I was feeling a tad tortured over the fact that I couldn’t decide if I should participate in club activities or if I should just go home because I wasn’t exactly feeling like going. The whole thing being only once every two weeks makes me feel extra guilty for not attending, but then my friend gave me an idea: I should write something on the topic at home. I liked the idea, and here we are. The topic at hand is “getting rid of the feeling of being pissed off,” “vitutuksen purkaminen” in Finnish. So I thought of just the thing…
Author Archives: Penttini
Death Note (2017) – Far more amusing than expected
I am going to absolutely blunt here: it was shit. But it was funny shit. I’ll elaborate on that a little.
I understand that, for a movie adaptation of a long long series of something, be that anime or manga or any other form of media, some changes have to be made, especially when your target audience is from a very different culture to the one it was originally built for. But this? Who the hell were the target audience? I do not understand who this was supposed to be for: the fans, teenagers, B-movie enthusiasts? Whatever few references that they made to the original manga or the anime adaptation just felt cringey to me as a fan, so I don’t think that’s it. It’s a bit too gory for teenagers, but the plot and the use of shitty pop music absolutely makes it feel like one. So was it made for B-movie enthusiasts, among which I count myself? Perhaps, but even for that it was not very good.
The Bear and the Nightingale – Life in the Rus’ of 14th century
I finally finished The Witcher Saga a few months ago, after a decade of waiting for translations. On top of that, I found and started running a Pathfinder adventure path (a long term pre-written campaign) called Reign of Winter (don’t read the book summaries unless you’re willing to be spoiled) because of it seeming utterly insane story wise and being heavily influenced by Slavic folklore, and concerning one of the most well known of the characters in it: Baba Yaga. All of these things just falling upon my lap has lead me into just becoming fascinated by fairy tales, particularly those of Slavic origin. To feed this new fascination, I decided that I wanted to both read into the original fairy tales, and the history and culture of various Slavic cultures. For the time being, I’ve ended up focusing on Russia. So much so that I’ve even started studying Russian – something for which I’ve been looking for an excuse for a while. But before I started doing that, I bought three books inspired by said folklore: The Bear and the Nightingale, Uprooted, and Deathless. I decided to start with the first one on that list.
It’s got a very striking cover.
Some Splainin’ To Do – Part 3 (up till the current day)
Finally we reach the conclusion of this series summarising the events I’ve gone through over the past two or so years. It has seen many delays over the course of the last half a year which I will go into at parts in here. There isn’t much else to note before going in, so I’ll just move on to actually continuing on from where the last part ended, around Christmas.
Bat Tidings
Bat Tidings
The young girl, despite the admonitions by the elders, had decided that it was time she spread her wings a little, to explore beyond the borders set by the circle. “You simply aren’t ready, child.” said the one with white eyes, Talkar. What does he know, Zehnska wondered. Of course the world is dangerous for someone who can’t see! I know what to watch out for. Even the strong one, Khyxis, told her never to go beyond the borders, “The things that lurk out there aren’t something you can take on.” I know that, she thought. That’s why I stay far away. I can see in the dark anyway, so I’m not worried. She snuck out after dinner, after the elders had left her to do her evening meditations.
Some Splainin’ To Do – Part 2 (mid 2016 till late mid December)
It should be noted that some of the information given in this post may be “gross” or “too much information” (more embarrassing for me than anything else), so you should keep that in mind going in. Other than that, I’ve done all the prefacing I feel I need to do in the first part, so let’s get right into continuing on with the story, shall we?
Some Splainin’ To Do – Part 1 (mid 2015 to mid 2016)
Hi.
It’s been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. It’s been closer to a year and a half, hasn’t it? My inaction is quite shameful, but I do have some excuses for that.
It should be noted that I have decided on two things here: 1) I will not include any pictures here due to none of them feeling relevant; 2) The amount of explaining that I am going to be doing is so lengthy that it has to be split into two separate parts. The first part (this one) will concern my first university year. The second one will be about everything from there on until the current day.
With all that out of the way, assuming you haven’t been scared off by the threat of a lengthy post, let’s get to it.
How I Socialize OR How I Try To Avoid Being a Burden
I haven’t written in a long while now. Part of that has to do with me being horrendously lazy, but the other part has to do with me actually being busy with university and the social events it brings. These social events have been fairly important for my sanity already, but sometimes I just feel like I’m being a burden despite there really not being signs telling me that. It is most definitely something that I feel is wrong with myself, rather than anyone else. So. I want to write a little bit about how I socialize and try to avoid being a burden on anyone.
I like people. I wouldn’t want to hang out with people if that wasn’t so. More than that, I care for the people I hang out with; I’m interested in how they do and who they are. The best way to get to know people and enjoy myself is to hang out with them, but I feel like I’m being a burden at times. For example, when everyone wants to go to a club to dance and such, I go with them, but I stay out of the dancing business. I am then told, more often than not, that the people I am with don’t feel it’s right to leave me to my own devices while they enjoy themselves. I wave off their concerns and just ask them to enjoy themselves, which then relieves me of being a burden on their enjoyment. Or does it?
An Entrance Exam, Half a Year in the Making
So. I’ve not posted an update on the site in a long, long while. As one might guess from the title of this post, my excuse is that I had been, until recently, preparing for an entrance exam for nearly half a year – that, and the fact that I am a lazy sod. Whatever you think of my excuses, I care not for I am here to give you, the reader, an account of my recent adventure to the city of Joensuu. But first, I’ll say a few (paragraphs of) things about my studies.
Christmascaching in Finland (24.12.14)
You know how Christmas is the time of year that you’re meant to spend time with the family and just stay home? Yeah well, I spent a couple of hours geocaching before lunch. The lighting was great (the sun was actually visible for once), and the snow seemed like it was going to be gone soon enough, so I had to go get some pictures as well.
Having never parked around the area, I spent a good ten minutes thinking of how I should be parking my car when I got there. With the initial difficulties out of the way, I decided to wander in to the forest in hopes of getting a few good pictures before starting to hunt for the geocaches in the area.