Carleton University Summer Orientation

Things I learned at my orientation today:

• they have a Womyn’s Institute
• there’s a fee inside your tuition that gives you a complete public transit pass for Ottawa during the school year - something like half of what you’d have to pay going to school and coming home, except you can go anywhere ever, whenever you want
• there’s a fee inside your tuition that gives you complete access to all their sports facilities, including yoga, pilates, and martial arts classes, as well as two gyms, a dedicated cardio room, a large pool, squash courts, etc.
• they have like 7 places to eat, including a food court (A&W, Subway, Pizza Pizza, stuff like that), at least one dining service area - I’m under the impression that there is at least one other - where chefs stand in front of you and prepare everything from grilled cheese sandwiches to stir fry to pizzas to whatever your favourite ethnic specialty food happens to be - Chinese and Indian style meals were on offer today, a cafe inside the library (kinda like the Starbucks in Chapters, only on steroids), and a full service restaurant (waiters, menus, the whole deal)
• they have a book store that will not only buy back your books, but is now offering book rentals for about 50% of new retail price - you sign a contract promising to return the book a few days after your final - which may be a loss if you’re a good used book salesman, but otherwise everyone wins
• they have lecture theatres that… you may not believe this… STILL HAVE CHALKBOARDS IN THEM. I realize that with a much larger facility than my high school, it would be very expensive to update them, but like, chalkboards… and then slideshows… SmartBoards were invented specifically to combine these things into one beauteous creature
• they recycle pretty much everything for you, from batteries to empty printer cartridges, and then they actually use these things - I saw an LCD monitor made from what must have been the recycled remains of an old white CRT monitor, because there’s no way it was originally made that way
• after two years there, you can go on an exchange for one (or both) semester(s) to pretty much everywhere ever - perhaps I shall go see the world
• our school colours are red with black, which is unfortunate because I actually own no red clothing, but I own plenty of black - as far as I can tell red is the social stuff and black is the serious academic stuff? seemed to me like the fun things were red and the academic stuff was black, anyhow, so I guess that’s appropriate
• they have a computer science degree focusing on social networking and social games

Things I experienced worth noting:

• there will be a lot of exchange/international/whatever students, like seriously a lot
• there will be a crazy large amount of people in general, which is to say that people with all kinds of interests will be available to agree with you or simply be attractive
• I shared the empty spots at my table with a girl and her mom, the latter of which joked that she would e-mail my mom to say I had met at least one person
• I met an ex-Polish guy wearing a Rush t-shirt named Conred (pronounced Conrad of course) who assured me that the Polish are terrible, embarrassing people
• I really wanted some pizza for lunch but like there was nothing disgusting and unhealthy like that, although I did manage to find some french fries and had some cookies for desert

Yeah so I dunno that’s what I did today. I’m not trying to promote stuff or say my university is better than yours, like I’m not some super excited school spirit guy or anything. I guess I accidentally promised (more like sarcastically humoured the request) to go do Fall Orientation, for a cost of $75, which is called C U (Carleton University, get it) At The Circus and I have zero interest in that, especially since I live off-campus. And so my mom paid for that already and now I feel guiltily obligated to go and not enjoy myself. Allegedly it’s all non-drinking, which is to say they won’t be providing drinks, but that’s not much of a guarantee that nobody will be drunk. As far as I can tell I accidentally made my mom pay $75 for these things (go to the events thing) and like I might go see a good movie if they were going to something good. I don’t really want to go to the beach and not be with anybody or go to a concert if there’s nobody I want to see, and the rest is so un-noteworthy to my mind I won’t even declare my non-interest in them.

        Academic orientation will be useful, although I would have assumed that was for everyone? Carleton Complete may or may not also be informative, likewise with Expo Carleton. According to their “why should I bother” section of the FAQ Carleton Complete will make me a brilliant success so it had better be worth $75 alongside the academic orientation. Actually, I don’t care about the money even if I have to give my own money to my mom. Expo Carleton could possibly be a showcase of thing people from the university have done, as I know for example that we have our own art gallery somewhere.

        I’m not hellbent on being boring and not meeting anyone, don’t get me wrong, I just look at this list of events and feel very disinterested. Turned off, even, and I’m sure I don’t need to explain that. Of course I’ll go out and do things that interest me, if I know they exist and can find my way there. That’s why I’m going to go see The Holly Springs Disaster next saturday. I’m not worried about being awkward and out of place there, because I’ll enjoy the event regardless of my locally friendless state. I can only hope that my charmingly polite attitude and witty banter will charm people taking the same classes as I am, though they may not necessarily share all of my classes because of my wonky degree. Thus far, this is the only way I know how to meet people. Its effectiveness is yet to be determined.

        Oh, slight caveat: each of our classes seems to have a discussion board or something for the students in the class to get information from their teacher and make plans to study together and discuss material and whatever, where I know all kinds of things about being awesome and befriending people. I knew my years of lurking would be good for something in university!

Post-apocalypse

Before me, gears and cogs and parts for which I have no name turn and click into place as they have every day since I stumbled onto this abandoned warehouse. I haven’t explored every nook and cranny of my newfound sanctuary, but every day I find myself drawn to this room simply to observe this strange machine. I haven’t figured out what it does yet, but so far it’s the only… “living” thing I’ve found here. No people, no animals, nothing but this tireless machine. Maybe the people who live here are hiding in one of the rooms I haven’t found yet. There are supplies enough for a dozen people to live here for months, so it must have been inhabited once. The layer of dust covering those cartons of food and bottled water makes me think it’s been a while since anything  in this building ate or drank, but I’m holding out hope to find some survivors. It’s been a very long time since I last lived with sane human beings.

        It was purely luck that I found this place at all, and damned good luck at that. In the middle of a sandstorm, halfway to dead already, I saw a shape out of the corner of my eye and ran for it. The building has held up pretty well over the years since it was built, and I haven’t found anything that needs repair. Most buildings I find are little more than boards nailed together, shelters built hastily in the last few years since the weather got worse. This place is pre-war, maybe even older. Older than I am, at any rate. No one in my lifetime could possibly have found this much food and water. Nobody I’ve met could built a building this sturdy, since anyone with access to concrete and steel would have to be incredibly rich. Not really my social circle. Not to mention that machine. Few people bother creating actual machines now. Creating tools and re-inventing things to make life easier, sure, but never a machine that works on its own. Such machines are too complicated and time-consuming, and the resources too hard to find. Not to mention that many pre-war machines were designed to take the place of good, old-fashioned human beings. We do most of our own labour now.

        The more I think on it, the more I dislike that machine. Whoever once lived here seems to be long gone, and yet it’s still working for whatever unknown purpose. It has outlived its original purpose, outlived its true masters. Outlived the people who knew what it really did. I wonder if it might be the last of its kind, even more alone than I am. At least I know there are others somewhere. Does it find comfort knowing that it may still have brethren elsewhere, working towards the same strange goal? Or does it relish being one of a kind? Perhaps it doesn’t think at all. Perhaps it was built before thinking machines, or maybe it was built afterwards and specifically designed to avoid the pitfalls of those unholy creations. At any rate, it tolerates my presence here, and for that I’m grudgingly thankful. Or perhaps it can do nothing to stop the only intruder it has seen in years. Maybe the defense mechanisms only start when I steal from the supplies. My own supplies have held up so far, but if I stay here much longer I will have to take from the unused supplies of whoever once lived here.

        The sun is going down now, so I’ve returning to the machine room to see if I can understand it with closer examination. Looking around now, there’s a large wrench behind the machine itself. None of the parts I can see signify any particular purpose, and in fact the machine is contained solely in this room. If it were important for the survival of whoever lived here, there would be pipes connecting it to the other rooms  to transfer whatever it was creating. If there had been pipes, I might have thought it was a furnace or a carbon dioxide processor for maintaining the air supply. As far as I can tell, whatever it does is limited to this room. Except there’s nothing else in this room. Not even a power supply. What makes it run? There’s no electricity in this building that I can see, and it emits nothing to suggest fossil fuels or steam as its power source. The more I examine it, the more I think there’s no reason for this machine to run at all. I’ve never seen anything similar, and I don’t believe I’ve ever needed one. Whatever it once did must have been a luxury affordable only by someone who could afford all the food stored here.

        As I pick up the wrench from the far corner, I’m looking for obvious weak points in the machine. Places vulnerable enough to be smashed or cracked. One glass or plastic tube in particular loops from the crown of the machine to its base, and this is my first target. After a couple of swings, it shatters. Nothing comes from the broken end of the tube, as if nothing circulated through it at all. There was small burst of light when it broke, but nothing else. Looking around the machine now, the exposed gears seem to be the most vulnerable places. An old phrase my father heard from his grandfather comes to mind, and yes, I will be placing a literal wrench in the gears. I’m hoping to pry one loose or perhaps stop it long enough for pressure to build and destroy one of the many parts depending on its motion. After fitting the head of the wrench around an appropriately sized gear, I use all of my weight to try to dislodge the gear. With a grinding, sickening crack, the gear comes flying into the room and only narrowly avoids taking off my right ear. The flash of light nearly blind me this time, but somehow the machine seems to function without that piece. The walls around me look alien and strange in the flickering light that must be coming from within the machine, but I don’t feel threatened by it. I don’t think this is a fragile machine about to self-destruct. Circling the machine again, I see a plume of smoke rising from a crack in the side. It looks vulnerable enough to smash with my wrench.

        Upon breaking through the outer shell of the machine, there was a flash of light so bright that I was blinded for over a minute. When I open my eyes, I’m no longer in a room on the left side of a warehouse. The walls, so strange a moment ago, have disappeared completely. I’m in a bare room with white-washed walls, and before me is a ruined machine nothing like the one I just destroyed. I leave the room, but the warehouse is no longer a sturdy sanctuary. It’s much smaller than what I remember, and rather than concrete and steel, I see only white-washed wooden walls. The crates of food and water have been replaced by empty cardboard boxes. In many of the rooms dead bodies lie abandoned, dead from starvation or thirst. The other victims of this cruel oasis. It would seem that machine was integral to the building I saw after all. As if it provides any comfort, no other travellers will fall prey to this holographic stronghold. Perhaps my damned luck will help others more than it helped me, when they pass this building in search of better shelter.

        After a while, I found a room with no other unfortunate fools inside. I closed the door and sat down to finish off my supplies of food and water and wait for the inevitable.

So I realize that perhaps I’ve barely mentioned my current real life status here on tumblr. Since people I talk to all the time were unaware of why I was absent. Perhaps those of you who know nothing but what I post on my tumblr worried that I was dead, or that I had abandoned you. No, I was just in the middle of moving fifteen hours away from the city (more like overblown town) in which I was born and raised. From peaceful little Summerside, Prince Edward Island, where you could have found my house if I told you the slightest bit about me, I have just finished moving to Ottawa, Ontario, where I could give you my full name and you could never find me. Prince Edward Island had a provincial phone book. Ottawa has two, or maybe three, phone books to itself. And each of those is at least twice the size of the PEI phone book. Yep, it’s a change of pace.

        We’ve been all moved in and everything for a little over a week now, and it’s kinda weird taking all of the *stuff* from your house and putting it into a new building, where you will be living from now on. We didn’t get internet because we were trying to find a good deal, and we ended up with Rogers because Bell was hardly an option. Their good service wasn’t available here, and we wanted good. So Rogers it was, and so far I’m not exactly happy. But I’ll live. Life goes on. I have a lot of catching up to do, but I’m alive! Hooray! And I’m so bored that I could post every day if I felt like it! I even have posts pre-written to post, but I’ll try to space things out. Honest. I’m going to post one now, and then another tomorrow or the day after. Sound like a plan? Yes? Great!

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        If Serial Experiments Lain, Welcome to the N.H.K, and Inception had a threesome, Chaos;Head would be born. I can’t speak for the visual novel it’s based on because I didn’t want to change my language settings just to play it, but holy crap, what an entertaining show. Those of you who don’t like subs (hi vael) won’t be able to watch it for a little while yet, but it has been licensed, so yay.

        It starts with a series of unexplained events dubbed the New Generation Madness by @Chan (it’s full of less-than subtle references like that, but some are funny), starting with a group suicide and a man becoming pregnant. The hero of our story, Takumi Nishijou, lives in a storage container on top of a tall building, where he spends his time watching anime, being the best at an archaic MMO (why would the data for his character be stored on his harddrive, and furthermore, how could he play in an internet cafe that way…) and jerking off to plastic figurines. Takumi has no friends, goes to school only as often as he needs to graduate, and hallucinates that one of his figurines is alive and talks to him. His sister occasionally comes to his “base” to make sure he’s still alive.

        Then he stumbles upon the third event of the New Generation Madness, the slaying of a professor studying a phenomenon called GE-Rate. The killer is… a cute high school girl. Who suddenly appears at Takumi’s school the next day and claims to be one of his only friends. The plot thickens!

        Takumi’s pretty much nuts and the whole idea is that half the time you don’t know if anything is actually happening. He hallucinates pretty frequently, often erotically, only to hear someone say his name and realize it wasn’t real. Then these hallucinations start becoming reality, simply because he imagined them. Then girls with swords no one else can see start paying a whole lot of attention to him. Then he becomes a suspect in the murder of the professor, and then stuff gets really crazy.

        It’s only twelve episodes long, and honestly it’s pretty well paced. There really aren’t any boring sections where nothing really happens. It’s one mystery after another, and as the pieces start to come together it all works pretty well. Off the top of my head, I don’t think there are any loose plot threads. It just clicks in a really satisfying way, and I think it would be as interesting to watch in one sitting as it would be to watch it slowly and give yourself time to think about it. In the last few episodes, there were a few times where I stopped for a second to connect little details and figure things out. One thing it doesn’t do is patronize you - no big villainous reveal followed by “yes indeed, I AM the villain!” Rather, you’ll see a chat screen left open, and then a confrontation. No need to tell you what you already know. So I like that about it.

        One of the characters was tortured as a young child and developed some serious psychological issues, as well as her special powers. She sees the world through mystical fantasy terms, like Black Nights and Demon Kings rather than people with special powers and mind control machines. She makes several references to Cocytus, the River of Grief  in Hades, only one of several horrible and depressing rivers to be crossed. At the end of the series, she realizes that the rivers past Cocytus don’t make passing it meaningless; rather, they validate the effort as a proof of strength to surpass further trials. Having passed one challenge, one can clearly pass the next, and the next, if only through willpower alone.

        Meanwhile, in Synthetic Worlds, the author compares the endless grind in an MMO to the trial of Sisyphus, who was sentenced to roll a boulder up the side of an impossibly tall mountain. Only at the end of the day, as he neared the top, his strength would fail and the boulder would fall to the base of the mountain. The reason people enjoy the grind in an MMO, however, is because they aren’t simply crawling up one large mountain. They’re crossing an entire mountain range, getting the reward for each milestone they pass rather than only being rewarded at the very end.

        Greek mythology aside, the two philosophies are similar at their core. Having climbed one mountain, you don’t admit defeat because there’s a taller mountain ahead. Nor should you expect a grassy plain on the other side, because there will always be challenges to be met and problems to be solved. No amount of success will guarantee a worry-free life forevermore. However, we need to take pride in our accomplishments and relish the joy of success to get us over the next mountain. If you disregard what you’ve accomplished, then every further challenge will be a source of despair, one more reason to be miserable.

        That’s the way I see my life when I look back. With every challenge I’ve overcome, I’ve become a better, stronger person. In the face of every challenge to come, I’ll take what I’ve learned and I’ll work until I succeed. Forward motion. Constant progress. I’m not looking for a grand reward at the end of the road to validate my efforts. The results are validation enough. It’s just a question of how you measure progress. Every little step is worth something, even if you need to take a thousand more. Don’t stop moving just because you aren’t there yet. Run faster if you’re that anxious to arrive.

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        Hey there kids! Are you really tired of writing, and completely forget the point you were originally trying to make? Don’t worry about it! Here’s a fool-proof guide to making nice fluffy arguments that barely form a cohesive thesis but give you an opportunity to mention all kinds of neato things.

1. Think of something that, in some small way, relate whatever your last paragraph was about.

2. Mix far too many metaphors and sound fancy without being completely clear what you mean. Don’t worry, nobody will notice except your english teacher.

3. Repeat steps one and two until you run out of neato things to bring in.

4. Repeat yourself, either with the same or different metaphors, and maybe add something personal. Just to make sure people reading the rest of what you wrote think of the things you wanted them to think about. Also, if you get a little lost yourself while writing this part, that’s ok. It’s all about the personal discovery they have reading what you’ve written. Let them draw their own conclusions! It’s like Writing 2.0 - involve your readers!

        I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again, because I start writing late or I just get frustrated with what I’ve written but plow ahead because I want to get it out. I’m not going to rewrite this, and I totally want to plug Choas;Head, and I’ve acknowledged the failure so now it’s a learning experience for everyone. Also, plan your essays. Having a thesis is important. Having supporting points is a nice touch.

        Now it’s time for the bonus quote, yay! From Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson, the ninth book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. It’s a completely ridiculous series, and not for the faint of heart. I started when book 6 was new, and they only get longer. I think the entire series reaches my hip or higher now. I wouldn’t know, because I donated them to my high school library because I knew I wouldn’t have enough space to take them with me to Ottawa. Sad, because now I don’t know what to do with this book and the next, which will be the final volume. I can’t just keep volumes 9 and 10 on the shelf, but who could I ever give them to? They’re basically useless on their own T.T

        Also as for the quote specifically I absolutely love it and it was like the most amazing thing ever to read and it makes so much sense in context and the reference is obvious (in the book I mean) but it still makes me think of a badass person going around fixing everything and knowing the world is horrible and they can’t change that, but doing their own small part rather than giving up. Kinda like Scott Shelby in Heavy Rain appearing out of nowhere to solve problems and then just disappearing without needing any thanks. Kinda like what I aspire to be too. I want a fist full of tears T.T

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Somewhere, out there, you will find the purest essence of that philosophy. Perhaps in one person, perhaps in ten thousand. Looking to no other entity, no other force, no other will. Bound solely in comradeship, in loyalty honed absolute. Yet devoid of all arrogance. Wise in humility. And that one, or ten thousand, is on a path. Unerring, it readies itself, not to shake a fist at the heavens. But to lift a lone hand, a hand filled with tears. You want a faith? You want someone or something to believe in? No, do not worship the one or the ten thousand. Worship the sacrifice they will make, for they make it in the name of compassion - the only cause worth fighting and dying for.

I remember the other thing I’d noticed about Ottawa now. Air conditioning. In PEI, nobody has air conditioning in their homes. Businesses have it to at least keep things at a decent temperature. Here, everything is COLD. Way, way too much AC. Everywhere. Houses, hotels, everything is air conditioned to death. It’s terrible.

Also, slight correction: the burka is just the kind that completely covers the face. I haven’t seen any of those. Sorry for my failure at Islam.

Now that I’ve been here for something like 30 hours, there are a few things I’ve noticed about Ottawa that are different from Summerside, Prince Edward Island. They aren’t exactly pros and cons, they’re just things that have stood out since I’ve been here. Not so much culture shock, as I’ve spent a week here and a week in Toronto before now, and there are things I knew to expect. Just interesting things to note.

• There are bike lanes on most of the large streets I’ve seen so far. Without exception, there have been people walking, running, and biking literally everywhere. No one is worried about their safety, they’re just out for some exercise. There are also paths set aside for walking and such, in parks, near an experimental farm nearby.
• In any public place, chances are pretty good that at least one conversation in both french and chinese will be happening withing hearing range of you. I’ve also seen several women in burkas. Here’s the thing - where I grew up, there were fewer non-white people than there are individual cultures in Ottawa. Like, we had, perhaps, twenty to thirty non-white people in our city of 14,000. That’s not to be rude, or racist, or anything like that. That’s just how it was. Here, there are people from likely every country in the world. It was rare to hear a conversation purely in french in Summerside. Generally it was tourists.
• It’s very clean, and certainly extremely modern. Again, this should be no surprise, but the difference from what I’m used to is pretty striking. We passed a building dedicated to “geophysics,” which previously was something I didn’t know even existed. It’s just a change from places where nobody paid much attention to looking shiny and new because it’s not like they had competitors lololol. If you offered a service, it was probably just you unless they wanted to go out of their way. You just did what you had to do for the most part.

Ok I had more to say but I forgot because I started trying to plan stuff out. We found a comic book/board games/card games shop nearby, and an anime shop in the same little plaza thing. That’s pretty cool. I purchased All You Need Is Kill which is about a guy fighting an impossible battle against an alien swarm, but being reborn repeatedly and slowly getting better and better each time. I also purchased Harmony (I think that was the title) about some future Utopia in which no one wants or needs for anything and some people try to kill themselves by starvation and simply aren’t allowed to do so. It seems really awesome and interesting and when I’m done reading it I’ll recommend it if it’s worth reading.

First of all, I’ve had dreams before where Vael and I sneak into a guarded compound and he murders all the guards until we finally come to an vault in which Jhonen Vasquez lives and works in what is essentially a prison cell. Except it’s his house and he just does that for kicks or something. The first time this happened Vael was using a silenced pistol and went in and introduced himself, and I didn’t post anything about it because I completely forgot about it. There were a few more afterwards, and as far as I can tell we may have received some kind of missions to embark on and were returning to report or something.

        After having another one of these dreams last night, I somehow remember all of the others up to the point of speaking with Jhonen. I remember the infiltration and what weapon Vael was using, and if there was anything specifically noteworthy about what he was wearing. Because I can’t remember why we were sneaking in there at all, or what happened when we got there, that’s pretty much all worthless. Except I remember some of why we did it last night because I woke up not long ago so here I am typing it.

        This time, he was wearing a skull mask like the guys in The Town (it’s a movie I saw the trailer for, the name is worthless but go ahead and look it up if you want) and was using throwing knives. The mask had night-vision as well as lights, and while Vael mainly used the night-vision to snipe people in the head with the throwing knives, there were a few times he blinded them with the lights and surprised them.

        We get into the vault thing where Jhonen lives, and Vael removes his mask, and he greets us like he knows us well and is particularly excited to see us. Vael suggests something to Jhonen, who gestures towards his computer and asks why he would ever do such a thing, when he has everything he needs in front of him. Vael answers that the Jhonen he knew would never think that way, and leans over to calmly slit his throat.

        And then we leave, and everyone is dead, and I don’t know what my role was aside from being a passive spectator to a conversation without context thanks to my selective amnesia. I did not sneak, I did not kill, and I did not say a word. I was merely a silent witness.

There hasn’t been much to talk about at my grandparents’ cottage, and I’m not sure the drive to Ottawa will be crazy and exciting either, so this will probably be my only tumblr post until we get settled in sometime on tuesday. We’ll have the keys on monday, but we won’t have any furniture or pillows or anything - so we’re just going to stay in a hotel again that night.

        The only really interesting thing is that I worked on writing a letter last night, by which I mean an actual letter that will be mailed with stamps and everything. I know that must seem ridiculous, so rather than explain that to every single one of you individually, I’ll just tumbl the story and save myself some time.
Two years ago, I had two jobs and a girlfriend during the summer between tenth grade and eleventh. One job was a year-round part time job at a convenience store down the street, which I kept for two years straight. Generally I worked every saturday and sunday, with occasional shifts during the week. The second job was a summer job, working part-time at a summer camp for Canadian Parents for French. I had worked there the year before, and it was lots of fun, so I figured it would be alright this year as well. I had to work 7:30-12:30 every weekday, which meant going to bed early so I wouldn’t be tired. I ended up staying late most of the time to make sure none of the kids mysteriously disappeared, but that’s neither here nor there.

        Thanks to my two jobs, I had plenty of money that summer. I ordered a ton of crap online, namely a bunch of t-shirts and a dozen PS2 games I got on eBay for around $20 each. Having to wait a few weeks to get any of it kinda sucked, but then knowing it could arrive soon was always exciting and I was always really happy when I got stuff in the mail. After getting a particularly large bundle of stuff (I think I got a package of shirts and four games on the same day - they had arrived over the weekend or something and were all delivered on monday) and being super excited about it, my girlfriend at the time said that she wished she could get stuff in the mail, because nothing ever arrives in the mail for her. Simple solution for that: I would write her a letter! I ended up writing a second one afterwards, and that was all well and good because she got something in the mail and everyone won forever at mailboxes.

        Skipping forward about two years (minus a couple of weeks, probably), here I am again writing a letter to her. First of all, I have no reliable internet until we get everything hooked up at the new house, so writing a letter and mailing it is a fine way to keep busy and stay in touch. Second of all, it’s slightly more personal than writing an e-mail, so it’s a good way to let someone know you haven’t forgotten about them. I’m throwing a sheet of stamps in with this first letter to make sure I get letters back, so I can guarantee we’re both still alive for at least ten letters worth of time. I’m not sure how often we’ll write to eachother, really; I wouldn’t want to run through my initial stamp investment before the end of the summer. On the other hand, it’s not 1708 anymore, so it’s not like it will take months for our letters to arrive. Maybe we’ll send them when they’re a specific length, so if life has been terribly exciting it won’t cover much time, but if it’s been horribly boring it might cover a couple of weeks.

        Would you like me to write you a letter!? I can probably do that, but I make no guarantees about sending them regularly. It does take a bit of time to write a proper letter, and if I’m writing seven letters every week, I may run out of things to talk about because I’m spending all of my time writing letters. I can probably send you one or two, though, but only if you send one back! I have to know it got there, and I have to know I didn’t waste my time writing a letter to someone who doesn’t care enough to reciprocate D: