Semi-drifting until tomorrow (hopefully)

Okay, so tonight is the last session of semi-drifting. Just like always, I’ll be operating on Lewis Carroll in Wonderland mode. You’ve been warned. Actually, you should have already been warned by now.

Firstly and foremost, have I discovered my chosen one? I’m not referring to my future girlfriend (seriously, only an abnormal or absurdly brave girl would consider the closest living person to Emiya Kiritsugu as her anata), but the PC. Just one word: Bolt. It ain’t got nothing to do with Usain Bolt btw.
https://www.aftershockpc.com/welcome/products/desktops

570 SGD onward sounds good to me. Considering the format of site, I’m gonna risk it and assume they included the hard drive without specifying it. Then again, I may be wrong. Either way, even if the hard drive would be calculated separately, I don’t have to spend more than 700 SGD since I don’t see myself needing the add-ons. Hopefully, I can get this deal at Heliopolis City tomorrow.

At the same time, I’ll most likely be ditching League Of Angels and Game Of Thrones: Winter Is Coming for a reason: A more permanent change to my daily schedule (i.e. my daily life). I know it sounds like bummer because it truly is. Before them, I already forced myself to ditch Tera Online and Rift. So you know it’s definitely a bummer on the correct side rather than the wrong end.

Another key reason behind this possibility is how Cryptic revamped Undermountain like Halaster experimenting stuff under his mountain. There’s no point running the other 2 games on auto while trying to readjust my brain for Neverwinter. I can be terribly obsessed once I start doing things and it’s not entirely a good trait even though this may sound like Guts’ most badass trait. After all, we all know he’s not going to give it up until he does in Griffith like how the Visigoths did in Rome in real life. Wait, is Miura Doragon-koroshitaro a history student in disguise? Maybe, I guess.

And speaking of Berserk, you can’t blame Game Of Thrones fans for going... well, berserk. If you think waiting for Berserk to exit from the other end of hiatus interstice was sheer torture, finale for the final season was said to be... well, you can ask your BFF who may still be crying her eyes out because Jon Snow stabbed Dany. No, that’s not a double entendre btw.
https://www.ricemedia.co/watched-game-of-thrones-endgame-biggsest-mistake-ever/

Reading this article actually reminded of how I got into writing in the first place. You see, writing can be therapeutic as a form of escape. If the rules of your society happened to pragmatically dickish, there’s another option called writing dark stuff. Originally, I believed it all started from the typical English contemporary literature. When my classmates were obsessed with getting a pretty girlfriend to boast about (I still remember this particular sweet beautiful girl one year older than me tbh), I was already reading the story of Ivanhoe. While they were talking about a popular and busty girl named Daisy, I was already familiarising myself with the heroic Drizzt Do’Urden. Since this was at an era of Gan Eng Seng School where there’s no primary school kids and 90% of the student population were either Ah-Sengs or the female equivalent of that, being part of the environment was like Chen Ping sharing the same school as Xiahou Ying, Fan Kuai, Guan Ying, and Zhou Bo. And it didn’t help that I was effectively that persona non grata of the system in the same way Chen Ping was the same before the generals as well.

Surprisingly, the chief influences ended up coming from a combination of epic fantasy and Japanese manga/anime. This was where difficult times arrived. Actually, they’re always there. Maybe that’s why I’m able to appreciate Interesting Times written by Sir Terry Pratchett.

No one supported me because no one understood me. This was best summed up by my ex-AS1 during my NSF days at the now defunct 32 SIB one fine day. His name was Steve Ang, but everyone called him Steve instead of Steven since he’s no Steven Lim. Steve was right about me as in being so obsessed with Japanese 2D stuff would turn girls off. But Steve was also wrong because he might have gotten the wrong idea about Japanese 2D stuff. To Steve, this video is for you since you’re definitely mature enough to deal with the contents.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Kqa_KJd3g

As of now, I’m still a struggler. But that’s beside the point. The point is, I never realised the fundamental difference between Japanese fiction and Western literature until just recently. It’s not just about not giving a damn to the influence of gaijin politics in America (a fact which earned the initial part of Rise Of The Shield Hero quite a fair bit of criticism due sensitive issues surrounding rape accusations and slavery). Above the whole “I care only about my Emperor and not your Captain America-vs-Iron Man civil war”, Japanese fiction is all about prioritising characters over plot. Sounds like what G.R.R. Martin would do so long as he’s still alive and not yet icy blue? Not really. Western fiction emphasises plot over characters. In short, they’re proponents of using the plot to drive the characters. That’s why in A Song Of Ice And Fire/Game Of Thrones, it’s the characters wrangling over that iron chair of swords. Japanese fiction, however, places importance on using characters to drive the plot. I know this sounds more confusing than trying to differentiate between wartime Japan and wartime U.S. where the government model was concerned. So let me just simplify this below:

Western fiction tend to have a faster pace due to how the plot dictates the characters while Japanese fiction tend to move at a slower pace to allow readers to understand the characters before moving onto the plot.

So was Steve wrong about me? The answer was no. Is he still wrong about me? The answer is definitely yes.

This is not to say I’m out to do a Berserk. For one, there’s no way I can attempt the insane level boasted by the guy who created a sane Godo (which is still very important since Berserk is all about a world where the closest thing to God would be the human desire to be... well, God). Another factor would be how easy it would be for me to try the #IMPOSSIBRU! only to fail miserably because a substandard Fett Mk III was conceived as a result. I’m not about to try something I know will fail.

However, there’s a need to conceive my own style and story. As a result, I deliberately used a few paragraphs at most to portray scenes which churches and liberal political parties would agree in unison are morally wrong. Ever wondered why a child rapist can get around 10 years’ worth of probation instead of 10 years in jail plus getting flogged ten times the amount given to Michael Fay N years ago? I’m not a fan of using even a single full page to describe child rape. And besides, my brain works more like Emiya Kiritsugu instead of Kotomine Kirei. The way my words flowed read like a bastard born from a Japanese tanka Targaryen dad and an English Stark mum. But that’s fine.

Hopefully, I can finish the edraft (i.e. edit+draft) for the next chapter of A Requiem From Winter Past. After all, the IED set off by Monica Baey actually set off my writer’s IED as well. Before I end this nonsensical post, please allow me to clarify that my writer’s IED going off had got nothing to do with Monica Baey versus NUS ideas wise. For the lack of a better way to phrase it, I was meant to be abnormal. Hence, I’m abnormal.

P.S: A Wikipedia link for Japanese fiction here.