“No Writing Is Wasted. Did You Know That Sourdough From San Francisco Is Leavened Partly By A Bacteria

forced to say “it’s ok” instead of throwing a chair at them

This is Agatha, she loves her personal space.

That's Rio, she also loves Agatha's personal space

The Japanese language is one of the most indirect languages in the world. There are the obvious examples of this, such as when some customers try to enter a busy restaurant without a reservation and the staff say 難しいですね (”this is tricky…”) instead of simply telling them that there are no seats. However, I've noticed that Japanese’s indirectness may go much deeper than simple euphemism.

Japanese seems to come built-in with ways of avoiding directly addressing your conversation partner.

The Japanese way of expressing things often involves voicing your internal monologue, which means people will say things ostensibly to themselves, even though what they really want is to communicate to the other person. When I first noticed it, I thought it was a bit similar to how some (western) cartoons occasionally handle exposition by having a character mutter something to themselves so that the audience can hear. This can be seen in the following extremely common forms of expression:

Using adjectives as an exclamation

うま！Literal translation: “Delicious!” Semantic translation: “Wow, this is really good”

怖い！Literal translation: “Scary!” Semantic translation: “I’m scared!” or “This place is giving me the creeps”

It could be argued that these single word exclamations may not always be “talking to yourself”. But imo more often than not, they are spoken with the vibe of “I felt this adjective so strongly that the word just slipped straight through my internal monologue and out of my mouth”.

Wondering aloud (かな)

雨降るかな？ Literal translation: “Hmm, will it rain or not?” Semantic translation: “I wonder if it’s gonna rain.”

今夜来るかな？ Literal translation: “Hmm, will [they] come tonight or not?” Semantic translation: “I wonder if they’ll come tonight.”

Compared to the adjective examples, this is less ambiguous. There’s no direct translation for the verb “to wonder” in Japanese - you just wonder aloud! The literal translations sound funny because they only make sense if the speaker is talking to themself.

Explaining stuff to yourself (んだ)

あそこにあったんだ！(context: the listener has just shown the speaker something they were looking for) Literal translation: “There it is!” Semantic translation: “There it is!”

In this example, the literal and semantic translations are the same, because this is a case of talking to yourself in English! If you think about it, it doesn’t make sense to say “there it is” when the person you’re talking to clearly already knows that’s where “it” is. Instead, the phrase serves to convey satisfaction and surprise.

まだ20歳なんだ！(context: the speaker has just found out from the listener that a friend of theirs is younger than they expected) Literal translation: “[She’s] only 20!” Semantic translation: “She’s only 20? That explains so much!”

In this example, んだ is used to mark the sentence as an explanation of something. The listener already knew the friend was only 20, so the aim of the sentence is not to convey new information, it’s to show that some sort of internal reasoning is happening within the speaker’s mind.

In the immortal words of Carly Rae Jepsen:

🎶 Do you talk to me, when you're talking to yourself? 🎶

For every Japanese speaker, the answer is yes!

You ever hear a song so good you gotta restart it before it even finish

they said this is the cheapest marvel series ever produced. see, this is what happens when you focus on storytelling instead of unnecessary stuff no one cares about. i loved this episode so much. please, give me more low-budget marvel shows that care about the plot, the characters, and their target audience. i don't need another rdj blockbuster marvel movie. you can have that. give me meaningful stories with a low budget, made by people who truly believe in what they're creating.

Positivityforlesbians here to give you some good news and positive vibes, so here’s the thing : girl in red’s album is finally out today on April 30th ! Go listen to it ! It’s called “if i could make it go quiet” ! That’s exciting in itself and I could stop this post here isn’t it ?! But no ! I’m making this post because guess who rarely ever post anything else than promo nowadays yet posted about girl in red’s album ? Taylor Swift ! Here’s a screen capture I took so you can see :

So basically we can now officially say that Taylor listens to girl in red and honestly y’all, that’s another huge clue. To me that’s not even a clue but typical signalling but this time she did it in a more obvious way than she ever did ! Look she even chose the 13th second of the song (!! she is the main character, she controls her own narrative, she knows what she is doing) which corresponds to a lyric that begins at 0:11 sec and ends at 0:14 sec that is “we’re not going back” AHHHHHHH I swear this is so fucking gay and if y’all straighties aren’t even capable to see this huge clue when you know at this point that “do you listen to girl in red ?” is THE way/joke to ask if a woman is a lesbian or bi withut really asking her then you’ll never be convinced. Taylor is one of us and this Instagram Story is the ultimate proof, I’m so hyped, let’s all be hyped ! Look at how much she isn’t bothered by the Gaylor rumors, she’s entertaining it 100%, we’ve been saying it all along ! Homophobes go home ! 💖💖💖

Also I’m so happy for Marie’s music, she’s super talented and inspiring, imagine being a gay woman from Norway and having Taylor recognizing your work, promoting it this enthusiastically and saying she listens to the album on repeat ! Listen to girl in red, in case it wasn’t the case already ! And OMG Taylor ! <3 ✨

this album... it’s literally just, like I could drive around and cry but have hope and vibe and it’s like such a new sound but is the sound Demi’s peace and happiness bc of what she’s been through I-

why are we all sleeping on kathryn hahn saying agatha is "for sure a top" in that podcast tho????? followed by "except that she's so powerful that sometimes she wants to be treated like a baby" WHAT

You don't need anyone's approval for the stories you write and the art you create. But it's also absolutely valid to want some approval from your audience. Kudos and likes don't determine your creation's worth. But it just feels amazing to receive them.