Just A Space

Another one of those crazy author people.

[dojizerker]

[unusual]

Japanese is an incredibly fun and rewarding language (if you’ve ever wanted to learn it for ANY reason, most importantly including the “silly” reasons) but the fearmongering and capitalist intervention involved in the language learning process have given it a reputation as an “impossible task” for English speakers, leading to confusion and dkn learners and weird pessimist attitudes about the whole thing. In this thread I will explain how to effectively learn and retain Japanese. This is a tried, tested and true method; probably 99% of all people who try to learn Japanese give up, but everyone I’ve met who has tried and stuck with this has been at or above N3-N4 after 6 months or less including me

[unusual]

You can teach yourself Japanese for free if you have a little free time every day and a computer

1. Drill yourself on hiragana and katakana. These are the phonetic building blocks of Japanese, think of them as equivalent to english letters. This site is a good resource in general. Once you have a solid grasp on this, DO NOT LINGER HERE; move to step 2. You will master kana later.

2. Download Anki. This is a flashcard service. They have a paid app if you’re willing to invest for it, but if not, they have a mobile website (create an account and sync it with your computer).

This is the deck you’re going to download. Import it to Anki and do this every day. I have learned the hard way (twice) that skipping this is bad. If you become overwhelmed, you can change the number of new cards and reviews by clicking the cog next to the name of the deck!

3. Cure Dolly (Youtube, grammar) + transcript. She has kind of a posh accent, you might want to turn subtitles on. Watch a few videos when you feel like it but most importantly set up 4 and 5 as soon as possible

4. Yomitan (must have) is a browser extension that functions as a pop-up dictionary. you need to install dictionaries for it to work. here are some dictionaries you can use with yomitan and explanations of what they do

5. READ. DO NOT LET YOURSELF GET STUCK BEFORE THIS STEP. JUST READ!!!! Most people who fail to learn Japanese do so because they are afraid of not being ready to move on, which is counterproductive. Just read. When you were a child did you spend years on vocab and grammar before reading? No I bet you did not. Pick something to read and learn what you don’t already know by reading in Japanese.

Jiten.moe has a list of novels and visual novels that you can read on your computer sorted by difficulty. So does jpdb. There’s also this document. There’s also this document. Hey look this website is cool too

For visual novels: download LunaHook. It “hooks” to your VN and allows you to use Yomitan on words you don’t know. Turn off the translation feature, it does nothing to help you learn

For literary texts: ttsu e-reader supports epub and htmlz files.

You can also learn Japanese by watching anime, but it’s a little more convoluted and requires a lot more patience.

For manga, utilize Mangatan, but I don’t recommend this right out the gate because when you’re first learning sentence structure you’ll want something with complete sentences.

Set your computer up for mining vocab before you start reading. Once you finish your kaishi deck, you can drill your mining cards (I didn’t do mine until after finishing kaishi because it was too much).

Most importantly: reading is going to be hard at first. It is going to piss you off. You need to muscle through with this because this is where the bulk of your learning will happen. After a while you will just feel like reading because you love reading! Try not to pick something too hard for your first read, but if you’re interested in the story you might be able to muscle through something a little tougher.

Remember to consult yomitan and cure dolly where needed, that’s what it’s there for. As you can see I am quite normal about the Japanese language, so if you have any other questions or need help with anything else feel free to shoot me an ask and I will get back to you promptly. Japanese is not your enemy and it is not impossible. It is your friend

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

Reblogging for myself: the first link is broken but the site still exists at djtguide.github.io

[writersisland]

Types of Speech Presentation

Direct Speech (DS): He said, "Like it here in London!"

Indirect Speech (IS): He said that he liked it there in London!

Free Direct Speech (FDS): I like it here in London!

Free Indirect Speech (FIS): He liked it there in London!

Narrative Report of a Speech Act (NRSA): He expressed his pleasure at being in London.

Narrative Report of an Act (NRA): He liked London.

What to do with that information:

Practice using all of the above in your writing and consider how you can use the different types for achieve different effects.

Switch up your style of dialogue every once in a while to avoid repetition and tighten the writing by skipping unnecessary dialogue. For example, rather than writing out an irritating but not plot relevant conversation, you can simply give context for the characters bad mood with, "After surviving one of the most frustrating conversations I'd had all year, I could finally..."

Depending on which one of these styles you choose, the narrator or the character gets more control over the narrative; DS is much harder to twist than NRA ➛ For unreliable narrators, NRSA and NRA are perfect ways to mask when a conversation is not being relayed accurately.

[wynnyfryd]

best advice i ever got for making third POV feel more “lived in” is to make your narrator mimic the POV character’s personality. is your character kinda dumb? make the prose simplistic. are they a goofball? pepper jokes into scene descriptions even when the plot is serious. if they’re stoic keep the tempos more stoccato, if they’re poetic make them lyrical and flowery, if they’re oblivious omit key details, etc.

[exeggcute]

I need a polite and effective way to say "hey your heart is truly in the right place and your anger is often righteous but I think sometimes you’re getting recreationally mad about things that are frankly not worth the amount of energy you’re spending on them, and every time you do this you're driving yourself slightly more insane with nothing to show for it," and then I need a way to broadcast that message through a loudspeaker to roughly 30,000 people at once, and THEN I need a time machine to send that message to my past self lol. and maybe a second time machine in case past me tries to be clever and sabotage the version of me who comes through the first time machine

[beelsebub]

He had seen the horror of Mordor and could not forget it.

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG + UNFINISHED TALES by J.R.R Tolkien.

[themeadowscene]

I would love to see a fantasy novel where the lore that the reader / protagonist learns at first is not true

[themeadowscene]

e.g. they're told that this kind of creature has some kind of psychic or pheromone-based "mate bond" that cannot be broken; but it turns out that's a popular myth that has never been scientifically substantiated, and is basically used to keep people in bad relationships (basically the equivalent of "human women are biologically submissive")

[themeadowscene]

"lore" is imo too often treated like information that the author is giving the reader, and it just happens to be using the medium of diagetic (that is, 'in-story') exposition.

it's so much more interesting and dynamic to treat "lore" as information that is generated and disseminated in-story. who is telling the protagonist this information? under what historical and social circumstances was this idea formed? what political motives are there for trying to get people to believe this information? which characters would disagree with it? would the protagonist believe it, or be sceptical? does the plot bear it out, or cast doubt on it?

[flagellant]

l

[animentality]

[corvidcall]

to anyone in the areas impacted by the wildfire smoke, my #1 biggest piece of advice as someone whos been dealing with wildfire smoke in the NW united states for years, is build yourself a Corsi-Rosenthal Cube

they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!

i think it took us maybe a half hour to put ours together, if that, and we replace the filters every 3 months. it's really made a HUGE difference, both when the air quality is bad, but also with our allergies

[o0fyuu0o]

Saw these easy to read instructions on Twitter. Stay safe 💚

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

Great time to start pricing this out by the way, fire season starts… on the summer solstice this year, that’s fun. Signs point to it being a doozy.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP hand-drew hundreds of small cards (cr 小狐哥)

[thatlittlemouse]

Cute bday pics posted on the 八一七稻米节 account over the last year

[rottenpumpkin13]

Every time there’s new content my inspiration says “it’s free real estate!”

[andmorgothcame]

Thranduil in this:

[meaningfall]

I Had a Dream About You || Richard Siken, Crush

[xiaobaosnoona]

when you're super mad at your stupid bf but you still wanna care for him vs. when your bf is rightfully super pissed at you and you find it kinda hot

[thoughtkick]

“When was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?”

— Maya Angelou

[thoughtkick]

“Sensitive people should be treasured. They love deeply and think deeply about life. They are loyal, honest and true. The simple things often mean the most to them. They don’t need to change or harden. Their purity makes them who they are.”

— Unknown