#i mostly write stuff and then save it to drafts instead of posting. esp if its random personal musings

[froget-me-nots]

i am going to be kind to myself about it. i will feel guilty about being kind to myself and then i will do it anyways. i will mess up over and over and over and still deserve kindness.

[nautilusgays]

heyy was stalking the thread about how Pierre would look, and loved loved loved all the suggestions! For some reason I always imagined him as a blonde with blue eyes - standard European lolll. I was wondering if you have any headcannons about what physical traits Nemo likes in Pierre, and any sort of other day-to-day stuff about them? No pressure ofcc:)

Oh goodness sorry for this late response!! I saved it as a draft instead of posting!!

I love that thread too omg it's so cool to see everyone's ideas 😍😍 and then the art work too!!!

I love the standard European look too - I deffo think as a baby/young kid he had that angelic blonde wavy hair, which got a little less wavy and darker with age but he had that baby angel look for sure and everyone would coo over him.

I think his eyes have the cool like yellow flecks around the pupil and have that semi colour changing thing that light eyes have - they're full of light and have a like dappled spring forest with a river kind vibe. It contrasts with Nemo's very dark eyes (which Pierre loves) and also they remind Nemo of both land and water - maybe a bit cliché of a like parallel but I'm sticking to it! Basically he's such a Natrual Sciences professor/connected to the natural world it's even reflected in his eyes!

And Nemo really likes Pierre's eyes and holding eye contact with him and just enjoying his presence so totally.

Pierre has quite a few little scars from encounters with wildlife (despite Conseil's best efforts to keep him safe) he also has some callouses from writing and doing conservation/preservation stuff and a lot of walking (Natrual researchers who are in the field as much as Pierre seems to be are gonna be walking far). Nemo likes all of this because it shows survival but also that despite his upper class, (mostly)city upbringing Pierre is so connected to his studies and the world - he doesn't have the hands of an aristocrat or academic who sits in an ivory tower. However; the stories of a lot of the scars (especially of Pierre climbing things or getting too close to wildlife) cause him anxiety despite the fact they happened years ago and has declared Pierre is not allowed to go exploring without his and Conseil's supervision.

Obviously he loves Pierre's freckles, especially the ones on his shoulders...👀

Also loves the length and texture of Pierre's hair cause it's easy to run his hands through - when Pierre cuddles next to him or lies his head on his lap Nemo will often pet/play with his hair, which Pierre loves and often falls asleep. Pierre enjoys brushing and braiding Nemo's hair but Nemo also enjoys looking after Pierre's, sometimes he washes and brushes it.

Nemo loooves that Pierre is smaller than him and will pick him up randomly - sometimes it's cute and romantic, but other times it's like picking up/scruffing a cat (Pierre wants to keep working or touch something dangerous). He also knows Pierre likes their size and strength difference and uses that to tease - well, Pierre likes the size difference unless he is being put in air jail for working too much or 'scientific curiosity' (touching/approaching dangerous things).

Hope you enjoyed this very late lil thing!! I had fun thinking about it - esp Pierre just being picked up and moved for being silly.

Thank you again for the ask I looooove them so much!

[migook]

Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh take two. I started this post, saved as a draft and then POOF. it gone.

Anyway first off wow this is post 100 and i’m like CAN U BELIEVE but also woooow that’s sad cos for as long as I’ve had this blog I.... should have posted way more, but whatever can’t change the past!

Obligatory spiel about my absence: January was a really shit month, as January tends to be for me, and so it’s taken me an unnecessarily long time to get back here and to my studying, but now that I’ve got my books out again, everything feels SO GOOD. I can’t describe how good it feels to be somewhere in my book and able to figure out what I’m reading and understand things with certain clarity. I find often I spend a lot of time struggling to really understand what I’m taking in and thus not really taking it in at all and it basically makes me feel very muddled and confused and not like I’m learning anything. So to reach a point - ESPECIALLY after a really bad phase of fogginess and incomprehension - where things just CLICK and I can actually not only understand but EXPLAIN them? Guh, it’s an indescribable feeling. I can’t compare it to anything else.

But like I said, January was just terrible. I was reading back on old entries in here and there was a post or two that were just difficult to read for that reason. It was a long period of doing nothing but sleeping or wanting to sleep and an awful, impenetrable foggy haze and nothing was retained. I started back where I left off, under my recent plans that I’ll just spend less time doing excessive reviews and hoping it’ll come back to me or I can figure it out by context but it was so obvious I retained nothing that I HAD to do a review. Fortunately, I’d only just started EWHA 2-1 so it wasn’t like I had a LOT to review but it was definitely necessary! I struggled so much with it back then that by the time I reviewed it now, it was practically new.

On the bright side, the review made me REALLY understand things! That’s not to say it was totally easy. I definitely struggled this time around and had to look up some things or else ask Kat for help (she insists she did nothing but she was literally the key to me understanding -에 비해서 because the book didn’t explain it well at all and even the study guide didn’t help me enough because I just was in that weird plastic-wrapped brain feeling where nothing actually sinks in!)

The point I’m getting at is: it was one of those times where a review was highly necessary and I’m really happy with this feeling of understanding. At night I’ve been trying to review grammar points in my head before I sleep, which is something I should become more diligent with.

Now that I’m caught up to where I was before, I think I’m going to take a break from plunging on and just work with the grammar and vocabulary I’ve learned, so that I can try to make them REALLY stick. I was talking on twitter about this, but twitter is twitter so it’s really hard to express myself sometimes but. I want to get to a point where these grammar points are a little more inherent. To this day, the only grammar point that I consider to be TRULY inherent to me is -고 싶다 lmao but a lot of them I can typically recall or understand when I read, but I need to reach the point where if i want to speak or write something, I don’t have to spend 800 years thinking of it - and that’s where I am right now. Obviously this means I have to give myself a lot of writing exercises, so that’s what I’m going to do! As well as that, I know flashcards aren’t the most useful things, but I think as a supplement, they work well for me. In the end, the best way to learn vocabulary is by USING it and coming up with sentences that you can recall, and reading things and just immersing yourself with it, but in that sense, flashcards can help if only to drill a sense of familiarity. (But never rely on flashcards alone!)

I guess this post doesn’t say very much at all but mostly it’s just serving as my own update. I have a lot of notes but I’m not sure how I wanna blog them, so I guess instead I wanna work on writing things first. Another thing I mentioned on twitter re: retaining grammar points is that for a lot of these, I don’t speak the way they do. My voice is very strong, I know, and I have a very certain manner of speaking, and that’s a big thing about learning another language is learning to think in the way of that new language. How I speak in English may not translate well to Korean. I certainly don’t have enough grammar knowledge, I don’t think, to do so yet, and maybe I never will - and that’s okay. English =/= Korean. So a big part of this practice of writing with grammar points is learning to think in that manner. I think this is maybe whey it’s so hard for me to sometimes write sentences? (That and my belief that my vocabulary is far more limited than it really is.) Learning to think in new ways is difficult, especially when you’re so very set in your own ways! But it’s such a necessity. Therefore, I plan to start small by doing things like writing 10 sentences and then maybe I’ll do 10 more, but incorporating more grammar points. (For example, the aforementioned -에 비해서 made use of this with some of their sample and practice sentences, where they’d throw in things like 어제 본 영화는 재미있어요? And you’d be surprised at how often that sometimes throws me for a loop. I really do forget so much that I can say things like “Was the movie you saw yesterday fun?” like. It’s just PROOF that I need to do so much work! Note taking and studying only does so much, duh! Stop being lazy self!)

Mostly I’m just in this really great position of understanding things and being able to use them and I know once I forage ahead it’ll be all new stuff, and that’s okay. As long as I get myself feeling even better about using these pieces, I’ll be good! Like I said before, I really, really love how it feels to be at this place - esp when I’ve had so many bouts of feeling worthless and stupid and just incapable of a lot of things. It feels good to feel like I’m LEARNING and going somewhere, instead of reading, comprehending and then struggling. Aaaaaaaah!