hm so it turns out the love was there and it mattered so much that it saved them, actually! yeah actually they’re alive and well today. and the love is still there
I’ve finally received the event calendar, which is exciting. I also booked my plane tickets about an hour ago, and it still doesn’t quite feel real that I’m actually going through with this. I’m honestly quite nervous, being alone in a city I’ve never visited before is a bit intimidating. I’ve traveled solo to other cities before, but it never really gets less nerve-wracking.
Unfortunately, because I have midterms the following Monday, I won’t be able to stay and explore. I’ll be arriving on the day of the event and leaving immediately afterward, which is disappointing since the city is supposed to be beautiful. That said, I’ll at least get to explore the airport, so there’s that. My return flight is at around 4 a.m., so I’ll be spending quite a bit of time there, likely reading or writing fanfiction, or possibly studying for my exams.
Speaking of which, I’ve been hesitant to discuss my thesis topic in detail here, since it hasn’t been formally submitted yet. I’d rather avoid a situation where I have to explain to a professor why this blog exists, or, for that matter, what “smut” or AO3 is. A friend of mine is writing their thesis on fanfiction, and we actually had to explain AO3 to our advisor. She ended up looking it up and said, “It’s a cool site, I’ve never heard of it.” So, unintentionally, we may have expanded her horizons, but I would still prefer she never asks for my username.
As for my own thesis, broadly speaking, it focuses on linguistic manipulation, particularly within political discourse. More specifically, I am analyzing presidential speeches from a historical figure (not a contemporary one) to examine how language is used to influence public perception.
Although the term manipulation often carries negative connotations, in a linguistic and semantic sense it can be understood more neutrally as the process of shaping or altering perception. If a speaker can shift an audience’s evaluation of a concept, from negative to neutral, or even positive, this constitutes a form of manipulation. The “object” of this shift can range from something trivial, like a preference for a type of coffee, to something far more complex, such as political ideology.
One of the key challenges, however, is that linguistic manipulation is inherently difficult to identify, particularly in written texts. Compared to multimodal communication, such as speeches accompanied by gestures, tone, and visual cues, purely textual analysis lacks certain interpretive signals. Additionally, manipulation manifests through a wide range of strategies, including lexical choice, framing, presupposition, metaphor, and rhetorical structure, which further complicates systematic detection.
With this thesis, I am attempting to identify and demonstrate instances of manipulation, or what may be interpreted as manipulation strategies, employed by the speaker. However, this has proven to be more challenging than I initially anticipated. The difficulty lies not only in locating clear examples, but also in justifying their interpretation as “manipulative” rather than simply persuasive or stylistic. The line between these categories is often blurred, making the analytical process more complex and, at times, uncertain.
That said, despite these challenges, I shall finish what I have started. (Hopefully)
Currently I'm feeling like this and I will be feeling like this for the foreseeable future I think.
This in question is the picture.
I’m sorry for leaving you all on a cliffhanger, but, in my defense, I did say it would end like that and that the next chapter might take 2–3 weeks to upload. But nooo, you all wanted it immediately. I mean… what did I expect? An angsty author naturally attracts angsty readers.
That being said, I am still writing bits and pieces here and there and sharing them, so it’s not completely dry around here, just not as consistent as I’d like. Although, realistically, I should probably stop doing that and actually lock in on my thesis… and now my presentation too.
Unfortunately, I seem to have had my biggest ideas during my busiest year. To put things into perspective: I’m (or was) leading and managing a university community, and due to some complications, I’m currently the sole person responsible for that said community (I don't know how that happened and the advisor isn't letting me quit, she fired the community's management team and I was very excited that she would fire me as well and then she looked at me and said "you can't quit, I wont let you" I'm stuck). On top of that, I’m in my senior year, working on my thesis, and preparing for a conference. I’m also doing an unpaid internship at a high school where I teach English, and I have my own students outside of that as well.
So yeah, life is… busy. Very busy. (It’s absolutely kicking my ass right now.)
