Lyger

Posted here so as not to clutter up the topic. Author's notes after the jump. Final Author’s Notes You really don’t have to read this. This is just my rambling and random facts about the writing of this story. To start off: I don’t believe I finished that. This is not like finishing a short story or a drawing or something, this was huge. How huge? In case anyone wants some statistics, as of this writing (I might do a couple more revisions) the story proper, minus my notes, stands at 176 pages in Microsoft Word (all default formatting) and 55,052 words. Around chapter 18, Word told me my document was too big to keep marking spelling and grammar errors. The thing is, I never finish anything this big. Ever. Which is why I was stunned when I typed out the last sentence of chapter 20 and realized, “Wait, this is it.” I guess it’s mostly because of a couple things I did right. For one thing, I wrote I think the first five chapters before even posting chapter 1, and always rigorously stayed one chapter ahead of what I’d posted. For another thing, I stuck to my schedule the entire way through (something else that never happens); even the week BZP’s server was down, I stayed up late on Saturday writing. One more thing, when I got to chapter 9 I actually wrote a plan for the rest of the story (this is the largest chunk of my notes) and was able to refer to it when I wasn’t sure where to go next. A sort of entertaining little side note: I most frequently got stuck on writing when I had to make up another name for a comic book series or superhero. It really wasn’t long before I’d exhausted most of the easy/obvious puns and portmanteaus… Speaking of names, most of the main characters have meaningful names. This fact is actually more of a sign of one of my weaknesses: I simply can’t just string together random syllables to make a fictional name that sounds nice. I suck at it. However, if I’ve got a bunch of preexisting syllables to work with, I’m perfectly able to mutate it a bit and come up with something halfway decent. I think Akiro and Mahka came from random names I stumbled across while flipping through the Aeneid. Of course I played around with the names a lot, but they don’t really have any meaning. I just needed something to start with. “Instar” means “image” in Latin. My Latin teacher always commented that it was such a cool sounding word, so it kind of popped into my head when I was coming up with names and I thought, “Yeah, I’ll go with that.” Believe it or not actually, the name spawned the character; when I got to chapter 3 I had a vague idea that I was going to augment my cast with a bunch of new quirky personalities, but if I hadn’t thought of that name, Instar wouldn’t have been one of them. Despite how major a character he became later on, Instar's part of the story wasn’t one of the things I’d determined before chapter 1. “Janai” is an informal way of saying “is not” in Japanese (i.e. “desu” in the negative form, contracted). This one I came up with in the correct order: I thought up the personality before picking a fitting name. “Dekimu” is a reference no one here will get because it’s a reference to a friend of mine, on whom the character of Dekimu is based. I basically lopped off the “s” on “Decimus” and changed the “c” to a “k.” The friend on whom Dekimu is based was in my middle school Latin class, and our teacher assigned him the Latin name of “Decimus.” No, my friend didn’t get crushed by a giant rock. “Kirga” is a severe contraction and mutation of the name of a philosopher, except I forget which philosopher it was and what he believed in. So it goes. “Lahkan” comes from Laocoön, the priest in the Aeneid who warned the Trojans of their impending doom, but whom nobody believed. “Sakrah” comes from Socrates, although I don’t remember why. Because they’re both smart, I think was my reasoning…? You could also interpret her name as being a contraction of “sakura,” cherry blossoms, which did partially inspire the epilogue scene. “Sebrahk” comes from… I don’t remember. I remember I had a lot of trouble with that one actually, trying to come up with a suitable name. If pressed for an answer, I’d say I probably got it from “Sebastian,” which, as everyone knows, is the quintessential butler name. Are those all my named original characters? I think so… hmm, what else? I don’t like deleting things, and there were very few scenes I completely rewrote. Mostly when I revised, I was adding things or altering wording. The instances that I did end up making paragraph-size or more deletions, I actually cut the original passages into my notes section. They’re still there. One was a description of the Rahkshi bringing down the Axalara in chapter 3, which I changed to be much more concise, direct, and morbid in the final version. One described Kirga falling off the roof in chapter 8, but I couldn’t work with it so I scrapped it. The last one was an alternate way of starting the bar scene in chapter 14, which wouldn’t have flowed with what I had planned for the rest of the scene. I was gonna write a quick interlude to post over winter break, basically “The Adventures of Nui-Toran Issue #01,” but I’m not that good at direct parody and it never went anywhere (there’s still a page of it in my notes). I even came up with a name for Nui-Toran’s secret identity: Mendax (“counterfeit” in Latin). Uh, I think I ought to address something I’ve been asked more than once about this story: why it’s in the comedies forum instead of epics. Well, the reason I posted it there, aside from the obvious fact that there were many jokes throughout the narrative, is the purpose of those jokes and many of the plot events. For one thing, if you noticed, I wasn’t really ever writing about Matoran. I was always writing about humans. Matoran were just the vehicle. This story is in the comedies forum because the entire narrative is satirical in nature: a commentary on the ridiculousness of human beings. And I tried to incorporate that into scenes throughout the story, into the characters’ personalities, and ultimately into their respective demises. Which, while depressing as some have commented, were still meant to be drily humorous in their nature. Which brings me to something else that’s been asked a couple times: did everything serve a purpose? In short, yes, but maybe not the way you might think. Certainly not everything played a part in the grand overall plot or revealed some important mystery. But everything I decided to write in that wasn’t for plot purposes, was there because it developed the characters, developed the universe, or developed the themes. It’s really because I just can’t write filler. If there’s no purpose to what I’m writing, I end up rather at a loss for what to write. But yes, there were scenes that were just setting the stage, establishing an atmosphere, hinting at the larger world outside the direct story, or in a couple cases, “There’s going to be a really serious scene next. I ought to put in some comic relief.” Well, I gotta say I enjoyed writing this story immensely. I love stories, and while I’m usually reading them, it was so much fun to tell one. I still can’t get over how I actually managed to complete so large a project. And I hope everyone enjoyed reading!

And I keep forgetting to mention them in favor of posting random ramblings. I wonder why. First off a classmate of mine was elected to the school board! Pretty cool, eh? The day after the elections everyone was congratulating her so much I think she was utterly sick of it by the end of the day. XD English class kept getting interrupted. We received like five phone calls and then a photographer (with a really loud rapid-fire camera) from the Star-Ledger came and snapped photos for the last half hour of class. Hilarious story, everyone was sorta messing around with her about her newly attained status, so when the photographer came one guy piped up and said, "Oh, I'm her boyfriend!" (and of course she said, "No you're not!"). ... apparently the photographer didn't hear because later he was showing our new representative the pictures and he said, "I even got one of your boyfriend!"　XD I of course did my best to not help by offering her another hearty round of congratulations on the late bus and encouraging all the other kids sitting around her to do the same. I also went to Columbia's Days on Campus yesterday which I think I mentioned but I feel I ought to detail. I attended and observed 3 classes, a Japanese class, an Art Humanities (Core) class, and an Intermediate Latin class. I think I was actually on par with the students in Latin, only since we've been doing the Aeneid the past seven months, I was used to neither Cicero nor prose. I guessed on a bunch of vocabulary and found myself forgetting grammatical structures that I later realized I knew. Ah well. Definitely learned a lot from observing the Japanese class. Mostly reinforced and helped pin down stuff that I already knew in theory, but would not have been able to use in practice. In hindsight I should have asked where deshou fits into the conjugation scheme of desu but oh well. Watching the Core class was really something, and this is really what it comes down to. Two huge reasons to go to Columbia: the city, and the people. Most probably I wouldn't find a classroom like that if I went to Rutgers and Maryland. And, I mean, if I went to either of those schools, yes I'd be in the Honors programs, but I'm in Honors and AP courses right now and we still don't have discussions like that. Everyone actually had something to say, and what they had to say was actually interesting and intelligent. The professor directed the discussion and taught, yes, but she made her students speak up and contribute, and contribute they did. In short, if I go to Columbia, the classes are all going to be full of not just smart people but really smart people with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints. Add to that New York City and that's really the question: is that worth $55,000 a year? $55,000 is probably half my family's total annual income. It is a lot of money. Yes, I've always heard that I should go with my gut and ignore the money but frankly I can't ignore that much money. So if it didn't cost nearly as much would I go to Columbia in a heartbeat? Yes, I would. Would I still be happy at Rutgers or Maryland? Most likely. What about CMU? Weeell... I'm not certain if I want to do comp sci and if I end up not doing it it would be a waste of money. Maryland is at least right next to DC. Rutgers is... New Brunswick, you know? Not a heckuva lot happening right there. Somehow this entry has evolved into ranting about my college decision again. Oh well. Third big advantage Columbia has, its size. It's small. So is CMU, relatively. Rutgers and Maryland... are HUGE. Massive. I'd really prefer a small school. Then again would it be better to be top of the class in a state school or middle of the flock at Columbia or CMU? And again, $50,000, $20,000, or free? A hundred thou saved is a lot. Two hundred thou even more. Ugh... gonna have to come up with an answer really soon... To end on a completely different note and for those who are bored with my rambling, it's an image. I'm a little worried but I'll wait for more promo pics and a trailer and of course January 2010.

Went to Columbia's Days on Campus today. No excuses anymore, I've been to all the campuses and I've got basically all the information. I have to decide which college I'm going to. ... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH THIS IS SO HARD. Goshdarnit if college would just have the decency to be free this would be a much easier decision.

So far as I know, yes it is now, but it didn't used to be. Language reforms reduced Korean to only the phonetic system, but it used to use Chinese characters as well (Hanja). So if you wanted to, say, transliterate your name into Korean, I suppose you can't go wrong there, just like so long as you know what you're doing you can't exactly accidentally say something untoward by transliterating your name into Katakana.

I want one, and yes, I'll research the meaning. As for Japanese, well, I think I found a good online dictionary. A dictionary isn't everything, though. Some of those people did have dictionaries... but something a dictionary won't give you is idiomatic meanings, figures of speech, cultural connotations, etc. For example, on the site they had a post on somebody who wanted a a tattoo of "one in a million," and what they got did essentially mean that... but the idiomatic meaning was very negative. I'll give a better explanation since I'm familiar this one, it's a common Chinese expression as well as a being Japanese one (the tattoo itself was in Japanese). For one thing the cultural equivalent of "a million" is "ten thousand" in Chinese and Japanese (dunno about Korean, not familiar with it). As in, where we might say, "I had about a million things to do yesterday!" in China or Japan it would be "ten thousand," or 万 (Chinese wan4, Japanese man). So they got that right at least. And one is just 一 (Chinese yi1, Japanese ichi). The problem is, 万一 (wan3yi1) in Chinese and 万が一 (man ga ichi) in Japanese do not mean "unique" or "special" or "fortunate," but rather "in case (something bad happens)" or "what if (something bad happens)." As in the Chinese sentence 我们万一晚了怎么办? If by chance we are late, what will we do? It's an expression of worry, of "what if that one in a million thing will go wrong?" Your best bet if you really want to have a tattoo in a foreign language? Consult a native speaker. Several native speakers, if you can. And bring them to the tattoo parlor to see examples of the artists' work, so they can confirm that the calligraphy doesn't look like garbage.

Can't link it here since it's a blog and will occasionally, casually use strong language... but I recently found something that's hilarious and relevant to my interests. I'm sure everyone here knows about Engrish. Basically, people in other countries, usually Japan and China, botch English in horrible ways. Well, one ethnically Chinese blogger decided to turn the tables on that and point out the many stupid ways Westerners use East Asian languages. The blog has actually been going since 2004 but I only recently discovered it (and it's gonna keep me up all night goshdarnit). So I'm sure you all also know about the people who get tattoos in East Asian characters, usually Chinese/Japanese (Hanzi/Kanji); I've yet to hear of a Westerner getting a tattoo in Korean, but they might be out there. Not to mention T-shirts and posters and whatnot that throw in Hanzi just to make it look "exotic." Well, a ton of those either don't make sense or mean the wrong thing, or in some hilarious cases, mean something really vulgar. My favorite is the one where a guy goes to Tokyo and gets a tattoo he thinks means "dragon." It actually says 外人 or "foreigner." There are also numerous characters that are written upside-down (including one on the cover of an alleged Chinese-English dictionary). These are the ones that I glanced at and wondered, "Wait, is that Chinese or random scribbles?" before the blogger pointed out their incorrect orientation. XD Ironically, to prevent that, some tattoo designs include a horizontal line to indicate "this side up..." so an otherwise perfect tattoo of "love" in Japanese ended up with a superfluous line. I also saw somebody who got tattooed with a single character which I did a double take at because that's my surname. Then there's the shirt with Japanese characters cascading Matrix-style that are actually copy-pasted from a Dell computer instruction manual. Then there's confusing the Chinese for doll (娃娃) with the Chinese for frog (蛙) (oddly enough my IME didn't turn up any results for "qingwa"... eh? Could I have remembered that wrong? Couldn't be...). Radicals make all the difference. And then there's the purse with a skull and crossbones on it as well as part of a Communist Party slogan (word of advice: next time get your characters from a takeout menu). I dunno, I could go on, but it's really a hilarious read. If anyone wants to know the site you can try to Google some of the examples I posted or PM me. I'll be edifying myself on my ancestral tongue and laughing.

Well, in actuality, not quite. There are a couple things I want to tie up with the epilogue, and I'd like to end on a bit of a different note. The epilogue really could have been just chapter 21, but considering that it's less than half the length of any of the other chapters, and all the main story threads were concluded... In any case, final chapter of 52-pickup. Although I thought I was done writing it over spring break, I ended up still making several revisions last night as I thought about the story more. I'll probably be revising the epilogue right up until the last moment, too. I just stuck in another paragraph about an hour ago, and there's one passage I'm considering adding. Since the epilogue isn't posted yet I don't quite feel the same sense of conclusion, but wow. To think that I made it to the ending.

AKA I went out to practice driving for the first time today, with my dad. Yeah, I realize I coulda gotten my permit two years ago. I was just really lazy and kept putting it off. ^^;; But now I have it! So my dad drove me to a parking lot and I got behind the wheel for the first time. He says I did pretty good, though I tend to be overly-cautious judging turns on the right side and always end up making the turn like five feet away from the curb. And if the parking lot had been full I think I'd have taken off a bunch of fenders. But it wasn't so I didn't. XD All in all driving actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Well, I guess, considering how many cars are on the road and how many people must have been able to pass the driving test... ... on an utterly random note I just realized that when I'm resting my fingers on the keyboard I tend to leave my right pinky on the apostrophe/quote key instead of the semicolon. I guess it's cause I use that key more. My left pinky rests on the shift key, instead of the a, as well. Probably also to do with my posture and the size of my hands. On another rather unrelated note, Zetsubou Sensei season 3. (Zan) Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei this summer. Which means Shaft's working on two shows that I'm looking forward to at the same time which means fingers crossed budget and man-hours won't be stretched... I also really, really don't want to write this Global essay that's due Monday. >< Then again I never do, but gah... research...

My dad asked me if it would be cool to have a Blackberry and I said, "Yeah, I guess so," so he bought me one. O_O On that note there is now a growing number of wires strewn about the floor near my computer. Cords for the external drive, the cord for my MP3 player, and now several cords for the Blackberry. I was hoping this one gadget could replace my MP3 player though... but that's not gonna happen until it gets more storage space. 240 mB is... not a lot. I don't listen to much music, but not even my 50-some song playlist will fit on there. I think you can plug in a card or something though. I'll probably just let my dad play around with it until he figures it all out. I think he has fun doing it.

This sounds familiar. Raiga? Same name, different syllables, isn't it?

Isn't it?

He just pointed his finger and went "Bang" and the guy he was pointing at got shot through the head.

I've never seen someone blush on the back of their head before. Mou chotto dake! On a completely different note. Is there anything these cell phones can't do? O_O

Today was my last day of high school gym. EVER. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Okay, granted, it's getting replaced with Health, but I can sit down in Health, don't have to go through the hassle of changing, can doodle, and possibly sleep. Also, National Latin Exam results are back! I got a gold! That makes four years in a row, which means I get the fancy $70 Oxford Classical Dictionary for free! =D The other two kids in my class who were also in the running for the dictionary (3 years in a row) also got golds! Fwee... However I scored horribly on the AIME. 1 question out of 15. Oh well! That was just for the heck of it anyway. NLE's something I've been committed to, the result of seven years of Latin class. Feels good to see that pay off. So yah, pretty good day. =D

Thy name is college decisions. Okay so I've got it down to 4, basically... Columbia, CMU, Maryland, and Rutgers. Columbia and CMU are both about 50,000 a year. Maryland is... 30,000 or 20,000 I think, and Rutgers is free. Columbia, obviously, is an Ivy. For CMU I got into Computer Science and CMU is definitely among the top for CS... but I have to know I really want to do CS because you can't really pursue anything else but CS with a CS degree. I also can't say I'm too hot on Columbia's core... lots of really long, really old texts on the syllabus. Maryland and Rutgers, there's probably not much real difference aside from Maryland is not Rutgers. Rutgers is just... too close to home. State school, you know? Sure it'd be nice to be able to do my laundry at home, but far outweighing that, I really want to get away, go somewhere new. Rutgers is literally 15 minutes away. Obvious advantage of Rutgers, though, is that it's free. I think I have a bit more freedom in terms of majors and classes at Maryland, though, although Rutgers probably has a good amount of freedom, too. Most likely getting a load of AP credit from both. And then in terms of getting into graduate school, do I want to be in the top of my class at a state school or hanging around the middle in a place like Columbia or CMU? Argh, just so many factors... >-<

Because these songs are actually really good. Have you heard any? Just 'cause they're amateur musicians using a voice synth program and releasing for free on the internet doesn't mean they can't produce some really awesome stuff. In some cases it's probably more a case of using the synthesized voice by choice; Vocaloid is pretty popular, after all. And a lot of the covers are really good, as well. I'm generally not a huge fan of Vocaloid music but I do have Sakura no Ame on my mp3 player. Uhh... I know that video site is blocked on BZP and you need an account for Nico... though there's a way to get around the Nico account thing. That'll work. Sakura no Ame - music by halyosy, sung by Hatsune Miku. If you can't understand or partially understand the lyrics, it's a song about graduation and the title means "Rain of Cherry Blossoms." It's somewhat slower and lower pitched than a lot of Vocaloid songs so the synth artifacts aren't nearly as noticeable. Hajimete no Koi ga Owaru Toki - music by ryo/supercell feat, sung by Hatsune Miku. Always thought Miku's voice could be a bit ear-piercingly high pitched, but it's only noticeable near the beginning. This is the one I was trying to translate earlier; it's a love song. Title means "The Time When First Love Ends." This is also one for which I rather like the cover better. Hajimete no Koi ga Owaru Toki covered by... well, she goes by the username Φ串Φ. Very pretty voice, though. 'Course whether you like the song is a matter of taste... but you gotta admit they're very professional, and whoever did the cover has a nice singing voice.

I dunno, it probably depends on the song... I've been listening to Hajimete no Koi ga Owaru Toki today and I like some of the human covers better. Plus in the original the music kinda overpowers Miku's voice... Also attempting to translate the song (mostly for my own benefit) but gosh is it a headache. There was an English version on Nico but "loose translation" does not begin to describe it.

Dude, the structural instability of your parents' house helped nab a dangerous fugitive! Stand proud, man! Seriously though, that's both a frightening and pretty darned awesome story.

This is what happens when real people cover vocaloid original songs.

Yeah I mentioned the German thing too. Everyone at the dinner table just stared at me.

Don't explain the joke, darnit!

So we had guests yesterday and so today my parents were drinking the leftover wine. And my sister was like, "That's beer!" and I said, "No, it's wine," and then as a joke I added, "It's like what you do all the time." And then my sister said, "There are three kinds of wine. There's the wine that you drink, the wine that's in the jungles, and the whine that's like waaaah, waaah." And then I'm like, "... the wine in the jungles?" Oh and I also forgot to mention that my sister lost her first two teeth recently! One after another, one Saturday night the other yesterday morning. Her two front bottom teeth. We got her to say "Mississippi" and it's the cutest thing ever. XD

I think there are still twenty-ish Easter eggs at large. Out of a final count of about eighty, it seems. We'll be turning them up from the nooks and crannies of our house for days. Not even I remember where I hid them. ... and since I may as well chapter 19, the penultimate chapter of 52-pickup, was posted earlier today.

I had to hide, like, sixty of them. >_< Well, in return, the munchkins will hopefully be busy for two hours.

How come when dust falls on things, it makes the things all whitish, but when you wipe it up, it makes the towel all black?