I don't know anymore. Seriously. All I said was that I missed my first chance to join netball because I changed school for GEP, then missed my second because I had third language on the day of the trial. I only intended to make a point about how I could be doing something completely different with my life now, if not for chance.

And as always--as if obligated to--my sisters had to make me feel bad for saying something they interpreted as arrogant. Twisted it so it meant "I was sure I could get into netball". And ONLY since they asked, I was honest and told them straight that I did think I was good at netball. ("was" not "am" because at present I can't even run for nuts.) How else was I supposed to answer?

Thereafter they did not contradict me directly, but only because they could not, having no evidence on the contrary, so they played the usual game--spoke with condescending tone, made veiled insults via omission and implication. And I could not have blamed them for anything, because they hadn't spoken a single direct insult and could easily have denied any perceived implications of their words.

I am sorry; I really have to let these things out sometimes. I know I should have more confidence or should simply ignore them, but ignoring isn't as simple a matter as deleting the thought from my mind. I can only endure this habitation with the two people I hate most in the world, and hope it's only because they assume I trust them that they put me down so freely. I don't want all the world to be like this.

This again, in case my posts both present and past haven't made it clear enough: I abhor my siblings and I would like to see them dead, mauled if possible. I'd see to it personally too, if I cared not for my own life. But since murder is outlawed I will bear with it.

I'm not in the mood for all this. Why do moods always get the better of me?

Not good enough--not good enough, right? No one's ever going to look up to me if there are people like you around, people who get all the gazes though I swear I deserve them as much.

Let us not talk about ranks because we know they are in fluid motion. That is the problem. Fight, and keep fighting, and never hold the place longer than a minute or so. So what if I advance? You fight to tear me down. This is life to me, life invariable, even though I am the only one who's aware of all the battling going on.

Though I wish we were, we're not ranked by ability but by propensity to be loved. You know how to win. I am too selfish; I do not. You are generous and that is how you are loved. Maybe that's what's wrong with me.

Or maybe I'm only blinding myself to the talent I don't want to admit you have. I want to be greater but maybe I'm not and I'm fighting to delude myself because it keeps me happy to think I am better. Maybe because it's my only pillar of security, knowing I'm the best among my friends. Without it I believe I am nothing. What pleasure does love give that could replace the thrill of superiority? Recognition?

That's honesty. That's a secret I'd normally keep in conversation. Here where I don't know who knows, I think I'm more comfortable with saying.

another dream

So I just dreamt that I wrote a story that we went on holiday to some insular land where we instantly found ourselves trapped the instant we arrived at the mansion-like hotel. It was in an alternate universe Europe I think; we were residing by a bay with all the northern windows facing it. Every building in the place where we lived was no more than two stories tall. The bay was misty and had grey water, as you'd imagine it in historical fiction set in England I guess. Out in the bay was the border of another continent which really lookeed like a tall black block because of all the skyscrapers on it.

What happened was that we found ourselves trapped in the town with the mansion or something similar to entrapment; there was also someone stalking us everywhere we went, or rather we could not shake the feeling, even at the nameless fast food joint downtown situated in a quarter-circle space, where the floors were dirty and the plastic tables and seats weee much like the old McDonalds ones. The mansion was creepy; it was really just a series of large connected rooms sitting in a row, some were bedrooms with two beds and others were smaller chambers of no known purpose. There were doors on west and east walls leading between them--if you want to enter one you must travel through all the rooms from the entrance to it. There were some doors on the south wall leading into storerooms and such. Floors were red carpet and there were gold ornaments on walls and ceilings. The windows were in the north wall, and the backboards of the beds were against the north wall right below the windows.

One day while we were looking out into the bay we saw a new island had appeared; it was a small, tall island, covered in what looked like blood and made of flesh and bones. A single bone stuck out the top like a flagpole. Someone beside me told me it was Crow's Island and something to do with how we'd never get out.

Just then the creepy things started to happen, I only remember worms appearing from inside the carpet and unfamiliar people whom I knew were oue stalkers, and whom I attempted to hide from under the blankets of my room while they hadnt entered. Of course they saw me but left me there, and later I found myself stuck underneath till they were gone. It was the appearance of Crow's Island influencing the events, I knew. Like any other haunted ship story, but with an island instead.

Cut to a flash forward wheee suddenly I was the cockpit of a flying machine and someone had sabotaged the controls; I was the copilot to someone I immediately identified as the "main character" and the entire crew was in a frenzy over the controls not working because the main character had lost control of some part of the flying thing.

Cut again to some really meta scene where a voice tells me that it's actually the "main character" who sabotaged the controls; he's the last person anyone would suspect. When I got back into the plane it must have been an imagined scene (let us forget about this being a dream for a moment) because now the main character was alone and he was flying fine and I think doing his sabotage work. Who knows why.

Then bqack to the mansion, which had suddenly grown silent and deserted. father called for me from somewhere at one point. I remember jumping off the bed and carefully stepping around the worms to where he was, by some huge bookshelves full of books in another room. I must have been aware that I was inside a story I was writing (surprisingly close to the truth) and I told my father so, that I created this universe and everything here and that things are attacking only because I wrote it that way. But when asked if I could control it, I realised I could not.

Then we ran down a concrete staircase into our storeroom, where my mother was working on some sort of touchscreen controls connected to stopped air conditioner vents. I recognised them as flight controls. My father told me my mother had been working on an escape machine, but as long as we couldn't start the aircon vents up it wouldn't work.

Suddenly I knew a siege was upon us and we fled the room, as did our mother--father told mother to try again in "the place" where I suppose they planned to try again. She agreed and we ran our ways; I know I was terrified out of my wits. There were others there and I recall school-like settings where other people my age (or younger) ostracised me for bringing this upon them, but I don't remember when.

So I think my father and I got into the car, knowing something was pursuing us, and we drove deep into the messy parts of the town where roads with shophouses went any whichever way and each building was really a stack of shops built upon each other. We got off on a pavement and raced down some hidden stairs into a basement where there were two air conditioner vents...and the sound of humming. Through the slats on the backs of them we could see the blades spinning. And our touchscreen flight controls were wired up to them. My father seemed happy--and we quickly clung to the controls because there wasn't a seat, just the engines and the controls. He started it up, and I think the ceiling was already open from the start because we flew straight through it and up through the air, over the bay where I must have rewritten the scenery and the coast of America and the Statue of Liberty appeared in the west no more than a km away. That was around when I realised my father was the "main character" but it no longer made sense. We flew down into the place at the far end of the bay where we knew we could buy parts for a complete plane/weird flying machine because we couldn't keep flying clinging to the dashboard. (who knows how that works man, it was a dream.)

Cut to police driving down the street in the place with all the tall buildings, searching for me and my partner-in-crime (I think it was Hyder of Umbrella) for a crime I previously committed in this area.

Sure enough I saw the police and when we landed by the parts store, we ran away down the street in search of a place to hide when the police sirens came and the white car appeared. While in refuge in a skyscraper alley, I suddenly realised that I'd been stupid and I was the one they sought, so I rewrote the entire scene. Instead of us running off at the parts store, I ran off alone, along the canal alongside which the stores were situated, and went in down the ramp to a place under one of the buildings where one would expect to find a basement carpark--instead there was a church, lit like a shopping centre. I decided that'd be a nice place to hide and so I entered it.

Cut forward to a point where we had the complete flying machine and were flying down a route to our aunt's house, between trees--I suppose we were in Kuala Lumpur for that fact. I woke up around then.

anxious

I hate that I feel unhappy when you tell me of things that you enjoy. What is it, anger at undeserved pride? Fear of inferiority? Jealousy (the you-can't-have-what-is-mine sort)? I know I must stop feeling entitled, or superior by default, I must stop, must. Am I neurotic? I am too tightly-strung. I must learn not to fear obscured malice when all you are doing is sharing the things you love!

I admit it, I feel very much out of the loop among my closest friends.

confused or not

So many things go through me each time we talk, so many things to be said because I never had a chance to say them anytime, anywhere else. Yet I'm not sure if it's a whim that creates this trust, or an intuitive knowledge I was not aware I'd learnt. A message passed under the table, beneath notice of my conscious brain.

I know not what it takes to earn this brand of trust. A secret? A sharing? I am saddened when you go silent but the sound is so chaotic! Particles bumped down currents. I enjoy it, I am terrified, I grow bored in the lulls and I scream in the eddies, begging my eyes not to sting. All a confusing metaphor for conversation but that is how it seems.

Dare I say you trust me? Dare I say I have no misgivings at all? No, I fear you sometimes. I hate you. I wish you'd be quiet, then I wish you'd go on forever. So many things storming my mind, and I cannot speak a hundredth of them. We'll unwrap, unpick, unfold them bit by bit, I hope. I'd like.

Is it the novelty of peering into a new person? Does it run deeper? It is all so very fascinating.

stars

Tonight is a clear night. I could see all the brightest stars of the winter sky with only contact lenses, which were too weak for me. I could see the Orion Nebula too. It almost seems a fairy tale, all of this.

long live!

I feel sad. There are things I don't want to forget.

For all my insistence that my appearance matters little to me, and for all my vehement rejection of anything "girly", I am sad, just a bit, that I will not be dressing up again like I just did, not for a year at least. (It was so much money, too.)

For a while I was so proud of myself. For a while I felt I had no reason to think I was ugly. For a moment it mattered just enough for it to feel wonderful - the way I looked - and now it's gone, less than gone. It will not matter tomorrow, but I know I will look back on it with rue. The day it didn't matter that I cared, somewhat, about how I looked. The day no one would have laughed at my efforts.

I will not enjoy it quite the same way, not ever again, not until another event like this.

And by then, the faces that surround me will be all but different, the songs all changed, the table no longer 91 and possibly no longer round, no longer ten-seated. I will come to let it go just as easily as I would water I struggle to hold, and I will be as I always was--but I cannot forget that I once took such delight in this, the way I no longer will.

I cannot forget, also, this as the last day I will see some, the friends just close enough for tears, but not close enough for lasting effort. The ones who changed me and shaped me. I saw so many chances today and I let them all fly. But I took the ones I could and needed. The table mates who are dearest to me. The ones I love most truly. I think that is enough, though I might someday look back upon this one, and come to regret that I did no more.

There's no way to preserve it all exactly, not in words - not in anything really but in sensation itself, and full memory of circumstance - thought I'd like to keep this forever.

Today I was happy to be who I was.

I am actually bored. Not because I have nothing to do but because I'm not in the mood to do it. Not enough sleep? The likely reason. I must remember to get sufficient sleep even in times when I will not need it because I will want to have it if I'm going to operate at my best.

Then again all my best ideas come in the night (do they?); they come when the air is cold and when there's no headache-inducing light about. That's 1. rainstorms and 2. nighttime. Sad life.

I tire of raising my arms backwards to tie my hair.

I think I have a crush on someone.

competition arcs

I like when characters are ranked in stories. Ranked people, ranked groups, ranked nations. And I like when they compete to change rankings. I want to write one like this. People fighting to change judges' impressions and rearrange their rankings every week. Maybe through entertainment. Fantasy entertainment reality shows.

Really I like most speculative fiction involving competition of some sort. Racing, tournaments, elimination rounds, strange competitions of other sorts.

Any recommendations?

by the way, streampad

Also, as a side thought, I wonder if anyone has been listening to the music I dumped on the bottom of the page. Have fun with it? I put in all the calmest/slowest anime/game music in my library, suitable for BGM. There's not many slow pieces of music that I like so the list's pretty short.

Background changed to Miku wallpaper...except Miku is not visible.

My post h3s are not showing up. I'm sick of studying the skin. Maybe I will stop giving my posts titles.

black/white selection--psychoanalyse!

I've realised I always choose the white phones when there's a black/white choice. I've also realised I'm the only person in my family who does.

Plans

Okay, time to write about something more cheerful. I intend to write a pseudo-essay (read: fangush) about Neutral's escape room games. They're positively beautiful. Go find them, play them, if you have the time!

Side-note: 'A' levels are making me so impatient...

I hate you. I hate you because they love you! I want to be loved too. I am going about it wrongly. But I want to be loved, but I don't want to be false for love--I am a person who does not beget love. You are. You are the spark that draws the eyes. I must be a cockroach. A billion year old species, but the most repulsive alive by consensus.

I don't want to acknowledge you. I don't want to know you're more talented than me; I do not know you're more talented! I want to believe I am the greater. I am the higher. I, I, I swear I am; I must be! Look! Yet I'm more hated. I'm less, I'm less than nothing.

And I will never prove I am better either.

GAAAHHH

AAAAAH I guess some don't take hints. I hate discussing writing, art and composition with others who do it. I hate discussing mine, I hate discussing theirs, I hate it because I feel in every conversation as if they're trying to outdo me by making theirs sound better than mine. I don't like to compare. Whether or not mine sounds better, because I CANNOT FREAKING TELL. I feel as if we're competing with every word put forth.

Wow now I realise I've changed so much. I used to describe myself as warm, friendly, accommodating, open, bla bla bla but now I dislike the thought of my own clumsy openness; I've lost every liking for sentimentality, I'm quick to condemn. What changed me? Meeting guys, I imagine. Meeting people who dared hurt me just because I was not "competent" enough.

sigh, I make myself victim again

I get so angry listening, sometimes. I cannot be explicit because I know I may be wrong, but are you trying to outdo me on the grounds I chose? Punch a hole in my pride, the very highest pride of mine? Can I not enjoy a victory without anyone trying to drag me down? Must there always be people trying to best me?

I'm sorry for assuming I am a victim in every case but it is hard for me to see this setup in any other way.

Can I never rest quiet?

enemies

I once had a friend who liked me to hate her. She derived some joy from it, as if she saw hate as a beautiful thing, as if between foes and lovers the former knew the more profound joy. It was frustrating because it seemed she liked to be the one we all hated. I suppose it was a hateful love she tries to win from everyone, or perhaps did not try at all. No warmer than admiration, no colder than a blaze.

I can say it is the strangest thing to feel. Knowing an enemy for many years, he/she begins to grow into a part inseparable of oneself. A sentence of one's Definition. A strand of one's Being. We may hate with all our passion, but ultimately we cannot be without each other, because the other has become in some sense the person each is by being the person each is not--the person one strives to be not.

It's a simple matter of light and shadow, except to each the self is the light.

stress balls

Stress balls?! I do not have the slightest whit how to use them! Squeezing them only results in me clawing myself. Particularly if my nails are long, which is 70% of the time. I have two, one in the shape of a heart and one kidney (YES BODY PARTS but the heart is a typical heart). Squeezing them feels nice...until I feel my nails jabbing into my palm. Then it just becomes an annoying matter of trying not to squeeze without digging my nails into my palms. Aah.

I really do wonder if anyone else uses stress balls. I always believed that such "micro" physical relief only works for those who have already learnt restraint. But then I want to appreciate the gifts, so I feel I ought to use them......

element personalities!

Each element in 3 adjectives, MBTI, D/S and alignment. I will triangulate you a personality. I may also reuse adjectives.

 

Potassium: Hyperactive, violent, outgoing. ESFP. Dominant. Chaotic Good.

Calcium: Unshakeable, laconic, unbound. ISTP. Dominant. True Neutral.

Scandium: Cloistered, soft-spoken, studious. INTJ. Submissive. Lawful Neutral.

Titanium: Sardonic, confident, breezy. ENTP. Dominant. True Neutral.

Vanadium: Unrestrained, fiery, bad-tempered. ESFP. Dominant. Chaotic Good.

Chromium: Prudent, chivalrous, dutiful. ISTJ. Dominant. Lawful Good.

Cobalt: Haughty, quiet, unperturbed. INTP. Submissive. True Neutral.

Selenium: Calculating, adroit, shifty. INTP. Dominant. Lawful Evil.

Bromine: Loyal, strict, motherly. ISFJ. Dominant. Lawful Good.

Rubidum: Efficient, severe, ruthless. ISTJ. Dominant. Lawful Neutral.

Niobium: Curious, eager, demure. ENTP. Submissive. Neutral Good.

Molybdenum: Vivacious, cheerful, intense. ENFP. Submissive. Neutral Good.

Ruthenium: Sturdy, daring, tomboyish. ESTP. Dominant. True Neutral.

Silver: Secretive, condescending, evilll (secretly). INTP. Submissive. Lawful Evil.

Tellurium: Bloodlusting, self-destructive, masochistic. INFJ. Submissive. Chaotic Evil.

Xenon: Xenophobic (yes really), paranoid, responsible. ISTJ. Submissive. Lawful Neutral.

Hafnium: Compassionate, gentle, docile. INFP. Submissive. Lawful Good.

Thallium: Objective, stern, unrevealing. ISFJ. Submissive. Lawful Neutral.

Polonium: Intimidating, stiff, moody. ISTJ. Dominant. Lawful Neutral.

Radon: Jovial, indulgent, charismatic. ENFP. Dominant. Neutral Good. (though he IS maker of the law...)

Radium: Workaholic, obsessively neat, caring. INFJ. Submissive. Lawful Good.

Rutherfordium: Casual, creative, undemanding. Submissive. Neutral Good.

A discussion with someone about things just made me wonder: do I scare the people who read my blog? Or are all my readers sadists waiting to see what my next statement about murderous desire/self-hate will be, how I will destroy myself? Or again, do people read for the posts in between?

I realise I'm not popular because people know these things about me. That I'm unpredictable with my anger, uncontrollable, destructive, violent. I know that. I remember how it felt being in conversations I did not enjoy, already somewhat nettled inside but putting on a front and laughing along--and suddenly bursting into tears at the next statement and tearing up my homework or throwing things at the floor/people.

My friend says I should get diagnosed for IED because I may have it. And/or a range of other psychological disorders. All of it is speculation, but I feel abnormal. It is not normal to hate the success of your friends. It is not normal to be hurt by criticism to the point you'd self-injure. It is not normal to want to kill people because they're imposing on you.

again, :(

I get so disappointed in myself sometimes. Is it because I need constant validation? Is it because the only sort of validation I will accept is numerical, statistical, truly indisputable validation? It may be because I've learnt how easy it is to falsify any other sort of accolade. Not an easy way to live, or healthy, but it might be the source of all my problems. From knowing how things can so easily be false I refuse to believe things are real except when it cannot be fabricated. Hit counts, download counts, scores, official awards. I cannot settle for much else.

I wonder if the discrepancy is what makes my behaviour so puzzling to others. I may be praised frequently, but somehow it never strikes me the way it should, something to be treasured, something to satisfy me. I'm always terrified of lies and flattery, that others fear to hurt me. Of course I probably brought that upon myself by refusing to accept criticism either.

Wow I'm terrible...

I feel more like a failure everyday...

So many things make me feel like I'm a lousy person. This is another I finally pinpointed today.

Seeing my friends draw. Not daring to criticise them. Them criticising me. I never found criticism to be of any use, in all honesty. But I cannot tell them not to criticise me, can I?

One day in and I'm certain I'm screwed. I know what I've already done is not enough, yet I have not the drive, born of desperation for good results for most, to work harder, have no strength to push for a victory. Yet I know failure will upset me. I'm stuck and I don't know what to do at this point; tomorrow I have two papers I'm nowhere near ready for.

My opinion of pornography?

Haha. My father just walked in on me being on Tumblr with an Avatar picture on my screen. Clearly I'm supposed to be studying so I quickly pulled the laptop lid down. And he asked me questions thinking I was looking at porn. Ha, porn. If he knew just how much the sight of naked males scares me--and indeed how absolutely horrifying I find any part of the exclusive male anatomy--he'd probably feel no need to suspect me of seeking such questionable entertainment.

I long to hurt my siblings, to the extent that their disdain at my primitive methods means nothing. What does it mean, that you look down on my violence, if your lips are ripped at the corners? If your ears are off?

Maybe too I'd like to put them in eternal silence. I'd like never to have to hear their voices again, or see them. I'd really like to see them dead. See their pale bloodless faces. I want them behind glass.

Note to self: keep hating your family.

I will not decide I'm the victim because I'm sure none of us are. They say your family members are the only people you can trust, but really I think they're the only ones you can trust to be hurtful. Others will hurt too, but the family will hurt deliberately and unabashedly. What about love? Some ask. All's well and good with loving families, but there is no love in mine. There is only enmity, distrust, spite, aloofness, respect at best, no warmth where warmth there should be.

I know there are families out there in which parents have marital problems, abusive relationships, hatred for their children. They have it much worse than me. I am sure of that. I still dislike my family because I feel unwelcome here. It's my siblings in particular; it is likely they abhor me as much as I do them. I seem to have made an impression as "judgmental" when I'm pretty certain it's just a discrepancy in perceptions; what is "the passing of judgment" to them is only "neutral offhand commenting" to me--so it seems, from the conversation we just had.

In any case, I know I can be sure I'll be finding no comfort here when I need it. To get a picture of how we are--I have not hugged any of my siblings for literal years, likely a decade or more. Or patted them on the backs or engaged in any show of amiability. I have not comforted any of them for years either; they have not comforted me for years, a decade. When I think on the few times I voiced my woes to my sisters, I only recall accusatory statements being made in answer. Neither of the next two siblings in my family has ever praised me in any aspect. They have only ever had bad, critical, spiteful things to say--about my art, my writing, my music, my appearance, my habits, everything. I believe it is not in their natures to praise those close to them, those from whom praise will not buy benefit.

I'm more than certain they never loved me, and I know I do not love them either. It was a state that we slowly drew into over time; I might recall dimly a time when my siblings and I played together, but that's as far as our "love" went. I hate them; they hate me. That's the agreement we've come to.

trolled sister again, responded as expected

Also, sheesh. She gets so defensive when I make the smallest points about her mistakes! I suppose I do it on purpose though. Trolling! It's like provoking an animal with a stick--risk of bite, but too much fun watching her rile herself up over something I clearly expressed meaning no true spite. Ah, why, why. Do I hate her so?

rant n about my sister

Sister is soooo J. She disapproves of my brother putting scissors on the piano because "it's not a table". Oh it's such a sin.

Those days when I hate everyone and don't want anyone to act as if they care about me. Today's one of those. I feel like beating up everyone who talks to me. And anyone who moves in my presence, really.

machiavellianism fascinates me

Something chanced upon during semi-casual Literature mugging:

"According to Machiavelli's popular and controversial theory, being a successful leader has nothing to do with being a nice person or doing the right thing. Instead, it's about being inventive, manipulative, charismatic, crafty, and willful. Machiavelli said that rulers should appear good to the public but shouldn't be above doing some pretty bad stuff in private."

I like that idea. I have it in my mind to create a Machiavellian character for some future story.

on analysis

Just because a book is not a masterpiece does not mean that there are no pockets of literary brilliance scattered throughout. I believe there is at least something worthy of analysis in every literary work, if only because it is the study of artistry, and any work that enjoys any degree of success has managed to employ some technique of the art.

R3!

That aside, I think my favourite characters from The Tragedy of King Richard the Third are the two sons of Edward IV, Edward V (once Prince of Wales and then King of England before death) and Richard Duke of York. I do enjoy the younger's lines more. Who can't love the "parlous boy".

I'd say I'm mildly appalled

Wow, Umbrella is so self-indulgent.

I suppose the realisation comes after encountering a book of similar "flavour" to Umbrella. I might have thought it deep while writing it, but really any sense of "depth" is negated by my shameless partiality towards the segments I enjoyed writing, not all of much significance to the work as a whole. I guess that's where those 315,000 words sprang from.

I'm sorry to anyone who (quite foolishly, I'd think) banked any hopes upon the eventual release of this story, but I will not be letting anyone read it in full until I can iron it straight and clean it up so it doesn't look like the hangover of my delirious imaginings. I grant that there is some material I judge to be almost worthy of the eyes of others; the less meaty (spoilery) bits of it go here.

Meanwhile, I will be hard at work at it--after the 'A' levels.

I try, I drop past grievances, yet I cannot but hate you. Not for grudge but because you impose upon me. You behave believing all are meant to cede to the requirements of your ways. Perhaps the bias has already embedded itself; if our amiability must survive upon my constant acceding then I'm not sure I'm patient enough to endure such a friendship. It must be a fair exchange, else it would be servitude not friendship.

ouchhh

Today I coughed till my shoulders and abdomen cramped up. Well, that's a new one. Possibly the worst flu I've had to suffer (but surprisingly without fever).

blogskin revamp the second

So I did. I just turned my blogskin into Black Butler/Kuroshitsuji fangirl heaven. For those unaware, both of the existence of this manga/anime series and of my love of it, it is wonderful and delicious because of the art, aristocrats and opulence of the backdrops. Some works hinge on atmosphere. I adore such works. Black Butler does it flawlessly.

I also worked out a lot of CSS in the process, thereby spending an entire afternoon I should have dedicated to Umbrella Story alone (in interest of finishing with time for A levels revision). I imagine CSS is highly useful to know. Particularly for one interested in going into graphic design.

Now you will note the mainbox and sidebar are in greyscale...until you hover your cursor over them. Then they magically gain colour! But what's this, the pictures are still in greyscale? Hover again--colour and scaling! There is also a blurry-to-clear title hover effect when you view individual posts.

In other news, see the post below.

focus switch?

I'm considering turning this into my writing blog. Unless people actually like to read about my life and miseries and such.

Umbrella Story word cloud

We all know who the story's about.

my two cents regarding examinations

Prelims over three/four weeks ago, nothing between now and the 'A' levels--nothing official. I don't think I want to say much about the 'A' levels because really I find I care less about them the closer they loom. Pride, glory, reputation: I have fought and cried for all; none ever brought me joy; ah the tragedy, we sigh. 'A' levels hardly matter to my pursuits of these three, and I don't think I want them to matter to me. I've stopped having much of an opinion of which grades I want, and which would put me to shame. All I can think now, in fact, is that 'A' looks like a face.

Prelims

I should like my scores yet I know I should not either. LLC's presentation informs me that I'm in the top 5% of the cohort with my grades, and all without touching my notes (out of laziness to find them, no more). By grades this is the best exam I've done. By percentiles this is on par with my very first CT--my very worst in JC.

Of course I won't mope about; I'm more than delighted at my scores as they are. But one cannot help but regret laziness, once the results come.

I bring my Dean's List tally up to 8 appearances. Not important, but it does swell my heart to see my name in a public place (fame gets me like not much else). I complete my Biology A, no-fail and Literature Dean's List  full combos. Proud of it.

To think I failed three subjects at the Sec 4 MYA. (Physics, Chemistry, Math 2, Social Studies.) I imagine I'd be an "inspirational tale" to any sixteen-year-old foundering amidst low GPAs. Though it makes me wonder if I could have had better--better if my hard work had begun at a younger age, better if I'd given my all instead of my one-quarter. But then I know I dislike allowing systems and expectations to contort me, and if I will be great then I will be great by my own creation.

Biology: AAAAA

Chemistry: DAABA

Mathematics: BCCBB

Literature: BBABA

GP: DBAAA

'A' levels

My predicted grades are straight A's (WOW) but judging by my trajectory and raw scores, I straddle the line between A and B for everything but Biology and Math (where I vacillate between B and C).

I will not care much, really. Ultimately the examination is meant to tell the universities how smart you are, and how capable of handling the demands of the course--and there are many more ways to know you are capable than through your certificate. Especially when the courses of your interest are more or less unrelated to your academic ability. Half of those I'm interested in don't even require me to show my cert.

What'd the hard work go towards, then? It is a precaution. I take five shots; I may hit the target on none. Maybe good results expand the target. I can't possibly throw out these two years of learning.

Even then, I doubt bad results will make more than a superficial scratch on my life at large. I am of the belief that those meant to be great will arrive at greatness, whatever their certificates suggest. Those meant to be mediocre will not be helped by good scores earned through toil. If this toil must be sustained for their continual success, they will quickly be overtaken by naturals, and ultimately will tire of it. No happiness there.

I believe in going where you're born to be, not in fighting currents and pretending to be greater than you were made, masquerading work as talent. (Just as I do not believe in punishment or deterrence.) If I'm meant to be great, I will. Otherwise I will not question luck or fate.

New page

The fandom list that I had originally on Facebook. Mostly written in a half-attentive state over two years...

writing woes...

My main character is clearly too reckless, and I can't justify it. There goes Convincing Characterisation...

I hate when people claim to empathise with me on something that I like to believe makes me unique. Or something.

In response

Unfortunately, it will be terrible in comparison. Go ahead, keep your cash, take matters into your own hands, O Great One. Uh.

Are you only bitter because the "classy, sophisticated" music you like isn't as popular as the pop they produce? Well I may not like them either, but I'm not complaining because--it appears--I've come to an understanding you have not.

Entertainment is an image game, a competition of shock and spectacle--and whatever they have, they have earned. Which is why while I may dislike the music of X, I can also bear solid respect for him/her, for engaging the entertainment art this well, knowing the buttons to push, the routes to go. That's popular entertainment in essence; get over it.

Your favourite entertainers aren't interested in exciting the masses; they sacrifice mass popularity for class, and once you understand that you'll probably cease making butthurt remarks on the popularity of those who work for it. It helps that the music you listen to appeals to a select group that thinks itself elite. There isn't reason to hate on celebrities who are hyped for music you deem substandard, and particularly not openly in front of fans.

The Chronicles of My Search for a Song from My Childhood

This will sound extremely overexcited, gushy, fangirly and childish. I simply couldn't go without writing about this marvellous event that occurred today, perhaps my greatest victory ever (the way my child self would have seen it anyway).

You know the feeling, of having experienced something in early childhood--a book, a TV show, a song--whose title you cannot remember, but which has recurred frequently in your memory ever since, even though you have not encountered any guise of it in more than a decade? And not just any book or show or song--one that's so good that it's killing you with curiosity over what its title is?

Basically, for the past thirteen years, there's been one such song in my memory. When I was five, an anime series aired on TV with this astoundingly catchy theme song. The chorus had the sort of perky, syncopated, memorable melody that probably got stuck in my head repeatedly, and which I likely hummed along with when it played on TV. I know I remember another thing: flashes of cartoon images that accompanied the song during the opening sequence of the show, most associated with sunniness and a girl in brownish clothes.

Of course, this song was in Japanese. Which meant that I never had a chance to memorise its lyrics, however much I loved it, because I knew not a word of Japanese. So for a whole 13 years since, I've lived with remembering nothing but its tune--and sometimes, there's this desolateness accompanying the thought that I'll never rediscover this wonderful tune of my childhood and never hear it again.

And believe me, it has haunted me like a ghost. I've wondered about it throughout my life ever since. At certain random points in time in Primary School, I'd suddenly think of it, but without harbouring any hopes of ever finding it again. I lived with it I guess.

I remember trying to satiate myself by insisting in my mind that I was confusing it with another song and replacing the lyrics in my mind with Japanese. That's what my sister told me when I sang the tune to her, anyway--and it's understandable why she'd think so. Haha. Time passed as always, and I started to believe myself at times--that it's a figment of my imagination.

Even then, I continued to remember this stupendously distinct tune, which refused to be erased even after near a decade had passed--and though the memory had been thinned so much by time, I was certain I hadn't imagined it. I wondered about it in secondary school, and sang it sometimes for friends who knew me well and with whom the topic was brought up.

Then one day, they were playing song requests in the canteen--and out of the blue, this Japanese song began to play that sounded uncannily similar to this one. I eagerly ran about the canteen asking if anyone knew what its title was--yes, I was certain it was THE song.

Lydia, who was queueing at one of the canteen stalls, knew its title, and told it to me. But when I eagerly explained my excitement as being because "I've been searching for it since I was 5", she seemed shocked. I was then disappointed to learn, then, that it'd been released in 2005--not my song. Of course I later realised (after this song, Weeeek by NEWS, itself became among my favourite J-pop titles of all time) that the singers of the song I sought were FEMALE.

The song hung about in the periphery of my thoughts, and I believe it only did because I was so intensely desperate to find out what it was and HEAR IT AGAIN. I think I did sing it to more friends, though no one said they did.

It was around Sec 4 that I grew extremely desirous of it again--probably following my discovery of Weeeek. I thought I'd type the melody out on Noteworthy Composer and go around on FB asking my otaku friends if they knew where it came from, and then going about publicising it on Youtube.

I also formulated this most absurd and desperate plan that year: I'd become a famous songwriter, and release a song with the exact same melody and instrumentation as that song--and just wait for some Japanese songwriter to walk up to me and sue me for plagiarism of his/her melody. Even if I had to pay $45720984332 for it, I'd FINALLY have its title and know its origin! (Silly plan.)

Of course, I tried my luck on YouTube, and searched for the opening themes of every single anime I remembered ever watching in my life--mostly around Sec 4 and J1. I tried everything from Dragon Ball to Digimon to Magic Knight Rayearth (and some rubbish) but NOTHING! I tried this on two or three occasions, but never got anything, clearly, though I was certain that if I remembered the theme song then I must remember the anime.

Then came today--in the midst of my Preliminary Examinations, near my A levels--when I was on Goodreads and decided to add more old books to my list of read books. I added The Amulet of Komondor (read in P5), and on the book's page, I discovered a link to a "What is the title of this book" forum post, in which someone was searching for the title of this very book through descriptions of it.

Of course I was immediately reminded of my own search for this old song. The melody was still as sharp as ever in my mind. So deciding that TODAY was the day I'd finally get properly serious about it, and CERTAIN it was somewhere out there, I began on my search.

I believe I began arbitrarily by googling "anime theme song", and there found a link to a forum thread regarding favourite anime theme songs. The top title on the first post was Sakura Saku from Love Hina--which was obviously not the song I sought, but which stoked me because it was in a similar-ish style. I began on my standard theme song searches, going through series I hadn't gone through yet.

One of these then led me to a series of videos of title such as "Top 20 Anime Songs" "Top 20 Anime Openings" "Top 100 Anime Openings in 15 minutes". I thought those were my best bets, since they were compact collections of anime themes. I went through every single song in all these, but no luck.

I really hit on a vein when I found a staggering 1:39:00 video of the same sort. Except this one was "Top 555"--and frankly, 555 is such a frightfully huge number that this godly video creator couldn't possibly have missed any prominent anime in this list--especially not one popular enough to have been aired in Singapore. I decided I'd devote my next 1.5 hours to it, and I did, delving tirelessly through the horrifyingly huge collection  of theme song clips this guy had cobbled together in the video.

In the process, I also managed to draw up an entire .txt list of good-sounding songs that I picked up on the way, and it looked like this:

kouga ninpouchou
sky's the limit - shihoko hirata
pre-parade - rie kugimiya, eri kitamura
motteke sailor fuku - aya hirano
endless story yukari tamura
silly-go-round fictionjunction yuuka
brand new morning mizuhashi mai
god only knows daisanmaku - oratorio the worl god only knows
daydream syndrome marina fujiwara
Bokura no Kiseki -Ishida Yoko
Shang ri-la - Angela
tabidatsu kimi he - rsp
beautiful world - ai maeda
Canta Per Me - Kaida Yuriko
Irony - Claris
magia kalafina
Towa no kizuna - daisy x daisy
gekkou symphonia - akino and aiki
Melody - Shion Tsuji
Innocent Starter Nana Mizuki
Toki wo Kizamu Uta - Lia
Zankoku yo kibou to nare - aira yuki
gravity - m o e v

I took the gamble devoting myself to the 555 songs in the video, quite certain it was the only way I was ever going to find it anyway, and the closest I might ever come (bad timing for passionate whims, really). After 150 songs, I was already in that "meh deluged with J-pop" state. I'd pretty much convinced myself it didn't matter whether or not I found the song, because there was so much good stuff here anyway, and it probably never existed anyway.

I'd just gotten by the really pretty theme of CLAMP in Wonderland, and was making the standard mental notes about how there had been two theme songs from shows about swordsmen in a row. After CLAMP was some really retro-sounding thing from the 1980s, and the music faded straight into yet another J-pop thing...

Then OH MY GOD. It suddenly hit me that it was THE SONG--playing, there, like that. Note for note.

I was pretty much stunned when that voice sang my memory tune--sounding exactly as it did had in my mind all these years. It was just there, this song like any other among these things from 1985 to 2012--except not just like any other.

Immediate thought: VIDEO CREATOR, THE WORLD IS BLESSED TO HAVE ANIME-OBSESSED PEOPLE LIKE YOU. PEOPLE WHO WOULD WATCH 600 ANIME SERIES AND THEN COMPILE THEIR THEME SONGS INTO ONE GIGANTIC 1.5 HOUR MOVIE.

Best thing is, he/she of this video trimmed the song down to the chorus, so it got straight to the part I recognised. I'm so utterly thankful for that, you know--for this person's diligent work--that I want to fly halfway across the globe just to fangirl this person face to face? Can you imagine if it'd started with the intro? I may never have recognised it (though now I think about it, the intro melody is reminiscent of the chorus too)!

I think I spent the next half an hour listening to it again and again and suddenly having all those old synaptic links fired again. And laughing because I was so damn happy just listening to this relic from my childhood, all the dust brushed off--HERE, IN THE PRESENT. Oh that ecstasy!

Right now, I'm just wondering about how my life will change now this Great Mystery of Life that has haunted me since kindergarten has at last been solved (now I think about it, I'm pretty sure it's my trip to Australia that erased it from my mind). Obviously not much is actually going to change--and obviously too, I glorify this song too much. But it really is a big deal to me. It's rediscovering a crucial part of your life--not just as a child, but as a teenager too, and all through the time you've lived.

/fangirlgush

I realise I haven't even mentioned what the song is.

space

I never really had a sense of "territory". It's an odd thing I'm realising, because as I have discovered, a lot of my friends decorate their bedrooms to reflect their minds, their interests, their passions and such. It might be a sort of territory-marking, or simply a projection of the psyche in real, three-dimensional space.

I, however, have never known the experience of owning my own room. As long as I remember I've slept on that double decker bed, in the same room as either one sister or the other. For a short time I was alone, I slept in the study room. For a period too I slept downstairs with the piano and the french doors--but it wasn't my room, because it was the entrance to the house.

I suppose this in part--from childhood and through teenhood--is what taught me not to care about what I have and do not, and not to fight for control or ownership--and especially not to be territorial. Since I share all I have anyway.

Some people I know who share rooms with their siblings do decorate their "halves" as they please, too--with posters, pictures, cutouts, marks of interest. Both my sisters do, in fact--the chief reason there is a Justin Bieber poster in my bedroom.

I do decorate my desk area and my shelf. But I've been scolded so many times by my sister for "making a mess" on the wall that I don't add to it much anymore. I barely take up any more space on the wall than my sister's Justin Bieber poster does.

Basically, space allocation in my room is painfully unfair. She has an entire system of shelves while I have about three (on which are stored vampire novels, hair accessories, deodorants, weird creams whose purposes I do not intend to discover, etc.) while I don't even have space in which to keep my books. To top things off, her bed is near double the size of mine.

AND when I do store my stuff in conspicuous sight because of this immense lack of space, she complains about the "mess".

This blatant favouritism in space designation does not bother me much though. But of course, I never have known the idea of owning an entire space of my own. One which I can put to full use and decorate without the intervention of others, or complaints about "the mess"--nor known this thing called fairness in material owning. My siblings have always asked for--and received--more than me.

I wonder if this in any way accounts for my lack of a "territorial sense" regarding anything else--my personal pride, my appearance, my class, my school, my nation(s?). It matters so little to me "where I come from" or "how I present myself"; I simply drift to occupy whatever is given to me, and people will know--at least in material senses--that I don't require things and will take whatever I have.

It's a relief at times; it's saddening at others because of how disproportionately much my sisters get in comparison. It is not jealousy but the innate sense of waste--that I could be having these books and things I see online but will never ask for them--that upsets me.


Of course a very large factor in these matters is the differences in our levels of combativeness. I'm not sure how it develops, but both my sisters are the sort to shout and wrangle till they get what they want. Perhaps because of other things that led to the ingraining of these preferences and habits in me, I tend to be avoid asking frivolously--only sparingly--to the point where my parents think they are severely depriving me of affection, and insist on giving me things. The habits feed each other; now I want little and get little, but when I do get, it's normally in a huge splurge, and on something of little value to anyone else in my house--my tablet, art books, branded art materials, etc.


But back on the issue of personal space and the lack of it. One of my sisters, second in the family, has her own room, and has no problems decorating since she owns it. (By the way, you might like to know that the study room I once "borrowed" as a bedroom came under her ownership, and was converted into a full bedroom for her sake when she moved in. Simply because she insisted.)

My other sister, third in the family, and the one who shares her room with me, has no problems either. And why? Because her sister, namely me, allows her to decorate the entire room as she wants without arguing that the space ought to be mine as much as it is hers--merely because the proportion to which I care doesn't warrant taking up a case regarding it.

That is not to say it does not bother me. It bothers me deeply, and maybe it is this lack of space that has forced me to take to artistic representation to capture spaces I do not have. They express themselves through their decoration; I must do it through my creation. It's not something I'm unhappy about. Only, I'm not sure what other effect this has had on myself as a whole.

"surfing the net"

Ah, catachresis at its best and commonest.

internet relativity...

Time seems to pass faster online than in real life. It's this odd sense, the lack of temporal boundaries on your online activities makes everything seem continuous and unsegmented. And because we're so used to having our time so emphatically segmented in lessons or in TV schedules or in the school year, we think in regular pieces of time now. And the lack of segmentation online makes everything seem like it happened in the same hour, the same month, the same year.

It really does go beyond the mere senseless gaming or internet surfing that we're mostly familiar with; time also "passes faster" on a larger scale.

I only just realised that I shifted my tagboard onto a page two years ago. And I was almost certain I did so early this year! It's similar to pop music and how your music taste is not demarcated into years either even though the charts are. I cannot seem to comprehend that California Gurls was two years ago, or that I discovered Dispute from MapleStory near four years ago. Everything seems so recent. Is it me or is time accelerating relative to the rate at which I do new things?

Flyways

(not that great, but the natural thing that comes from my style nowadays)

I

Just like the swifts, who bargained with Darwin's Evolution and lost

legs for wings, you seem certain freedom will compensate loss

much the way you’d toss nickels in wells for happiness,

when pennies would suffice for the same in a gambler’s machine.

You say it’s the quaint sort of altruism the deities are entertained to see, and freedom is throwing life to luck.

I say you’re stupid.

Just like that, I think you are a swift

uncurling from the shards of rules you broke, ramming your head straight through them.

You may be bleeding glass splinters, but your smile seeps with green and teal

mantras of surety like "we will live gladder"

and "this is for the greater good"

which is ironic, because the latter is the motto of every villain who's ever lived.

You’d like to be a leaf in a book, but I do not know you're the sort to keep within binders without ripping them

clean. You'd burst the margins like rivers break banks and topple trees

leaving the adventuring swifts nowhere to roost.

Every year at thousand-mile flyways, we watch myriad birds break into apple song—

Not the sweet red kind, but unripe and emerald.

They see not lighthouses and garages on the coast, nor the crows’ telegraph poles

only pray new caves will spring out of the sand in time

to house them from crackling cape towns halfway down longitudes

when the world tilts nether ways, and it turns cold up here

and blazing hell down there.

If swifts knew astrology they’d realise their stars are good at least once a year.

But we know they cannot cease flying, and must die in flight too

because the better parts of their legs lie trophies in Charles Darwin’s cabinet, now,

and they make lemming brothers jealous when they fly straight into the sun.

II

I am not that.

I like to think of you as my frosted window, my tarot deck

Through which I may see but not see clear.

I like the kingdom.

The crown may strangle us all, and maybe to you I am only a puppet of someone else.

You’d like to make me your puppet, but that seems no better to me,

only an exchange of some dreary safety for some exhilarating peril.

Rather die slowly inside the rusting crown

than plunge straight through windows the way you do.

—

Note: Flyways are migration routes. Swifts have had their legs so diminished by evolution—in a trade-off between aerial agility and mobility on the ground—that they are no longer able to walk or hop as normal birds do.

is this madness or is this the way I was made?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaping_(psychology)

"The successive approximations reinforced are increasingly accurate approximations of a response desired by a trainer. As training progresses the trainer stops reinforcing the less accurate approximations. For example, in training a rat to press a lever, the following successive approximations might be reinforced:

1. simply turning toward the lever will be reinforced
2. only stepping toward the lever will be reinforced
3. only moving to within a specified distance from the lever will be reinforced
4. only touching the lever with any part of the body, such as the nose, will be reinforced
5. only touching the lever with a specified paw will be reinforced
6. only depressing the lever partially with the specified paw will be reinforced
7. only depressing the lever completely with the specified paw will be reinforced

[...]

The culmination of the process is that the strength of the response (measured here as the frequency of lever-pressing) increases. In the beginning, there is little probability that the rat would depress the lever, the only possibility being that it would depress the lever by accident. Through training the rat can be brought to depress the lever frequently."

Just a thought, but I imagine there are ways manic behaviour may develop from this sort of testing. Imagine the lab rat if the rewards were immense or even addictive. I imagine it'd begin to depress the lever repeatedly and incessantly, thinking more would come, in greater amount, for a hyperactive display of this behaviour.

Then imagine we condition the rat not to press so rapidly, by denying reward when it displays the abovementioned behaviour. If the rat bore sufficient cognitive abilities: its reinforced belief that frequent depression brings more rewards--and its conscious knowledge that pressing too frequently will deny it its reward--must begin to frustrate it eventually. Because it must press to be rewarded, but patiently, and not manically.

If I were the rat that'd drive me quite mad. I'd begin to hate my world and have delusions about reality and myself. But that is how the real world works; we aren't caged, and there is no "outside"--just as the rat, surely, believes.

---

I really do wonder if I have Intermittent Explosive Disorder. (Capitalisation makes it look so much more disease-like.)

I feel as if the symptoms described are the exact ones I suffer. This damaging of property and causing harm to myself and others, on impulse. This unreasonable anger that is completely disproportionate to the provocation. The way it seizes me at random, and suddenly, and stirs the most violent of desires in me...

self-indulgent rant post

I feel inferior and angry for it. But it is a selfish thing, to feel inferior and feel it openly, and even more selfish to tell others of it because it plagues no one else. And I cannot speak of it to anyone--though speaking to the causers of it is unfortunately the only likely way the problem will be solved. I just cannot, and must live with this weight.

(As I have discovered, the best way to deal with it is to write my sentiments down, somewhere where they may potentially be discovered by those whom this concerns, but otherwise cannot be accused of intentionally bringing up a stupid and self-indulgent topic like this for discussion.)

I felt this insecurity come into existence last year, perhaps coinciding with my sudden and strange desire to do well, and succeed academically. Which was spurred by my class, of course. With the consistent praising (both from my classmates and my teachers), I began to think I was that great, that I was that capable, and I want to continue to believe I actually am.

But well, while I ascend to "good at the school level", they go on to be "good at the international level" which completely puts EVERYTHING I have achieved these two years to shame. I no longer feel glad for it, however glad it once made me. I feel so small and inferior and stupid for looking at this tiny mess and thinking it my glory.

Of course it is selfish to tell others to stop acting superior (or simply discussing things that imply superiority in front of me) just because it makes me unhappy, isn't it?

But right now, this is how I feel. All my best friends are acting like part of an exclusive elite club that I am not a part of. I am the only one not a part of it, because everyone else has been to Olympiads, both local and international, and they are constantly and repeatedly making references to experiences they had with fellow competitors and in competition, doing "prac rounds" and "theory rounds" and exalting the competitors who were particularly successful and praising each other and then reciprocating the praise because all of them are certified brilliant and have entitlement to this sense of fraternity amongst themselves. Companions in certified brilliance.

Which is understandable, since all of them are familiar with the experience and the glorification, of course, and have a right to praise each other. Which is why I say it's insufferable of me to have gripes over such a thing.

That is not all. They are constantly discussing their applications to top universities worldwide, and while I have far less of an issue with this, it's still discomfiting when they do because I can say nothing without mentioning the completely dull topic of How I Do Not Aspire Towards Anything Higher Than Local Education Because I See No Need. No one's interested in discussing something like that, and they have nothing to say to encourage me, and nothing to say in empathy either.

Basically I am trapped outside the conversation whenever either of these topics turns up. And in addition to that I must spend that same time brooding over my sickening and pitiful inferiority. And watching other more agreeable friends praise their hearts out regarding how something's impossible for those "without an Olympiad medal" and feeling as if they are casting blanket praises over the entire group. Not realising they don't touch me, of course. And are conversely condemning me.

They all have reasons to feel elite and superior. I do not. I am honestly and absolutely the most untalented and undecorated member of my circle. I simply look lousy beside them. And feel lousy too.

Frankly I am not talented. But I am convinced I am no stupider than they are, whether or not certification speaks of otherwise. That is why it hurts when they behave as if they are superior. I do not want to believe I am inferior. I do not want them to believe I am inferior. I want to believe I am not.


I wonder if they realise I have absolutely nothing to contribute when they go off on conversations like that. Sure I have achievements from times far back that could equal theirs or something, but to bring them up for nothing but the sake of fitting in would be contrived and obviously attempts to bring myself to a level I am not at.

Of course, there's absolutely nothing to praise about me. I'm not a genius, at least to them. I'm not talented. When I "excel" at something, suddenly everyone wants to be better than me at it. While they seem to love each other's talents to death, they don't honour any "talent" I may have. Maybe because I don't have any accolades for them.

They only seem to want to make my "talent" look pitiful. And in part, I think I am afraid to fight this current. I don't want to show off before them, for fear of appearing self-centred, and for fear that they'll try to put it down, as usual, by criticising me instead.

I do want praise. I love praise. Maybe I've made them afraid of praising me, because of how I vehemently deny it each time. Maybe. Maybe my own selfishness and fear of acknowledging them has similarly made them reciprocate by not acknowledging me. I'm terribly sorry, but I really need to know. I don't know what it is about me that makes them hate me so much.

Maybe, too, I've developed immunity to praise. I can think back objectively and remember many times people praised me. But the praise has been coloured by my brain to sound meaningless next to the praise of others. I don't understand it. There's something fundamentally wrong with my mind.


Maybe I do not actually fear inferiority, but something worse, more telling. I fear having fallen behind despite us having been level before.

Or maybe I never was. They all beat my by 10 marks or more at PSLE, didn't they? And I did fall miserably behind in Secondary school, till they were excelling in the high 3.7-3.8s while I languished in 3.0s, didn't I?

Am I stupid or am I merely unwilling to work hard? I want to believe it is the latter--that I willfully chose not to do well. That I could do well if I chose to. But maybe not, because this year, I finally decided to work, and while I know what I'm better and worse then them at, I feel I will forever lie in their shadows for what they have managed at the same time, outside of school boundaries, where I never dared to go all these years.

It extends into my fear of losing friends. Hearing my two best friends speak of each other like soulmates regarding plans that do not include me...breaks me. Especially when these plans regard their university choices, and I know there is no way I will ever be there.

It is all so selfish of me. I'm glad I managed to say it, or at least get it in text, in case I am unable to shape this feeling into words in future and cannot explain it.

Why can't they stop being proud and realise each is just riling the other in retaliation? It's sickening to know you're probably more mature than your parents are in the matter of communication. And all this over the position of a painting on the wall. Seriously.

tagboard update and stuff

I guess the Attack of the Bots has returned my attention to my tagboard. I've been wanting to do this for forever: new emoticons (shamelessly stolen from deviantART) have been added!

 = :B

 =  >< or >.<

= :3

=  <3

= O_o or O.o

 = boing

 = :/

 = :O

CARLY RAE JEPSEN'S UPCOMING ALBUM!

I did not expect to come to like her this much! Kiss seems brilliant so far. This is the sort of shamelessly happy, upbeat (and clean) pop stuff I've been longing so~

[A digression on the topic of pop music: I'm well aware that there are numerous people out there who are of the (rather strong) opinion that the only music worth anything is the sort produced with care--immediately excluding anything mass-manufactured by the Western pop music machine. And I suppose I can understand that sentiment--that was purist me, before Sec 3, and when I say I was purist I mean I was CLASSICAL OR NOTHING, FOLKS. 

While I can see, and sometimes agree (especially with regards to rap) with the opinion that much mainstream pop (or anything formed of loops, lazy singing and autotune) is worth little more than titillating sound--akin to the ring of a bell, or an inexplicable boom--which snatches interest for some time then loses it as fast, it seems simply unfair to decide it is all trash because it's shallow and simplistic. 

Mainstream pop music has its defining mission, as a genre. Just as Jazz is interested in sophistication and improvisation, Trance seeks to numb, Rock appears to promise and provide release in its intensity--pop is made to tickle the senses, to interest, to excite. And that is exactly what I listen to it for. 

And ultimately, who says it's entirely unsophisticated? Attaining that mindless, overjoying sensation is not a matter of looping any jumble of beats and playing one-note instrument tracks over them. It's an art, to be able to stimulate so intensely. The writer needs to study the audience, think about about what it wants. Coke wasn't invented through recycling of old ingredients from other popular drinks. Things aren't addictive just because you stir "instant addiction potions" together. (Except for MSG in food, I suppose.) A repetitive hook isn't going to hook every single time just because, oh, that line's repeated and those other songs with repeated lines became number ones. It must be crafted carefully to appeal. 

Besides, close analysis has turned up the conclusion that, generally, the hooks of phenomenally popular pop songs have melodies more complex than your average mass-produced pop tune. Yes, I do analyse catchy tunes, pick them apart, try to work out what makes them tick. The monotonous ostinato we associate with pop music just isn't popular. There's a reason Friday's lauded for being so hilariously terrible. Tonal variation is. Sixth and octave jumps are particularly exciting. (I'll mention also that melodies whose notes are 80+% within the pentatonic scale feature in an overwhelming majority of pop hooks--it's a good idea to avoid semitones unless you want something semi-depressing.) 

Overall I know there's no changing anyone's taste by pushing arguments, but it's just that I find it unfortunate people devalue pop music just because it's not "smart". There are times for your senseless autotune-, sound edition-, beat loop-heavy pop staples, and there are times for things more sophisticated. Times when you need that five minutes' numbing ecstasy, and that rich and unabashed instrumentation (even electronic) absolutely, overwhelmingly inundates you with such.]

Well yes I have been quite eager to express just how painfully much I love Call Me Maybe (annoying or not to those who dislike pop), but I didn't think she could equal that feat of a song! Carly is one who really has a feel for catchiness. Of course while I love Call Me Maybe to death, it was largely a song whose popularity I took independent of the artiste, especially since I doubted anything else could be half as good, let alone anything else by her.

What had me really start following, then, was her collab with Owl City (whose song lyrics have utterly transformed my life and whom I am unashamed to say I rabidly follow). Good Time isn't much like him in terms of style, but while his turn to pop music has upset a great many fans, I'm pretty overjoyed about that because 1) my favourite songwriter is getting huge amounts of publicity from this one and 2) it just goes to show that he can handle both the philosophical and the mindlessly blithe, two ends of a spectrum most other artistes choose one end of and settle at.

(Reminds me somewhat of Katy Perry, along a different spectrum, and yes, I do miss her old music dearly. Not to say Firework isn't absolutely spectacular. And for the measure California Gurls is another of those things I just get up and wild listening to.)

Well, anyway. That's when I began to get really interested in Carly and her music, mostly because of the personality she shows through her stage sense and gestures (which really allow one to predict a lot about one's songwriting style, believe me). Listening to the previews for her album Kiss practically sealed the deal for me.

Re: the actual previews of Kiss. Everything's CATCHYYY! There's something uncannily J-pop about everything on the preview. Which means AWESOME because I love J-pop. This is likely the first time I'm liking everything in a pop album (so far).

need to celebrate or something

Holy CRAP

Umbrella Story just surpassed 1,000 A4 pages.

1,032, to be exact--it passed the mark a week ago.

Someone shoot me now. What am I doing?! It's supposed to be Prelims next week!

brain wishes to speak

I wonder if it's just me, but then again it can't just be me. There are these strange images of places stored up in my head, which bob to the surface of my thoughts at the bidding of the most random of thoughts, even without stimulus. They vary in detail and "cinematography", if any, but all bear strong emotional or atmospheric colours.

They seem to exist nowhere but in my imagination, because I cannot seem to tag them to any specific existent places (though some are associated with certain regions, e.g. I have this recurring image of an unfamiliar school, with a quarter-circle foyer and always in still, windless late-afternoon colours, being associated with the area around Keppel). Yet I'm compelled to believe that they are not from dreams because they are too vivid, and because I associate them with certain other very realistic things (such as coming home from my own school for the abovementioned location).

I may have imagined them, I may have--but the odd thing is that fading of memory does not change them the way imagined places change when I do not touch them for years. These remain constantly the same, and every time I chance upon them again, they become as vivid as I remember they were in earlier years.

I'm not quite sure where these are, but it's interesting to think upon. Are they pieces of memories, the rest of which are lost? Do they come from places I've forgotten existed; are they perhaps from movies, photographs, fictions that grew strangely real in my mind?

There is a similar class of memories that hangs about in my brain: these are of places I've only visited once, or perhaps have not visited in more than a decade. I know where these places are, but the impressions have grown so faint I can no longer be sure of exact layouts, only certain colours and tinges in the air.

I wonder if the residue will thicken with age. More memories wandering?

Some have been with me since the times when I had a single-digit age. Sometimes remembering them makes me remember other times when I similarly recalled them. Smatterings of memory that mingle and mix at the edges, like paints on palettes, rather than staying divided and divisible.

As I realise, memories are not film-reels the way modern media portrays them, but singular flashes of sensory input, or moments that loop to create a scene whose details are unimportant.

It all comes together, and there is no actual process to the scene that forms the memory: flowers fall and the breeze is cold; there is a faint scent of roasting chestnuts from the road behind, children in the periphery. You see grey pavement and know the tingle of the skin that comes from a pretty wind, yet you do not automatically picture the entire walk from the city edge to the temple you meant to visit.

That is perhaps why I have no idea what these little satellites of sensory information are--making rounds in my memory, detached from the events that spawned them, without destination or purpose. Like transposons, those pieces of genetic information without any certain purpose to the organism as a whole, but which persist and are conserved in the genome anyway merely because they are able to survive.

These memories deluge me sometimes. I went for the RACO concert and the very final piece, which was veritably of cosmic scale, brought long chains of recollections of places, some seeming fantastical though somehow I am certain I have visited them before. Perhaps in fiction, again.

Ah, the strangeness of the human mind. How did evolution produce such a confounding entity?

devices

I was on Wikipedia, and began from "metaphor" in whose exact definition and usages my interest was aroused because of the poem I just posted below.

From the familiar realm of literary techniques (the Wiki pages for metonymy, synecdoche etc.), somehow I wandered into linguistics (suddenly, paradiastole). Which surprised me, because I'd always thought before this that I had no (lasting) interest in linguistics or any subject that studied the functioning of a language on a microscopic level.

In the end, though, I suppose they are all tangled together--language and what it forms and what it is formed of. A work of literature may only be beautiful when taken in its entirety--yet that entirety is formed of sections that build tensions between each other, thereby reenacting the world, or a likeness of it--and for those single sections the language is the scaffolding. A simple double entendre, a polysemic word, may set out the story's premise (Richard III anyone?). Some literary pieces are defined by singular sentences of superior linguistic construct, syntactic adroitness, deep dictional understanding. The language is the brick and the idea is the mortar: is that not why I cannot avoid studying the mechanics of the English language if I wish to inch up on any sort of expertise in writing?

Semi-relatedly, I realise I have been engaging all sorts of rhetoric and literary devices without realising that I was doing so. Anaphora is likely my favourite of them, or the non-religious English form of emphatic Semitic triplets.

P.S. paradiastole? As in, "beside the diastole"? And what's this linguistic meiosis?

some poetry

Thank you Jingjie ;A; this poem is so wonderfully lush and panoramic without being significantly lengthy; in thirty-odd lines it studies every glory of the world and--at least "it seems to me--encapsulates it within a person. I really admire that in poetry. The metaphors ("the sky tangled in your voice", "the storm anchored by/its own flashes") and personification in particular are so pretty~

After All This

Richard Jackson

After all this love, after the birds rip like scissors
through the morning sky, after we leave, when the empty
bed appears like a collapsed galaxy, or the wake of
disturbed air behind a plane, after that, as the wind turns
to stone, as the leaves shriek, you are still breathing
inside my own breath. The lighthouse on the far point
still sweeps away the darkness with the brush of an arm.
The tides inside your heart still pull me towards you.
After all this, what are these words but mollusk shells
a child plays with? What could say more than the eloquence
of last night's constellations? or the storm anchored by
its own flashes behind the far mountains? I remember
the way your body wavers under my touch like the northern
lights. After all this, I want the certainty of hidden roots
spreading in all directions from their tree. I want to hear
again the sky tangled in your voice. Some nights I can
hear the footsteps of the stars. How can these words
ever reveal the secret that waits in their sleeping light?
The words that walk through my mind say only what has
already passed. Beyond, the swallows are still knitting
the wind. After a while, the smokebush will turn to fire.
After a while, the thin moon will grow like a tear in a curtain.
Under it, a small boy kicks a ball against the wall of
a burned out house. He is too young to remember the war.
He hardly knows the emptiness that kindles around him.
He can speak the language of early birds outside our window.
Someday he will know this kind of love that changes
the color of the sky, and frees the earth from its moorings.
Sometimes I kiss your eyes to see beyond what I can imagine.
Sometimes I think I can speak the language of unborn stars.
I think the whole earth breathes with you. After all this,
these words are all I have to say what is impossible to think,
what shy dreams hide in the rafters of my heart, because
these words are only a form of touch, only tell you I have no life
that isn't yours, and no death you couldn't turn into a life.

alignment test

I think this will be my new addiction for a while. Not a good time to be finding things like this!

http://easydamus.com/alignmenttest.html

I'm apparently Chaotic Good. The category encompasses the wild heroes of lore who will do good in accordance only with what they believe and under orders from no one; such a romantic way to put it, but I'm nothing like that.

realisation about two of my original characters

More like the two original characters I've found myself obsessing over to the greatest degree, really: Ketara from OTDOTS and Ruthenia from US.

They're direct antitheses of each other. In fact, they're such perfect opposites I could contrast them point for point. A la biology essay questions, I could create a whole table discussing their differences and similarities but I'm sleepy and tables look bad on blogs.

Let's see...Ruthenia is a tomboy, Ketara is an effeminate male (in conventional terms). Ruthenia primarily demands things of others, Ketara willingly accedes to others. Ruthenia hates being told what to do and actively resists anyone's attempts to do so; being told what to do and doing it without fuss almost defines the entirety of Ketara's characterisation. Ruthenia is a selfish realist who sees the world as a cruel place and all people as being themselves selfish, but Ketara's world view is about the direct opposite--he is a selfless idealist who wants to believes the best of everyone and will not condemn. Ruthenia pretty much doesn't care about beauty, visual, aural, psychological, etc. while Ketara is easily amazed by the same. Needless to say the former is a sloppy dresser and commonly viewed as unattractive, while the latter is practically attractiveness personified.

Strangely enough, their MBTI profiles (this again!) are ENFP and ESTP respectively. Is that disparity in how they choose to process input and form conclusions (in characterisation terms at least), one through cold, calculative logic and the other through considering heartfelt concerns, really enough to set their personalities apart?

I suppose I've only covered the differences in their thought processes. Both are dominant (as opposed to submissive) types: they will take active steps to have what they desire, even if the things they desire seem entirely disparate.

(Or of course it could just be my differing taste with regards to main characters of the two sexes. It's no secret that I'm particularly drawn to people straddling the line between, and I don't just mean fictionally.)

I really should analyse my characterisation, it reveals things about my own mind, and it somewhat amazes me how real these personalities can grow (in my mind) after a few years with them. I know I'm guilty of referring to them like acquaintances sometimes. :P

~

君と出逢った
あの日が
始まりのSTORY

imaginary family

(click for big version)

Tree of the current Arcane royal family, goes up four generations. I cannot begin to imagine how and why the family grew so big. Though it cannot be seen from here, Aligon is the elected Arcane King and you can deduce the rest of the relations.  Funny that it's no longer much of "the Luzerno family" at all even if the story's centred around them. Lora and her branch are included because Lora is Aleigh's classmate.

quote dumping begins here

"It's also how you thank someone you hold in high regard," he said. 

She turned aside to hide her grin. "High regard, eh? High enough, it would seem, for you to have neglected saying goodbye to me for near three entire months." 

“I am sorry,” he replied. “You have, after all, been the epitome of politeness these three months.” 

“And you’ve been most deservingly humble, your Highness.”

Just a day in the life.