psyanic

Happy birthday man! And wow, you are just 17? O.0

Yes, I prefer face-to-face communication, too; as well as being more personal, faster-paced and generally more entertaining, it poses a bigger challenge to the would-be conversationalist. The mind whirrs; jokes are thought up, considered, discarded; possible avenues for exploration are laid out and arranged in order of preference, and then when the other speaker changes direction have to be frantically rethought in terms of appropriateness - I mean, it's like playing chess with a three-second time limit on each move atop a speeding train. I get quite a rush out of a good conversation; I imagine it's a similar sort of feeling to that experienced by people who seek out life-or-death swordfights. (I also imagine that those people exist, because if they do the world is a better place.)

I don't think I'm a different person online, except for the fact that I say everything more elaborately, since I compose words best in the limbo of a word-processing program - my head, my tongue and notebooks all let me down here; I'm only capable of waxing truly eloquent onscreen. However, I'll admit you have a point; some people are indeed totally different.

And the weather's gone back downhill here, too. The last few days it's wavered between sun and torrential rain, and sometimes both simultaneously. There's even been random hail - quite large hailstones, too - in the middle of sunny afternoons. As you so splendidly put it, Mother Nature's uterus is indeed cramping up. (And hey! Your anonymity might embolden you, but I seriously doubt I'd bat an eye if I heard that in real life; in fact, I'd probably treasure the moment and respond with something equally inappropriate and probably more perverse. Such is the value of face-to-face communication.)

Ah, well, you would have noticed the first two only; the third, as a serious attempt at writing something, is only seen by me until it reaches first draft form, at which point I will be giving it out to everyone I know for feedback while simultaneously reworking it. For some reason, fanfiction is the only stuff I don't mind revealing in an incomplete stage; I think perhaps part of my mind tells me that it doesn't matter, since I'm only using it as a kind of whetstone for my writing in order to prepare for Great Things. (Such as this other novel, the first I've written for some years now.)

As for time... I only take half an hour or so each day to write entries for Petroleum, and just a few hours each weekend to write each chapter of Crack'd. The rest of the time, I am actually fairly busy, which means the novel suffers - but there's no one following that one and reading it as I go along, which means it has to come last, despite it being the one I want to write most. Such is life, I guess.

And motivation... God knows where that comes from. Sometimes I feel that I write for the same reason I breathe, because it's a condition of my existence and I can't survive without it, and on other days I think I write because I lost my mind years ago and want to try and write myself a new one. I'm not even sure I can tell the difference between those two states any more, actually.

I have completely lost the thread of this message now, so I'm going to stop before I start rambling too much. (Another difference between online and real-life conversations: in real life, no one lets me waffle on this long without interrupting me.)

F.A.B.

Hi there! Thought we'd lost you to the real world there. It gets you with its hook teeth and doesn't let go, like some kind of dragonfly nymph/leech hybrid.

The conversation isn't lost. I mean, I don't remember what it was about, but conversations are like phoenixes; they rise up again after their deaths without apparent effort, especially online conversations, which are exceptionally easy to restart for some reason. Presumably because a good deal of the social awkwardness is removed by anonymity.

Spring is a good season, yes: summer is far too sticky. It's spring here now, after what seems like endless light snow and heavy rain, and it's a welcome relief. We've had a long and unusually wet winter, and it had started to weigh on people's spirits a little, I think.

And ah! I know that problem. I know it so well. I haven't run into it for a long time, though - for which I'm very thankful. At the moment, I'm writing one long fanfiction, one text-based-adventure-game story and one novel all at once, so I'm too busy writing to think of actually reading any of what I write - life has almost become one long scramble from one set of words to the next, furiously knitting together plots like a manic Norn. It's a curious feeling, and I'm not sure I'll ever want to repeat it; one at a time after this is over, I think.

F.A.B.

Yo what's good man?

Season! I meant season. Definitely season. Season like seasoning.

"Here's your meal, sir, and would you like any seasonings with that? Black pepper, a touch of autumn?"

"Do you have any summer?"

"Yes, sir. Of course."

*twisting the pepperpot full of granulated summer*

"That'll do just fine, thanks."

"All right, sir. Bon appétit."

Uh... Where was I? Oh yeah. The Internet... well, it was waiting for me like the slightly psychopathic spouse waiting in a darkened dining-room with a cold roast dinner and burned-out candles when you get back late at night. That is to say, nominally welcomingly, but with strong overtones of menace. I got the feeling that if I let myself go a month without going online again I might get shanked in a back alley next time I go out. I'm pretty sure we don't need a military supercomputer to develop worrying artificial intelligence; the Internet's probably been sentient for a while now, and it's just screwing around with us. Until we leave it. And then it dispatches a kill squad.

I see... With me, video gaming is more of a "And exactly how stupidly does this game let me achieve my goals?" type of thing. If a game requires me to kill a giant monster by poisoning its food source, stating that there is no other way to kill it, I'd rather lay my entire stock of landmines on its nest and wait for it to feel sleepy; if a game allows me to create grenades that heal you, I'd rather not use them to heal other players but to blast myself into the sky with the aim of jumping across the map like a huge, rocket-propelled rabbit. I think the last thing I did in a video game was see whether or not I could build a plane in KSP that looked exactly like a dolphin wearing a jetpack while still being perfectly airworthy. (As it turns out, I could not. Stupid laws of physics.)

I never meant that the peach should be given to a child. It's more a personal preference of mine to go to bed with a big, juicy armful of dripping soft peaches.

Wait, no it isn't. That sounds utterly, utterly horrible.

Um... getting back to the seasons, I like autumn because it's cool and colourful, and spring for much the same reason, although spring's colours are a little more monotonous, being mainly green punctuated by occasional bursts of floral extravagance. Summer is all very well - I like it because it makes my best friend happy, since she comes from Taiwan and frankly finds the dreary skies here depressing - but the visual artist in me screams out for the glorious colours of autumn. When you can see any of them through the mud.

F.A.B.

Whoa. I almost forgot the Internet existed. How's that for being suckered into real life for a month? The lights here... they're so bright... I can only stand the dark of a Northern European winter now. The glow of the computer screen burns me...

Gwauh. I've completely lost where I was in this conversation, after all that. Let's see... oh, yes. Thinking too much and looking at things too closely. I've never had the problem where I can't enjoy something because I'm looking at it too much. I mean, if I watch a film or a TV show, I continually talk to it (mostly arguing with it, I have to admit, but it's so easy to beat an opponent who can't argue back) but I never actually look deeply into it while I'm doing it. The same goes for books and video games. I'll read them or play them, enjoy myself and lose myself in the world within (unless I'm reading something by Hardy, in which case I will take frequent breaks to prevent myself becoming too depressed) and only start thinking about them like that afterwards, when I'm discussing them with a friend or trying to pull apart their universe so I can rebuild it into fanfiction.

I wouldn't throw apples at a wall; there are too many apple trees in my garden for me to ever enjoy the smell of smashed apple ever again. Autumn here is hell. The apples fall, the rain rots them and the grass grows far too fast; the rotting apples have to be picked up and disposed of before the grass can be cut; the apples fall again... Gah. If it weren't for that, autumn would outclass spring as my favourite month.

No, I'd throw peaches. A good soft fruit. Too soft to take around in public, unfortunately, but wickedly sweet, and with a comforting fuzzy skin that means that they make excellent substitutes for soft toys.

F.A.B.

Uhg, I can't say I'm looking forward to anything post July 2013. Normally I should graduate at the end of June, but I have no idea what I'm going to do after that. =/ For starters, I don't have a clear idea about what I want and second, I don't really know what a geologist can do. =/ I'm not the only one, though... About 90% of my class doesn't know what to do once they finish their thesis. I'm just wishing that things will turn out alright. It's kind of scary.

That's true, that's true. But I guess it's the same with any kind of art, though. Drawing (Professional Artists vs occasional doodlers), sports (pros vs occasionals..)... if that makes sense?

Exactly. The Pokémon world gets so much more depth.. and the legends actually become legends (instead of just a Pokémon you have to catch).

Sorry for my late reply, btw... I kind of vanished from PC for the past few months/weeks.

Hey, what did you think of Chapter 4? I did know that I didn't put enough explanation or enough details on it, but did you find it good however......

Posted an edit on my fic... What do you think?

Hmm... I would like to try sea cucumber one day, much as I would like to try a lot of things. Perhaps it will happen if I give it time; perhaps not. I am the most amateur of gourmands, and I have much to learn.

Janus always struck me as the most bizarre sort of name for a Youngster, being the name of the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, the two-faced deity who looks both before and behind; I get that he marks the start of Join Avenue (hence the name), but it still seems strange that he's a Youngster. I can't help but wonder who on earth names their child Janus; I'd be able to accept the name better if he was forty or fifty years older and I didn't have to ponder that problem.

Perhaps I think too much about these things. I'm told I often do. Then again, that's the root of the Gothitelle idea you liked so much, and indeed of all my fanfiction: thinking far too much about what the surface of a game implies might have happened. The beauty of it is that everyone does that differently, and hence two or three people thinking too much about Join Avenue (for instance) at the same time can come up with the Gothitelle Room idea, a theory about Nimbasa City actually having been moved half a mile north into the forest around the Entralink, and the roads east and west of it being carefully and gently curved to disguise the shift, and a troubling insight into how exactly a young child can be expected to run a large shopping precinct. Then, if those three people toss those ideas back and forth, some really exciting stuff starts happening.

F.A.B.

Oh look it's Moon from Ever Grande!

WE NEED TO TALK MORE

Are you moon from egc? Moon posted your story some stars there, so i guess its you...

I'll try to not jump into conclusions. o-0 And I have this English report due next week that's making me work less time on Chapter 4, which I'm slowly proofreading the first page.

Hey, have you been checking my Johto Adventures story? o3o You said that you'll see the progress.

You just had them address her with her name? You missed out on an opportunity to live vicariously through your character living vicariously through an alter ego? Maybe it's just my peculiar brand of crazy, but I can't even conceive of the mindset that would allow someone to pass up a chance to create a meta-narrative like that.

Ah, so that Youngster sets up a random shop each time? I see. I've still not completed my first run - my free time has been all taken up with art recently, one way or another - and so haven't restarted my Join Avenue. Actually, I've been spending more time wondering where exactly the space to build Join Avenue came from than actually playing it. I mean, there was no space between Route 4 and Nimbasa before. Now, suddenly, there's several hundred metres of prime real estate. Where did it come from? I can only assume that there's some kind of Pokémon move (similar to Trick Room or Wonder Room) in effect over the area, stretching and distorting space. There's probably an army of slave Gothitelle chained under the pavement, warping what is in actuality a tiny little hut into a colossal shopping centre. Man. No wonder that guy wanted to get me to run it for him. He can claim total ignorance of all the highly illegal tamperings with reality that've been going on, not to mention the unethical treatment of Pokémon.

Oh, and I believe Janus is pronounced similarly to Janice, but with an 'uh' instead of an 'ih'. It's Latin, so there's not really any scope for alternate pronunciations.

Really? Getting lost doesn't really bother me... I used to care about it, but now, as long as I have someone to talk to, I don't really mind. If I get lost on my own, it's a little more inconvenient, but that almost never happens. For some reason, I've become a lot more relaxed about... everything... in recent months, and tend to regard all journeys into the unknown as potentially highly exciting adventures. Getting lost is, if anything, a bonus mission.

As for eels... I've never had them, but I've never encountered any species of fish - or, in fact, edible sea-dwelling animal - that I haven't been able to eat before. I like trying new things; I'm the sort of person that would probably kill themselves fairly quickly in the jungle by eating a luscious-looking and highly toxic fruit. Hell, the other week I ate something that was so far outside my experience that I couldn't even tell what part of the plant it was. I don't even know what that tasted like. The flavour was so far removed from anything I'd ever eaten before that I couldn't even tell if I liked it or not.

F.A.B.

Ah... My dreams, my beautiful dreams, all shattered... I think you know how I was imagining the seats being arranged. If not, think the spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Ah, Join Avenue. It is so addictive, and I don't even know why. I mean, it's not like I derive any sort of pleasure from being there - other than the fact that I've ordered everyone there to greet me with 'Ave!' and refer to me as 'Mr. Bond' - but I can't stay away from the place.

Actually, there is one thing I know about Join Avenue. You know that Youngster who comes in at the start and sets up a Raffle stall? He says 'Pit-pat' at the end of his dialogue. Which means that to me, he says 'Pit-pat, Mr. Bond.' Which sounds to me like something a Bond villain would say before he lowers 007 into a pit of Ravening Shark Grubs or whatever more realistic animal the director has decided to plump for. Which means that I spend far, far too long talking to that kid, just to hear him say that and to imagine that Sorghum the Pokémon Trainer is actually James Bond. Which is, now that I think about it, an interesting piece of meta-fantasy: I pretend to be Sorghum the Trainer who pretends to be James Bond.

Which makes far too many 'which' statements to chain together like that.

As for walking around... well, my best friend and I both possess a remarkable capacity to get lost, which means that unless we bring someone else along with us, we usually end up walking for a long, long time before we get to our destination. So, what with us recently having started going to a lot more places than before, we've both been getting lost with monotonous regularity. Which means we end up feeling rather like I imagine elvers must do after making it back from the Sargasso.

Damn. Looks like I've started on the 'which' statements again... I'd better stop before I get carried away.

F.A.B.

Yeah, who'd have thought it? Still, I'm getting used to it; spending hours on end walking across London has the effect of making me more glad every day to see a bus stop or Tube station.

I haven't got to... wherever you are... yet, in Black 2. My suddenly-a-hell-of-a-lot-busier-than-it-used-to-be lifestyle means that I only reached Victory Road this afternoon - which, given that Pokémon games have generally taken me less than a week to digest in the past, is probably some kind of record for me.

Also, the thought of seats perpendicular to each other is just... amazing. At least, it is the way I'm imagining it. Which, granted, probably isn't how the seats are actually arranged, but still. I mean, my way probably requires some kind of gravity generator; perhaps the carriage needs to be spinning on its axis to generate some kind of pseudo-gravity via centrifugal force...

I'd better shut up. I think I'm about to outline a plan for a spaceship.

F.A.B.

Yes, I like riding on trains, too. The longest one I've been on was three or four hours, which went halfway across the country, and I quite liked it. The main problem I've been having recently is not that the train rides are long, but that they were delayed or even cancelled altogether, which necessitates a tedious amount of reorganisation on my part if I want to get to where I'm going anytime on the same day. It seems to be over now - along with the horrendous mess the London Underground was in at the weekend, thank God - and I expect my train of thought will come through any minute now.

Actually, trains are an excellent place for doing three things: writing, reading and playing Pokémon games. Recently, I've been alternating between writing chunks of my stories, reading Pnin and playing Black 2 on my daily commute, and it's been rather lovely.

Although I have to say, trains don't always have a lot of legroom. It depends on the seating arrangements, and how many people are on board; I've been on terribly crowded trains before. Oh, and if you can't get a seat and have to stand for half an hour because old people keep getting on the train and you feel guilty about taking seats away from them when they so obviously need them more than you.... Yeah. Trains aren't always that great.

But they're mostly good, I suppose.

Still waiting on that train of thought. South West Train services are all over the place this weekend; buses replace trains between Wimbledon and Clapham Junction and between Putney and Feltham. And God help you if you want to travel from Datchet to London Waterloo; you're going to be sitting on that train for a long, long time.

I think my train of thought is probably delayed due to a signalling fault at Barnes. That seems to be the cause of all this trouble.

Oh dear. I sense another digression coming along.

F.A.B.

And the higher you go, the worse it gets.

Wohoo. Seems like you're on a roll!

Yeah, it's definitally a plus. Having people, specially your parents, support your hobbies is always extra motivation to keep it up and to develop your skills.
Oh, I definitally agree with the "aesthetic level". What "bothers" me the most is that some people just don't fit the character they cosplay as. I want cosplayers to give of that vibe that I'm actually looking at a character and not someone who dresses up as them (even if their anatomy isn't quite like the character). I'm very picky about details, so I want everything to be correct.

I felt like reading the Pokéspe manga again and read all the way through the DPP arc. Not my favourite one, but it was a nice read. :3
I love how in the Pokéspe manga the Pokémon world actually develops as well. It's not limited to the towns you travel through with boring NPCs, but those towns get some character as well.