Hallöchen

University Student in Germany over 25 she/they asexual

[samcormac]

what’s the rush?

[rainwasheseverythingaway]

The time will pass anyway

[eurodynamic]

[kanagenwrites]

I once wrote a 1500 word essay on something I'd forgotten to read in the 40 minutes before class. Including the time it took to read the thing I'd forgotten to read.

I got an A on that paper.

Writing is a skill. Skill is muscle. If you don't use a muscle, it atrophies. If you are a student and you are tempted to use genAI to cheese an assignment, I am begging you for your own sake to not do it.

This is not a moral stance about genAI (which is shit at what it's ostensibly for, and full of lies and evil, and fueled by art theft and burning rainforests, and there is no good reason to ever use it for anything; that's the moral reason for why you shouldn't use it), it is a purely pragmatic stance based on the fact that if you use it you will never learn the single most essential skill that is used in every single workplace.

You will never learn to bullshit.

And if you cannot bullshit, you will not understand when you are being fed bullshit by others.

For your own sake you must learn to do your own thinking, your own bullshitting, because our trashfire society runs on bullshit and for your own good you must become fluent in it, because very few people will bother to translate it for you. It was asinine in the late 90s, and it is asinine today, but it is the central truth of adult society: everything is bullshit, and you need to know what is going on beneath the bullshit, and you need to be able to bullshit back if necessary.

I know that the expectations being placed on you are ever-increasing, and I know that it does not seem rational to put effort into explaining the plot of a Charles Dickens novel to someone who has read the thing 50 times and will read 50 identical essays about it over the weekend. I know you are being handed ever-greater heaps of what is functionally mindless busywork because of an institutional obsession with metrics that don't actually measure learning in a useful way. High school was nightmarish in the 90s and I am fully aware that it has only gotten worse.

Nevertheless, you must try, if only for your own sake. Curiosity is your best hope, and dogged determination your best weapon. Learn, please, if only out of spite.

I was able to get an A on that paper because I was able to skim the reading, figure out what it was about, and bullshit for 1500 words in the space of 40 minutes.

Imagine what you can do if you learn to bullshit like I can bullshit.

[eldritchamy]

For my senior year of AP English, I was assigned reading over Easter break. We were instructed to read The Old Man And The Sea, and save the rest of the short stories in the book for the first week back.

Unfortunately, what I heard was "read everything BUT The Old Man And The Sea."

Double unfortunately: the first day back was a test, on The Old Man And The Sea. Which I had read exactly zero words of. It was, notably, a short essay test. It wasn't multiple choice or fill in the blank. It was designed to require deliberate answers from scratch, entirely out of your own head, with nothing to go on BUT what was in your head.

And in the course of about 45 minutes, I was able to use the questions of the test itself to piece together a vague enough sense of how the story went to bullshit my way through other questions. I gave wide, thematic answers that were extremely light on details, since I did not know any of them, and did not even know this test would be happening until it was in front of me. An essay test for an AP-level English class.

I had a starting point of zero information, and an essay test about the thing I was supposed to have read.

I bullshitted my way to a B+ on it.

On a test I should have gotten a ZERO on.

It's been 16 years since I took that test.

I couldn't tell you a damn thing about The Old Man And The Sea.

But you better fucking believe I still know how to bullshit, and when someone is trying to bullshit me.

The power and utility of knowing how bullshit works CANNOT be overstated. It is one of the most important skills you can ever have.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

This is also a good string on this topic.

[marisolinspades]

How can you ever understand both what goes into real actual research and also how to spot bullshit a mile away, if you never put in the effort yourself.

You need to know how to bullshit to spot a bullshitter, as said above, but you also need to be able to do real research and figure out how to understand a topic beyond just the surface level that you get with multiple-choice questions.

How else will you be able to avoid buying into the blistering heaps of rancid bullshit coming out of the government, how else will you gain enough literacy to avoid being sucked into anti-science and anti-intellectual nonsense. This is your primary defense in the Information Age. You have to do the work yourself.

[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

[key-ofdestiny]

goodbye, zandik.

twt link!

kakome kakome was my inspiration for this draw ~

[hakogyi]

do monsters ever miss their nest?

[gum-iie]

thesis defense

[gum-iie]

patch so ass it’s got me finishing my wips bro

[rartalkstranslation]

if you know you know.

aitsu is a gender neutral pronoun, full stop.

i know that anime often translates it to "that guy" or "this guy" but it's not masculine. it's not "neutral but masculine leaning".

listen to me. japanese does not have gendered pronouns like this. if japanese wants to gender something a pronoun, it has to add onna or otoko to it (onna no ko 女の子 girl, otoko no ko 男の子 boy, literally "child who is a girl" and "child who is a boy", because 子 ko, meaning child, is also genderless.)

aitsu is gramatically gendered in the fact that japanese has consistent ""gender"" for location. koko soko asoko (doko). koko here, soko there, asoko over there. (doko where).

you can read more about ko / so / a / do words here, thanks tofugu

location based: koitsu = this person here by me, soitsu = this person there by you, aitsu = this person over there far from either of us.

tofugu also says that koitsu is emphatic, you want to emphasize it. soitsu has no nuance. aitsu, meanwhile, is often used to refer to mutual friends who are not physically present - its' a person we both know but they are not here right now!

that's the nuance of it, not gender

"but japanese first person pronouns--" do not inherently have gender, they just have societal conventions that make their usage imply gender.

speaking of: koitsu / soitsu / aitsu are so genderless you can use them to refer to inanimate objects. you can use them to refer to situations. they are simply demonstrative pronouns and there is no gender attached because japanese does not, really, have gendered pronouns the way english does.

in sum: aitsu is not masculine, it is not gender-neutral but "masculine leaning" , aitsu simply does not have gender, because japanese does not have gendered pronouns

[rartalkstranslation]

some examples

so: translating aitsu as "he" or as "she" is perfectly valid, because, usually, the context makes it clear who the speaker is referring to, and presumably you know the gender of who they are referring to.

the gender is in the context - japanese is a context heavy language! there are probably cases where a translator has gotten it wrong because it was vague enough you couldn't tell. i definitely have had cases of seeing a character say aitsu and going well, hm, the rest of that sentence wasn't clear, so i'm not 100% sure who they're referring to, and since aitsu isn't gendered, i can't really narrow it down by gender.

which is also rough because like, english does in fact need a gender in that pronoun, even if singular they for gender neutral is catching on. who are they talking about? i don't know, and i also don't know the gender, because aitsu itself does not give me gender, so do i use he or she or they? you don't always know!

in fact, there's a good chance - THOUGH I AM NOT CHECKING, SO DON'T QUOTE ME ON THIS, - the reason that ffxiv nael has that "oh shit, that's a woman, uhhhhh, she stole her brother's name when he died" problem is that the gender was not clear to the english localizers in 1.0 (because, famously, japanese does not have gendered pronouns!), so when they got to 2.0 and coils they had to go oh, fuck, oh that's a woman model. uhhhhhh here let's add in some lore to rationalize our mistake.

it is in fact possible to translate aitsu wrong re the gender, because aitsu itself does not have gender, so it's up to the translator/localizer to figure out the context and that's SO HARD. sometimes. you know?

that said: here's an example where the context is ESPECIALLY clear who is being talked about, so it's very easy to translate, and there's literally no way the translator could have gotten it wrong:

Sora: あいつにあやまらなきゃ English: I have to apologize to her. English, localized: I really let her down...

you may be wondering "hang on, how is this obvious? you JUST said aitsu is gender neutral, and that inferring who Sora is referring to by using aitsu could be difficult, if there's no context!"

but let's look at JUST the context in this screenshot. he's holding Namine's good luck charm. also, this is Chain of Memories, the game in which Sora's memories are actively being rewritten to make Namine his Most Important Person. Pretty safe bet that he's talking about Namine.

Just to be sure, let's rewind and see a bit more of this converastion.

I'm not posting the whole scene in screenshots, but this is the scene where Sora pulls out the charm and tells Donald and Goofy the story behind it: that there was a meteor shower, and Namine was scared, and he promised to hit the meteors back into outer space to protect her and keep her safe, and so she gave him this charm, as a sign of their promise - which is significant, since she had the charm since she was a baby, and it meant a lot to her!

(here's a link to the game's script: searching "I really let her down" will take you right to it, since it's only said in the game once.)

Now, let's get the immediate context for Sora's aitsu line.

Donald: そんなに大切なものをくれたんだ... English: She gave you something so important to her... English, localized: And she gave it to you? Wow...

note 1: Donald doesn't use a pronoun at all, because Japanese doesn't generally use pronouns, since it's a language that depends on context. But since we are talking about Namine's good luck charm, and Sora just said that Namine gave it to him, the context is clear enough that we know Donald is talking about Namine giving Sora the good luck charm. Did Donald say "she"? no. but who else could he be talking about!

note 2: the english localization doesn't actually 1:1 match the japanese sentence, but that's not a bad thing! the same thing is conveyed just the same: that Donald is surprised that Namine would give something so important to her to Sora. both sentences convey this, so, mission accomplished.

Sora: うん。それでナミネと約束したんだ。 English: Yeah. So, I made a promise to Namine. English, localized: Yeah. So I promised her...

Oh, hey look! He said Namine's name outright! (Indicated in red.) If we were somehow worried about not knowing who they were talking about, we certainly aren't now!

Sora: これからは、お守りのかわりに　俺がナミネを守ってやるって English: From then on, this charm represented keeping my promise to protect Namine English, localized: "From now on, I'll bring you good luck. I'll keep you safe."

Oh, wow! The localization really went somewhere different with this one... but not necessarily in a bad way. The localization picks up the fact that this is a "good luck charm", and has Sora promise to bring Namine good luck - since the charm can't, if he's holding it.

If I was keeping it literal but more natural, I would probably go for "This charm represents the promise I made to protect Namine." Even still, Sora saying he'll bring her good luck in the stead of the good luck charm is cute... and it's clear that the localizer understands what is going on in this story.

Anyway, after that, Sora has this little "..." animation

and then we're back here, at our aitsu line

this time, with the timestamps and such included, in case you want to watch it yourself. the screenshots were all taken from this longplay of Chain of Memories, Part 5; the scene occurs at 1:17:20 (though the link should directly take you there).

note: the person playing definitely has emulator speedup through the cutscenes, so watch at half speed, or prepare to pause and go thru frame by frame with the comma and period keys on your keyboard.

final conclusion: wow. there is no possible way that Sora could be talking about anyone other than Namine, or that he could be thinking about anything other than apologizing to her / feeling bad for feeling like he failed her by letting her get captured by bad guys in this castle.

which isn't really a surprise, since, again, Chain of Memories is the game about Sora's memories getting so fucked with he only cares about Namine and her safety, to the point of abandoning Donald and Goofy once they are done with Twilight Town, telling Jiminy to shut up and stop talking if he's not going to be helpful (since Jiminy lives in Sora's hood and wasn't abandoned), and barely having any words to say to Tidus / Wakka / Selphie on the upcoming Destiny Islands world, to the point of barely remembering their names. Sora's dialogue from this point on consists mostly of "where's Namine" and "I promised to protect Namine, so I will," and "the only thing I care about is Namine".

and, you know, you may ask: "but what about Riku, he could be talking about Riku - aitsu is gender-neutral, after all", and I'll tell you that's not exactly what I meant. aitsu is less gender-neutral and more gender-void. There is no gender attached to it, only "this is the demonstrative pronoun I am using to refer to the mutual friend who I am talking to you about" - which, in this scene above, is very clearly Namine.

"But Japanese doesn't encode single/plural into pronouns, either, maybe Sora meant a promise to both Riku and Namine -" what? Sora's memories are of Namine and Namine alone. The only memory he has that includes Riku is how they used to play fight over who she would draw next. The whole reason Sora and Repliku keep fighting each other to the death is because they have the IDENTICAL MEMORY of making this promise under a meteor shower to Namine - and they both believe that THEY AND ONLY THEY made that promise, so they're fighting about it. Sora did not make a promise to Riku, not in these fabricated memories he's holding. He made a promise to Namine, and Riku was not even there. You think Namine fleshed it out that much? No. She copy+pasted the fabricated memories of herself from Sora to Repliku, after all. That's the whole reason they're fighting about it.

In sum: if you are saying that Sora could possibly be referring to anyone other than Namine in this scene, or that the line "あいつにあやまらなきゃ" (despite the surrounding context???) could secretly be about Riku in Japanese, then I don't believe you speak Japanese, or that you do but didn't actually look at the context of this scene, and therefore you are making a frankly insane reach.

also as i've said before. it's not that deep. YES japanese is context heavy but also when the context is clearly presented to you... that's it. that's how japanese works. it works by you having the context so that when you are in the converastion you understand who you are talking to you, even if they do something like drop the first-person pronoun from the sentence. aitsu is not vague to anyone speaking the language. it's only vague when you are a translator and were not given the whole context - and the translator here, working on GBA CoM, clearly had the whole context

"""aitsu is masculine-leaning, so Sora wouldn't use it for Namine, he must be talking about Riku""" is blatant misinformation, and I'd really appreciate if people would stop telling lies about my favorite Kingdom Hearts game on the internet, just for the sake of their shipping goggles <3

[rartalkstranslation]

@etrangeres

#imo his shift to aitsu is meant to indicate he feels emotionally closer to namine now#it's not a hard rule or anything#but anoko feels like there's a level of…distance?#prob bc so much about her is still unknown#but aitsu does indicate a level of familiarity#ie: the brainwashing is DEFINITELY working

OH.... THAT'S A FUN DETAIL I HADN'T THOUGHT ABOUT. THANK YOU.

[dogsdreamm]

Adapting trends!

[dogsdreamm]

[ilikegreedraw]

no longer human

sorry for not posting a lot, been busy 💔

[stolenstarsart]

“mine has been a life of much shame. i can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.”

drew dazai on dazai’s no longer human!! i had this idea recently, and couldn’t get it out of my head. i read no longer human a bit ago, and i found it indescribably haunting, and beautiful, and relatable all at once, which scares me in some ways. still, i can’t recommend the book enough. my new favorite book 🫶

[venelona]

@dazatsuweek 2025 day 4 - Beast AU + Hanahaki

When Atsushi starts coughing flowers, he tries to suppress it for as long as he can, but of course he loses control right in front of the Boss. And the look on Dazai's face... He's not just mad, he's furious. Maybe he'll dispose of Atsushi before flowers do the job.

Dazai... Dazai is losing it. This wasn't supposed to happen. Atsushi wasn't supposed to die. Especially from love. He wasn't supposed to fall in love with anyone. This wasn't part of the plan.

Somehow, Dazai is more upset about Atsushi dying than his plan going haywire.

He's furious, yes, but it's not anger that's burning his very core.

It's jealousy.

[dbradyart]

Cue Dearly Beloved

[lieserli]

Sora may have opened the door in KH1

This isn’t to say Riku didn’t do wrong in KH1. He did. But, as far as the door and Destiny Islands is concerned, I think we’ve been getting hints for 20 years that it was Sora and Riku just got blamed for it on top of what he DID do.

Keep reading

[daylighteclipsed]

What you said about Sora potentially seeing Ansem Seeker of Darkness before his nap on the beach in KH1 got the gears in my head spinning. Because that would parallel what happens in DDD. The exam is hijacked before Sora falls asleep/DDD begins, just like Sora would be hijacked before KH1 begins. In both cases, we wouldn’t see it happen. We’d only see what happens after Sora’s put to sleep, possessed, etc. The start of DDD and KH1 share similar imagery, with Sora sinking into the ocean in his dreams, and in DDD we hear Ansem SoD repeat what he tells Sora in KH1. “This world has been connected.”

Weiterlesen

[stuckinapril]

“Do it scared” “do it badly” it’s time to drop the guide for do it alone

[stuckinapril]

Doing it scared and doing it badly is one thing, but no one seems to talk about doing it alone. When you feel so isolated from your friends and your family but you have shit to do and you have to get it done no matter what. When your support system really is only you. For any myriad of reasons. We do not talk enough about doing it alone.

[housemousecooking]

Want guides? I do Guides.

💪 Doing It Alone

💪 Doing It Alone When You Don’t Have a Support System, This Is for You 🧠 1. Mental Anchors to Remember You are not broken because you don’t

Other things? Job, Food, Car, Home, Health, Money. Plus a request form.

[daysleftofsecondterm]

Doing it alone the next 1,282 days

[thatweirdthingoverthere]

Reblogging because this made me feel less alone about being alone

[hvemarja]

COMMISSIONS OPEN!! 🐚✨️

shares are very appreciated!!

feel free to dm me here or on discord (hvemarja) 🫶