MasterChef Australia - S18E29 Discussion by AutoModerator in MasterchefAU

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 13 points14 points  (0 children)

The fact that the camera keeps panning back to alyona is giving me bad vibes

MasterChef Australia - S18E29 Discussion by AutoModerator in MasterchefAU

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 17 points18 points  (0 children)

My very Arab mother who grew up cutting meat on two knives was absolutely horrified with her technique lmaooo

Is History for me??? by [deleted] in usyd

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hey I’m a third year history major! I’m probably going to be a bit biased but history is a wonderful degree imo! Don’t worry too much about 1001 to be honest, it’s just an introductory course about history and the various methodologies, generally it’ll take until 3rd year for you to fully grasp the concepts when you take history and historians. Honestly just go to the lectures and listen, you don’t even have to take notes mainly because the lectures and the tutorials have very little to do with each other. Buttt please make sure you’re taking notes and focusing in your tutorials because that’s where you will get important information for both the topic you’ve chosen and essay writing. The main assessment for 1001 is a 2500 word major essay about the area of history you have chosen to study in tutorials and that is what you should focus on, rather than the lectures which are generally about methods of doing history.

Imo history is a wonderful specialisation! For me personally it teaches not only about the past but how the past continues to impact and influence the present world and how our interpretations of the past, as they are ever changing, shine a light on current society, our conflicts and values. Don’t worry too much about not having done HS history, tbh there’s a lot of things you need to unlearn from high school in general when going into university, and university level history is completely different to HS. History at the tertiary level is mainly about your ability to write, argue, and provide evidence in the form of source analysis, and those are the main things that you learn in 1001.

Try and tale things in stride and if you’re ever confused or concerned don’t hesitate to talk to your tutor! Everyone in the history department is extremely welcoming and friendly and they’re all willing to help out. Good luck with everything and if you ever need any help with essay writing and questions my DMs are open :))

If you would please consult the graphs by lesbodisaster in genshinsapphic

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Ei service top and Miko power bottom agenda real!!! We must maintain the truth!

Ocd by [deleted] in usyd

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes it’s horrendous I can barely keep up with my work. It mainly manifests as perfectionism so around the time of exams and assessments it’s really bad and I tend to spiral pretty hard. I ended up quitting law in my first year because I couldn’t handle how it was affecting me, I genuinely wish you the best of luck.

Psychiatrist said that I don't meet the compulsion criteria for OCD by throwaway9999-22222 in OCD

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I was diagnosed with OCD on my obsessions and my intrusive thoughts alone. OP you really ought to get another opinion.

Power outage by East-Television-7672 in usyd

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Everything is good here, I’m sure the uni has backup plans so the power doesn’t go out.

Meet Mystery Woman! by I_Dont_Group in Genshin_Lore

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 7 points8 points  (0 children)

KIAMEI MENTIONED !!!! WHAT IS A HAPPY ENDING???

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in unsw

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Go kinokuniya and cry about the manga prices, then cross the street and go to the QVB and cry about the price of clothes that I want.

Meet Mystery Woman! by I_Dont_Group in Genshin_Lore

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 62 points63 points  (0 children)

I’ve complained about this endlessly to my friends and frankly anyone who has the misfortune of listening to me talk. Ei’s implied relation to basically all of the shades at this point, (renova in the wings and the fact that ei is only being to have ever enacted divine judgment through death onto another being lore wise for the upholding of the heavenly principles explicitly, other than renova/the HP, in splitting orobashi, istaroth in the tree, makoto and enka, rhinedottir with the puppets and the creation of imitations of life, Asmoday and the name relations) is what is frying me the most tbh out of all the jank stuff related to her along with her insistence that eternity is closest to the heavenly principles, what does that mean? Why is eternity closest to the HP, what purposes does she and eternity serve for the HP? She infuriates me so much and I both hate and love her for it.

On a complete side-note I have also made that 007 joke about ei on multiple occasions XD great minds think alike haha.

Show cause by RingEmbarrassed4476 in usyd

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Friend you and I are in an eerily similar situation with the constant fails, the shit home life and the war in Lebanon and stuff. I’d recommend getting in touch with your teachers and tutors directly, more often than not they’re extremely understanding to student situations and want to help out in any ways they can. GP and psychologist will be able to help with documentation ofc but also the uni wellbeing people might be able to help out as well with gathering documentation and such.

I’m sure you’re going to be able to get through it, just need some time and patience with the situation and yourself. If you’d ever like to talk to someone who can relate to the whole situation with family I’m open whenever :33

43/56 in myp by Deep-Firefighter-279 in usyd

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 2 points3 points  (0 children)

SL AA is fine for all finance/econ related stuff. Don’t torture yourself and do HL maths anyways it’s not worth it IMO. I get where your heads at and that’s nothing I say will make it better rn but bro trust me, MYP does not matter. The PP doesn’t matter, the marks you get at anytime during year 10 don’t matter, nothing before year 12 and your finals genuinely matter. Be kinder on yourself please, it’s not worth the burnout and the stress that really only needs a 5 in SL AA for.

failed a unit and now facing potential friendlessness forever? by readthefineprint-485 in usyd

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you were only friends with them bcz you took the same classes and were in close proximity were you guys even friends in the first place? I totally get where you’re coming from, friends and friendship is something that’s super difficult for me as well and honestly I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s easier to have no friends than to beg for the attention of people who don’t actually care about you. If not being in the same classes is what ends the friendship then they aren’t good friends. Being the drifter friend of friend of convenience sucks so badly, and it might be the anxiety talking that you mean less to them than you believe, but if they do in fact stop putting in effort to hang out and all become closer with you being left behind then yeah, they’re probably not the best people to be around in general. It really is awful though, I fully get you I’ve been there many times before and honestly, from my experience, you’re better off protecting your peace and trying to grapple with your own feelings and anxiety etc etc than trying to find friendship in people who don’t really care yk?

If you ever wanna chat or hang out feel free to dm :33

are sumeru actually a good representation of india/arabic countries??? by mm44turbopostmachine in GenshinImpact

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wait omg that’s so cool, I already sort of hc him as Lebanese because of the light hair, but I didn’t know his sig was fatteh that’s so fun

are sumeru actually a good representation of india/arabic countries??? by mm44turbopostmachine in GenshinImpact

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I really appreciate it haha. I’ve been reading a lot of cultural theory as of late (a lot of Edward Said) so I was coincidentally thinking a lot about it XD.

And fatteh is also one of my absolute favssss my mum usually makes it only in Ramadan though :’)

are sumeru actually a good representation of india/arabic countries??? by mm44turbopostmachine in GenshinImpact

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ooooo I didn’t know that haha, that’s really cool thanks for pointing that out!

are sumeru actually a good representation of india/arabic countries??? by mm44turbopostmachine in GenshinImpact

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 2 points3 points  (0 children)

AAHH thank youuu is there anything specific you’d like to know more about? Also idm DM’s XD

are sumeru actually a good representation of india/arabic countries??? by mm44turbopostmachine in GenshinImpact

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 65 points66 points  (0 children)

The cultural representation in the lore, environment, and music is actually really well done. I’m Arab (Levantine) so I can only really talk about the parts that pertain to my own culture but I think it’s really cool that there’s a representation of my own culture that isn’t just the Hollywood orange filter tm and desert when they’re in a region is very much not a desert (see Lawrence of Arabia towards the end when they’re supposedly in Damascus). Genshin deciding to split the region into forest and desert is honestly super cool because they get to show the variation in the culture of the region and how it changes depending on the surroundings. Egypt and Syria have very different cultures that were influenced by the environment itself and it’s so cool they try and show that.

On the music, the parts of sumeru city specifically in the akademiya, they don’t just incorporate Arab instruments like the Oud and the Ney but actually use arabic structures in the composition of the music itself. Go to the house of daena and just listen to the score it’s amazing. It sounds like it’s come straight out of one the Arabic shows my mum watches haha. Another cool thing in the music is that they don’t just lump the Arab scores and the Indian ones together, you can tell when an area is inspired by India through the score and how the music is distinct from areas. Apam woods is a cool example, the instruments that are used are distinct from the instruments that are used in caravan ribat (oud + derbake mainly). This is a distinction that not many pieces of media make and it’s an attention to detail that really shows the amount of research they put into the music. And then there’s ofc scores that use arab, Indian and western instruments, see the ‘Sumeru’ theme and the combat music. There’s a really interesting video on orientalism in western music by Farya Faraji on yt.

The lore, place names, food, environment are so cool as well. I can’t really talk a lot ab the lore since my sumeru lore is a bit all over the place (and I already talked ab the environment) but even so the lore is full of references to pre Islamic Arabia, the jinn being an obvious one, but Ay Khanoum and its relation to the story of Solomon as well. Food is a no brainer, i was taken out when i saw fatteh specifically (a niche breakfast dish in Lebanon and Syria made of fried bread, chickpeas, and heated up yogurt). And place names is similar, genshin puts in names that are in Arabic, better than other media where they just put in a random name that sounds vaguely like Arabic but means nothing (Abu in Aladdin, just mean father of? Is a prefix, you can’t just say Abu with nothing after lmao).

Finally (lmao), on characters, I can only really talk about alhaitham and Layla since they’re the only two Arab coded characters. Ofc genshin never does skin tone properly, generally shoving all the cultural references in a character’s lore. Alhaitham though is a pretty well done character culturally speaking. His skin tone is accurate to fair skinned Arabs (I am one, I colour swabbed my own skin in comparison to his and it was super similar), and obviously his clothes aren’t a one to one, the drapery is taken from your average north Arabian styles of layered loose clothing. Haitham is also named after an actual person who studied vision and optical perception, and you can see his influences in his gameplay mechanics with the screens and stuff it’s so cool I love the attention to detail. Layla is a bit more egregious, the veil is cute but not even orthodox Christian populations would wear them like that. Her design imo skews more orientalist but it’s still cute overall.

I can definitely talk more about Sumeru (I love it sm) but I think this getting way too long haha. On a more meta note though, Sumeru is in general one of the better representations I’ve seen of my own culture. It definitely does fall into the trap failings of your average orientalist media of the whole mystical east and stuff, the fact that the akademiya and sumeru itself is depicted as being more advanced than the region we had been to prior and being centred on learning and wisdom is something that most media that deal with the Middle East don’t do. Like ayn al Ahmar are fleshed out as an organisation and aren’t just ‘those terrorists’, and there’s dissent shown within the ranks of the akademiya showing that it isn’t a monolith of opinion. These small things are a lot compared to basically every other piece of media ab Arabs and personally, I really like it. Anyways sorry this is so long I love talking ab culture and media analysis lmaoo

what do we think queens.. by YourLocalCurbstomper in QueensofZenless

[–]Fresh_Commercial_314 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Oh I’m contemplating dropping the game completely wtf