Creepychu

Well, as long as you've been able to get outside and enjoy a bit of it! Usually the real heat only lasts through the end of July around here, and the first week of August was nice, but recently we've gone back to ridiculous levels of heat/humidity. Nothing much to do except hide in the AC and wait for the temperature to drop again. =/

Heh, yeah, I think those two are among his most popular--or at least the most likely to be assigned as class readings. XD I'll check out the other ones you mentioned too; I've had good luck finding them online, and you're right, Orwell does have a nice style. It also looks like the library has Futurological Congress (in English as well as the original Polish, even), and I'm planning to restock on books as soon as I'm able to leave my apartment without without bursting into flame, so I'll definitely check it out!

Awesome, look forward to seeing what you've been working on! And yeah, I guess we've learned that I'm never going to be a journalist or anybody who has to actually interview real people, ever. If it takes me hours to come up with questions for fictional people on the internet, there's no way I'd be able to do it real-time for someone sitting in front of me.

Heh, I suppose that's what I get for replying to your message almost a month late... -_-; Weather is a moving target like that, I guess.

Ooh, that's some classic stuff there. I have to admit I've never read any Stanislaw Lem, and not much Orwell, either. I've read a couple of Orwell's essays, on the politics of language and "Shooting an Elephant;" any other ones you think are worth checking out in particular?

Glad you found the thread helpful! That's not something I would have guessed people would be using the questions for, but it works. Feel free to throw a character in there if you want, I promise I'll get to it sometime before the sun implodes. (Why is it so hard to think up decent questions for people??)

Ooh, send me some of that nice summer weather. Right now it's the time of year where you're pretty much going to catch fire if you step outside in the middle of the day. Looks really inviting outside, but nature is a cruel temptress.

Glad your summer's been going well, anyway. Run across anything particularly good in your summer reading?

I've mostly been working this summer, especially this month, but sitting around in the air conditioning all day is made less terrible by the aforementioned disgusting heat. Had a nice vacation in June... that's about it, really. Not terribly eventful around here.

Ah, OK, so I'll just remove that bit, then. Thank you!

(The revised version should be up later this year, by the way. Just been busy.)

Yeah, it was something about my Author's Notes sounding over-defensive or something and I wasn't sure where you got that from?

Good to hear! Though, there's a pending question for revising Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Plasbad in the future I might want to ask now you're back?

So I've heard you're back, kinda. How's it feel having an actual Pokemon of you?

Hey, what's up? Haven't seen you around in a while. Been having a good summer?

Cool, good luck with it! Don't get hung up if it isn't completed by Pi's initial estimate, looks like early Feb is quite possible and imo a good result as well given the very quick turnaround from the previous FFQ!

Poke regarding FFQ! ~

Oh, replying to your post in that one Author's Cafe thread (on your note there of being contrarian, don't worry, I usually avoid gripe threads partially for similar reasons and have just been commentating on that one because I've had a surprising amount of constructive-ish stuff to say) reminded me...

You mentioned in your review of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Plasbad For the Criminal Intent contest that I came across as overly defensive in a "deflecting criticism" kind of way in my Author's Notes for it, and as I expressed in my response I was actually really concerned about that, since I had no desire to do that at all (to the point I worried the response was overly defensive itself to the point it's why you never got back to me).

I think you or maybe Negrek or someone expressed they actually like Authors' Notes even if they cheese some people off, and I mention that that's basically what I try to do with mine - give my reader a bit of context into what I'm going for with the story and my mindset in writing it, sometimes peppered with tl;dr s of any weird headcanons of mine that would make a reader go "buh?" in ways unrelated to actual story flaws. So while it'll probably still be a little while before I give RGP an overhaul, I still felt I should ask what made them come across as defensive in that regard so when I write new ones for the thing going live they'll be less so.

Hi Creepychu!

Checking in to see if you're still interested in writing for the FFQ? There is a spare slot for the Editor's Choice feature still.

(There is only one suggestion made there for what the fic should be, but if you wanted to write it about something else that's fine too - but deciding sooner is better than later!)

Haha, yeah, contest reviews always take me ages. "It's only eight stories, how bad can it be?" Reviewing death. Glad you enjoyed writing them, though. I think they turned out really well.

Ah, sorry to hear the D&D's been kind of spotty. Sounded like you had some great character ideas for it, too; hope you've gotten to enjoy some fun NPC interaction moments even if your DM has trouble with them sometimes. Missing out on the prison break in particular sounds disappointing; one of my favorite RPG sessions ever involved the party having to bust their way out of prison, which ended with everything on fire, animals everywhere after our empath visited the stables, and the dangerous criminals the police had apprehended back on the loose, now with 100% more guns and ammo.

I've never played the Battlestar Galactica boardgame, but I've heard good things about it. At least you have a fun fall-back activity for when your DM can't manage to put on a session.

Yeah! I had a great holiday break, which means that I got basically no work done and am now paying for it in spades, but w/e yolo I suppose. It hasn't been very wintery around here, which I'm totally fine with, but it's starting to edge into that annoying period where it's gray and dark and chilly but without any actual snow. At least the days are getting longer again.

Hey, how's it going? How's post-contest-review life treating you? Hope the schedule issues with your D&D campaign got resolved and you've been able to enjoy a bit of that.

I was a bizarrely morbid kid, so the heavier themes were legitimately the first thing that captured me about it. All that death and suffering and the ending (plus the dragon, because who can resist a dragon) were basically everything I'd ever wanted from a book. I was actually old enough when I first read it to pin Jonatan's stories about Nangijala (and later Nangilima) as something he was making up on the spot to make Karl feel better, but didn't manage to take that train of thought farther than being weirded out that it then just happened to turn out to be true. I reread it once when I was thirteen or fourteen and understood it a bit better then, but yeah, I've been wanting to give it another read as an adult.

Soooo I just took it out from the library and started rereading it and now I'm crying all over everything. Damn you, Astrid Lindgren.

I'm assuming you're Swedish, if you have Swedish class where you analyze literature?

I am appreciating the Brothers Lionheart love over in the themes and age ratings thread. It was one of my favorite books when I was a kid, although I haven't read it in ages. Definitely took on some pretty heavy stuff!

Awwwww yes, awesome. I thought it was gonna be all Team Rocket fics aside from me and one other guy.

Can you specify what teams made it in the actual thread? I would but I posted last and I don't think anyone would see an edit.

EDIT: Well, Bobandbill took care of that. From what he said team diversity is accurate to what you said but can you spoilerconfirm numbers?

I'm assuming since you're a judge in this contest you won't need me to be a good sport and show you the initial version before the post-contest version like I did with Crater Dreams because... Well, as a judge you're already reading and critiquing said initial version anyway.

No problem, life's been unusually crazy for me this month, so obviously I haven't been great about my replies, either. At least it sounds like you've been doing productive (with regards to fanfic, anyway) things with your time--actually reading contest entries before the judging period starts, for example. You are way too on top of that. Hope you manage to get that one-shot together, too!

As far as challenge badges goes, a list of people who reach each badge level will be kept in the first post of the thread, and I'm also going to get badge images done for people who earn them to display in their sig or wherever if they'd like.

The primary reason I took basic Spanish so may times was that the classes were scattered across schools and grade levels, and they were usually required without any alternatives. I took my first Spanish class in the fourth grade, which was mandatory for everybody. It was a new program that was just starting up, and the teacher was replaced the following year, so in the absence of any real plan the next teacher just started over with basic stuff. I had mandatory required Spanish again in seventh grade, which was at a different school, and they didn't have any way to verify who had or hadn't taken it already and didn't have a more advanced option available for anyone who had anyway, so I was stuck with it again. Then I had to take two years of a language in high school and chose Spanish because it would be easy; the middle school class didn't count, naturally, so I started with Spanish I again. I did finally manage to take Spanish II after that, but at that point I felt pretty done with the whole thing and didn't pursue it further.

I suppose, though I think there's a degree of having a "knack" for it involved, I think. I know someone who became pretty good at Spanish just by surrounding himself with people who only spoke Spanish for a while, and I didn't start learning a second language until I was thirteen but I felt like I caught on pretty quickly. Though I do hear many people say that learning new languages gets harder with age, and I feel like it does, though my example might not be the best since I'm working on Chinese right now and that's completely different from anything else I know of.

I think growing up with fluency in multiple languages in great. My sister lives in Mexico so she and her husband are raising their kid to speak both languages, and so far all he knows is "hola" and "dog," but I'm interested to see where it goes!