Some rl ranting and Bleach
So as usual I end up not writing anything for a month :/
Well, rl has been a bitch with all my exams being even worse than I expected (with the exception of the one in psychology which was easier). So far I know I passed the Psychology one and got a 4 (5 is the highest possible mark), so that's pretty good (the only thing that sucks, is that if I ever want to get the right papers for teaching kids, I still need to learn children's psychology, because our course didn't cover that); unfortunately I failed the History of the English Language exam, and I'm re-sitting it in two weeks' time. I was expecting this to happen as the amount of dates, names and facts to learn for it is beyond me :/
As far as credit tests are concerned, the Second Language Acquisition one went decently (I still don't know the results, though), but the Pragmatics (it's a new branch of linguistics) one today went terribly. I really hate this subject. It's terribly boring and requires memorizing tons of definitions. What's more, the credit test looked more like and exam than a test... I'll probably have to re-sit this one as well. So, overall this exam session is probably my worst so far.
Well, at least now I have a bit of leisure until I start learning for the re-takes. I'm going to catch up on lj (I need to make a post on the epicness that were the European Figure Skating Championships <3), and bollywood.pl, write a bit in my film blog (which I never seem to be able to really take of the ground), tidy up a few fics I've written or am in the middle of writing, and finish catching up on the Bleach manga and a few fanfics I'm reading.
As far as less entertaining things are concerned I need to translate a German article for my dad and read the Portrait of a Lady for my American Literature class (not that it's bad, it's only really damn long and not very easy to read in English), and also write a draft for my thesis on Shakespeare for my Academic writing class. Quite ambitious plans for such a procrastinator like me. I hope I'll manage to do half of this :P
As far as Bleach is concerned, I got slowed down on my catching up because of my exams and watching figure skating. The manga itself, however, also got pretty dull. The HM arc will never be not too long. I really hate the Szayel Aporro fight. It's too long and the guy, who starts off as and intriguing enemy soon turns into an annoyance. He also uses every cliche trick in the book ("voodoo dolls", making the heroes fight a mirror match against clones of themselves, etc.). Also, dear Kubo, why won't you let Renji be great? Why design such an awesome character and then make him hardly able to hold his own ground? I did enjoy his co-operation with Ishida, but wouldn't it be awesome if he actually figured out a way to defeat Szayel without bankai? Renji is not THE brightest strategist in Bleach, but he's not an idiot either... Chad laying in a pool of his own blood for several chapters (after a fight with a very uninteresting guy) does not make me happy either. I severely miss Rukia, but at least her fight with Aaroniero was genuinely exciting and the Kaien flash backs moving.
At least Grimmjow remains awesome and Nel starts to shine. Ichigo is being pretty failsome, but that's pretty much necessary for character development, so I'm bearing it. Orihime is going out of her way to be annoying with the classic "Kurosaki-kun!" galore, but I still like her and just want her to get her shit together. The spoliers I read for the time-skip (couldn't help myself) are giving me hope :) Anyway, I'm only 130 chapters behind right now :D As I said in a previous post, before I had my Bleach hiatus I read till somewhere after the Pendulum arc, but re-reading from the end of the SS arc was a good decision, because honestly, I could hardly remember what happened so far, especially in HM. Curious that I can still remember most of the SS arc even after a few years :P
As far as the Polish release of the Bleach manga is concerned, we're at volume 7 right now, and I can not stop praising the translation. It's serious and heroic sounding when it has to be and lulzy in the right places. Just perfect. And of course I am grateful to the scanlators for the work they do (without them the rest of the world would always be 9 million years behind the Japanese), but as they have other real life jobs etc., they can't spend as much time polishing the style as a professional translator, who gets paid for doing it, does.
Also Kubo's old-school art is lovely. On the one hand I enjoy everyone being bishified in the current manga, but on the other their faces used to have more individuality to them. It's really funny especially in the case of Ichigo, who was considered pretty ugly by others... with his current looks that just sounds ridiculous. Maybe if his looks had changed after the time skip it would have made sense (as in a teenager growing out of his ugly-duckling years), but it just happened during the SS arc in something like a month (which of course was waaay longer in real time and thus Kubo's style changed).
Well, rl has been a bitch with all my exams being even worse than I expected (with the exception of the one in psychology which was easier). So far I know I passed the Psychology one and got a 4 (5 is the highest possible mark), so that's pretty good (the only thing that sucks, is that if I ever want to get the right papers for teaching kids, I still need to learn children's psychology, because our course didn't cover that); unfortunately I failed the History of the English Language exam, and I'm re-sitting it in two weeks' time. I was expecting this to happen as the amount of dates, names and facts to learn for it is beyond me :/
As far as credit tests are concerned, the Second Language Acquisition one went decently (I still don't know the results, though), but the Pragmatics (it's a new branch of linguistics) one today went terribly. I really hate this subject. It's terribly boring and requires memorizing tons of definitions. What's more, the credit test looked more like and exam than a test... I'll probably have to re-sit this one as well. So, overall this exam session is probably my worst so far.
Well, at least now I have a bit of leisure until I start learning for the re-takes. I'm going to catch up on lj (I need to make a post on the epicness that were the European Figure Skating Championships <3), and bollywood.pl, write a bit in my film blog (which I never seem to be able to really take of the ground), tidy up a few fics I've written or am in the middle of writing, and finish catching up on the Bleach manga and a few fanfics I'm reading.
As far as less entertaining things are concerned I need to translate a German article for my dad and read the Portrait of a Lady for my American Literature class (not that it's bad, it's only really damn long and not very easy to read in English), and also write a draft for my thesis on Shakespeare for my Academic writing class. Quite ambitious plans for such a procrastinator like me. I hope I'll manage to do half of this :P
As far as Bleach is concerned, I got slowed down on my catching up because of my exams and watching figure skating. The manga itself, however, also got pretty dull. The HM arc will never be not too long. I really hate the Szayel Aporro fight. It's too long and the guy, who starts off as and intriguing enemy soon turns into an annoyance. He also uses every cliche trick in the book ("voodoo dolls", making the heroes fight a mirror match against clones of themselves, etc.). Also, dear Kubo, why won't you let Renji be great? Why design such an awesome character and then make him hardly able to hold his own ground? I did enjoy his co-operation with Ishida, but wouldn't it be awesome if he actually figured out a way to defeat Szayel without bankai? Renji is not THE brightest strategist in Bleach, but he's not an idiot either... Chad laying in a pool of his own blood for several chapters (after a fight with a very uninteresting guy) does not make me happy either. I severely miss Rukia, but at least her fight with Aaroniero was genuinely exciting and the Kaien flash backs moving.
At least Grimmjow remains awesome and Nel starts to shine. Ichigo is being pretty failsome, but that's pretty much necessary for character development, so I'm bearing it. Orihime is going out of her way to be annoying with the classic "Kurosaki-kun!" galore, but I still like her and just want her to get her shit together. The spoliers I read for the time-skip (couldn't help myself) are giving me hope :) Anyway, I'm only 130 chapters behind right now :D As I said in a previous post, before I had my Bleach hiatus I read till somewhere after the Pendulum arc, but re-reading from the end of the SS arc was a good decision, because honestly, I could hardly remember what happened so far, especially in HM. Curious that I can still remember most of the SS arc even after a few years :P
As far as the Polish release of the Bleach manga is concerned, we're at volume 7 right now, and I can not stop praising the translation. It's serious and heroic sounding when it has to be and lulzy in the right places. Just perfect. And of course I am grateful to the scanlators for the work they do (without them the rest of the world would always be 9 million years behind the Japanese), but as they have other real life jobs etc., they can't spend as much time polishing the style as a professional translator, who gets paid for doing it, does.
Also Kubo's old-school art is lovely. On the one hand I enjoy everyone being bishified in the current manga, but on the other their faces used to have more individuality to them. It's really funny especially in the case of Ichigo, who was considered pretty ugly by others... with his current looks that just sounds ridiculous. Maybe if his looks had changed after the time skip it would have made sense (as in a teenager growing out of his ugly-duckling years), but it just happened during the SS arc in something like a month (which of course was waaay longer in real time and thus Kubo's style changed).