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Sounds like.... Dog.

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When I was young I was told that, being of simple mind and dull wit, the status quo would decide my role in life. However, I doubted her credibility, considering how foolish she appeared, using her finger and her thumb to form the shape of an L on her forehead.

Time moves on at it's own pace; and, dropped into adulthood, I took to independence excitedly. I committed myself to living by my own philosophy that life is best spent having fun, and that, while academic pursuits are worthwhile, a strong character is more valuable.

There is so much to take in and so many possibilities in the world; and so it doesn't seem unfitting to me to live outside of traditional values. Without first experiencing something, you can get no measure of it's worth. Without expressing the beauty of your soul, you can't expect others to appreciate it.

Have faith in your passions, and express them by having fun and enjoying your life in whatever way you see fit. Take what you love, and find a compromise whereby you can live your own way, despite the constraints of society. Jump at every opportunity and follow your instincts, because to be something unique you have to push the boundaries.

Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me

I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed

She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb

In the shape of an "L" on her forehead

Well, the years start coming and they don't stop coming

Fed to the rules and I hit the ground running

Didn't make sense not to live for fun

Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb

So much to do, so much to see

So what's wrong with taking the back streets?

You'll never know if you don't go

You'll never shine if you don't glow

[Chorus:]

Hey, now, you're an All Star get your game on, go play

Hey, now, you're a Rock Star get the show on get paid

And all that glitters is gold

Only shooting stars break the mold

Appeal for help

By Teto,

Nobody here has heard my voice in a long time. This is because, as of June 20th 2014, I have been held vocal hostage by a technospider. Not many people are aware of technospiders, or how many people are effected by them. Some even don't know that they are living with this parasite. My intention today is to spread awareness.

On June 20th 2014, I briefly visited the social media site Reddit.com, and it was from there the technospider came, and crawled in my mouth. It made a technoweb in in vocal chords and connected to the internet. I no longer have the will of my own to speak, and whenever I try, I only speak in memes. I cannot stop the memes, and now the memes control my life. No matter where I am; the church, the morgue, the room full of grannies, the spider will find a subreddit full of relevant memes, and control what I say. I have lost many friends, and am no longer allowed near primary schools. This is troublesome because when I need medical care I cannot tell doctors my symptoms, and must communicate through writing.

So this is the only medium left to me. I can't go through this hell any more. Until they find a fix for the technospider controlling my life, all I can do is ask this: Stop the bad memes. Everybody must stop doing memes as soon as possible. Rid the spider of his ammunition, and I will take back control. The memes must end. Please.

I want my life back.

Thank you.

"It's JIF, not GIF"

By Teto,

Short story. Warsaw is the capital of Poland, and through it runs a major river of Poland; the Vistula. We call them Warsaw and the Vistula, but in Poland they're, phonetically "Varshava" and the "Veeswa". That's what they call them. We don't, though; we anglicised it and made it our own. As far as we're concerned the Polish can call them whatever the hell they like, but we call them Warsaw and the Vistula, and that isn't changing.

The founder of Warsaw stood on a hill somewhere near a trade village next to a large river, and said "This town will henceforth take on the name Varshava, until the end of days."

But we call it Warsaw.

I've been wanting to start writing stuff, seriously or not, and Necro is inspiring me to just write stuff and blog it. Here's the first part of a mostly unplanned story. The first line will do as a working title.

------

My dreams were filled with wonders. It was as if, in sleep, I entered a world running parallel to my own. The responsibilities were more demanding, the toil less satisfying, but my life I lived in dreams was far richer than the reality. My waking hours I spent wondering what was happening on the other side. There were roads that stretched for miles, like fingers knotted together, holding in its palm the world it connected. The forests there were old; a great history of nature rooted toward the centre of the earth that we all shared. People took on more variety, embodying aspects of nature I thought only a shadow image never seen in full light, opposing my views of how people should be. New dimensions, new colour, new life.

I spent more time asleep than ever before. Some days I would spend a mere hour out of doors before escaping back to the dream, and before I became aware of it, I was spending whole days in bed. Days then turned to weeks, until I stopped taking note of my absence, and resigned myself to escapism.

If my own world had been that much wider, perhaps I wouldn't have let it fall apart.

An indeterminate length of time passed. My world pulsed back into view along with a low thumping on the door to my house. “Come out!” a voice called, “You've been holed up far too long! Everybody’s worried, and we need to know you’re okay!” The voice was frantic. Frantic? Fear and anxiety were never prevalent here before. It’s part of what made reality that bit more boring; that it lacked these features of human nature.

I pushed myself out of bed in interest. I shambled down the stairs, a little disoriented from the shock of waking life. Peeking out the window, I saw naught but the ocean, and silence in between. The lawn and path were overgrown with tall reaching grasses and weeds, bent by the ocean breeze such that they seemed to reach toward my house.

I pushed out the door, and a cold smoky air washed over me, sucked into my front room as if keen to escape inside. The air settled until it was unnervingly still. I’d never felt so uncomfortable stepping outside of my home. The world was quiet around me, but a sense lingered that I wasn't alone. The air in all its eerie stillness buzzed with a latent energy, ready to burst out.

But it didn't. Nobody was there. In all my tiredness it hadn't registered who it was that called me, and now nobody stood in front of my house to answer the question. Still I felt tense, as familiarity met with a new unwelcoming atmosphere, putting me at unease. There was definitely something wrong, in a world that had always been right before.

I struck out to fix my mind, wading through the heavy overgrowth, long left out of check by myself and, as it appeared, everybody else. It seemed the thick grasses covered everything, and the once youthful trees seemed greyer, older, though not too much time should have passed. How long can someone possibly sleep?

By Teto,

It's going okay. When I was about 13 or 14 years old we met a Polish couple who lived in Scotland for work. They were expecting their first child and they lived in a small flat in the nearest town. We met them through my brother, who worked at a hotel with the soon-to-be mother. My parents were fast friends with them; and remained friends as they raised their first boy, and then their second child, a girl. We've known them for 7 years. When their first child was 6 and their second child was about 3, they decided to move back to Poland. They stayed with us for two weeks while they readied themselves for the journey back home.

That was last year. This year I and my parents have come to visit them, in their two-room house in the country 3 hours south-ish of Warsaw. The first two thunderstorms of the year occurred on the first two days we were here. The time at the house I've spent reading or talking to the older 7 year old boy, who is insistent on playing LEGO, and built me an army for which he hasn't stated a purpose. He just likes putting together different people I suppose.

Back at home in the UK, bigots complain about the Polish taking their jobs, while scratching their asses and playing candy crush. In Poland the economy is such that it's four times more difficult to pay for anything, and if that was the case where I lived, I'd give a go at making money abroad as well, even if it did mean moving to a country where I didn't speak the language and couldn't locate a pharmacy.

However, despite the economic troubles, it doesn't appear to be as poor as it is. Driving through the countryside the roads are lined with new-looking houses of eclectic variety. Houses of varying colour and size sitting comfortably next to one another. This old two-room house doesn't seem so out of place across from a large two-storey house built orange and white with balconies and elaborate iron fence. Each house is different, and so none are out of place.

The thing is, in Scotland we have a wealth of council housing estates. Large areas occupied by identical houses attached to one another to fit as many people as humanly possible. Grey houses with grey roofs with small corner shops dispersed throughout to keep people from starving to death or running out of cigarettes. Whereas in Poland it's all private property, which has it's downfalls too, despite how much more interesting it is to look at.

The family we stay with have two children, and they don't expect to have any more. There is some kind of population problem in Poland, and the government insists on families having more children without actively encouraging them. Financial assistance for families raising children can be about the equivalent of £50 a month, and that doesn't make much difference for the raising of a child. People just can't justify many children.

There's a heavy religious presence here, and shrines for prayer are built what seems like every mile or so through small villages along single-track roads in the country. I can see one from the house. Abortion isn't legal here, yet when we stopped at a gas station on the way from the airport, I noticed they sell condoms at the counter where in Scotland they would probably have chewing gum or chocolate.

The countryside is mostly forest, with wild berries and such like. There are plenty flies and mosquitos, but nothing worse that I've encountered yet. Curiously, the mosquitos don't even bite me. Plenty days out without any kind of repellent and I'm unscathed while others swell up from minor allergies and scratch legs dotted with bite marks. Maybe I'm too sweet.

The family we're staying with keep chickens, ducks, a dog, and two alpacas. Alpacas are pretty gentle creatures that shy away from most contact with people or other animals, besides each other. They don't spit like llamas or camels are said to. They're incredibly gentle, timid animals. Good to have around.

Over the past couple days before now, the chickens' eggs have been hatching. So far there are three chicks hatched, and they're being kept in a box in the house where they're being fed, to save the mother the dilemma of whether to feed her chicks or keep warming her eggs. They were quite alright in their shallow cardboard box for the first few days, but the largest one with black feathers took to hopping up and out of the box. Thanks to him, all of them have been put in stricter confinement to keep them from running off. If a chicken can jump twice it's height at 3 days old, I shudder to think what incredible power a chicken of 100 years would possess.

Out here in the country most people make their own food and fields are divided into strips for individual people. People sell berries and local produce out of wooden boxes, sitting in overtaking lanes on the main road. For all the talk of crops without pesticides and chemical enhancers, it all tastes about the same, including the meat. Some things are the same though, like the presence of Tesco and Lidl stores. Lidl is much the same here as anywhere else; cheap, cold, uninviting. If the signage wasn't in another language, I wouldn't know the difference from Lidl in Scotland.

On the first day, before the thunder started, we escaped out for a drive around the nearby countryside with the kids, to escape the neighbour who didn't warn that he was planning to kill a pig very noisily that day. Besides that, nothing particularly shocking has happened, though I wouldn't call the pig slaughter particularly shocking either, unless you're 7 years old. We relaxed a few days and lost track of time, as you should when you're on holiday. It could be 2pm or 6pm and it would make no difference to how we spent the day.

So far we've visited Warsaw, Radom, and a small town dedicated to art galleries and medieval-themed touristry. We went for the art galleries. Warsaw was a nice enough city. We visited the Copernicus Science Centre, which was so much better than any science event or centre I've ever been to before, full of interactive exhibits. If only it was in Scotland so I could visit it again. Radom was just a smaller city, barely a city when compared with Warsaw or Krakow, but it was nice to visit and walk around in. We met the family of our friends there, and while I kept quiet and didn't make myself much for conversation, I memorised all the names I could. There were a lot of them, and most of them knew a little English to either understand or speak it.

Interestingly, when going over the many names of the family, I noticed that all the women had names ending in the letter A. Dominica, Veronika, Victoria, Asha, Basha, Anna, Paulina, Maya. I brought up the observation to Veronika; the one we met in Scotland all those years ago, and she told us that this was in fact a general rule. I'm not sure if it's heavily enforced, but she also told us that, when they have children, they must chose names from within a range of generally accepted names, You couldn't just pick up any old noun like Raindrop or Helicopter and give it to your child. I'm not sure how great a custom this is, but it's interesting. I can't imagine it being any real problem. There is no such naming rule for men as there is with the A ending of womens' names, unless perhaps mens' names never end in A, but I've never asked about that.

The 7 year old boy, Macek, who periodically pursues my attention, is a nice sort. As he grew to the age of 6 in Scotland, he learned English as well as any Scottish child might have. He lost some of it over the year living back in Poland, but he can still communicate with me well enough, and served as translator briefly when I met his friends from the village. One, a stocky lad who stood grinning with a large snail he found, proudly told me in full English "My name is David!", though I'm sure that's all he knew, and he had to ask Macek how to say it first. The second was Kuba, crouching and quietly watching as he was introduced, his left arm in a sling from some accident. I didn't ask about it. The more time I spent with Macek, the less English I spoke out loud. I found my internal monologue changing to the same subtly fragmented English spoken around me by our Polish friends. Of course they spoke it well, but there were some grammatical slips which, while noticeable, were hardly noteworthy.

There's plenty to be learned from the conversations of others. On long drives between destinations I've learned plenty about Poland and the people here. Most of what I've learned and presented here was gleaned from the discussions had by my mother and Veronika. With all that Veronika chats and translates, you'd think she spoke the most English out of the two of us, as I stand in the background smiling sympathetically at everybody and everything, pretending I'm not foreign.

Despite all the romantic hopes and dreams I have for my future self, on this holiday I find a reminder of my lack of confidence. I worry terribly about how to communicate with people in shops or on the street, and instead take a back seat while others guide the tour of my day. Though it's not so bad and powerless as that.

I'm sure there are other observations and whatnot I could bring up, but this is all there is for now. It's another week until I arrive home on the 28th, in the comfort of a country which shares my language. I'm killing flies in one of two rooms in this two-room house, while my mum sleeps with a book on her chest; and my dad walks through the village taking pictures of the houses and their many colours. The alpacas are grazing in the back garden with Nero, the 14 year old dog, looking on from the shade, his lead fastened to a tree. It might rain later, it might not. I think it's Monday, but I'm not sure.

I found this (I assume) Russian site that has all the books available to read, in English. Norton Safe Web says it's OK, so no obvious danger of viruses. Cascade started on A Game of Thrones, and hasn't reported any foul play, in that it look like it's going to charge you money after you read to a certain point in a book.

The site it self is here: http://www.litmir.net/
It has plenty other books, if you search for them. I gave a go and found the Earthsea novels, and a couple Philip K. Dick books there as well.

So yeah, the Game of Thrones books. Here they are:
A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords
A Feast for Crows
A Dance with Dragons
If you fancy knowing how I found it, I just typed a random unimportant line from the page I had open in A Feast for Crows and it gave me the same page on the site. Magic.

There are words here and there while reading that I'm not sure I understand properly, or don't know at all. Facial expressions and feelings, and words for places that I never knew before, or wasn't sure of. I would continuously keep having to take breaks to find definitions for things, and sometime into the book I felt like I'd begun repeating myself. I'd been looking up words, putting it into the scene in my head, and immediately forgotten what the word meant. I decided the best thing to do would be to write down words in a notebook as I read, along with their definitions. Since I started writing, however many pages ago, I've got 23 words. And here they all are, definitions included.

*Noun
**Adjective
***Verb
Wry **1. Using or expressing dry, esp. mocking, humor.
**2. (of a person's face or features) Twisted into an expression of disgust, disappointment, or annoyance.

Niggard *A stingy or ungenerous person.

Conjecture *An opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information.
**Form an opinion or supposition about (something) on the basis of incomplete information.

Trepidation *1. A feeling of fear or agitation about something that may happen.
*2. Trembling motion.

Nonplussed **1. (of a person) Surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react.
**2. (of a person) Unperturbed.

Perturb ***1. Make (someone) anxious or unsettled.
***2. Subject (a system, moving object, or process) to an influence tending to alter its normal or regular state or path.

Slight *An insult caused by a failure to show someone proper respect or attention.
**Small in degree; inconsiderable.
***Insult (someone) by treating or speaking of them without proper respect or attention.

Contrite **Feeling or expressing remorse or penitence; affected by guilt.

Quip *A witty remark.
***Make a witty remark.

Sullen **1. Bad-tempered and sulky; gloomy.
**2. (esp. of water) Slow-moving: "rivers in sullen flood".

Admonition *An act or action of admonishing; authoritative counsel or warning.

Insolent **Showing a rude or arrogant lack of respect.

Rankle ***1. (of a wound or sore) Continue to be painful; fester.
***2. (of a comment, event, or fact) Cause annoyance or resentment that persists.

Lecherous **Having or showing excessive or offensive sexual desire.

Sardonic **Grimly mocking or cynical.

Earnest *A sign or promise of what is to come: "an earnest of the world's desire not to see the conflict repeated elsewhere".
**Resulting from or showing intense conviction: "an earnest student".

Droll **Curious or unusual in a way that provokes dry amusement: "his unique brand of droll self-mockery".

Reproach *The expression of disapproval or disappointment.
***Address (someone) in such a way as to express disapproval or disappointment.

Curt **Rudely brief: "his reply was curt".

Placid **(of a person or animal) Not easily upset or excited.
**(esp. of a place or stretch of water) Calm and peaceful, with little movement or activity.

Ford *A shallow place in a river or stream allowing one to walk or drive across.
**(of a person or vehicle) Cross (a river or stream) at a shallow place.

Petulant **(of a person or their manner) Childishly sulky or bad-tempered.

Retinue *A group of advisers, assistants, or others accompanying an important person.


And this concludes Teto's first vocabulary roundup.

By Teto,

Today I woke up at 7:00. Then 7:09. Then 7:18. Then 7:27. Then 7:36. Then 7:45. Then I was finally able to actually switch off my alarm with confidence that I would then be able to go out into the day. I showered. I sat around a bit and waited until 8:45 when I went to class, which I had to rush for, because I am no good at time management and should have left earlier to allow for travel time. On the way I listened mostly to "
" and " " by Eels, the second moreso than the first. I arrived at 9:05 which wasn't a big deal; it hadn't really started yet. We just had to get results, but like half the class puppyed up and nobody had any cell growth. We got someone else's results. Class ended at 10:15, and I was released back into the wild.
I went to Greggs and got a Scotch Pie, which you shouldn't eat with your hands because it's way oily. It was kind of weird. I was careful not to make a horrific mess, and was successful. Then I took a picture of the dragon statue.





I then went off to Waterstones, looked around halfheartedly at the comics and books. Read the back of The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Read the little staff-written recommendations on the front of A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, and one of the Doctor Who books, based on the Ninth Doctor. I looked at the Judge Dredd comics and wondered why volumes 12 or 13 onwards of the complete case files were so much smaller than the first dozen. I also looked again at the manga, which never ever changes, and I wouldn't buy even if I saw something I wanted. I saw a popular science book that had "Electric Sheep" in the title, in larger letters than the rest of the title. I mistakenly thought it was something to do with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, which I recently finished.

I went off to the Costa upstairs, and ordered a pot of tea instead of my usual mocha latte, because I have given up trying to think coffee doesn't suck. I sat down in a corner of the cafe next to a couple people who I assumed were lecturers for a gaming course. They were discussing Heavy Rain, and generally the whole ludology vs. narratology debate. They got onto the American archetype character of the big hero who walks off into the sunset after winning the battle and killing the bad guys, and they noticed how often that comes up. Like in Fallout 3 and stuff, and apparently Bioshock Infinite? I struggled to read Game of Thrones with them there because A) They were like arms length from me; They were kind of loud; C) Their conversation was interesting.

They left, and I got on finishing the chapter I was on, which is just the first chapter after the prologue; Bran. It was really good and I liked it. I'm going to enjoy this book a lot. I had to get up to get a third sugar for my tea because two wasn't quite enough. I didn't have enough tea for a second cup, but I poured it anyway and put in way too much sugar. I finished that and left.

I decided to call up my flatmate and see if she wanted me to go by the print shop to pick up her postcards she got printed out, because she's going to have a booth at the upcoming anime convention we're having in Dundee on the weekend. I went over, since it was on the same street, and picked them up, with surprising ease; I just gave them my friend's name and they handed over the stuff. I learned later that the shop called my friend to make sure that I wasn't just some stranger stealing her stuff.

I was going to go buy a Magic the Gathering booster but I decided against it because it's not so much fun when you don't have obsessive pros around you to tell you which cards are utter rubbish. Instead I went off to a shop to buy some more cord for making dice bags.

So I went and got on the bus, came back to my flat. Not a lot happened between those two things.

I got back, unpacked all my stuff, met up with my flatmate, talked briefly. Moved my stuff through to the living room because she was going to do some clay making for jewellery she's planning to sell at the convention as well. I was going to make dice bags there but I decided against it because being in her company is really uncomfortable, even though she's nice; I just can't stand being around her for extended periods of time, I just end up feeling antisocial because I can't think of anything to talk about, and she's constantly forcing enthusiasm out of herself, and I can't help her there at all and I can't match the enthusiasm, and so I feel like I make her feel bad about herself, and so I get tired quickly.

We went to the Tesco because she needed stuff. I didn't really, but I got Pringles and chocolate because I am fat. We return to the flat. She finds a weird egg in amongst the eggs she got. Look at this weird egg.





Not even cracked, it just looks like that. How does a shell get like that.

The time is 2:19. It felt like 5pm at this point. I felt bad, but I went back to my room to be by myself. I listened to Eels a bit, watched the first episode of the second season of The World God Only Knows, that god-forsaken show, and then put on The Big Bang Theory because it's piss easy to watch. From then until sometime around 9:00, here was the playlist:





Over this time I sat and made another dice bag, which I posted about. I used some of the cord I bought earlier, and was more careful with measurements and keeping the stitches closer together. It resulted in a better made bag, with a worse cord. The cord was too rough, and so it's more difficult to open and close than the first one I made, which has since broken, since part of the cord came loose due to not being very securely fastened to the felt body. Here's the second dice bag.





Then I wrote this. I might read more Game of Thrones and then sleep. Here is my Twitter feed for the day, oh haha what I charmer I am.




Thinking about character creation and conception. I’ve never really made many characters outside of roleplaying games (including making up personalities and moral codes for games like Skyrim and Morrowind). I’ve been thinking lately about personality, characters, and understanding other people.

To start with, here’s a story about my dog. He’s a nice enough dog, and I love him a lot, but when he gets around other dogs he acts aggressively defensive. At first I just thought it was okay, and put it out of my mind or excused it somehow, but the last time he got aggressive with another dog, it made me take it more seriously. He’s aggressive because he’s pent-up. He’s more energetic than we have time to exercise out of him, and so he gets frustrated and acts out. Just because I understand him, doesn’t mean that I can let him off. I’ve reformed and decided not to let him off his lead when I’m uncertain of whether I’m approaching other walkers (on a woodland trail), because he’s a big scary thing and he can sometimes be not that nice. I used to only tell myself “he’s a good dog but he can appear scary, so I’ll be careful about other people” but now I’m more aware that not only does he look scary, but he acts scary as well, under certain circumstances. People he’s okay with. Unfamiliar dogs less so.

I started to more level-headedly consider his personality, and as I did so it dawned on me that I can’t rightly say what he’s thinking, nor predict what’s best for him. Like, I know he just needs more exercise, but as a philosophical thing the thought interests me.

Moving on, I started to think about the fact that I had begun to build a personality for a dog. I had started to imagine the connections and meanings behind his actions, as you would with people. We get to know people directly through experiencing their actions; their words.

And so I thought to myself, what about this as a possible method of character creation?

Rather than fussing yourself over what their key aspects are and then using those aspects to predict their actions, do it the way you would with people: Predict their actions by knowing their personality, and know their personality by analysing their actions.

Start with a blank slate character. A nothing. Then imagine what actions you want them to make, and then, from your own personal philosophy, explain their actions, and begin to build a framework of their personality. That’s the idea.

It had me thinking also about how people understand fictional characters differently. People have their own philosophies about life and themselves, and from this they understand other people, by using their own knowledge of themselves and their own motivations. People who share your interpretation of characters will probably also share parts your personal philosophy, and so they’ll probably be the people you’d befriend, because they get that part of you and you share it.

People often disagree with either the author’s decisions for the characters, or with other people’s interpretations and fan-made representations. I’d put that down to personal philosophy, and how people choose to relate to characters, thus shaping their understanding of them, leading to different predictions of the characters’ future actions. So don’t hate peoples’ interpretations, because it’s just them expressing a piece of themselves. Your interpretation is just as personal as theirs.
Before this year, I've not been much for reading books. Several years ago I read the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, which consisted of The Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. I must have read those in 2008, having got three copies of The Northern Lights for Christmas in 2007, following the movie adaptation, and since then I've forgotten what happened. I have brought one or two things home from them, but basically just the idea of a knife so sharp that it could cut through any material with great ease (the subtle knife itself). Besides that, I've forgotten the books for the most part.

At some point I read through all the Harry Potter novels as well, though evidently I must have read them pretty carelessly, since I didn't realise Snape was a good guy after all at the end. But I did read them all, maybe sometime between the Order of the Pheonix movie and the first Deathly Hallows movie. I must have enjoyed them to get through them all, though I don't distinctly remember any parts I enjoyed.

I also chose to read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë for an essay at school, though I only read the first half. I later read Animal Farm by George Orwell from Septemberish of 2011 to sometime in the early summer/late spring of 2012. I read Wuthering Heights for the fact my mother could help me analysing it, and Animal Farm just for the fact that it was a school book that I'd never read in class before, and wanted to say that I had read it.

That's a brief history of what I consider ancient history, before the point where I really enjoyed books. A history of half-experienced books that I either wasn't invested in, or didn't pay the proper attention to in order to get the most out of them.

The next book I read was one I'd considered reading for a while, and chose out of a long-standing interest rather than any other shallow reasons like 'bragging rights' (in the case of Animal Farm alone, really). That book was A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, inspired by the fact that Tales from Earthsea was such a mediocre movie compared to any other Studio Ghibli movie I'd watched. I'd heard that the author was unimpressed by the movie, and that fans considered the books to be much better (as book-readers unfailingly do). So I read that, from October 2012 until January of this year, and enjoyed it a lot.

If you've ever seen Tales from Earthsea, or indeed if you're a fan of fantasy novels at all, I recommend reading the Earthsea novels a lot. Maybe I'm inexperienced as a reader, but they're very well written and easy to love, as well as quite short. If you've ever seen the Tales from Earthsea movie, then you'll known the character Sparrowhawk. The Earthsea novles are all connected to him in some way. The first, A Wizard of Earthsea, follows Sparrowhawk from childhood to young-adulthood, as he finds his magical ability, goes to wizarding school, which serve as an introduction to the greater part of the book where he embarks on his brief work as a wizard, and then onto his journey to fight a curse he brought on himself during his time at the wizarding school. The second book, The Tombs of Atuan follow not Sparrowhawk, but a girl who meets him, and how he involves himself in her own story. The Farthest Shore serves as the basis of the movie Tales from Earthsea, but I haven't read this one yet.

So yes, I highly recommend these books. They're a quick read, and accessible too. And it has magic (Knuckle).

I read A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan one after the other, the latter being read much faster than the other, but still at quite a slow pace, taking me about a month or so. At some point, there was an episode of Psycho-Pass, in which Makishima Shogo remarked that the world of the show was similar to that of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Since I was thinking on what to read next at this point, I took note of the title, and ordered it shortly before I finished reading The Tombs of Atuan. So continuing with the habit of only finding books through anime, I got it and read it over the course of two weeks. Another good book, though it didn't resonate with me as the Earthsea novels had. I recommend it as well, though less enthusiastically.

I'd been contemplating for a long while, ever since I fell out of touch with the TV series, that I might try reading Game of Thrones. Having read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? so much more quickly than the last books, I figured I can trust my commitment to reading enough by this point to take on as large a book as Game of Thrones. I read it in a month, loving it all but not being blown away, since I was mostly covering old ground that I'd seen in what I'd already watched of the TV series (episodes 1-8 + spoilers people had given away online already).

Between that and Clash of Kings, I fitted in A Murder of Quality by John le Carré just to spread out the series. My dad is a great fan of John le Carré, and I figured it'd be nice to give these books a go to see if I can get into them. It was a good enough book, but not nearly enough whimsy for me. Still holding hope that I could get into this sort of stuff, I planned ahead to go back and read Call for the Dead (which I'm currently reading), and read all of the George Smiley novels, since I did enjoy his character, and he could serve as a bridge into this new ground.

Back to Clash of Kings, which took me another month of reading, while I moved from Dundee back home. New unspoiled territory. At some point while I read it, the Red Wedding happened, and the great boom of internet chatter got the bare bones of the events to me, and spoiled the important details of 'who' and 'what'. Understandably irritated, this fueled me to finish Clash of Kings, and then read both parts of Storm of Swords one after the other in just over two weeks. I passed the spoiler about 130 pages into the second part and plowed through to the end.

All through it, I thought how sweet it would be to be free from the threat of spoilers on the internet from the TV series, and instead have the advantage once I passed the point covered by the TV series. Instead, I've found that it's just instead frustrating not being on the same wavelength as other people. I'm behind most of the book-readers, and ahead of those watching the TV series. I'm not experiencing the book alongside other people, and I've realised that's something that puts me at a certain disadvantage. Everybody watching the series is on the same wavelength, while I'm somewhere between the two points of completion, with few people who I can relate to right now.

So while I would say that the books are absolutely completely undeniably superior to the TV series, I have to say that if you're particularly invested in the social experience that comes with experiencing the TV series with other people, then don't bother reading the books. It's not very fun for anybody if one person watching the show knows what's going to happen next, hanging over the others' shoulder waiting for a reaction to something you're looking forward to. So if you're willing to take it on as an individual experience for a while, or if you aren't as picky as I am about it, then stick with the series. Nothing wrong with sitting waiting for next episodes year after year, having a huge number of people experiencing it alongside you. That's a good way to be as well, maybe better.

So that's that, and now I'm here. I've been reading Call for the Dead by John le Carré since I finished Storm of Swords last week, and been enjoying it well enough, and slowly. Being a bit more moderate with how much I read again, but my casual reading is a lot better than it had been while I read Clash of Kings and those before it. I would read a bit every day or so with Game of Thrones, and The Tombs of Atuan was something I read at night before sleep, while A Wizard of Earthsea was only ever read under rare circumstances; train journeys mostly.

I have a pile in my room for books I've finished, and another books I've yet to read. Sitting in the former are all the books I've mentioned here, and the latter, A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, which will come after Call for the Dead. That, and the two books I got today, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, and A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin.

Which leads me to the reason I even started making this vanity post; this picture of those two books. Look at me, I read books now.




[Ash's] Primeape VA's
J: Hiroshi Otake
E: Michael Haigney
______

King Boom Boo VA's
J: ???
E: ???
______

Sonic Adventure 2: Battle VA's:
*uncredited on info.sonicretro.org

-Japanese VAs-
Junichi Kanemaru - Sonic
Kouji Yusa - Shadow
Atsuki Murata - Tails
Nobutoshi Kanna - Knuckles
Taeko Kawata - Amy
Rumi Ochiai - Rouge
Etsuko Kozakura - Omochao
Yuri Shiratori - Maria
-Kinryu Arimoto - The President
-Mami Horikoshi - Secretary
-Tohru Okawa - Flying Dog Pilot -
-Kouji Ochiai - Big Foot Pilot
-Kaori Aso - Tikal
Tomoko Sasaki - Chao
Chikao Otsuka - Gerald Robotnik / Eggman
-English VA's-
Ryan Drummond - Sonic
Scott Dreier - Knuckles
David Humphrey - Shadow
Conner Bringas - Tails
Jenny Douillard - Amy
Deem Bristow - Eggman
Lani Minella - Rouge / Omachao
Moriah Angeline - Maria
Marc Biagi - Gerald Robotnik
-Steve Broadie - The President -
-Sue Wakefield - Secretary -
-Elara Distler* - Tikal -
-Shelly Fox - Menu voice



Continued search yields no further success. I can find no connection between the voice of Primeape from Pokemon and the voice of King Boom Boo, the ghost boss from Sonic Adventure 2. Neither Hiroshi Otake or Michael Haigney appear to have been involved in Sonic Adventure 2, and so it's unlikely that they loaned their voices at any point. Given that King Boom Boo has no lines, and only grunts and gurgles, it's unlikely that he has any noted dedicated voice actor worth speaking of, and so I cannot come to any conclusion there either.


Voice actor information for Ash's Primeape taken from here:
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Ash%27s_Primeape

The lists of voice actors were taken from a reading of the Sonic Adventure 2 credits, and given characters by using the following sites:
http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Adventure_2_credits
http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com
http://www.imdb.com/

Thus concludes my search. King Boom Boo shall forever remain an enigma.
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