A bird in the hand is in the hand

A couple of panels I fall in love with from my on going Edeleth fancomic... With cookies included! XD

ROUND 1 — Match 32 of 138

Rodrick Heffley (Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

Problematic because: "he bullies greg, embarrasses him on purpose, uses greg’s secrets to blackmail him, and regularly dumps work on him or manipulates him into covering for him. in rodrick rules, he’s the only person who knows greg’s humiliating summer secret, and he uses that as leverage. he also throws a party while their parents are away, leaves greg tangled up in the cover-up, and in the 2011 film version pranks greg at church with chocolate on his trousers, causing a public scene. he’s lazy at school, rude to his family, and usually happy to let greg take the blame if it means rodrick gets away with something." Propaganda: "he’s hot, he’s funny, he’s in a terrible band, and he has the exact smug older-brother energy that makes people lose all critical thinking skills. yes he bullies greg. yes he’s gross. yes his room probably smells insane. unfortunately the eyeliner/emo drummer thing works."

vs. Edelgard von Hresvelg (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

Problematic because: "She's one of those characters where you can absolutely argue she has a point, but the methods are still a lot. Fodlan’s Crest/nobility system is awful, the Church is hiding history, and Edelgard herself was tortured as a child by the same faction she later ends up using for her war. But she still starts a continent-wide war to force her reforms through, and she’s very much willing to decide that everyone else’s lives can be thrown into the fire if the world that comes out the other side is better. As the Flame Emperor, she hires bandits to attack the students early on, works with the Death Knight, raids the Holy Tomb for Crest Stones, and keeps a working alliance with Those Who Slither in the Dark, even though they’re the people behind some of the worst experimentation and political violence in the setting. She hates them and does plan to turn on them eventually, but “I’ll use the evil mole cult until I can afford not to” is still a pretty questionable political strategy. And depending on the route, she can become the person who drags the entire continent through five years of war, conquers territory, treats classmates and former friends as acceptable losses, and in Azure Moon pushes herself into an even more monstrous form rather than surrender. I love her, but she is not just “girlboss emperor who wants equality.”" Propaganda: 1. "She’s one of the few characters where I can understand the argument and still be horrified by what she does with it. She’s right that Fodlan is rotten. Crests decide people’s worth, nobles inherit power they haven’t earned, the Church has shaped history around itself, and people like Edelgard and Lysithea are living proof that the system grinds children up when power wants something from them. But she takes a real injustice, responds with real conviction, and then makes herself the person who gets to decide what everyone else must endure for the future she wants. She lies, allies with monsters, starts a war, and keeps going even when the cost is horrific. She’s driven, wounded, brilliant, ruthless, and sometimes genuinely right." 2. "sorry but if you grow up being tortured into a political weapon, watch your siblings die, and then look around and see the church/nobility/crest system still being treated as basically fine, you are probably not going to become a chill reformist who writes polite letters. does that excuse everything? no. obviously no. she still starts the war, she still lies, she still uses people she knows are dangerous because she thinks she can beat them later. but i do think people flatten her when they act like she just woke up one day and chose conquest because she likes red capes. she’s trying to destroy the system that destroyed her. the tragedy is that she’s willing to destroy a lot of other people’s lives to do it." 3. "She is fascinating because every route makes you deal with a different version of her. On her own route, she’s the revolutionary you can understand and even support if you buy into the cost. On other routes, she’s the former classmate across the battlefield who has decided the war matters more than anyone’s personal feelings about it. She’s sympathetic, stubborn, terrifying, painfully young, and somehow both the person trying to end the Crest system and the person willing to use a faction of nightmare scientists to get there. Incredible character."

Timestamp October 2019

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.