the storyteller's apprentice

Don't go. I don't want you to go to the US. I'm not going.

SERENDIPITY'S EMBRACE (2024)

What are you doing here? I'm in pain.

"I feel the same way too."

the show began with kiho and mokha's fathers traumatizing the life out of them, but ended with kiho and mokha now having an adoptive dad who loves them and cares for them much more than the biological dads ever could.

(2)

"How could it have been a coincidence? It was fate."

mokha telling kiho that she knew, she knew how hard he tried for her, how he searched for her and endured through all these years. and the expression on kiho's face going completely soft as he is taken aback T.T the viewers knew it ofc, but to see mokha talk about it and acknowledge his efforts was so heartwarming. "It was fate*," and it truly was; and it was made possible because kiho refused to ever give up.

Apparently the key to unlocking the hidden Ki-Ho was just to tell him that he wasn't Ki-Ho. Mok-Ha really said 'You're not Ki-Ho, Ki-Ho was a badass, you're just a little bitch' and man had an existential crisis then proceeded to go into full Ki-Ho mode.

“But why not? I’m not trying to argue or anything. I’m just… I’m just curious.”

*cue me:

*facepalm* HOW???!!

First of all, how insufferable. lol The girl that has been lost on a deserted island for freaking 15 years (and has had no human interaction) says you remind him of the friend that helped her escape and stood up for her because of a comment and you immediately think that kid must be you? good lord, what gives?? the mental cartwheels to reach this conclusion are INSANE. Also, he's the person she's been interacting with the most since getting rescued and of course, she's gonna relate her experience of him finding her on that island to her experience of Kiho saving her all those years ago.

Look, I do think something else is at play here and that he also went to trauma (hence the memory loss) but he isn't Kiho. I can't accept that.

Second of all, it's so obvious the real Kiho is Bogeol. Even if the OG Kiho had indeed lost all of his memories, I don't believe for a second he'd be as loud and meddlesome as the hyung is. Or that he'd be into copying every single thing his brother does or the opposite of what people tell him to do, like a child. No way. Plus, we've already established OG Kiho was quiet and alienated himself from everyone as a trauma response and guess who reminds me of him? Bogeol. Logic would dictate that after experiencing the trauma and guilt of being the one responsible for Mokha jumping off that ship and being lost for 15 years, he'd be even more reticent to get close and open himself... again.

i really liked him in WIFTY but i don't have any interest in watching this show

His character here is a pro e-sports player, is HIGHLY obsessed with his girl (but still in an endearing way, due to the girl's personality) and is a good friend to the FL also. Overall, I think as a support character, he's okay but not that unique or anything.

I'd say, you can try to watch this if you're in the mood for: stories about the e-sport industry, aloof and highly capable ML, equally capable FL, clingy Zhou Yiran who worships the ground his girl is on...

My type? She has glossy hair, her eyes are big and round. She always looks very smart and has a big appetite. She likes sports, is very needy and loves to follow me around.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

This post is doing the rounds again.

Everything in it remains true: Moleskine notebooks are overpriced for what they are, and even over-hyped; they’re not the original Moleskines referred to in the Bruce Chatwin (famous travel writer) anecdote which accompanies (or used to) each one. This is a typical example; here’s an extract:

Moleskine notebooks are synonymous with understated style and professionalism. They have been used by some of the greatest writers of our time, including Ernest Hemmingway and Oscar Wilde, whilst plain paper versions were popular with artists Picasso and Van Gogh.

Um. No, they weren’t.

Current Moleskines are a 1997 product which resurrected a long-defunct brand. If those Great Names used them there must have been a bit more resurrection going on, because by 1997 every single one - including Moleskine’s poster-boy Chatwin - was also defunct, most of them for quite a long time…

*****

There are many other elastic-closure notebooks far more fit for purpose, especially if that purpose involves a fountain pen. My own current fave is Rhodia, with a Leuchtturm next in the queue, though I bought a few Moleskines some years ago when I still used gel pens a lot (Pilot G-2s are excellent).

Despite changing almost entirely to fountain pens, I’ve been working my way through the Moleskines because TBH they were too expensive just to chuck out. But they’re restricted almost entirely to gels again, because the wretched paper is so prone to bleed-through.

Here’s an example:

Here’s the other side. Every line is visible to some extent, and a couple of them have bled through. A broader nib, wetter ink or indeed both combined would leave marks so severe that a “120 page” notebook might have just 60 useable pages, and if the bleed-through was bad enough to mark the next page as well, maybe not even that.

There are several reasons for bleed-through: nib width (obviously a Broad nib <B> lays down more ink than an Extra-Fine <EF>), ink viscosity (“wet” flows faster than “dry”) and the way nibs vary between manufacturers, because widths don’t seem to have a standardised size.

It’s obvious that my Lamy Al-Star <EF> nib writes far broader than my Pilot MR <F>. With the same ink in both, the difference wouldn’t be as conspicuous, though I suspect it would still be there; Lamy nibs skew wide while Japanese nibs skew fine. Those variables apply to all the rest as well.

So why use broad nibs and wet ink if it’s so messy?

On heavy or just well-finished paper it isn’t, and the combination is (a) pleasant to write with, since the nib skims effortlessly along a lubricant of ink and (b) broader nibs with a bit of flexibility create more obvious line variation, and that makes for graceful handwriting…

…and fountain-pens in general, due to not needing pressure, can and probably will improve the sort of scrawl ingrained by years of using ballpoints. Voice of Experience.

The primary reason for bleed-through is low-grade paper, and Moleskine has that without a doubt. They should spend less on marketing and fancy associate-with-whatever’s-trendy-now covers and more on better materials, but they don’t need to, having settled into the comfortable “Lifestyle Accessory” slot where things sell by familiarity of brand-name, not quality of product.

IMO Mont Blanc fountain pens are there too, and have been since the early 1990s. @dduane​‘s MB-146 was one of the last without the various authenticity marks that happen once a thing becomes desirable enough to be worth counterfeiting - as in China, which churns out a lot of fake MBs. (China is also where Moleskines are made…)

DD’s 146 may also be one of the last meant for use rather than possession. Nowadays (IMO again) a big MB is the fountain pen To Be Seen With. The equivalent big fountain pen To Write With is a Pelikan.

Just don’t try using either of them in a Moleskine…

*****

And yet, rummaging through old posts, I found something which amazed me as much now as when I first saw it 8 years ago. This was done with ballpoint pen on Moleskine, and embellished with real gold.

Wow…

Lost Hat (A short comic)