MerreKEE @merrekee - Tumblr Blog

Fun fact: by just using imaginary numbers, some Evil Math, and 101 rotating vectors You Can Create a shitty approximation of a fish.

kirby97

two points of view on math fish

kyraneko

it isn't good art unless it's itself enough to get haters, so

win

the-haiku-bot

it isn’t good art

unless it’s itself enough

to get haters, so

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

mimosa-sexypeople-contests-2026

If someone gifts you a bottle of alcohol and you feel bad wasting it so you drink the whole thing in a night to get it over with does that count as drugging yourself?

merrekee

Could not you. I don't know. Keep it? And open it on someone's birthday? Or whatever notable accession comes up next?

Alternatively if the bottle was opened, (which i dont really see why someone would gift a opened bottle of alcohol but i dont know your life) have you considered using it for cooking? Lots of fun stuff to do there that involves minimal to no drugging.

I'm really curious why was drinking it all down in one day the first solution.

prokopetz

It's fine to disagree with the IAU about the definition of "planet"; however, if your definition includes Pluto but not Ceres, Orcus, Haumea, Quaoar, Makemake, Gonggong, Eris or Sedna, you don't actually care what a planet is – you just want the exact list of nine planets you learned in primary school back. Your cute little Pluto-including orbital distance mnemonic ought to be at least seventeen words long, and good fucking luck with the Q!

thefiresontheheight

My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Orphic Palaces, Slandering Hungry Quaker Matrons Going Erotically Southward.

prokopetz

I appreciate that you included Salacia but not Charon – really threading the needle pedantry-wise there.

penny-anna

this is not an original observation but i really do think so many of BBC Merlin's problems stemmed not from bad politics but from the fact that it was trying to be Arthurian Smallville

penny-anna

SO i confess i have not seen Smallville but the consensus seems to be that it's a solid, competently written television show. BBC Merlin is, um. Not That.

here is the first of the show's major Smallvillisms:

okay so in Smallville the fact that Clark Kent has superpowers is a secret. I cannot speak for Smallville in particular but Clark Kent keeping his powers a secret generally works for audiences bcos 1) it is a core element of the Superman narrative. if he was just publicly Superman that would feel weird and jarring. 2) Clark Kent is a nice and good boy and we understand that he is keeping his secret with the best of intentions

the secret superpowers angle is completely foreign to the Arthurian mythos however; in fact it's kind of the opposite of the usual deal with Merlin as a character? but they wanted to do Young Merlin with a Clark Kent thing going on. OK. now they need a reason why his magic is a secret.

uhh it's bcos they made magic illegal. who made magic illegal? the king. not Arthur obviously. different king. we want to keep the whole Camelot/royal court aspect tho so instead of doing the usual King Arthur backstory he's just uhh normal prince. and magic is illegal bcos it killed his mother. okay now we're cooking with gas. but obviously we want the villains to mostly be other magic users for Merlin to fight. why are these other magic users trying to Get Arthur? well they are mad that his father banned magic. and Merlin has to protect Arthur bcos he's going to be King Arthur one day and save the land. so Merlin's gotta explode all the other magic users. he gotta!!

it never really works partly bcos it's just not an established Arthurian Thing and also bcos it renders basically everything Merlin does extremely sketchy? I don't think it's inherently a problem that he's a morally dubious protagonist (if anything Merlin is kind of traditionally a little bit evil) but the show wants him to be a Good Boy like Clark Kent and frames him as such even though he keeps blowing up other magic users with legitimate grievances. its very strange!!

penny-anna

which brings me to the second big Smallvillism:

Morgana has THAT arc bcos Smallville has a whole thing where Lex Luthor and Clark Kent are childhood friends.

i re-iterate that I haven't seen Smallville but I imagine Lex being the guy in the friend group who is going to turn out evil works bcos Lex Luthor's whole thing is that he's an asshole rich white man. definitely possible to do a character like that who's sympathetic whilst still having it ring true for the audience that they're just gonna be a bad guy.

and like they maybe COULD have made this work with Morgana? but here i suppose we do get into the straight up just bad politics, doing Morgan Le Fay but she's Lex Luthor would maybe involve leaning into the privilege she has as a noblewoman (effectively a princess) but instead they just u know victimised her over and over and then when she snaps and starts exploding people it's like wow Morgana i can't believe you're evil now. stop exploding people Morgana. only Merlin is allowed to explode people.

it's like, i don't know. they didn't realise they couldn't just go directly from s1-2 Morgana (was end of s2 the switch? I forget) to 'oh she's just evil now' without it being really weird and jarring? they didn't realise that a female character could have motives for being evil that didn't revolve around all the men in her life abusing her?

but like im hesitant to even come down on it too hard for being sexist (even tho it was) bcos first and foremost its just stupid. wym she's just evil now. you didn't earn that at all. what are you DOING.

penny-anna

it all comes back for me to that part in s1 where we realise that Sophia's father is and was always planning to sacrifice himself for her and Sophia is distraught and suddenly these 2 characters who hitherto have been straight up evil gain a new sympathy and depth and its like oh no what are they gonna do!!

and then Merlin rocks up and explodes them both. just blows them up like bombs. and its like ok that COULD be a really interesting character moment for him but it. its not. bcos really blatantly what's going on there is they were like 'ok we're out of time, wrap it up folks. Merlin comes in and explodes the bad guys like bombs.'

it feels weird & jarring not bcos it was morally bad behaviour on Merlin's part but bcos straight up its just bad writing.

eta not gonna reblog this again but the OTHER issue w the Smallvilling is that it means Merlin is constantly not just lying by omission to Arthur but flat out lying to his face, manipulating him, on occasion straight up brainwashing him?

and like Clark Kent DOES on occasion engage in acts of gaslighting. see for example this scene. but in that instance its like well yes he did go to great lengths to deceive her but also she jumped out a window in an attempt to force him to reveal his secret so i don't think either of them come out of it great.

penny-anna

ok i said i was done but i am back with another aspect on this:

so Arthur is an asshole in s1. this is fine. he is at the beginning of his growth arc. Merlin training a young Arthur up to be a better king is a Thing in Arthurian literature and this is a different angle on it but nonetheless. growth arc!!

except um. it never really happens? like yeah he matures and becomes less of a manchild as the show goes along but his improvement is pretty limited.

and its like well yeah bcos he can't actually Learn anything. he must remain at all times a buffoon who is oblivious to Merlin's secret magic. he can't ever be like 'hey maybe magic isn't 100% evil after all' or 'hey maybe there's something up with my manservant' without challenging the status quo of the show. and the status quo of the show (i MUST stress this was directly stated by the creators) is that Merlin must remain Clark Kent.

merrekee

Hay, I don't want to take away from the main point here, i agree 100 percent but you can't just leave this in the tags

birdplushie

"it's not that deep" START DIGGING!!

magn-animously

DIG

14-opossums-in-a-trenchcoat

DIG

buriedunderyourmum

DIG

hannisconfused

DIG

kitsunesakii

DIG

yourlocalfandomfriendo

DIG

DIG

DIG

DIG

DIG

thatghostthateatspeople

DIG

DIG

DIG

DIG

DIG

OOPS TOO DEEP

CLIMB

CLIMB

CLIMB

CLIMB

CLIMB

CLIMB

#feels like this was made im 2019

maxknightley

"it would be so good if it was good" will haunt you but "it's extremely good, except for the one or two parts which are so bad it's genuinely kind of insulting" will straight up drive you insane

maxknightley

one has you making posts like "okay but if the author UNDERSTOOD the POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS of the story they were telling, and leaned into it, it would actually be a really interesting exploration of..."

the other has you pacing your bedroom at one in the morning going "why. why would you ever in a million years do it like that. genuinely what possible thought process was involved. was the writer possessed by a fucking ghost or something."

mindllessdreaming

and the winner of superwholock is officially??? no one. we all lost. congrats team

buggyhuman

eternal-confusion-of-han

rewatching the series so I can write the porn more in character

derinthescarletpescatarian

“If I had time travel I’d kill Hitler” “If I had time travel I’d stop my favourite politician getting assassinated” you’re all thinking way too small. If I had time travel I’d stop Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from dying on the moon due to Soviet sabotage, kicking off the Great Nuclear War and devastating half of the planet.

stavarosthearcane

Good Job.

derinthescarletpescatarian

#this post gets me every time

It’s from two days ago fam how many times could there have been

heroofthreefaces

do you think no one else has time travel

derinthescarletpescatarian

Happy one month anniversary to this post that has not allowed me a single day of fucking peace since I made it.

derinthescarletpescatarian

#surprise reblog!!

STOP IT’S BEEN MONTHS. MONTHS!

YOU CAN STOP.

roach-works

wow if only you had a time machine

transdaughterofthesun

Honestly having reached a billion notes I think it’s safe to say that in the Year of our lord 2041, this is the most popular tumblr post out there.

derinthescarletpescatarian

I’m killing your parents before you’re born

iforgotmyfandom

idiototheinternet

Still here, why’d you hesitate @derinthescarletpescatarian

derinthescarletpescatarian

Your mum’s ability to hold up under active gunfire was really hot. I’m your dad now.

lizyarikus

Isn’t that the plot of Terminator

anexperimentallife

Where do you think the plot for Terminator came from?

what-if-i-just-did

This is such a classic trainwreck post that has the vibes of a 2014 screenshot posted to Pinterest and then the last addition is just last Tuesday I can’t even

derinthescarletpescatarian

Imagine how I feel

mrsjdavis

POST, LIVE FOREVER!!!!!!

derinthescarletpescatarian

It doesn’t have to

smegorl

Yes it does.

type-blaze0

Of course it has to, it gets a billion notes in 2041

angels-haven-official

We all know who needs to be @’d

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

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

kokoruu

this is true, ive been trying to learn japanese on and off for over 10 years, and the past year is the only time ive been able to actually stick with it every day and actually interact with the language meaningfully! here's some more resources: 1. the moe way i cannot overstate how essential this site was for me to change how i approach learning japanese. it not only has a plethora of resources to get you to start learning but also HOW to learn and why people tend to fail. i recommend reading their "japanese guide" and "30 day Japanese" to get you started. they also have a discord server with lots of extra resources. there's a lot of people there fluent or near fluent and native speakers too, so they can have some great insights for you

2. this is gonna age me severely but i recommend for learning the kana trying out this book too: Remembering the Kana: A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 Hours Each. it's only like 8 bucks for the digital version but it's so old the pdf has been circling around forever if you can't pay. they are not kidding, over 10 years ago when i first used this i really did memorize it in a few hours, and it took like 3 days total of using flash cards to completely solidify it and ive never forgotten them even when i went years without studying. it uses mnemonics, and i think it can be a good alternative if the brute force method isn't working for you.

3. for other grammar resources, esp if you prefer reading to watching videos, you can try yokubi or the classic tae kim's guide. there's also japanese ammo by lisa for an alternative video series. i don't recommend trying to absorb every grammar point possible before reading- you really just need the absolute basics, and the rest will come naturally as you see them in context while reading hundreds and hundreds of times.

4. for me personally, starting off reading manga for a month or two helped me dip my toes into reading without feeling overwhelmed with literary prose or long dialogue with vns and novels, but it is important to try and graduate to the latter as fast as you can. when i finally stopped being scared to try reading novels i can't tell you how much of a difference it was to enhancing my reading skills- reading actual books, and visual novels too, just blows comics out the water. but! they're still very good for stepping stones. remember your first vn and ESPECIALLY your first novel is going to suck, it's gonna feel like beating your head against the wall. it took me over 30 hours to read my first novel and it was for children lmao. but, every time you finish one it gets easier and easier. anyway, for manga, i recommend the mokuro app there's hundreds of premade ocr'd manga and all you have to do is install them and start reading. it also tracks how many characters you read.

5. game sentence miner + agent agent text hooks games and gsm allows you to use yomitan on the hooked text, it also acts as a repository that tracks your vns and game progress, how many characters you read, and lets you set goals. it even has an overlay you can put directly over your game window so you can use yomitan directly there instead of having to go to your text hook page. gsm also works with lunatranslator. generally you wanna use luna for pc visual novels, and agent for games on consoles. i recommend agent over luna generally, as luna in my experience can be fussy, and agent loads text near instantly to gsm. the switch especially has a treasure trove of visual novels to read.

6. random but do you like tsukihime? there is a 100% browser based version of it with some qol features, and selectable text so you can use yomitan directly in browser with no other resources necessary. you just gotta change the language to japanese in the settings.

it's not necessary to read per say, but i recommend listening as well as reading, even if you don't care about being able to understand verbal japanese in media or never want to speak it irl, it can help reinforce your reading, and figure out the proper pronunciation. you can start with watching shows with subtitles and moving up to pure raw listening.

also yes to op's point it's so important to just read. 99% of any problems you have can be solved with just read more. keep forgetting grammar and vocab? read more. reading is hard and frustrating? read more. consistency is key, and you also wanna try and stick with things that you're interested in, esp things youve already read or watched. i feel like stuff labeled as shoujo or shounen is the sweet spot- complex enough to not be boring, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming.

cheeso

The problem with tumblr

i am being pursued by a mysterious sphinx

ask-vonbelfry

… wat

cheeso

im being followed by a huge flying sphinx constantly

merrekee

Damn, talk about lucky. I got a flying Leprechaun and the dude doesn't even give me any gold, he just points and laughs at me sometimes and randomly makes my background into a rainbow while I'm talking.

manipulated-pieces

Why is it easier and more comfortable to sit in a position that actively damages my joints than it is to just sit with okay posture. Why does my body crave its own destruction

vedurnan

today at work i rung up a customer and the total was 12.30 and i said “12:30, reminds me of a clock :)” and they kind of smiled at me with confusion and i was like “like the time on a clock, just reminds me of it… 12:30” and they said “i have no idea what you’re talking about…” with an expression of supreme pity and gentleness. after that was finished i turned to my coworker next to me and said “i just bombed so hard with this clock comment” and then realized the customer hadn’t moved and was still standing right next to me. if my fate continues down this path, the customer will probably read this tumblr post as well