” that he died.

It wasn’t a punishment. It was just something that happened. People die. It happens. He didn’t die because he was a bad person. At least I don’t think so.

And it doesn’t make me, or any other fans, or Grace, or the apex kids bad people to mourn for him. For his lost opportunities. He was a traumatised child and he’s gone now.

And the ghom? Wasn’t it shown in season one that the ghoms are Amelia’s fault anyway?

Personally I think the entire point of the train is to work out your problems, full stop.

I think the only way someone is /meant/ to be able to die from the train is to die of old age.

The ghoms are accidental. They’re the product of someone else’s actions.

And sometimes we fall prey to that. And I think it’s okay to look at that and say “well that’s not fair.”

Because it isn’t.

I don’t know if Simon could have gotten better. Maybe he could have?

In the scene where he loses his sanity there for a moment he really did show signs of immense remorse and even confusion.

But honestly? Even if he wasn’t able to get better he didn’t deserve to die. And it disturbs me that a lot of peeps seem to think he did.

Anyway sorry this turned into a bit more of a rant than I meant for it to!!! >~<

Like I said I /just/ watched it!

But yea as far as Simon Laurent looking like Lawrence goes, I’m still a bit freaked out by that. The amount of times I’ve gone to write “Lawrence” instead of Simon in this post is way to high lol!

Personally I wanna know how gato feels about him honestly! Like she’s Lawrence’s creator and Simon really does seem like such a nod to her character!

Thanks for the ask, I got to vent a good bit! Idk if this is the convo you wanted from me tho lol :P

[shinylitwick94]

Best/Worst Reads of 2020

My life got turned upside down in 2020 and not just for the same reasons as everyone else, so it’s been an odd year and my reading(or lack thereof) kind of reflects that.

As usual, there’s a mix of SFF titles and some good old classics, with some random stuff thrown in.

I tried to read a lot of Big Name Fantasy Authors this year, to keep up with the times a bit. Some I liked, some I didn’t, but overall it proved to be a fun exercise.

Going back over previous comments/reviews I’d made on specific books really made it stand out to me that feminism was kind of a theme this year. Both because I ran into a lot of bizarrely sexist sixties stuff and because I tried reading a couple of more explicitly feminist essays/books at a friend’s recommendation. It was ok, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s my thing.

The best/worst thing is, of course, completely based on my personal enjoyment of these books and nothing else.

Worst

5.Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier

This wasn’t so much a bad book as a complete mismatch for my reading tastes. I ended up DNFing it fairly early on because I realised I was going to hate it.

4.Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I had high expectations for this book and it lived up to almost none of them. Yes, burning books bad, we get it. Very flat characters, a prose that drove me up the walls and a premise that was interesting enough for about 5 minutes.

3.Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

Another colossal disappointment. This one hurts especially because I’d looked forward to it for so long. The story seemed interesting enough at surface level, but I couldn’t stand the characters or the writing. DNF’d

2.The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

LOTR for kids too young or too dumb to read LOTR, I guess. Or LOTR with all the interesting bits taken out and all the great characters replaced by whiny 12 year olds. The only reason I finished this at all was because it was so short. Wanted to strangle those stupid kids.

1.The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I hated this thing so much. I wrote a pretty detailed rant as to why when I decided to DNF it, but in a nutshell I detest the way it’s written. To quote myself:

“It’s just a jumbled mess of unnecessary metaphors and similes and puttogetherwords and Unnecessary Capitalization and (parenthesis) that drove me completely up the wall.”

It just stinks of r/iamverysmart and I couldn’t stand it. Doesn’t help that the prose was so annoying I could barely make out the characters and the plot through it.

Best

I’m doing 8 of these, because I can.

8.The Satyricon by Petronius

I had so much fun reading this. It’s ridiculous, it’s insane, it’s debauched, it makes me want to cook decadent roman food, and I had a great time.

7.The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula le Guin

Very different from the previous Earthsea book, but I loved the atmosphere in this, its characters and the fairly simple story.

6.Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart

Another one that was just fun to read. It’s a sort of fairytale adventure that has us running through ancient China. It’s sometimes silly, sometimes touching, and I quite liked how it ended.

5.Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

I read this at one of my lowest points in the year, and thank goodness I did. It’s quiet, relaxing, the story and characters are easy to follow and their kindness and compassion was just something I needed at that time.

4.The Shadow of the Wind/La sombra del viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Another great fun read. Not usually my genre, but I got completely sucked into the story and its characters. Reading it in the original was also definitely worth the effort.

3.O Gato Malhado e a Andorinha Sinhá by Jorge Amado

I’m embarrassed that it took me this long to read this. @ my fifth grade portuguese teacher: fine, you win, it’s really good

Mind you, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it nearly as much back then, but I’m glad I’ve read it now. Jorge Amado’s writing is just too pretty.

2.Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy

I’d been meaning to read this for a while, but let’s face it, it was peer pressure that finally did it (thanks @frederick-the-great).

And of course I loved it. I do think I still prefer W&P, but there’s something about the way Tolstoy writes his characters that resonates SO MUCH with me and I’m left in awe every single time.

1.Novos Contos da Montanha by Miguel Torga

I didn’t expect this to be my favorite book of the year, but thinking on it, yeah, it definitely is. It’s a collection of short stories set in rural Portugal. Most of them are fairly dark, but in a way that feels meaningful, and not grimdark, if that makes sense. Some are also quite beautiful and uplifting. I remembered reading Torga when I was younger and liking his writing, but looking at it now, I definitely need more Torga in my life.

[violetosprey]

BTD2 My thoughts on Lawrence

I covered my thoughts long ago on all of the “Till Death Do Us Part” game characters, but I never really took the time to talk about my thoughts about the main series “Boyfriend to Death” characters.  I have actually talked about many of these characters through various different posts.  But otherwise, there haven’t been that many posts dedicated specifically to certain BTD characters.

These posts will mostly be about my own opinions and views (a rough analysis more than anything).  I may end up focusing on multiple aspects of the character, or just one particular one if I think it defines them best (we’ll see).  For those that have read some of my other posts, there likely WILL be some thoughts I’ve stated before that I’ll simply be re-iterating here.  But there may also be some new stuff in here if it happens to come to mind, or because I’ve simply not had the time before to go over such a topic.

It will take a while to get through all 8, so please have some patience and just check back later if it looks like I don’t have a post up yet for a character you’re really interested in.  I will also be talking through these under the assumption that you’ve played/read all the routes (so I might mention but not go into explicit detail on a scene).

*major spoilers below *

Fun Fact: When BTD2 was announced, the character who’s route that I was MOST interested in playing was Lawrence.  He was completely different from what I was expecting to see as a character from these games.  I’m not quite sure what it was about him.  Even with his physical appearance, I could state his traits out loud and it wouldn’t sound like he’d be the kind of guy I’d be into.  But it just seems to work here.  Also, I had this goal when I started the games that I was going to try REALLY hard to survive on my first attempt for at least 1 out of the 4 guys. Needless to say, I failed spectacularly on my first attempt.

I’ll be completely honest here.  I’ve wanted to write about Lawrence for a while now because he’s one of the characters I got REALLY into.  He’s the only one in the BTD series (excluding TDDUP) that I almost was able to get all the endings on my own.  I had two left before I broke down and looked up a guide.  If I had tried a little harder, I probably could have figured out how to get his best survival ending in the bathroom (I had the scenario set up for it), but I couldn’t have figured out the “name” thing on my own (which was the ending I was really looking for).  

The problem is I wasn’t quite sure HOW to talk about Lawrence.  I’ve said this before, but as opposed to BTD, BTD2 gave the characters a lot more depth this time around.  Among them, Lawrence is the hardest to figure out and comprehend. Hell, Gato’s even explained through asks from time to time about Lawrence’s history with finding the river after a drowning incident I believe, how leaving it (or was it constantly returning?) is slowly rotting him, and how he keeps wanting to go back.  We have been given information, but I often have a difficult time either remembering the details, or putting together the pieces. So other than acknowledging that Lawrence was born human but has become something supernatural overtime…not much more I can expand on here at the moment.

One thing the creator has said about Lawrence is that he’s “not good with people.”  I couldn’t agree more!  Lawrence has this conflicting nature where he simultaneously wants someone to bond with, but doesn’t know how.  At the very beginning of the game, he’s meeting up with Ren, whom he’d been chatting with online previously (presumably more than once).  When things get awkward and Ren leaves early, Lawrence becomes SO distraught that he puts the blame on the MC and attacks them.  Then later when the MC is held captive by Lawrence, he may start to like you but…well…remember the whole “spine” bit?  Yeah he’s probably not fully aware that some of the ways he interacts with others could be off-putting to say the least.  He’s also very apprehensive about what the MC says or does at times (ex. MC screaming or taking too long in the bathroom). When he feels he’s starting to lose control, he’s quick to restrict and gag the MC.  And if you push him to complete insanity, he reveals that under that nervous exterior he does indeed have a slight hint of sadism.

Right before I started this post though, I thought of something that I don’t think I’d taken the opportunity to do on my tumblr before:  Compare Strade and Lawrence.  I mean JUST the two together (not compared with all the other characters at once).  They’re both characters owned by Gato that operate in COMPLETELY different ways.  Strade was such a hit (possibly the most popular in the first game), that’s it’s almost like “How do you top that?” or “How do you avoid recycling older material that you know worked the first time?” Strade is just a pure sadistic monster with no supernatural qualities to him (with the exception of a fox boy in his house).  He has no real motivation for being evil other than he enjoys it.  Lawrence on the other hand, is a human whose mind has been gripped by supernatural events, causing him to become mentally unstable. He’s detached from reality and constantly on edge, but still has at least a small desire to connect with other people (that he’s often unable to).

I forget who the heck made the post, but someone made a comment about how after having to deal with Strade’s “unbroken stare” in BTD, it was quite a shift to face Lawrence who is often looking away from you.  This is both hilarious and true.  Strade carries himself with a lot more confidence in a jovial manner.  Lawrence, even when he has you tied up, is nervous and not sure how to deal with the situation at hand.  Strade knows he’s in charge while it feels like Lawrence has to remind himself that he’s in control of the situation.  For example, Lawrence says “he can do whatever he wants to you,” but if you start kicking up a fuss he’ll freak out.  He has the strength to keep you down, but he appears to lack…authority?  Really, the times he seems the most composed ironically are when he becomes COMPLETELY unstable and goes to cut you up.  That’s pretty terrifying.

Strade also loves to hear his victim’s screams, while Lawrence can gag you frequently in his route. Yes, you could say it’s because Strade has you locked up in his own house where people can’t hear you while Lawrence is in a shared apartment building (one time one of the tenants even hears the noise).  But I think even if Lawrence were alone, I feel like he just doesn’t like loud noises or resistance in general.  He’s implied to have gotten a little “dirty” with corpses after all…and a corpse won’t fight back or say a word.  I personally perceive Lawrence as something like a frightened dog.  The dog wants some attention and compassion, but if you’re not careful, you could corner and frighten him to the point where he bites you.

The weirdest thing I probably have to say is that…both Strade and Lawrence like people in different ways.  Strade I get this feeling that he genuinely enjoys conversation and interacting with others. That’s why he appears so friendly. But then he gets his kicks out of torturing people, so how much he can ACTUALLY care about another human being is debatable.  Lawrence (I’m running into speculation territory here) I don’t think necessarily hates or dislikes people, but they do make him nervous.  Still, he wants some kind of companionship (first with Ren, then with the MC if you get him to really like you).  In a strange way, Lawrence comes off as liking you more “genuinely” than Strade ever could.  I don’t really know how to explain it.  But the problem with Lawrence is that when he does decide he likes you and wants to keep you…he clearly doesn’t know how to have a proper relationship (*coughs* cuts your limbs off so you can’t get away *coughs*).

The best ending for Lawrence (as in HIS best ending at least- not talking favorite endings) is where you two connect when you mention the river.  It’s definitely a rather sweet ending.  I think what this may also imply, when comparing this ending to the one where he amputates you, is that Lawrence can never really have a “normal human relationship.”  His mind is has been warped too much by the river and he can never view or interact with the world in a normal manner again.  You have to be on the same level as Lawrence in order to truly bond with him. Kind of interesting.

So what did I think about Lawrence?  I loved him! Definitely don’t regret spending as much time (the most time even) on his character as I did.  Even if it meant just getting killed over and over…and over…and over again for several hours (let’s just say that maybe by the time I got to Ren’s route I wasn’t COMPLETELY upset that I had to kill the guy).  Regardless, Lawrence also gets the award from me for being the HARDEST character to figure out in the main BTD games.  This post was fun to write, but it was just challenging to try to come up with some solid viewpoints.

P.S.  In the event someone reading this is aware that my blog is half BTD/TDDUP and half yanderes goes “Are you seriously not going to talk ONCE about Lawrence as a yandere character?”  Well here’s a short answer for you:  I could see why someone might (and you are more than free to) label Lawrence as a yandere, but I personally do not.  The reason is…Lawrence is weird?  Sorry if that’s an unsatisfying answer, but if I really wanted to get into my reasons why here then this post would be way too long :P

[spanishahora]

I'm doing an online Spanish course in School and I've fallen behind on vocab and grammar. I don't know how to catch up, especially with all my other classes I have to do. I feel really tired and stressed, and at this point don't know what to do. I also don't really know how to study a language in general,I wrote in a notebook, but its not helping. Now I just put everything into a google doc, but that's not helping either. I've also not found anything interesting to listen to.

Well, I know from experience (I took Spanish 1 online) that taking an online class is INSANELY difficult. So don’t worry, you’re not alone in this struggle. It happens to the best of us.

Now, for catching up on vocabulary, I would suggest using flash cards or quizlet to study for tests. Write out quirky ways to remember difficult words (ex: el metro = subway, and I imagine that my local subway is called Metro) and mnemonic devices.

For grammar, I often use this free app called Lingvist. It may seem a bit unorthodox to use an app, but this one has crazy amazing lessons on grammar from Beginner to Advanced (about a 4-5 year student). Try to write out the rules of grammar (bulletpoints or shorthand to save time) until you remember them. Make up sentences highlighting the rules. Memorize the phrase el gato blanco toma agua to remember adjectives come after nouns. Things like that.

I would hold off on intensely trying to find good music until you get your school work sorted. Unless it’s an assignment, put off all recreational learning of the language. Focus on your school work first. The new season of a telenovela can wait. Harry Potter: La Piedra Filosofal can wait. Your school work cannot. Get caught up, then you’ll have time to find music that you really like.

I feel like this explanation is kind of muddled, so if you have any further questions, feel free to send me another ask or talk to the other Spanish langblrs. Hope this helped!

[kadian-theodosia-xanthos-blog]

Envy is Everything Chapter 1

Tink-a-link. I stepped into Distant Encounters, the light of the setting sun illuminating the dusty thrift store. The assortment of knick knacks blankly stared at me as I walked past looking for a large calligraphy set. I got to the back of the store where a glass display case detained my objective. A noise made me drag my eyes up to the source of it. A large woman with graying eyes, a side effect of too many emotion potions, raised her also graying eyebrows at me. I gave her a sheepish smile and cleared my throat. "How much for that?" I asked pointing at the set. I glanced at the bedazzled lanyard hanging around her thick neck. Celeste it read. She continued to stare me down making me fidget until she sighed heavily getting a rusty from behind the counter to, hopefully, unlock the display case. I gave her a puzzled look since she hadn't answered my question. She removed the set from the case and handed it to me still saying nothing. Celeste walked around a shelf of cracked porcelain dolls and disappeared for a few minutes, leaving me to stand awkwardly at the display case. She returned with two spiral notebooks. My confusion grew with each passing second. "$10 please." She told me. "What?" I asked almost dropping the calligraphy set. "The notebooks are $5 each and with 2 of them your total is $10." Celeste explained. "Oh, of course." I realized that my head wasn't in the conversation. I pulled a $10 bill out of my wallet. Before I could ask about the price of the set again she started shoving me towards the front door, past the previous knick knacks. Then I was outside on the street with the door closed and locked behind me. "What just happened?" I said to the empty street. A stray cat meowed in response before staring at me like the woman did. I hissed at it before heading in the direction of my apartment. Once home a wave of exhaustion hit me like the tsunami on Japan in 2010. I settled the calligraphy set and notebooks on my cluttered desk and fell asleep just before I hit the bed. That night’s dreams were even stranger than usual. The typical terrors invaded my dreams, clawing at my sanity again with frenetic brutes from my past. A salmagundi leviathans with serpentine bodies, gnarled hands, floating severed heads with fanged yellow teeth, and many other ghastly apparitions. Amidst the onslaught of devils I saw something truly monstrous. My eyes were completely froze. It was the sliver of hope in my Pandora’s Box, with curly black hair and ice blue irises inside of black eyeballs. They were often described them as icy comets floating in deep space. He turned his head finally acknowledging that I was there. I froze, recognition flashing on his pale face. If I remembered correctly the name that he went by in that incarnation was Rook “The Raven Sword” Saxon.  This incarnation was from the 1920s in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was strange that he recognized me since in the last incarnation that we were together I looked very different. I guess when you’re soulmates you just know. Pure hatred and loathing engulfed his face and he lunged for me. I bolted out of sleep covered in a gelid sweat. Leaping from my bed, I bounded to my desk and took out the calligraphy set, knowing that I wouldn’t be sleeping for awhile. The box was simple enough, just a typical cardboard box. The contents were the same as any other calligraphy set as well except for the weird rattle I heard in the plastic. Placing the contents of the set on the desk, I ripped apart the the plastic sending a cylindrical object flying across my bedroom. My eyes widened as I stared at it: I feared that it had been damaged or worse. A few beats passed before I went over and picked the object up. A light purple crystal was the mysterious object. Something told me not to mess with it anymore but of course it was just a friendly suggestion courtesy of my conscience. I shook the crystal and a sloshy sound came from inside of it. Puzzled, I put a hand on each end and twisted. To my surprise the ends moved like the way a screw does. “What the hell?” I inquired outloud. I continued to twist until half of the crystal portion came off completely. It was a pen; a calligraphy pen to be more specific. The pen looked much better than the calligraphy pens today with the rough grip and uneasy flow ink. I brought it closer to my face for further inspection. The design was 200 years old at least but the pen itself looked to be only 5 years of age. I turned it to see every angle. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. It read 3:49 AM. I went back over to my desk and grabbed one of the notebooks. Opening the polka-dot cover, I started to write when a stream of ink started to float around my room, my level of puzzlement rising. It stayed suspended in the air for a few minutes before gravitating towards the rest of the ink. The blob had formed a large glob and started shaping itself into that of a human. “Welp, I’m dead.” I stated bluntly. The ink began to define itself, making all the nitty gritty details of the humanoid. The humanoid was the other half of my soul, Phoenixis the god of wrath. It was the incarnation from my dream. I hate prophetic dreams worse than dandelions. Nix’s (his nickname) comet eyes, full of loathing, narrowed at me but he didn’t move. “What’s the matter, your insides still liquid?” I stabbed. Then his face softened, followed a faint scratch on my hardwood floor behind me. “Great.” I said sarcastically. Turning around slowly, I tensed anticipating some kind of monster but all that was there was the cat that had meowed at me outside of Distant Encounters. “Oh it’s just…” I started before the cat jumped up in my face, scratching and biting. I could hear Nix’s familiar laughter at my predicament. Black fur clouded my vision. “Don’t just stand there, help me!” I demanded but it was rather muffled so I probably sounded like the Swedish Chef from The Muppets. His laughter finally ceased. “Temperet.” He commanded with a hint of real magic lining the word. “Let me guess not your average cat based on that locution.” I said not really caring about his answer for my rhetorical question. I started the search for my first-aid kit in case I had anything that needed tending. Sitting down at my desk and pulling my mirror closer to inspect my face, I remarked. “What’s the matter cat got your tongue?” “I am not human. I never was. Over every incarnation I tell you this. So why do you keep expecting me to act like one?” He finally spoke. “ Sorry just trying to make polite conversation. By the way, your soul may not be human but your body sure is so get off your high horse before you fall and break every single bone in that human body of yours.” I snapped. “Why you planning to finish me off, Sweetheart? Nix snapped back. “Only if you want me to.” I said sweetly. He rolled his eyes. “What stray did you pick up this time?” I said closing the first-aid kit since none of the scratches were worth worrying over. Nix ignored me. If he was going to be like this the whole time I’d end both our suffering and kill him now. A little thing you should know about the world I live in, almost everyone is born with a number somewhere on their body. This number indicates the amount of previous lives we had endured. I mean experienced because not all lives are horrific. Most people seem to have a 3 or 4 but occasionally there is a 10 or so usually they tend to disappear relatively quickly. I wonder where they go, hm? My number isn’t really a number: it’s an infinity symbol. Nix has the same sign. How about we just call it a sign to save confusion for something complicated like math. The bulb in my desk lamp when out. “Oh Satan bless it! I should throw out this fickle thing!”I said sounding like an old woman. I walked out of the room into the dark hallway and flipped on the switch. The door to the apartment opened as the light turned back on to reveal my roommate and best friend, Elisheva Ramon. She was holding a box of donuts from the bakery that she works at. The treats from Heavenly Magic were just like, if not better than, the food of the gods. Trust me I would know. I heard Nix come out of my room behind me reminded me of the onslaught of rules in the roommate agreement that I signed 72 times. She had set up a very long list of “basic” rules and regulations to make sure everything was orderly. One of them happened to be if we invited anyone over to alert the other member of the domicile, in order to prevent any unnecessary encounters. Elisheva started ranting to me about how I should have told her, how I should have this and that, blah, blah, blah. Cue insane amount of eye rolls now. Now would be a good  time for that cat to start clawing my eyes out. Thankfully after 10 agonizing minutes she stopped and handed me the box that I was probably drooling over. Elisheva gestured to Nix, saying that he could have one too. “Yeah, right,” I muttered. I picked a Boston Creme donut with chocolate icing, licking all the chocolate icing off the top. A black ball of fur came soaring into the kitchen. My eyes shot daggers at it. The cat did a backflip into the air and disappeared in a flash of light. The three of us turned away so we wouldn’t be blinded by the mini sun. When we had turned back a dark haired pale slender figure was where the cat was supposed to be. “Diablo gato!” Elisheva shrieked ducking behind the kitchen island. I facepalmed saying, “Like hell I would let any kind of demon in my home.” The lights flickered again. “What kind of power source are you using? This stuff works worse than the stuff in 1922.” Nix said looking around the kitchen. The human version of the cat sat down crossed legged on the floor. “Spurious energy source!” I complained. I went outside to give the leaning lamppost a good kick. This usually gets the magic flowing again for some reason. Elisheva and Rook followed closely behind me out to the edge of the property with the the first rays of dawn peeking through the sea of buildings. A woman was walking down the sidewalk wearing a sweatshirt to keep the chill off her. I looked at the woman's face. It was the woman from Distant Encounters, Celeste. Turning to the post, I told Elisheva to go back inside to see if the magic was showing a constant flow. She did as I asked, hopping up the stairs back inside. Rook hadn’t seemed to notice her even though the clicking of her stilettos would at least spike someone’s curiosity to glance in her direction. I glanced at him then. His icy eyes were closed but they were moving under his eyelids as if they were searching for something. “The magic that you spoke of,” he paused. “It’s quite anomalous.” Rook finished opening his eyes. “That’s because it’s about as artificial as this.” I told him taking a mint out of my jacket pocket and tossing it to him. Rook caught it and popped it in his mouth, nodding. The clicking stopped. I whirled around taking a step back, almost into Rook’s booted feet. “We meet again Theodosia, goddess of envy, and Pheonixis, god of wrath.” Celeste said looking at us each in turn. A red flag started waving just behind my eyes. How could she possibly know who I really was just by a single meeting? “Thea, it’s alright.” Rook said. “ This woman is a descendant of the man that saved me from dying during our last joint incarnation.” He clarified as if that would make the fact that she knew our real identities any less of a reason to raise alarm. The door to the building opened letting out Elisheva. She bounded back down the cinder steps, “It’s good.” She said taking in the situation with her dark eyes. “Elise, stay there.” I told her. Elisheva and I locked eyes and I knew that she wouldn’t. Ya know, she listens about as well as a rock. My eyes widened and I gave her frozen jazz hands. “Elisheva can come along as well, if she would like?” Celeste interjected. I glared at her. “No, Elisheva cannot come if she would like. Now, let us be going.” I shook my head and asked. “Where are we going? And why are we going there with you?” I air jabbed my pointer finger at Celeste. “He may trust you but I sure as flapjacks don’t.” As soon as I had stopped yapping at how I distrusted Celeste all four of us were enveloped in a blue light. We had been Zipped! Once the room had been starved of the blinding light, Rook observed. “It didn’t matter if we wanted to come and take the job offer freely. Your instructions were to shepherd us hear regardless of our protests or approvals.” Celeste nodded indifferently. The room had many layers for court officials, each row a level higher than the last. Every level had colored flags hanging over the edges of the front, most likely to exhibit the  difference in rank between the levels of court officials. At the opposite end of the colossal room was, quite possibly, the judge. He was in a depression in the wall that was enclosed by the same stones that made up the pews. The flag that draped off the front of his booth was pale white and outlined in blood red with the presidential crest; a golden eagle with its wings spread wide ready to could fly off the banner, emblazoned in the center. The setting of the meeting makes me uneasy due to the resemblance to that of a 16th century courtroom. I’ve been on the receiving end of their so called justice. I was able to get my own justice when their howls of pain erupted from the burning court room like the crimson flames. I shook my head dragging it out of the Dark Ages. We were herded down the room until the judge’s box was upon us, the eagle staring us down with its golden, beady eyes. The eyes of the official were much like that of the eagle, although I would take the eagle over the officials, at least I knew what to expect from the eagle. “Welcome to those that have accepted our gracious offering of employment,” came a booming voice. “This is a job that has been assigned to you because only you can do it. You have been chosen by the magical force that we have come to rely on.” The voice definitely belonged to a man, unless puberty messed up and hit a poor woman with the wrong stick. It resonated throughout the courtroom by sound magic. In the early 2000’s scientists had predicted that the world would run out of coal by the year 2050 and they were almost right. Unfortunately, we ran out halfway through 2045. The world was in the third world war for the remaining coal. (Technically the fourth, hello the War on Terror) Real magic has been around since the beginning of everything. That’s what the gods were created from and have to obey. Yes even gods have to obey rules, we can’t just do what we want willy-nilly. The alternative energy source that the world has come to rely on is artificial magic. It's much easier to use and contain but not as powerful as actual magic. “Hey, can I get the MoJo incantation?” Elisheva inquired slowly raising her hand. “You are here to get employment not to play games.” Rook snapped. MoJo is like early 21st century WiFi for our almost mid 22nd century technology. I turned around and looked at Rook. The look on his face told me that he was also remembering the 16th century. During that time he was a member of the court sometimes saving people’s lives by persuading the king that they needed to be punished justly, not simply executed. Other times his persuasions had the opposite effect. The king would condemn to death a simple farmer that had stolen some seeds for payment crops. I put my hand on his arm to silently tell him it was going to be fine. He nodded, shaking my hand off and facing the source of the voice. “What does the job entice?” Rook bellowed at the box. “It is quite simple. All you must do is go back and stop a few mass murderers.” The voice replied. ELisheva cocked her head her dark ponytail swinging to the side. “Go back where?” She bubbled. “You’re concerned where you would be going but not the whole ‘stop mass murderer’?” Celeste chuckled. “Enough, please allow me to finish with the details Miss Lyda.” A small man materialized in front of us. He had a pot belly that was emphasized by how he stood, opposite slouch. He wore a robe styled like that of priest with the colors of the presidential flag. “It is a pleasure to finally meet the last two creators of mankind. Would the rest of you come and meet them please?” 5 other people came out into the aisle, 3 were male and 2 were female. Rook stepped up next to me. The two of us surveyed them all in turn not knowing whether to embrace them or attack them. The 5 of them starred us down just as intensely. “Kadi, you don’t have to intimidate every person you meet.’ Elisheva said poking me in the ribs. “Elisheva Ramon how ya doin?” She held out her hand in hope that one of the 5 would shake it. “They aren’t much into the whole friendly greetings thing there, Elise.” I told her pulling her hand back.

I am with everyone but no one wants me

A goddess of sin in every era

I have been cast down from above with he who is forever my enemy

But also my love

A man that looked about 23 had recited part of a poem that I had written to be able to identify myself as Theodosia by any of the other gods of sin. My only response was a simple nod.

I am killed by my love in every life

Strings stronger than fate are what tether us

Sewn into everyone’s souls is that of my essence

I am also a sin

A 15  year old girl finished the rest of the poem. Nix had the same response. ‘It really is you!” A 27 year old woman with purple eyes crushed the two us into a bear hug. I would know those eyes anywhere. They belonged to the goddess of pride, Verena. Each god had some kind of physical attribute that was colored to that of our sin. I have green eyes because the color associated with envy is green. “Sid get over here and say hello to our old friends.” She told a guy about the same age as her with light blue eyes. The god of sloth, Isidor. “Well it’s certainly been awhile. The Holocaust was it?” He said. I nodded looking back at Elisheva. Her reincarnation number is 4. During the Holocaust she had experienced it through the eyes of two people. My sister was her second incarnation where she had been killed by disease in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Elisheva’s third incarnation was my daughter in that same ghetto. It was a miracle that either of us survived birth since a few of the Nazi soldiers thought it would be hysterical to tie my legs together when I went into labor. Any time the Holocaust is mentioned Elisheva would get really angry or scared as if she was remembering anything from that time. It happened 200 years ago so I had my doubts that her soul would remember it, but considering how traumatic it was even to me. Her soul will never forget anything that happened there. She didn’t even look bothered by it, thankfully. “Let me see if I can do this correctly.” Elisheva said. She pointed at each person in turn. “Verena, goddess of pride.” The woman with violet eyes. “Isidor, god of sloth.” The man with light blue eyes. “Ogden, god of gluttony.” A teenage boy with a slight pink complexion. “Keyshia, goddess of greed.” A blonde teenage girl. “Jotham, god of lust.” A man with red hair. Elisheva then looked closely at me and Rook as if she needed any additional thought to who Theodosia and Pheonixis could be. She pointed at me and said. “Theodosia, goddess of envy.” Her eyes examined Nix trying to find where his color distinction for being the god of wrath was. He pulled back his black hair to reveal his pale forehead and a small orange circle just above his brow. “Pheonixis, god of wrath.” Elisheva finished. “Do you all still have your marks?” I asked putting my hair up so it would be easier to reveal mine. They all nodded moving to show us. Verena had her infinity symbol on her left hip. Isidor had his on the right side of his abdomen. Ogden’s was on his right shoulder. Keyshia’s was on her left wrist. The symbol on Jotham was on his left ankle. Nix held out his right hand and I pulled back my left ear. All the symbols had been accounted for. “Am I supposed to reveal mine too?” Elisheva asked. I shook my head at her. “What exactly are you asking of us?” I asked. “We are asking you to go back in time and stop mass murderers from killing. The first place you would be going would be Victorian London when Jack the Ripper roamed the streets a free man until the day he died.” (fill in word for president here) informed us. I pursed my lips thinking it over. I was hesitant since I was his 5th victim out of 7. “Would all of you be joining us?” Nix asked. “Yep.” Jotham answered. “Can I have some time to think it over?” I inquired. “But, of course. We wouldn’t want you to do something against your will.” He answered. I bit back the comment about being brought here without any of our consent. “Now best be on your way. You three have a lot of thinking to do in not a lot of time. Tomorrow at 10:00 am is when I would like your decision please.” He instructed with a wave of his wrinkly hand. With that simple gesture the three of us were back in front of the apartment complex.

[dontcallmesensei]

The Truth About Learning Japanese

(I’m going to start with a random side note: If I ever get a book deal to write Japanese primer, I’m going to call it I Eat Cake Everyday: A Complete Guide to Japanese with Stupid Sentences.)

It’s been a while since we’ve just talked, so I wanted to just take a moment to do that.

I think every Japanese platform at one point write an article about “the deep truth” of learning Japanese, claiming to give you the golden key that you need to become fluent in only 6 months or 1 year or whatever. 

The argument for those kinds of posts isn’t hard to understand: People are fundamentally similar. If people are fundamentally similar, it is very likely that works for me will will work for you. Thus, if this works for me, it will work for you. This does work for me. Therefore, it will work for you (most likely.)

This is why all articles start with something like, “I guarantee you that I’m no genius. [Insert daily task that the writer struggles with on a daily basis.] I’m just a regular person that tried out a few things until I found a winning formula.”

I, personally, want to do my own take on this kind of article. I won’t offer a golden key, but I’ll talk about learning Japanese.

1. Japanese is Coded in the Most Inefficient Writing System in the World

Kanji, the logographs that are the bane of all Japanese-learner’s existence, comes from China. Kanji itself, 漢字, means “Chinese characters.” Kanji were invented to suit the needs of the Chinese language (from way back when, before Mandarin/Standard Chinese was a thing.) Japanese, on the other hand, is a language isolate, and it is not related to Chinese. So the use of these Chinese characters has over time been used in different ways for different words and with different readings- for Kanji tend to have multiple readings, sometimes being just 2 and at other times 8. 

In Eastern Asia, the use of Chinese characters was widespread. It was used in Korea, in Vietnam, in Japan, to some varying extent in Malaysia, and the territories these nations conquered.

Korea developed an ingenious writing system called Hangeul, which now has all but totally substituted Chinese characters. Vietnam adopted the Roman alphabet with many diacritics. Japanese, well, Japanese developed two writing systems based on morae. These two writing systems could be used to write out the entirety of Japanese. Kanji is not really necessary. Further, there is no evidence to suggest that there are so many homophones such that even with context one could not make head or tails out of what was being said. 

So, Japanese does have a potential unique writing system that is easy to learn (it’s easier than Hangeul in my opinion), but it does not use it exclusively because of cultural reasons. Kanji is just hardwired into the culture.

But here’s where my personal opinion and advice come in: If you have to choose between loving Kanji and hating it, hate it. Don’t romanticize it. Don’t go “above and beyond” what you have to know because of your love for Kanji. Just learn what you have to learn, and leave it at that.

“How many Kanji must someone learn?” The official common use Kanji list (the Jōyō Kanji) lists 2,136 Kanji. How many readings are among these Kanji? Somewhere around 3,869. There are also some variations on Kanji that one should keep in mind and some Kanji that one sees only in names, so add around 400 Kanji to the official list and about 400 new readings.

“How many Kanji must I learn for my first year of Japanese?” All of them. That’s my honest advice. Don’t aim to learn only a few Kanji. If you’re going to learn Kanji, learn them all. Think in that mindset. As soon as you decide you want to learn Japanese, work on Kanji. Before you enter a classroom and learn your first few greetings and whatnot, make sure you know all the common use Kanji, or at least that you’re well on your way to knowing all the Kanji.

2. Language Learning is an Intensive Process

Learning a language is a process that scientists haven’t quite been able to describe accurately. We do know, nevertheless, that it’s a heck of a lot different from learning chemistry or carpentry or bicycling. 

In the Western world, there is this idea that one can learn a language in a classroom, normally as a subject period, with periods lasting somewhere from 50 to 70 minutes. Here’s the truth: it doesn’t work very well. (There are historic reasons for this way of learning a language, but we can talk about that some other time.) The success rates of language acquisition in classrooms is ridiculously low. This does not mean that language classes are bad: but it means that it just isn’t enough.

There are many reasons why learning a language in and of itself may be hard. It’d take forever to talk about all of them. 

But let’s talk a bit about lexicons. A lexicon, here, refers to the dictionary in your brain where you store the words you know. If you’re monolingual- you have a standard dictionary in your brain with a word and definitions. If you were raised bilingual, then you have one lexicon with two words and definitions. That is to say, if you’re an English-Spanish speaker, then you have “cat” and “gato” in the same space in your brain and you know that what applies to one applies to the other. Then, depending on your fluency and use, you may have two supplementary dictionaries where you store all the information about words that don’t exist in the other language and idioms and expressions and things like that. 

Now, if you’re an English speaker and, say, you want to learn German, part of what you’ll learn to do is to process your English lexicon entries into German. What that means is that you learn to engineer English words into German. “Father” turns into “Vater,” “to drink” turns into “trinken,” “Love” turns into “Liebe,” etc. So the words that have no relation with English (the non-cognates), turn into a supplementary lexicon and everything else is put through a mental processor. 

Because the brain can do this is the reason why many people in Europe can speak many languages. The fact that someone can speak Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, and French is not terribly impressive. The overlap in words (and in grammar) is so immense that what you’re doing is processing one language into another and you’re guaranteed an astonishing success rate.

Japanese, however, is different because it’s a language isolate. You can’t process one language into another. You have to learn words one by one. That takes time. It takes repetition. Memorization is as much an active process as it is a subconscious process. When people talk about the benefits of “immersion,” what they’re talking about most of the time is putting your brain into survival mode, i.e. either you learn all these words (and grammar stuff) or else you will not be able to survive and thus you will die. That is one way of doing it, and if you do not choose this path you have to commit some serious time to this. I believe that if one knows around 5,000 of the most frequently used words in any given language, one is guaranteed to know at least 95% of all the words one will hear/read in a day (given that one doesn’t go read a super technical manual on how to calibrate a nuclear reactor or something like that.) So, the question becomes how will you memorize 5,000 words? How long will that take? If one learns 10 a day, then it’s 500 days, and if one learns 50 a day, it’s 100 days. 

The tradeoff when it comes to speed is that the faster you learn something, the faster you forget. (When you relearn something, it should be faster nevertheless.) So how much time will you commit to learning a language? How will you follow that up? These are important questions.

3. Japanese Media is Considerably Insular

Japan isn’t like the United States. The United States wants every nation to know what music it likes, what fashion it wears, what it believes ideologically and socially, etc. The U.S. is everywhere.

South Korea, recently, is everywhere. K-Pop, K-Dramas, K-SNL, K-Beauty. If you want to know what Korea is up to, it’s pretty easy to find out. They want you know! 

Japan... eh. Japan is pretty good at making anime available globally. People know about Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon and the Mighty Atom and all that. When it comes to dramas and movies and tv shows, they’re not quite interested in that. Ages ago I wrote a post on the misconception of “Whacky Japanese Game Shows,” where I basically explained that most of those shows aren’t game shows but segments on variety shows, the only person in my mind having totally insane game shows being Beat Takeshi.

Okay, fine, what does this mean? This means two important things. First, one’s expose to the language outside of going to Japan or talking to Japanese people will be based highly on anime, which is fine but there are other styles of expressing oneself. One needs a bit of variety. If one goes the information/news route, then one is exposing oneself to something very formal and literary, but dull. Second, it means that when people teach Japanese, they’re going to assume that one wants to speak Japanese for business purposes. This sounds strange to say, but let me put it like this: Japanese is an important part of the world economy and STEM and anime, on the other hand, is not a sufficiently large part of Japanese culture so that the Japanese can figure you want to learn Japanese for that sole purpose. If you want to speak Japanese, then it must be for business purposes (and we’ll consider academics to be within business.) So you learn Japanese through the perspective of honorific and respectful language. This isn’t a bad thing either, but the desire to make you sound nice will often lead to lies about how Japanese actually works at a grammatical level.

(On the other hand, in South Korea the K-Pop/K-Drama boom is such a big deal that people around the world start learning Korean in hopes of auditioning for the big production companies in hopes of becoming actors, singers, dancers, and hosts.)

So here’s my advice: Once you have your feet wet with Japanese, once you know your Kanji and you know how to analyze a sentence (even if the lexicon isn’t all there yet), look at something that isn’t anime. I recommend movies, a lot of which are quite nice. Okuribito (Departures) was a great movie. An (Red Bean Paste) is a more recent film that was wonderful. Look up some movies. Sit down, and watch them. Watch it with subtitles, so you know what the movie’s about. But watch it a second time and a third time without subtitles. Try to see if you can make out a few sentences, read a few signs that appear in the background, take note of expressions or words you keep hearing. No, you won’t be able to understand the whole film all of a sudden, but it’s something new and something good and the more Japanese you learn, the more you will be able to return to the film and make out. Eventually, you will be able to listen to a sentence, pause the film, and look up the words you don’t know.

4. Learning Japanese Doesn’t Happen with One Method Alone

This is rather obvious, but it’s worth finishing this off with. There is an abundance of book series, CDs, cassettes, and even online resources (our own included.)

A language is greater than any method, than any curriculum, than any teacher. No one source has all the answers. One has to be encouraged from day one to look at many resources.

A library is a language learner’s best friend. Why? Because books can be expensive, and you will probably not need all the resources you dabble into for a long time. So, when you begin learning Japanese, look at the entire Japanese section, order a few famous books through InterLibrary Loan, if you have access to that, and sit down and just read the books, as if they were novels. Don’t memorize a thing. Don’t do the exercises. Just figure out their style, their aims, their perspective. Do read the footnotes! The more footnotes a book has, the more useful it tends to be in the long run. Information that isn’t relevant in Lesson 1 may be absolutely vital in Lesson 10. 

Check out some old books if you can. The way people learn a language today is not the same way they learned it 50 or 100 years ago. The most useful Italian grammar book I ever read was written in the 1800′s. Japanese books published before World War II may have some slightly outdated things, such as the /we/ and /wi/ morae, but they will be good for most of everything else. I’m personally dying to get library privileges again somewhere to be able to look into these, so if I find some good book titles I’ll let you know.

Because a lot of language instruction was, until recently, modeled after the way Greek and Latin was taught, reading some of our own material gets you familiar with the lingo, should you heed my advice. So people like to talk about cases and declensions and conjugations and moods and all that. The works of William George Aston are some of the most important books on Japanese historically. So, if you can find originals of those, please do read them.

So yeah, food for thought

[fapangel]

Re: Submarines with floatplanes | Well the funny thing about this is that you're flat out wrong on quite a few factors. You're blinded by your hatred of the Japanese and unwilling to consider the objective truths, let alone that there might be some possible positives of it. This response is slightly larger than I can type out here, so here's a link to the full writeup (just add your own period): pastebin com/EJFafyeZ

Oh, EvilTwinn. You're a thousand years to young to be fucking with me. I'm going to quote from your response in italics as we go along so those reading can follow along. _Size:__They range from equal in size with their contemporary fleet boats of equal range to up to 10 meters longer. Take for example the Type B1s of 108.7 meters long and a beam of 9.3 meters with the Kaiten VIs, such as that which killed the Yorktown, of 104.7 m and 8.2 m. So as we can see, not really all that much larger. Type B submarines are also of equivalent size. Type Cs actually are longer (by a single meter, so jack shit, but give me the rhetorical point) than the Bs and B1s despite lacking the hangar entirely, while maintaining the same width. "But EvilTwinn," you ask, "how can they be the same size and yet have a hangar?" The hangar actually fits right into an extension of the conning tower and the hull itself. Sure, it makes the submarine marginally less maneuverable when submerged, but that's not a massive concern for the advantage you gain with a floatplane. See, the important thing to remember is that for the most part, these floatplane-carrying submarines were not massive monstrosities like the I-400s, but rather normal sized fleet boats with just one (or rarely two) aircraft carried.__The following are pictures of a Type B1. As you can see, the hangar actually isn't very large, and it does in fact have a crane, for obvious reasons.__https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/I-26_Japanese_submarine.jpg__http://orhistory.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/i-25-Submarine.jpg_The Kaidai-class boat I-168 (which sank the Yorktown) displaced 1,400 tons surfaced. The Type B1 cruiser submarines displaced 2,631 tons. They were _literally_ twice the displacement. _Not really all that much larger?_ Do you know what the [square cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law) is? You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, kid. Get used to that phrase, because you're gonna hear it a lot. Secondly, none of these aircraft-carrying boats were “fleet submarines.” They were cruiser submarines. Bear with me for a bit, I'm gonna do some History to entertain the peanut gallery (and myself:) During the interwar years, every major naval power experimented with various submarine concepts, trying to discover the best design balance to utilize this promising new weapon that'd wreaked such havoc in the Great War despite being a crude early effort. There were a few ways to go with it. One option was to stick to relatively small, nimble boats; an attractive option for navies expecting to fight in waters close to home (i.e. the German navy,) with torpedoes as the primary weapon. Combat experience in WWI had revealed the great difficulties and unreliability of torpedoes, however, which were very expensive weapons to begin with - and the limited ammo count. Some of the most successful U-boats of the war (including the leading U-boat ace, the excellently named Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière in _U-35_,) simply operated like surface raiders utilizing centuries-old “prize rules,” popping up near a merchant, training their 6-inch deck gun on them, and ordering their crew into lifeboats before shelling scuttling, or (rarely) taking the ship as a prize. Naturally the Entente powers got tired of this shit and started putting guns on their merchants, going so far as to bait U-boats to destruction (Q-ships,) and the rest is history. The concept was still sound, but submarines would have to upgun to deal with armed merchants. Attempts varied widely. The British tried the interesting [M-class submarines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_M-class_submarine) which used a single fixed 12-inch gun in the conning tower; the idea being to surface, fire into the target, and quickly submerge again - basically a torpedo style attack, but much more likely to hit and without the many pitfalls of expensive, finicky torpedoes. Most nations, however, planned on using their gun-armed submarines more conventionally. The _Surcouf_ was the ultimate expression of this: a 3,250 ton sub with twin, _turreted_ 8-inch guns, periscopes designed to double as rangefinders and directors, a fucking motor launch _and_ a hangar for a spotter plane. It was basically an underwater cruiser (*absolute fucking madmen,*) because that's what they were for - cruiser-style long-range commerce raiding. Hence, “cruiser submarines.” America also experimented with cruiser submarines in the interwar years; witness the [V-class boats,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-boat) the most famous of which was the _USS Nautilus,_ who probably changed history at Midway. They were effectively a series of experimental boats as the US Navy (as with their foreign contemporaries) were trying to determine the right development course with these new weapons. The first three boats reached for a new concept; a submarine meant to fight submerged with torpedoes, but with the surface speed (and range) to keep up with the 21-knot Standard Battleships in any Pacific war. Technology in the early 20s wasn't up to the challenge, however. Next they embraced the “cruiser” submarine concept in earnest, (as other nations had in response to the same technical limitations,) producing the ill-fated V-4 Argonaut, a minelayer, and V-5/V-6, the _Narwhal_ and _Nautilus,_ true “cruiser” subs with their two six-inch guns (same concept as _Surcouf_, just not taken to the insane extreme.) V-7, V-8 and V-9 were laid down in the 30s, and by this time technology had caught up and allowed the US Navy to finally reach the design goals of the first three V-boats. What they arrived at was neither the small, nimble 700-900 ton submarine (like the Type VII U-boats Germany fought the Battle of the Atlantic with,) nor the hulking 2,500ish ton “cruiser submarines” (like the _Narwhal_-class.) These boats, which were more maneuverable and faster submerged than the cruisers, but had the surface speed and long range endurance to operate across the Pacific, weighed in around 1,500 tons, and were called “fleet submarines.” I didn't relate all that _entirely_ to amuse all six people who follow this blog, nor to be pedantic - the distinction is important because the Japanese, uniquely, built and used the _full range_ of submarine sizes and concepts throughout the war. By displacement; midget submarines, (many kinds,) small defensive coastal submarines (Ko class, 600ish tons,) medium-sized attack subs, (Type L subs; literally license-built British Type Ls, 893 tons, Kaichu-class subs at 720 tons,) fleet submarines (Kaidai types, 1500ish tons,) and of course their cruiser subs; (Junsen type, 2000ish tons, Type A, 2,500ish tons, Type B, 2,100ish tons, Type C, 2,100ish tons,) and a full range of tanker/transport subs to boot. And they _actively pursued_ this breadth of classes during the war, too; [upgraded Kaidai-type designs were being built through the 40s,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaidai-type_submarine), the [Kaichu VII class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaich%C5%AB_type_submarine#Kaich.C5.AB_VII_.28Sen-Ch.C5.AB.2C_Ro-35_class.29) were built from 1942-1944, etc. America found uses for their V-class prototypes (the _Narwhals_ were especially good as Marine raider transports, with built-in fire support,) but had abandoned the concept well before the war - once they hit on the fleet submarine concept with the last three V-boats, they never looked back: the pre-war _Porpoise, Salmon, Sargo and Tambor_ classes were incremental refinements on a concept that'd eventually be perfected with the _Gato_ class. For all intents and purposes there was only one class of submarine in the US Navy, the fleet submarine, with a few leftover prototypes used for whatever special missions suited them. The Japanese, however, actively developed and built a much more varied force. If the IJN primarily operated cruiser submarines to the exclusion of all else, you'd have a point in that floatplanes nonwithstanding, their boats were going to be big anyways - but they _didn't._This begs the question of where the floatplanes come in; did the Japanese commit to big cruiser subs in such numbers for other reasons, and throw the planes in as an extra on some classes, or did they go big because only those subs could support the planes? Well, I'm not an actual naval historian like **uss-edsall,** but I'm leaning towards the latter. Let's go over all the IJN's cruiser subs in rough order of progression, and note which ones carried floatplanes: [Junsen-types:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junsen_type_submarine#Characteristics) Junsen I, (I-1, I-2, I-3 and I-4,) no plane. Junsen I Mod (the I-5,) carried a plane. Junsen II (I-6,) had a plane. Junsen III (I-7) had a plane. [Type-A boats:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_submarine#Characteristics) All marks carried a floatplane. [Type-B boats:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_B_submarine#Characteristics) All marks carried a floatplane. [Type-C boats:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_C_submarine#Characteristics) None of these carried a floatplane. They apparently traded the displacement for two more torpedo tubes (for a total of 8) and two more stowed Long Lances. So. The first four boats of the Junsen-class (considered obsolete by war's start and regulated to transport missions from the start,) and the Type Cs (11 of them) were without planes. Actually, subtract the three built Type C Mod (I-52) boats, since they were intended as transports. Eight Type Cs, four Junsen-class boats. 12 cruisers without aircraft. Compare this to the three plane-carrying Junsens, the whole A-class (six boats) and the numerous B-class (29 boats.) That's 12 cruisers without aircraft, compared to 38 _with_ aircraft - and the four Junsens were the first boats of their class, laid down in the mid-twenties and already regulated to transport. We can safely subtract those as not representative of Japan's late-thirties/early forties planning priorities, so that gives us eight cruisers without planes to 39 with. Gee, do you think those floatplanes were a priority to them? No? Then consider two of the A-boats, the [A-mods,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_AM_submarine) which were fucking massive boats equipped with hangar space for _two_ planes - [purpose-built bombers, in fact-](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aichi_M6A) which were contemporary efforts to the I-400 (the AMs were laid down at Kobe late '42 thru mid '43, and the I-400s were planned in '42 and laid down January 1943 at Kure.) In other words, these were not late-war V-project Hail Mary's. Considering how consistently the Japanese equipped their cruiser subs with floatplanes, the A-mods and the I-400s together indicate a serious devotion to sub-based floatplanes. Considering how extensively Japanese doctrine offloaded scouting duties onto cruiser-based floatplanes, I'd say I'm on safe ground when I say that increasing the number of scouting floatplanes was something of a doctrinal priority for the IJN. (Using subs for this was moronic, but more on that later.) For the peanut gallery, this is where the mildly interesting historical retrospective ends and the educating begins. It's time to talk about this “doesn't make the boat bigger” bullshit. For starters, if you think the conning tower's size doesn't matter, you should read [this,](http://navsource.org/archives/08/pdf/0829294.pdf) a nice run-down of the evolution of US fleet boat's conning towers throughout the war. You'll note how the large, generous bridge structures - so comfortable for standing surface watches in peacetime - were ruthlessly and consistently cut down as much as possible through the war. This was primarily to reduce the visual silhouette but had consequences for underwater maneuverability as well. When a submerged submarine is trying to turn left or right, the more flat side surface it has, the more effective drag it suffers, and thus the slower it turns. The overall size of the boat is the biggest factor affecting this, but a large conning tower sure doesn't help. Remember that the main application for a fast underwater turn at flank speed was to move sideways out of the path of a charging destroyer, who would lose sonar contact as he hit flank to sprint over you and drop depth charges. How significant was the extra drag of the floatplane hangar, which significantly increased the sub's superstructure? I've got my opinion (not nearly as significant as the silhouette issue) but Japanese sub skippers watching DDs bearing down on them probably had a different one. Nonetheless, the main issue's the sheer size of boat required to fit a hangar on it at all; that 2,500 ton displacement is what _really_ made them slow-turning and slow-diving. The C class shows what the trade-off was - ditching the 2,467 pound E14Y floatplane (and god knows how many tons of aviation fuel, the flight crew/support crew and supplies for them, spare everything for the engine, and the catapult equipment) allowed for a boat 45 tons lighter to mount two more torpedo tubes (and thus, two more Long Lances.) Whether or not the plane was worth more depends on how useful you think the plane was._Having to stay surfaced to recover aircraft:1. As you yourself mentioned, most submarines stayed surfaced for most of the time, regardless of whether or not they had floatplanes. Thus, having to stay surfaced at most times is not in fact an argument against it. And let's say that the submarine somehow was caught while recovering the aircraft. This is an incredibly unlikely proposition, and to my knowledge never occurred, but I'll humor you nonetheless. If it were to happen you'd probably say "fuck you" to the aircraft in question, shut the interior hangar doors, and if you for some reason couldn't close the exterior doors too, you'd just leave the aircraft behind or still in the hangar, which is now flooded full of water and the airplane ruined, but I think you would agree that the submarine is slightly more valuable than a single aircraft. These things are essentially as a slightly bloated fleet boat._You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. For starters, submarines did _not_ under any circumstances run on the surface, in daylight, when in range of land-based airpower. Everyone - the Germans, the Japanese and the Americans - would stay submerged during daylight hours and cover distance on the surface at night. Air power was absolutely _lethal_ to submarines. To illustrate just how much, staying at periscope depth didn't mean you were safe - a sub's shadow could be spotted from above down to 100 feet (and further, if there was a shallow, sandy bottom,) to say nothing of [magnetic anomaly detectors](http://www.subsowespac.org/the-patrol-zone/japanese-airborne-magnetic-detector.shtml). You could expect to be bombed/depth charged by a plane; you just had the advantage of being able to dive immediately instead of thirty-five seconds from now. This wasn't as crippling on boats ability to patrol as you might think; mainly because the best hunting grounds are usually around geographic chokepoints that dictate shipping lanes. Looking at the Pacific, there's all the Javan straits, the Makassar Strait, the Celebes sea (and the many small straits between the island chain linking Indonesia and Mindanao,) the area between Sumatra and Indonesia, etc. Generally speaking, that gave better results than fucking off to the middle of the Pacific and sailing circles around nothing, so that's where subs hunted. And while submerged and slow you had your hydrophones, which could often pick up a merchant convoy in the surface duct from further away than your aloft spotters could see anyway.The bitch about choke points is that the enemy can read a map too, so those areas were the most heavily patrolled, as well, making it nigh fucking suicidal to stay on the surface during daylight hours. It was twice as suicidal if your air search radar was poor or nonexistent (viz. Japanese.) [Mush Morton found that out the hard way,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wahoo_(SS-238)#The_search_for_and_discovery_of_Wahoo) but you could still get whacked a damn good distance from your patrol zone while making best time on the surface by long-range multi-engine MPA planes. Just getting to your patrol zone was dangerous enough _without_ advertising your position. To say _nothing_ of surfacing for a while to recover a floatplane. And you _would_ be surfacing to recover that sumbitch, because if you think the pilot could dead-reckon his way through his search leg, then return and land only for his sub to surface within visual range, you don't know jack shit about aircraft navigation in the 1940s. Once his wristwatch and kneeboard math said he should be in the general area, he'd start eyeballing for his ship. It was hard enough for carrier planes, and they had a formation of eyeballs with looking for their stonking big ship surrounded by other stonking big ships. And even _they_ needed radio navigation aids to stand a good chance of not going into the drink. Looking for a much smaller, low-profile submarine with only two pairs of eyes, one of them busy with the instruments? Yeah, their skipper'd be watching his own wristwatch, ready to surface at the designated appointment time, because glassing for them with the attack periscope doesn't hold a candle to a conning tower full of lookouts and by the time you surface and wave flags at 'em they'd be well out of sight anyway. How long would you have to wait, exposed on the surface? Depends on how long it takes the plane to show up. You could speed it up by broadcasting a signal for them to home on with their D/F loop - if you want to bring every other motherfucker with a D/F loop running your way with depth charges and bombs. There's one way to minimize the danger - launch your plane in the afternoon, so they'll be coming back for landing around dusk. This makes it easier for them to find you quickly, as spotting ships by their silhouette against the horizon was the best way to do it, and you'd have the sun setting behind you (and even if they fucked up and came home on the wrong side, the long shadow of your conning tower would make you more visible anyways.) It also means you'd soon have the cover of night during recovery and stowage operations. The disadvantage is that your hangar-enhanced silhouette would also be more visible to _enemy_ aircraft as you waited for your own, making for a situation where the every aspect of that fucking floatplane would be working in synergy to get you killed. I did a brief Google search to see if there was any actual information on Japanese submarine floatplane operations and doctrine, and found nothing. The fact that combatreform.com is on the first page of Google results hints to me that there's little online to be found. I _did_ stumble across combinedfleet's record for I-31, which mentions [one Glen lost on landing in rough seas, and one near sighting by a hostile aircraft while they had their dicks out trying to winch a Glen on board,](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-31.htm) so there's a nice illustrative anecdote of why you're being pretty fucking glib about the dangers - especially considering that I-31 was eventually killed by a sharp-eyed PBY pilot. Oh hell, why not skim through a few of these pages real quick - oh, look, I-19 [was caught fucking about with her floatplane](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-19.htm) _thrice_ during the war, with two planes lost as a result. Top notch. [I-36](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-36.htm) is a fine example of the problems I describe - one floatplane never found the sub at all in the dark, despite it running great risks by flashing running lights and using radio, and another couldn't find it till sunrise - and they promptly scuttled it rather than spend a single hour in daylight recovering it, due to the danger of detection. Oh, before I forget - being spotted on the surface during flight ops entails more than just losing the aircraft after crash-diving. Your problems aren't over just because you dove. The enemy's not going to just shrug, say “ho-hum” and piss off. They're going to start looking for you with active sonar while radioing for every escort and aircraft available to converge on your location and do the same. **A detected sub is a sub with problems.** This was as true in 1942 as it is today._Problems recovering aircraft:I can't speak of any difficulties they encountered, other than that they clearly somehow managed to figure out how to do it, and even if it was slightly more difficult than a 10,000 ton cruiser would have it, they're still launching and recovering a floatplane. That's a pretty big advantage._“Slightly more difficult?” Motherfucker, you don't know what you're talking about. I suggest you read this [ugly but very informative page](http://www.pacificwar.org.au/Midway/RalphWilhelm/SeagullIndex.html) full of first-hand information from a SOC Seagull pilot on how difficult seaplane operations were on a cruiser - where you had a _much_ larger crane, mounted on a much bigger and stable vessel to work with. There is _nothing_ easy about naval aviation even with the best facilities and conditions you could ask for. With the meager equipment and crew available on a submarine? Compare [these](https://thearmoredpatrol.com/2016/08/01/eyes-of-the-fleet-ww2-american-seaplane-operations/) pictures of hoisting operations to the size of the crane in the illustration you linked - I'd bet my bottom dollar they had to take the floats off before swinging the plane over the deck, and with such limited reach there was _no_ room for error; the slightest swell was liable to smack the plane into the hull._Slightly_ more difficult? Wew, lad.I'm on page six and I still haven't gotten to the worst parts yet. Fuck you for making me do this. _Aircraft Performance Concerns, otherwise known as "muh 70 nmi":1. First of all, the aircraft in question could do it more out to 200 nmi per leg. Now, that'd put them fairly low on fuel for the return flight home, but the most numerous airplane, the E14Y "Glen", could go out 200 nmi, cut left for 30 nmi, then fly the 200 nmi back home, and still have 45 nmi worth of reserve fuel. That seems pretty good, by my reckoning. Of course, even if he's only flying 150 nmi legs, that's still fantastic. Reasoning provided more later._There's “I don't know what I'm talking about” and then there's flat-out failing to _think._ Here's the [Yokosuka E14Y “Glen,”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokosuka_E14Y) the most commonly used floatplane by IJN submarines. And here's the earlier [“Slim.”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watanabe_E9W) They have something in common with the Mitsubishi F1M “Pete” and of course the SOC Seagull - **they were not great scout planes.** The SOC Seagull and Pete were contemporaries and similar in many respects; they were meant for short-range recon, anti-submarine patrol, and, of course, gunnery spotting. This is reflected in both their performance and range - they all manage around 400-500 nautical miles. Compare that to a dedicated scout floatplane like the [Aichi E13A “Jake”,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aichi_E13A) and its range of 1,100 nautical miles. Given the weight and volume restrictions of a fucking submarine hangar, I didn't even bother looking up those floatplanes before guesstimating their range, and I was right - they were Pete/Seagull tier. The Glen made 475nm (better than the Pete, worse than the Seagull) and the Slim barely managed 400.So about those “200 mile legs.” You can make that “200 mile leg,” singular - they could fly 200 miles out, and then fly 200 miles home. _Nominal_ eyeball range for a scout plane flying around 1,500-2,000 feet was about 25nm. That's not exactly a covering much of the horizon. Assuming you actually want to search an area _around_ your fucking submarine, looking for prey, you're going to be flying search patterns:[How the fuck do I embed an externally hosted image god I fucking hate tumblr](http://i.imgur.com/z8zTXtM.jpg)70nm is probably generous. **Simply put, the ocean is a lot fucking bigger than what one plane can visually recon.** They had decent enough reach to recon important facilities, like a harbor or anchorage, but as volume search for supporting the efforts of the submarine and/or other warships they were decidedly lacking, just as the cruiser-carried Pete was. Which brings me to this: _Now, on to the issue of planes being visible. Yes, yes they are visible. That's the tradeoff. You can sneak in to get eyes on without anyone noticing, but let's be realistic here, the submarine can't see very far, especially not without a good surface search radar. Contrast that with a floatplane. They quite inarguably give you much better reconnaissance capabilities, being able to spot both enemy fleet assets as part of a wider search effort as well as enabling a submarine's primary mission: destruction of enemy shipping._One plane simply isn't going to be searching very much ocean area. The Petes and Seagulls on cruisers were mainly used for ASW patrol to catch subs making a surface approach, not for area search at significant distance from the fleet. Worse, if it _does_ find enemy shipping it's likely to be spotted, thus advertising its presence and prompting said ships - merchant or otherwise - to pile on the coal at flank, which makes it immensely more difficult to catch up and move into position for a submerged approach and attack. If they weren't zig-zagging, they sure are now, and their lookouts are awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. To say nothing of how subs are typically running offensive operations in _hostile waters,_ which is what they're built for - that's also hostile airspace. If they have air search radars on nearby islands that plane will attract more attention to your presence, and faster, than you might've bargained for. _But yes, the enemy MIGHT notice the plane. It's not guaranteed. But let's assume they do._Yeah, naw, it's fairly fuckin easy, dingleberry. Here, lets flip through combinedfleet's tabular movement records and just ctrl-F “floatplane:” [I-21](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-21.htm) launches a plane to recon a harbor prior to a midget sub attack, at night. Said plane is caught by spotlights and spotted conspicuously circling near the USS Chicago before it's run off. The follow-up midget sub attack totals a Dutch (i.e. useless) submarine and a harbor ferry, missing the CA completely. It's almost like they knew they were coming, or something. [I-29](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-29.htm) launched a reece mission on Sydney harbor but was detected on radar _and_ had its transmission decoded. [I-30's](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-30.htm) floatplane tries to reconnoiter Djibouti but finds it _extremely_ fucking shooty and is sent packing by naval AA. A follow-up scouting mission goes better and the following midget-sub attack manages to hit HMS Ramillies and a 6,000 ton tanker. (The Wikipedia article notes the plane was spotted, prompting the old British battleship to change berths.)[I-36](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-36.htm), as already mentioned, lost her floatplane when it couldn't find the submarine again in the dark, but here note that despite a night visit the plane was promptly illuminated by searchlights and sent packing. This ain't an exhaustive survey, or anything, just the first several links I clicked. _All they know from that spotting is that there's somewhere that it's flying off of within 200 nmi of there. They might even know the rough direction it's going, though that's not guaranteed. As I'm sure you're aware if you've played CMANO, a circle with a radius 200 nmi is a ludicrously large area to search. By my math, roughly 125,000 nmi^2. To say this makes the prospect of locating the submarine in that amount of ocean is difficult would be a massive understatement. Now sure, there are areas where the submarine is more likely to be than others, but it's STILL an insane amount of area to cover. No, this argument makes no sense, especially to someone who presumably realizes the ability of a CSG to remain undetected through clever maneuvering, and they're a fleet of massive surface ships._The sheer number of subs sunk by airpower during WWII put the lie to this claim; _especially_ when you take into account the introduction of radar to aircraft around mid-war. [The krauts were particularly roughly handled;](http://uboat.net/fates/losses/cause.htm) note that the “Aircraft” column is strictly boats killed _directly_ by airpower. The Brits sure found them in the Bay of Biscay pretty fucking often. There's a map, and it's [a lot of fucking boats.](http://uboat.net/maps/biscay.htm) 69, to be precise. As the page puts it, “This body of water was known as the Valley of Death among U-boat men from 1943 onwards.” Yeah. But how big is the Bay of Biscay, again...? [Seriously why can't I switch between Ritch Text and Markdown without it fucking up all the goddamned syntax](http://i.imgur.com/ySdIEgn.jpg)Gee, by my math, at _least_ 125,000 nmi^2. What are the fucking chances, huh? I'll be blunt; you clearly don't understand the sheer density of airpower that the Allies were able to bring to bear - a capacity that any Japanese war planner would have known about well ahead of time. Especially considering their entire fleet was built around a strategy to _counter_ US manufacturing superiority. When a floatplane - a _small_ floatplane - is spotted over a harbor, it's basically ringing a dinner bell and telling every ASW aircraft the enemy has that there's subs nearby to be found. It changes a literal ocean of possibility into a small box of certainty. 125,000 square nautical miles isn't _shit_ compared to the size of the entire Pacific ocean, and the Allies had plenty of goddamn planes. The “Valley of Death” is a good testament to what can be done with a 125,000 square nautical mile search box. It was so effective they literally started [sailing around the fucking thing.](http://uboat.net/maps/piening-route.htm) If you think 200nm by 200nm is a big area to search, you should look at a map of the Pacific for some perspective. _Crash Diving, sonar, etc. :1. We've already established that they're effectively the same size and nearly the same shape as normal fleet boats. They aren't going to be much different from them in a crash dive. They aren't going to have a much larger sonar return._As we've already established, the aircraft-carrying subs were all cruiser boats of around 2,500 tons displacement, so they would all crash-dive and maneuver like pregnant whales, and were probably louder than said whales in labor on active sonar. I guess if you're hell-bent on building a big, fat-assed, shallow-diving, slow-turning, easily-detected deathtrap of a boat _anyways_ then sticking a floatplane on it is just the cherry on the suicide cake, but as I said earlier I rather suspect the Japanese built cruisers for the sake of having a flight platform as much as anything else. _And good fucking luck with that hunter killer group, crossing hundreds of nautical miles of ocean looking for a fucking submarine, because they ain't going to find JACK SHIT. Even if the hunter killer group only had to cover 70 nmi, the submarine will have cleared datum long before it gets to the last spotted location. It will be long fucking gone._Twinn, I want to take it easy because you're usually cool on IRC and all, but you're a fucking idiot sometimes. “Hundreds of nautical miles?” Do you think ASW vessels just sit in port with their thumbs up their fucking asses waiting for an MPA to radio a report? No, they spread out over the area and search on their own (if it's someplace important, like, say, a major fleet anchorage, or near a chokepoint/strait/shipping lane,) or they're guarding a convoy, in which case they can rely on the sub coming to _them_. For just one example, the demise of [I-18](http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-18.htm). Spotted only nine miles from the task force by an OS2U Kingfisher based off a cruiser. The Kingfisher marked her with a smoke float and whistled up the USS Fletcher, name ship of her class, to come rub her out of existence, which she promptly does. And what the _actual_ fuck do you mean “cleared datum?” Are you retarded? If the spotted submarine stays on the surface, the aircraft will soon become two aircraft will become four will become six eight ten as everyone rushes over to have a go. At the very _least_ the sub will be shadowed. Perhaps forever, if the aircraft's a [blimp,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-class_blimp#Operational_history), which was used specifically for its ability to squat atop a sub and vector in additional air and surface assets. But I guess you could dive and “clear datum” at **three fucking knots submerged.** Spoilers, you ain't clearing **shit**, motherfucker. In fact, you're not surfacing again until nightfall, which means you're not going very far. Lets say you're spotted at noon in high summer, so there's eight whole hours of daylight ahead of you. MPAs will be squatting on your head the whole time, and you'll be making your best sustained speed (any faster and the batteries drain faster than an Osprey mechanic's will to live) so that's 3 knots, for these IJN cruiser boats. If the closest enemy destroyers are 100nm away, then you're 100nm away from anything worth attacking, and thus you've just been inconvenienced during your ingress (assuming you dodged the initial air attack and were not permanently indisposed.) If they're 50nm away, on the other hand, in about ninety minutes you'll have the destroyers on your ass. You'll have managed to move about 4.2 nautical miles, yielding a circular area of 55.42 square nautical miles to search. A destroyer squadron (five ships) will have 11 square nautical miles each to search. Against a huge-ass cruiser sub I'd expect them to get solid active returns anywhere under 3,000 yards, for sure - enough to know they've roughly located you, at least. (Incidentally, that's almost the exact range Fletcher got solid contact on I-18 at, so I guess Aces of the Deep and Silent Hunter IV got their math right.) That's about 1.5nm. I think five destroyers can manage. And this is assuming the aircraft can't maintain contact at all with MAD or sonobouys (invented in 1942.) Not everything's a destroyer, of course; but anything you'd want to get close to for hunting - for instance, the Eastern Coast of the US, if you were a kraut beating the drum - will be well patrolled by slower sub-chasers that know you'll be coming to them (such as convoys, along well-traveled coastlines, etc.) “Clear datum,” my dying ass. Only in your private fantasy world where navies don't patrol contested waters in wartime. We built 343 PC-461 class and 438 SC-497 class sub chasers alone, to say nothing of destroyers and destroyer escorts. If you were within fifty miles of something worth attacking, scouting, or shadowing, you'd have escorts on your ass fast if you were spotted. _Let's go back to the floatplane and discuss what it provides._This is what everything hinges on, and the thing I've been waiting to rip your head off over, but I'm on page nine at 3AM, so my usual unholy glee has soured into something fell and terrible. You brought this upon yourself. _If I wished to make use of my submarines to support my fleet actions in any way, you'd bet your ass I'd want them to have floatplanes. I'd want every fucking vessel in my navy to have floatplanes. However, submarines can actually work like the pickets of old, ranging far and wide away from the main fleet, and still having a decent chance at detecting the enemy, especially when used en masse.__En masse,_ he says. _En_ fucking _masse._ With their _one_ plane apiece. _Create a screen with a few dozen submarines carrying floatplanes, alternating flying days. You get all the benefits of having normal submarines doing the job, which are already sizeable, with the added benefit of having a dozen floatplanes ranging far and wide in search of the enemy, preventing him from getting the jump on you or letting you find him so you can get the jump on him. And remember, you're still a submarine. You're still more stealthy than any other vessel, particularly at night. Yes, even when surfaced._A beautiful description of the submarine picket line that never happened at Midway, followed shortly by the annihilation of 2/3rds of Japan's fleet carriers. _Sloooow claaaaap._ Speaking of Midway, it really put things into perspective vis a vis “picket lines,” so I'm going to summarize from Parshall and Tully's book _Shattered Sword._ They summarize Genda's scouting plan for the Japanese fleet thusly, on page 110: “Put simply, seven planes could not reconnoiter an area the size of Sweden. By way of comparison, the U.S. Navy was not only planning on devoting the thirty-one PBYs based at Midway for scouting duties, but could call on three squadrons of armed Dauntless dive-bombers (fifty-six aircraft in all,) from their carriers in an armed scout role as well. The PBYs by themselves would outnumber the Japanese scout aircraft by more than four to one.” To re-iterate, the sum total of _every_ floatplane-carrying cruiser sub Japan had built by war's end was 38 boats, mustering a total of 40 aircraft (counting the two per A-mod boat.) This was a search area of 176,000 square miles, incidentally. So if you somehow assembled _every fucking cruiser sub_ the Japanese ever built in one place, for one battle, the number of scout planes they could assemble would be adequate, at _best._ Meanwhile, in reality, that was never, ever going to happen. But what about supporting fleet ops with extra planes, you say? The limited range of those Glens was a problem (at Midway one of Haruna's Petes flew search line #7, flying a 150nm leg and a 40nm dogleg before homing, whereas the Jakes from the cruisers flew 300 mile legs and 60nm doglegs. SBD Dauntless's practical combat radius? 250nm.) But you can position the submarines forward a bit to make up that range difference. So, how much would they help? Well, at Midway, _Tone_ and _Chikuma_ (cruisers designed specifically to carry lots of scouting floatplanes) could've ditched their two Petes to carry two more Jakes into battle - four more scouts right there. And CruDiv7, instead of holding their limp dicks hundreds of miles away shepherding the invasion force, could've been attached to the carriers, yielding plenty more AA fire _and_ a dozen additional floatplanes. Then there was the simple expedient of launching a handful of the carrier's complement - _Kaga's_ extra B5N _chutai_ of nine planes would've done nicely. With a little more thinking, Japan could've mustered 25 additional aircraft...... or, _or_ they could've taken [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_seaplane_carrier_Nisshin#Operational_history) ship out of the fucking Main Body and attached it to the strike force. Yes, this ship was “present” at Midway and carried a whopping _twenty-five_ floatplanes on its own.So you tell me what makes more sense - using _one_ seaplane carrier to augment the main fleet's scouting power, or devoting _twenty-five_ submarines to the same task, to muster the same amount of aircraft? Oh, remember, the subs have far less fuel, spare parts, repair facilities, etc; so don't expect nearly as many sorties, and more casualties from accidents. And you know what those twenty-five subs are _not_ doing while they're fucking around with the planes? *ATTACKING THE FUCKING ENEMY.* Compare this to the performance of I-168, a Kaidai-class “fleet boat” of 1400 tons displacement. At Midway she observed the island day _and_ night, providing 24/7 intelligence on US air activity. Then she was able to relocate to find and attack the _Yorktown,_ achieving in one blow what _Kido Butai_ could not before enduring a prolonged depth-charging from her vengeful escorts - and surviving to fight again. What was she _not_ doing? Fucking around with floatplanes. BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T HAVE ONE. It's pants-on-head retarded to use cruiser subs and their ONE PLANE APIECE as a distant screen, because even a large number of boats would have insufficient aircraft to conduct a volume search, and with their limited flight facilities, they'd be launching a limited number of sorties anyway - and would be far enough forward to be endangered by hostile air patrols themselves. And operating closer, in support of a fleet, they're not far forward enough to actually attack directly (you know, the point of a fucking submarine,) and they're a very expensive way to contribute airpower that surface ships can carry much more of, much more cost-effectively. _If I were to think about how I might integrate floatplane carrying submarines with a larger fleet I would have several options. First, they might be my normal fleet boats, just with a bonus. Second, they could be used as a command vessel in charge of a wolfpack of submarines, finding targets and providing space for the requisite command facilities, so that the SUBRON might gangbang its enemies. Third, have them as an independent unit for fleet support and reconnaissance. You know how US subs would often take a peak at islands and their bases? You can do the same thing from air, with arguably greater results. A single aircraft can likely get in and out. Certainly happened enough._Incidentally, just from the tabular movement records I linked from combinedfleet.com to go on, it seems the floatplanes were most often used neither for fleet support searching, nor volume search to direct the sub's own attack, but as high-value recon over valuable installations difficult to reach otherwise (witness the visits to Pearl Harbor,) and several times as the reconnoiter prelude to a follow-up attack by midget subs carried by accompanying boats, which was even successful in the case of the HMS Ramillies at Diego Suarez. “Getting in and out” was ideal for those kinds of missions. And speaking of command vessels, apparently the [Type A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_submarine) subs were equipped for just that, suggesting you're right about the expected usage doctrine. (I'm saying that said doctrine was _fucking stupid._) The I-168's recon of Midway illustrates the real power of submarines as intel assets, which remains relevant today - the ability to keep eyes on a port, harbor or airbase _without the enemy knowing you're watching._ It's persistent, and stealthy. If you telegraph your knowledge, the enemy can take action and alter their plans accordingly. A sneak-peek is valuable at a major rear-area fleet base like Pearl, where ships go for rest and refit. Even if they put to sea the next day, you know they're out of the combat theater for a few weeks at _least._ Even if the enemy knows you know, they can't do much about it, either. A sneak peek at a forward anchorage? Not so much. The 24/7 intel a submerged sub watching quietly from offshore can deliver is far more valuable, there, because the data's more tactical and time-sensitive (setting up an ambush on a convoy leaving port, for instance,) and is far less useful if the enemy knows they've been compromised (convoy zigzags aggressively and keeps flank speed till they're out of the area, etc.) _So with that in mind, what have we learned? Well, what I hope we've learned is not to make assumptions based on prejudice and to give ideas a fair and evenhanded evaluation before deciding your opinions on them, but I'll accept the acceptance that floatplanes on submarines are not necessarily a bad idea._\_-EvilTwinn_And I hope you've learned that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and that you should probably do a little more research before lecturing me on how I'm “blinded by my hatred of the Japanese and unwilling to consider the objective truths.”

[selflovinalicia]

Interesting title I know… but bear with me until I get to that story.

Whenever I am not at home, ie. college, vacation, a friend’s house, I always wake up super super early the first few days I am there. This was no exception. I woke up at around 6:30 or 7 (I don’t remember). I didn’t get up though, mainly because I didn’t want to wake any of my three roommates nor did I know how to get out of my bed.

Once my roommates had gotten up and gone downstairs, I basically cannonballed off of my bed (which really hurt) tumbled on the ground and made my way downstairs as well.

  The view from my room

Breakfast that day (and every day) consists of bread and marmalade (Peru is known for their Marmalade and it’s amazing!), and a variety of exotic fruits.

After Breakfast, all of the new girls (Marissa, Annie, Skylar, Tressia, and myself) along with Leo and Clara made our way to Plaza San Miguel to exchange money and make ourselves acquainted with the plaza since we would spend quite a bit of time and money there.

We made it back just in time for lunch which was a really yummy pasta salad, rice, and a salad. If you think that’s a ton of carbs you should wait for every other meal (everyone always complains and I just think it’s annoying).

  just a bathroom mirror selfie of a sleepy, peruvian gal

After lunch, all of the new girls squeezed ourselves into a taxi and headed to Miraflores (a very touristy area on a cliff displaying the Pacific Ocean in all of its glory). In Miraflores, we walked along Parque Kennedy, which is named after President JFK. This park is full of stray cats just walking around and doing their thing. The urge to pet them was so real, yet we didn’t because A. who knows what they had on/in them and B. they were quite skiddish around humans (no doubt due to some little kids trying to yank their tails).

A very pretty bull

Una Catedral

gato

gato

By this time, the five of us had all opened up about being nervous the night before and for the same reasons. We had talked about families, friends, past trips, so many things and we were really getting comfortable around each other.

By the time we had finished telling stories, we were at Larcomar, a shopping center with about the same sorts of stores that the Panama airport had. There we walked around, took pictures of the coast, talked with some locals etc.

View of the Ocean from LarcoMar

Some of the other girls in the house had told us about this Incan Market that was by Miraflores. Marissa wanted a bag, I wanted to look around and see the colors, and the other girls didn’t have a preference of what we were doing so… after a 25-minute walk or so we made it to the Incan market. The market was full of colored bracelets, bags, sweatshirts and more, alpaca blankets were displayed on every wall, and so many hand-carved trinkets. It was such a sight to see and while I didn’t buy anything that day (I didn’t want to lose anything) I will definitely make my way back to the Incan Market later in my trip to get some goodies.

After Marissa bartered for a bag and we had scanned the entire market, we hailed a taxi and were on our way back to the volunteer house.

The Incan Market

After dinner,  seven of the eight people who hadn’t gone out of town for the weekend decided to go to Miraflores to go clubbing. Well, the three older people (the 4 new girls were exhausted but we wanted to see what clubbing in Peru would be like… so we tagged along). Apparently buying alcohol in bars and clubs in Peru is just as expensive as the States, but buying bottled liquor is much cheaper so we walked to a local grocery store and came out with 2 bottles of $4 vodka, a knock off orange juice, and plastic cups.

We took a cab to Miraflores(where most of the nightlife happens) and started passing out the mixed drinks. (PS I am legal here so it’s all good). When our drinks were being poured and distributed, I had the pleasure of being the first sip. It tasted like cough medicine that your parents have to force down your throat when you’re little. But we had a lot of it to drink so we shoved it down our throats.

We had a man from Cusco take this.

After we finished our drinks (well Marisa hid the vodka bottle in a bush), we got to the club. At the club, they played a variety of English and Spanish music and had an insane amount of flashing strobes. it was nothing too fancy, but it was nice to be able to check out the party scene of Peru.

I got home with 2 of the other girls at around 230 that morning and immediately passed out in bed, and the other 4 didn’t get home until 5. Nevertheless, we were up at 730 to explore Lima some more.

Sunday was a lot more laid back. We took a taxi to Barranco, a less touristy, more local city by the ocean. There we found a cute cafe and Skylar had her first acai bowl, and there was a very very cute Colombian barista who complimented my Spanish speaking abilities.

We got lunch in Barranco after walking along the beach for a bit. For lunch, I got grilled veggies and rice, and tried Sangria for the first time. It was good but definitely not my favorite drink in the world.

Cafe with acai bowl and frozen coffee

After lunch, we went to this little sort of Farmer’s Market, called Feria, which had clothes, food, soaps, cosmetic products, and just anything you could think of. We didn’t buy anything there but looking around was really nice. A few of the booths even had fake Kylie lip kits, which I thought was rather funny.

After walking around all day in the scorching heat, we needed something sweet. We found this little gelateria called Blu, which had a line wrapped around the entire block, which made us sure it had to be good. They also had sorbet (vegan!) so I was able to indulge in an amazing banana mango mixture that was absolutely heavenly.

Gelateria

We ate our gelato/sorbet in a park in Barranco which was filled with cute puppies and live music, an A+ on all ends if you ask me.

We finally made it back to the volunteer house, ate dinner, showered, and promptly fell asleep, awaiting what was to come n the following four weeks.

Alicia

Warm vodka

Interesting title I know… but bear with me until I get to that story. Whenever I am not at home, ie.

Warm vodka Interesting title I know... but bear with me until I get to that story. Whenever I am not at home, ie.