i love that, at the end of the day, yu yu hakusho is a story about identity. not just who you are, but who you were; how those facets are changed by the people around you, good and bad; how you have to find the balance between them to discover who you will become—who you can be.
every decisive battle in the final demon world tournament is the ultimatum for the main characters to decide on who they really are: kurama has no choice but to decide if he is yoko or shuichi, and to negotiate which makes him stronger, or is it an impossible union of both?; mukuro urges hiei to use his jagan to “end [his] search—the real one—and find [himself],” and to find his reason to keep living when he’s told himself his whole life that he deserves nothing but death and suffering; yusuke’s whole fight with yomi hinges on a sudden internal crisis that renders him catatonic: he’s forgotten what he’s fighting for. and if fighting is all he’s ever done—if it’s the only way he’s ever expressed himself, and felt like himself—then what does that make him, now that he can’t remember what it was that made him do it in the first place? moreover, is he mazoku or human? (he’s both—this is obviously symbolized by the fact that his spirit gun becomes a blend of his spirit and demon energy; he is strong enough as one or the other, but at his strongest and most true when he accepts both.)
even kuwabara, who’s barely present in the last arc, has to make a choice about who he is; is he going to follow in yusuke’s footsteps forever, fighting for any reason, or is he going to grow up and fight for what matters to him, and to do it in his own way? the times when he does the latter are when he shines brightest—when he fights for love, he wins his dark tournament match against an unstoppable foe; when he fights for his friends, he unlocks his greatest power (the jigen-tou); where yusuke might have busted up seaman or even killed him, kuwabara shows him honor and faith, and this brings seaman to their side and makes him a valuable ally! it’s by NOT fighting in the demon world tournament that kuwabara demonstrates how much he has learned about himself and his values, and how very much he’s grown.
after it all, after all of the cool fights and saving the world and typical shounen stuff, yyh is about change, and growth, and identity. kurama discovers that, yes, he can be shuichi minamino, soft-spoken and loyal and noble and kind; AND he can unify that with his past as youko, cruel, calculating, capable of betrayal and hatred and murder (and worse—see elder toguro!), prepared for anything because he plans for everything, loveless, thinking only of himself. he can balance these, and become something new, someone stronger.
hiei must look inside himself and accept that, yes, the hatred and violence in his burning heart make him strong, deadly, unmatched in battle; but it is his capacity for that single flickering ember of something like hope that unlocks his greatest potential (he is never more powerful, many in the show say, than he was when he was willing to die for someone besides himself). shunned by his own people for something he could not control, shunned by his adoptive family for something he could but chose not to, he belongs to, and is loved by, no one, so he resolves to love nothing in this world that has shown him nothing but hate—but what drives him is not hate: “it’s longing—you just want to belong to something.” in the end, hiei defies his curse: he lives.
kazuma kuwabara comes to save the world in quieter, gentler ways; he detects earthquakes, he studies hard, he raises his cat, he makes his sister proud. (but still steps up to the plate for the next demon world tournament, battling alongside his friends for a better world.) yusuke urameshi finally learns who he is: something new, and different; something entirely his. and even after all that, he comes home.
they fight. and they learn. and they grow. and then, perhaps the most monumental accomplishment of all: they find a reason to live.
a fun thing with writing stories is that while i’m writing them i just go with a dumb title like ‘ghost condo,’ or ‘scuba skeleton thing’, something i can look at and instantly know yeah that’s that story ok.
and then i finish and have to come up with an actual title, and the story i’ve been thinking of as ‘ghost condo’ is suddenly ‘We Who Inhabit These Walls’ or crap like that. and anyone reading it wouldn’t know, but for me those stories are forever marked ‘scuba skeleton thing’
As some of y’all know, my dog had 10 puppies and now I’m attempting to rehome them. The area I live in is notorious for not taking their dogs to the vet, so I wanted to give them their first round of shots. On top of that there was always the fact I needed to get their mother spayed.
And today I discovered that one of the puppies has Pyoderma, and is gonna need weeks of antibiotics.
For those of you don’t really have pets, vet bills are expensive, and vet bills for 10x puppies is really fucking expensive. I was already struggling to be able to foot the bill for the shots, and with this extra cost I simply cannot afford it, and all of my attempts to raise money (including getting a job) have fallen through and most of the money I saved has been loaned out to help my mother and sister.
I hate asking for money and having nothing to show for it, but I simply just need help. None of this money will go directly to me – anything that isn’t used for her expenses will go towards paying for food and treats for the mother, the three puppies that will be staying with us, and the other dog who lived with then.
If you can spare any help, I would appreciate a whole hell of a lot. If you can’t help, but can reblog, I would appreciate that too.
So let’s say you’re in the same boat I am (this is a running theme, have you noticed?) and you’ve just got, like, SO MUCH STUFF that HAS to get done YESTERDAY or you will DIE (or fail/get fired/mope). Everything needs to be done yesterday, you’re sick, and for whatever reason you are focusing on the least important stuff first. What to do!
Take a deep breath, because this is a boot camp in prioritization.
Make a 3 by 4 grid. Make it pretty big. The line above your top row goes like this: Due YESTERDAY – due TOMORROW – due LATER. Along the side, write: Takes 5 min – Takes 30 min – Takes hours – Takes DAYS.
Divide ALL your tasks into one of these squares, based on how much work you still have to do. A thank you note for a present you received two weeks ago? That takes 5 minutes and was due YESTERDAY. Put it in that square. A five page paper that’s due tomorrow? That takes an hour/hours, place it appropriately. Tomorrow’s speech you just need to rehearse? Half an hour, due TOMORROW. Do the same for ALL of your tasks
Your priority goes like this:
5 minutes due YESTERDAY
5 minutes due TOMORROW
Half-hour due YESTERDAY
Half-hour due TOMORROW
Hours due YESTERDAY
Hours due TOMORROW
5 minutes due LATER
Half-hour due LATER
Hours due LATER
DAYS due YESTERDAY
DAYS due TOMORROW
DAYS due LATER
At this point you just go down the list in each section. If something feels especially urgent, for whatever reason – a certain professor is hounding you, you’re especially worried about that speech, whatever – you can bump that up to the top of the entire list. However, going through the list like this is what I find most efficient.
Some people do like to save the 5 minute tasks for kind of a break between longer-running tasks. If that’s what you want to try, go for it! You’re the one studying here.
So that’s how to prioritize. Now, how to actually do shit? That’s where the 20/10 method comes in. It’s simple: do stuff like a stuff-doing FIEND for 20 minutes, then take a ten minute break and do whatever you want. Repeat ad infinitum. It’s how I’ve gotten through my to do list, concussed and everything.
You’ve got this. Get a drink and start – we can do our stuff together!
WOAH THIS SOUNDS HELPFUL. I’M GOING TO TRY THIS IMMEDIATELY. Also, I made a chart for myself, but if anyone else wants it for reference (or if this is wrong and I misread you can tell me) here it is:
#can you imagine the poor lady who had an existential crisis over this tho#‘Dana. dana i don’t know the name#when I asked the name they just said to surprise them#dana what does that mean what do i do#who says that’
writing conclusions in papers is like the stupidest thing ever though like what’s the point of dedicating an entire paragraph to “so yeah i know you just read my paper but this is a summarization of what you read in case you need to be reminded about what you just read” like why can’t the paper just end
I keep seeing this post and similar ones, and if y’all’s teachers and professors have left you with the idea that a conclusion is a summary, they have failed you in a big way.
Your conclusion is your “so what’s the fucking point” section. You’ve given you’re reader a lot of info and now they need to know why they care. Depending on the type of paper you should be giving a plan of action, explaining how this knowledge changes our understanding of the topic, link your paper to other disciplines, suggest further areas of study, etc.
One of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever received is that if you can’t envision yourself dropping the mic and strutting off stage at the end of your conclusion then it’s probably not strong enough.
“So whats the fucking point” is more helpful than all 6 years I’ve probably been writing papers
you ever read a fandom post thats intended for seasoned consumers of a piece of media youve never even heard of and theyre carefully dissecting problems with the politics of said media and using names and making academic points and you have no idea whats going on whatsoever but you cant stop reading because youre already most of the way through an eight paragraph post so youre just sitting there like
AU where Ed uses those weird, uncomfortable tumblr insults when he’s fighting someone (and Roy’s just in the background struggling to fathom what he’s hearing)
bullshit central 