Today’s listening: Michael and Peter dive into the actual book behind “love languages” and its roots in evangelical Christianity and traditional gender roles. 👏🏻
“What’s your love language? Is it gifts? Words of affirmation? Or is it podcasts about books with extremely weird, reactionary gender dynamics?”
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What I've Been Enjoying Lately - Japanese Media
This is way overdue! I've been consuming so much great media in Japanese, it's time to share the love and recommend some things for all of you lovely language learners
📚 Books:
旅猫リポート - 有川浩: This is a super adorable novel about a stray cat who is taken in by a young man. Five years later, the owner is suddenly unable to take care of this cat and the two embark on a road trip across Japan to find the perfect new owner. This one is definitely a tear jerker to any animal lover and will absolutely make you want to cuddle your own fluffy friends into oblivion.
キノの旅 - 時雨沢恵一: This is a light novel series that's extremely close to my heart! The 2003 anime adaption of this series also isn't just my favorite anime, but my favorite TV show ever. Because of the relatively simple vocabulary, I often see it recommended as a first read for Japanese learners just dipping their toes into novel reading, and I find myself agreeing. This series follows a teenager named Kino who travel from country to country with a motorrad named Hermes. There's not much of a continuous plot and very few recurring characters, making it even easier to follow if something confuses you. Despite the fluffy sounding description, this series has a good amount of content warnings accompanying it and can get pretty gory at times as well.
僕らの地球の歩き方 - ソライモネ: An adorable manga series in which two men travel the world together under the agreement that, upon returning to Japan, they'll get married. I feel like if someone looked into my brain to find what I like in a series in order to create a manga series perfectly suited to my tastes, it would be 僕らの地球の歩き方. It's gay, it's adorable, it's about traveling the world, it's about loving the people around you and human culture and delicious food, I'm already crying. Definitely one of my all time favorites.
薔薇王の葬列 - 菅野文: I went back and forth about putting this on my list, but it's not titled "What I've Been Enjoying Lately" for nothing and boy oh boy have I been enjoying this lately. Perhaps I've been enjoying it a bit too much. A while back, I actually banned myself from reading this series because I didn't have the full set and would instantly be put in an awful mood if I caught up with the volumes I had. This manga series follows Richard Plantagenet III, yes, that one, and his ascendance to the British throne. This series is chock full of treachery, murder, violence, and everything else nice. Due to the... everything about this series.... there's a lot of unusual vocabulary, but it has furigana on everything, which helps a lot for speedy look ups.
気になってる人が男じゃなかった - 新井すみこ: Bonus manga! Because this one is worth it, and also because everyone needs a little more GL on their shelves. This manga is so good that I've even been seeing people who don't speak Japanese buy this to have on their shelves. It follows a slightly awkward girl and a gyaru from her class as the two bond of their shared love of western rock music. Yeah, this is the manga that's doing a collab with Nirvana.
📺 Shows and Movies:
Old Fashion Cupcake - This is a BL office romance drama about a middle aged man and his subordinate who begin acting like teenage girls in an attempt to regain some of their youth. Through eating sweets together, taking selfies and food pictures, and talking "girls' talk," the two deepen their bond. I don't think I can say this enough, I love food romances. If their is food involved in a romance, I'm there, no need to tell me twice. This series is super sweet and a really enjoyable watch.
カルテット - Four musicians meet by chance and decide to form a quartet together. However, each one has secrets that they're hiding. Bonus points to Netflix for actually having a J-drama I like for once. This series has a warm and cozy found family vibe, while still managing to have some of the most wildest shenanigans imaginable. I also really appreciated that this series seems to take some stances that I've never seen before, especially regarding family and what you owe to your parents.
映像研には手を出すな! - This anime follows three girls and their attempts to make anime. As an anime that is about the creation of anime, it's really no surprise that the art and animation is stand out in this series. I loved the ways that we as the viewer were able to see the imaginations of the characters. I also really enjoyed the characters, and the voice acting was phenomenal as well. This show is also home to one of the best intros ever.
赤髪の白雪姫 - This fantasy anime follows the titular character Shirayuki as she escapes from her home kingdom after being chosen as a royal concubine due to her unusual red hair. On her travels, she meets a prince from a neighboring kingdom and becomes a palace herbalist. It's not often that I watch or care about straight romances in media, but this romance is so adorable, and even beyond it, I truly love all the characters and their relationships in this series. Also, I think this is the only show I've watched where I found the soundtrack to actually be distracting- and not because I didn't like it, but because it was just that good.
🎤 Music:
オーガストの風 - THE BLACKBAND
夢伝説 - Stardust Revue
lemonade - Chili Beans.
Show - Ado
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i think one of the main reasons i love zach and jess as a duo so much, in addition to their sheer genius as improvisers of course, is how they can make the dynamics between their characters so natural. obviously that comes from years of doing improv together but no matter the pairing, they make it believable — whether they're playing parents, siblings, a married couple, friends of any gender combination, parent and child, teenagers in love, rivals, or literally anything else. the chemistry between their characters is always just right
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so, my friend @thing-in-the-yellow-mask and I recently realized that the descriptions of the creatures from the beastiary in part 17 match up almost perfectly with descriptions in the Call of Cthulhu sourcebook H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands: Roleplaying Beyond the Veil of Sleep, and after spending a minute hunting down a pdf of it, we found that almost every creature in the show has an entry and description, so boy do I have some interesting things to share with y'all. More under the cut
Lamp-Eft
"A lamp-eft is a salamander-like creature two or three feet long. It floats in the air, writhing its way along with its flattened tail and four paws, but has no wings. It has two huge globe-like eyes, but no mouth. Lamp-efts normally inhabit the upper air, and only descend to the earth’s surface at night. They feed on ambient magic. Lamp-efts are easily tamed and magicians sometimes use them as a live-in defense against shades. lamp-eft can project a beam of bright colorless light toward a target."
Zoog
"Zoogs are small and brown, with a rodent-like body outline. Small tentacles dangle from their snouts, concealing their small sharp teeth. Zoogs live in burrows and tree-trunks in the Enchanted Wood. There are several prominent zoog villages in their domain. Though they live mostly on fungi, zoogs have a taste for either spiritual or physical meat as well, for many dreamers have entered their wood and failed to return."
Boltworm of the Bnazic Desert
"Closely related to the fireworm is the boltworm. Boltworms are found primarily in the Bnazic Desert, but have been sighted in other desert areas throughout the Dreamlands. During its travels the boltworm builds up an enormous static charge which it can release at prey or attackers either to stun or kill. Once every decade or so, the boltworms release great amounts of this energy during their courtship and fill the skies with sheet lightning."
Gug
"The Gugs are a hairy and gigantic race of beings which once inhabited the surface of the Dreamlands in the area where the Enchanted Wood now stands. Here they reared a circle of colossal stones and made sacrifices to the Other Gods and the crawling chaos, Nyarlathotep. Finally, while trying to summon Yog-Sothoth into the Dreamlands, the Great Ones took notice of their blasphemies and banished them to the Underworld forever. Only a great trap door at the top of the tallest tower in their city, the Tower of Koth, connects their realm with the surface world, but no Gug will dare to open that door for fear of the curse of the Great Ones. Gugs stand approximately 20 feet in height and are covered by a coat of short, coarse hairs. Roughly humanoid in form, their arms split into two separate and fully functional forearms at their elbows; in effect giving them four arms and paw-like hands. It is the gugs’ head which is their most striking feature. Their mouths are filled with great yellow fangs and run vertically from their foreheads to their chins. Their pink eyes, set on either side of their head, bulge outward and are shaded by bony protuberances. Their ears are so small as to be non-existent, but they have a highly developed sense of hearing and they can pick up even the slightest sound. Gugs are also capable of moving almost as silently as nightgaunts. Combined with the fact that they have become accustomed to seeing in absolute darkness, this means that they can strike without warning at any who may blunder around in the dark."
Haemophore
"Haemophores are small humanoid beings with webbed hands and feet, and curious W-shaped mouths. A haemophore subsists on blood and is attracted to bright and shiny objects. It will suck blood from a victim until the haemophore is so monstrously bloated that it is completely distorted and bulging, incapable of movement. Their name comes from their habit of filling up on blood before migrating. Haemophores move very softly and often carefully investigate potential prey before sucking out blood. Once a haemophore has bitten a target, the creature remains attached on subsequent rounds, sucking blood and draining 1D3 points of the victim’s STR each round until the victim dies. If the victim survives, the STR returns at a rate of one point a day"
Buopoth/Lily
"Buopoths are a little larger than horses, but resemble elephants in general outline. Buopoths are pale mauve, with light green mottling over the backs and sides. The skin is soft and felt-like, and the mouth is at the end of a long trunk-like proboscis. The ears are shaped more like human than elephant ears. Along each side of the back are rows of protuberances. Their eyes are large and liquid. Their calls are soft and melodious trumpetings. Buopoths live in remote forested areas. They are gentle and skittish creatures which would rather flee than fight. If cornered, a buopoth rolls up its proboscis to keep it out of danger and charges, trying to knock down and trample its opponent."
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