schneefink

Conclusion: I'm still not very good at studying. I get distracted too easily, I did almost nothing yesterday (in my defense there were extenuating circumstances, like being almost nauseous from hunger because I forgot to eat breakfast before going to the dentist - okay, still my fault), today I also reread long fics instead of studying... but at least I did study for four hours, that's something. But not much. (I bet LB I could do six, hmpf.) I'll do a bit more, and it'll be fine. The exam is tomorrow at noon. Terrible timing, because this is the one time I would have wanted to watch a Critical Role episode live. (I'm so nervous!) Ah well. Better luck next time. At least what I'm studying is interesting (more details some other time) and no matter how well I'll do - I'm very curious because I feel like I really can't say - I'm glad I'm learning again.

I finally found out why our newest flatmates is so often on the phone around midnight and later: she's playing WoW. That makes more sense than, idk, I didn't really think about it, I just wondered. Fortunately I only hear that she's talking, not what, and it's not loud enough to disturb my sleep.


The latest D&D session was amazing. ( Details, mostly for my own memories )

I have not yet written even one fic for h/c bingo, but I at least started several (okay, only two have more than a handful of words.) I'm still optimistic though! Would anyone be interested in helping me with a post-s3 Bright Sessions fic? I think at this point I mostly need brainstorming help and cheerleading. My flatmate who I would usually bribe to do it is on vacation in Greece (while here autumn weather is finally arriving, unfair.)

I'm a university student again! o.o I'd been vaguely thinking about it for a few weeks, and then it happened really fast. I asked a week ago if I could cut back on work hours, on Monday I got the okay from the company, and yesterday I enrolled at the university. Sooo I'm actually doing this. *wipes hands* I'm nervous.

I had always planned to do a Master's program eventually, but when I do it'll be full-time and I don't think I'm ready yet. But work isn't really intellectually challenging right now and also not helping me figure out what else I want to do. So I'm doing another bachelor program, business law, at the same university where I finished my first degree (which has the nice side effect that I can directly transfer several credits from my previous program to the new one.) I'm not completely sure yet if I'll like the program enough to finish, I'll find out. I don't actually want to work solely in business law, but it is very interesting. I think that together with my socioeconomics degree it'll open up some nice job opportunities, and I'll try to get into as many interesting internships as I can.

My current work contract is until December, and I'll be working 32 hours, so I'm not doing many lectures to start with, especially because I also need to read up again on those lectures that I technically already did, but that was in some cases eight years ago. I already know it'll be very tiring. First exams are in early October! Partially it's also kind of a test for myself I think, how much I can do. I think I can do it. My problem was never the studying, the problem was getting myself to study, and I like to think I've improved in that area. I think I can do the work, and I have the support network, and financially it's fine, and it should definitely be doable; and if I'm lucky, it'll also be fun.

I'm procrastinating on cleaning up, so I'm trying to get my notes on "Wolf 359" into something that maybe resembles order.

When I first started this podcast I stopped in the middle of episode 3, because it's no fun listening to people who can't stand each other and make each other's lives unnecessarily difficult by behaving unprofessionally on a fricking space station, I mean, wtf. The sheer number of recs I saw while looking for similar podcasts convinced me to give it another try, however. The second half of season one was okay, and then the season finale was fantastic and it got pretty great from there.

The show is currently in season 4. The plot is great, very tense, with the heroes almost constantly in danger of varying degrees. While there are funny and touching moments, there's not a lot of fluff. The "characters can't stand each other" problem gets a lot better, people grow closer under pressure, and by season 4 I really love several of the characters. (Others I enjoy hating.) I'm very curious where it's going, and how they're going to get out of this.

Do try not to get spoiled, there are some great twists. So if you haven't listened to it yet, stop here.
( Spoilers: barely organized notes I made while listening )

In offline happenings, tomorrow my parents, LB and I are going to a dinosaur park.
Mom: "Unfortunately we found out that the dinosaur park where we went when you two were kids has closed, but we could do something else…"
LB: "There are two other dinosaur parks."
Mom: "I thought it was about the memories?"
Me: "Mom. It's about the dinosaurs."
It's going to be great.

I haven't written fic since *checks* May, huh. But then suddenly I got an idea, and now in the past three days I've written over three thousand words and it feels amazing. Story writing is a thing I can do! Oh man, I missed this feeling of getting words onto a page, instead of being stuck at the image-to-word conversion process in my brain.

Btw, I recently read a piece on writer's block that I liked a lot, So you're having a bad writing day: Consider: the act of telling a story is you CONJURING AN ENTIRE UNIVERSE INSIDE YOUR MIND and then using words as knives to CARVE THAT UNIVERSE INTO REALITY SO THAT OTHERS CAN VISIT YOUR IMAGINATION. “Today I am going to make a world out of my brain that you can go to in your spare time,” you say aloud, hopefully realizing that this is far more significant and far more bizarre than tying your shoes or blowing your nose.
Writing is hard, and that's okay. (Clearly prolific authors who update frequently are wizards.)

I'll just assume you know the feeling of having found a bright shiny new thing that you want to tell everyone about but somehow it's really hard to find the words, and also writing why you like it also takes away time from consuming more of it. I just finished watching the "Akatsuki no Yona" anime (+OVAs) and I'm taking a brief break for some barely organized notes before I go and read all the manga chapters. (Also I should eat dinner, that would probably be good.)

Where to start? It has so many of my favorite tropes, especially when it comes to loyalty&betrayal. (A premise is not really a spoiler, right?) The dynamic between Yona, Hak, and Soo-won is fantastic. Yona herself is pretty great, and so is the whole team she assembles. And it looks like things will only get more and more political, yay.

( With spoilers )

I don't dislike my job, but it's often boring. Fortunately during much of it I can listen to other stuff. During the first few months I listened to many many Critical Role episodes, but now I'm caught up, so I need something new. I've been trying a few different things.

- Political comedy. There are a few I enjoy watching/listening to, like Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, sometimes Trevor Noah. Is there something similar for European politics?, that could be fun.

- I tried other RPG videos or podcasts, but haven't been able to get into any. They all start pretty slow, so without recs from people whose taste I trust I'm unwilling to invest much time into it. (I heard good things about The Adventure Zone, but I'm not in the mood right now to listen to a men-only RPG.)

- Speaking of! Podcasts. I was looking for economics-focused podcasts and the vast majority of what I found was hosted by men. I found an article that said about 2/3rds of podcasts are hosted by men, that about fits what I saw and doesn't even take into account which topics the podcasts are about. DD and I wondered how much of that is because men are more used than women to people listening to whatever they say. I also still sometimes have to consciously train myself out of thinking that a woman's voice on the radio or on TV sounds "shrill" whenever she raises her voice and/or gets angry.
If anyone has recs for podcasts hosted by women, especially about economics and/or history, that would be welcome.

- I thought aboud podfic, but I usually get too frustrated by the fact that I know that I can read faster. Radio plays are different though. I was never that into WtNV, but I remembered that someone on DW (I forgot who) recced The Strange Case of Starship Iris. I liked it a lot, but unfortunately it only has 5 episodes and is currently on hiatus. Recs for radio plays would also be very welcome (but no horror, even though I think it's a genre that lends itself well to radio plays.)

- I also spent two days watching youtube videos about ancient battles. I now understand better why dhampyresa is so fascinated by Hannibal and Scipio ^^ Unfortunately battle plans need to be watched and I rarely have time for that.

- I had the idea to listen to Russian language learning podcasts, I found out that there are a few. Unfortunately I realized that while podcasts are okay to remember words I already knew once (I used to speak Russian at B1+, but I'm severely out of practice), I can't learn new words from listening. If I don't see how they're spelled I forget them almost immediately, which is frustrating. Russian also takes more concentration to listen to, which I don't always have.

I also sometimes just listen to Disney soundtracks on a loop when I don't have much concentration to spare, or radio. (I never listened to Ö3 before, but 2-3 weeks ago I realized how little attention the constantly repeating pop songs require.) But that sometimes feels close to wasting time – which is ridiculous when I'm at work, but still. I could be learning things or listen to actual stories! Not the whole time though, I'll try to find a balance, and in the meantime I'll try out more stuff.

I recently reread one of my favorite fantasy series as a kid, the Märchenmond books by Wolfgang and Heike Hohlbein. (I only ever knew of three books, I recently found out that there is a fourth one but with a different main character. I haven't read it yet and I don't think I want to.) The title means "fairy tale moon", though the English translation is "Magic Moon," which for some reason sounds hilarious to me.

I was worried I wouldn't like the books anymore, but I reread them anyway because I had ideas for these characters for h/c bingo. (No idea why they came to mind after so long. Now after rereading I've discarded the original idea but I have another one, let's see if anything comes of it.) Unsurprisingly I don't like them as much as I did, but I can still see why I loved them and enjoy some elements, good enough for me.

As I half expected, I didn't much like the main character, who always becomes unexpectedly extremely wise in the last fifteen pages and makes a great speech; the special fighting skills were pretty much a given. Especially books 2 and 3 required a lot of work to ignore how silly the central conflict premise was so one could enjoy the rest of the plot. In all three books I really liked the secondary characters, they were a lot of fun. There were continuity problems from each book to the next, I did not expect that to annoy me as much as it did.
All in all I don't regret rereading the books, but probably won't do it again, at least not anytime soon.

( Märchenmond )

( Märchenmonds Kinder )

( Märchenmonds Erben )

In apartment news, most of the construction site is gone! Originally it said end of July, so logically I expected it to last until the middle of August, and it finishing earlier than announced was a happy surprise.
Eva moved out today :( She'd only been here for three and a half months, but apart from DD she was my favorite flatmate so far and I'll miss her. We already found the next person, she'll move in in August. She seems nice too, but at least at her initial visit I found it not that easy to get into a conversation flow with her, I hope that'll get better and we'll get along well. We already know that she doesn't bake, that's a downgrade right from the start ;) DD and I decided to bake more often (and also make more lemonade), I hope we'll actually manage to keep to that.

The latest season of Natsume Yuujinchou has been over for a few weeks, but I find it hard to talk about it because most of the time I just want to go "<333". I like it very much, is what I'm saying, and I find it hard to explain why for some reason, idk. Nice and warm and many feelings.

( Some short episode reaction notes )

Fic recs:
like religion by WerewolvesAreReal
6.9k, gen, futurefic
Summary: Natsume would like to make it clear that this is all the dog's fault.
(OR: how to become a god, by accident).
Why I like it: This would happen to Natsume :D Lovely.
The same author wrote another futurefic, haunting, softly, in which Natsume dies and nobody notices, it is also very good but unsurprisingly sadder.

So the castle that we built won't cave by Taisi
1.8k, gen
Summary: The last time he remembers feeling this protective was probably back on the day he and Kitamoto taught Natsume how to ride a bicycle, those pleasant hours of late afternoon that swept by so fast. He had been unprepared for how thin Natsume’s shoulders would be, how fragile his back would feel under Nishimura’s hands.
Why I like it: This author has a tag "Natsume Protection Squad" and it's the best. This one is probably my favorite but go and read all of them. never mind the bus fare is another one of theirs I like a lot, it has Nishimura with a giant crush on Natsume, it's very sweet.

There is a new findthatbook comm, which you should all check out, especially the post I immediately made about that one book I've wanted to reread for years now. I know what the cover looked like and the entire plot outline - finding out that the "lost heir to the kingdom" knew all along that she wasn't the true heir but just pretended so that she could take over is still among my favorite plot twists - but so far no luck.

Edit: I found it! Thanks to /r/whatsthatbook, always good to try multiple sources. It's "Bloodrights" by N. Lee Wood. I read it so long ago that I have no idea if it's actually any good, but I look forward to finding out.