I was first introduced to the Suikoden series with Suikoden II when it came out in the States in 1999. I enjoyed it quite a bit and it was only by a chance encounter at a Toys R’ Us that I got my hands on the first game. I learned about the transfer bonus for saves, so once I played through the first game, I did another playthrough of the second. And that was where I left the series until I came back from the Army.

Some readers may not be familiar with G4. It was a video games-based cable channel that eventually lost its way, modeling itself as a sort of Spike Jr. before finally folding and being replaced by the Esquire Channel. Well, when I first came back from the Army, the channel was at its purest, a quirky little niche channel. One of its shows was called Cinematech, which would should of game intros and such, sometimes of fairly obscure titles. It was on this show that I saw the animated intro to Suikoden III. I was hooked. The only problem was that I didn’t have a PS2. This was in 2003. Somewhere between late 2005 and early 2006, I first started to import Japanese games, in particular a number of PS2 games, Suiko3 among them. However, those games would sit untouched until I bought a Japanese PS2 before returning to the States from Japan in 2008. (I was toying with the idea of getting a PS3, but due to backwards compatibility being taken out of later models, I decided to just get a PS2 instead.) Well, one of the first things I intended to do with my new PS2 was play Suiko3, but then it asked for a save game from Suikogaiden, Vol.2. Not wanting to miss out on the save game bonus, I went back to Suikogaiden, Vol. 1. (I imported the two Suikogaiden games around the same time as Suiko3, if I recall correctly.) Well, it asked me for a Suikoden II save. Wanting the full effect, I waited rather than just start things up there. Then comes 2011, when I managed to find both Suikoden and Suikoden II at a Book Off while in Japan. I didn’t actually start playing the Japanese version of the first game until 2012, though. I beat it and started on Suiko2, but didn’t get very far. It wasn’t until late 2014, when a venture of mine foundered that I resumed the playthrough, then went through the two visual novels and finally started Suiko3. I only got a few chapters in before straying from the game once more and only this year as I was coming to a bit of a dead end with Fire Emblem if did I pick things up once more and play through to the end. So, yes, a 12-year journey all for a single game, all because of the strength of the intro movie.

I’d actually intended to end my Suikoden story with Suiko3, as I’d heard mixed things about the fourth and fifth games, but once I beat Suiko3, I decided to keep going and play the series to its conclusion. So be on the lookout next year for reviews of IV and V. Stay tuned.

For those of you who have ventured down the rabbit hole that is TVTropes, I’m sure you can appreciate the sort of conceptual shorthand they provide whilst simultaneously ruining and improving your life. Today we’re going to talk about values dissonance. To explain in briefly to the uninitiated, values dissonance is where the values of you the consumer of media clash with those of the characters, author, etc. This is often due to a difference in time period, culture, etc. For instance, the average modern reader probably isn’t going to be completely on board with the values of characters from a Regency Period novel. The inverse is values resonance. Where values dissonance highlights the differences that divide us, values resonance can reveal surprising common ground.

As an author and a pseudo-philologist, the subject of values dissonance fascinates me. Perhaps I just use my novels as a means of sublimation, but it’s the excuse I give for my interest in taking in the ideas and viewpoints of other people. I love taking it in, internalizing it, trying to become a person I’m not. If I’m doing it right, it means that I can make characters that are further removed from myself.

Therein lies a tricky point. Because stories and characters come out of the author, they bear the mark of their source. The most transparent have nearly one-to-one correspondence, but the truly talented storyteller can create degrees of separation. This is certainly what I strive to do, but I couldn’t say how well I succeed. It becomes a problem when you want to create a character largely removed from yourself. The thing is that a lot of people think what’s on the page (or screen) is a direct reflection of the source. This is not always the case, though. Oftentimes, the attempt to create the Other only results in strawmen, but sometimes the Other can be crafted so convincingly that it’s hard to imagine they’re removed from the source. This can lead to misblaming in the case of deliberate values dissonance.

The cowardly solution is to lay it on thick with the disclaimers or to abandon a convincing, fleshed-out character for a safe strawman that only the thickest would confuse for self-representation. Alternatively, you can have your little author avatar thoroughly dismantle the offending character or see that karmic retribution is swiftly and duly meted out. If you’ve got a little more steel in your nerves, you can opt for things to play out more naturalistically. The focus of values dissonance may not ever get refuted in any meaningful way if it doesn’t serve the interests of the story. You may catch some flak for it, but your work will probably have more integrity.

Let’s take an example from my own work. As you know, I don’t like to dwell on my own views, political, religious or what have you. It’s not that I lack any conviction or am ashamed of my beliefs, but I don’t like to create unnecessary conflict or distract from my work, which should be the focus. I can tell you now that no one character is a carbon copy of myself. In fact, because I’ve been working with most of my characters for so long, many of them retain artifacts from earlier stages of my development. They may represent former aspects of my beliefs but not me as I am now. Anyway, on to the specific example, let’s look at Chapter 1 of Tico3. The drunken racial and political diatribe by Lydia and Sean with the bartender Khoi was actually a lot of fun for me to write because I was going out of both my comfort zone and myself. Things like race and politics are touchy subjects, maybe not so much in some countries out there, but here in the US, get ready for a scrap if you get into it in mixed company. (Even in an audience with largely the same views, it can get unpleasantly heated.) Cutting loose like I did was really cathartic. Lydia is mostly an equal opportunity misanthrope, but despite (or perhaps because of) her own Chinese ancestry, she’s rather strongly anti-Chinese, but as a general gadfly, she’ll latch on to any angle of abuse if she can. Sean, on the other hand, doesn’t have much actual antipathy for anyone, but he’s a bit of a troll and hates political correctness (which is still very much in force in the Union era). They don’t think as I think or speak as I speak and are likely to rub a lot of people the wrong way, but that’s all part of the reason I love them so much.

In conclusion, values dissonance may make you uncomfortable, but can be interesting. If you’re the sort of person who likes to venture beyond your own boundaries, it can actually be a way of broadening your horizons. Maybe you’ll use it to hone your ability to launch a counterattack and maybe you’ll use it to build a little empathy. Or you could just shut yourself off. It’d be a bit of a waste, but life is too short to raise your blood pressure too much.

I’ve mentioned before that I consider Frank Herbert one of my Three Pillars and that the Dune series has had a profound impact on me and my writing. I’ve also discussed how I studied adaptation of the written word in grad school. One of the main themes of the course was stories that are “unadaptable”, that is, ill-suited for the screen for one reason or another. Working out the how and why a particular story could be considered unadaptable was a decent chunk of our in-class discussions. Anyway, I bring all this up because if ever there was a story that was unadaptable, Dune is it. If you’ve seen the David Lynch version (or its Alan Smithee variant), you know that it was a mess. There are some good points to it, but it misses the mark by a wide margin. I thought the mini series made by the Sci-Fi Channel was better as an adaptation, but still came up short. I honestly don’t think the gap can be overcome, though I could potentially see it working in animation. Working better, at any rate, in the right hands, of course. A 13- or even 26-ep series would probably do the trick. All that aside, I want to talk about the first attempt to bring Dune to the silver screen as chronicled in the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, which I watched last week.

Alejandro Jodorowsky is something of an experimental filmmaker and at a friend’s recommendation, he decided to make the leap from arthouse indie flicks to a a big-budget magnum opus with Dune. I highly recommend the documentary, so I’m not going to hash out everything that it covers. What I am going to say is how intrigued I was at Jodorowsky’s concept, the years of work he sunk into it and the grand assemblage of talent he was pulling together. Salvador Dali as the Padishah Emperor, Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen… That’s just scratching the surface. Each step of the story seems more impossible than the last and the amazing thing is how far Jodorowsky actually got. It was an impossible vision and the final result was inevitable. Still, it’s amazing to see and the aftermath isn’t nearly as dire as you might think.

My all too brief treatment doesn’t come anywhere close to doing the material justice, but in conclusion, check out Jodorowsky’s Dune. It’s a real trip. In more ways than one. ^_^

Although I’m content to let things drop with regards to The Desolation of Smaug, there’s a wider issue not really covered in my critique of the film that would likely be used against me if anyone cared to rebut my post. That issue is adaptational fidelity.

Let’s start by setting up where I began on the issue. I was once the most die-hard of purists. In another life, I would compose these massive posts comparing the Inuyasha anime to the original manga with copious scans and such minute detail that even a single word changed in the script didn’t go unnoted. I was often decried by the more loosey-goosey members of the fandom as a “manga thumper”. (Yes, that was really a thing, and, yes, we were all incredible nerds.)

I say this is where I began because my views have matured over the years. No small contributor was a course on adapting the written word I took in grad school. I came to fully acknowledge the differences among media and appreciate pragmatic adaptation. The spirit of the word is more important than the letter of the word when it comes to true fidelity. Herein lies the problem.

You see, it’s not uncommon for an adaptation to fundamentally misunderstand the source material. For instance, when watching the special features for Return of the King, I was appalled to hear that they were wanting to have a fight scene between Aragorn and a physical manifestation of Sauron. The whole point of LOTR is that it isn’t Aragorn who’s the real hero of the story, even though he almost perfectly fits conventional expectations. It’s Frodo and Sam who are the real heroes. Upending those conventional expectations of the heroic epic was at the very heart of the story. The fact that they almost went that far off the rails makes the disappointing developments of TDoS not all that surprising.

I don’t claim that any of this is easy. The transition between a project that is largely contained and directed by a single person to a massive undertaking involving dozens of people is no easy task. There are a host of considerations at work and competing visions shaping the final product. I can appreciate a measure of pragmatism as necessary and even a good thing, but when the adapters miss the mark, it can be really disheartening. It’s the risk you run when you adapt a work from one medium to another. I recall one writer who commented that if you want a movie deal, you just sign away the rights, cash the check and let the chips fall where they may. I doubt I’ll ever be presented with that opportunity, but I’d be reluctant to just let go like that. I’m too much of a control freak for that and would just as soon forego any adaptations rather than risk my vision being warped. Maybe any interested parties can wait until after I’m dead. ^_^;

Okay, I’ve slept on it and I’ve come to a conclusion: I hate The Desolation of Smaug. Let’s turn back the clock a bit. When I heard The Hobbit was being made into two movies, I was a little concerned. When those two movies became three, I grew even more concerned. This is Peter Jackson, after all, which meant three-hour movies. A 300-page book spread out over nine hours? Yeah, we’re going to have a pointless scene with Smaug and Naomi Watts playing in the snow. However, when I saw An Unexpected Journey, I was pleased with the integration of materials from The Unfinished Tales and the stronger buildup to the LotR trilogy. The movie was still a little longer than it needed to be, but I was satisfied with it.

However, even with material from the periphery to expand the narrative, what happens when all that runs short? How do you fill the gaps? Well, The Desolation of Smaug answers that question. With bad fanfic.

Much of what is terrible about TDoS centers around the character of Tauriel. When I heard there was brewing controversy around this OC female Elven warrior, I didn’t pay it much heed. Now, before I go into this rant, let’s set something straight for any cuckleheads out there. I’m not opposed to strong female characters. I love strong female characters. I love ’em in the fiction I consume and the fiction I create. What I don’t like is poorly executed “strong” female charas. For instance, one of the more loathsome things about Van Helsing is faux action girl Anna (a rant for another day). In Tauriel’s case, being a canon foreigner stacks the deck against her right out of the gate, but that isn’t her mortal sin. Her mortal sin is being the Suest of Mary Sues this side of Bella friggin’ Swan. Let’s lay it all out. We won’t count her beauty on the Sue card because all Elves are supposed to be beautiful. So we’ve got a cool female warrior who’s not just a low-ranker struggling to prove herself in a male-dominated society. No, she’s the Captain of Guard. But, hey, she’s lowborn, so she’s just like us. Also, she’s not like all those other racist, isolationist Elves. She cares about the outside world and is tolerant of other races. She’ll stand up mean ol’ Thranduil and rebel against him to do what’s right, doggonit. Oh, and let’s not forget about the romance. Even if there’s the class difference, she’s got that dreamboat Legolas to pine and be pined for (though, admittedly, any romantic subtext between those two was about as clear as mud). And because we can’t have an Edward without a Jacob, she’s also got the dreamiest of the Dwarves fall for her. Yeah, he’s a stubby ol’ Dwarf, but he’s just a little taller and instead of one of those nappy beards, he’s got that smexy bad-boy permastubble. Oh, and it’s a deep emotional connection, too. Starlight and stuff. Also, in addition to her near flawless warrior skills, she’s also a talented healer, too. What a perfect pretty progressive princess.

Merciful Heaven, where do I begin? I don’t even know. I’m not the certain of person to delve into fanfiction, but if Tauriel doesn’t feel like a self-insert OC, I don’t know what does. She was made for the express purpose of shoehorning in a female character into the story. They showed signs of trying to do this with Arwen in Fellowship, but that idea was mercifully killed in the cradle. Using her in place of Glorfindel was a pragmatic adaptation and I let it slide. A lot of people go on about the dearth of strong female charas in the Tolkien mythos. Well, guess what? An author in the 40’s writing in the model of 8th Century epics. Who’s surprised? Not me. Trying force modern sensibilities on such material is just asinine.

While we’re on the topic of feminism, let’s talk some feminism. Tauriel is clearly meant as progressive pandering, but guess what? Her character is entirely wrapped up in her love interests, Legolas and Kili. I’d say that fails the Bechdel Test, but I suppose it requires two females. I’d like to believe that the true goal of feminism is to give females their fair shot based on their ability and talents. In other words, the end game should be that so long as the ability is there, it shouldn’t matter if a male or a female is in the slot. However, Tauriel has been so deliberately engineered that it’s downright offensive. And you want to know the real kicker? I probably wouldn’t mind the character half as much in any generic fantasy story. It’s her imposition that is such a large part of the problem.

I’m going to make a rather bold statement here. Tauriel is worse than Jar-Jar Binks. Yeah, I went there. They’ve got more in common than you might think. Both are intrusions in an established canon that the director thought was a terribly good idea. However, at least with Jar-Jar, everyone in universe recognized he was a fool and we could sympathize with Qui-Gon’s annoyance. There was some self-awareness and terrible comic relief is practically expected because comic relief character tend to miss more often than they hit. With Tauriel, we’re supposed to take her seriously and that’s what makes her worse. This original character gets grafted in and we’re all supposed to love her for what a special super snowflake she is. Well, I’m not buying what you’re selling.

Moving on to the romantic plot tumor, I mentioned in an earlier parenthetical that the romantic relationship between Tauriel and Legolas was largely informed. Yes, we hear a lot about how Legolas cares for her, but all I really saw was aloof contempt. (Legolas was rather unlikable in the film. Shoehorning him in wasn’t a great idea either.) The main event was the Tauriel/Kili ship, which was terrible. I’ve heard about being strangled by the red string, but this is the first time I’ve physically felt my own neck go taut just observing a crappy romantic subplot play out. Ugh…

Let’s go back to where I was talking about Jar-Jar. I’m a Star Wars fan. I actually enjoyed the prequels more than I didn’t, though I don’t rewatch them regularly like I do the Original Trilogy (theatrical cut, of course, because screw all the extra crap from ’97 on). Episode I was the worst of the three, of course, primarily on account of Jar-Jar, but Jake Lloyd’s Anakin wasn’t much better (I actually kinda feel sorry for him now that I know what the role did to him and his career). Anyway, the point is that I kept watching and though I completely ignored the theatrical Clone Wars film, I’ll be there in the theaters 2015 to give Episode VII its fair shake. You know where I won’t be in 2014? In the theaters to see There and Back Again. TDoS killed it for me. I actually wanted to leave the theater but decided I was going to get my $10 worth for better or worse. I’ve seen some bad movies before, but I never wanted to get up and leave the theater. Even friggin’ Transformers 2 I sat through, dagnabbit. My grandmother and I have a tradition of watching the LotR movies in the theater going back to The Two Towers (I was stationed in Italy when Fellowship came out, you see), but this year I’m going to break that tradition. I don’t want to see TDoS again. I’m not going to see it again and I’m not going to see Numero Tres either.

Now, I could end on that, but let’s talk a little about the positive. Martin Freeman’s performance? Outstanding. Same goes for Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug. If you just skip to the climb up the Lonely Mountain, you might have a good time. Naturally, WETA’s work is top-notch, though they go a little too over-the-top and so it looks a bit fakier than in previous films.

Bottom line: Stretching The Hobbit out to three movies was a mistake. Tauriel is a terrible character. I want Peter Jackson to pay me $5. (The aforementioned performances of Freeman and Cumberbatch are at least worth half the ticket price.) And I’m done, on so many levels.

While I was heading out to see Ender’s Game last night, I saw something interesting. We’ve recently had some heavy rains and last night we had a thick fog. At first I was making jokes to myself like, “What’s with this draw distance? It’s like I’m playing Turok. I half expect some blocky velociraptor to come at me.” Then I started to realize just how creepy it was.

With such low visibility, I was naturally going slower than usual, which drew out the drive. With the regularly spaces trees and lightposts, the road seemed to go on forever. Then I took a turn onto the highway and there wasn’t a light one to bed seen for a good half mile. I thought, “Man, this is where stuff goes down.” Fortunately, no stuff did go down, but I got a nice visceral sense of the atmospheric quality of fog. I’ll certainly have to remember it.

You’re probably wondering what’s happened to me. Minecraft. That’s what’s happened.

I first heard about Minecraft when it was still in development. I tried the demo of the beta and was going to make a point to get it once the full version was released, but I never did. Even so, I’ve been watching Achievement Hunter’s Minecraft vids ever since I heard of Plan G and the recent foray into Galacticraft seems to have been critical mass for me. I purchased the game Saturday evening and no small portion of my waking hours since have been devoted to it. (You’d think after the Fantasica debacle, I’d show a little more sense, but, alas, I have not.) Minecraft takes hold of my love of collecting, exploring and building in a perfect maelstrom that consumes much of my time and brainpower.

When I created my first world, I wasn’t used to the controls and it ended poorly. You see, I’m used to using the keyboard only for PC games (except an RTS like Starcraft), which was fine 20 years ago, but you can’t get around the keyboard and mouse requirement and once I stopped fighting and learned the controls, things picked up. It was entirely unnecessary, but I deleted and recreated the world to start over.

Kronos 04 has proven to be an interesting planet. I appeared on a small island with nothing but ocean as far as the eye could see. I dug in for shelter and slowly began exploring the depths while fortifying my new home, Ithaca. Penelope’s Wall was raised around the island to seal it off from the ravening hordes. After uncovering the cavern I codenamed Area Zulu, I had to beware the monsters of the depths. Taking advantage of the fact that I was on an island I flooded the tunnels to keep the beasts at bay. The island was too small to support wildlife, so I pretty well had to resign myself to starving with only the occasional apple from the oak trees or the rotting flesh of zombies for sustenance. In addition to filling the island with trees, I slowly began to build a farm that made bread a possibility. After a failed mining expedition where all the fruits of my labors were lost to the lava, I committed myself to the construction of my great sanctuary, the Tower of Telemachus. (Somehow a creeper still managed to slip into the chamber over 130 feet in the air. >_>)

Yesterday I finally dared the endless blue in search of new lands. My search has been quite fruitful and I have established new forward operating bases to extend my reach. However, beyond the Wall’s safety, I found myself far more vulnerable to the depredations of the creatures of the night. Some of my acquisitions were saved and some were lost, but soon I’ll tighten my grip on the new territories and unite my empire. Until then, I hunt, I gather, I mine, I build.

The above is a bit of a variation of the common if rather vulgar expression warning against mixing tasks in a certain location, but I’m sure you all could tell that.

You see, I tend to sit on the couch while I do my work on my laptop. I also have a habit of taking naps on said couch. As I’ve mentioned before in the previous Rambling post “The Night Owl Crashes and Burns”, my new exercise regimen has a way of sapping my energy and putting me right out. I’m sure that my body being conditioned to sleep on the couch (to say nothing of my borderline narcolepsy) contribute to this.

I remember reading an article way back when advising against reading or doing other similar tasks in bed because it disrupts your body’s conditioning to associate the bed with sleep. Whether this is true or not, I surely couldn’t say, but it would seem that there’s something to it. Of course, I’ve also crashed out in my office chair as well, so I think a hypersomniac like myself has to resign himself to falling asleep pretty much anywhere at the slightest inducement.

Anyway, long story short, that’s why I haven’t posted any progress the last couple days. Oh, I suppose I wrote half a sentence two days ago, but I can hardly count that. Maybe I can do better over the weekend. We’ll see.

Hello. My name is James and I’m a gaming addict.

Group: Hi, James.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter (not exactly the ideal platform for long discourses, though I have a habit of treating it like my IM with the world), then you’ve heard me talk about my general disillusionment with gaming, which was once a major part of my life and continues to hold some influence, though I’ve largely “grown up” as someone close to me has said on the matter.

You may also remember me talking about the game Fantasica, a grind-heavy Japanese TCG that plays on my inclination to indulge in the grinding so many JRPGs demand and my obsessive sense of completionism. It is also one of the many free-to-play games out there that backloads the actual cost with incentives to advance. I didn’t originally intend to put any money down on the game, but I have. It only amounted to $28, which I suppose is fair given the number of hours I’ve devoted to it, but not really worth it in the grand scheme of things. At least with physical TCGs, your money gets you actual cards and not just imaginary ones that last as long as the game server’s integrity. I should be happy that I’m not like many players who plunk down $200 or more in one sitting and have nothing to show for it. Perhaps the poor yield during my two experimental stabs at premium content successfully disabused me of the idea of actually getting ahead through paid transactions.

Despite the game lacking any significant plot or characterization beyond the blurb on the back of the cards, I’ve spent a no small percentage of my waking hours on the game since I started back in August. Perhaps the minimal interaction via touchscreen has facilitated this (as it doesn’t cause me the pain of holding a controller). I’ve been late to some classes (the ones I can get away with showing up late) and nearly late to others (the ones that I’d incur a significant penalty for tardiness), which got me to scale back a bit, but it wasn’t until the latest event that really put things in perspective for me.

The guild battle event requires you to physically be present for and participate in five guild battles at set times every day for the duration of the event. I didn’t fully figure this out until the fourth battle of the day yesterday, but the vast majority of my guild was non-participatory as well. The chance of the higher-level rewards was quickly fading from view. However, I was going to make a point to participate in as many as possible, since other guilds can have as significant a participation problem as mine. (For instance, one of the two battles I participated in yesterday had no defenders whatsoever.) The first battle of the day is 0600 CST. I planned on being awake for it (despite having gone to bed at 0430) and then catching a little more sleep until the next one at 1100 and I planned on continuing this pattern until the end of the even next Thursday. In theory, I would only be missing four battles due to classes and I might just be able to rack up enough victories to score my first six-star card.

This was the plan, but it was after 0900 when I woke up. My alarm didn’t work for some reason (or I just slept through it until it gave up). By grinding for an item called Blue Souls, you can raise the morale of your guild and have more action points during a battle. This resets after each battle, so it would’ve made sense to just grind until 1100. However, I decided I’d instead get another hour’s sleep. While I was lying on the couch trying to squeeze in that little extra rest, I realized how foolish it was to let a game (and not a very satisfying one at that) dictate my schedule. I promptly deleted the game and went back to bed.

When it comes to addiction, oftentimes efforts to wean yourself off the source of your addiction or to apply less harmful substitutes only facilitate a relapse. I’m not going to say it works for everyone, but the cold turkey approach gives your system the sufficient shock that–if you get through it–you have a good chance of kicking the habit once and for all. It was what my dad had to do to get off chewing tobacco and what I’m doing to get off an inane TCG.

My obsessive-compulsive addiction with regards to gaming has countless examples. My youth was filled with gaming binges. I remember Christmas break of ’98, where I played Xenogears all day until about 0400 in the morning, caught a little sleep and picked right back up as soon as I woke up. During my brief time playing WoW, I’d clock crazy hours on the grind until the gank-happy Hordies drove me away. Even more recently, after getting the PS2 rerelease of Dragon Force in Japan last year (a game I’d wanted ever since I saw a review for the original Saturn version back in ’96), I’d pull all-nighters going through a character’s scenario (until the pace dropped off in the third act) in multiple playthroughs. The damage to my hands is one of the main things curbing my gaming addiction, but so is my disenchantment with the current tangent of the games industry. (The lack of funds to feed the habit also play a role.) Nevertheless, this sort of behavior is very disturbing to me and I’m glad I’ve refrained from any other habit-forming activities.

I don’t plan on ever becoming a parent, but if I did, I wouldn’t ban my kids from playing video games. I would, however, regulate usage. When I was really little, my mom did the same and as I got older and more independent, I was able to skate by even as my usage increased. Even now, I can get away with quite a bit, but just because you can get away with feeding an addiction doesn’t mean that you should.

I haven’t made any progress the past couple days because I’ve been preoccupied not only with my everyday stuff but also the developments in my potential paths for next year. There are four main options I have to consider, two of which involve furthering my education. Just moments ago, I withdrew my application for one after concluding it was financially infeasible. I’ll be looking into financing for the other in a few weeks once I find out if my current gig is going to pan out the way I’m hoping or not.

Ever since high school, I’ve scarcely stayed in any one spot for more than two years. That being said, it feels like only yesterday that my previous Japan venture fell apart and I had to return home in defeat. I managed to make the most of it, though, and though my footing is still a little uncertain, I’m ready to try for something new. I don’t know how things will shape up or how they’ll affect my writing career, but you never can tell.

I have a strange pseudo-fatalistic view of the universe. I believe in endless possibilities but ultimately only one path that you follow. We each have a path that we are supposed to follow, but our ultimate purpose may not come to fruition anytime soon. Somewhat paradoxically, I’m a firm believer in free will. We have our set path, but we make the choices that put us on that path. When faced with multiple options, we just have to grope about in the dark until we find the track. I believe I’ve just resolved one branch that wasn’t meant to be. One down, two go.