An extremely weird recurring theme for me is: I start learning a new language, I read/watch/listen to a lot of stuff in said language, I get really into various cultural stuff, someone decides to make fun of me about it. Like. Can they... Not?

Listen, I know I'm often embarrassingly into things! It's a feature! I know it's probably hilarious to call me a koreaboo while I listen to music in Korean and watch Korean shows and talk about them a lot and so on but consider: how the fuck else am I supposed to learn a language

Like. Cultural background study is super important for learning a language??? You...you have to do that or you'll totally miss a bunch of stuff. You can't actually learn a language just reading a grammar textbook and making flashcards of kitchen utensil vocabulary.

I know people can't bear the thought that people know they like things, I know it gives them second hand embarrassment when I totally fail to be embarrassed about liking kpop or donghua or BL manga, and I know it's possible to be weirdly, racistly into these things.

But I'm never ever gonna know if I really do pull some white gaze bullshit because actually doing the reading/listening immersion and cultural studies part of language learning is inherently cringey apparently *sigh*.

This would be why English speakers suck at languages.

Anyway, with that rant it's time to do my Chinese flashcards.

Also if anyone has c-drama recs where the plot either is very easy to follow or isn't that important, that'd be handy: I want something to watch while I knit where I don't have to constantly pause and look up words.