Brettia

Well, to all who shared that year of Brettia with me, I present a gift: Word 2003 compiled version.

I read a lot of the RPs and stories that were posted there as I archived them, and I was amazed at the quality of writing that we achieved. For 8th graders, we did pretty good (did you catch that one?). Of course, we posted during first semester of our freshman year, too, but it was obvious then that Brettia was already in decline. I did word counts on all 36 files that make up the archive, as well, and the results of that are stored in an Excel 2003 file in the archive.

To me, it was amazing when I did the final word count: 218,232 words, about 650 pages. Wow. Sure, it took over a year of work, but all in all we were only really posting for about six months because of lags in the summer and during breaks. I think I probably accounted for about one-third of that 218,000, as one of my stories, the Second Algebra War (don’t ask), made up 30,000 words, and others that I started or participated heavily in racked up 10,000-20,000 words each. It’s just too bad that all the stories are unfinished, so they could never be seriously published.

I’m happy to say that my period of being devoid of optimism has ended. My mood changes hourly; all part of being a teenager, I guess, though it’s slightly annoying. Organon is a good outlet for my rants, though, so at least no one, save for those poor souls who read this, had to experience my outpouring of unhappiness and distress firsthand.

I’ve read about 1600 pages in the past week, as I just finished reading the 5th Harry Potter book fifteen minutes ago, and I read the fourth earlier, as I noted, I believe, in a previous entry. Both of these I read earlier, back when they were first released, but, as with all good books, I ended up reading them again to refresh my memory. As I write this I wonder whether people would think it immature to still read Harry Potter books, to go to the movies, etc. But I find I really don’t care. There’s no better defense for my actions than that: I just don’t care.

This was something I learned in middle school. Back in 6th grade, just like everyone who wasn’t super-popular, I had a few run-ins with various bullies and others who thought it enjoyable to poke fun at me (and others). But this didn’t last long, as I just took the “grin-and-bear-it” stance, which wasn’t very entertaining for them. I realized that, as annoying and mean and stupid as people can be, it’s never worth it to stoop to their level and fight back. Not because of the possible punishment for doing so, but because it would trigger a continuous bombardment of insults and threats. How did I know this? Because I saw other people lose control and try to lash back at their oppressors, and they failed horribly. To this day, one of those people is still ridiculed.

Does not fighting back make me a pushover? Maybe. But at least I’m a big pushover. And I’ll always know, deep down, that no matter how hard someone tries to get to me, I’ll always be better than them.

I really have no idea why I wrote this, or how I veered so horribly off of the subject I began with. I’ll come back later when I have something more interesting to say.

“You’re still goin’ strong.” - WordPress, which displays a random quote at the top of the posting page. This one is strangely relevant.