#unfortunately I'm a terrible teacher because I'm learning too!

[cqtlatte]

could you post about your thought process for your art? i always love the colors you choose!! and the themes n composition always are AMAZING AAAA

a lot of the time it's p much head empty swirly painting HAHA but I'll ramble below!

Honestly sometimes I have an immediate idea/theme in mind and I just play around a lot when I'm sketching, and other times it kind of just evolves while painting. I remember with the Yoimiya Pyro flamenco piece came around when I asked my Twitter followers which Genshin girl they wanted to see next, and I got a LOT of Yoimiya requests. And literally it went like this LOL

I have a couple of other sketches I could pull out but I'd have to find them...

It actually wasn't supposed to be a flamenco dress in the beginning, more like a mermaid tail style dress?? But while I was sketching I thought to myself,, yo... this would actually make a sick flamenco dress! So I started to look up tons of flamenco photos for reference to make it look accurate. :)

---

As for my coloring thought process, analogous colors are my best friend! (colors that sit side by side on the color wheel) I like to choose one color that all the other colors will revolve around. Kind of like how for my previous commission, the client asked for a cherry blossom theme. As you can see in the sketches I offered, almost all of the pieces have the same cherry blossom color, but different colors revolving around them.

If you take an eyedropper and drag it across, you'll see the colors change along the color wheel. That's what analogous colors are! They're pretty great for tricking the eye too ;) The grass from the sketch may look like a blue-ish teal with all the colors surrounding it, but it actually does fall under blue! (I made a little video to show this but it won't upload for some reason, so I put it on Drive!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zYFu2MTvwOY8KsLzWsa7oyCLz03x4H7d/view?usp=sharing )

__________

I guess if I were to describe my thought process from a technical standpoint, I like to capture moments (as if the piece were photography or a page in a picture book) and movement (the swirls and other patterned lines blending into the composition. )??

obligatory link to an earlier ask for a deeper look into the work process itself (although it may not be relevant)

Hopefully this is helpful anon!!

[loser-female]

Math masterpost!

So you want to learn math. Good. Math is amazing. I studied physics for two years and I miss it SO MUCH. Learning math isn't just cool, but it's a great way to improve skills such as:

Resilience: sometimes you will get stuck for a while on a problem - this is absolutely normal for college-level problems. You won't start from here though;

Self confidence: mastering a subject known to be difficult is fun;

Problem solving: you will be less likely to just sit down and do nothing if something comes up in your life, you will be able to try to find a solution.

It will change your approach to failure as you will become more flexible in your thinking.

Unfortunately most people never learn how to properly study math. We all probably know how to study a book over humanities. We start by reading the material, then we take notes of the keypoints. But this method doesn't work with math, and math teachers often don't really know either.

For the basics I've made this post here. To sum it up:

Please don't start with "but i suck at it". Because then your brain will actually prevent you from learning (self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?);

Realise that you need to master one topic before covering the next one or you won't be able to progress;

Really, the methods you use for things like literature or psychology or whatever won't work

Now I'm not a genius, I always was and I always be a terrible student. I have adhd, depression and chronic pain, all of which add a difficulty layer with learning.

I feel like most people fail because of the first point. I've seen this with people I've tutored IRL, people I try to fix their pc... Don't be the person that gives up before trying because no one likes that. Just don't. Remember that you are learning on your own and no one is going to grade your excercises. Now take that and make a poster out of iy.

Now, resources Where To Find The Stuff.

Khan Academy. I didn't follow this courses becuase well, university, physics, but everyone references them.

Professor Leonard

The Math Sorcerer

3b1b (curiosities in math)

Vsauce2 (fun)

numberphile (this for understanding math memes)

r/learnmath resources are great!

A great study method

Proofs? Proofs.

A 3 page document on learning math (but it's cool)

Terry Tao's famous post "there is more in mathematics about rigour and proofs"

Remember that, even if you don't like a specific youtuber, source or anything it has been a while since college and high school teachers started to upload their own material. Generally, looking for like "calculus pdf" will give you a lot of resources. Youtube is full of university courses of every kind and it's so good to access all of this knowledge for free. I cannot recommend you anything regarding textbooks because I still have my high school one. Also yes, i've used the Rudin as a complementary textbook in university but that's a bit too much.

I really, really want to emphasize the mentality part. Leaning formula is useless if you feel like garbage because you weren't able to solve the first exercise you picked up after a decade not doing anything.

My personal and sparce advice:

Unless you have dyscalculia don't use the calculator. I know, I KNOW. But this "lazyness" will make everything 10 times more difficult.

Beware about overlearning. Basically, when you solve everything at the first attempt and you keep doing the same thing over and over because it feels good, but the truth is that you are wasting time. This is the time to move forward.

Try to differentiate between a knowledge error(did I actually study the subject?), a conceptual error (did I understand the material), or a mere calculation/distraction error (fo example a missing sign, writing the wrong thing etc)

Try to solve the problems in different ways if you can.

After a certain time, It will be useful to review things done in the past, (ref: spaced repetition method).

Write everything down. Reasonings, steps etc. It will be easier for you to review them.

This posts keep crashing so I have to call it quits now.

but:

have fun

[xiangqiankua]

My thoughts after doing a few TOCFL practice tests:

- I really really need to practice reading for the gist and not getting hung up on unknown words. I'm sure the whole point of throwing in phrases and characters that weren't on the word list is to weed out test takers who can't manage to pick up on overall context. Unfortunately I am used to looking up every damn thing when reading for leisure. So I've selected a library book of a suitable level to force myself to read without pausing- the first attempt went alright except when I cracked and had to look up 櫺 líng because it was such a good shape, it means latticework on a window. - Unsurprisingly, I'm not that great at questions on unfamiliar topics for which I don't know the vocab (because they're of no interest to me and I never bothered to learn it). I understand the logic of testing people who might be getting this certificate for work on topics that might happen on the job. But why can't we slide in some of my special interests I've listened to hours of podcast on, huh? (I decided to find a tv series to watch in order to diversify.) - The most troublesome part of "Mandarin proficiency test" is not so much my Mandarin proficiency as the "test" part. In the listening section I often understand perfectly what 小美's mother asked her to do to prepare for the guests in the afternoon, or the long list of critical steps in booking a ticket for XYZ. Hell if I remember the details by the time the multiple choice question rolls around. I need to practice taking notes, and also remembering to actually look at the choices on the answer sheet beforehand. - Sometimes I am thinking of the correct answer, and somehow write down a totally different one?? - I start out with some confidence and energy and then deflate (or panic) somewhere around question 30. I've timed myself on the reading and done the listening without any pause or repeat to try and simulate authentic levels of anxiety (success, unfortunately), and when I do them both together it's exhausting. I don't know if it's late in the game to try and build stamina, but I might as well try. - Sometimes I get things wrong not because I misunderstood the material but because I had my own interpretation of what exactly the question was asking, which I don't think I can do much about. - When I second guess myself and write down a row of potential answers, the first one is almost always correct. - My language school teachers definitely lifted some of their final exam questions directly from these.

I asked a Japanese acquaintance today how the test was when she'd taken it and she said she passed B2 (TOCFL 4) a year ago, so I ought to be fine because her level is currently slightly below mine, but Japanese native speakers have a significant edge on the reading so this isn't entirely reassuring.On the bright side, nothing too serious is riding on this at the moment, at worst I disappoint myself terribly and just take it again later. But success would be nice! I really hope the practice tests are of similar or higher difficulty to the actual exam, not significantly easier.

[sapphosewrites]

People are being forced to censor things like death and sex because of platforms that defund those topics not because they aren't mature

This is why one shouldn't screenshot posts the op made unrebloggable and keep reblogging them. Because then people bring me into it again.

Anon, I am not mad at you. You have the right to respond to a point I made in a public forum. But I turned off notes on that post and tried to shut it down because I was overwhelmed and upset by the number of people making bad faith assumptions about me, from the idea that I'm somehow entirely ignorant of how internet spaces work (even though it's impossible to avoid learning about the culture of tiktok censorship) to the idea that I'm malicious and terrible at my job and making my students miserable. (It's amazing what trauma people will project onto a random teacher on tumblr, I've learned.) None of this is your fault, anon, nor do you have any way of knowing.

I try to always have anon on and my askbox open so I can respond to any message kindly, thoughtfully, and in good faith. Right now, unfortunately, I'm not able to do that. I'm still a little too frustrated by the whole situation to respond to you in the way that I want to be able to.

Please come back if you have a question, and I'll try my best to answer, but in the meantime I invite you to consider what it would mean if I already know this information, and still made the comment I did. What happens if you assume that I am informed, competent, and care deeply about the subject at hand, even if I was cavalier in a personal post that I didn't expect to spread so far? How would that assumption change your reading of the post? How would that assumption change the conversation that you and I can have?

[meowww-ffxiv]

Theodore had told Meowdred more than once that if he wanted to formally adopt Ruu, the Ala Mhigan orphan he'd taken on as an apprentice, he needed but say the word.

And honestly both Mordred AND Ruu had thought about it. He'd asked her more than once, also. Was that what she wanted? She didn't have to call him dad or anything like that. Mordred did get adopted himself, but there was as much a weight of legacy in being someone's student as there was in being someone's child. "Do you want a parent?" Mordred asked her, very bluntly, because she was already fourteen by the time they knew each other and because "parents" were an ugly, bleeding wound to her.

Ruu's story was very much like Arenvald's. Her mother did not want her. The M tribe did not want her either. She was not a child but a living gash on her living family. The outcome of oppression and rape. Though M'naago and Lyse absolutely insisted on being kind to Ruu, they weren't her family. Her aunts called her a curse. She was in the Ala Mhigan Quarters when she met Mordred, and met him only because she was trying to steal herbs from him to help her friends -- friends who all abandoned her when the Garleans were kicked out, and as the adults turned on everything and anything reminding them of the occupation, Ruu became caught in the crossfire because she was half.

Her mother killed herself when she was ten. She would've killed Ruu, too, but the neighbors stopped them in time, and like a cornered beast, the woman turned the blade on herself while everyone watched, horrified.

"Was it my fault?" Ruu had asked the grownups then. They didn't answer her, they just moved her to an orphanage.

She haltingly told Mordred this story, years later. Asked him again, "Was it my fault?"

"No," Mordred replied. "It might feel like it is, but there's a difference between something being your fault and something being just a problem you were a component of, but ultimately had no control in."

"It's not fair."

Mordred slowly shook his head. "It isn't," he agreed. "But I'm glad that you came out of it alive. That's all."

She cried until there was a wet puddle on his shoulder, and then she did feel a lot better about it. Ruu's...everything with her mother was complex. Some tangle of terrible pain and guilt and deep, deep hatred and resentment under all that. The woman she barely knew. Who was never kind to her. Who made her death her fault until the very end. But she was her mother! She had only the one...

Is a parent something you want, Mordred had said.

Not really, Ruu would have to reply. And she did say so. She feared she'd hurt his feelings, but her teacher only inclined his head, and accepted her answer without any feeling one way or another.

No, that wasn't it. Mordred had never been ambivalent towards Ruu. Or rather, his ambivalence wasn't one of neglect or indifference, but rather that he simply...accepted it. When she said she couldn't do something, Mordred said, "Do you want to continue pursuing this?" and let her decide whether yes or no. Some things, he'd make her learn -- currency conversions, how to dodge, how to fight -- but other things, like magic and maths and arithmancy, he let her choose.

Ruu didn't live under a rock. There was no rock in Eorzea big enough to spare her from the fact that her teacher was one of the most powerful mages in this generation, anyway. Others clamored to have themselves or their children be under his tutelage, but Mordred only scoffed. He taught her instead, and Ruu was unfortunately only mediocre at magic.

He didn't mind at all. And that both made her feel more and less bad, that his legacy in her would be so-- so lackluster. That when she sobbed about it, he only replied, bemused, "Why MUST you excel in magic? Why must you excel in anything, at that? If you glean even one morsel of joy out of anything that I'm teaching you, then nothing is in vain."

Mordred didn't demand excellence from his one fully-acknowledged student. His sole aim had been to give her as many options as possible to do with her life, and for him, the key to much of his own agency had been knowledge and power.

Thus, the lessons in magic. Thus, the lessons in crafting that Ruu found boring. Thus, he'd let her run amok with minimal supervision in Ala Mhigo once he was satisfied that she was both looked after and was familiar with the lay of land.

Mordred was based in Thanalan, and he had so many places to go. But he spent months and months in Ala Mhigo with Ruu, traveling from one occupation-destroyed site to another in order to help locals repair their temples and groves. He taught her conjury and lithomancy, and asked the locals to teach both of them the stories and tales of their homes, in turn.

They were of course well received. Mordred was well versed in funerary practices, was a skilled repairman of anything, and even if he never brought up the fact that he helped save the entire country, when he rolled his sleeves up and helped people out, they were naturally welcoming of him in turn. As his companion, Ruu basked in the same warmth of belonging and friendship.

She understood it to be intentional. It was why he took her around Ala Mhigo specifically, even though she knew he could've picked any other country. He wanted her to be welcomed beyond the burden of her lineage. He wanted her to see that grownups were capable of more than just beating her on the head about something she could not change. Adults outside of Arenvald, who was barely one anyway, or Lyse, or M'naago.

"The world isn't always nice," Mordred said one night as they were roasting fish on skewers in the wilderness. "In fact, hard times could bring out the worst in people. It's nice to have someone or something to blame."

"Yeah," Ruu said glumly. "And sometimes you can really see that they feel better after they beat you down."

"No reason satisfies a bully," Mordred replied. "Put 'em in the ground."

"You're supposed to say something like, 'They might be going through a hard time too, so be understanding to them'."

"I said what I said," her teacher answered, matter-of-fact. He flayed a fish of all its bones and handed her the morsel. "You can be compassionate without their gouging their claws into you. In fact, if you want to be productive with your compassion and not just be another indulgence for their destructiveness, a line must be drawn and enforced."

He twirled the knife in his hand for a moment, then added, "Standing up for yourself feels horrible, sometimes. But you gotta do it until it's a habit. Only when you understand your own limits can you meaningfully allow others in your life to negotiate them. I let Theodore get away with a lot more than if he'd been my casual friend, and it goes both ways."

Mordred never said it in so many words, but he didn't think that he was kind enough to be someone's father. He didn't think there was any kindness in being protective of someone under his care. He told Ruu, "There's a temptation to be an asshole if it keeps you alive, and you'll find that most people you meet will indulge in it. If you want them to not do so, you do sometimes have to snap at them."

He told Ruu, "You can do everything right, everything that was asked of you, and still come out feeling like shit and having accomplished shit. I don't have a 'but' to end this sentiment with, unfortunately. Failure is what it is. What you make of it, how you interpret it in order to move forward from it, is up to you."

He told Ruu, "There will be lessons you can only learn on your knees after having been brought there by your enemies. What I can prepare you for is how to get up, and how to make it hurt less maybe, but the getting up will be your responsibility."

Failure was the one thing Mordred wouldn't let Ruu choose to ignore. If she couldn't comprehend a math problem or an array, fine. But he wanted her to tell him why, exactly, she didn't understand. He made her sit with the shame of not being able to learn something or understand something until it had lost its bite. He made her know what she was feeling, and whether her mood was going to be a productive one or if she should go shake that off first before going back to a problem.

The intensity Mordred taught Ruu with was indeed not something one would expect of a father, if Ruu were to compare it to the ones her friends complained about. None of them said stuff to their kids like, "Hey, the world kind of suck" or "You're not going to always meet nice people; here's how to get them to play nice even if they're not, in their heart". No one would say, "Hit the bully back. Put them into the ground."

...but Mordred also didn't say or do any of the hurtful things Ruu's parents did to them, either. Called them weak, called them incompetent and a disappointment. Yell and scream. Or, like her own mother, wished so loudly that she didn't exist.

Mordred was, to her, something and someone else entirely. He was solely her teacher, and behaved distinctively different from all the other grownups in her life. Ruu didn't use the behaviors she had with her mother, with him. No running or hiding in the cupboard. No covering her ears while her mother loudly wished that she was dead.

No, Ruu didn't really want another parent. Maybe one day, but right now, that very word and the very role was a festering wound.

But a teacher who was willing to teach her how to live, and not how to excel? Did not mind that she wouldn't excel, in the things he was known for? Yes. Ruu wanted that.

Her mother was deeply unfair to her. Life had been and might continue to be unfair to her. Even Ruu's friends right now were sometimes petulant and dense. But Mordred--

Mordred would always be. And he let her tell him when he wasn't, and he'd seriously think about it.

What was "fair", anyway? To be treated in the same way you were willing to treat others, wasn't it? In full knowledge that it wasn't going to work out that way all the time.

But in knowing, there was agency. There was something you could do about it, even if it was only in having the knowledge. It invested power in you.

Ruu really did take well after Mordred as a student, even if sometimes she didn't feel like it. Not in the magic and the crafts, but in the understanding of what made you strong.

[torchlitinthedesert]

"#but john had a pattern of asking for proof of commitment and pulling away once he’d got it" can you elaborate on this? I can't think of an example of it, off the top of my head

Yes! This is a very late response, both because life got away from me and because I wanted to think it through some more.

In the tag you quoted, I said "asking for proof", which I now think is too sweeping (I've updated my earlier tags to reflect this). It's may not be as clearcut that, or not verbalised that way. And it involves other people's expectations/choices: some of this is just about how intensely people sought John's approval. But even with all those caveats, I do find it striking how making a big commitment to John could lead to *loss* of closeness.

Some examples (unfortunately including the Beatles being ableist):

Stuart Sutcliffe wins his art prize, and gets talked into spending the money on a bass guitar so he can join John's band. It's a big commitment from Stu. So what happens? The band goes on tour to Scotland, where they all picked on Stu. “We were terrible,” John told Hunter Davies. “We'd tell Stu he couldn't sit with us, or eat with us. We'd tell him to go away, and he did.”

According to Davies, "At one hotel they stayed at, a variety show had just left. There had been a dwarf in the show and they found out which bed he had slept in and said that would have to be Stu's. They certainly weren't going to sleep in it. So Stu had to. 'That was how he learned to be with us,' says John. 'It was all stupid, but that was what we were like.'"

John frames the status drop as a rite of passage: making the commitment isn't enough, you have to go through being pushed away, too. And it's John doing it: it's not just Paul and George being jealous of the new guy, John is actively joining in.

Fast forward to Hamburg, where it's Paul's turn to drop down the pecking order. Fandom often focuses on Paul leaving his job at Massey and Coggins, but I think Hamburg is a much, much bigger turning point.

Paul's exam results were disappointing, but good enough for further education. That had been the family dream his whole life, particularly for his mother - that Paul would get a professional job that would lift the family into middle-class security. And other trusted adults agreed: Paul asked his favourite teacher Alan Durband for advice, and was told he should play it safe and get his qualifications.

Paul ignores this, rejects the future his family dreamed of and demanded for him, and goes to Hamburg. Where he finds himself out in the cold, unpopular, stuck in a windowless back bedroom. (Beds again: important for hierarchy and for bonding - see George insisting that Ringo roomed with Paul when he joined.) This happens right at the start of Hamburg, too. It's not just about getting distracted by the cool exis: this is the dynamic the Beatles brought with them.

This isn’t all John. The teenaged Beatles were a seething messy friendship group, a bunch of jealous rivals kicking out at someone else’s success. Both Stu in Scotland and Paul in Hamburg had reason to feel homesick and rejected. Those are hard feelings to have, and can make people harder to be around, especially when other friendships and opportunities are opening up. So there are other factors involved, but to me it does feel like a pattern.

I misremembered my next example, conflating two of Cynthia's later acid experiences. John asked her to try acid again: she had a horrible time, but he did stay close and try to comfort her. So that's an important example of John not pulling away, even if it didn't work out.

What I remembered was the last time Cynthia tried acid - I think spontaneously, rather than at John's encouragement. I'm fairly sure John was already high when this happened, which I'm sure affected his behaviour. It's still a brutal example of Cynthia pushing herself to fit in with John's world, and being knocked back. She takes acid:

“At Brian's house I followed John around, hoping he would comfort me as I went through what was, for me, a horrible experience. But he was not in a good mood: he glared at me and treated me as if I were a stranger. I felt desolate. Upstairs I found an open bedroom window and contemplated jumping out. For a few minutes, ending it all seemed like an easy solution…”

Then there's George. May Pang describes his anger at feeling he'd made multiple commitments to John:

“Then George’s anger really burst forth. ‘Where were you when I needed you!’ he snapped. It was the first of a series of explosions, each of them followed by moments of tense silence. ‘I did everything you said. But you weren’t there,’ he repeated. ‘You always knew how to reach me,’ John would reply evenly to each of these outbursts... George said that repeatedly in the past he had sung what John wanted him to sing, said what John wanted him to say. Because John wanted it, George had gone along with the decision to go with Allen Klein. In the nearly four years since, John had virtually ignored him, a fact that pained George deeply. George’s voice grew even more harsh as he blasted John for his sudden appearance, as if out of nowhere, to offer an evening’s worth of help. Yet again George said furiously, ‘I did everything you said, but you weren’t there.’”

I think there's miscommunication here, and mismatched expectations. George felt he'd made commitments and been frozen out; it may have seemed very different from John's perspective. But if John's not responsible for other people's choices, he's also not just standing there passively while all this happens. And if people felt they'd made big commitments, only to be knocked back, that's still part of the collective dynamic.

Quotes: Hunter Davies, The Beatles; Cynthia Lennon, John; May Pang, Loving John.

[albonoooo]

emy I think you’re so brilliant and kind!! you have such a way with words and I would love to see what kind of fic you would come up with if you ever published some <3

if i wasn't half alseep already, i'd be sobbing rn 😭 please, this is far too kind, i've dissolved into a puddle. compliments about my eloquence and by association my english always hit a bit of a soft spot, because i used to be terribly behind in english class (normally, we start learning english here in first grade. i started in fifth grade because my primary school didn't have a proper qualified english teacher) and i still get insecure about it at times. more so my spoken english, but still. so thank you so so much (and sorry for rambling haha) <3

i'll have to disappoint you, unfortunately, so far i've never been able to execute any of my ideas and i'm trying to accept that that may never change. BUT i'm simultaneously clinging on to my last little shred of hope that one day, i will be able to put the thoughts into words. maybe. we shall see.

tell me on anon what you'd never tell me off anon

[0-k-4]

not anyway actually i'm going to speak about them. A lot of them are late every morning, and i'm talking about a "30 minutes or more" late. Almost all of them spend their whole time on their phone, not listening to a single word that is being said. They are just here to get paid at the end. They don't even try to look like they're giving a shit. One of them bragged that she got suspended for calling her teacher names last year, but it was deserved because said teacher was "being a bitch". I've seen her film her tiktok dancing in front of the bathroom. She complained earlier that she would just quit if she isn't being paid more than 300 euros. For what you bitch ? You've done NOTHING but sat your ass on your chair, complain and play your fucking tiktok out loud and talk during class. They are so irrespectful and unfortunately that's something i hate.

They complain about having tests and exams (which are unbeliveably easy if you just LISTEN and READ THE BOOK SOMETIMES) because most of them believed before coming that they just had to sit in the room all day to get paid at the end. They don't do SHIT. They complain every break about the quality of the lessons they're not even listening to. They have the most STUPID opinions. "But why do we have to learn the legal rules and articles, that's so stupid and useless ughhhhh" i don't know why would you learn about the reglementation of you job ?? especially when said job have a high risk of you comitting an infraction or even a crime if you're not careful about what you're doing ???

I'm not even going to talk about the ones asking the very question the teacher just answered. Also one of the people i eat lunch with just love to spew very false information very confidently, and the other is a pretty girl but she's so unuseful. She MUST have a personnality but. where ? And I hate hate hate the bunch of guys making fun of the first one, because even if i don't like her, that kind of half-assed bullying is way worse than being a little cringe. I hate that the teacher too isn't going harder on them btw. He's a mop. I'm so full of spite that's terrible

[neowinestainedress]

rebs!! within europe, which country would you say have many polyglots?

i personally think it's italy bc i think people there understand 2/3 other languages beyond intermediate level? do you think italy provides solid language-learning system in schools (compared to your european counterparts)?

This is longer than I expected, I had many complaints to do lmao

Honestly, I have no idea... I think Italy sucks when it comes to teaching languages. I learned English by myself because in elementary school the English teacher was never the same and every year we basically did the same things over and over again. In middle school I had better teachers but I didn't have a base so I struggled a lot and one direction and tv series saved my ass. In high school we do grammar for the first two years and then the other three are just literature, so if you're fluent, you're fine, but if you're not, it's going to be hell. (Probably it depends on the professor too, mine was pretty strict and I found her funny and iconic only because I was good, but some of my friends that weren't fluent hated her a lot, and they were right)

We only do another language in middle school (either French or Spanish). I learned French but yeah... The professors were terrible, I only had a good one in the second year but it wasn't enough. I mean, I was better at French than English back then, but I hated it so much I almost completely lost all my knowledge after.

After middle school, if you want to study languages there's the "linguistic high school" but from what I know it's not like it's much better, especially for languages like German or Chinese.

In Italy there are some regions that have other official languages like French, German, and Albanian (don't know if it's official, but a lot of small countries in the east-south speak it).

I just think Italians are slick and most of the time speak with their bodies, and when it comes to understanding others we are not like French (sorry not sorry) and even if the pronunciation is not perfect we just think about getting to the point. Also, quoting that tweet that was popular saying "Portuguese, Spanish and Italian speakers understanding each other without speaking the same language" it's true. We have the same roots so for survival needs I think we can communicate pretty well, and at least understand what we're saying. Still, I don't think many of us are fluent in more than another language. But probably I'm thinking too much about the older generation, idk the younger ones seem to be more interested in languages, I think the Universities that involve languages are the most popular rn, so this could change in the next few years? But we are also a very old country (many old people and no newborns) so I don't think I'm wrong for now.

I would say Switzerland is the most polyglot because they speak Italian, French and German but it's based on the cantons, so I'm not sure they speak more languages in a single one. The other one is probably Germany. They seem like the most open-minded and also very global, but I don't know much about the school system.

In conclusion, I think that the Italian school system is just really hard and puts students under a lot of stress without making them accomplish a lot, and that involves languages too. I wish I was the only one, but if you ask young people where they learned English, 80% of them will answer like I did, on their own, with music, movies, and fanfictions... that tells you everything about how the system teaches languages. Also, I think that the ones speaking more languages are the mixed couples children (I'm one, but for reasons, my Spanish is hanging on a thin line) and the second generations' children that speak Italian, their parent's language, and one or two that they learn later on. But white Italians? Either they're passionate about it or they don't care. This is also why I talked about being open-minded, unfortunately, Italy is going through a very bad fascist turn of events again and foreign languages are seen as threats, the prime minister wants to fine people for using English words when they speak, and that's all from 1925. Not saying that if you don't speak other languages you're fascist, but that's another factor to consider when you analyze the way people act when it comes to the topic, you simply might not be good at that (just like some people are not good at math, or art and so on) but that doesn't give you the right to push foreign languages down or mock them, or treat people that spend time learning a new one as if they're stupid.

So what I'm thinking is, in the new generation there's a lot of us speaking more than 2/3 languages but I think at least 70% is because those are already the mother tongues (so Italian because they were born and raised here and then the one they speak with the family) the rest is taught at school but only if you want to learn them. Considering the oldest generation makes up most of this country, I still think we're losing compared to other places in Europe.

This turned into a rant, and you just learned to never ask me anything ever again I'M SO SORRY PLEASE FORGIVE ME

Also, can you explain why you think we're almost fluent in 2/3 languages? I'm curious to know why it looks like this on the outside.

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: I'm a 32 years old, poc, male ISTP. Due to the second mentioned factor and living in a closed, rural community, I was a victim to a lot of discrimination in my childhood. Both being hurt, scared and bit of a meathead at that time of my life, I turned to a shadier sides of the town (where people 'accepted' me more). I'll admit it was stupid in itself to even step a foot in that business, but I'll admit I really only stood around and try to look like a doberman (being 6ft and all).

Until, things got out of hand, and in my early adulthood, I actually got tangled in court and went into prison. While I eventually got out, I was feeling so terrible that I didn't return home and decided to stay in the city. Looking back at it, I can't really tell if it was a decision made on whim or something I wanted long time. Cause after while, months going to total years, my contact with my home place eventually lessened till I just completely severed all relationship there.

My mom was a really supportive person, albeit too strongheaded, and my absent dad altogether made me appreciate her all the more. She was a major factor why I felt so ashamed about my entire trial and temporary imprisonment. I won't say my childhood was the best, but I very deeply know she tried all her best to make it tolerable. The entire shady stuff I've been in, that at the time felt belonging, now had felt like I've had undone all her effort. [cont]

----------------------

I'm afraid I didn't receive the rest of your message, so please resend. Although I don't know what your question was, I can still make a few general points that may benefit you and other readers. You're not alone; a lot of people struggle because of a difficult childhood or have trouble reconciling past mistakes.

Throughout childhood and adolescence, your brain is designed to be very open to social influence because it helps you learn efficiently. Human children take a long time to mature compared to other animals, so they need to learn as quickly as possible. One reason humans evolved to be a cooperative and social species was to make it easier to pass crucial survival and cultural information from one generation to the next. The capacity to learn from collective memory and intelligence helped us evolve quickly as a species, but the downside was that negative cultural patterns could become more and more entrenched through each generation, making it difficult to change direction.

Social creatures learn from their social environment. No matter how great your parents are, they alone cannot shield you from all the negative influences of society at large, particularly when it comes to prejudice, discrimination, and hate. Even with maximal parental support, it is very difficult for one person, especially a child, to stand against an entire society that is designed to keep them down.

To learn optimally, kids need more than just parents. They also need good peers to rely on for emotional support, good teachers in school to model the right thinking and behavior, and good mentors from the community for learning how to be a productive member of society. Without enough moral support from the larger social environment, it is more difficult for kids to learn good decision-making skills. This is the meaning behind the common saying that it takes a village to raise a child. But when the village isn't passing down healthy cultural values, children are forced to work with disadvantages that prevent them from realizing their potential and flourishing in life.

Unfortunately, as a young child, your thinking isn't complex enough to understand just how toxic your social environment really is and why. Even if you have some moral instincts about how terrible the people around you are, you don't have any power to change anything, especially when sticking your neck out would risk severe blowback. When the social environment is putting great pressure on you to learn and internalize its toxic values AND your natural inclination as a child is to become a valued member of society, resistance doesn't really register as an option. Who wouldn't take the easier path and try to swim with the current?

Don't call yourself stupid when there were so many forces working against you. You shouldn't be blamed or blame yourself for the conditions of your upbringing that you had no control over. Accidents of birth shouldn't factor into your personal identity since you didn't have any say over them. However, in reality, people do define themselves by accidents of birth and they might waste too many years unconsciously seeking out the things that they felt deprived of in childhood. In this state of arrested development, of always longing for approval or belonging, they readily believe what people say, about who they are and who they should be. Eventually, they learn to be their own harshest critic and hold themselves up to toxic standards and expectations.

To really grow up is to become independent, to have the ability to mentally differentiate oneself from one's social environment enough to understand the importance of personal well-being. It's very hard to make something truly good out of yourself and your life when you don't know how to take care of your own well-being. As you enter young adulthood, the brain finally reaches maturation, and you gradually gain enough self-awareness to reflect and think more critically about yourself and your life. This opens up the possibility of choosing a future that is different than the one your childhood set up for you.

Who are you? Are you just your negative experiences? You will be, if you don't use your self-awareness to understand that how you define your identity is in your hands. You get to choose your beliefs and values and change them as necessary. You get to choose the people you let into your personal life. You get to choose how to respond to bad or difficult situations. You get to choose how to conduct yourself in your daily activities. You get to choose your next steps in life. All of these choices, over a lifetime, reflect who you really are. If at any point in time you don't like who you are, there is always the possibility of choosing a different path and becoming a better person.

You are well into adulthood and it sounds like you've been able to make some sense of your past and put negative events in the right perspective. However, even when people succeed in escaping their negative early childhood environment, it doesn't mean that there aren't some lingering questions and concerns always floating around in the back of the mind. For example:

How much of that environment still exists within you, and are you aware of the aspects that still influence you today?

Have you really made peace with everything that happened, or do you still harbor unresolved feelings and emotions that come out when you're stressed/unhappy?

Have you truly changed and bettered yourself, or would you still lose your way upon reentering a similarly toxic environment?

Was it all bad, or were there some good aspects of the past that you didn't appreciate and/or threw away unfairly and should try to reclaim?

Do you really have a better way of making decisions today, or are you still driven by past influences to either seek approval or enact rebellion over and over again in every new situation, always a victim of larger generational and/or cultural forces?

You mention having unresolved feelings of regret about your mom and how your decisions might have impacted her. When you realize the gravity of the hurt you've caused someone, the best you can do is try to make amends by expressing to them how genuinely sorry you are and empathizing with their suffering. You can also try to make up for mistakes by finding some way to compensate for hurt or damages caused to them, with their consent and agreement. Whether they can forgive you and resolve their feelings about the past is their business and not for you to control. In some cases, if the person you're trying to make amends with is no longer around or refuses to have contact with you, you have to find a way to forgive yourself.

Forgiving yourself involves addressing those lingering questions and concerns honestly. Are you truly sorry and repentant for your past mistakes? Have you understood why you made those poor decisions, learned the right lessons from them, and now live your life in a way that honors rather than repeats your past? Have you done something to make up for the mistakes you made, for example, through acts of service and devotion? Even when you can't obtain forgiveness from other people, you can come to forgive yourself by taking your negative past and transforming it into something positive, something that expresses the positive aspects of you and contributes something positive to the world around you. In this way, you take the lead to define who you are, rather than letting the past define you.

Maybe the guilt/regret never goes away completely, but maybe it shouldn't, because it has a job to do. Every part of you serves a purpose and should be properly understood and loved. The guilt/regret could serve as a reminder to choose carefully when you're at your low points and at risk of repeating past mistakes. Perhaps the guilt/regret is really your mom's voice in disguise and you were only able to hear it once you faced up to the past bravely. If that's the case, fully embracing the guilt/regret would be a good way to keep her love close to your heart, like a caring companion guiding you to live your life well.

[astridthevalkyrie]

If it’s not too much, can u pls tell me how does it feel like to be a law student? Having a rough time picking majors for next year ;-;

Thank you!

not too much at all! obviously my word is not the end all be all but i can tell you what my experience has been so far.

law school is hard, but it also isn't. it's a crapton of reading, first off. one class could give you fifty pages of reading that need to be read by the next day. professors will post a syllabus/schedule so you can try and read ahead and you might for a while, but it's impossible to be on top of everything all the time. i've already seen breakdowns and had breakdowns, and i've been in law school for all of (checks watch) two and a half months. since classes grade pretty much only on final exams and maybe midterms, anyone like me who relied on always getting their homework done on time and participation to keep their grades up will be miserable.

you need to carve out time. a lot of time. you may think it'll take you two hours to do one reading—it'll take four hours at least. but if you give yourself that time, for reading, for studying, for practice questions, you'll stay above the surface. your social life is gonna die a little. not as terribly as i imagine med students' lives do, but you can't see your friends every week. you can't spend time with your family every week. you can't indulge in your hobbies every week.

extracurriculars are....also not the same as undergrad. there's no joining theatre club or creative writing or anime club as a way to destress after classes and turn your mind off from your studies. every club is a law society of sorts and they all do pretty much the same thing—if they're a diversity group of some kind, they'll plan things around that identity (i've seen henna+study! and destress+dragbingo! events from the south asian and gay straight alliance law societies respectively). they'll offer outlines from students who have already taken the classes you're taking. they'll give you an idea of how it feels to be an upperclassman and good advice on what to do to survive your first year (and their advice helps a lot more than teachers). mostly every club requires dues. the big clubs are any advocacy progams, like mock trial or moot court, and if you compete in those your life will get harder because you do have to put in the work to succeed in those competitions.

i have terrible adhd, executive dysfunction, procrastination problems, focusing issues, whatever you wanna call it. i'm writing this in class right now. i usually can't focus in class and have to do most of my learning outside of it. the reading IS important. what's also important is looking at outlines made by people who took the same class AND had the same teacher. doing practice problems, talking to at least one other classmate to try and understand things (study "groups" are a little overhyped, they're not as deadly necessary as everyone says they are. just have at least one person in every class that you can confer and sit down with sometimes.)

law students are pretentious! unfortunately. i'm not in a super diverse area, so i'm one of four or five south asian girls in my section of `70 people. many people talk like they are god's gift to the world. and many people don't and are completely chill. everyone is struggling, though. everyone has a weak spot and everyone seems to some extent have imposter syndrome. if you do get into law school, you gotta remember you got in. on your own merits. no one is smarter or dumber than you, just different.

classes themselves are interesting. your first year your classes are decided for you so you can take all the basic classes you need to study more advanced stuff. and things will surprise you. i thought civil procedure just by its name sounded incredibly boring. but it's not! i wouldn't pursue a career in it, but seeing cases succeed or fail based on technicalities and guidelines is fasinating to me. your legal writing class will make you do research on things you don't know about, and suddenly you're kind of an authority on them! (don't debate a lawyer, but, y'know, throw some big words around your friends and family.)

it feels so good when things click. when you've studied for two hours and suddenly you figure this shit out, it's like a whole new world just opened up for you. it's incredibly satisfying to answer questions correctly. don't worry about memorization as much as you should worry about understanding, exams can be open book and if they're not professors will know they're not and will not make them rely just on your memory.

SO. all in all. law school is tough, much tougher than undergrad, everyone around you knows it's tough, and if you think you can do hours of reading at a time, write in a way you've never written before (cite. after. every. assertion.) and isolate yourself away from everything and everyone to focus on your studies, then go for it. don't think it's for super super smart people, it's not. don't think you need to know the law or the constitution or anything to apply, you don't. if you're a fan or argument, or persuasion, or even etymology, you could do really well at law school.

feel free to ask me anything else about it!

[seelestia]

okay, second attempt at this because tumblr hates me.

i’m glad you’ve been doing well! as for me, i’ve been doing a bit better! still working on it, though. dw abt it, i learned my lesson, i think 🦭 (/hj) you got this lia! i’m sure we’ll both do well <3

honestly i barely passed, it was pure luck i was able to do that actually (we accept all the slander to my terrible math teacher, i won’t stop you huhu 🫶🏼 /lh) ive managed to save my sleep schedule, but who knows how long that’s gonna last! thank you! i hope to return to writing at some point, i miss it dearly 😞

HIDING MY WANDERER RN, YOU WON’T FIND HIM 🏃‍♀️💨 (/lh) those eight seconds, i ate them up like i eat your writing. it took a lot of patience,, and resin but it was for cyno - worth it! i’m planning on pulling for her, but haven’t had time to farm bc of personal issues so - not counting on a miracle. (HELP LIA THATS A HUGE COMPLIMENT <3 live laugh love nahida.)

yep! he turned 11, and tomorrow my sister turns 9 :) oh,, unfortunately our plans didn’t quite work out, i’ve been a little bummed because of it actually 😵‍💫 but i’m sure i’ll get to see them at some point!

i am LIVING the dream rn, so true! i give him kith. also not him threatening to kill you?? manz better explain himself rn, i got the chancla. HELP?? omg,, invite me to the next therapy session (/hj) omg.. maybe 👀

of course! and aw, no boiling hot tea today - a shame. pfft it’s kind of like that with cyno and kazuha rn, not sure how that’ll go either, hehe!

OMG YES I SPOKE TO CYNO AI AND GOT HIM TO FALL FOR ME 🤭 (same with kazuha, and the wanderer.. it’s an all-out war rn /lh) and i bet you that i missed you more <33 ty for the forehead kisses they’re vv appreciated here 🩷 if you see someone glaring at you rn, don’t mind :) it’s just a grumpy lil wanderer trying to scare you! dw, he won’t attack you (yet. /j)

THANK YOU FOR TRYING, YONA!! tumblr may be an obstacle but it's got nothing against you 💪 i'm glad! no matter what, you can always try again and i (+ your mooties) will be there to support and bite your ankle when you need it <3 (/aff)

pure luck?? i thought it was your braincells swooping in to save you 😩 coincidence because i just finished my math test today and now, i'm hoping for the best (holding in tears. there were so many questions abt finance— DARN, I DIDN'T SIGN UP TO BE AN ACCOUNTANT. /j) 🤞 me too, yon, i genuinely hope that you can go back to writing without other people telling you how to be one :( leave my girl yona ALONE or i will come for your kneecaps!! 🐎 (/hj)

NOOOO, GIVE HIM TO ME. (/lh) i have so many intertwined fates, but i can't pull anyone because i have to save my guarantee for his pretty face 😞 FRRRR. hoyoverse did not need to make him look that good if he's not rerun-ing?? they need to be considerate to wanderer non-havers (me) 😦 (/j) i hope the gacha will look down on you with favor and you'll get nahida! and that you get to see your friends too soon (do you already have fun plans for what you're gonna do with them? (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)) 🍀

NOT THE CHANCLA?? yeahhh, fling it across his face 🪃 hehe, have a sneak peek for that therapy session you didn't get to join— and idk why but the way i talk so seriously here looks so funny when put together with the name and pfp, PLEASE.

cream stew is one of my fav genshin dishes; it reminds me of carbonara pasta, yummzz! weird question but do you have a fav in-game dish, yon?? which one is it and why >:3c

DAYUMMMM. i'm just gonna eat popcorn amidst this war while wanderer and cyno reenact that special program's fight. kazu and yona, come join. 🍿 lucky for me heizou and ayato are both vv civil people.... somewhat. (/j)

[yanderelovlies]

✨Galaxy Anon ✨ here!

Oh viví but how could you deprive me of this privilege?! It’s too good lol!

Yea like i’m so picky on even getting something I want from the store. The most you will see me ask my mom is for food because I want a snack. I life really have to have a whole debate with myself if the item is something more I want than need if I really want it or I could live without it. So when people give me stuff I feel guilty or use it a lot so it doesn’t go to waste.

You sure? Some sound childish I guess I’m my opinion or many wouldn’t understand my perspective on things and call me one of those fans which makes me close up. If you’re sure I guess it be alright, and no worries you aren’t straightforward in a way that is disrespectful and I like your blunt on what you are saying. Maybe someone could be selling it somewhere! Was it limited edition or something?

You know if I was in your shoes I give up because dammit math is hard so I commend you for even still trying since I don’t understand algebra and my math teacher must’ve been horrified on my scores. Oh those sound fun especially evaluating people behavior and also traits. Ooh his dog? He must’ve been fun!

It’s my job now vivi! Gotta make you feel happiness with compliments!

Glad your spending your time also making time for them and showing you care. Still make sure you have some time for yourself! You deserve that much vivi! Also what did you sing?

Honestly the amount cases for death, assault in one or the other way is scary. Why do you think I’m such a hermit? Other than work I like staying at my house since I feel safe and just shit happens outside like what the hell?! It’s actually a surprise now when nothing goes horrible for once in the news. Have that pepper spray vivi and good for being safe! Good because while I’m paranoid I loving having my headphones on for music and well if I’m distracted enough I would be a easy target. Damn I need to learn self defense.

Thanks vivi! I mean those customers a little less common at least. Most are nice or you can leave them alone enough and they be cool. Unfortunately that is true since I’m just trying to work and some people are unnecessarily mean for some reason or get mad when you bother them to ask what they even want to drink like I’m just trying to get your order since you wanted to eat.

Lol come back during business hours.

Me too! Even if I'm buying it myself I'm always sitting there and complaining if I really need it or not. I usually miss out on good shit, but I always feel bad for spending mine or other people's money on stuff I don't need to survive. It weird lowkey frustrating.

I don't mind at all! I love hearing about people's fandoms and what they love about them. So throw them my way I wanna see 🥺🥺💕💕. Also, I found a shirt on aliexpress, but the original place I found no longer sells, but I'm gonna keep looking and hoping.

Honestly, I thought about it, but going back to my last job scares me more. So I'll take my chances with the math lol. Also, I've only taken one semester of those classes, but I still had a lot of fun and even learned some cool tips for helping manage anxiety.

Just you taking the time to talk to me makes me happy. It's always nice to hear from you. 🥺💕💕

We were singing all kinds of things. Musicals, their favorite songs, and some random they fell into line.

Me too! If I'm allowed I stay inside with all my favorite things where I am safe. As for the headphone thing me too I have these big ones that I take, but they are loud enough so I can just have them hang around my neck and still hear them.

It's like people these days forgot how to be kind to one another. It's sad, and I always feel bad for those who get the terrible treatment for just doing their job. I am glad they aren't frequent for you though.

[oroniel]

And now it's your turn to talk about your love for languages, if you feel like it. :-)

Ah, thanks for asking! This will also be a long response.

I was a terrible student in school - I know now that that was mostly because I was bored, since I already knew a lot of what we were learning, but at the time I thought it was because I was just too stupid to pay attention or focus on homework. So when we had the option to start learning a foreign language when I was 12, it was something new, therefore it held my attention, and I was REALLY good at it. It was the first time a teacher told me I was good at something in school.

I think I discovered Tolkien's language stuff at about the same time. I'd read the books before, but once I started learning French, I started to understand how you could play with grammar in different ways, and I had a much better understanding of what he'd done. I started to invent languages for my own imaginary world. Unfortunately I have no idea what happened to those notebooks, but I spent many hours inventing verb forms and vocabulary and alphabets when I was supposed to be paying attention in other classes.

Fortunately my bad behavior in school didn't have a long term detrimental effect - I got to university and could finally study what I was interested in, and became an honors student. I took linguistics as part of my anthropology degree, continued to pursue French, studied Kiswahili and Hindi, reinforced the latter two with study programs in Kenya and India, started to learn some Tibetan, then also ended up learning Mongolian and Khmer while working in Mongolia and Cambodia. (Though I was never literate in Khmer - I learned it only through conversation). I also have a smattering of Bosniak from time working on human rights issues in Bosnia.

My Mongolian and French are pretty fluent; the others more dormant. I can usually understand written Spanish and Italian, and was studying Russian in anticipation of doing some work there, but I stopped when the Ukraine war started because it was clear I wouldn't be able to travel there, let alone do research. I can read Hangul, but only enough to get around on the bus and subway system in South Korea. I'd love to learn that language but don't have the brainspace at the moment. My next formal language of study may be Kyrgyz - I might be heading over there for a year to work.

Like you I'm constantly listening for patterns when watching foreign media and can usually pick up some basics. This has proven true for Korean and Danish. I'm weirdly resistant to German though - much to my father's chagrin, as he learned it from his German grandmother and really wanted me to speak it.

And lest I seem annoyingly arrogant about all these languages, I want to add that there are many, many things at which I'm terrible or mediocre. Languages just happen to be my own little gift, I think. I'm sure Annatar would approve.

Thanks for asking! It's been fun to talk about languages. I'm still up for trying to decipher Halbrand's remarks to the warg, too.

[shubaka]

dang that's a lot of languages to have studied! kudos to you just for tackling mandarin and japanese 'alphabets' 😳 may I ask how you would rate/rank your proficiency in all those languages? were you able to retain the previous languages when learning new ones? (if yes, how? lol) also unrelated question and sorry I'm asking so many questions, but is university/college referred to as "school" where you live?

no worries if you're busy, no need to respond

"school" is usually used for anywhere from up to and including post-secondary (university/college). some people are very adamant about only using university or college when talking about it, but overall a lot of people still just say school when referring to post-secondary.

ahahaha it looks more impressive than it actually is. :') i unfortunately don't use the other languages much, so in my opinion, my retention isn't that great. it's important to keep using languages that you're learning! (i say, and then proceed to not do that haha) but i think if i actually sat down and focused on reviewing them for a few weeks, it wouldn't be too difficult for me to pick things up again.

french i learned from grades 4-7 because it was mandatory in my school in grades 4-6. unfortunately i had a very ... let's just say prejudiced teacher in grade 7 so i didn't continue after that. i still remember some phrases and vocabulary words. for more basic/casual conversation level stuff, i'd say i could understand maybe a quarter of it? sometimes i can kind of guess based on context haha.

i learned mandarin in grades 10-12. i'm definitely better at listening than speaking. although sometimes i trip up because i'll think of a word in cantonese first. i think basic beginner/casual is fine. on a side note, when i had cantonese lessons as a kid, we learned it using traditional characters, so the simplified characters end up confusing me half the time hahaha. (when i was 6-8 years old my parents made me take classes on saturdays. it was mostly for reading and writing because we speak it at home so it wasn't exactly "learning a new language")

i took one semester of korean in university... unfortunately my teacher wasn't the greatest at explaining some concepts (to my understanding, at any rate) and i'd often find myself asking the TAs (who were all korean exchange students haha) to clarify... it didn't go very well haha. i can only remember a handful of phrases and vocabulary.

japanese.... ahhh, i actually majored in it in university, so i got to an advanced level, but since graduating i haven't really used it at all -- so it seems like a waste *sobs*. hmm if we're basing my proficiency right now with no extra review to brush up on things, my speaking and listening might be at an intermediate level?

and not mentioned in that poll because i learned them outside of school for fun is ASL and thai (which i am currently trying to learn via self-study).

ASL is great but also one that you need to keep practicing -- if you can get the muscle memory, even better. i took it for a year (evening classes as an adult) and i'd say i'm at a beginner level. this, like everything else, i need to practice more to retain.

with regards to retention of other languages while learning new ones, i think it's mostly a matter of how much you continue to engage with and use the other language. and it can be helpful if you compare grammar structure, vocab, etc with the language you're currently studying and the old one. it can be fun/interesting when you notice similar patterns or words across different languages and that might help you remember things more easily as well.

i love learning new languages but oh god am i terrible at continuing to practice it afterwards :') there are just so many things i want to do and learn and there are only so many hours in a day -- and there's definitely a limit to how much i can think in a day before my brain turns into mush

[stierhai]

Enstars AUs, 6-10

Enstars AUs, continued from here.

VAMPIRE AUs

[because sometimes the classics are classics for a reason]

6. Shinkai Cult, Vampire AU- I have to confess, what's written in my notebook here is actually FISHPIRES and nothing else. But I feel that alone is a compelling premise. What if, instead of fish and cannibalism cult, there are vampires. The Shinkai gods are vampires! We can have Elizabeth Bathory style pools of blood! Innocent monster Kanata! Chiaki can have a debilitating fear of ghosts still but be kind of mostly confused and concerned about vampires! I'm into it. Pros: I love vampires, I love the fish cult. It's also further divorced from the canon than the non-idol AU so I don't need to immediately go read stellar maris for writing it. Cons: I still should go brush up on everyone's voices.

7. Reimei Academy, Vampire AU- The AU where that school is actually a vampire factory. I mean, look. That school is canonically built atop catacombs, I don't know what else you want from me. The special students are being trained to give up their humanity with the way they treat the regular students, who also donate blood alongside their labor. The Shuuetsu students can be actual vamps. I've been re-reading Obbligato, so this one was on my mind while I was brainstorming. Pros: Hiyori!!! Kaname!! Cons: While I think it's a good idea, I also am not really sure what I'd be doing with it? I'd need to sit and think on this one longer to get more of a sense of it.

Magic School AUs:

[Twisted Wonderland, Scholomance, etc. There's a ton of them out there, we know the formula here. Boarding school where people learn magic and also it's dangerous both because of and for the students.]

8. Eccentric 5 Focus, Magic School AU - I want to write about the e5's downfall in a setting that allows for their downfall to be more absurdly dramatic while also not killing them off when they have their downfall so I can still let Natsume give the whole thing a different ending. Canonically they refuse his plan because even though they could have gotten a victory, it would have been nothing more than a pyrrhic victory. The damage is done. Vengeance is vengeance, but they're generally not spiteful people. Bringing the War into a magic school setting, it allows for Eichi's plan to have had-- well honestly I think in canon Eichi being allowed to save the idol industry and enable its evil which he furthered with his super capitalism is still just like plain evil and damaging-- to have had more dire consequences that needed to be stopped. Let Natsume have a nice thing and let's have an AU where Eichi gets foiled for real! I think that'd be fun. Natsume gets to reveal magic to normies and end the magic school because actually the magic school sucked, the version that relied on them and Eichi's new world order too! Pros: I've always wanted to write a Natsume wins AU to the war but canon really has spent so much time on the war at this point that it's like fine fine, Akira I get it you really really don't think this point needs to be belabored anymore. I understand, but also understand, I've gotta. Eichi has had it too good for too long. Cons: I've never written Sakuma Rei, Kanata, or Natsume before.

9. Sensei-tachi focus, Magic School AU - In which instead of all of them being survivors of the idol industry which is terrible and watching students go down the terrible pipe which they've already been down, it's the teachers being so, so tired but they can't really even encourage anyone to leave being magical. That's not how it works! They are so tired of watching their students absolutely torn up by the school and possibly magic society and doing their best to save them/help them. Unfortunately, they kind of suck. They are doing their bests, and their best is simply not very good. If I'm working with the senseis though, I'll need to figure out what I'm doing with the students. The obvious group to focus on is Trickstar, with Seiya being Hokuto's father and his connection to Subaru, Jin and his connection to Hokuto and Subaru, and Akiomi and his connection to Makoto (though the model-gumi more generally). This leaves Mao as their mundane tag-along friend. But I do need to figure out what sort of trouble Trickstar is getting into, to make this AU work. Pros: I really enjoy the teachers and don't get a ton of excuses to write for them or talk about them. How could I not love Seiya, also. This fucker. Insists he's a robot, not a person, what's a feeling! Come children throw your individuality and emotions away for the sake of the industry. I love Hokuto's bad dad so much. I could also put the Gatekeeper in it as the head of the Academy if I wanted. Cons: Voice review, need to figure out more of what I'm doing for this one.

10: Ra*bits Focus, Magic School AU - In which three new, magically weak students are saddled with their weird survivor upperclassman who snuck into the lower grades after [a terrible thing that wiped out valkyrie happened] to try and help them survive magic school. Pros: Nazuna! I love writing Nazuna! I'd get to write a different side of him than usual! Cons: I need to voice review for everyone else.

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