I remember I once mentioned “this delicious Korean restaurant nearby where I used to live in the US”; this article announces the closing of that very place.
As the interviewed visitors mention, the owners were really lovely people, and even though I only have foggy, vague memories myself, every time this place came up while reminiscing, my parents would tell me how they were really nice to me, remembering us and knowing what we will order, and how it was one of their favorite places to go eat.
We were planning a trip to the area this summer, and I was hoping we could go eat here again, for the first time this century. While it’s sad that we can’t, I’m happy to know that there were so many people who loved them, and that they’re closing for happy reasons.
Anyone who has ever tried to make a imaginary school has probably run into the same problem as I have: how do I make a timetable that actually works without involving cloned teachers and time-turners?
I never really gave much thought to how real life teachers make timetables before, but now I appreciate how much teachers put work into making sure we can attend the classes we’re supposed to. This was hard.
Planning how many hours of what for who was 100% manual, but once I got a list of “who teaches what to who at where (per week)” that theoretically works (as in, for both teachers and students, number of classes < maximum number of classes), I put that into FET and had it solve the mess.
I found out FET isn’t really good at working with electives, so I had to make blocks of subjects for all students and all teachers who have one of the electives in the same block, but else than that, it worked like magic.
FET seems to have a strange UI, and it’s intimidating at first, but it’s quite simple, once you get used to it. Anyone having timetabling problems, either real or imaginary, should try fiddling with it.
Until quite recently, I spent most of my reading time on AO3 with a smaller window, so the text would be narrower and my eyes won’t have to move too much. Very recently, I realized I should just force a max-width on the site layout as a skin. It works.
The sad thing is it doesn’t work for single chapter works (probably because of a lack of some class or role), but for everything else, it makes reading a lot easier for me.
I first tried this as a regular “width” instead of “max-width” and it broke AO3 on mobile. max-width is a lifesaver.
(I haven’t checked whether the !important is really needed.)
So, I’ve seen some posts about “why are people not talking about the stabbing in Japan?” and I thought maybe I should say something.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s the killing where a former employee broke into a center for disabled people and stabbed 19 people with severe disability to death, and also injured 26 others. The guy who did it had announced his intention to wipe out disabled people beforehand, and turned himself in after the stabbing.
Note: I mention various people spouting ableism and disregard of human life. Please be careful with clicking.
So, I read the Ilvermorny post on Pottermore, and the only thing I can think about right now is how it said “twin cores fighting together increases power” (or something like that).
We know brother wands going against each other causes Priori Incantatem. Now, we know twin cores fighting together makes them stronger.
Do Harry and Voldemort’s wands count as twin cores, or are they just brothers but not twins? This is the best thing that came from Pottermore. Pitting them against a common enemy is going to be even more fun.
For anyone who is looking for some anime with LGBT+ protagonists/themes, but isn’t fond of the Yaoi/Yuri genres.
Revolutionary Girl Utena
This show follows 14-year-old Utena Tenjou at Ohtori academy. Her goal is to ‘become a brave and noble prince who rescues princesses.’ She meets and befriends Anthy Himemiya, who, at first glance, seems to be a damsel in need of rescuing. But the reality is far more complicated than that.
This series deals with abusive relationships, sexuality, gender roles, feminism, and many, many other themes. It’s also very heavy on symbolism, metaphors, and subtle storytelling, so it’s really one-of-a-kind.
No, this anime is not about grumpy dog sitters. Although that would be cool too.
No.6 takes place in and around a seemingly Utopian city called No.6. The story follows two boys named Shion and Nezumi. Shion grew up as an elite citizen of No.6, and slowly realizes how messed up his city is. Nezumi lives in the slums outside of No.6, and has known exactly how bad it is from the beginning. They both have massively different ideals, but they agree on one thing: No.6 has to go.
Read the English translation of the novels it was based off of Here
Shinsekai Yori
Set 1,000 years in the future, where all humans now possess psychic powers. This story follows Saki Watanabe and her friends living in the seemingly idyllic town of Kamisu 66. But when kids keep disappearing, and no one will talk about them, they try to find out what’s really going on and uncover unimaginable secrets along the way.
This one is super interesting. It’s got some of the greatest world building and storytelling I’ve ever seen in anime. Also, four out of the five main protagonists are queer.
This story follows a trans girl named Shuichi Nitori and her friends through their first year of middle school. It deals with gender identity, sexuality, and just life in general.
This one is really good. I mean REALLY good. I think everybody should watch it. The artwork is beautiful, the characters are amazing, and the story is one of the most real and heartfelt I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, I know this is a yuri anime, but it definitely deserves a spot on this list. Aoi Hana follows childhood friends Fumi Manjome and Akira Okudaira through their first two years of high school as they figure out their sexualities, navigate relationships, and deal with coming out of the closet.
You’ve probably heard of this one. Set 15 years after alien creatures known as Angels attack earth, and organization called NERV recruits several teenagers to pilot giant bio-machines called Evangelions to protect earth against the next series of attacks. It deals heavily with mental illness and the protagonist is a 14-year old bisexual boy.
Unfortunately I can’t find a place where you can watch it legally. If anyone knows of one, or has another anime they’d like to add to this list, feel free to add on!
It was a strange incident, considering how the teacher herself was not a German local but foreign, from some English speaking country. I guess living in a foreign country doesn’t always increase awareness of stereotypes.
Before I moved (and encountered that teacher), when I told people I’ll be moving to Germany, everyone at school asked whether I’ll be eating lots of wiener sausages and German potatoes. I still don’t know if “German potato” is a real thing. I have a suspicion that it’s made up by people who want to pretend their potato dishes are Authentic Fancy European Food™.
People need to stop asking me whether I’m always eating [insert foreign food]. Stereotypes are 100% bullshit, no matter who or what the stereotype is about.
I know (simplified) Chinese and do okay on comprehending the most common traditional Chinese characters. Now I’m considering learning Japanese.
I’m a very fast learner and have experience with studying languages; also I’m pretty solid when it comes to understanding grammatical structures. Plus that handy circumstance of Kanji not really presenting much of a barrier for me.
Does anyone have a suggestion for Japanese teaching materials that don’t shy away from using Kana and Kanji right from the start, but also present new characters and especially Kana in context instead of just tables? Basically I’m looking for dense lessons that center around (conversational) content and situations but still include both grammar and the Japanese writing system right from the start. I don’t mind having to look for an extra source for pronunciation.
This kind of teaching material probably doesn’t exist, so here’s my list of priorities:
1. has to center around actually relevant conversational situations
2. has to have a relatively fast progression
3. includes Japanese writing from the get-go
4. no misleading simplification of grammar
Feel free to share this and/or point me towards people in the know.
Hi
@functionalfan, this is ashlair from Japan. Sadly, I am a native Japanese speaker, so I’m probably not the best person to answer. I’ll try to give some examples that seem to be accurate and reliable from a native’s perspective.
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies has some online material, as well as other universities. Here are some that look okay-ish.
Since the Japanese borrowed chinese characters a long long time ago, kanji in Japanese often have similar but different meanings from when they were used on the continent. (A post on this.) Thinking “chinese is gonna be so easy because kanji” is quite common among Japanese uni students, and they pay dearly for it later. I don’t know if the reverse applies too, but it may be good to proceed with caution. I know we definitely have some made-in-Japan kanji that aren’t in the original characters we borrowed, so you will probably need to check those at some point.
Still, being able to tell kanji apart and make fairly accurate guesses at the meaning when you encounter new kanji is definitely a great advantage. There is an entire category of Japanese idioms (故事成語) that are borrowed from Chinese classics, so knowing the original material will help too.
I hope this is better than nothing. Please enjoy learning Japanese! Good luck.
Gather around, kids; it’s time for a history lesson.
Back when the internet was in its infancy there were a few Harry Potter websites scattered throughout the web. One of those was DeepForest, which was conceived in 2001. The primary pairing of the site was Tom/Harry, as you can see above. The site has long since been lost and the artist hasn’t been seen in around a decade, but you can still find some of their art floating around if you go looking.
Things on my dashboard reminded me of this music teacher I had around 8-10th grade, who’d ask me if I ate sushi for breakfast every time she noticed me existing. I was like “hell no I ate a slightly stale brotchen just like any other student don’t single me out”, but being terrified of everything, I just silently shook my head instead.
I once literally translated a common expression 腹の底から声を出す and said “(sing) from the bottom of my stomach”, and the teacher thought it was so funny she drew a stick figure (me) with sushi popping out of the mouth. It wasn’t funny at all.
Hello! On the post about Kishi writing women, I liked your point about how odd it is that ninja women in Naruto are given modern-day worries about boys/marriage rather than realistic concerns for a warrior. I've noticed this in a lot of anime. Do you think it's a cultural thing or just lone authors who don't think women can fully exist outside of men?
Q:Anonymous
A:
I think it’s actually a combination of those two things. Like, the ideas exist as a cultural thing, but the expression of them with varying degrees of intensity is probably more to do with individual authors and how they fit in/have been influenced by culture.
So firstly: I am not familiar enough with Japanese culture to speak about it the way an insider would. I am aware that, like in many cultures across the world, there are different standards of acceptable behaviour and very different stereotypes and character archetypes for men and women. A lot of that has to do with cultural ideas about how women and men are supposedly so very different.
I guess I think… As an analogue I can actually work with, my thought is that it’s a bit like reading a magazine aimed at women (personally I’m thinking of Cosmo, but there are many). Like, you know how there are contributors whose job it is to write whole columns that purport to help women “interpret” “signals” from “their men” based solely on outdated notions about gender binary?
Yes, if you read it from a nuanced perspective the contributors sound, uh, kind of absurd. And reading magazines like that makes you feel like “male” and “female” are somehow alien species, so distinct and separate from one another that it’s a wonder they can even reproduce viable young, let alone communicate fluently! So that’s kind of ridiculous and most of us know that, or at least know that it’s a problem that’s exaggerated by the media we’re reading, but those ideas about how vast and interminable the breach between (binary) genders is? They don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re spawned and perpetuated by the same culture that produces such magazines. It’s kind of a dialectic between culture and media in that sense.
So, like: are the writers of such articles outlandish and weird? Well… I feel like they may be outliers with regard to how intensely invested they are in the ideas, but not really unusual in having them.
I feel like that’s probably what it’s like with people writing anime as media, although the cultural perspective is probably a bit different (again, I’m not Japanese, and I just don’t have the firsthand experience of how gender is interpreted in Japan to comment more fully; it feels presumptuous to try), but in general I think it’s probably a…. crystalised expression of ideas that exist in culture.
and then I mean there’s the part where there EXISTS anime that’s respectful and smart and adorable re: gender and it was also made in Japan so honestly as much as the SPECIFIC ways sexism manifests are reflective of Japanese culture, the fact that it DOES manifest at all is 100% on the creators themselves
Okay, so I’m not sure if your response was literal when you said “100% on the creators themselves,” but if it was I think that’s an extremely under-nuanced comment. Free will is not an absolute, as anybody who believes inequality is structural will surely know. Do I think creators are an oppressed minority? No, not necessarily. But I do know that they’re a product of the same systems that create oppressed minorities, and have ingrained values and cultural standards.
That isn’t “100% on them”. Some of it is certainly on them. And I agree that it’s their responsibility to stop and think about it. But, and okay, I’m not sure about you, but when I step outside my bubble of queer, mentally ill people who hate capitalism with every fibre of their beings (which I do not like, because they are my people, but I digress), I find that people are literally not exposed to ideas outside binary representations of gender. They do not see any alternative to oppressive systems. Like, not only can they not wrap their heads around them, but they don’t have the tools to think about them critically and, by and large, they don’t even know that such alternatives exist.
My own sister, who works in one of the most feminised industries here, has repeatedly told me that “feminism is for, like, third world countries” because we can vote. I’m not going to say that’s 100% on her. I’m not going to get pissed off with her for perpetuating stupid bullshit when she’s never been presented with an alternative*.
Media and culture feed off one another to grow and change shape - and they also reinforce one another. Those same creators are a product of a culture and education and whole existence that has been gendered in precisely the same ways as the media they create. To say that the presence of sexism in media is 100% on the creators is, I think, a failure of critical thinking.
* also the major issue I have with “privilege” discussions. Educators and activists struggle to keep our tempers a LOT but sometimes people really do need to be introduced to the idea that The Way It Is is actually not the only way ever and they COULD help change it. It makes us so mad because we’re like ‘well thank god YOU’VE never had to think about it, asshole!’ but… you don’t get to be a product of a culture that doesn’t exist, goddammit. It’s a tricky one to navigate and not really the point of this reblog, but I can’t let it pass without comment because I can’t help myself.
Can I just add this: creators don’t choose what they make, it’s the companies, such as publishers that have control over what creators make. Companies make what they think will sell. They mercilessly shut down projects if it doesn’t make enough money. If you need to blame someone for bad representation of women in Japanese subculture, I think the best bet would be blaming the customers, who make that kind of thing more profitable than not. And ultimately, the customers are the people that are shaped by culture, so yes, the root of the problem is, more or less, culture. (Can I get away with blaming capitalism?)
I’ll stop here because I’ll probably rant forever about education and economy.
I can’t believe how I stay completely focused on one fandom for 2-3 years, spend most of that time collecting/organizing information and poking at plot holes, read a lot of fanfiction, start planning one of my own, do research relevant to my hypothetical fic, read fics, do more research …. and suddenly land myself in a different fandom.
(This is me, neck deep in TYPE-MOON hell, and getting killed by EO5 hype. I think naming characters after HP related things would keep me anchored after the EO5 release in summer.)
Ok so I didn't know anything about coeliac disease at all (It's just my policy to never argue with someone when they tell me they have needs food wise) but after reading your post; I could bake you cookies with rice flour? Like as long as I got ingredients with no random wheat products in them it's like a 1/1 ratio and add a tablespoon of xanthan gum? (I want to bake you cookies but I acknowledge the weirdness of this. I'm a stranger on the internet do not eat strange internet cookies bad plan)
Given your inclusion of xanthan gum, I’m guessing you already know that gluten helps hold a lot of baked goods together. Rice flour’s definitely an alternative. But I never actually cook with it, so I’m really not sure what kind of ratio it should be at? However, both rice flour and xanthan gum are a-okay, so if you do give in to this urge you can share your biscuits with somebody on a gluten-free diet. Waste not. :P
This might be old news for you, but SANYO/Panasonic has been making GOPAN for a while. Apparently, you can make bread from rice, with options to run without gluten? I couldn’t find English pages else than the press release PDF from 2010. If you don’t mind Japanese, you can see the manual PDF(18.09MB) and the cookbook PDF(3.42MB). There are recipes that say no wheat(小麦なし), and there are ones that say you can substitute wheat flour(小麦粉) with rice flour(米粉), so from skimming through them, I think most of them can be made gluten-free. The examples include dough, bread, pasta, and cake.
After writing this much, I realized GOPAN may be harder to buy overseas. I have no idea if they even make international models (with English buttons and different voltages), or if there are other makers of rice-bread-baking-machines that are easier to buy. Sorry if this isn’t useful at all.
Can we please stop stealing people’s art without their consent?
Especially Japanese artists?
Because believe or not, when you take a dojinka’s art and post it somewhere else without permission, not only will you make them very sad (not to mention angry) when they find out, but you could cause them some serious legal problems as well.
I am not lying. Artists are in danger of losing everything they have if distribution of their parody work gets out of hand and the original publishing company gets wind of it (and decides to prosecute). Quite a few artists have already had their lives pretty much ruined because of the thoughtless actions of irresponsible western fans.
The reason why the dojinshi industry and sites like pixiv are even allowed to exist is because of the implicit understanding that artists who make parodies will control and limit the circulation of their digital artwork, and that printed dojinshi will only be made available to a limited audience. When you take an artist’s work and upload it somewhere else, you are taking away that control, and putting them at risk.
Re-posting art without the artist’s explicit permission is not okay. Adding a source does not get you off the hook either. Neither does not adding a source at all, or saying you don’t know the artist. You took something that wasn’t yours without permission, and that means you stole it. Reblogging and liking such posts only gives re-posters the incentive to steal even more art - making the situation worse for the artist. For the love of god, have the decency to respect the rights of other human beings.
Still not convinced? Then let me take an example of an artist I’m sure you’re all familiar with: emi (of the 10-RANKAI circle).
Thousands of western fans have constantly been stealing her art for years. As a result, not only she has changed her website url multipletimes, but has now renamed her circle in an effort to shake off the so-called fans who keep going against her wishes and stealing her work.
Unfortunately, her new url has already been found, and her gallery has been plundered of its copyrighted content. And it seems that re-posters can’t read, because they clearly don’t heed what she says on her site; in FOUR DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, including plain English:
DO NOT UPLOAD MY FANWORKS TO OTHER WEBSITES, COPY AND REPRODUCE THEM, PUBLISH THEM IN FANZINES WITHOUT PERMISSION.
There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to disrespect the wishes of artists like her in this manner. If this continues, she will no doubt block foreign servers from accessing her site, or perhaps even stop sharing her work with others altogether. I’ve seen this happen to so many other artists who couldn’t take this abuse before.
But pixiv artists don’t say they don’t allow re-uploads on their profiles.
That’s because it’s already prohibited in the terms of use, and they don’t feel the need to repeat it. You can even find it on the help page:
This art theft has gotten so fucking bad, a flipping union has been formed to try and protect amateur artists’ rights. I shit you not (and by the way, emi happens to be a member).
But where will I get my fanart?
You’re free to browse artist’s galleries, save art to your hard drive, and enjoy them at your leisure. Just don’t upload the art. It’s not yours. You have no right.
But I wanna share awesome pixiv art with my friends.
Then link them to it without re-uploading the damn image. It’s not hard.
But I wanna share art on my online communities.
There are many wonderful artists with tumblr accounts. Look for them, enjoy their work, reblog from them. Your support will inspire them to create more, and encourage other artists to come in (I can’t tell you how many times a tumblr artist has said they won’t make art for the SN/NS fandom because there are too many unscrupulous art thieves in it).
Quite a few Japanese artists are here too (a popular Korean narusasu artist, um-mmma, gets their art re-posted here all the time, yet they actually have a tumblr). You could always learn to draw as well. You might turn out to be good at it. It’s fulfilling to make your own fanwork (and it’ll also help you appreciate the feelings of other creators). If you can’t, you can always just ask artists if you can share their stuff.
But I don’t know Japanese!
Most pixiv artists have a basic grasp of English. Keep your sentences simple and they can manage. You can always make use of Google translate, and you could also usethesetemplates. It’s not hard, and artists really appreciate it. Why give them headaches when you can make their day?
I asked the artist and they refused/I got no reply.
If the artist hasn’t replied, then do not re-post. If they say no, do not re-post. Ever.
Can’t we be more creative as a fandom and not get by through stealing? Is that how we’re going to support our pairing? Through plagiarism? Are we gonna keep appreciating dreadful thief blogs like sasunaruyaoigirl? Are we that desperate to get notes? Are we gonna keep abusing these artist until pixiv blocks out all foreign access? Tbh, our pairing tags are a fucking eyesore, far worse than almost any other Naruto pairing I’ve ever seen. We’re better than this. It’s possible (not to mention easy) to run a fandom blog without snatching art from somebody else.
