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winchesterxxi · 4 years

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Two Left Feet (Din Djarin x Reader)

Rating: G ( General Audiences )

Type: Fluff

Summary: “Din wakes up just to find reader and Grogu dancing around and that goes on almost everyday since she joined them and Din seems to get used to it, but after a really hard day, reader suggests dancing with Din for the first time and he's not quite the dancer type.”

Word Count: 1.6k (short but sweet, I promise)

Warnings: Non-canonical music (for the sake of working well with the story); teaching someone with absolutely no rhythm how to dance (all my fellow dancers know the pain, and yes it is a warning)

A/N: For the sake of rhythm and story pretend the songs I’m referring to, in order, are (1) Rasputin by Boney M. (2) Tusk by Fleetwood Mac (3) Club Tropicana by Wham! (4) Moon Song by Phoebe Bridgers

MASTERPOST | REQUEST HERE | KO-FI

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Din was a fan of routine.

He was a man that liked peace and quiet, to lead his life with the schedule that he pleases, not having to attend to anyone else.

But the galaxy just told him no.

At first, his life was disrupted by what was by now his protegée, despite everyone calling him his son, that little green ball, over a decade older than him, Grogu.

Then, you came. It’s not that you disrupted his life per se, on the contrary, you were his salvation when it came to managing between taking care of Grogu and going on dangerous missions or fighting the Empire. But he soon found out that the peace and quiet that he had instilled in his clan of two was not going to be kept long with the clan of three.

You had a thing for the kid, a deep affection, a motherly love, if you will. Taking care of most of the mundane tasks like bathing and feeding him but the little ball really started reaching out for you more than Din because, on the particular case of your little group, it was the mom that meant fun and the dad that meant business.

Grogu loved how you would play music through the ship when Din was away, having little dance parties with him, as he sways between his tiny legs to the beat of the music.

Whenever night time came around or Din was with you, you tended to not want to disturb him as much, so you would just hum along some tunes to entertain the kid. He was particularly fond of this one tune (1) where he could clap along, giggling at the silly dance you would make.

At first, Din was not amused by it. As said before, he was a man that enjoyed peace and quiet but seeing the joy that you brought to the kid, who previously only had a little ball to entertain himself, slowly but surely started to soften his heart over time.

This one morning, stationed in some random planet after a long mission, he slid out of his cot, fully armored headed towards the sound of a rhythmic thump coming from the main deck of the ship.

It wasn’t the first time that he would wake up to the beat of a song and even though he couldn’t bring himself to admit it out loud, he preferred it a thousand times to the sound of the cockpit signals going off.

Walking towards the source of the sound (2), as it became more clear, Din leaned against the door frame as soon as he spotted the scene unfolding in front of him: you shaking your hips side to side, slightly bent down so that you could grab Grogu’s little hands, the kid laughing out loud as the two of you moved to the beat.

Noticing Din close to you Grogu coos at him, extending his hand in his direction and making grabby movements.

Looking up, you straighten your bag dancing up to where he was, maintaining your eyes fixed on the T-shaped helmet on the beskar helmet.

“Come on, old man. Join us!” You tug at his arm but he just stands straighter, reaching his full height, arms still crossed across his chest.

“I don’t dance.” his voice rumbles through the modulator. You just continue to sway your hips and move your shoulders next to him trying to at least get a small shuffle in his weight out of him, but he remains undefeated.

Just as you were about to pull him harder in your direction, the lights in the distant cockpit go off and a deafening beeping fills the Razor Crest. Din stomps past you and rushes to the panel.

“Saved by the bell.” you mutter under your breath, before pausing the music and rushing to the seat by his side, getting ready to co-pilot, not before grabbing the kid and buckling him up to your lap.

The perks of being a foundling, you ask?

People feed you, bathe you, carry you on their laps and most importantly, you don’t need to actively engage on any sort of physical activity that might reveal itself to be exhausting, say a bounty hunt.

The kid was insufferable.

It was stark dark outside of the ship and you had already tried to put him down to sleep about three times, but every single time he would just refuse to close his eyes, making sure to display his reservoir of unused energy.

If it’s tired that you need to be, it’s tired that I’m going to make you, You think to yourself.

Settling him down on the ground, your fingers reach for the control panel of the lower deck tapping in a few times before a tune (3) starts fluttering out of the rusty speakers.

The kid’s ears perked up in a flash as he giggled and started shaking to the sound of the music in the middle of the room.

You shake your head down at him, before climbing up the ladder that accessed the top deck, adjacent to the cockpit, dangling your legs from the edge, allowing you to not only keep an eye on Grogu but to also be within Din’s reach, would he need something.

You were floating through hyperspace, only the stars lighting where you sat, Din just a few feet to your right, sitting at the pilot’s chair.

“Are all kids like this?” you ask him breaking the silence, as the music below you sounded quite distant.

He turns his chair to face you, leaning against its back.

“How would I know?” he questions.

“Oh, right. Stupid question.” You laugh and shake your head down, checking on the kid, but Din maintains his eyes trained on you from under the beskar. “Next time you’re the one dancing with him to exhaustion.”

“I piratically have two left feet. That’s not happening.”

“Was that a joke?” You ask mockingly and he chuckles.

It isn’t until you beckon him closer with your finger that he moves, cautiously walking to where you sat, following your gaze and looking down at the kid who had seemingly fallen asleep from exhaustion on the floor, curled up on himself.

You both chuckle at the same time, unconsciously looking at each other only to avert your gazes as soon as your eyes met.

“I-...I’m going to put the kid down.” You avert his gaze as your cheeks were flaring up, quickly descending the ladder and picking the kid up, walking towards his improvised crib.

A few minutes later, you emerged from the bottom deck, sliding the access to the ladder closed, only to be met with Din’s right side facing you, the pilot seat facing the side of the ship. His legs crossed in front of him and his hands tucked underneath him as his arms formed an x against his chest.

This was the typical position which he used to fall asleep on the cockpit but you knew by the way his head was positioned that he wasn’t actually sleeping, but rather looking out at the stars.

Not wanting to disturb the scenery in front of you, you just rest your hip and upper body against the control panel wall, admiring the beskar hunter.

“Penny for your thoughts?” the way his voice resonated through the chamber would’ve scared you a few months ago, but instead you remained unmoved, only a smirk growing on your lips.

“A few actually.” you finger pads skim through the control panel before you smile to yourself and click on one of the tunes (4) you had recently chipped into the ship’s system.

Din’s helmet slowly turns your way, just in time to watch you slowly walk up to him, only the shine of the closest stars illuminating your figure. You looked beautiful, there was no denying that.

When your knees brushed against the side of his chair, you extend your hand down to him, inviting him to join you at a standing level.

Din gently grabs your hand and stands up to his full height, a few inches higher than you, inducing his helmet to face down at your own face.

“I told you, I don’t dance.” his voice is but a whisper, raspy and tired but so full of adoration for you that in no other setting would he let transpire through the modulator.

“You don’t have to.” You right hand trails up his arm until it comes to rest on his shoulder pad as your left fingers intertwine with his, his head shifting to follow both actions, one at a time.

“Just hold me and shift your weight from one foot to the other.” it is your time to utter but a whisper as you bring your braided hands to rest against his chest, followed by one of your temples.

It was quiet between you as you danced, his smile never fading, his fingers momentarily leaving yours only to have both of his arms around your waist, beckoning you closer against his body as you swayed to the slow strums of the music, relishing every second of it.

“Isn’t dancing easier like this?” your barely audible wouldn’t it be for his closeness to you, the sultry sound of it, mixed with the warm feeling of your body pressed against him, had his heart racing.

“I actually wouldn’t mind if every day ended like this?” his answer surprises you, but you try to hide your smile, keeping the side of your head rested against his chest.

“Are you going soft on me, Din Djarin?”

“Not a word to anyone.” You bite your lips containing a chuckle and the man in beskar repeats the action but unknowingly to you, as the beskar helmet concealed it. And you stayed there, in his embrace, and him in yours swaying through the night, every time ignoring the restart of the song, secretly hoping that the other wouldn’t complain.

Secretly hoping you could stay like this forever.

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TAGLISTS

PERMANENT TAGLIST

@blondekel77 @pedrobreakmyback

DIN DJARIN TAGLIST

@niall2017

PEDRITO TAGLIST

@weirdowithnobeardo

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Want a completely personalized imagine just for you? Click here!

#Two Left Feet #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x reader #star wars #fluff #star wars fluff #Pedro pascal #Pedro pascal x reader

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the-silentium · 4 years

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Murphy day Pt. 2

Masterlist - Part 1 - Part 3 - Part 4

Pairing: Bad Batch x Reader

Words: 3161 words

Warnings: Curses.

A/N: Yes, I put some ARK:Survival evolved creatures in this, so I do not own their concept. They are just so cute! Also I’m not as good at worldbuilding as @shadow-hyder .

Fors is an Original planet. I do not give permission to people to use it for their own fics, the planet, the animals, the Nightmares, the lore or anything related to Fors. Thank you.

"So you guys are Commandos?" You asked as Hunter moved aside the colorful plant blocking your way, his steps following yours closely.

For the last 10 minutes, you've managed to make good progress in your quest to reach the clones' ship. So deep into the jungle, the prank traps were nonexistent, making it easier for the group to venture without a hitch although it also meant that you were out of the village's defence system.

Wrecker had been chattering with you for the most part, explaining that they weren't regular clones when you pointed out that referring to them as 'clones' was basically going against the definition of the word as they all looked completely different from one another.

Unbeknownst to you, a certain bad batcher started to think that you may not be as annoying as he initially thought, your comment about the fact that their mutations made them the best version of their kind was running through his mind.

The jungle is in constant evolution! Only the bests survive and to do that, they need to mutate! It's the same with you guys. Your mutations make you even more adapted to survive and do your job. That's impressive.

"We are!" You could tell Wrecker was immensely proud of being an elite special team, his enthusiasm made his voice even louder.

You'd hoped that Wrecker's voice mixed with Tech's repulsive odor would keep the nasty fangs away. Unfortunately, bad luck decided to show its face again.

A branch snapped behind you catching your attention, prompting you to stop dead in your tracks and turn around at the same moment Hunter did. He didn't even have to lift his hand, his troop immediately turned like one man while lifting their blasters towards the moving and cracking flora, their feet firmly planted on the ground, ready to engage whatever there was lurking around.

The animal was clearly making its way into your direction, its form moved the plants around to form a clear path towards your group.

The utter silence was nerve wracking. The birds had stopped chirping a while back, when Wrecker had exploded in laughter at one of your joke, the jerboas were definitely keeping themselves at bay along with every non-lethal creature around.

Crouching very slowly, you reached for your knife, the warm wood connecting with your fingertips relaxed your stress just a little.

A sigh of relief left your lips when a familiar bleating sound reached your ears. Releasing your knife, you pushed past the rest of the group to search the tall grass for the small herbivore.

"It's fine." You breathed, your eyes falling on the excited baby, its cute face almost making you aww. "'s just a Shinehorn." You crouched to carefully take the small light-brown goat in your arms, its tail wagging quickly in excitement.

The troopers dropped their weapons, all their helmets now focussed on the wiggling animal in your arms. Slowly, you put it back down before giving him more pets under its chin.

The Shinehorn was still very young, the top of his head reaching just below your knees and his tiny green horns flashing lowly in his excitement. You traced the two green lines marking its back with your fingers, the squeaks you received in response making you giggle.

"What's a Shinehorn?" Tech asked, crouching next to you to be closer and scan the baby with his helmet.

"They are small herbivorous animal. Their horns can glow in the dark! Very useful when we have to do night hunts or anything in the dark." You grabbed some berries from a bush nearby, feeding them to him. "They're also very docile."

With a last pet between its green horns, you got up and let your place to Wrecker who clearly wanted to gush over the newfound ball of cuteness.

Out of the corner of your eyes, you noticed Crosshair, his hand still firmly wrapped around his rifle like the little goat would pound on him or something.

“Oh! I just thought about that, I know you’re probably very experienced with your blasters seeing as you're all the cream of the clones, but could you not have them in your hands?” You lifted your hands in the air in surrender at Crosshair’s constipated expression. “Just sayin’! Been there, done that, ya know!”

"You accidently shot someone?" Hunter turned his attention from the intriguing creature to you.

"Not me. But before the laws strictly prohibed people to go out on Murphy day, it was common occurrence."

All you received was a grunt of aknowledgement, before Hunter called his team back and started walking again.

To your amusement, the little Shinehorn followed your steps, happily jumping around but never getting in anyones' way. From time to time, you'd grab nearby berries from tall trees to feed him in hope that he'd take a permanent liking to you so you could maybe take him with you on your way back home.

For the seventh time that morning, Tech tripped on his feet, muttering words in a foreign language that you were sure were curses. It was almost normal now. The small clone would fall on the ground, curse, get up and continue for the cycle to restart a couple of minutes later. You didn't think any of it, having stopped turning around in concern at the 4th time. He had his armor to protect him after all.

Although, this time you should have turned around. You would have seen that in his fall, Tech tripped Wrecker who was now losing his balance.

A clash of armor hitting armor mixed with the very sudden movement right beside you made you yelp in surprise. Hunter grunted, out of breath and confused, under Wrecker's imposing form.

Chuckles flew off your mouth, too quickly for you to keep them in, as the bigger clone moved off its C.O.

"Maybe we could take a break." You proposed, hand digging into your pocket to retrieve your tap.

"Wouldn't hurt."

At Hunter's approval you swiftly grabbed your knife, found the nearest bigger tree and tapped it to access the sugary water within the core of the tree. As the water started to drop down the tap, you moved yourself in front of the flow and opened your mouth to drink, calming down your thirsty driven mind.

Once you were satisfied, you moved aside to let the others access the water.

"Help yourselves." You motioned toward the dripping tap before sitting next to Crosshair who was picking fruits in a small tree, his helmet on the jungle floor.

Wrecker was the first to taste the water, his face enlightening the whole jungle with his delighted smile.

"It's sweet!" He stated to your amusement. He seemed more and more like a child.

"Yeah. All the drinkable water here is sweet. If it doesn't have a taste, you should spit it out, 'cause it means that it's full of bacterias."

You stretched your legs to be more comfortable, your hands behind you supporting your body. You petted absentmindedly the young Shinehorn, enjoying the humid wind caressing your face.

Everyone had their chance to drink, the last one being Crosshair who removed the tap from the tree before throwing the object back at you at your demand.

The goat approached Crosshair's pile of fruit, clearly interested into eating them, when he was gently denied access by a hand.

"Not for you Shiny." The sniper muttered, protecting his precious.

Nice name.

"Pass me some, Crosshair?" Tech asked his brother from his spot before you, helmet now at his side.

Without a word, you saw a fruit being thrown into Tech's hands. The precision of the shot was flawless and it would have impressed you to no end if your eyes hadn't caught the color of the fruit that Tech was bringing to his mouth.

"Don't eat that!" You yelled, pushing you forward to slap the pink fruit out of the clone's hand. "Those are the bad ones." You said, ignoring his yelp of pain at your slap.

"But they smell sweet like the water in the tree."

"Yeah because the tree wants you to eat them instead of the good stuff. It's a defence system." You picked the fruit and threw it away.

"The ones that smell not so good," You said, picking up a grey similar fruit. "are the good ones. Taste sweet and won't make you puke your guts for hours. There ya go." You passed the fruit to Tech whose gaze was fixed onto something behind you.

You turned, confused about Tech's worried expression. Realisation hit you like a train, Crosshair didn't have to tell you that he fucked up, his white face along with the almost completely eaten pink fruit in his hand were telling you enough.

"Kriff. Are you feeling nauseous yet?" You genuinely asked, no sarcasm or malice in your voice. You knew what pain he'd be in, having learned your lesson the hard way, just like him.

You'd passed a whole day puking like there was no end, bruising your abdominal muscles in the constant effort they had to muster so you could evacuate the content of your stomach, hurting from the biliary acid burning your throat, fighting against the fatigue, dehydration and starvation.

"Yes." You heard his breathing accelerating and knew what was coming.

A shiver ran up your spine when he quickly turned around to empty his stomach on the jungle floor. You wanted to help him but knew he'd probably take it badly, so you let his brothers do their thing while you walked a bit away, searching for a specific plant.

At the moment, you quickly forgot that at the beginning of the trip he had told you to shut up, that he had it coming. You were too empathetic for your good. Once again.

"I'll be back." You told Hunter before venturing away with Shiny.

"Please be close, please be close, please-" Searching around, you moved the grass around, peaking at the flowers for yellow petals with purple edges. Shiny whined at your side, nudging you a bit to get your attention, but you chose to ignore the needy baby to continue your flower hunt.

A bit farther away, yellow petals caught your attention, your legs moving forward to get to them in seconds. With a victory hum, you crouched to pull the base of the flower, exposing its tortuous roots.

You got up at the same time a low growl reached your ears, freezing you on the spot. Eyes scanned your right frantically for the source of the sound, a pair of sparkling dark hues staring back at you with hunger. Your blood ran cold into your veins, the imposing Dire bear was a good feet taller than you, surely reaching Wrecker's height.

You clutched the root into your left hand, your right hitching to grab your knife at your ankle. In a very slow movement, you lifted your foot to allow your hand to grab the wooden handle. You almost succeeded when Hunter chose this moment to come looking for you, yelling your name into the trees.

The Dire bear got scared and ran for you in a roar and you knew you were dead. You couldn't possibly outrun it and had no way to fight it. But you had to try, right? Run, I mean.

So you ran, the most primal part of your brain taking control and ordered your legs to move as fast as possible towards the armed clones.

You hadn't ventured too far and Hunter had followed your trail, so your wide terrified eyes met his, the Dire bear almost on you to bite on your neck. In last resort, you put all your faith in the sergeant's quick thinking, diving to the ground, screaming at him to shoot.

You crashed unceremoniously on your chest, missing the sound of blasters opening fire. An incredibly heavy weight fell on you, pressing your whole body into the dirt, trapping your joined hands under your abdomen. The shock emptied your lungs of air, your mouth and nose were full of furr and dirt, making you panic.

You desperately tried to push the weight away, take a deep breath of air and scream, but you couldn't do anything. You were trapped. You'd asphyxiate and die. All this because you couldn't control your stupid curiosity. Curiosity killed the tooka.

You felt tears form in your eyes at the thought, for you were not ready to die. There was so much you still wanted to do.

Suddenly, the weight disappeared from your back and you were harshly pulled away and rolled onto your back. Your crying wide eyes met the sergeant's, your lungs taking in the biggest inhalations they ever let in, before a wobbly smile stretched your lips.

"F-found t-the cu-re." You managed to get out in broken words. Your hands opened slowly, showing the brown roots hidden between your fingers.

Hunter sighed, relieved that you were alright despite crossing path with death. You were lucky he decided to follow the Shinehorn when it started acting up.

"Are you okay Y/N?" Wrecker's head appeared beside Hunter's, searching your body for wounds. "You're crying."

Arms slipped under your back and knees, lifting you without a problem. Your hands immediately closed around the root, gripping them tightly like they were life itself.

" 'm not dead so I'm good." Your head fell onto Hunter's shoulder, you found comfort into the hard uncomfortable piece of armor. You were alive to feel it. "Thank you."

He looked at you for a couple of seconds and you tried to control the heat assaulting your cheeks by taking deep breaths in. You definitely weren't admiring his tattoo from up close.

"Didn't do it for you. I had to save the plant." He answered, sarcasm lacing his words.

You chuckled, closing your eyes for a second. You felt all your energy leaving your body, the adrenalin that powered you moments ago dissipated and let exhaustion consume you.

"Is she alright?" Tech asked, as another retching sound echoed around.

"You tell me. Scan her."

It took a couple of seconds, but you managed to open your eyes to see Tech with his helmet on, the thin screen that was previously up was now right before his eyes. He had a tool in hand, blue rays emanating from its extremity to scan your body.

"No broken bones or internal injury. She's fine." He lifted the screen back up to get a better view of your state.

"Can you stand?" Hunter asked.

"Almost sure I can."

So Hunter lowered your feet to the ground, his hand lifting near your shoulder in case you fell. Your legs were still a bit wobbly, but you stood up, trying to ground yourself at the best of your ability.

You opened your numb fingers, giving the root to Tech who looked at it with a frown on his face.

"Break a small piece, remove the skin and give it to Crosshair. It'll help with the nausea and muscle pain." You told him, proud that your voice didn't break.

"A piece like this?" He broke a piece and showed it to you, not wanting to give too much. They had learned that they should ask you first before eating something.

"Yeah. Keep the rest for later."

Nodding, Tech took the vibroknife in Hunter's hand to peel the root, placed the rest of it in his bag, before walking to his grey-haired brother. He tripped once, but managed to stay on his feet.

You sit on the ground to relieve your legs for a bit, at least until Crosshair was able to walk without puking every 30 seconds. You were sure he'd be as wobbly on his feet as you for a totally different reason. Definitely not ideal for a field trip in the wild jungle.

It took a good 10 minutes for Crosshair's stomach to settle, his retching stopped, letting him to deal with a slight nausea. With your tap, Hunter managed to get water to Crosshair and yourself before everyone packed up and prepared to go again. Shiny had returned after some time, the poor baby stopped running around and stayed closer to the group.

"We're almost there." Tech announced at some point and you were grateful. Your legs were ready to abandon you for a while now, although you pushed through to not burden anyone with your adrenalin-less exhaustion.

"The ship is just after these trees."

One feet before the other. You repeated to yourself. At this point, all of your concentration was on your feet, you let the environment to Hunter and his apparently enhanced senses. Right, left, right, lef-

You bumped into Crosshair who had gained energy during the walk while you had the opposed effect. You waited for the harsh comment to come, but it never did.

"Where's the ship Tech?" Wrecker asked, confused.

"That's not possible! This isn't the same place! The coordinates are wrong!" He started to panic.

You dropped on your knees beside Crosshair, the open clearing without a ship was the last tol.

"Describe it to me. " You muttered.

"What?" The sniper asked, his glare finding your exhausted face.

"Describe it to me. The place where you left your ship." You concentrated yourself on your breathing, noticing how you started to inhale too quickly.

"There was a field of glowing purple flowers and a stream with a big rock on one side. There was a gigantic tree too. Way bigger than the rest." He remembered.

You sighed, tried to get back up with your shaky hands only to be helped by the sniper who pulled you by the pit of your arm. You smiled at him in thanks.

"That's the Waytree." You pointed on your left. "20 minutes of walk in this direction."

"But that's such a great gap between my coordinates and-" Tech stopped as soon as he met your tired eyes, reading perfectly what you were telling yourself. "It's today."

"Exactly." You huffed, forcing your legs to start walking again.

Hunter watched you intensely but you pushed forward, forcing your body to obey you and not fail. All it took was one word from Hunter and a movement of his head toward you.

"Wrecker."

Suddenly, you found yourself bridal style in his arms and were carried for the rest of the trip despite you affirming that you were fine and that you were perfectly able to walk by yourself.

From your position, you had a perfect view of the sky, worrying you to no end.

"No pressure but I'm sure it'll soon start to ra-" A drop of water hit Wrecker's helmet right before your eyes. "Awesome." You sighed.

#bad batch #bad batch x reader #wrecker x reader #tech x reader #crosshair x reader #hunter x reader #clone wars #clone force 99 #star wars #murphy day

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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march - just some thoughts

i have read more this month than any other month? and its not slowing down its only 3/12 so i have 2/3 of a month to go and i’ve read 26 chapters. even if these chapters are ‘short’ at 10 pages, if i wanna count by ‘20 page’ chunks i’ve still read 13 chunks so far. and i’ve still got more time in the month left. most other months i’ve managed to read ‘a lot’ i read 10-20 chapters. so i’m doing really good.

grammar is a weird thing? in reading i feel like its quite easy now to understand. when listening or watching - same. and yet if asked ‘why do i say/type X’ or ‘why is it written/spoken like X’ i have absolutely no explanation in my head. i could not explain the grammar if prompted. this puts me in a weird place and i feel like i SHOULD go over a grammar guide again just so i can WORD what i’m intuitively understanding.

this is a bit bizarre to me because within the first 6 months of study i DID read through an entire grammar guide just to get an idea of what i was about to look at, and it hardly made sense once actually reading/watching/listening. i understood the guide fine, but actually Seeing chinese i was still confused. i would reference AllSetLearning’s Chinese Wiki on some basic points, then after 6 months i just stopped. now its been what 1.5 years and - reading is so easy, listening is so easy, grammar wise. none of the grammar confuses me. but i no longer ‘explicitly’ have any idea what the fuck the grammar is. i used to. i studied it explicitly before trying to read/listen. and yet now that i can read/listen, i have no idea how to explain the grammar. i can listen to a podcast and i don’t think about what the grammar is i just get it. i read and just know what i’m looking at. its like english - i cannot fucking explain it. Which makes speaking/writing a bit hard. Because when i try to check if i’m right i have no fucking clue HOW anymore - i just say/write what comes to mind and HOPE it makes sense. i have no way to conciously check for errors except ‘does this feel right’? And that’s not good enough for me lol. So I definitely do need to eventually read a grammar guide for explicit explanations again.

Technically I think “English and Chinese Grammar Side By Side” grammar book would be an excellent one to use. Because i read the first 50 pages of it and it compared it to english (so it explained english too), and it was very easy to understand and started basic then got more involved.

I’m probably gonna use my very old Chinese Grammar Self Taught by Thimm book instead. Just because I really like that book. Then I guess use another after (probably Basic Chinese Sentence Patterns since its modern and perfect for ‘catch your own mistakes’ study and much shorter than Eng+Chinese Grammar side by side).

Anyway I’m in a very weird place right now lol. I know i’m understanding grammar that is stuff I never even studied initially in the grammar guide, but unable to explain what it is, and a lot of stuff i did explicitly study in a grammar guide i completely forgot the explanation for. My reading and listening is GREAT, because all my effort only has to go into learning new words lately! its relaxing! Its the only part i need to do! But my writing/speaking i am very concerned about because being able to check myself for mistakes is something i’d like the ability to do.

how grammar is presented really makes a difference in how well i get it. there is some serious benefit to ‘show simple first then build up what you know’ that text books tend to prefer. versus like grammar reference books that may start with some in depth stuff.

i tried to read a japanese grammar guide the other day and 1 it was great but 2 it covered some ADVANCED stuff i never learned in genki 1+2, and so it was Explicit grammar description of stuff i had literally years ago been immersing in japanese and Still not conciously known about. So i felt. Overwhelmed lol. I felt so confused. I feel like I might switch to Tae Kim’s grammar guide primarily just because its structured with basics covered first. and i feel like until the basics are again glued into my brain, seeing even more advanced stuff just confused me so much i had no idea how to remember it. which is funny because? my usual strategy with grammar guides is to just read it and let what sticks stick and what is confusing be moved on from, in the hope i will later see it again and understand it better. so like based on what i usually do i should’ve just been able to read through it (and i’m gonna try anyway lol). but truly japanese grammar just... my mind does not like wrapping around it and remembering it. (chinese grammar is so much easier for me... so much easier....;-; )

i have been tempted to just Restart Nukemarine’s LLJ (Lets Learn Japanese) memrise decks, because I KNOW they worked for me last time really really well. And they include Tae Kim grammar lessons. And I know if i did it then maybe i’d get back to where i was years ago pretty fast.

I tried Earthlingo app. Its a cool idea, I don’t think its worth it though unless you planned to get Rosetta Stone (since Earthlingo is FREE). Earthlingo features 1000 words per language, taught to you by exploring video game worlds as an alien. Its a cool concept, but since all words seem to be nouns then you aren’t even learning the most common verbs/adjectives. And 1000 words is not a lot. And you could learn 1000 quite fast if using srs flashcards like Memrise or Anki (think weeks if you push yourself, and a month or two months if going at a regular pace). Earthlingo you have to slowly explore the worlds so that eats time, you have to choose to test yourself (so you don’t review nearly as often as flashcard apps), and one test includes walking around the world clicking the object which you’re given the word for (takes time to find the right object). All this means a word that might take maybe 15 minutes to study over a few weeks, might instead take much longer to study and learn. I don’t use duolingo because it generally covers so few words (usually 2000-4000 i think which is good for a beginner resource but you have to do the WHOLE course to get to all those words and i take so long on duolingo that could take YEARS for me versus a month on a flashcard app or clozemaster). Duolingo I also don’t use because it very slowly paces learning material (it takes me months/years to get through 1000 words on duolingo - just personally i go so slow on it, i think faster people would find a use for it). Likewise Lingodeer takes me AGES to get through (and i think covers 2000 words nowadays? I’m shocked Duolingo has more words for the japanese course tbh). However, Lingodeer is by far the best ‘app’ for Japanese grammar lessons in app practice form. Even if basically all the apps feel pretty slow to me in how fast they give you new info. Earthlingo is cool that its free, and for learners 12 and under i think it would be super useful as a way to engage them and keep them studying (since what child likes flashcards? whereas as a child i would’ve loved this). But as an adult Earthlingo is sooooo slow on how fast you can learn words, and it does not even offer very many words (1000 is a nice bare minimum but without verbs/adjectives it can only be a supplementary learning tool for beginners at best).

Link about Lingodeer having 2000 words in a course. (Since its SO hard to lookup how much vocabulary lingodeer includes :c )

Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks (which I’m considering going through again but ToT agh flashcardssssss.... they sure do work though agh)

http://www.chinese-grammar.com/beginner/ - this is the site I read a chinese grammar guide on at like Month 3. I am rereading it now maybe it will help me remember wtf grammar explicitly is. ToT (A tip, read Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced sections). Last time I visited the site you just clicked a section, then saw each fully explained grammar point and clicked ‘next’ it was nice. Now its laid out a little less ideal for me, but its still got all the same nice info! (Also honestly if you are a beginner I really DO like this grammar guide... it introduces basic info first, gradually gets more complex, and i could follow its logic knowing like 200 hanzi and 100 words ToT. its very easy to understand even if it takes a while to apply that info).

im probably gonna read hanshe more today. i’m at the point where either i know enough vocab, or the writers style has just ‘clicked’ idk. but now i just am not getting bogged down by unknown words and am just. speeding through enjoying the plot. Also rip me this novel has 155 chapters and im only on chapter 30.

watching japanese lets plays is really fun! i feel like im 3 years old cause i just see nouns i can learn pretty easy in context cause i know the game well, and hear some vaguely familiar verbs, but its fun! also it helps i know kingdom hearts 2 like by heart so. a lot of it makes me instantly cheerful and nostalgic. roxas’s voice is so cute in the japanese version.

oh i almost forgot: I found a book recently for chinese that for it’s like 10 page grammar guide summary at the beginning ALONE i think is more than worth the 4 dollars it costs to get. It has a ton of compound words and its a reference book in mandarin and cantonese (it has pronunciation for both, all characters are in traditional). I got it initally because it as a bunch of compound words and I’d like to get better at knowing a lot of common ones. But the intro to the book has a page explaining sentence structures in chinese, then examples. Its so straightforward and to the point. I love it. The book is “Understanding Chinese: A Guide to the Usage of Chinese Characters” by Rita Mei-Wah Choy. (There is also a companion book for individual hanzi, which is nice but this book specifically I’m finding more useful).

what i really like about Listening-Reading method, and reading, as study activities: no matter how I do them it is only improvement. I have a tendency to ‘redo’ material i don’t feel i fully mastered, or refuse to move on. So when i have duolingo, flashcards (sometimes i can move on if i ignore reviews/make myself do new stuff), books, grammar guides, self guided classes - i have a tendency to redo the material. over and over. and not progress and challenge myself. whereas with reading - every time i look up a word its useful because its new or something i clearly Need to review (not something i’ve actually learned and can move past reviewing). so whether i reread material or read new stuff, as long as i run into things i find somewhat challenging (feel the desire to word look up), i know i am running into new material i can learn. Same with listening-reading method: whether i finish a book or just skip to random books, any new chapter i do will give me new words to learn/remember (until i’ve reached a point of perfect listening comprehension which is a WAYS away). There’s no way for me to mess it up. I can give up a book im bored with, i don’t have to stick to one resource to the end.

someone tell me why professionally made chinese audio books almost NEVER line up to the chapters???? whyyyyy ;-;

Even More Notes lol:

So I read so much in Pleco, which auto pronounces, I have COMPLETELY forgot. 得地 - for these two, when they’re attached after a description like 淡淡慢慢高兴 etc, when are they pronounced di versus de???? i’m pretty sure 得 is pronounced de when its an adjective like ‘-ly’. but for 地, i don’t remember if when part of a describer if its pronounced di or de????

#rant #march progress #march #everyone using ore in kh2 is hilarious a lil to me tho #u are all bishies u are all tiny kids WHy u acting so tough lol

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maggyoutthere · 4 years

Text

It's funny how I'm actually putting effort on this. I'm putting actual effort on a shitpost.

Anyways I said I'd write a bad sonic creepypasta so here it is. Here's the catch: I like how its turning out so imma make it a 2-pary story. This is the first part. It doesn't have any scary shit but it has the basics for a shitty creepypasta: someone gets a old pirated/unreleased/defective game and tries them out despite getting warned that bad shit might happen.

Again I'm not a fluent English speaker so expect some grammar error and stuff like that ._.,

So ladies, gentlemen and non-bis, I present to you-

Sonic: Battle of Metal and Blood (Part 1)

Synopsis: Teen gets nostalgic mid-quarentine and starts playing old Sonic games. She asks for some cheat codes and shit happens.

So for context; I'm a 17 year old girl stuck home because of quarantine.

It had been 4 or 5 months since the virus sent everyone home. Students were playing Animal Crossing and DOOM all day to fill in the summer hours since no one could go outside. I never liked going to the beach so I was never really bothered by it.

Like many people, I found myself going back in time to easier phases of my life. I was rewatching old cartoon shows from my childhood, getting into MCR and P!ATD and just living in pure nostalgia. I also started getting into gaming again, even going to the point of setting up my Wii again just to play Epic Mickey, but I didn't exactly grow up with the Wii. I was more of a Playstation kid, so much that me and my bro got a Playstation 2 from our cousin when he eventually bought the 3rd one for himself.

My cousin was older than us; I remember him being 16 or 17 when I was like 12, so he was kind of our gaming hero. If there was a level in Crash Bandicoot we couldn't beat, we'd call my cousin and he'd do it in 15 minutes. He knew all the cheat codes, all the secret levels and extra content for the games he had; he was like a genius to me and my lil bro, so when he gave us his old Playstation 2 and games me and my sibling knew we were in for a treat.

We got this Sonic Gems Collection for the Playstation 2 from him. It's like a port of various older Sonic games like Sonic CD, Sonic The Fighters, Sonic R and so on. I grew up playing that game, especially Sonic The Fighters since I wasn't very good at the racing games.

I still had a working controller and a lot of free time so I asked my bro for help setting up the console. The thing was so dusty I was actually scared it wasn't going to work. We clicked the power button and the light on the console turned on. Me and my brother held our breaths as we put the DVD in the console and crossed our fingers. As the screen lit up with the SEGA logo and music started playing, I just hugged him and cheered. He set up the console in my room so I could play without having to go to his room (he was the one keeping all the electronic stuff) and told me to have fun.

I didn't even know where to start. There was so much I wanted to play now that I actually knew what I was doing. I thought about starting with my favourite one out of the bunch: Sonic CD. I'm a sucker for the retro 2D pixel games so that was a must. It was better than what I remembered; the music was so catchy and the art style was vibrant and it stood out from a lot of games nowadays that go for a washed out "hyper realistic" look.

As I kept playing, I eventually reached the level where Amy tags along with Sonic for a while before Metal Sonic bursts through a wall and kidnaps her. Oh yeah, Metal Sonic was a thing. I remembered him from Sonic R and Sonic The Fighters - and the fact he was in the fucking cover art of the DVD case. I absolutely loved the fucker in the games though. He had a cool design, and the idea of the villain being a copy of the hero gone wrong was so interesting to me at the time.

I ended up passing the level and even making it to Stardust Speedway. I was sweating since I'd never come this far at any game. My bro was there cheering me as I tried not falling on spikes or getting hit by Metal Sonic's attacks. I ended up making it till the end on top, but it was kinda sad seeing Metal crash face-first against the door like that.

I was done with that for a while, so I went ahead and played Sonic R and Sonic The Fighters for nostalgia. Again, the fucker was there, either as a boss or as an unlockable character. I ended up noticing how there were a bunch of games missing. There were empty grayed slots with question marks instead of the game titles. I couldn't understand if the game was broken or if there was something I was supposed to do, so I called my cousin in hope he would somewhat tell me what to do. He ended up explaining how the game made you complete all the other games to unlock new ones. I thought that was kinda stupid so I asked him if he had any cheat codes or something to make the whole thing available. He told me he was going to dig up his old stuff and ring me again if he found anything.

A few hours later, he sent me a message telling me he'd found something that should work. He told me he did have a cheat code but he thought it was best if I didn't do it. Here's the transcript from his message.

"There's something that might work but it's kinda weird. I got this memory card from a friend of mine and he said this should unlock all the hidden contents within the disc, but when I tried it some weird shit started happening. Most of the sonic games were unplayable no matter how many times I restarted the console or cleaned the disc. There should be an extra game slot but that's just a glitch. Something about the system trying to make up storage for the extra code. Just don't click on anything that looks like a glitch and you should be golden"

Well that was a bit discouraging, but we agreed to meet that afternoon so he could give me the memory card.

When I got home and plugged the cartridge into the slot on the console, I was kinda scared. What if the thing exploded or something? I gave it a try and the thing actually worked! As I clicked on the games section, everything was there! There were some vectorman games but I didn't know who that was at the time so I didn't really care about them. What I was more interested in was the museum. There were a bunch of unlockable promotional art and illustrations there that I never got to see as a kid, so you could imagine how joyful I was when I saw the museum section filled with pages upon pages of illustrations and renderings of the games. Some of them weren't even on the Gems Collection like some screenshots of Sonic Heroes.

I went back on the game menu and was surprised to see another game entry below all the vectorman ones. It was called "Sonic: Battle of Metal and Blood". What the hell was this? It surely wasn't in the cover art and a quick google search turned up nothing. Was it a glitch? It couldn't be; it looked too clean and intentionally made to be a glitch, not to mention that whole game titles don't just appear out of thin air. Game or not, something was programmed in there. I concluded it was probably someone's fan project that was in the memory card my cousin gave me. Why hadn't he mentioned it though?

I was too curious to turn down a mystery like this one, so I got up first to make a cup of coffee since it was already getting late. As I returned from the kitchen, I remembered to look at the synopsis of the game. I can't remember exactly what it said but it was something along the lines of:

"In this sequel to the famous Sonic CD, step in the shoes of Sonic's friends as they face their biggest challenge yet. Control Amy Rose and Miles "Tails" Prower and fight against the metallic faker himself, Metal Sonic, and stop him before he puts his plan to become the only Sonic in action"

Woah, that sounded exciting; I wasted no time. I got all cozy, kept my cup of coffee next to me

And pressed START.

To be continued in part 2

#sth #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #creepypasta #creepy story #short story #sonic gems collection #sonic: battle of metal and blood #battle of metal and blood #maggy moment #shhh i actually like how its turning out #i'm not that good at writing but this is the best i've written in a while

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childhoodgrave · 4 years

Note

I'm starting 2 play pathologic but I'm scared any tips for how to make the start of the game less impossibly heavy and mortifying (I accidentally started a fight got scared and restarted my game)

HI im typing on my computer this time bc i wrote likean essay long response to this and tumblr crashed instead of saving this also adding a readmore bc this will get long im sorry.. but thank u so much for sending me this ask i am so excited u r playing pathologic first of all!! i will format this in a numbered list so its a bit easier 2 read...

1. im assuming the fight u started was with the ppl loitering in evas garden, right? this is a v common problem new players face and an intentional obstacle left by the devs to teach u tht u shld avoid confrontation and fighting at all costs when u can help it. the fighting system in this game is intentionally difficult and u will usually die if u get into a fight if u dont have a gun. just leave the guys alone and let them stay and u will be fine. there arent any consequences to this so dont worry!!

2. starting and then restarting the game a few times when ur getting into it is very normal so dnt worry abt that!!! i had to restart my save like 3 times before i got the hang of things, so dont be discouraged. tht being said the game isnt for everyone so if u just consistently are not having fun w it dont force urself to play it!!

3. check out the settings page where it lists all the controls for the game, bc it will show you some mechanics the game nevr tells you about. use Q to open up your quest menu which will show you your overall goal, main quest, and sidequests. the main quest MUST be completed by the end of each day or there will be ingame consequences, so be careful. sidequests are less dire.

the I key opens up ur inventory!!

you press E to talk to people

the P key opens up ur status menu iirc. be sure to keep track of that too, but statuses will also pop up in the corner of ur screen when they get actually dire, too, so if u dont check it u wont be completely clueless dw!!

the L key opens up your letters menu. u will get letters from different ppl throughout each day and usually they pertain to the main quest at hand or a sidequest you can do so that you know what youre supposed to be doing each day. whenever you get a letter a spinning icon will pop up in the corner of the screen and the sound of a paper flipping will play, but the game never actually tells u abt it which is a big design flaw on its part.

4. pay attention to the time!! esc or q will pause ur game and pause the flow of time, but opening ur inventory wont. time is a super important aspect of the game so just watch out 4 that.

5. spend all your money on food on day 1. dont bother with eggs or lemons so much as meat, bread, fish, vegetables, and milk to a lesser extent. its important u do this on day 1 for reasons u will find out later.

dont worry abt keeping ur hunger meter completely low tho!! make sure it doesnt max out, but dont try to keep it empty, ull waste food very quickly that way and its a very important resource.

theres also an area in the game near where u start out that has some milk left out near a statue of a woman that you can pick up. raising ur fists in game will make a little dot appear to help you aim for things, and i always use that to focus on what i want to pick up because it can be very difficult otherwise. heres the area im talking about

6. check ur map frequently whenever ur going anywhere!!!! the layout of the town is intentionally confusing and u will get lost without ur map, esp because it shows u quest markers of wherever u need to go.

the walking in this game is also very slow and tedious. u get used to it but it is a feature of the game so just keep that in mind.

i used this map to keep track of where all the shops in town are because its a bit difficult to tell otherwise and can save time if u need to get stuff (like food and medicine. dont bother with clothes bc theyre honestly useless but clothing stores do sell needles which you should collect for bartering.)

7. bartering is a BIG system in the game and its actually what you use to get a lot of the items youll need. you can barter with pretty much every random npc you see in town, just press E to talk to them! different people will trade for different things and find value in different items, so just pay attention to that!

look in trash cans and bins located around the town to find useful things you can barter or use yourself, like water bottles. id recommend especially saving items that children will trade for like jewelry, flowers, needles, hooks, sharp objects (like knives and switchblades), and nuts. dont eat the nuts, trade them with children.

8. one child in particular will have an item called “schmowder” on her occasionally. theyre important for reasons that you find out in game later. if she has a schmowder, trade for it, and save it. it costs a lot so save up things this child will trade for. dont use schmowders on yourself, save them for later. the child looks like this.

unrelated but i just think this girls design is sweet. i like her dress :)

9. sometimes characters will give you items for quests. if your inventory is full, the item will drop to the ground in a bag with a thud. watch out for this and be sure to check your inventory and the ground to make sure you actually have the item you need to do a quest.

10. quests can be confusing sometimes, and if u ever feel lost i recommend checking the pathologic wiki for “the bachelor’s route” to find a guide about each quest that happens each day. OR you can just dm me and i can help u if u dont want to risk being spoiled!!! i dont know everything but if i dont know the answer i can just look it up for you since i already know the story of the game.

11. dialogue can also be confusing sometimes, so choose what you say carefully! dialogue trees that you can go back to are usually rare and dont actually happen that much. the dialogue system is also intentionally confusing and tricky. dont be afraid to reload a save file if you want to learn more or see what other dialogue options would have got you.

and thats all i can think of right now??? im sorry this is a lot, i promise the game isnt actually that difficult once you get used to it!!! its just a matter of getting used to the mechanics. lmk if u ever need any help at all :D

#pathologic #im so sorry for saying so much ...i rlly rlly tried to be brief here ok #the game RLLY RLLY isnt as difficult as ppl make it out to be #or at least the bachelors route isnt.

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sunflowerhoney · 3 years

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Can you answer all of the soft questions please darling? 🥰😘

-🍓

Of course sweetheart! 🥰 Thank you so much for sending this! <3 (and sorry that it took me a bit to answer them all!!)

1. your favourite playlist (made by yourself or someone else)

a very cute playlist that @strawbabie-honey made for me 😊

2. how many houseplants in your room, and what kinds are they?

In my room none because my one cat tries to eat everything 😅but I have two succulents in the one window in my apartment that he can’t reach

3. your favourite “grounding” activity (anything that involves using the hands/doesn’t involve “spacing out” or escapism - something like gardening, knitting, dancing, cooking)

Coloring!

4. an account on social media whose posts make you smile

all of you guys on here!! Ily <3

5. 5 tv shows that cheer you up

Ratched (especially the Mildolyn scenes lol), The Office, That 70s Show, Adventure Time, Firefly

6. how you get relaxed when you’re struggling to sleep

Usually I either watch Tiktoks/scroll on my phone or I close my eyes and daydream until I fall asleep haha

7. your favourite board game

Ticket to Ride

8. if you were going to write a non-fiction book on any topic, what would it be?

Maybe something true crime related? I’ve spent a lot of time watching true crime shows lol

9. a quote that you would consider getting tattooed or putting in a frame

“Get out from your house, from your cave, from your car. Get out from the place you feel safe, from the place that you are. Get out and go running, go funning, go wild. Get out from your head, get growing, dear child.”

If I was getting a tattoo I would probably only want the last line but I would frame the whole thing :o

10. something you’ve created in the last year that you’re proud of (a playlist, a piece of art, some writing, a craft hobby, a social media account, etc)

Honestly this blog! I’ve really pushed myself to be more social on this blog than I have been on previous ones I’ve had and I’ve met a lot of amazing people because of it! 😊

11. a tip or hack you’ve learned that makes cleaning or tidying easier

Rolling shirts up when you put them in a drawer instead of folding them, it makes it easier to see them and stuff doesn’t get lost at the bottom of the pile :)

12. if you could make a candle that smelt like anything, what would you pick?

Bookstores!

13. the last so-bad-it’s-good joke you heard

I’ve been trying to think about this one for a while but I’m honestly not sure :o

14. an artist (of any kind) whose work you look forward to seeing

these days I look forward to anything with Sarah Paulson in it tbh 😅

15. the last tv episode that made you laugh out loud

I honestly haven’t watched much TV in a while (other than watching AHS on Netflix)

16. how you wake your body up when it’s feeling tired, achy or needs a stretch

I like to stretch my back, like side to side and crack my neck. When I’m tired I like to get up and walk around/listen to music

17. a bath, shower, beauty or toiletry product that makes you feel revived, or that you always re-order when it’s running out

I haven’t had it in a while but I used to have a face jelly thing from Lush that I loved :o ( and now I want it again lol), also even though I don’t take baths that often I love bath bombs

18. a book series you can always escape in

Percy Jackson because nostalgia lol

19. the sport or exercise you enjoy the most, and what’s helped you get better at it

Softball! I played from like 3rd grade until almost the end of high school. What helped me get better was mostly just practicing and not giving up! :)

20. a skill you’ve picked up in the past few years

Being able to get rid of things, I used to keep sooo much stuff when I was a kid (like every ticket, every pamphlet, every essay lol) and I’ve gotten better about knowing whats worth keeping/what I can let go of

21. a youtube video you find useful, entertaining or relaxing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs this video is entertaining and informational and I can’t even imagine how long it took the person who made it to put it all together!

22. if you were going to dye your hair any colour of the rainbow, what would you choose?

Pink! or dark purple!

23. the book you just finished and what you thought (no spoilers!)

A Clash of Kings, it was really, really good but really, really long. I also made the mistake of watching Game of Thrones before reading the books and I feel like its kind of tainted them for me lol

24. describe the most wacky, weird and wonderful at-home outfit you’ve put together

When I was in high school my best friend and I used to dress up in random outfits from her closet, go to the lake near her house and have “photoshoots” lmao i remember wearing a sweater, shorts with black tights underneath and boots and thinking i was the coolest person in the world 😂

25. a game you’re playing that takes your mind off things

Animal Crossing, I restarted my island after ages of not playing recently

26. the film you watched most recently that you could watch again and again

Blue Jay!

27. your favourite flavour and brand of tea

My favorite flavor is raspberry! but im not sure if I have a favorite brand :o

28. a good-will story you’ve heard on the news that’s made you feel hopeful

Any story about people helping animals makes me 🥺

29. a favourite easy recipe: 5 ingredients or less, or takes less than 30 min to make

Edible Cookie Dough :o its basically just mixing cookie dough ingredients minus the eggs but its so good!

30. a song that makes you want to have a boogie round your bedroom

Electric Love!

#anon #anonymous #answered #🍓

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whaq · 4 years

Text

Fuck You, Animu (2/4) - Re:Zero Episode 1

With non-stop suspense, compelling characterization, and hints at a greater narrative, Re:Zero’s first episode is sure to keep you coming back to the series over, and over, and over, and ove…

Based on a series of light novels, written by Tappei Nagatsuki and illustrated by Shin'ichirō Ōtsuka, Studio White Fox (Goblin Slayer)’s Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World is a new contender for the crown of the eponymous isekai (Another World) genre that has recently taken over the anime industry. Is Re:Zero the breath of fresh air the anime community needed to restart the trend of otaku running into oncoming traffic in an attempt to be reborn? Or just another run-of-the-mill zero in this already saturated market?

The series follows Natsuki Subaru, a hikikomori (shut-in) who finds himself suddenly transported into a fantasy world of swords and sorcery. Following in the footsteps of his fellow isekai protagonists, Subaru explores this whole new world with the help of his vast otaku knowledge. Unlike his isekai brethren, Subaru was seemingly transported with nothing more than a jumpsuit,a bag of convenience store goodies, and a surprisingly good physique, for someone who doesn’t leave the house. When he encounters danger in this new domain, he is saved by a white-haired, half-elf, mage whose kindness sparks inspiration in our hero’s eyes. The story continues as Subaru trial-and-error’s his way through this new land, using a new ability he doesn’t quite comprehend, all for the affections of a lady he eventually gets to know as Emilia.

As series openers go, Re:Zero’s first episode serves as a masterclass in how to introduce, not just a story, but its main players too. From the episode’s cold open, you’re immediately pulled to the edge of your seat as we’re given glimpses of the aftermath of a struggle and hear the last words of a man at the edge of his life. Unbeknownst to us, this scene is intercut with shots of this man, who we later find out to be our protagonist, merely living his life as he peruses the aisles of a convenience store. The show’s director, Masahiro Watanabe, of whom this series serves as his directorial debut, flexes his comprehension of cinematic storytelling by utilizing not-so-subtle visuals to convey exactly who Natsuki Subaru is and what kind of life he lives. In a single minute, we see Subaru read manga, cringe at the sight of a couple, and sulk over his life (or lack thereof), showing us exactly how much of a loser our “hero” is.

The character of Natsuki Subaru is, following the conventions of the genre, an audience insert. He’s a down-on-his-luck otaku whose backstory is practically non-existent to make it easier for the viewer to see themselves in his shoes. That said, unlike his contemporaries like Kazuma of Konosuba fame, Re:Zero does not shy away from the darker side of otaku. While the rest of the series hammers this concept home, the first nail in the coffin of this generic archetype is already set from the start. Upon his arrival, Subaru is faced with his first dilemma in the new world: a child who’s about to be hit by a carriage. You’d expect our dashing hero to well... dash in to save him, right? Not Subaru! He instead contemplates on how his grand entrance into the new world should go first before finally deciding to actually try and help. While it might seem like an off-hand gag meant to get a cheap laugh, this self-centered aspect of our protagonist permeates throughout the rest of his journey.

Upon entering this new world, the show greets us with one of its many iconic audio cues: an angelic gasp from the song Rondo of Love and Darkness. The series’ soundtrack is one of its best aspects. Composer Kenechiro Suehiro, who went on to compose the serene yet atmospheric music of Girls Last Tour, was tasked by Director Watanabe to utilize human voices in its tracks, which he uses to great effect. The music is filled with these ominously chilling chants that sound as if they were straight from a circle of Hell. This is heard in the likes of the aforementioned Rondo, and in the show’s ever-meme’d Call of the Witch that trails every pivotal moment in the anime.

Subaru is suddenly mugged by the city’s under dwellers. It’s during this scene that one of the show’s issues arises. Re:Zero has been praised for its subversion of the genre. While this is accurate at times, like how Subaru’s entrance into another world comes in the form of a blink instead of a glomp from truck-kun like his contemporaries, the show seems to think that acknowledging overused genre tropes gives them an excuse to use overused genre tropes. When Subaru sees a girl in the distance while he gets pummeled on, he hopes and prays for her to be the female savior he sees in manga; this hope is immediately dashed when this girl, Felt, turns out to be a thief and completely runs past our groveling protagonist. This, in and of itself, is hilarious and subverts what we the audience expect from this cliche. But then this gag is immediately followed by the entrance of an actual female savior, completely abusing the trust we put into the show to not be like the other isekai.

But all these technical issues are merely second to Re:Zero’s main strength: its premise. Subaru’s first day involves him helping his savior find a lost item of hers and this leads them to a tavern where he finds a pile of blood and corpses, of which he becomes part of as he’s killed by someone off-screen. The show finally gives us context to the cold open when we see that the people gasping for life in the beginning of the episode were Subaru and Emilia. Giving neither Subaru nor the audience time to breathe, we’re immediately taken back to Subaru’s first interaction with a citizen earlier in the episode. Before our protagonist is able to process what has happened, we’re already introduced to the show’s main mechanic: Return after Death.

Return gives the show a constant sense of suspense. Both the viewer and Subaru are having to work with limited knowledge of the situation that can only be broadened after literally dying, making Subaru’s mantra “what DOES kill you MIGHT make you stronger.” Each of Subaru’s retries unearth, not only new information, but also new character interactions. The show’s main appeal is how each of the character dynamics change when Subaru is given new knowledge about them while said character remains stagnant from the last run. When your main protagonist’s only ability is an unlimited set of checkpoints, he has to rely on his adaptability and resourcefulness which does a good job of keeping conflicts in the show real and real exciting.

In contrast to Return being the highlight of Re:Zero, there are many parts of the episode that are barely worth mentioning. The voice acting feels like nothing special. While Yusuke Kobayashi and Rie Takashi, who play Subaru and Emilia respectively, seem to be good voice actors, they aren’t given much room to showcase their talents as most of the dialogue in the first episode is limited to world-explaining exposition. The animation was also just passable. While the few fight scenes in the episode were clearly animated, there truly is nothing to write home about with regards to the way things are drawn. There’s even the obvious use of CGI for background elements that feels so jarring to look at. Lastly, while most other critics praise the show for its creative world, the first episode doesn’t do it any favors. We’re shown lizard people, generic magic spells, and just another medieval-ish setting along with the same NPC-like side characters you know from RPGs.

Re:Zero’s opening episode is a thrill from beginning-to-end. Its musical score is top-notch, its cinematography is excellent, and the story, along with its subsequent gimmick, aims to set it apart from the rest of the isekai genre while still holding enough of its DNA to sit comfortably within said genre. Its pitfalls into both tropeyness and technical mediocrity are easily ignored by the oozing quality of the sum of its parts.

#re zero #anime #manga #review #anime review #re:zero #otaku #critic #critique #media criticism #emilia #subaru #rem #ram #I believe in Echidna supremacy

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atissi · 5 years

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What advice would you give someone who wants to play Pathologic but is also terrified of screwing up really badly because I've played just enough of it to feel like there's no way I can succeed without looking stuff up but I don't want to do that! Just basic tips and/or reassurances if you have any?

Updated: Feb. 27 2021 (since I've finished and am replaying P2)

See, the thing about Pathologic is that it’s not possible to “succeed” like you do in other video games. There’s no happy ending for everyone. In the same sense, you can’t really fail. The game accommodates a wide variety of deaths and mistakes—even in Pathologic Classic HD, you can get a character's ending if you hoard enough medicine by the end of the 12 days, no matter how many people get sick or die. In Pathologic 2, everyone can die, but you’ll still be able to get an ending. Even some of the "bad" endings are fun in their own right. Sometimes, the game will reward you with more content because you failed in the first place.

All that being said, I totally relate to your fears. I’ll start by talking about Pathologic 2 first, since I’m more familiar with it. Then there will be some tips on playing Pathologic Classic HD.

Pathologic 2 is incredibly punishing, both emotionally and mechanically. I’ve seen people adapt to this through 3 different playstyles. I’ll rank them in terms of “least close to the intended gaming experience” to “most close”.

1. Just cheat.

“wrt cheating, as a notorious cheater, id recommend trying to do the game as legitimately as possible regardless! if there are some aspects that you absolutely do not vibe with, even with reduced difficulty (for me that's hunger mechanics), i would say that you can load in items to mitigate this aspect. and, tying in with the second point, if you complete a run this way you can always go back and try it legitimately since you've (sort of) gotten an understanding of the mechanic.” - Onion

If you have really bad anxiety, or just dont have the time available to do the other playstyles, cheating is a way to engage with Pathologic 2′s excellent story. Fiddling with the difficulty controls is allowed. Spawning in endless food for yourself is possible. I can even get you in touch with someone who uses cheat codes in the game regularly to get game assets. If changing the game is what it takes for you to get through it, I think it’s better than nothing. But I’d personally at least encourage you to try an Imago playthrough first. Decide if it’s too difficult for you after that. And again: Pathologic 2 is constantly trying to trip you up. It’s meant to be difficult. Sometimes you’ll fail and the game won’t tell you if you could have prevented it. Just keep going. But like Onion said, cheating works as a supplement.

2. Replay, replay, and replay, until you get it right.

“You can always replay. You have more time than they do. Also save states are your friend.” - Alex

“reload as much as possible, do NOT look things up. your first playthru WILL be bad, and thats good!!! experience it fully yourself first. [and] “reload as much as possible” meaning like: [it] isnt a crime, you can do it as many times as possible. but dont get stressed about doing everything perfectly. its an experience!!!” - Zee

There’s no penalty for using your save states. If you get stuck in a death loop, go back as far as you need to in order to get things right. Hopefully this means starting a day over and using your time more effectively. Personally, I got to Day 7 before realizing I had to restart from Day 1, because I was doing that badly. Trust me, if you’ve gotten one miracle cure and 10 bottles of water by then, you’ll be doing better than I was. My friend Bee had trouble too, and took 92 hours to finish their first playthrough. A replay playstyle takes a LOT of time. But Pathologic 2 is so rich in content that replaying isn’t even as annoying as it could be. And this is also the best way to complete as many quests and save as many people as you want. Whenever you’re scared, just remember: you can always go back on your choices! (Other than the theatre’s death penalties. But nothing can help you with those.)

3. Just go through it.

Again. You’re not supposed to succeed in Pathologic. In the words of the lead translator Kevin Snow, “…I know [Pathologic 2’s] script and this is different from other games: there’s so much story locked behind failure and death. You’ll die, and you can’t save everyone. That doesn’t gate you from story; it gives you more. Resist, survive, but continue.” It’s only when you’re suffering that you experience the story so viscerally. That’s when the choices mean something. Sacrificing your own health or the health of others–saving tinctures for yourself, breaking into houses, killing people, choosing not to help people because you just don’t have time–these are impactful because you’re experiencing the mechanical repercussions of your actions. You are not a removed arbiter of the Town’s suffering. Everyone in Pathologic is having the worst 12 days of their life, and you’re dying right alongside them. Spoilers for Day 4, but I don’t think visiting the Rod and seeing the Tragedians would have affected me so deeply if I wasn’t actively starving for the entire sequence. It served as a reminder that I wasn’t the only one in pain; it was heart-breaking and heart-warming. Which I think is Pathologic at its core.

Try to see your failures in the game as another form of success. You’re experiencing the game as it’s meant to be played. And when you feel bad about all the people you’ve failed, remember that this is all a play. The game knows it’s artificial. You can replay the game after you finish–and feel free to use cheats or lowered difficulties on a replay–in order to get everything right. Your mistakes aren’t permanent! But on a first playthrough, try to tough through the hardships. You’ll have a more fulfilling time.

Other tips

You can use these 3 playstyles in combination if you need to. I let myself die when I feel like I deserved the punishment, or reload when I feel like I don’t. Bee managed to finish Day 11 by lowering the game difficulty in the final stretch. Just approximate the intended gaming experience as much as you can.

As for gameplay guides, I don’t think anyone I’ve met recommends it (at least for Pathologic 2). The game does interesting things with when and where it reveals information to you, often in ways that are deliberately inconveniencing. You want to experience that on your own. I also think Pathologic 2 is relatively good at telegraphing mechanics or quests. compared to Patho Classic. That said, I do have tips that I wish I knew before playing:

Sprint everywhere. I know the town is beautiful. But you’re on a hell of a time crunch. If you finish your quests early you can forage or trade for more resources, or just bottom out your exhaustion bar. Sprinting does not make your exhaustion go up faster, and water is plentiful in the first few days. Just do it! Save your own time!

Save a lot. Even if you’re not gonna die on your way in and out of the Broken Heart, this game is chock-full of choices, down to the resource management. If you waste a swig of twyrine, you’ll want a good save point to reload at. You can load any save point in your timeline, so save as often as you want. Keep track of where clocks are on the map--the game tags these in the building descriptions. (For that matter, keep track of where beds are. I didn’t realize I could sleep at Vlad Sr.’s place, which made me waste SO much time travelling between the Shelter and the Lair.)

Learn the trading economy. Everyone holds items at different values. Even the kids value certain nuts over others. There are also some interesting conversion rates between items, like peanuts to soap to pemmican. Make the most of the items you’re bartering. And for that matter, try to build up a cache of items valuable to little girls, in case you find one with a schmowder. The kid’s caches are valuable for trading too: twyrine can show you the locations.

This is also a good spoiler-free guide to Pathologic 2′s mechanics.

For Pathologic Classic HD, I haven’t personally played it, but I’m under the impression that it’s easier than Pathologic 2 because there are less character perma-deaths and no death penalties. The advice about reloading still applies. Here’s what Ally says:

“id recommend using a spoiler free guide (Bachelor, Haruspex, and Changeling guides) but other than that read the diary and letters carefully and try to keep track of npcs that could be affiliated with quests. also! some quests have different options for endings so there could be multiple ways to complete them. stock up on food on the earlier days, and after the inquisitor arrives because the prices drop. try to stealth kill with melee weapons when you can, and also reserve your bullets. …also make sure to trade with the children a lot! hold onto objects like the hooks and flowers [to get schmowders. Like I said before, to win the game you only need enough cures to heal the Bound.] …another tip is to keep a pen and paper around to take notes. like when i got the tincture recipes instead of keeping them in my inventory i just wrote them down.”

And that’s it! If you need specific advice or clarification, feel free to DM me! I love talking about this game. I can also get you in touch with anyone mentioned in this post (except Kevin Snow LMAO). Pathologic has an amazing story and I want everyone to experience it!!!

#inbox #beepbeep.txt #pathologic

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flyswhumpcenter · 5 years

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Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled. Green deltas are for requested prompts.)

I'll fix what's broken.

I'm not even sorry for writing this much Inazuma. I love Inazuma. I need to catch up all the years I haven't written content for it.

Also, yes, this ship? I ship it. It has a lot of my soft spots combined into one neat little burrito I immediately fell for it. I wish Akane was better written than what the anime gave us, sure, but it won't prevent me from imagining things and rely on a lot of personal interpretations. Thus this fanfic, which was supposed to be much grittier and edgier and stuff, with more focus on Akane being a more cunning spirit than she lets on, with a ton of regret and an insistence on the theme of fixing and patching things out.

You know what my mind told me instead? "ngh... soft..."

So instead, we all get fluff. I'll see if I can't fit the original idea somewhere, I still have 600-ish words written for it. I restarted this fic like 4 times before finally sticking with this version lol

but like see you soon for more angst on the flygon channel

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Dawn of a New Day

Summary: Akane watches over a dear friend.

Fandom: Inazuma Eleven (Ares/Orion continuity; post-canon) Ship: Akane/Haizaki (pre-rel, implied, can be read as platonic)

Wordcount: 1.5K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

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It’s not so bad, it’s going to be fine, Akane repeats in her mind. It’s not so bad, it’s going to be all fine.

Easier thought than applied, sure. The rational part of herself knows it’s not bad: people just happen to need surgeries, sometimes, and this one wasn’t anything bad. The surgeons looked fairly relaxed about it, the nurses told her it’d be fine, that it was nothing to get this worked up about. Yet, even knowing this, she was still worried: it was still a surgery, it wasn’t just like getting a flu shot.

Still, in her heart, not getting worried is impossible. She cares about her friend too much not to be scared he won’t open his eyes again, stolen away from the world by a malevolent spirit. They’re too young to go to sleep forever, she figures, and she squeezes his fingers inside of her palm with even more strength now.

It’s funny, when she thinks about. Ryouhei has gone through so much, much more than her in fact, having fought against an enemy much bigger than he was, having faced adversaries coming from the entire world and helped save its order with strong teammates; and yet, she’s worried he won’t ever wake up from a surgery a lot of people have gone through just fine. It’s irrational, paradoxical in a way, but the feeling won’t go away, and she still has a vulnerable picture of her best friend right before her eyes.

A nurse occasionally shows up to tell her she should be moving around and not stay on that chair, that it’ll be all well and good. Akane doesn’t bulge: she’s determined to be there for him as much as possible and, frankly, she doesn’t feel like she needs to go for a walk, she’s over that. Patience is the one thing she’s always had that she can put towards anything she wants and that’s a liberty she won’t give away for anything. She’s determined to stay here, this much is sure.

She appreciates the attention and recognizes some of the nurses passing by. She sometimes chats with them, they reassure her, she observes them do a few things here and there: changing an IV bag, updating vitals on their notepads, taking temperatures and pulses. She doesn’t say anything about that, lets them to their job: she’ll have to pay them back too, someday, but they’re less close to her than Ryouhei is, so she thinks of them as secondary thanks. She’ll give them flowers in the near future, she swears, because they often compliment those she brought to put in the vase of the room.

His room isn’t unlike the one she had to stay in, except it’s meant for two and the other patient isn’t here anymore. She’s seen him leave when arriving with the bouquet and a rare plushie she’s grinded at the claw machine for, packing his things away and slipping a “have a nice day” at her before disappearing forever from her sight. It leaves her alone with the passing nurses and her friend, whose hand she holds even if she starts having a cramp from having her fingers in the same position for so long, watching the time go buy on a clock, looking at the sky through the window, glancing at him and smiling to herself about how peaceful he looks like this, both eyes visible.

It’s a rare sight of tranquillity, now that the things that caused them turmoil are over. He deserves this rest from the world.

She has lost track of time passing, more focused on staring at his chest rising and downing softly, slowly under the covers. It’s an innocuous detail nobody pays attention to, usually, yet she can’t help but find it soothing to watch now. It has a different meaning, here, giving this attention more sense. It’s a vision of serenity, of calm after a violent storm. It’s a gentle warmth she welcomes.

To be honest, Akane spent so long merely watching the window with an empty soul and eyes staring into the void that she doesn’t mind finally spending time for something dear to her, hitting home. This is an unconventional way to spend time with a childhood friend, sure, but this she also can’t mind: in a way, it’s like Ryouhei felt, watching over someone and never getting an answer. The main difference is that she was certain he’d wake up sooner or later, even if she nourished all those irrational worries, when he never knew when she’d do so, if she’d even wake up someday. She’s glad and relieved to be able to say she’s won over her previous ailment and is currently making up for all the time and the lies.

Her eyes flutter, tired. She finally glances at a clock: it’s already fairly late in the evening, nearing the very early morning. Visiting hours are closed, but she’s been allowed to remain: perhaps her already existing links with the nursing staff allowed her to do that. She’s going to fall asleep soon, even if she doesn’t want to, starting to lack in energy. Ah, that’s a shame… She’d have at least liked to be there when he’d wake up. Not that he’d need her to remember why he’s here, simply because she wants to be the first to say him hello in the morning.

She should have drunk coffee before getting here, but she doesn’t feel like getting up and fetching a can downstairs. What if he wakes up while she’s gone? She doesn’t want that, does she? She’ll remain by his side, now, so she can finally be truly forgiven and make up for her mistakes, clutching the plushie close to her chest.

She still ends up falling asleep, eventually, slowly dragged into Morpheus’s arms. Her dream is nothing out of the ordinary: it’s abstract and colourful, as she walks around a beautiful garden with fountains made out of crystal shimmering under the summer sunlight. She always feels like she’s been here before, but never knows why, the reason remaining in the shadows of the nearby forest she used to be trapped in. It’s peaceful and calm, gentle like the breeze going through her untied hair.

She follows a golden path, the breeze still blowing through the meadow, flowers slowly dancing to it as they perfume the air. The prize waiting for her at the end of the path always changes and, this time, it’s a familiar pair of eyes she carelessly runs towards.

It’s already shining outside when Akane finally comes to, eyelids fluttering back open, the discomfort of sleeping in a chair making itself known in the background. The first changes she notices are on her: she now has a jacket on her shoulders, whose scent has never been hers, and there’s a cushion in her back. Someone’s undoubtedly been there while she was out. It’s a given, considering this is a hospital.

She hasn’t moved much in her sleep, she realizes, considering her hand is still in the same place as it was before she fell asleep. She doesn’t dare move it as she otherwise stirs to further wake up, immediately greeted by a familiar voice.

“Tch, don’t tell me you’ve been here all night…”

It’s groggy and obviously tired, most likely still tinted with some anaesthetics. It’s accompanied by a smirk on his face, eyes half-closed.

“Good morning, Ryouhei,” she replies with a smile, noticing her own voice to still sound tired and not entirely awaken yet. Maybe he’s only woken up recently too.

Despite his hostile words, which lack the bite he tried to put into them, he puffs, “good morning, Akane.”

She takes his hand in hers, trying to shake away the lethargy she feels in one of them.

“Go to bed, you look like crap,” he tells her again, but his fingers trying to hold hers betray him.

“I’m happy to see you’ve not changed while I was asleep.”

“Tch, like I even would… That’s just a tiny operation…”

To her slight surprise, Ryouhei loses his smirk.

“Wait… You did stay here all night, did you?”

“I did! It was the least I could do after you’ve watched over me for so long!”

He tries to shove his head in his hand, but the way he’s positioned makes it funny to watch.

“I told you that it was fine… You didn’t need to do that, geez… ”

“Maybe I didn’t need to, but I really wanted to…”

The hint of red she sees on his face makes her swoon on the inside, like she’s getting tickled under her skin. A weird, yet not uncomfortable feeling.

They shortly fall into silence, neither of them speaking, as she watches the sun rise from the window, peeking through the curtains. The dawn is beautiful.

“…thank you, Akane,” she hears getting mumbled by a boy looking the other way.

“It’s nothing,” she replies, hands closing in on his.

It tastes like childhood again.

#inazuma eleven #inazuma eleven ares no tenbin #haiaka #miyano akane #haizaki ryouhei #caretaking #comfort no hurt #fluff #bedside vigil #soft #hospitalization #otp: revenge with the face of a teddy bear

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mzkeensmth · 6 years

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20 Things I've Learned In 20 Years.

1.There is a price for everything in life.

You want it? You got to work for it. Nothing in life, especially the good ones, comes for free. You gotta work hard for it. Your effort determines how the result will be.

2. Longing for your non-existent father will not change anything.

There will be days where you're going to miss him and the hurt is inevitable but you've got to come to realise someday that just sitting in your room, sobbing real hard while you tune in to sad indie songs will not get you anywhere. If he wanted to be a part of you life, he would've made an effort to.

3. Go on dates, get your heartbroken over and over again, fall in love a hundred times.

Let others say what they wanna say. "She's too easy." "He's such a player." But these are parts and parcels of life. These are needed to be done in order for you to find the right one. If you give it a miss, fearing of what others have to say about you then you might miss the chance of meeting the right one.

4. It's OK to move on faster than others.

Some might take a year to get over their ex, and some probably just days. And it's OKAY. You may have dated someone for 10 years and move on in a matter of days and you may have dated someone for 10 days and move on in a matter of years. And that is fine.

5. Your mom loves you more than anyone else can ever.

Do i really have to go into it further?

6. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to breakdown and cry sometimes.

You dont always have to have things figured out all the time. You're a human being. You are allowed to make mistakes. And from them, you learn and become better.

7. Money is the root to all evil.

Money destroys everything. Every possible relationships and friendships.

8. Nothing is better left unsaid.

If you live with this etched in your heart, then you'll live forever with regrets of not being able to have said what you have wanted to in the first place.

9. You can protect them by allowing them to be them.

Sometimes the only way to protect the people we love, is to let them make their own mistakes.

10. Love with all of your heart.

It's okay to feel so much. It's okay to love more than the other. If it seems like you portray more emotions than everyone else, its totally fine. You have a heart, make full use of it.

11. No one else has a say in the choice that you make other than YOU.

If you want something/someone, you get them. And if anyone else opposes that idea then that's not on you.

12. You dont owe anyone anything.

Other than your mother, ofcourse. You owe your whole life to her.

13. Dont let anger eat you up.

It's always easier to stay mad, but a minute of anger is 60 seconds of happiness lost.

14. Eat whatever the hell you want.

Dont worry about the calories intake, as long as it makes you happy, munch on it.

15. Grandparents are the most precious things on earth.

They cook for you. Make sure you have plenty of rest. Tells you good old folk tales. They slip you money while your mom isnt looking. And the best part, they gave birth to your parents didnt they.

16. Pauses.

When you get back with your ex, the time doesnt restart. It unpauses. Everyone knows that. - How I Met Your Mother.

17. Nothing good ever happens after 2AM.

When the clock strikes 0200, its better to just stay at home.

18. Always be kind.

The littlest kind acts can cause a ripple effect that can change your life.

19. It's okay to be scared sometimes.

If you're not scared then you're not taking a chance. And if you're not taking a chance then... what the hell are you doing?

20. Life goes on.

Whatever that has happened, happened. You cant change it. So why bother drooling on it? Instead... Let go of the past. Embrace the present. Prepare for the future. It's not going to be easy. No one said it will. But what i can tell you is that... it sure as hell's gonna be worth it.

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kriskebob-blog · 6 years

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Day 1, Part 1: Me vs. the grocery store

Hi again. It was really nice to hear from some of my friends and family in response to my post last night! I’m really excited to know that some people are down to read my long-ass posts about plants. I’ve also had several people offer me cookbook suggestions or even offer to have me plunder their own stash. Thanks for being my enablers, guys! (No seriously, thank you, I love you all sm.) Also, I can now reveal that my grandma texted me this morning to confirm she did indeed read my first post to its end. She’s the best!!!! This blog is rapidly evolving into a dual-purpose food/my grandma fan page and I can’t be sorry for it.

So it’s Friday afternoon as I write this but the day I’ll be writing about is actually Wednesday. Can you tell it took me a little while to get going with the actual blogging part of this project? Anywho, I woke up Wednesday and after taking some time to wake up with a coffee, I flipped open my shiny new How Not to Die cookbook to the pages with the 2-week meal plan. I scanned the lists of recipes, already nervous. There were so many listed for every single day. I’m used to preparing dinner each night and eating leftovers for my lunches. For years my tried-and-true breakfast almost every single day has been two hard-boiled eggs and a piece of toast. So I’m really only used to having to prepare a fully involved meal once a day. You wanted to do this, I reminded myself. You have the summer off. You have the time! Trying to calm my nerves, I opened up the notes app on my laptop and began typing the names of the suggested recipes. There are no page numbers referenced on the meal plan pages, which would have made things a lot easier, just sayin’, Dr. Greger! I found the recipes and opened the grocery list Google Doc I’ve shared with my husband since we moved in together. I started typing up a shopping list.

This was more than 48 hours ago at this point, but luckily I did stop to write down some initial thoughts. I shall share them with you now, verbatim:

How the f@#! am I going to buy everything we need for all this? How will it fit in my fridge? Will I spend literally all day prepping all of this? Am I even going to be able to find everything I need for these recipes?

...

16 recipes compared to my normal 4, MAYBE 5. Eating this way is obviously the vanity project of the wealthy wtf

...

It’s only two weeks. I can spend 2374623645 dollars on food for just half a month right? right?? It’s normal to spend money on hobbies? Gah

...

What the hell is date sugar?

...

I am definitely using vanilla extract instead of buying a giant vanilla bean Fresh turmeric? Where would even sell that? Ground sounds just fine to me

I noted that I began this process at 8:55. At 9:21 I wrote:

I give up… because I can already tell I’m going to be buying WAY too much produce to fit into my crisper drawer. The original plan had been to stock up enough stuff to carry me through until Monday but I can see now that’s just not going to be realistic at all. I’ll stock up on enough stuff to get me through to Friday night. I don’t want to grocery shop on the weekend if I can help it. I’ll just go again on Friday. Then I’ll probably have to go again on Monday, maybe Tuesday if I’m lucky. That’ll be three grocery store stock-ups in one week. I wanted a hobby, didn’t I?? Time to go back and redo my list to only reflect recipes for the next three days then.

I put a break in my recipes list. Alright. That brings me from 16 recipes to 8. Feels much more manageable. I look at the huge list of ingredients I amassed on my Google doc and decide it’d be easier to just delete it and restart from scratch than go through and try to remember what I now do and don’t need. 9:30.

9:45 - done. Still a LONG list. This is only for 2 days plus a dinner. But to be fair I did include stuff for a couple of desserts.

I’m a tad concerned by how none of these recipes call for ANY salt.

I was more than a tad concerned, actually. But I had my mission lined out. It was time to head to Big Y.

Of the common local grocery store chains in Connecticut, Big Y is probably the nicest one. My husband and I used to frequent Stop & Shop but we stopped because the produce kind of sucked and anyhow the set-up of Big Y is a lot more appealing. I drove on over to the Ellington Big Y, hopeful that I’d be able to find the majority of the items I needed, but also aware that I’d probably end up at Whole Foods later that day.

I’d been so focused on getting together my massive shopping list and hustling out to the store that I hadn’t attended to my basic personal needs with as much care as usual. I realized two things almost immediately as I crossed the parking lot: I kinda had to pee, and I was also sort of thirsty/hungry. Should I get a lemonade or something from the cafe? I wondered briefly then decided against it. I’d be fine til I got home, surely.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in the produce section. I bagged up two heads of lettuce and an even bigger head of red kale. I bought the biggest container of baby spinach they had and then also the biggest bag of regular spinach. Cilantro and parsley. Scallions. And that was just from the greens section! I was already tired by the time I got to the natural foods section, and I had only shopped for stuff whose location I already knew.

I spent some time figuring out which seeds/nuts I needed that Big Y sold by the weight. It’s a really convenient and cool system, except the stupid sticker-printing machine is sort of finicky. I must have spent a solid ten minutes before I had the correct amount of almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, etc. Okay. Now I needed to look for some stuff that I genuinely had no idea where exactly it might be. I knew they likely were somewhere in this natural foods section, I just didn’t know where. Stuff like hemp hearts and nutritional yeast (sounded gross but it was called for in quite a few recipes). I found them eventually. Cool. Now I needed canned tomatoes and beans, but Dr. Gregor really wanted me to be sure I bought cans without a BPA liner. Seriously? Was that really going to be the thing that would make or break if I lived to see 100? But I didn’t want to half-ass the Dr. Gregor lifestyle. It was only for two weeks, after all. After way too much time studying the shelves of tomatoes and beans, I ended up with two cans of diced tomato that cost twice as much as the brand I normally purchased... and the same exact generic brand of beans I normally went for, because none of the beans at Big Y seemed to be BPA free. Whatever. I was hungrier and grumpier by the minute. I wanted to stuff something into my mouth full of sugar and gluten and whatever other chemicals were out to kill me, stat. Almost done. Just had to find frozen okra (vegan gumbo, y’all! Stay tuned), and also miso. I wasn’t too worried about the miso. Big Y has a decent Asian foods aisle... one that I paced up and down at least four times before accepting that they didn’t seem to have miso. They also didn’t have date sugar, a key ingredient to a no-bake brownies recipe I wanted to try. I have a major sweet tooth (can you tell?) and the idea of two weeks without chocolate bars or ice cream was something I refused to entertain without some sort of chocolate dessert option. Okay. No miso, no date sugar. I also hadn’t been able to find “whole wheat tortillas - no salt added” anywhere in the store. So, I’d be going to Whole Foods. I had figured as much.

I checked out with a whopper of a bill and tried not to die too much inside at the fact that this was only two and a half day’s worth of groceries. After all, I had needed to stock up on several crunchy hippie type pantry items I hadn’t already owned. Thank god I already had a pretty sizable spice collection or my bill would have been even higher. I tried not to think of how this wasn’t even everything on my list. Not only did I still need to go to Whole Foods, but I needed to go to the farm stand.

Shout-out to Johnny Appleseed’s Farm in Ellington. Sam and I love them, and they love us back! Okay, they love Sam back because he told them once that he had gone onto Google and fixed an incorrect listing stating they were permanently closed. They really love Sam for that. They have no idea who I am unless I walk in with him. But that’s okay. Every late July through October, Sam and I buy as much of our produce as possible from Johnny Appleseed’s. I stopped over there to load up on tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, and an ungodly amount of zucchini. The woman ringing me out seemed amused. “Lots of squash,” she commented. “What’re you cooking?” I stared at her, trying to remember. The recipe planning I’d done only a couple hours ago already seemed such a blur. “Zoodles,” I managed finally. “You know, like when you try to pretend you’re eating pasta but it’s actually vegetables?” She chuckled and nodded. “You make your own sauce from scratch too?” “Usually,” I told her, feeling a sudden pang of longing for a nice meaty bolognese. Wow, I really wasn’t going to be cut out for this meatless life for long. I told her goodbye and got into my car. It was sweltering outside and 10x worse inside my black interior car. I now definitely needed to pee and I was starving. Home couldn’t come fast enough.

Of course, before I could eat my lunch I had to go through the battle of trying to fit all of this produce into my refrigerator. Even with the clearing out of the usual cartons of eggs and older produce that I’d tossed earlier that morning, it was definitely a game of Tetris trying to fit all of the extremely perishable items I’d just purchased into my fridge. I didn’t even entertain the thought of trying to fit all the vegetables in the crisper. Just to fit them in the fridge itself was an accomplishment. Thank god I hadn’t been quite stupid enough to try to buy enough groceries to last us through Monday. Dear lord, I was really going to have to go back in two days and do this again? You chose this, you chose this I sang to myself repeatedly in my head as I grabbed the container of my last non-vegan meal for two weeks: zucchini turkey meatballs, romano cheese, and marinara sauce over spaghetti. It was damned good. This is still healthy, isn’t it? Do I definitely have to give up cheese, Dr. Gregor?

Now came the time for my final real dessert of the next two weeks. Something I end up binging on far too often when Sam leaves me at home unsupervised for too long: Aurora honey nut granola with chocolate chips mixed in. It’s so good!!! And I definitely went especially overboard that day knowing it was my last sugar binge for awhile.

Alright. It was time to head to Whole Foods. The closest one to me is in Glastonbury and a solid 25 minute drive away. The air felt heavy and oppressive as I headed out into the heat. Ominous dark clouds hung low in the sky. I could feel the nasty air pressure in the depths of my sinuses. Blah. Almost done, I told myself. The parking lot at Whole Foods was mobbed. Why are so many people out on a random Wednesday afternoon, I grumped to myself as I narrowly avoided running over a perfectly nice young family (sorry, strangers!!) and found myself a spot. I walked inside and immediately started rubbing my arms up and down. It was freezing. One thing I love about Big Y is that they keep a lot of their refrigerated items behind doors. I forget how cold other grocery stores are.

I don’t go to Whole Foods very often. I knew where the ethnic condiments were but had no clue where I might find “whole wheat tortillas, no salt added.” I wandered the entire length of the store twice over and finally found a small selection. They really didn’t have much to offer in the way of wraps. Too many carbs for the Whole Foods shopping crowd, I guess? I settled for normal whole wheat tortillas that did indeed have salt as an ingredient. What do you want me to do, Dr. Gregor? I’m only one person. I at least then found the date sugar no problem. Okay. Cool. Only the miso left.

I wandered into the Asian condiments aisle... and essentially repeated the same pacing act I’d done at Big Y, except I went back and forth even more times because I had a hard time processing that Whole Foods wouldn’t have what I needed. I mean, they’ve got some weird stuff there! They have like 5 different brands of ghee! Miso sounded like such a basic Asian condiment to me. We’ve all heard of miso soup, no? But it was nowhere to be found. Ugh. Fine. I’ll go to the Asian market in East Hartford. It’s not that far from here anyways, I tried to reassure myself. I could feel a sugar crash hitting my bloodstream. I wanted a juicebox and a nap.

I checked out and made my way to Je Mart. I wandered up and down their aisles and couldn’t seem to find miso there either. It finally occurred to me that I was obviously missing something here. Like I really should have done at Big Y in the first place, I pulled out my phone and Googled “Where do I buy miso in the store?” Within 5 seconds I realized I’d been looking in the wrong spots of the stores the entire time. Miso isn’t a bottled or jarred condiment like Sriracha or curry paste. It’s actually sold in plastic tubs in the refrigerated section. Look near the tofu, the infinite wisdom of the Internet advised. I turned around and what do you know, literally right behind me was the refrigerated section with the tofu. And within five seconds I spotted it: a tub of miso!!! I grabbed at it ecstatically and scanned the label. Was this the white miso that Dr. Gregor had specifically demanded? It didn’t specify, but it looked pale enough for me. And it was only $5 for a pretty decent sized tub. I handed my money gleefully to the cashier and went on my way. Finally.

I got home and put away my new purchases. It was about 2:20pm and I was beyond exhausted. I really shouldn’t have eaten that much granola, I thought morosely as I flopped onto the couch. I wanted to rewatch Forks Over Knives (it’s on Netflix!). If I started now it would end right around 4, a good time to start trying to actually prepare some of the meals I’d worked so hard all the day just to shop for.

I’m not saying that I napped for the entire documentary because I definitely didn’t. I remember some parts of it. But can I guarantee I didn’t nap at all? No, no I cannot.

This was another long post, so obviously I’m going to need to give us all a break and stop here before going on to Part 2, in which I’ll finally talk about cooking and eating these recipes. These first couple of posts have really just been a lot of exposition, I promise I’m going to get to the meat of the plot soon! (pun intended)

For now, here’s a picture of the miso I drove all over the state searching for before finally acquiring for the very reasonable price of $5 (fyi - Big Y does have miso but it’s red miso and it’s $7 so I guess all’s well that ends well):

#food blog #food writing #veganism #healthy cooking #plant based #whole foods #still bad at tags

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mikegranich87 · 3 years

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Nintendo Switch OLED review: Beautiful, but not a must-have

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Though they don’t come out with the annual frequency of an iPhone, video game consoles can always be counted on to have a few mid-cycle refreshes (think: the PlayStation 4 Pro or Xbox One X). This week it’s Nintendo giving the OG Switch a makeover, adding an OLED screen and a few other exterior tweaks. But it’s basically the same system on the inside, so don’t call it the Switch Pro. It’s officially dubbed the Nintendo Switch OLED, because calling it the “slightly nicer Switch” doesn’t really move units from the shelves. If you’ve already invested in a Switch or Switch Lite you won’t need the upgrade, but if you’re still Switch-less this is the model to buy.

It’s $50 more than the original, which is not being pulled from shelves just yet. For $350, the new Switch has a full 7-inch OLED screen, a step up from the older model’s 6.2-inch display. The larger screen size is appreciated, though after six hours of playing it in handheld mode I didn’t notice the difference as much.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

What did catch my attention when I switched back to the original were the chunky bezels around the 6.2-inch display. I’ve never liked them and found them to be one of the least attractive things about the system. Now they make me recoil in disgust when I compare them to the OLED model’s slim lines, which have been whittled to a third of the size. The matte plastic frame around the screen has also shrunk and changed to a glossy plastic, making it even less obtrusive.

As for the display itself: yes, it is noticeably brighter. There’s enough of a difference that in my initial hands-on I was dismayed when I returned to my personal Switch at home hours later. When placed side by side, the difference is undeniable. The colors pop just a bit more, the blacks are deeper and the whites are… more white, with the original having a slight lavender tint in contrast to the purer white of the OLED screen.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

While not every game will benefit from better colors, Nintendo is also releasing Metroid Dread the same day. Like all titles in the series, the game traffics in a lot of dark spaces, with the bright pop of Samus’ red and yellow (or blue) armor contrasting nicely alongside backgrounds of brown and gray. It’s a good showcase for the OLED’s improved color fidelity and just a nice-looking game in general, which distracts from the fact that the new Switch doesn’t bring any actual improvements under the hood.

The CPU and GPU go unaltered, which ensures that all future Switch titles remain compatible with existing Switch and Switch Lite systems. This is pretty much in keeping with the Game Boy Advance and 3DS lines of products, which saw some radical redesigns like the Game Boy micro and 2DS over their lifespans. Sure, there were handhelds like the DSi and New 3DS that came with improved internal specs, but those never saw widespread adoption. The Switch OLED is a lot more like the Game Boy Advance SP: significant improvements to the display and form factor, but the same old library of games.

Alongside that new display are a bunch of minor tweaks that don’t seem like much when considered individually, but as a whole really improve the experience. The most notable is the new stand on the back. The one on the original Switch is small and roughly a finger’s width, with only two positions: open and closed. The one on my original launch unit no longer locks in the “closed” position and has a tendency to flop out when I’m playing in handheld mode. It also detaches completely if you look at it funny.

The Switch OLED’s stand is an entirely different beast. Instead of a skinny little strip, it’s now a Microsoft Surface-style panel that stretches across the back of the entire unit, with real hinges that can be left in a number of positions so you can now put your unit at whatever angle you prefer. I wouldn’t try to pull this thing off; the hinges are actually molded into the plastic, so if you do break it, it’ll have to go off to the Nintendo repair shop to get fixed up.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

To accommodate the new stand a bunch of stuff has been moved around on the back of the Switch unit. The logo is now printed on the stand itself, so it’s been moved to the lower half of the rear. The manufacturing info, like the parts number and voltage, is now printed in black on the black plastic, underneath the stand. So it’s doubly hidden — a subtle but welcome improvement. The rear speakers have been moved to the bottom edge of the unit, where they also serve as a way to pull the stand out. It’s actually very thoughtful, while providing clear game audio and minimizing system noise. And, while the microSD hasn’t been completely relocated, it’s now placed parallel to the bottom edge. I assume this small change is to keep users from accidentally pulling out the card when they’re trying to adjust the stand. The one thing that hasn’t been relocated is the USB-C port on the bottom, so you still can’t recharge it in tabletop mode.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

There are fewer changes to the device’s top edge, with the most notable being a button redesign resulting in longer, thinner power and volume switches. The new buttons aren’t easier to hit, but they do look sleeker and feel better under my fingers thanks to the textured plastic of the Switch OLED. The system is actually just nicer to hold now, like when it kept the sweat from pooling under my clammy hands during a particularly stressful boss fight in Metroid Dread.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

Because the Switch OLED has to be compatible with all existing accessories, that means the unit is the same height and width as the original model. The Joy-Cons haven’t gotten a redesign, but hopefully the infamous “Joy-Con drift” has been eradicated by now. The new black and white color scheme is very nice, a step up from my all-gray launch unit in terms of style. If you like a more playful color palette, the Switch OLED can also be bought with red and blue Joy-Cons, or you can swap any other Joy-Cons you want. But the white ones don’t show scratches as easily as the other shades, so they’ll look spiffy for longer.

The one change in the system’s dimensions is the weight, thanks to the OLED screen. When handling the original and new Switch side by side, the difference is undeniable. But it’s not a big enough divide to make the Switch OLED less portable in any way. Subjectively, it might actually seem a bit lighter, possibly because the weight is well-distributed. The one thing about the build that feels like a step down is that the OLED model has a tiny bit of flex in the middle of the rear panel that’s not present in the original. However, it doesn’t make much of a difference to the build quality unless you’re planning to take a hammer to the back of the unit.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

Because the system keeps the same internals, that means the battery has gone unchanged as well. It’s the same as the refreshed 2019 battery, which offers between four and nine hours of battery life compared to the launch unit’s cap of six hours. However, the new OLED should be more power-efficient than the LCD, and in use it appears to be. I got almost seven hours of Metroid Dread before I got the “low battery” warning at 15 percent, and that’s a game that makes frequent use of vibration. Compare that to the four or five hours I tend to get out of my OG Switch, even when playing something fairly tame like Animal Crossing or Untitled Goose Game.

If you already have an existing Switch, you can drop the OLED model into your current dock and it will work just fine. But the system does come with its own, redesigned dock that you might want to set up. It looks a lot nicer thanks to its rounded corners and glossy black plastic on the inside (which admittedly will probably scratch up over time). The back panel isn’t great, as it feels flimsy and can come off completely (so you may lose it). But all of these are outweighed by the important addition of an ethernet port.

Prior to this, the Switch has always been intended as a wireless system, and it hasn’t been stellar. Early models had a tendency to “forget” how to connect to your WiFi, forcing you to restart the system. And even now, downloading from the Nintendo eShop can be pokey; even with the OLED model I had to leave my system sitting for an hour or two while it downloaded games wirelessly. But now you can just plug in a cable for a faster, more reliable connection. If you have one in your living room, that is. Many people don’t, which makes this a feature for the more technical-minded fans. It’s the one new feature of the Switch OLED that I would consider “pro” level, and if you have a place to plug in it’s certainly worth the $50 premium.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

Overall, the Switch OLED is a nice system coming out at an odd time, as it’s been over four years since the release of the original Switch. Based on Nintendo’s past release history, that would indicate a new console some time around 2023. So it’s a big ask of people to buy a $350 system if something better is just around the corner. (Nintendo has categorically denied that it has plans for a new Switch as recently as last week, but that doesn’t preclude that one will come out eventually.)

There’s also the specter of the Steam Deck in December, just two short months from now (assuming no delays). It's far more powerful than the Switch, and is also much larger, but promises access to almost the entire Steam library, which happens to overlap with the current Nintendo eShop quite a bit. The biggest selling point for the Switch OLED is access to storied franchises like Mario and Zelda, as well as the incredible bargain that is Switch Online. But you don’t need an OLED screen or wired ethernet to enjoy old NES, SNES, N64 and Genesis titles.

Kris Naudus / Engadget

If you’re not going to be able to plug it into ethernet, or don’t need better speeds because you play offline all the time, the choice to upgrade to a Switch OLED is tricky. If you always play on the TV, there’s absolutely no point in buying this one, as there’s no difference in the dock’s output quality. It’s going to look the same as it always has, as this is most definitely not the rumored upgrade to 4K. But even if you’re a handheld player it’s not a must-have, unless you’ve given up on your original Switch because you just really, really hate LCD displays, or absolutely need more than five hours of battery life.

from Mike Granich https://www.engadget.com/nintendo-switch-oled-review-130025998.html?src=rss

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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Advice I’ve found helpful:

1. For ‘easier’ immersion materials, pick things you have some familiarity already with. So: shows/books you’ve already read in your native language, or watched/read in the target language with some kind of context (seen subs before in your native language, a summary, you’ve looked up lots of words etc). I definitely find immersing in stuff I have some context for much easier, because at least sometimes I can place what certain unknown words mean/what is going on in the plot, even when I don’t actually ‘know’ all the words.

Personally: I like using some absolutely new unknown materials for immersion, just because I like to test how much I’ve ‘improved’ with something I’m sure I have nothing to rely on ahead of time except for what I have learned. But when I’m immersing with something I want to find more comfortable/easier to immerse with, its easier for me to use things I’m already familiar with - otherwise I have to pick graded material/learner materials instead of using target language native materials.

2. Once you find some study materials that work for you, stick to them. Specifically if they progressively teach new stuff - like textbooks, grammar guides, apps with lessons, teaching podcasts, flashcards that add grammar points/new words, etc. Anything that builds up knowledge over time.

I used to have a bad habit of switching these kinds of materials often, and would keep ‘restarting’ myself in beginner materials, when really I should have been moving on and studying new things. I have found that even if my ‘book/guide/tool’ is imperfect, if I stick to it then I make more progress and improve at a more dependable rate.

3. For immersion material, feel free to pursue things based on interest. You don’t have to finish one material before moving to the next.

I’ve noticed that I tend to get demotivated or disinterested sometimes in materials (which happens in english with my hobbies anyway too), and its definitely better for me to just move to new material that’s interesting me in the moment (so a new show, new story, new audio). I’ve found that as long as its target language native material, its all exposing me to common things I should review, and new things I ought to pick up/learn, so regardless of the material its going to challenge me and solidify what I’ve studied already and teach me new things. Meanwhile... graded readers would fall into point 2 - but with a special caveat - if the graded reader has a Subject i’m not interested in, I need to just switch to a new novel at a HIGHER difficulty level at a certain point. Basically - regardless of if I stick to a graded reader all the way through, or if I drop it and move to another, once I’m very comfortable with that reading level, I need to move to prioritizing higher difficulty level material. This might apply to immersion content a little - as in, its better for me to work in some dramas/audios/books with more words I don’t know, so I get more comfortable. But with target language content made for natives its less of an issue since pretty much everything made for adults is constantly teaching me new stuff right now.

4. Its BETTER to do something consistently, than nothing. So better to study any minutes a day then never. Likewise - its better to study using ANY method that’s helping you make progress, than to not study at all because its not ‘the best way.’

I’m sure I’m not the only learner who’s had this issue studying languages, but its easy to wonder if you’re doing things right or doing ‘enough.’ And in the end? For me it boils down to ‘anything where I make any progress, and don’t give up IS enough.’ No method’s perfect for everyone, not everyone can stay engaged in the same methods, etc. Yeah some advice says ‘don’t ever speak before X time’ but some people only stay motivated if they speak from day one, so they might as well speak! I’ve seen plenty of advice for chinese to ‘focus on listening/speaking first’ instead of focusing on reading so early on. But I get motivated/interested by reading, so here I am doing more reading from day 1! It’s worked well enough for me! It got me this far!

5. At some point, focus on all for skill areas because eventually you need all of them: listening/reading, speaking/writing.

This seems basic as can be but I’m guessing its still easy enough to overlook. There’s a reason good textbooks/teachers try to make sure they cover all these skills for the level you’re supposed to be comprehending/communicating at by the time you finish their class. I self-study mostly, and its easy to forget about one or multiple of these areas, especially if they don’t align as well with your goals/interest areas/preferred study methods. It’s just important to cover them all eventually, if you want roughly balanced skills in the language. I personally think its okay to have imbalanced skills - depending on your goals, and your preferences. For example: if you want to read but do not want to prioritize speaking due to low need to speak to anyone, it seems fine to spend more time on reading and work on speaking more later when its a goal or need to. Or, maybe you specifically need to speak regularly to people in your workplace/living situation/life, then it would make sense to prioritize daily needs conversation study and skills way before you bother dedicating a lot of time to reading etc.

Thankfully, there’s usually a variety of study methods to improve each skill. Though unfortunately, usually to improve in production you must eventually practice Producing language, and to improve in comprehension you must eventually practice comprehending materials. By this, I mean that even with textbook grammar drill sentence exercises and repeat-after podcasts, you must eventually practice speaking to people and writing messages/paragraphs. Even if you study sentence flashcards or read graded readers, you must eventually try to listen to real conversations/audio/shows and try to read materials you’re planning to one day engage with (newspapers/websites/novels/games/whatever your goals are).

6. Prioritize learning the most common 500/1000/2000 words as needed.

(Unless your goals and needs are very specialized on other vocabulary needs - who knows, maybe you only need X language for mechanical engineering words?) I ran into this tip when studying French, and then variations on this tip from a lot of polyglot blogs. I’ve also noticed a lot of the youtubers who try to learn a language in ‘x days/x months’ tend to cram in a lot of vocab early on - I saw two successful learners who studied 2000 words in the first 1-2 weeks. Then they moved onto reading grammar points, reading actual books, immersing in television, trying to speak their conversational requirements etc. What boosted their speed-run intro to the language is usually a bunch of common words - which will be their foundation for comprehending some gist when immersing, and their source of words when forming sentences as they work on speaking skills. Now, of course, these people generally get into maybe A1-A2 level-ish knowledge in a month etc. But they still make a lot of rapid progress in that first ‘uncomfortable’ hump, at least from what I can tell. There’s many a article out there about how for most languages 2000 words covers 80-90+% of words in everyday conversation, and in many media like shows (and sometimes books).

Basically, usually at 2000 words you know enough words to start communicating anything you need to with at least basic words/ideas, and have enough words to start learning some new words from context in immersion (and will in general find immersion much less overwhelmingly difficult). I’ve personally found that it’s just a starting place - but its often a really Great starting place, at least for me. Usually its more than enough to make immersing in shows doable, and to make reading with a dictionary bearable. Its also usually enough, with a few months grammar practice/exposure too, to start expressing a lot of my basic thoughts/needs at least. I did this to some extent with French (maybe 1000 common words), then jumped into immersing and grammar books mostly. I do think if dropped into an all french country, I could read signs and forms/speak my basic needs if I were lost/needed help with X/thought something/wanted to speak with someone. I would probably sound like a wreck (since I didn’t work on pronunciation much and one day need to) but I think I could navigate having to go to a hospital/get a plane ticket/buy something/make a friend/ask how to get somewhere/read any book for gist main ideas/read the news. I could get by. And the foundation for that started with just around 1000 words to start me toward that. Ever since I’ve tried to learn common words with any language I study, and each time I’ve noticed it substantially make target language materials more % comprehensible, and make it easier for me to start having a foundation to express a lot of basic ideas (think maybe 5-8 year old that can start talking about a lot, but may need to ask for a lot of ‘what’s X word mean/what’s X thing about?’).

Its not a lot obviously, since there’s still much that’s incomprehensible, and there’s still lots that’s hard to discuss/follow the details of. But its enough to build from more easily. And I think its a great way to direct self-study before you start specializing - it prioritizes a ton of useful words before you start moving onto words with less ‘payoff’ because they show up less frequently and not in as big a variety of situations/topics. Even if using a textbook, I find using a frequency list too helps - since some textbooks teach pitifully little like 200 words, and some teach very focused on topic-specific words like ‘my classroom’ and ‘my job’ and ‘shopping’ when you may need words that show up in ‘news’ ‘social media’ ‘shows’ too based on whatever your goals are - a frequency list helps make sure words that show up in more places get learned, even if they don’t always fit in specific topics.

7. Read through a grammar guide. (Adapt this depending on where you get the advice: read a grammar summary, or just look up grammar points once for reference when you run into one that confuses you, or just skim through a guide before you learn, or just read a grammar guide later on if you need a stronger foundation etc).

I don’t think everyone needs this. Lots of people really LOATHE grammar, or think its ‘wrong’ to study it at the wrong point in time, whenever they think that is (beginning, or later on, etc). I personally find my life gets way easier when I read at least a grammar guide/summary on AT LEAST the basic past/present/future tense way of expressing things, on adjectives, nouns, verbs, conjunctions/notable grammar particles and features, as soon as possible. Covering this stuff makes my attempts at producing language SO MUCH EASIER since I’ve got at least a rough framework of how to express things basically. And immersing likewise becomes just SO MUCH EASIER with at least a rough idea of what I’m looking at that I can break down into meaningful parts. Even if I don’t know 1 word to even 80% of words in a sentence: if I can tell which words are nouns/verbs/particles/conjunctions/what tense the sentence verbs are in/if there’s any gendered nouns/if there’s any plurals - then I can figure out a LOT about the meaning of the sentence.

Take “Na no le mayy, ter le henent.” Here’s a sentence I just made up. Let’s say you know that ‘na’ means “there is” in this language. You know “no” is a particle meaning belonging like the japanese ‘no’ or chinese ‘de’ or english ‘s. “le” means masculine ‘the’ and is put before nouns that are masculine if a person, or objects/etc if another kind of noun. ‘ter’ you know means ‘is/are’ as a super basic verb, conjugated for a masculine person not object - now you know maybe this ‘le mayy’ is a person not an object - so the sentence so far means “this is my ‘person’.” You know le also goes before adjectives in this language to match the noun to which it refers, and ‘ent’ is a super common adjective ending in this language. So now you can guess the sentence means “This is my ‘person,’ (they) are ‘adjective describing them’.” Its possible the le henent is a noun spelled with this ending, so it could also mean “this is my ‘person,’ they are ‘noun probably describing them’.” This has narrowed down what the unknown 2 words in the sentence could mean by A LOT. Now if you understand some other context from the Surrounding sentences, you might be able to guess if the ‘person’ is a student/husband/friend/enemy, and maybe if the descriptor is something positive/negative more specific etc. Without any grammar study or overview ahead of time, the grammar pieces like ‘le’ and ‘ent’ and ‘no’ may have confused you or helped you less.

“Na shi wo de pengyou, ta hen hao,” might be how you say this in chinese, or, “Ill y a mon amie, ton est tres intelligent.” But this kind of grammar-helping-comprehension stuff translates to bigger more complex sentences, and sentences where you have less words you know and can rely on. This helped me a TON in french when i just dived into reading when I only knew a couple hundred words at first, and its constantly helped in Chinese - especially since i have no spaces to help me separate words, so recognizing how the grammar breaks down the sentences helps a lot.

8. Don’t be scared to immerse in interesting things over high comprehensibility things, if you want.

While I do think, absolutely, that things with high comprehensibility will be easier for you to relax and enjoy, and MUCH easier for you to pick up new stuff from context - i think its possible to learn from harder materials if you want. I do it all the time. Like that higher up tip about any study better than none - if engaging with more difficult stuff keeps me interested, then it helps me more than a boring material i would give up studying and therefore stop learning from. Also, personally I really both enjoy occasionally challenging myself to really push what I can do and prove to myself what I’m capable of versus where my ‘safe zone’ is, and I think I personally learn better when I regularly get difficult bursts that challenge me. I do think for some other people, this may have the opposite effect and possibly cause them to burn out/want to give up studying. But for me, while it makes me sad I’m never as ‘competent’ with real material as I wanted to be, I’m always better at it then I was before or at least confident in knowing I’m practicing/studying something I actually want to do one day. (In comparison to me doing like podcast lessons or self-teach beginner books, where I often feel demotivated because it starts with a lot of basic convo drills, often a bit unnatural, whereas I don’t plan to have those convos much, and for my goals want to do other kinds of stuff that those podcasts may not prepare me for after months if at all...). I’d much rather get a quick foundation then be thrown into the deep end, then a slow foundation with baby steps where I have little new material regularly pushing me.

Who knows how much this is a legacy of me being in all those honor classes/AP, and then being an engineering student in a bunch of accelerated/condensed courses taking way too many credits, studying too many hard classes at once ;-; - honestly studying anything I actually enjoy and am passionate is eons better than that past schooling. But I do think I developed a lot of my study habits back then around ‘do quick effective stuff to get basically competent then MOVE ON CAUSE THERE’S NEW HARD MATERIAL YOU GOTTA AT LEAST GET THE GIST OF IN LESS THAN A WEEK’.... aahhh. So um... I’m really skewed toward do bare minimum needed, and push difficulty asap constantly. NOT everyone is going to be able to do this, or even Want to do this. So, I’d say in general if other people apply this tip about immersing regardless of difficulty if you want to: you do not have to get the same benefits as me. I think even if the only benefit is that you’re enjoying the parts you do understand, or having fun even if its something you only do once in a while because you’re curious on how much you’d understand, that’s absolutely fine. A lot of people who do this focus on ‘comprehending the gist’ - which I guess would be me. And a lot of people who do focus on harder stuff sometimes, instead prioritize ‘focus on just getting used to it’ aka don’t worry if you can’t follow what’s going on, its okay to only catch a line or word once in a while, the familiarity you develop over time is also a benefit itself.

I do personally think, at the bare minimum, doing this does get you more okay with being dropped into situations that are harder for you and being okay with that. I imagine in language learning, eventually you run into a convo where you get lost, reading where you barely understand anything, or a show where you catch zero words! It’s nice to have the practice of not understanding but being comfortable, so that when you’re stuck in those situations you are less bothered and have possibly some other methods you’ve developed to help you cope/get by/tolerate it until you get through it or can grasp something comprehensible again or can find a way to redirect the convo/look up key words etc. In some languages there is just a huge amount of time you’ll deal with materials less than 98% comprehensible (which is comfortable level for most people), or less than 90% comprehensible (which is difficult but bearable in short bursts for most people). Also, the earlier you immerse/engage in conversation, the longer you’ll hit this ‘difficulty’ curve and either need to get used to it or else it’ll feel uncomfortable.

9. Write your GOALS down. Also, preferably, plan some SMART goals - or some study plan that roughly includes WHAT you plan to do, how you could measure it or it’s progress and test if its working or not-actually-helping-the-goal, how it contributes to your goal, and what smaller-step of your goal you want it to get you to in X time.

Writing goals, and plans for smaller achievable steps, helps in any goal achieving process. Helps a ton with language learning too, especially when self studying if you’re not sticking to a textbook or course with very clear definited steps/goals you can just copy and aim for. There’s been studies that literally just writing your goals down makes it more likely you’ll achieve them. Its also just much easier to stick to a self study plan if you know what you’re doing, where you’re heading, why, how to check that what you’re doing is actually making progress, and have something to hold yourself accountable to study (since there may be no one else expecting you to hit your smaller-goals or bigger ones). Also personal goals will motivate you - what do you want out of this study? Personally?

10. Make it enjoyable to you, again any study that you can keep doing and make progress is better than none. And any goal you personally will USE and Enjoy/will help you, is much better then some external goal (like oh X people will be impressed).

The enemy of progress is you giving up. Even if you Do give up - skip the being mad at yourself or feeling guilty, it is what it is and if you gave up there was a reason. Likewise, if you start studying or pick up from an absence, make sure you know what is driving you to study. Think about things you want to DO in the language - how do you want to engage with people, culture, language, that sphere of the world.

If you are studying it for some external goal - say you want to learn it to ‘be more appealing as a job applicant’ make sure there’s something you’d DO with it (do you plan to speak to those language speakers at a job? translate? read articles in the language to improve your knowledge in the field? work in that country? do you also want to chat with friends/make friends? do you work with that country a lot and want more bg on the culture and want language to use social media/watch shows/chat online/read their news more etc?), or do you have no plans to actually use it concretely - if the second is the case, maybe a different ‘job skill’ would also help your resume and would personally be more valuable to you (maybe coding would help your job prospects, and you also think you’d use it to make an art portfolio website, for yourself or some fun little games or text-choose-your-adventure stories, maybe you would like a job specifically that codes as a part of the regular tasks, or you want to do website/portfolio coding commissions on the side even if you don’t end up getting a job that codes).

If you’ve got some hobby reason - same things apply. Will you actually use the language if you could? How? These questions will help you form concrete goals, and possibly even help you pick the study methods you’ll want to use more. If convo and chatting is a big goal, conversation skills and practice will be way more important earlier on and also motivate you since you’ll be making friends sooner etc. If say chinese or japanese novels are a big interest of yours, and you even read painful machine translate messes of novels just to get updates or read ones never-translated that you’re into, it might really pay off for you to prioritize reading and maybe even be practicing translating yourself (for yourself) earlier on - since you may end up at the least, learning to translate fics you want to read a bit better than the machine translations you rely on (or at least so you’ll be able to double check the original writing when mtls are painfully incorrect).

All these goals will have pretty clear smaller-milestones you’ll already know you want to aim for, and those smaller goals will make what study methods you’ll need to use for them a bit clearer. If your goal one day is to chat with people about all kinds of things, a good small step is to learn small talk, introductions, then start branching out one by one (or by depth of convo) into things you want to talk about. If it’s to connect with people, language partners might be a fantastic thing, and you might study a lot by helping someone else with your language, then they help you with theirs, the whole time you get to chat and share ideas and develop friendships. If its to read novels, small steps are learning maybe to skim novels for key information - so if a mtl novel is painfully wrong, you can pinpoint what line you want to word-by-word translate yourself for yourself. Maybe you prioritize learning a lot of words, and characters, and basic grammar, quickly, so that skimming gets easier - and so that picking up details gets easier piece by piece. Maybe you start with more basic topic novels (or comics), get to read novels you’d want to read anyway in that language, then move onto harder stuff as you progress. If you watch tons of dramas, and already know you sometimes watch no-subbed and just desperately try to follow it anyway because you want to watch it NOW or you wanted to watch THAT SHOW but it has no existing subs in your native language... now you know a major long term goal of yours, that you’ll use. You can plan smaller goals that build up to it, and also allow you to accomplish things you enjoy. Maybe first you work on following short fanmade videos with scenes, or following trailers, or watching youtubers/etc that you like watching and would probably try to watch without subs anyway. You compare the subbed versions to no subs or target language subs, you look up common unknown words that come up, common phrases etc. You work up to episodes of shows you’ve already seen and had subtitles for, and try to follow it this time without subs. Etc.

Yes, with all of these goals you’ll eventually need to do the less fun less your-goal oriented more basic tasks, like grammar and vocab acquisition and pronunciation learning/listening etc (whatever you personally like more or less). But you’ll have reasons WHY you’re doing it that motivate you. You’ll have a REASON you’re willing to slog through vocab flashcards or a grammar guide or a pronunciation/convo learner podcast. Because it will directly help you do something you WILL like. And you’ll know at least a PIECE of your study, WILL be some tasks you do know you’d do/enjoy anyway - like trying to chat, or reading, or watching tv, or listening to music, or browsing the internet, etc.

#rant #advice

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