Moon's Study Blog

[the-g-m]

september 17th 2022 cquackblr plant incident

[thinkingabouthanyoojin]

finally ive found the entire context i was so confused but so deeply shaken by “couldn’t die because it was never alive in the first place”

[stiffyck]

i wanted to make a concept of what scars skin could look like for the opening of his theme park but it just looks like his season 8 skin 

[veeaziel]

every day i am percieved™️

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

There is a reason for this though!

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply. 

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” these stories are only “easy” to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start rewarding the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail. The fact that you find joy in the process of reading (or listening!) to stories–that is what matters.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Things Traditional Publishers Can Learn From Fanfiction

tagging systems are a big draw for readers. both for content/trigger warnings, and for genre information. knowing the tone of the story and whether the ending will be happy/sad/satisfying is a deciding factor for many readers.

word count: especially important as digital books become more common. books are more accessible when readers have a way to check both the total word count and the chapter word counts. 

there is a big audience for short stories featuring characters from book series. It used to be more common for authors to release short stories or anthologies in between novels, with shared characters & settings. (Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse, and the Rumpole series all did this.) Unfortunately this has fallen out of practice, but as fanfiction has shown, there is still a huge reader interest.  

there is a demand for expanded universe content, particularly for content with a different format or atmosphere than the original canon. audiences like variety; e.g. fans of high-stakes/dramatic stories are also interested in seeing their favorite characters in low-stakes/humorous situations. these stories are not inauthentic nor do they pander to the audience; they simply allow audiences & creators to explore characters through a different lens.

similarly, there is a big interest in spin-off content featuring secondary characters. audiences see a great deal of potential in supporting characters, with most fandoms having clear “favorites”. short stories expanding on such characters have a great deal of marketing potential, and allow writers to explore expanded canons without any risk of altering primary characters/storylines. 

Give audiences accessible, satisfying stories in a variety of formats. 

[learnjapaneseseriously]

Novel Comprehension No. 3

The following paragraph is from a Japanese novel. Nozomi's mother wrote a letter to her. Can you understand the content of the letter? You may want to learn and study the vocabulary words below before reading this paragraph.

大のほうには、母から手紙と、預金通帳、そのキャッシュカード、あとは保険証が入っていた。手紙は、実にお気楽な内容のものだった。

「のぞみんへ

おはよう！びっくりした？びっくりしたよね~？ごめんね。ハハは、ちょっと旅に出ます。長旅になりそうなので、荷物もぜんぶ整理しちゃった。部屋も、カイヤクしちゃったから、のぞみん今日中に、出て行ってください。部屋に残ったものは、大家さんがショブンすることになってるから、大事なものはちゃんと持っていくようにね。預金ツーチョーのお金は、のぞみんのガクヒと、晴れ着代ね。高校卒業と成人式は、ハハのギムと思って、フンパツして残していきます。あ！それと、のぞみんの新しいおうちは、のぞみんの、お姉ちゃんのおたくです。びっくりした？なんとのぞみんには、お姉ちゃんがいたのです。ハラチガイだけど、いい人っぽいから。年は、のぞみんの二十歳くらい上。てゆうか、ハハと同い年。アハハ。もうケッコンもしてて、世田谷の高級ジュータクガイに住んでるマダムみたい。ダンナさんは、海外キンムのエリートサラリーマンだって。きっとお金持ちだよ~。のぞみん、セレブの仲間入りかも~。お姉さんの住所は、もう一通の手紙に書かれたとおりの場所です。のぞみん、ひとりで行けるよね？じゃ、また会う日まで、元気でね！

ハハより」

Vocabulary

1. 手紙 (てがみ) letter

2. 預金通帳 (よきん つうちょう) Bank deposit passbook, bankbook

3. キャッシュカード = cash card / ATM card

4. 保険証 (ほけんしょう) insurance card

5. 気楽な (気楽 = きらく) carefree, easygoing

6. 内容 (ないよう) contents

7. 長旅 (ながたび) long trip

8. 整理 (せいり) sorting out, arrangement, putting in order

9. 残った (のこった) remaining, leftover

10. 大家 (おおや) landlord

11. ショブンする disposal, throwing away

12. 大事 (だいじ) important, precious, valuable

13. 晴れ着代 (はれぎ だい) 代 (だい) means cost/budget for 晴れ着 (ceremonial clothing, like kimono for special occasions)

14. 高校卒業 (こうこう そつぎょう) high school graduation

15. 成人式 (せいじんしき) coming-of-age ceremony

16. 同い年 (おないどし) of the same age

17. 世田谷 (せたがや) Setagaya (name of a city in Tokyo, Japan)

18. 高級 (こうきゅう) high class

19. ジュータクガイ (住宅街) residential area

20. マダム = madame (from the French word)

21. エリート= elite

22. サラリーマン = salary man (working adult)

23. お金持ち (おかねもち) rich (person)

24. セレブ celebrity

25. 仲間入り (なかまいり) joining a group

26. 住所 (じゅうしょ) address (of a residence)

[99yikes]

tetsu's gonna rust like that, kiri 🌧️

[capacity]

I hope Wikipedia doesnt go bankrupt it will feel like the end times . I think I will literally panic

[eyan-j]

Encyclopedia Britannica is always there

there’s this place called a library. and they have these things called books. and then there’s this thing called Google Search. where you can find books in PDF form.

Wikipedia is user edited. you can literally put anything you want in an entry almost. I think you know where I’m about to go with this.

[capacity]

You’re condescending and annoying. I am attached to Wikipedia out of sentimentality it’s always been there for as long as I remember and reliable to me for some casual trivia. Wikipedia is iconic and I love her. go write a research paper or something

[veronicasantangelo]

who let high school teachers find tumblr

[assassinregrets]

me: hm i wonder how many countries drive on the same side as the UK

friend: let’s check wikipedia in 2 seconds on our phones

some asshole on tumblr: um excuse me why don’t you stop what you’re doing to go to the library and look it up in an outdated book that’s edited maybe twice a decade and that definitely doesn’t have a single page article called “list of countries with left-hand traffic”

[corpsegirlforever]

also “user edited” really doesn’t mean as much as you think it does. there are millions of people displaying accurate information, for every one person displaying inaccurate information. and that inaccurate information is usually changed quickly, and the person who made it can get their ip blocked from wikipedia if it was bad enough. way more accurate than textbooks or a library.

[ayellowbirds]

Librarian here! I’ve worked at both academic (college/university) and public libraries, and let me tell you this: most print encyclopedias are useless garbage we can’t get rid of fast enough. With the exception of subject-specific sets which we need to buy again every few years because the information has become outdated, most of the information in any volume of an encyclopedia is far more accessible and far more in-depth on the internet. 

Wikipedia as a reference resource is fantastic because, just like print encyclopedias, it serves as a jumping-off point for research… and so do librarians! A librarian isn’t going to just write your paper for you, we’re going to point you to the books, articles, and websites that contain the information. Wikipedia is great for that, too, because any article that gets more than a bit of traffic will wind up with sources and external links. But print encyclopedias don’t go that far in citing their sources, and because they’re static media, the references may not only be outdated, they might be entirely inaccessible due to age, obscurity, or cost of access.

And there’s an interesting thing about all those books we have on the shelves… anyone can write one, and usually they only have a handful of other people checking their work. Academic journals are somewhat notorious for the ease with which a completely falsified paper can see publication (especially in cases of electronic journals), but printed books can also be easily falsified, whether as a result of publishers with an agenda or just fact-checkers slacking off.  

 As has been pointed out above, wikipedia is really great at getting obscenely specific in terms of the topics of articles. It’s an amazing collection of data, and more importantly, it’s an amazing collection of sources of data.

The role of a reference librarian and a wikipedia editor are basically the same: show you a brief summary of the information you need, and point you to more in-depth, reliable sources.

[siphersaysstuff]

I was helping a friend clear out their dad’s old stuff from their home recently and we came across encyclopedias from the 90s.

They all went to the dump. They were ASTOUNDINGLY outdated. Totally fucking useless.

[bossandsquid]

High school English teacher here–I regularly get crap from some of my colleagues, but I am completely fine with students using Wikipedia for info. Wikipedia does an excellent job of flagging articles that have been recently edited until someone can verify the changes, so pages with inaccurate info often have giant warnings at the top saying “THIS PAGE MAY CONTAIN IANCCURATE INFO”. Won’t find that in an out-of-date print edition.

Not only that, but Wikipedia cites its sources. It tells you right at the bottom of the page where all its info came from, so if you want to use a fact from Wikipedia but don’t want a teacher annoyed with you, just cite the source in the footnote. Teachers and professors are (a) not likely to check up on this and (b) it’s a real source so even if they do it’s legit?

The biggest problem I have had with letting students use Wikipedia is actually that Wikipedia articles are often written in such academic language that students sometimes struggle to understand them. That part kids have to overcome on their own or with the help of their teacher. But there’s nothing wrong with Wikipedia as a source. Hatred for it is a remnant of academic elitism, thinking that “peer-reviewed” can only mean some handful of crusty white dudes instead of literally anyone with enough knowledge and motivation to review it.

[punk-aziraphale]

Honestly. My dad is a college professor and he’s told me time and again to always start my research at Wikipedia. You have to go further, obviously, but its such a great jumping off point for information.

Plus, where else can I find an itemized and updated list of every Cryptid known to human kind?

[moddeydhoo]

For the impenetrable articles, here’s my tip.

The list of other languages in the sidebar? Look at it and check whether the article has a version in Simple English.

Simple English is a mode for non-native English speakers but is also great if your reading comprehension is not super good, you’re having a slow brain day for any mental health or developmental disorder reason, or the English version is just poorly written.

[nofreetrees]

Librarian here, and this whole post gives me so much joy.

[kernezelda]

@sugargroupie, @turtletotem

[tearyourcurtainsdown]

I feel like people think “not a reliable source” means “not true” but it actually means “can’t be quoted because the words might change”

[fuzzyfishesandscaleymice-deacti]

I never knew there was a simple English version? I learned something new!

[thewrongbookshop]

So yeah, everyone go donate to Wikipedia, they’re having a hard time over there.

[prismatic-bell]

ALSO.

It’s available in 285 languages.

Two. Hundred. And. Eighty. Five.

No, not every article is available in every language. But do you have an idea what a wealth of information is there for countries where getting to paper media might be difficult, due to extreme remoteness or civil unrest or poverty? (I’m specifically thinking of what a blessing Wikipedia would have been to Russian and Eastern European students and adults in the couple of years immediately following the fall of the USSR.)

SAVE WIKIPEDIA. It is an incredible resource, and not just for English-speaking nations.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

there are so many types of history nerds and i love that for yall

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i don’t just mean what their favorite time period & subject is. i mean you can tell so much about a person based on how they treat that subject, and what information they prioritize vs what they find less interesting 

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

take any subject. take war, for example, any war. there are so many types of war history nerds:

nerds who want to talk about weapons & watch war movies 

nerds who want to examine the historical significance of weapons advancement & analyze historical inaccuracies in war movies

nerds who are interested in the ethics of how weapons were used & misused, and the way civilian lives were impacted

nerds who are interested not in the weapons but in any of a thousand other aspects of war, like battlefield medicine, or the impact on scientific advancement, or the longterm sociopolitical repercussions, or the way societies recover & trauma lingers, and how cycles of violence & unrest repeat throughout history. 

nerds who are interested in the way everyday lives were impacted 

nerds who came for the guns & costumes and stayed bc they got invested in the stories 

nerds who want to hear about military life

nerds would rather hear about the actions of women and civilians and resistance members, and the way people fought outside of battlegrounds

nerds who want to hear about the clothes, my god, the clothing 

writers nerds who want to engage in a very specific fantasy of being a lesbian nurse in a battlefield hospital caring for a mysterious and tragically wounded young officer who wears men’s clothing and signed up for the army under their brother’s name, and now it’s up to their clever and sympathetic lesbian nurse to hide their identity from the doctors. 

espionage nerds who know everything about carrier pigeons

and that’s just war. and even among all those types of history nerds, they’re still going to individually have different relationships w/ the subject matter. and that’s not even getting into motivation! nerds have so many different motives for studying history. some people find historical minutiae fascinating or relaxing. some have a strong sense of injustice or excitement, or want to understand why the modern world is the way it is. some people like to indulge in nostalgia for an era that never really existed. and some people use history to fuel their rage and political leanings. 

sometimes these relationships are healthy, or maladaptive, or even toxic. it’s why you get so many angry white male history nerds with extremist views, but also so many women & poc & queer people who are equally fascinated with the same time period. and you just never know what type of nerd someone is until you meet them! anyways i’m a nerd about history nerds

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

maybe we can get americans to give up their gun obsession by replacing it with swords…

[isabelrse]

[melaschnie]

Thursday, 26/11/20

guess who was up way too early because she thought her exam would start at 9am but then it turned out to start at 2pm. whoops. well, a little more time to prepare then

[paper-chase]

Hey, it’s been a while! 🦋✨

I’m at my last semester in uni, which is daunting and scary but hopefully I’ll be able to stick to my schedule and resolutions, incorporate some good habits in my life. I’m also going out of my comfort zone by taking some creative writing courses, are any of you interested in writing prompts? Maybe we can make it a thing and do them together. Let me know x 

[galina]

One of the chapters of my thesis is on water as a model of time so naturally, I procrastinated by making a playlist to go with it. You can listen to my dissertation playlist here 💻 🎧 📓

[hakyunie]

you gotta do it every day. properly, every day.

[tearless-notes]

no matter how lazy this morning may have seemed like to me, it was actually really productive ✨

.

(From my ig: @basic.human.stuff)

[jeonchemstudy-closed]

11.1.20 | day 63/100 of productivity | today i got to hang out with my best friend (outside and social distancing) and i’m so glad we got to see each other after nearly a year!!! didn’t get too much done today but that’s ok dfskjdsf 

🎶 i am listening to: eclipse, kim lip 

[berrywons-deactivated20230510]

happy november （⌒_⌒）

[peistudies]

Daily Vocab Day 3

11/12/20

Just to clarify, this challenge is basically me forcing myself to memorize at least 5-10 words (depending on difficulty) a day until I know all 800 words of JLPT N5. I will be posting the words I must memorize every day! I might end up skipping a day here and there but the goal is to know all 800 in 3 months (._.)

that...~ あの

to take (a shower) あびる

dangerous あぶない

not much... あまり

to wash あらう

to walk 歩く・あるく

to say, to tell 言う・いう

how many, how old いくつ

pond いけ

word count: 45/800

another clarification: I know way more than 45 words, but I am using a complete JLPT N5 vocabulary youtube video and i’m just going through them chronologically. I skip over the ones I already know and count it as a word learned! I will probably end up learning about 500 words from the video but there are 800 in total.

If you would like to see all my JLPT N5 vocab lists up to date, just search up “peisuri vocab”