NaNoWriMo and Other Unnecessary Fictions

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”
- Winston Churchill

I got my third win at NaNoWriMo this year.

If anything, the past month's grueling grind has been a bit of an eye opener for me. I thought I had very little left to learn when it came to this event, but I'm happy to be wrong.

The past two years' entries have been products of tedious planning which left me a mental wreck once December came around. I tried to do the same this year - trying to write a story I've been wanting to write for many years now - and failed to plan despite countless hours of trying to do so.

I must admit that I've been suffering a terrible case of burnout at work for several months now (or for the past year, if we're being honest), and at some point I've made the mistake of letting that dreadful feeling of apathy take over more parts of my life than I should have. For nine hours every weekday, it felt like whatever was the emotional equivalent of watching paint dry. I truly hope that it's just burnout.

Maybe that's why I have not been updating this blog regularly - and I take full responsibility for that - and maybe that's why I was very close to excusing myself from participating on this year's NaNoWriMo.

In the end, I went with something like this. No plans, no limits, no inner editor - I just needed to write as much as I could about anything I wanted. Twenty-three days and over thirty stories later, the beast was slain and things were better. Much better.

I've forgotten that this obscure hobby was an important outlet for me and a way to keep the madness of the world at bay. I've forgotten that I should have been writing for myself first, and others second. I've forgotten what a distinctly human trait it is to translate thoughts into words and record them on paper (or a screen) for posterity. I've forgotten that humans do not have time on their side, and stories have been a way to allow us to transcend the boundaries of mortality.

I haven't written with purpose for a long time, and this year's entry was probably the most rewarding one yet.

Lastly, a shameless plug - my 2014 novel Domino: A Superhero Screenplay is now available on Amazon for the discerning souls who like reading about crazy vigilantes and their equally nutty friends.

Scramblers in Darkness

NOTE: This is chapter nine of my NaNoWriMo entry, A Scoundrel's Missives. I don't know, but I think it still feels cohesive when torn away from the rest of the story. Enjoy!

I was awakened by someone’s vigorous shaking and the sound of Valdin’s raving filled my head. I struggled to regain my senses, having no idea how long I was asleep. I asked my companions what happened, and the dwemer replied that we had to hurry and try to return to the gate as quickly as we possibly could.

Confused and still not able to get the sleep off my tired eyes, I asked what the reason for the urgency was. Valdin hushed me and whispered that we had to start moving silently back the way we came. He added that we hold our torches ready as soon as we returned to the lower chambers.

Perhaps it was my incessant barrage of questions that annoyed them while he tried to walk as quickly as possible, so Ruso covered my mouth with his hand and tensely asked me to stop speaking and start listening.

I complied, and at first I could not hear anything besides the shuffling of our feet nor see anything beyond the soft blue glow of the growths along the rocks.

It was then that I heard some distant sounds, not unlike the scrambling of hundreds, if not thousands of feet. The sounds faintly but steadily grew louder in intensity and I realized that the noises came from almost every direction behind us – from the walls, the ceiling and from the ground itself. After a few tense moments that seemed like an eternity we reached the ledges and Valdin softly said that it was time we lit our torches. Hurriedly, they tried to light mine first – something that thankfully did not take too long.

As my torch began to emit a healthy blaze and my immediate surroundings became a bit more recognizable, I fancied a quick stare at the hallway from which we came from.

I was horrified by what I saw.

Hundreds of creatures, humanoid in appearance, stared back at us from the darkness. They were very pale in complexion and covered in mottled welts, as if their skin has never met warmth in their entire lives. The ones on the ground stood hunched, while the others somehow managed to cling to the walls and the ceilings as if their limbs were sticky enough to scale them. What was most unnerving were the creatures’ eyes – dead, milky-white eyes, almost whiter than their skin, stared back at us from the darkness.

An ear-splitting shriek broke our stare down. Ruso started screaming that I started to head down as quickly as possible, while he and Valdin prepared to follow after me. I did not need to be told twice, as I hurriedly clambered my way to the steep ledges into the tombs below.

A deafening sound thundered from above, followed by Valdin cursing and hurriedly climbing down after us. As I hit the ground, Ruso followed shortly behind.

Valdin was only halfway through and, as he noticed the creatures rapidly gaining on him, he rapidly weighed his options and let go of his grip. It seemed like an eternity before he hit the ground on his arm, and he screamed in agony mere moments after the impact. I hurriedly helped Valdin up as the first of the creatures leaped at us with Ruso catching it in mid-air with a swing of his mace, screaming for us to immediately run down the tombs into the gate’s direction and never look back – assuring that he would be following us closely.

The run towards the Gate and into Aeolon felt like forever. My pack was heavy and the straps started digging into my shoulders, adding to the agony of the already exhausting run. Valdin followed close behind clutching his arm, although I could not see nor hear any sign of our friend Ruso.

It was as if everything moved in slow motion. My legs seemed to cry out in pain and I felt my body throbbing with panic as the corridor seemed to stretch on forever, with the Gate, our only source of salvation, moving away from us.

After what seemed like an eternity, I managed to jump through the Gate back into Aeolon. I had not yet raised my head when a blinding light struck the Gate, followed by darkness and silence.

Zachary "Jick" Johnson's Sea Monkees

Note: As promised, the battle logs for my final showdown with Dad Sea Monkee in Kingdom of Loathing (cleaned up for easier reading). Excellent writing, and I could really say that the thirteen ascensions over two months were worth it.

Easily navigating the intense currents atop your trusty seahorse Purplie Gloaming, you crest an undersea ridge and discover, spread out beneath you, a magnificent Mer-kin City!

Strange. The temple door is unattended. You'd think there'd be guards.

You step through the doors. The water inside holds the stillness of untold ages.

Past the door there is a wooden table. On the table there is a bowl of fruit.

"Of course there is," you think to yourself. "Of course there is."

You peel the banana. The banana is your skin. You twist the stem from the pear. The pear is the scales on your eyes. You stomp the apple. The apple is Peanut. I'm sorry, Peanut. Next time, kiddo. Next time will be different, I promise.

You step through the door into a silent room with featureless white walls. In the center there sits a massive machine, the source of the noise. Pipes lead from the machine to ports on the blackened walls, pumping strange liquids into and out of the tank.

In the tank, floating, almost peacefully, is Dad. His eyes are open but vacant. In them you see your reflection, standing in a tiny room. White. Silent. Black. Deafening.

The room is the machine occupies the room contains the machine contains the room describes the machine creates the room is the machine.

You shake your head and look above the tank, at the window into space. Rotting forms swim in the darkness, each more bloated than the last. Space warps, slowly revealing 48-dimensional monstrosities.

No. Look again. There is nothing. Is your grasp on reality betraying you? As if on cue, 17-sided triangles materialize and then disappear. So impossible that your head throbs.

You have to end this.

You smell the decaying flesh of an ancient carcass, as big as a thousand thousand suns. You conjure up a rotten egg and hurl it at your opponent. You summon a whirling tornado of toys. A distant nebula's shape is painfully suggestive. You squeegee some oil from your nose and flick it skywards.A bolt of grease strikes your opponent. A baleful eye stares at you from the depths of space. You raise your right hand in the air and conjure an immense fireball. It makes your right hand red, like Nick Cave's right hand. You spin in a circle, conjuring up a cyclone of frost. The cyclone hits your opponent, leaving it as cold as ice. The chill of infinity coats your face in frost. The heat of a dying star scorches your bung. You raise your hands in the air and conjure an immense fireball in each of them. That's a hot pair of balls you've got there! The chill of infinity coats your arse in frost. You call for backup, and a zombie emerges from the ground nearby.

Some critical part has burned out. The window is now one-way. You look behind the machine and find where it's plugged into the wall. Amazing that all this was powered by a single 110 circuit.

You unplug the machine. Dad's eyes close. There is a flash, and you are back in front of the Temple.

You were hoping maybe he'd thank you.

Week 9 - First of Summer

Nearly sixteen years ago, I beat Pokemon Red in a single playthrough. The GameBoy cartridge's battery power was dead which meant that saving wasn't going to work anymore, and I wanted to give the game one last shot. Using a pair of fresh Duracell batteries, I beat the game (capturing Mewtwo included) in a little over ten hours. Suffice to say, it was nowhere near record time but it was my first taste of a speedrun.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, an anonymous person set up one of the most interesting social experiments so far that faintly invokes the infinite monkey theorem. A Twitch channel was set up and hooked to a game of Pokemon Red. Button input was gathered from chat and was translated into ingame commands in an attempt to do the seemingly impossible: complete a single playthrough of the game. Nearly four hundred hours later, Zapdos hit Red's Blastoise with a Thundershock and history was made. While the 650,000-person effort was hardly the first of its kind, this achievement was done in a game that was more chaotic by several orders of magnitude. Bravo, humanity!

Meanwhile, I snagged a copy of the reprint for Gerry Alanguilan's Where Bold Stars Go To Die from Comic Odyssey at the Galleria. I wasn't expecting to get anything else, but they somehow had a few copies of one of his earlier works which I have been trying to find for over a decade - Wasted. While a lot of his work (besides the ones done for DC and Marvel comics) are already dark and geared towards mature audiences, the ones I got took them a notch further. In any case, it was definitely a good score. Hopefully, we get to go to this year's Komikon - I've been meaning to go for the past couple of years or so.

Lastly, it feels like summer's here. We went to our cousin's place in Cavite last weekend for an impromptu gathering and a swim (which turned out to be a quick one). Needless to say, I hate the sun.

Later!

Week 4 - Contrition

Okay, so this will be the last time I post about NaNoWriMo for now. I finally got the complimentary copies of my entry a few days ago (which was one hardbound and a couple paperbacks). I must admit that it made me really giddy inside because holy crap I have written an actual, physical, totally real and tangible book!

Does that officially make me an author now? I don't know - the thing is pretty terrible if you ask me. On the other hand, I could totally dare people to bet against me having written a book and win - because trolling is fun.

In other news, here's a bunch of films I'd love to watch this year (so far): Tome Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow, Kickstarter-backed Kung Fury and Jupiter Ascending - where I'm betting that Sean Bean somehow finds a way to die yet again.

Meanwhile, I'm now on run nine of thirteen in the Great Cloathing ascension chain. I finished the last run in 708 turns. That's a whopping forty-five turns less than the speediest run, which means two things - less dumb mistakes and better odds with the adventure queue. Metagaming is the shit.

In relation to that, I also got an email that Mr. Card Game is on its way to my greedy hands. After a couple of years, I'd finally get my hands on the first Kickstarter projects I backed up. Hooray for the wonders of crowdsourcing!

Later!

Week 48 - Lessons from NaNoWriMo 2013

"I am the Commander of these words.
I am the King of this story. 
I am the God of this place.
I am a writer, and I will finish the shit that I started."
- The Penmonkey's Paean

Why yes, November has been a particularly crazy month for me as one can see from my posts from the last few days (and their apparent lateness).

The main reason for my lack of updates, however, is NaNoWrimo. It's something I've been meaning to do since I've heard of it way back in college but real life has always pushed it to the sidelines year after year.

In a nutshell, NaNoWriMo (which is short for National Novel Writing Month) is an annual month-long activity held every November that challenges its participants to come up with a fifty thousand word novel within thirty days. Some may see it as a travesty, especially those who write for a living, but for what it's worth I have learned a few things from the experience.

NaNoWriMo is a self challenge.
There isn't really any tangible prize to completing NaNoWriMo nor is there any way of checking whether a participant cheated or not. But I think that's the beauty of something based on a person's own honor system and I think that's what makes the win gratifying in itself.

NaNoWriMo is an exercise in determination and self-discipline.
There have been days when life goes in the way of writing (or more accurately, writing goes in the way of life). If there's a piece of advice that I could give to anyone who would attempt the challenge, it could be summed up in two words: Keep Writing. While some people looked like they breezed through it, I found that NaNoWriMo (and writing in general) is much, much harder than it looks. I guess the trick is to never, ever give up - much like many things in the real world.

NaNoWriMo requires commitment.
I've learned that the difference between saying "I can do that" and "I've done that" is actually getting up from the comfy couch of complacency and doing the damn thing. NaNoWriMo asks us this question: If not now, then when, or rather, will you ever do it?

NaNoWriMo does not need our inner writer, author or editor. It needs the storyteller in us.
It has been said that everyone has a book in them but they didn't tell us that the story is the most important part of the book. I think I'm lucky that I've got a whole world of crazy lore to pull from (which is a whole different story altogether), but I'm sure that a lot of people have their own personal troves to pick their stories from. NaNoWriMo is all about the shitty first drafts - and it is from that chaos that the good second draft and terrific third draft are born (according to Anne Lamott).

NaNoWriMo has a personal lesson for each of its participants.
It may have been a silly and unnecessary decision to forgo dialogue in my entry and write nothing but pure narrative instead. But then I realize that maybe I subconsciously wanted to fit in as much lore as I could in lieu of conversation because I don't think I'm ever going to do this again. But perhaps in those thirty days and nights of literary abandon, I feel like the greatest thing I've learned is that I love writing. Not stories or novels or anything in particular, but just writing in general - seeing my thoughts committed on a medium. A lot of people live their lives without ever discovering anything they're passionate about, so I guess it's all worth it in the end. Self discovery and whatnot, yes?

Give NaNoWriMo a go. There's something in it for anybody who's giving it a shot. As for me, it's back to regular programming. It's something I'm happy to scratch off The Tertiaries.

Later!

Darths & Droids

+500 XP.

"If movies were made by gamers, all the heroes would be short, overweight guys with physical disabilities." 
- Episode 52 annotation (Darths & Droids)

I've been on a bit of a Star Wars binge lately, mainly due to a book I'm reading as well an awesome find - a webcomic called Darths & Droids.

In a nutshell, Darths & Droids is a humorous take on the six official films - where each one is played out as a pen and paper roleplaying game amongst a singular gaming group (hence the obvious homage from title's initials).

Each panel mostly consists of stills from the movies interspersed with witty dialogue from the players and the game master. While many exchanges have the expected in-character roleplaying fare, the majority consists of conversations amongst the gaming group - in the form of gamer bickering, rules lawyering (in a good way), narrative justifications along with the occasional interpersonal quarrels and other real world woes.

However, it's quite important to note that the webcomic uses roleplaying-centric terminology which the creators have helpfully annotated with (hopefully) layman's terms at the bottom of each strip. Prepare for a lot of background reading on TV Tropes for the uninitiated.

All in all, Darths & Droids is a very interesting webcomic that grants readers an inside look at a fairly geeky (and sometimes esoteric) hobby and it provides a refreshingly unique take on the Star Wars universe.

Flavor Text : Coalition Victory

"You can build a perfect machine out of imperfect parts."
- Urza

Just for the sake of flavor, the planeswalker who said that quote was eventually pitted against his greatest creation, Gerrard Capashen, and lost his life. It's a bit sad that his vendetta against Yawgmoth and Phyrexia was done under the guise of saving Dominaria, but whatever ends he sought to achieve would never have justified his means. Or vice versa, I think. It's a very old story that spans more than a decade's worth of books and lore in the form of flavor text.

Anyway, this quote reminds me of the fortune teller scene in After Eden, where Jon and Cecile were told of the concept of clasping of hands - that the gaps between each person's fingers were metaphors for their shortcomings while the fingers represented their good sides. The fortune teller said that if people allowed others to fill in the gaps, then those shortcomings would be complemented by the other's strengths, hence the clasping of hands. Pretty neat, no?

Which reminds me, I was hoping to have a scan of that particular panel for quite a while now but the book has been lent to someone for longest time.

I should probably try getting it back.

Old FB Notes - Thirty Books

So I'm just cleaning up a few old FB notes and I'm a packrat, so I can't throw them away.

This one was some sort of thirty day challenge about books. I've edited them a bit and added a few notes, because I'm well aware that some of the entries are very unusual. Blame the schools my parents decided to throw me into, I guess.

Also, for the purpose of this list, graphic novels count. Here goes nothing.

Your Favorite Book
Not answering this one, sorry.

Least Favorite Book
DooM Quadrilogy - Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver

The series went from campy video game storytelling to a major clusterfuck. I'm still looking for the second book in the series though, because that covers DooM 2.

A Book That Completely Surprised You
Ang Paboritong Libro ni Hudas - Bob Ong

This book showed me that someone could stray far away from the pedantic style of writing that I was so used to (at the time) and write something great colloquially. The best thing this book has taught me was that one could actually win an essay writing contest even when it has been stealthily packed with satire, but that's a story for another day.

A Book That Reminds You of Home
Dessert for the Angels - Andrew Maria Almonte

This was one of the first books I ever got as a gift (along with The Stones of the Moon and something else I couldn't remember).

A Non-fiction Book That You Actually Enjoyed
Peksman (Mamatay Ka Man) Nagsisinungaling Ako - Eros Atalia

A Book That Makes You Cry
Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom

Well, it didn't really make me cry but reading about someone who looks at the concept of death from a very different perspective isn't something that's easy to swallow for the first few pages.

A Book That’s Hard to Read
Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Maybe I was too young when I read this book, but I've never picked it up again. Dune might be a good contender for this though.

An Unpopular Book You Believe Should Be a Best-Seller
The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray - Chris Wooding

I'm a Mythos fan, so this is definitely biased towards that genre, something that the author managed to make his own.

A Book You’ve Read More Than Once
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

That was the first answer that came to me. On a related note, I had a couple of runs on The Horse and His Boy as well.

The First Novel You Remember Reading
A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett

Imagine being forced to write a book report about this during fourth grade. That's sowing the seeds of a grammar nazi right there.

The Book That Made You Fall in Love with Reading
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

A Book So Emotionally Draining You Couldn't Complete It or Had to Set Aside for a Bit
Thimble Summer - Elizabeth Enright

Not exactly emotionally draining per se, but this book took me six months to finish because it bored me to death - and we had to write a goddamn book report on it. Those were days that Google was still a dream, so one could only imagine how horrible it could have been.

Favorite Childhood Book
The Swiss Family Robinson - Johann David Wyss

A family-oriented Robinson Crusoe, so that's sans the cannibals and piles of corpses. Mostly. Yay!

Book That Should Be on College Required Reading List
Rizal Without the Overcoat - Ambeth Ocampo

Favorite Book Dealing with Foreign Culture
Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze - Elizabeth Foreman Lewis

Yep, another book report requirement. It wasn't as bad as I'd imagined, fortunately.

Favorite Book Turned Movie
The Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft

Book Turned Movie and Completely Desecrated
Wanted - Mark Millar

A Book You Can’t Find on Shelves Anymore That You Love
Jeff Hawke - Sydney Jordan

A Book That Changed Your Mind About a Particular Subject (non-fiction)
I don't really read a lot of non-fiction. At least not books.

A Book You Would Recommend to An Ignorant/Racist/Closed Minded Person
The Watsons Go to Birmingham (1963) - Christopher Paul Curtis

A Guilty Pleasure Book
World War Z - Max Brooks

Favorite Series
Harry Potter

Sorry, but I feel like this needs an explanation. My classmates during my elementary days could attest to how over-the-top our curriculum was - just see the entries above. After all, if you're required to write book reviews on unabridged versions of novels like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (which I liked) or Great Expectations (which is a goddamn snoozefest), a freaking story about wizarding school is a welcome break.

Favorite Romance Novel
After Eden - Arnold Arre

For all its sappiness, cliches and mushiness, this graphic novel is nothing short of magic.

On a related note, The Princess Bride would probably be a perfect fit here, but I've only had the pleasure of watching the movie (which is still my favorite, by the way). It's essentially a fairy tale's fairy tale.

A Book You Later Found Out the Author Lied About
No real answer for this too, but see the third from the last entry.


Favorite Autobiographical/Biographical book
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell - Tucker Max

A Book You Wish Would Be Written
HP Lovecraft's Commonplace Book - H.P. Lovecraft

A Book You Would Write If You Had All the Resources
something that would place the Dream Cycle in a modern setting

A Book You Wish You Never Read
Battlefield Earth - L. Ron Hubbard

An Author That You Completely Avoid/Hate
Eh, I give the benefit of a doubt for any new author. Otherwise, L. Ron Hubbard

An Author That You Will Read Whatever They Put Out
Michael Crichton

Dear Them

So what was this post about?

Blame this book that I've been reading lately. It's such a pain to find (and I even somehow managed to get lost, again, for some reason) - but definitely worth it.

Dear Me is a book containing the letters of famous personalities from all over the famous-people-spectrum to their sixteen year-old selves.

The letters provide amusing insight to the celebrities' lives - from their regrets to notes about what to do or not to do in their alternate lifetimes. The letters serve as anecdotes, and I was surprised at what some of them wrote.

I won't bother with a long review, but I'll end this post with a few quotes from some of the contributors.

"You truly become those you're with. There are three types of people in this place: those who love, those who hate, those who are stuck in between the two, like us."
- Michelle Rodriguez

"The truism of one life to live is there because that's true. Enjoy the music of your life because once the band stops playing, that's it."
- William Shatner

"If there is anything you are really likely to regret, it's that you didn't come to believe in your angels sooner. Believe in your angels, and don't be afraid to fail."
- Steve-O

"Make your own messes, and then work your own way out of them."
- Alan Rickman

"Always remember, my dear Suze, to be as happy in your sadness as you are in your happiness and then you will know the key to life."
- Suze Orman

Zombie Dramas, Songs and Comics?

Exit Humanity

Exit Humanity is not your run-of-the-mill zombie film. I was surprised that it turned out to be more of a drama than a horror film set shortly after the US Civil War - with the undead added into the conflict.

The film is based on the fictional memoirs of Edward Young, a soldier who has to deal with the horrors of a post-apocalyptic America ten years after the war - losing his family shortly afterwards due to a mysterious disease that reanimates the dead.

He decides to go on a journey to find answers to the terrible plague that has swept across the land and ultimately, to find answers to the doubts he has for himself.

Exit Humanity captured what The Walking Dead (the TV series, not the comics - those are still awesome) failed to do - human conflict set against a world with inhuman foes.

Junk of the Heart (The Kooks)

This is an album from the English band The Kooks, which I first found when I was running along the dark side of YouTube.

The album has fourteen tracks, and most are incredibly catchy - not a surprising quality from British bands.

25 Lives (Tongari/@madaoba)

Lastly, see the work of Tongari entitled 25 Lives. I don't think I've seen anything this simple and awesome since Arnold Arre's After Eden.

Satire's Outer Limits

"Sometimes the biggest source of irritation comes from within. Every man must come to terms with his own failure. Every college dropout, fired employee, or middle manager will carry with him the seeds of contempt that will later manifest itself in an angry, vitriolic discharge - sometimes in the form of a book."
- Maddox

So if there's one word that could be used to describe the work of George Ouzounian, much more popularly known as Maddox, it's crass.

This is to be expected. After all, Maddox is one of the Internet's most famous and long-running satirists. His book, The Alphabet of Manliness (Extended Edition), perfectly reflects the writing style he employs in his personal site, The Best Page in the Universe - brutally inappropriate satire brimming with profanity with copious amounts of misogyny and misanthropy.

To put it bluntly, the book is not for everyone. Just like the articles Maddox publishes online, each chapter discusses one particular 'manly' topic, often in what seems to be the tone of a spiteful manchild.

Is it a wonder that both editions of The Alphabet of Manliness became bestsellers? Not really. In writing this book, Maddox has willingly volunteered himself to be a scapegoat and wrote about topics that most people would avoid. The book contains topics that are deemed taboo by most standards and one can't help but have one of two reactions, sometimes simultaneously - laugh and get offended.

Marshall McLuhan once said that jokes are grievances. It is probably a safe bet that this book and any person who can relate to at least one thing the author says would prove that to be true.

On Books, Stories and Written Words

So lately, I’ve found myself wandering around Manila looking for second-hand book shops again. Apparently, 2012 is a slow year for gaming, as there are very few games coming out that I’m actually interested in, but I digress.

Reading has always been a fallback pastime for me, and I tend to jump in whenever there’s nothing left to play or no shows to watch on my free time.

I guess the affinity for books came from the fact that it has always been a struggle to get my folks to get us toys back then, but they rarely said no whenever we wanted them to get something for us to read, whether we wanted graphic novels, literary classics or whatever piece of literature we found ourselves pointing to on frequent visits to book stores. I guess being tasked to do book reviews every quarter in school was a major factor too, especially when we had to read books which were, to be honest, unbearably boring. I even recall spending weeks at a time at my grandparents’ house, rummaging through the old books my aunts and uncles have dumped there over the years. It might sound strange, but I knew about Jaws and Star Wars from the books first before the movies.

Does it pay off in the long run? Maybe it does. The sheer amount of trivia (or useless knowledge as we call it) as well as reading comprehension are just the bonus perks. I think the real value is in the fact that we became better listeners and we found it easy to appreciate the stories other people tell. We see the effort that others put into telling those stories, whether it’s something simple that made their day or some worries they just needed to get off their chest. We learned that people experience similar stories and we learned the merits of seeing things from different perspectives.

Could those things be learned from real life experience alone? I don’t doubt that, since different people learn one thing different ways and to each their own. This after all, is just an opinion too.