I feel you, for both of those things.

You just reminded me of how parents always ask for "how was school?" and you say it's fine, nothing much happened, and they want you to tell more but there is quite literally nothing you could talk about because nothing happened. Or that's for me at least. Idk about girls. I heard they talk a lot about that stuff.

Same here for AP exams. I an confident in a 4, and I hope for a 5. But also I'm a bit expecting a 3 simply so I don't get disappointed if I do get a 3.

I say don't worry about posting less topics. I think I actually like it more as there's less to read, and you also have more topics to write about later on.

Whenever you talk about tests you make me feel like it's going to be extra hard whenever I take them lol

How much do you study? If you don't mind me asking.

it's been a while but! finally done with all of the big exams I had to take this year, now just to wait until results come out in July (which is hhh I just really want to see what I got)
I'm hoping I got at least a 1500 on my SAT I took on Saturady but we'll see,,,

in other news, I finished Trails of Cold Steel 3 last night and boy oh boy what an experience that was
Even though I was spoiled for a lot of what happens, that ending still managed to get me; just aaaaaa
(major spoilers for ToCS3, also I'm really sorry for rambling)

like? the part where Alberich blows up the Courageous really made me just go ")): ouch" not only because of the deaths, but also because of what that scene symbolizes. At this point, the series has kinda conditioned you into believing that whenever things are looking bad, there'll be someone to arrive and get them out of the mess (the Cold Steel arc in particular has a ton of these deus ex machina moments). And so this time, when when the figurative "cavalry" - Olivier, Toval, and Victor - arrive via the Courageous, you kinda expect them to barge into the Gral of Erebos and lend the protagonists their aid. But they aren't even given the chance to do it; almost as soon as Alberich becomes aware of their presence, he asks Osborne and Cedric for permission to blast the ship out of the sky. And when he does it, you're forced to just watch as things start to go from "bad" to "we messed up" - there is no longer anyone else remaining to get Rean and co out of the mess they're in. Even more than that, the Courageous was consistently a symbol of hope for a number of characters in the franchise, so to see it go up in flames really only amplifies that feeling of "we messed up".
The fact that Olivert, Toval, and Victor all spend their last moments apologizing to the people closest to them (Scherazard, Ein, and Laura respectively) also makes it hit even harder, especially since all three of them aren't ones to give up
And then that's really only the start of Class VII's collective descent into despair, since after that you have Millium's sacrifice for the "sword of the end" and Rean losing control of himself again. That entire miniboss where you play as "corrupted Valimar/Rean" for the 3rd phase of that dragon fight just made me feel terrible - the entire scene just feels so wrong, but there's no stopping the "twilight" anymore
And of course the final scene where the 5 other known awakeners just all gang up on Rean after he doesn't heed his friends' pleas and the final fade into the credits theme was just,,, aaaaaaaa thanks game for that suffering
The return of Crow's memories too,,,,,,,, thanks game
it's incredible how somehow Rean manages to end off every game in a situation even worse than the previous; I wouldn't be surprised if ToCS4 ends with Rean suffering again
I hope not though, he really needs a break with how he keeps getting betrayed and used

I kinda want to jump right into ToCS 4 because of that cliffhanger but if I want to play the game for myself I'll have to wait until either my library gets the game (assuming they'll get it for the switch in the first place) or I'll have to wait until my birthday, but that's in a few months and I know I'll also probably be busy around then

1500 huh. A high standard

Yeah, this school year was kinda weird. It felt preeetty short

I've been inactive here again but what I did manage to do is finish two books (that I read for fun, and not for the sake of a class) so I guess I'll just briefly talk about them? I'm not really a proper reviewer or anything so this might be all over the place, but I'll try to refrain from spoiling much

The first one I finished was Thunderstruck, by Erik Larson. It's a nonfiction book that alternates between telling the story of Hawley Crippen and Guglielmo Marconi, who are described as an "unlikely murderer" and "creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication" (essentially, radio) respectively. I remembered reading one of Larson's books around this time 2 years ago (The Devil in the White City), which also juxtaposed two vastly different stories about the Chicago World's Fair. I enjoyed both books, but Thunderstruck in particular can lull at times when it gets too technical (which I didn't mind, since I enjoy physics, but I know not everyone feels the same).

The second one was The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie, which is a fantasy novel. I finished about 3/4 of the book yesterday, while the other 1/4 took me around a week or so to get through. Part of the reason it took me so long to get through the beginning was because it was admittedly kinda slow, but there was also real-life circumstances that prevented me from reading much while I was going through the beginning. I think it's worth mentioning that this book is mostly written in second person with a potentially unreliable narrator, which is a style that I found difficult to get used to at first - and it also switches from the present to flashbacks quite a bit. Even despite it's odd pacing and narration, I still relatively enjoyed the book - the plot is interesting enough to make up for some of the issues I had with it. It's probably also worth mentioning that apparently this book is loosely based off of Shakespeare's Hamlet, although since I haven't read Hamlet myself, I didn't really get the parallels. (ending spoilers ahead)

I will say though, the characters were admittedly on the weaker side, which is in part due to the way it's narrated; you can only see what they do, and only through the lens of the narrator. Mawat in particular I found a really difficult character to emphasize with, since all I got out of him was "stubborn and angry", and so when he dies towards the end, I found it really difficult to care, even when the "main protagonist" Eolo was grieving

and actually now that I'm talking about this, I also ended up reading Wishtree by Katherine Applegate while I was bored at my cousin's house a few days ago as well. It's a comparatively short read, particularly since this one is probably intended for younger, elementary-middle school students. This was narrated by a wise old oak tree (which, now that I think about it, might be why I wasn't completely lost while reading The Raven Tower, since that one also featured a similar type of narrator), who describes both the story of what's happening in it's own life as the threat of being cut down looms over the tree, as well as the story of the girl who moved into the house by it, who feels lonely due to the discrimination she and her family faces. Despite the heavier premise, both stories contribute to the overarching narrative about optimism and acceptance. Even though I'm far from the target audience from this book, I think what I liked was how cheesy yet not unrealistic it was? You pretty much can guess how it ends just from the synopsis and the focus on "wishes" and even though it was a relatively happy ending, it's still pretty clear that it's just a step towards change; the world isn't suddenly perfect and free from bigotry, and this is implied with how (ending spoiler ahead)

the person who arguably drives the main conflict isn't ever found or even named; he's just there to write the words "leave", which threatens both the tree and and the girl, albeit in different ways

The only thing is that I'm not sure how subtle the messages in this book are, or how the intended demographic is supposed to interpret this; I remember talking to my 9 year old cousin (who was about midway through the book) about what she thought about the book, and I'm not sure she got anything out of it more than just "tree that is believed to grant wishes" - she seemed pretty clueless about the heavier themes, which I guess is just a product of how Applegate presents it

Now that I think about it, it's interesting how all of three of these books all decided to tell two seemingly different stories and present them as a single book; it's a neat coincidence. Obviously each one goes about this in different ways, (one does it to fully explain context of certain events within a certain time period; another does it to develop the world and lore; and the last does it to express the same message but in different ways) but it's something I didn't fully think about until writing this mess (which I really didn't think would be this long oops)

but anyway I think that's enough from me, I've procrastinated enough on reading on my actual assigned reading for school (Frankenstein), so I'll probably get back to my summer assignments now so that I can free up time for other things, especially now that tennis is starting again

Last edited by autumnlibrarian16 (July 12, 2021 16:15:24)

in other news, today was my first day of tennis practice for the year! I got to see and talk with a number of people I haven't been able to see in a while so that was fun

also completely irrelevant but yesterday my SAT score was finally released and I was pleasantly surprised by my score and I'm so glad I don't need to retake it ever
although I'm kinda in fear for AP exam score releases in less than a week, I feel like they're going to be disappointing as some sort of retribution for a good SAT or something idk fhslkfjksd

genshin 2.0 released last night! haven't started any of the new quests yet but I'm very excited to explore inazuma and meet the new characters
I tried rolling for ayaka but got c2 diluc instead,,, diluc sir why do you keep doing this to me, please go home

also got my AP exam scores! got 4s on my humanities, 5s on calc and chem
very happy with my chem score, since that was the one I was most worried about; I wish I did better on lang and apush but there's nothing I can really do except try my best to make up for it with lit this upcoming year
speaking of lit! I should probably go work on my essay again

Time wrote:

Wait is there a Gershon impact 2 or just a big update?

Congrats! I'm still waiting for mine. Hope I did good.

It's a big update for Genshin! update 2.0 added a bunch of new things, most notably the next major nation/region (Inazuma)
There's also a bunch of new story missions which is exciting

and thanks!! hopefully you did well on your exams as well, Time!

it just hit me but,,, it's august already huh :^)

I completely forgot to mention it yesterday but in terms of "things Autumn has been reading recently for no good reason" I have two new additions: the first 4 volumes of Haikyuu and a book called Magyk
both of them I ended up reading while in travel during my vacation; the former was because I was just searching on my library's ebook service for a manga and that happened to be one of the few on there that started at volume 1, while the latter was because my cousin was reading it, and I decided to read it too at her recommendation

Haikyuu was fun! never thought I would be reading the volleyball manga but here I am, I'll probably go and try to check the physical library for the next few volumes once I finish up with my summer assignments. I probably can't say much else about the series yet since I really haven't gotten that far but I can see why it's so popular

as for Magyk it was admittedly very predicable with how it was going to go from the very beginning but as a simple fantasy story I found it enjoyable. it's first book of a larger series named after it's protagonist, Septimus Heap, but it can definetly be read as standalone due to the way it ends. The only thing is that I still have pretty big questions about the main villain and other few loose ends but that's probably just because I haven't really read the later books (which I probably won't read, but I might go and search up a summary of them later out of curiosity)

decided to write a little poem! I'm not a poet by any means and I don't think it really follows any formal poem structure (and it's honestly not that good), but I just felt like writing and figured I might as well try to write a poem since what I had in mind wouldn't really work in any other format
I don't really know where else to post it so here:

"a little leaf"

A little leaf,
Floating away in the wind.
Away from its tree,
But it knows not where to go.

The wind, sometimes gentle; sometimes harsh,
Pushes the leaf along.
Even with no say in where it goes,
It does not resist.

But then, what if,
What if it wanted to find its own direction?
Never having done it before,
It fails.

Back to being pushed by the wind,
With no say in where it goes.
Until it tries again.

:^)

although rereading it, I realized there's at least one completely different way to interpret it than I intended so I'm kinda curious to know what you thought it was about
actually the interpretation I just thought of makes a lot more sense for this poem than what I was really writing about which oops

@Galaxian:
I didn't mean to worry you oops, sorry about that
 

I know I'm not very active here to begin with, but expect me to be even more inactive (if that's possible) now that school is about to start 
Fall/back to school season tends to be very busy as it is for me but I need to make sure that I don't procrastinate on working on all my college apps, especially since it takes me a while to figure out how to express the thoughts I want to express

I got tocs4 last week but I should probably be smart with my time :^) the faster I get everything all done, the faster I'll be able to get back to it (luckily I'm not that far into the game; I just got ash back and I assume we're getting musse before we finally go and get the main protagonist back)
but even though I'm only like 10 or so hours into the game, it's made me almost cry a few times already,,, which isn't too surprising but I wasn't expecting the feels this early into the game

extra points to the claire scene where she finds the 2 week old text/email from millium and then breaks down - like aaaaaaaa ))): millium is so sweet and seeing the so called villainous "icy maiden" break down really hits hard, especially since she's supposed to be the cold and calculating sort of character (which she kinda isn't but that's another story)

fun fact: the real reason halloween is associated with scary things is because it's the day before (a good number of) early application deadlines; high school seniors are in terror of it every year

// please don't take me seriously I think college applications (truthfully, just the essays) are hurting my head
october starts next week and that's,,,, aaaaaaaa just where did all this time go

I really do want to get back to doing more art-related things (I normally draw on a regular basis but I just haven't had the motivation for it these last few months; I also really want to try picking up either sewing or photography as a hobby because that seems kinda fun. writing is also fun but I mean college apps are taking the fun out of it) but I guess that'll have to wait until college app season is done :^) but that's in a few months time, so I guess for now I should focus on all of my school-related activities 

and that's probably my cue to disappear for another 3 weeks or so! as usual if you ever need me for whatever reason the best way to do that is to contact me via discord, although if you post something on this thread I'll probably see it within a day or so