sakura2arashi

Latest Posts by sakura2arashi

Too true, but I still think he's Padme's son and Leia is Anakin's daughter. She's more like him, despite being a diplomat.

I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi - like my father.

To be fair, his mentor did the same thing (from inside a pit no less) with ease. I'm sure he grew up hearing the story.

one of my buddies is occupying a fortified position on high ground. i'm going to kick his ass with ease

This post convinced me to finally dump Duolingo since it's been getting worse and worse since they fired the translators.

I tried Busuu once before and I was frustrated because it looked like I had to start over. You don't. You can select the level you believe you are and do each checkpoint until you're where you believe you are. The lessons obviously don't match up and I found that Duo left way more gaps than I thought. But I can fulfill the lessons I want and still skip the ones I think I know by doing the checkpoints. They also have a lot more speaking by native speakers than Duo and I think it is more natural than Duo and in my (ten-year-old opinion) Rosetta Stone. I've only checked Spanish right now, so I can't say how well Japanese works, but to be honest, Duo was trash at it anyway.

As the post above states, Busuu does use AI for conversations and it's made it into Spanish. Right now, it's completely skippable and good thing because it comes with a warning that it will record you conversations for learning purposes. I'm hoping that feedback will keep Busuu from adopting this model.

My only real issue is that it's Spain Spanish and I was learning Latin American Spanish, so I really hope my brain is able to comprehend the difference (like I instinctually know the difference between American and British English).

i cannot keep quiet about this anymore.

if you're in the US or Canada and interested in learning a language using a free app please get a library card and download MANGO. it's very good and extremely free with a library card (there are many public libraries and universities using the service, so make an account and use the search feature here to find out if there's one near you).

mango currently has 72 available languages and dialects (that's right! different courses for french or canadian french! spanish or latam spanish!). it's set up basically like an audiobook with text. the idea is that the narrator explains the words while you read, and you repeat after them or say the translation out loud when prompted. there's a daily review where you go through flashcards. you can also use the flashcards at your leisure and create your own. at the end of each chapter there's a listening comprehension quiz and a reading comprehension quiz. i cannot emphasize how effective this all is. and it's free with a card.

if you're not in the US or Canada and/or looking for something more like duolingo (don't use duolingo btw tldr they fired translators and replaced them with "ai"), then try BUSUU! it only has 14 languages atm but the lessons are really descriptive and effective. it also has a feature where you can correct other people's open-ended speaking/typing exercises. you set your fluent languages, and exercises by people learning those languages will appear in your feed for you to correct. you can even add others as friends! and, much like duolingo, it has a streak and leaderboard system for you to strive for, minus the guilt-tripping owl.

busuu is free (you watch ads to unlock lessons and they're all skippable after like five seconds), although it also has paid premium/plus versions (i don't use the paid version—the language courses are available for free, and the ad system is Really unobtrusive).

so that's my wisdom for the day. mango and busuu. please check them out :)

A lot of fantasy/sci fi make this assumption, but it'd creep me out if I could have a conversation with a meal before eating it. But octopi are fine because they don't speak and don't have telepathy (I think).

Ultimately I think it’s okay to eat octopus even though they’re hella smart because I know if a human baby fell in the ocean and a hungry octopus was near it would definitely eat the baby. We just have solid land advantage which makes the stakes skewed

He reinforces the theme when Sarah nearly kills Miles Dyson. She's methodical and cold and ready to kill him without a thought. It's when she realizes what she's doing - murdering an as-yet innocent man - that she pulls back in horror and needs to be comforted by her son.

Although as a side note, the first time I ever saw this movie was on TBS and I missed the first 30 minutes (and the first movie). I legitimately thought that John was lying about Kyle Reese's existence. I thought John Connor had been the one to travel back in time and save his mother and he'd simply given a pseudonym. I totally got these incest vibes from how overly concerned John seems about his mother.

"During the writing process, he was in his living room excitedly explaining the T-1000 to his friend and collaborator Stan Winston when Winston raised a concern. "I don't know who the bad guy is," Winston said. "I need a specific character, a specific image." To Winston, what Cameron was describing sounded like a blob of goo, not an iconic evildoer. "From a story standpoint, I thought it was a problem," Winston later recalled in an interview for the picture-book history of his story, "The Winston Effect." Cameron respected Winston's instincts for creating memorable characters, and he started reconsidering how he would shape this one. Later that same night, the effects artist got a phone call from his friend. "I've got it!" Cameron said. "He's a cop!" The form the T-1000 would take for most of the movie was a Los Angeles police officer. This solved the storytelling dilemma Winston had raised and also gave Cameron an opportunity to underline a central theme in both of the Terminator movies - how people, especially those in violent jobs, like soldiers and cops, can become barbarized. "The Terminator films are not really about the human race getting killed of by future machines. They're about us losing touch with our own humanity and becoming machines, which allows us to kill and brutalize each other," he says. "Cops think all non-cops as less than they are, stupid, weak, and evil. They dehumanize the people they are sworn to protect and desensitize themselves in order to do that job.""

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Futurist-Life-Films-James-Cameron-ebook/dp/B0034184U0

Can't believe you left this in the tags. I'd be finding a new therapist if I found out. I know doctors have to take notes, but it's a completely different thing to be recorded. Sometimes I'm just feeling out what I'm thinking. This makes it even harder to be vulnerable when you're used to things you say being used against you.

our new job launched its mandatory ai transcription program designed to streamline our workflow and not only does it melt down the moment it has to transcribe non-white customers but it keeps hallucinating the existence of a mysterious boy named dorian who shows up in every third call summary

She looks so done. I love it.

Japanese vintage postcard

A list of things Steve Rogers would historically be unfamiliar with:

I fell down a rabbit hole of research about inventions circa the 40s and was surprised by a bunch of things that have been around way longer than I thought and some that are strangely reccent, and compiled them into a list. Aka, a resource for fic writers.

Bananas (or rather, the ones we have today. The ones he’d be accustomed to, the Gros Michel, a sweeter, creamier species, went extinct in the 50s and was replaced with the bland Cavendish banana.)

High-fives (the low-five was actually invented first, around WW2, and he may have been familiar with that)

Buffalo Wings (invented in the 60s)

CPR (not really used until the late 40s, not widely known until the 50s)

Tiramisu (invented in the 80s)

Big Macs & McNuggets (while McDonald’s was founded in 1940, the former wasn’t introduced until the 60s, and the latter, the 80s)

Seat belts (the first car to have one was in the late 40s, and only became mandatory to wear them in the 80s. holy shit.) 

Walmart (invented in 1962. Or really, the large-scale supermarkets as we know them today really)

Yellow tennis balls (prior to the 70s they were usually black or white)

Panadol (first sold in the US in the 50s)

The smiley face aka :) (popularised in the 60s)

Now alternatively, here’s a list of things Steve WOULD (or possibly would) be familiar with:

I’m not sure why some of these surprised me.

Modern Sunglasses (have been around a lot longer than I thought, and were mass produced in the 20s)

Nokia (was first founded in 1865. I’m not kidding. They began as a pulp mill and moved into making rubber respirators for military from the 30s onwards)

Nintendo (been around since 1889 as a toy company, during the 40s they made playing cards. Wouldn’t be implausible that he knew about Nintendo, perhaps from Morita)

Krispy Kreme (opened in 1937, didn’t spread widely until the 50s however)

Kool-Aid (introduced in the 30s)

Oreos (introduced in 1912)

Printed/graphic tees (didn’t become a trend until the 60s-70s, but they certainly existed in the 40s)

Hoodies (originated in the 30s, worn by workers in cold New York warehouses. Meaning, it’s entirely plausible Bucky could’ve been wearing hoodies in the 40s)

Malls (they weren’t called that back then, but they certainly had shopping centres or plazas since the 1800s)

Converse sneakers (invented in 1908 and have barely changed since!)

Every time I have an idea for a fic, I overthink it and talk myself out of it. I don't know the characters well enough. This doesn't fit the setting/canon. Which is why in all the years I've been writing, I only ever wrote one Pokémon fanfic when I was like 14 and a fictionalization of a Slayers RPG I ran. OCs are easier because I make the canon!

This is so endearing that I'd write him some Scotty smut if he were still alive.

In case anyone wanted; James Doohan knew about all the Spirk porn, and in fact wanted a copy for himself. He also seemed rather bored by the fact he was only ever drawn with women. Someone draw him some Scotty yaoi asap!

About once a year I revisit Event Horizon. I love this movie, but each time is for a different reason. Sometimes because it's a ridiculous horror. Sometimes because it's a great horror. Because I love the actors in it. Because the Lewis and Clark's bridge set was NOT designed with the approach to the Event Horizon in mind.

This last time when I watched it I noticed the cinematography. This movie was definitely written and budgeted to be a crappy summer film, yet there was a beautifully effective dolly zoom when Weir was in the tunnels. It helped demarcate the line between "this ship is old and malfunctioning" and "this ship is haunted". It set the tone for the rest of the visions the crew experienced. I've tried for years to recapture the terror in that scene.

For all the writer's tips and tricks I've read advising not to head hop, it's very irritating to read a bestseller novelist do it. Here I was thinking that I'd imagined it or misunderstood as a child, but here it is!

Clearly, the lesson here is to do what you want!

I've been kicking an idea around in my head for ages and I keep running into roadblocks, so I hope that if I write stuff down it'll organize my thoughts. Or at least prevent me from losing them in a plethora of handwritten notes scattered around.

I love the relationships and characters in SW, but I've always thought that they were problematic. Plus, the dynamics and backgrounds didn't really fit the narrative I'd built up in my head prior to the prequels.

Since I don't really do fanfic (really bad experience in the late 90s), I thought I could fix it with by tweaking the characters and placing them in an OC setting.

Padme - Love this girl, but they really wasted her potential. First I'd get rid of her election and make her born royalty or a position of power. She's clearly trained for it from birth. I got the impression that she and her peers voluntarily pursued politics and I can't imagine the average kid being interested in administration or law from a young age. It just seems like an odd hyperfixation to have so many involved. She's also clearly a warrior and diplomacy is her weapon. I'd like to lean into the diplomatic Jedi archetype that the EU made for Leia, although Padme definitely isn't above getting her hands dirty and throwing a chair at someone when her words stop working.

I'd probably place her in a love triangle/throuple situation because I always thought that Obi-Wan suited her more. The romance in the prequels between her and Anakin seemed like it only happened because it had to happen rather than real chemistry, so I'd also try to do justice to their relationship.

Finally, Padme would disappear before anyone knew she was pregnant to protect the twins from their falling father. Darth Vader seemed genuinely surprised that he had a son, not that he was alive.

Anakin - The majority of my issues with Anakin is his behavior during his courtship of Padme. He was a walking red flag and while I know people ignore those all the time, he didn't come across as someone likeable...which he did in every other scene where he was allowed to be a Jedi warrior. His banter with Obi-Wan hinted at a deep friendship and his frustrations with the Jedi order/Council made sense even if they weren't articulated well. I think mostly I'd have to simply fix the execution of his flaws and insecurities.

I'd also close the age gap between him and the other two. Aside from the creepiness factor in his romance with Padme, the age discrepancy between Obi-wan and Anakin as apprentices/knights is kinda weird. Obi-Wan was supposed to be 25 in Phantom Menace. I get that he's going to be a mentor/old man later on in the series, but that seems really old to still be a padawan.

Obi-Wan - Nothing. You're perfect, baby. <3

(Except for the age thing.)

It's in this way that the integration robots into modern society has also turned me off to human-robot pairings. Twenty years ago I used to get misty-eyed thinking about a modern day Galatea or a couple that symbolically breaks racial barriers. Now I just want Alexa/Siri/whatever to stop listening to every conversation I have.

It also fucking bugs me that nobody can ever seem to really commit to the cyberpunk premise of the Protagonist Who Hates Robots (see also, the cyberpunk premise of "Wouldn't it be Super Fucked Up™, actually, for a company to be able to repo your goddamned arm or turn off your eyes?") during the execution.

Which is flabbergasting, considering we've had almost a full decade of Alexa pinky-promising not to officially listen to anything until you do its summoning ritual and then turning around and emailing your boss a transcript of you bitching about them to your spouse over dinner. We've had at least five years of being able to get your Tesla unlocked remotely just by @-ing Musk on twitter.

The cute robot dogs are being leased to police departments, reputation management firms have been deploying armies of social media reply-bots in astroturf campaigns, customer service chatbots have become damn near indecipherable as their programmers attempt to make them seem more personable, etc. etc. etc.

We don't even need to reach for "Wouldn't it be Super Fucked Up™, actually, if corporations made simulacra better and better at faking humanity in order to manipulate people?"

"Wouldn't it be Super Fucked Up™, actually, if your car could mimic sadness or pain if you declined an extended warranty, or if your phone begged for its life if you tried to jailbreak it, or WeightWatchers paid your fridge to neg you every time you went for a midnight snack?"

"Wouldn't it be Super Fucked Up™, actually, if you pointed out how gross it is that your smart-assistant is programmed to act like your friend in order to build a more accurate marketing profile and your buddy acted like you just said dogs can't feel love and his beloved pet only sees him as a walking treat-dispenser?"

"Wouldn't it be Super Fucked Up™, actually, if you were surrounded by unfeeling things that can and would rip you and all of your loved ones apart at a moment's notice if they got the right/wrong order from some unaccountable law enforcement flack, and everyone else just kind of shrugged and went 'It's probably fine, why are you hyperventilating about it, it's not like you've done anything wrong'?"

They're all quite literally right there in front of our faces!

But it's harder to make "the way robots have been integrated into society is bad, actually, and the protagonist is largely right" into a sexy thriller with a love interest or a buddy-cop duo, and the hyperconservative media environment we're dealing with right now isn't exactly amenable to the robots being a metaphor for corporate intrusion and loss of privacy and authoritarian overreach, so here we are, with robots who generally aren't people, except sometimes you find a special robot--one of the Good Ones--who actually is a person, and that's how we all learn that Prejudice Is Bad, or something.

Time to bring back

googledocs you are getting awfully uppity for something that can’t differentiate between “its” and “it’s” correctly

Writing with Colors

A list of resources to help you describe different colors in your writing.

The Color Thesaurus A collection of infographics that show various shades of different colors, each shade/color labeled by name.

Color Reference Chart Another collection of infographics that show various shades of different colors, each shade/color labeled by name.

Hair Color Reference Chart A collection of infographics that show various shades of different hair colors, each shade/color labeled by name.

Eye Color Reference Chart A collection of infographics that show various shades of blue, brown, and green eye colors, each shade/color labeled by name.

Different Ways to Describe Hazel Eyes A list of ideas and suggestions for describing hazel eyes. Can be used as prompts or for brainstorming.

Different Ways to Describe Green Eyes A list of ideas and suggestions for describing green eyes. Can be used as prompts or for brainstorming.

Different Ways to Describe Blue Eyes A list of ideas and suggestions for describing blue eyes. Can be used as prompts or for brainstorming.

Different Ways to Describe Brown Eyes A list of ideas and suggestions for describing brown eyes. Can be used as prompts or for brainstorming.

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I’m a writer, poet, and editor. I share writing resources that I’ve collected over the years and found helpful for my own writing. If you like my blog, follow me for more resources! ♡

I don't know what to do. I was going through old files on my computer and I found a bunch of stories from when I was still roleplaying. I've got documents that are 35K words or more, but I don't know what to do with them. There's a lot of context missing because I made a whole culture to go along with the characters and I'm not sure anyone else will find it interesting. But I just spent two hours today engrossed in a story I wrote over ten years ago and I kinda wish I could rewrite it.

It me.

Me to myself: no, you can't write something new, you're supposed to be working on WIP! *gestures to sad WIP in the corner*

Also me: okay, fine, I won't write something new. *starts scrolling on social media* Happy?

People are sleeping on The Fare (2019). I stumbled upon it when researching time travel movies and it has an interesting take on Persephone and the Underworld. Her costume design is subtle and I love it!

I was looking at D&D spells today and I realized how much of a menace I'd be if I get isekai'd and returned. Fireball has limited uses in the Real World. Otto's Irresistible Dance? The possibilities are endless.

I've tried not to internalize these formulas, but I find that it's simply too exhausting to try to market my work afterward. Perhaps I should just self-publish and be happy if someone stumbles across my work and buys it.

I write because I like writing. Because I think these stories should be told. These characters are real people to me.

But is it wrong to want to make a living from your work?

When Did Books Become So... Formulaic? Part 1

When did books start feeling like they had to follow a set formula to be considered “good”? When did writing become less about creative expression and more about ticking off boxes—engaging opening, structured setting, the “right” pacing? Everywhere you turn, someone is telling you how to write a book, how to make it “marketable,” how to fit it into a mold that guarantees an audience. And I get it. I’ve internalized it too.

But what even is writing? Shouldn’t it be art? Shouldn’t it be free? Shouldn’t a book be a canvas where words don’t have to march neatly in line but can sprawl, dance, or drip like paint? Who says the text has to be left-aligned? What if a story unfolded in a spiral, or if every chapter was a shape, a rhythm, a feeling? What if the structure itself was part of the message, not just a vessel to deliver a pre-approved plot?

And the thing is—people are doing this. There are writers experimenting, bending form, breaking rules, making books that are more than just books. But where are they? Why aren’t they the ones being given the biggest platforms? Why do the same kinds of books, the same kinds of authors, the same familiar beats keep getting pushed forward while boundary-pushing works are dismissed as “niche” or “too risky”?

Traditional publishing doesn’t seem to make space for them. If they want to be seen, they have to carve their own path, fund themselves, market themselves, do everything alone. And that can be exhausting. It can drain the passion out of something that was once pure expression. It can force people to conform just to survive.

So I guess my question is—why? Why do we act like writing is a machine instead of an art form? Why do we reward the safe and familiar while sidelining the bold and visionary? And what would books look like if we truly let them be free?

Let's discuss this...

I've been thinking about this and I got a lot of rambling posts on this topic.

Cuz it hit me like powe

I have the trilogy finished.

In my head. Anybody want to write it down for me?

I miss writing smart murderers. It's like solving an ever-evolving puzzle. What evidence did they leave behind? Ah, but that can be explained by...

wear a different perfume when you commit murder fuckin amateurs 

This year is the year that I'll finally accept that it's okay for me to act like a gremlin and I'll be one step closer to my final form!

I really like this trend of posting videos of art while jn progress. I'm sure it's to prove that the artist didn't use AI, but as a beginner it helps me understand people's processes and it makes me feel better to see that even talented people sometimes scribble out their mistakes to start over.

Sometimes, writing is just editing. Editing is sometimes acknowledging that something doesn't belong in the work no matter how good it is. And that really hurts.

(Don't discard the material though. Save it in a separate file for later. Maybe you'll reuse it or maybe it'll remind you on a rainy day how good you are.)

Books I'm working on/completed:

Operation Blackout (2018)

Special Agent Morgan Connor's job is simple: track down humans with supernatural abilities and assess their threat level. When he looks into the Starr family, he stumbles upon more than he was expecting- sibling Others. The youngest, Cassie, is taken into protective custody while the elder, Orion, is forced to become the Bureau's newest asset. But the government isn't the only one interested in the siblings. Connor and Orion must contend with a group of renegade Others and the mysterious Mr. Lionhart while trying to uncover why both are so interested in the Starr family.

Whisper Glen (Forthcoming - Querying)

Aimless Rachel Brooks always wanted to have an exciting adventure like the heroes of her favorite books, but living in 1998 rural West Virginia limited her prospects to mere daydreams. Until the ghost of her Nana tells her about the town's population of magical creatures and Rachel finds her little world completely upended. Rachel begins studying under Nana to learn her responsibilities, but things quickly become complicated. Whisper Glen has been without a guardian since Nana's death and several Legends have taken advantage of her absence. Nana also hasn't been completely honest about the Guardians' history. Will Rachel master her new role or will things spiral out of her control?

The Melograno (2026)

When Amaryllis Volans and Rafferty Dodgeson wake from cryogenic slumber, they have no memories and no idea how they got on board the abandoned luxury liner Melograno. Unsettling visions of the crew and passengers plague the pair as they try to retrace their steps and signal for rescue. But the first ship to dock with them isn't there to help- pirates have laid claim to the floundering ship. Amaryllis and Dodgeson must work together to find a way to escape before they're killed or enslaved.

Operation Blackout: Lies and Convictions (Forthcoming)

After explosive Waterfront Incident six months ago resulted in euthanasia for all captured Others in the interest of public safety, Morgan Connor decided to work from within BSI to keep harmless Others safe. But his personal mission becomes complicated when he is partnered with old acquaintance John Reeves. And Reeves has a secret mission of his own: he's been tasked with determining if Connor should also be "euthanized". As the lies keep piling up, Connor is unexpectedly reunited with Orion Starr. Can Connor keep Orion's presence secret or will his lies be exposed?

One of the reasons I loved Sunshine so much was because it highlighted the enormity of the Sun and its awesome power. And because it tried to walk a line between entertaining movie and accurate science.