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.