#overall im still watching the same 10 vocabulary videos

[jesterlaughingstock]

In my sign language learning endeavour sometimes i watch these videos of city names and oh my god like 70% of those cities are the most random middle of nowhere towns that I never heard of before in my life

[sanstropfremir]

please let me join the dance conversation since it's the form of art i am actually the most interested in. i've been dancing as a kid for 6 years, and i don't mean to say that that gave me any type of authority in the domain, but it did leave me with the slight ability to recognize a good performance (or whatever makes a good performance to me, personally) and a great appreciation for valueing dancing as acting, like you said. too often i've seen dance ranking videos from actual life-long dancers who value technical skill above anything else. even if they take into consideration the facial expressions, it doesn't hold much weight and that always lowkey pissed me off. because when i am watching a performance, i care way more about the emotional delivery rather than the technical one. of course, this is not to disregard skill, because emotion without skill just ends up messy. good enough to appreciate as a form of authentic self-expression, but still messy, and mess won't make you a good dancer.

i've really enjoyed seeing you say dancing and acting have a mutual component since i've always felt that way too but never knew how to put it in words. two groups that come in mind when thinking about this are blackpink and itzy, i have no idea how familiar you are with them so i'm sorry if the following come across as foreign to you. but i gotta say, regarding bp, i think there's always been discourse over lisa vs rose as the best dancer. technically, everybody knows lisa is miles ahead, and i have to say she has decent stage presence and some pretty nice facial expressions too (taking into consideration how limited bp's concepts have been so far). rose, on the other hand, has a certain style that appeals to a specific audience (which i am not a part of, her lack of body control is so irritating sometimes) but i can see why some would find her charming. i would say her stage presence is decent too, but i can't help but choose lisa over her, and not just because i'm biased. but because in order to be a true dancer, you need the right balance between technique and emotion that gives your performance that star-value and appeal. and let's be real, kpop is really lacking in that "true dancer" department.

another dancing discourse that goes on is in the itzy fandom, where fans are pitting yeji and chaeryeong against each other. their techniques are quite different but they are each very good in their respective style. now, i've seen people call yeji the better "idol dancer" since she has better developed facial expressions, and chaeryeong the better "overall dancer" since people value her technique more. and i'm just like, no. emotion makes or breaks a dancer. everyone can learn technique, but emotion is hard to fake, and when you do, the non-authenticity is very much obvious.

that's why i love san as a dancer. he might not be the most technically skilled, but he is skilled enough to hold his own. and his way of living in the performance, of just letting every feel of the song wash over him and show the audience 110% and more - nothing compares to that, no amount of technicality. stage presence is something you just have, and no matter how much you train for it, you will pale in comparison to a natural.

wow, this is really long so thank you if you take the time to read it all and respond. english is not my first language and sometimes i'm having trouble finding the right words to get my point across exactly how i think of it in my mind, so i hope the message is delivered accurately, haha :D also, i must add i love the way you talk, your speech has a flow and a uniqueness to it you don't find everyday. and we love a developed vocabulary<3 may i ask how old you are?

thank you for the compliment, thats very sweet of you! english is my native language and i have spent just as much time, if not longer doing academics as i have doing performance work so at this point ive developed a very specific style. there’s a joke that theatre design is 90% communication and only 10% design, and it’s not wrong. it helps that i like to talk and my brain works very fast sometimes.

im glad you took the time to write this out! and don't apologize for your english, it's excellent and very clear. you are correct i know very little about blackpink and itzy but i would likely agree with you, dance is equal parts emotion and technique and that is my preference in idols as well. but i don’t think that the kpop industry needs to have ‘true’ dancers, though. yes it is fun to watch those who are technically and charismatically gifted in dance, it is only a portion of the experience that they market. also i think we lose a bit of objectivity in kpop because all idols are required to dance, but i dont think ive seen one recently that's a legitimately bad dancer. even the ‘worst’ dancers that i can think of are still leagues better than the average person on the street, but we see them as ‘bad’ because they work directly alongside peers who are legitimately gifted and have a passion for dance as a form. 

it's interesting to hear you say that everyone can learn technique but emotion is hard to fake, because i hear a lot of dancers say that. i think this comes from a misunderstanding of what exactly acting is and how it works. i would argue that a statement closer to the sentiment that you (and many others) are trying to get is ‘not everyone can do both at the same time.’ the average person is no more predisposed to acting then they are to dance, because acting is a skill that can be taught and exercised in the same way dance can. sure, there are people that have a higher latent ability, but if you put in the work, you can learn. why do you think there are acting classes and schools and conservatories? you can get a doctorate in acting if you really want to. the thing about acting is that in order to be good at it, you have to both understand and be able to implement the correct postures for mimicking human emotion. this is an insanely complex task when you get down to the brass tacks of it. just think about your face and body posture for a moment. why are you sitting/standing in that particular way? why is your face in that particular expression? what do you think your posture is saying to someone who is observing you? how would you change it if you wanted the person to start a conversation with you? if you wanted them to leave you alone? 

there’s also a general assumption that acting comes from a place of genuine or authentic emotion, and this is the fault of modern ‘method’ film acting. i have a very long thesis about how much i hate method acting and i can make a separate post about that if people are curious. but suffice to say, acting very rarely comes from a ‘genuine’ place. it may be informed from a genuine place, but by nature it is not real. thats what makes it acting. and i think dancers seem to be under the impression that showing emotion while dancing has to come from the dancer personally feeling those emotions, when thats not the case at all. this criminal fancam is a perfect example of exactly how good taemin is at putting on a character for a performance. you can very clearly see him drop character after the main camera cuts, and pretty much any concert footage shows this as well.

now, being able to do both a complex system of physical movements with your body and also control the minute details and timing in your facial muscles and posture? thats pretty fuckin hard. not a lot of people can do that, it takes just as much practice as learning technique does, just not in the way that people might think. but it is possible.

[rigelmejo]

6/28 I DID A LOT

WOOH

WOOH

I talked in chinese today! For around a half hour!! AHHHHHHHH

ANYWAY

AHHHHHHH

IM SO HAPPY I WAS UNDERSTANDABLE AHHGGHGSIUSJAJEJDJEEJIE

So first of all I practiced with Google translate today beforehand (lol yes machine translate isn’t perfect). I clicked the app, clicked transcribe, spoke in chinese then saw if the English translation it was producing was close enough to what I was trying to mean to say. (Also I learned chinese transcribe will need to process for a few moments if you play Chinese audio like from a podcast because at first it will give you a sucky transcription lol and then correct itself). Anyway so I did that and quickly learned: Google translate WILL fucking think I am speaking sentences when I’ve only said a couple words of my sentence because I pause “too long” so when I tried thinking of tones or grammar I spoke too fucking slow for the app so BAM I had to speak faster for the app just to comprehend me. So I did not practice Thinking about how the fuck to say things right much, just how to recall words on a fucking speed time limit lol. So uh that was an experience. I’ll definitely say that my 学习普通话 app is way better for me actually practicing pronunciation with any success, because Google just will NOT tolerate me speaking slowly goddamn.

Anyway so then tonight I spoke with my language partner. Well

WELL

good news: I was understood, I was told I sound pretty standard and they can tell I maybe imitate some peoples phrases and words from shows I watch (which in this case is a compliment since they said weeks ago when I asked how they improved their standard mandarin accent for a speech competition that’s what They did and the kind of shadowing they suggested I try doing more for accent work).

My grammar and word choice was understandable (I KNOW I wasn’t perfect and there were fucking mistakes Especially just notable spots where I forgot common words and tried to talk Circles around those words to describe them since I know Enough words to kind of “explain around” and come up with a more word description of a simple word I forgot sometimes but fuck is it probably awkward to listen to. Like I forgot “back then/at that time” so I said “the time when I was in high school” or “in high school I..” just because I couldn’t say “that time” on the spot, also fucking I forgot how to say “also” and “or” in certain ways and just had to figure out a different way to make my point like “this is like that” or “not the same” ToT).

Anyway regardless it’s a real big accomplishment to me. Reasons being: 1. I’ve never talked in chinese that long straight or to someone else communicating, or telling stories about my life and asking questions and actually testing my fucking communication abilities past small talk. Even talking alone to myself it’s just phrases or small situations where if I forget a word I just stop, so this was huge for me. 2. I did not have time to think about tones period while talking today with my language partner so like being comprehensible is!!!! GREAT. Considering I tried speaking to a language partner simple common word tone pair examples or very simple small talk at 5 months into learning and remember being incomprehensible like 50% of the time. Versus me now a little under 2 years in so being able to simply not be constantly thinking about tones and still know I might be understood (and in this specific case was understood) is nice to know. 3. I did better at winging vocabulary and talking my way around words I didn’t know than i thought I could. 4. REALLY simply tone and grammar being comprehensible is blowing my mind on its own - I know there were many mistakes (I personally could hear my 3rd tone not always sounding right to my own ear, and know I heard a few grammar mistakes I heard after I’d made my point lol). But just being comprehensible enough for someone understand my points even if I made those mistakes was really cool. 5. I’m hoping this means all the things I’ve been doing lately: the Listening Reading, the watching shows with English subs this month while repeating some of the Chinese lines to myself, listening to audiobooks and repeating many of the lines to myself, and the weekly language exchange I’ve been doing, have all been helping to some degree. Improving production skills is not something I’ve tried studying before and so basically all that I’m doing is flailing around trying stuff and hoping something is useful. It’s nice to see something must be if I’ve managed this.

Anyway it was just very very cool to be understandable. ;-; At this time last year I was absolutely assuming it would take years to get even a little understandable. Also for now idk this proved to me to maybe just stick to shadowing for a while and Not specifically thinking of tones While actively speaking. For a while I thought of them actively which made me clearer and I think was important and helped, at this point currently I think sometimes i overthink and trying to speak from memory/more shadowing practice might help it become a bit more automatic? And then I can go back to some corrective work where I’m messing up specifically or haven’t internalized certain words/phrases tones maybe.

—

IN OTHER NEWS

today I ALSO played 4 hours of Kingdom Hearts II in Japanese WHICH WAS AN EXPERIENCE

AN EXPERIENCE IVE NEVER HAD BEFORE LIKE FUCKING THIS

So 1. EONS easier than last time I studied Japanese. For context at 2-2.5 years into studying Japanese I played the opening of KH2. I remember it was brutal, I used my phone constantly to look up words, but I got through like the opening portion to the first save point after the haunted mansion (so like is that day 2? Basically what’s usually .5-1 hour of play or less that took me a few hours back then). It was doable, kinda brutal, but also I have kh2 near to my heart so I could play it without reading when I felt drained. Now?? I had over a year break from Japanese study (maybe 2-3 years break idk). I reviewed Japanese in I think March-April 2021 this year. April/May to June (now) I’ve been studying some new material. The biggest new material being some more Nukemarine memrise decks, and Clozemaster as of this month. So like... this Eons of improvement is after a long ass gap of no study, a cram review, and some just beyond last-times-progress kind of new study. It is a HUGE difference to me in how it feels.

I did not use a dictionary at all this time. I did not play slow either, I read at a speed much more bearable, I comprehended most sentences totally (understanding words because of a mix of knowing most words, knowing the context for the words since I know KH2 WELL, knowing Hanzi from chinese, and thanks to Clozemaster of all things feeling a lot better/quicker with Japanese grammar comprehension), and a few sentences I knew the overall gist because of recognizing the Hanzi (tho they were being used in words that aren’t similar to Chinese), the grammar overall (the rough intention of the sentence), and knowing KH2 well enough to remember the main idea of th English sentence. So it was overall a much more pleasant, easygoing experience this time around playing! It was something where I COULD play 50 hours of Japanese KH2 now.

This kind of showed me some things: first that knowing a basis in chinese (for me) makes a huge difference. Kanji now make words easier for me to learn and guess. I can now recognize when some pronunciations are somewhat similar to Chinese words. I can recognize when some kanji are used to mean Different things from Chinese (since I know the English context too). I can also now actually Like and Appreciate that KH2 specifically uses kanji in some speech bubbles and scenes then hiragana for the same words at other times - it gives me a chance to use context to see both versions of the word and learn both the pronunciation and kanji a bit more. Now I have katakana English like words and kanji (in the sense of their similarities to Hanzi) and my basic grammar grasp to rely on to parse sentences which makes all of it much easier. For me chinese was just easier, and that’s now paying off also in making Japanese easier in some ways than it was before.

I also appreciate now why “prior context” and “comprehensible input” are encouraged so much. My effort level is comfortable and NOT draining, so I could’ve kept my playing for hours and I did not need a dictionary for new words because I had TONS of context. Part of this is KH2 being a game I know super well (so even back at year 2 it was doable if draining when no other video game probably would’ve been doable at all). So it makes sense now it would be the first comfortable feeling one. It is VERY comprehensible input for me, especially now with some of the Japanese improvements I’ve made.

Whereas I tried to play crisis core a month ago (doable but DRAINING in part because I knew the game so comprehensible but I didn’t HAVE the game remembered by heart like KH2 so I had to slow down to read everything slowly and figure out words much slower with no prior meaning in my head for many parts), and persona 3 (which was doable but DRAINING in part because I have little prior context compared to cc or KH2 and in part because it has so much reading). Also KH2 is easier to read than cc or persona 3 - kh2 is obviously meant for age 10+ and so the amount of text I’m required to read is shorter, a lot of conversational stuff and not layered (cc had a lot of technical paragraphs of directions for missions and persona is aimed at older teens and has much more like “think about it more long term” conversations which I struggle more to parse). Also just persona 3 has so much dialogue I started speed reading just to get to a save point which felt Draining. Whereas KH2 the reading is comfortable so I don’t read too slow, and so it doesn’t feel as draining since it’s not slow nor do I have to rush at lower comprehension to get through it - I can just read and comprehend everything as much as I can at a reasonably non draining pace.

Also I DO think Clozemaster (so kudos to u app) is actually helping noticeably. I’m doing Clozemaster Japanese by common word tracks (still in the 100 most common words sentences and almost done). I’ve been doing listening mode and then reading sentences after. I can TELL it’s helped me already with the following. I’m doing better at recognizing some grammar structure particles/words/conjugations in various forms and levels of politeness. I now have much less issue telling how to separate sentences into word/grammar functions - it makes everything just much easier to start being able to segment my sentences as I read so I can just pinpoint WHAT parts I know versus don’t know and what their rough function is (and since in KH2 I know the English lines usually it makes it way easier to guess what words mean roughly what English translation). I also read some manga during this past month that’s also helped with this skill. I noticed Clozemaster also is just helping with it a lot since in Clozemaster the politeness level varies and stuff so I’m forced to practice guessing and figuring it out more with Clozemaster sentences over and over. The listening mode has helped because I can tell that some of the most common words I can hear more instinctively now and read aloud at a more normal pace now. I still CLEARLY read over listening when the subtitles in KH2 are there if I don’t know a word, so my listening has HUNDREDS or likely thousands of hours to go (my Chinese is much much better). But I can already notice the sheer fact Clozemaster listening question mode is forcing me to 1 HEAR Japanese more (and I need like what 2000 hours listening) and 2 start recognizing more easily at least recognizing words I’ve learned when I hear them (whereas before I would struggle to hear certain words even if I’d studied just because I’d read-studied a lot but not actually heard much of those words much). Now this all isn’t a huge help with new words in KH2 since I’m learning to read them from the game but my listening isn’t picking them up or Parsing them well. But as far as IN Clozemaster: yes the constant audio word drilling is helping me recognize words by sound which is great since thanks to Chinese kanji recognition is now not intensely difficult, it’s the sound recognition and match up to spelling that’s now the major confusion for me. I mean grammar is also confusing.. and will take years... I do think Clozemaster forcing me to practice interpreting the grammar somewhat with nothing to help me is helping me at least feel less drained by the grammar. I used Clozemaster before for french and chinese at the stage between graded readers and actual native speaker material, and I think for Japanese it’s also Good for this purpose. Clozemaster is good for a lot of immersion-like sentence reading practice, with tools to make it easier like a translation and mostly words you know in each sentence. Making it a bit easier than just diving into the deep end into a random novel. I do think it helps with preparing you for less learner-tailored materials a bit while still being easier than native speaker materials so you can practice without feeling youre drowning.

anyway ahh. WOOH I PLAYED KH2 in japanese today!!! I HAD FUN

gonna do it some more.

kh2 is maybe THE original reason i started trying to learn japanese. its really fun playing it now.

—-

And finally, while I’m at it: I am ALMOST done with the Sundial arc in Guardian Listening Reading wise. I’m on chapter 17. I have like 2 days left so who knows maybe I can manage to finish the sundial arc we’ll see.

What I mostly did this month was Redo L-R chapter 1-12 with a second audiobook, read the novel print version up to chapter 12, read chapter 1-2 in the traditional print version, also read maybe 4 chapters of other random things, listened to audiobook files of stuff overall idk 20+ times while repeating after a lot of lines, did a small amount of Clozemaster chinese (mostly just Radio mode), did 30 min - 1 hour writing or speaking language exchange sessions once a week, and watch a bunch of Chinese shows with English subs this month while repeating after a lot of lines.

As you can tell my reading Amount lowered significantly since the past couple months. However, I think I’ve pushed up my listening amounts a little.

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/the-love-song-of-dril-and-the-boys/

The Love Song Of Dril And The Boys

I have not read dril’s book. I cannot read dril’s book. 

Dril Official “Mr. Ten Years” Anniversary Collection compiles 1,500 of the pseudonymous Twitter user’s greatest tweets, and it is simply too funny for me to read for more than a page or two at a time without laughing so hard, I feel physically ill. Ask my family if you don’t believe me. Ask the patrons of the West Babylon Public Library, who have been shooting me dirty looks since I began writing this essay. Every time I crack the book open, I’m seconds away from hitting something like this … 

“hello 911 I need a moat dug around my house immediately” “sir this line is for emergencies only” “Thuis is an emergency moat��

— wint (@dril) May 18, 2014

 … or this …

koko the talking ape.. has been living high on the hog, wasting our tax dollars on high capacity diapers. No more. i will suplex that beast,

— wint (@dril) September 7, 2014

… or this … 

where do girls live

— wint (@dril) October 20, 2010

… and that’s it. Show’s over. “Goodnight Irene,” as Gorilla Monsoon would say. (“I will suplex that beast.”)

Dril’s blend of fist-on-the-table bluster, abject confusion and burned-toast syntax — the style of humor he pioneered, which became the lingua franca of Funny/Weird Twitter in toto — has my number. Like Monty Python’s run-on sketches, non sequiturs and Terry Gilliam animation; like the endless awkward pauses, omnipresent electrical humming and recycled animation of “Space Ghost Coast to Coast”; like Tim and Eric’s garish colors, glitchy video and non-actor stars, dril’s tweets are a new way to be funny, with a rhythm and vocabulary all their own. I love it.

But dril? Dril loves the boys. 

A recurring collective character in dril’s oeuvre, the boys occupy a unique place in his taxonomy, which, thanks to the book’s arrangement of tweets by topic, is easier than ever to get the hang of. For example, girls are mysterious sources of intermingled awe and terror, like the monoliths in “2001.”

ah, So u persecute Jared Fogle just because he has different beliefs? Do Tell. (girls get mad at me) Sorry. Im sorry. Im trying to remove it

— wint (@dril) November 1, 2015

Brands are icons of integrity, as admirable as they are untouchable.

just deleted 23,000 tweets at the request of Sbarro. feeling Purified

— wint (@dril) July 5, 2015

The trolls are contemptible pests, an implacable obstacle.

will no longer be livestreaming foreskin restoration process; the trolls who attempted to summon [インプ] (Imps) into the chatroom are to blame

— wint (@dril) February 3, 2012

And then there’s rival Twitter user @DigimonOtis, a class by himself: He is nemesis, the anti-dril.

(reading my latest death threat ) “from the desk of DigimonOtis…” this is bullshit. digimonotis has never owned a desk

— wint (@dril) November 6, 2014

But the boys are on dril’s level. The boys welcome dril with open arms. They share his hopes and fears, his loves and hates. He’s one of the boys.

Just met w/ Boys Lunch Club. Seems to me, That we are very pissed off that teen girls would rather kiss, “Soldier Boy,” than Actual Soldiers

— wint (@dril) May 16, 2016

pleased to report my custom beer tap that makes a dramatic diarrhea noise while filling the glass is a hit with the boys at the fondue club

— wint (@dril) October 16, 2014

best 90s memory is gathering around the old oak tree with the boys and passing around trading cards featuring all of our dads #DamnGood90s

— wint (@dril) April 30, 2013

Crucial to the boys’ appeal is their exclusivity. Like any clique, they’ve invested their aesthetic preferences with moral weight, and those who violate them do so at their peril.

darknet 2002: pics of dead guys in bath tubs, warez darknet 2017: discussions amongst the boys as to which of our acquaintances aren t funny

— wint (@dril) August 11, 2017

me & the booys are riffing on 78 hours of stolen walgreens security cam footage. this guy on here just bought a toilet brush. bitch!! bitch!

— wint (@dril) December 8, 2014

me and the boys have decided that the least gay way of wiping your ass is to dump a quarter bottle of Palmolive Spring Sensations back there

— wint (@dril) September 17, 2016

Dril may be a member in good standing, but membership brings responsibilities as well as privileges.

the boys held an intervention about me “Going hollywood” because i;ve been buying plastic toothpicks now

— wint (@dril) June 1, 2018

THE BOYS: were watching the mr bean episode where you can see his ass. get over here ME: cant. wifes making me watch mr beans holiday (2007)

— wint (@dril) June 14, 2017

If the boys function as dril’s superego, instilling and policing values, they are also his id — an embodiment of his most voracious physical drives.

pussy log 12.29.11: justin unscrewed the knob from the door to the ladies’ room and now the club boys all take turns cradling it

— wint (@dril) December 30, 2011

“Ah!! Lunchtime, Boys!” i snort several lines of Hamburger Helper, tilt my head back and shake with unbearable agony as my head turns purple

— wint (@dril) May 15, 2013

The comedy and tragedy of dril is that he is a man without ego, the mediating force that balances the needs of id and superego. He is perpetually out of balance, careening from excess to shame. He requires the intervention of the boys, the example they set, just to function.

This is why the saga of dril and the boys is a love story — conditional and occasionally unrequited though that love may be. It is poignant because it is impossible to imagine dril living without them any more than Juliet could live without Romeo.

When the lovers are in harmony — when the needs of id, ego and superego are aligned at last — the result is a thing of beauty.

going ape shit at the gym. rotating in full 360 degrees with the boys, flawlessly synchronized

— wint (@dril) November 28, 2017

The boys can be peers, contributing to the good posts for which dril is best known at a level beyond dril’s own imagining.

cant wiat to see what devilish thanksgiving scenarios me and the boys of twitter can conjure up. “The turkey was taken by spiders? ? Whua??”

— wint (@dril) November 24, 2014

Together they can be silent guardians, watchful protectors, dark knights, defending boys both within and outside the circle from the depredations of rival groups.

me & the boys will be holding hands., forming a Covenant Ring, to protest girls who only want to fuck the main pirate from the pirate movies

— wint (@dril) June 4, 2017

the epic shit of 2017; is the boys getting TheSegaPimp fired from his job at The Red Cross for not wishing me a “Happy Halloween”

— wint (@dril) January 2, 2018

the boys are enjoying their fave jukebox when ths sarge steps in SARGE: TURN OFF THE DAMN JUKE BOX! ITS WAR ME: Fuck u sarge. The armys crap

— wint (@dril) July 7, 2015

Not every tweet about the boys made it into the book. This is fitting, as when they’re operating at full force, nothing can contain them. 

thje opening riff of “Life In The Fast Lane” repeats over and over forever while me and the boys shoot at a septic tank with airsoft rifles

— wint (@dril) August 1, 2014

me N’ the boys eating messy sandiwches, sneaking around with big binoculars looking for girls & letting every one know who runs this TJ maxx

— wint (@dril) July 21, 2016

So we come to the crux of the matter. Dril and the boys are the great love story of our time because their insecurities, their mania, are our time’s prime motivators.

Dril and the boys wallow in the same miasma from which all our era’s reactionary movements have emerged — the MAGAs and Pepes, MRAs and incels, GamerGaters and ComicsGaters, Sad Puppies and Proud Boys and all the other doofuses with unwittingly infantilizing sobriquets.

With “the boys,” the humorist behind dril has tapped into the overall vibe in this country that there exists, somewhere out there ― perhaps in a TJ Maxx ― a lost masculine ideal. No one agrees on what it is, least of all dril, whose psyche is as piecemeal as his punctuation. It could be yelling at NFL protesters to stand for the national anthem or screaming at Disney for committing white genocide in the “Star Wars” films. It could be having sex all the time or having no sex at all. It could be respecting the majesty of the law or flouting it or both, depending on whom the law is meant to penalize. It’s the nightmare superego-id hybrid, 10 pounds of Blue Lives Matter shit in a five-pound “Live free or die” bag.

When men fail to live up to the puritanical amorality of the boys, they’re less than men, which is to say — as women have a lifetime to learn — they’re less than human. Such men earn sexualized insults like “betas” and “cucks.” They’re reduced to contemptuous acronyms like “SJWs” and “NPCs.” They make the soy face. They listen to dad rock. This blend of macho aggression and childlike vulnerability cannot be resolved in the real world, where it results in a racist, revanchist, minority party controlling all branches of government and installing sexual predators in every available position of power yet still acting like the David to the Goliath of Me Too, female gamers and the theoretical casting of Idris Elba as James Bond.

me and the boys watching james bond morph into a black guy before our very eyes , and braying at the movie screen like distressed cattle

— wint (@dril) September 4, 2018

Dril and the boys reside in this all-American astral plane where the Large Son–Libtard civil war rages, where misandry is real and must be guarded against with magic spells. We recognize our own reality in their incoherent but nevertheless militant search for reasons to hoot and holler. As such, their romance presents us with an opportunity to convert the problematic into the pleasurable, just as surely as antihero dramas or even halfway decent kink.

In the world of dril and the boys, all the pride and greed and wrath and lust and envy and sloth and gluttony of the movements that have fouled the entire adult lives of multiple generations of Americans can be boiled down to a gaggle of morons screaming about toilets. It’s a beautiful fantasy, and like all fantasies, it’s as romantic as it is remote.

Sean T. Collins has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Esquire and Vulture. He and his partner, the cartoonist Julia Gfrörer, are the co-editors of the art and comics anthology Mirror Mirror II. They live with their children on Long Island in New York.

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dril-and-the-boys-twitter_us_5bb66529e4b028e1fe3bfd71

[rigelmejo]

also out of curiosity my brain went like “well on ao3 there’s a TON of French Merlin fanfics, i wonder if the show was aired in french dub?” I just looked it up and OH YES IT WAS (it seems to all be on dailymotion dubbed)

I’m about to look up if Person of Interest is the same, because that’s another one with a TON of french fanfics on ao3 (in particular some Amazing epic long ones for Root/Shaw including aus which I all have saved because they look interesting as hell and I’ll get to them next time I get into the show).

also why yes thank you for asking i absolutely do NOT have time to study multiple languages someone Stop me before i fall in a pit and end up succeeding at nothing. 

study plans below the cut:

Chinese - number 1 priority, no sidetracking until I feel reading is where I want it to be! (So yes ultimately I might sidetrack listening and speaking/writing).

Plan is still: READ. Focusing on improving reading level and speed, so vocabulary increasing by reading mainly. Currently reading and finishing: The Little Prince, Hanshe, Guardian. Once Guardian is finished I think I could consider the possibility of making chinese a lower priority for a while. 

Japanese - number 2 priority, can be sidetracked as long as I’m engaging with it a little here and there. I abandoned it for like 2+ years, I’m in a weird spot where I’m relearning some that’s easy, and freshly learning others, and my reading skills are artificially a bit inflated due to hanzi recognition. I really don’t want to give my full primary focus on it for a Significant amount of time until my chinese reading skill feels solid and like it won’t deteriorate significantly. I am working on it in the sense of maybe boosting it up closer to my chinese or french - or at least some level of ‘I can comprehend the gist main idea reliably’ which I got to in chinese around month 10 and french earlier, but never really got to in japanese. 

Plan: going through Nukemarine decks at my leisure, playing games in japanese/watching japanese plays and lets plays as desired. I think it might get higher priority temporarily while I’m into some video game, but overall just reading daily in chinese is easy to maintain the habit of. Ideally I would like to finish reading Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide but I abandoned it so idk if I will go back for now tbh! Also I’m reading through Japanese in 30 Hours and writing proper japanese in it so that is a bit of grammar I’m just going through. (I’d also like to use a FEW other japanese resources I have like the book Japanese Sentence Patterns, the japanese audio lessons, my ‘read japanese’ books, but... chinese really takes too much time for me to commit much into japanese). Eventually MUCH later I would like to work on my japanese reading skills, would would be cool (I’m succeeding in chinese so idk why i won’t eventually be able to in japanese). But that’s for wayyy down the road. 

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*What I do like about my current study plan is it’s very SEPARATED. Because the activities I do are very different, I don’t feel like I’m “doubling up” and having to do the same activity twice/study the same thing idk if that makes sense?

Like for Chinese - I focus on reading (new words from reading), and optional shows/audio study material/audiobooks where I tend to look nothing up. Usually just intensive reading, extensive reading, then some kind of chiller listening. For japanese - flashcard app memrise, video games/watching something and looking things up, optional grammar guide reading. 

So I intensively read japanese video subtitles when I can (or at least look stuff up often), but I don’t ever do it with chinese videos (only with novels). Idk but like... the fact each activity is separate helps keep me focused? Like I don’t play chinese video games so I don’t think “oh I should play some japanese now to balance it out.” I don’t read japanese novels so i don’t feel i need to “go read japanese since i read X chinese chapters.” While some stuff I do overlaps (I might try to read comics in both as desired, or watch shows with no subs in both as desired) there’s enough Fully Different Main Study activities I do that they feel like they’re in nicely separate spheres for now. Which helps me stick do doing them regularly instead of abandoning one.

Like - right now I’m doing some chinese daily (usually reading, sometimes reading/watching or reading/listening), and some japanese every few days (usually flashcards, sometimes watching/listening). 

Years ago I studied French, Japanese, Russian at the same time (it was a fucking mess lol). And I had an AWFUL time trying to make progress in any. What I ended up having to do was pick one to prioritize a month, and basically just ‘maintain skill level’ in the others. One problem was my french wasn’t self-sustaining yet (now it is, so I can drop it for months and just come back to it which helps a lot). So I still actively had to do a lot of french work constantly. The other big issues though? Well one was my study plans sucked - specifically in japanese. I really made no fucking progress in japanese for like 2 years mainly due to poor planning of goals/resources to meet those goals. Looking at my study plan now, I have a much better idea of both what I need to do to improve X, and I’m also willing to engage IN japanese content which just in general has always seemed to help when I did it. The other issue looking back - I would try to study ALL aspects of ALL languages at once. I think this was a big way I failed, and also tend to fail even if I’m just studying one language at a time. 

I am not a person who can consistently do 4 goals at once for listening/speaking/reading/writing. At the most I can usually juggle 2 at once. I have long term goals for each, but based on my chinese and french experience, I do much better when I focus on one area for a while and improve it THEN move to a different area-goal for a while. With french I improved reading, THEN basic writing, THEN listening and pronunciation. I did not learn them to the same level at the same time. With chinese, I studied grammar then vocab, reading alongside pronunciation, writing on its own, etc. Usually with chinese I’ve been focusing on 1-2 goals at a time (some months its reading/speaking, some its writing/reading which is this month, some its listening/reading or listening/speaking). I do not tend to have success when I am to improve ALL 4 main skills at once. But years ago, that was exactly what I’d try to do with Russian and Japanese - improve all 4 main skills in BOTH at once. So 2 grammar resources, 2 listening resources, 2 big vocab lists (i was still learning basic words in both). Of course I kept abandoning one language I could not handle doing 2 of each thing! French was the easiest to NOT abandon because I was advanced enough in reading I’d usually just pick one weaker skill to improve at a time (first I picked grammar, then pronunciation, then I picked listening and never did as much work as I wanted to with that area...). 

So yeah: future me, if you happen to find yourself studying multiple languages at once (or even just one). Pick 1ish goals to work on per language per time span. Don’t try to do all 4 skills at once. 

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French - realistically I have no time for it! None! No mejo! However.... I always end up doing whatever I end up wanting to. And what have I wanted to do lately? Well 1. FINISH reading Le Francais Par Le Method Nature. I read like HALF of that book, and its so much a nice foundation tool but when I studied french I just fucking jumped around a million things then just read novels and. I would love to actually have a solid foundational base I went through and finished - and could help build an active vocab with (since its actually made for study and speaking, versus whatever the fuck I chose to read which was ALL just whatever random genre I was into and was NOT applicable to general conversation). Also I’d like to read it out loud for both the practice and if I’m motivated maybe to make an EXISTING audio for the text since the text is SO old there no longer exists any accessible audio for it. I’d also like to finish reading Carmilla, but that’s more just “im in a read french novel” mood and like that’s more something I might just end up doing. Would be nice to do it AFTER finally finishing that fucking foundational book first though ;-;