Room of Chat

Hey hey! I'm Brindlebriar, but you can call me Brindle😁

Hello everyone! I haven't really been on here much either haha

I had this week off which was pretty great, but I go back on the eighth and then have an English diploma exam on the eleventh which should be interesting. I'll probably have to reread Hamlet this weekend, because I like that one the best and will probably write on it.

Discussion for math makes no sense? There is nothing to discuss? That's definitely really weird. I took an online social studies course last year, and we just had to answer questions and put them on the forum, but pretty much none of the students actually discussed anything with each other so it was kind of pointless haha. Do they at least tell you what you're supposed to discuss or ???

Ooh, creative writing! That sounds like a lot of fun. I still want to take a creative writing course at some point in University depending on my course load... I can't pick classes yet because the supplementary application website is completely broken, so I don't know if I'll get into my first choice program or not. Buut, I did get accepted into my university of choice, which is pretty great!
I usually enjoy chemistry, but my teacher this year is really confusing. She doesn't ever explain anything directly and uses mostly confusing analogies, and has a bunch of "tricks" that actually just make things more difficult. sigh. She's been teaching for a while and sometimes writes questions for the diploma exams and stuff so I don't get why she's so confusing? Nobody I've talked to finds her a good teacher either.

I've heard the Breath of the Wild is supposed to be really good! Some of my younger cousins got a switch for Christmas so I played a little on that during Christmas. It's pretty cool. I haven't played video games in such a long time, other than the Sims (which I got the cats and dogs expansion pack for, and I immediately created my cats on it), but I got Shadow of War for Christmas which I kind of want as a Tolkien fan but also don't want as a Tolkien fan. I want to see how absurd it is with my own eyes, and also because I love Celebrimbor, even though the games kind of ruined him. Um, other than that, my cousins came over for New Years which was fun, and I've really enjoyed this break of doing absolutely nothing and am dreading actually going back. I have calculus homework I need to do this weekend, unfortunately, and I have forgotten all of it. Calculus is horrible, avoid it if you can

My exams are really confusing because the government decided we shouldn't get so much time off (it used to be we'd be back in school in January for about a week or two and then have the rest of the month off... which was nice) but they didn't really communicate the changes. So I think have Thursday and Friday off school (aside from my exam Thursday morning), but my math teacher wants us to come in on either Thursday or Friday (depending if we write the English or Social Studies exams) so we can do more lessons, which sucks. I'm debating if I want to go in on Thursday, after three hours and two essays, or if I really want to get up and leave the house on Friday. I guess I'll see how I feel after the exam? Hamlet is a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it. I can manage to get through Shakespeare pretty well, which is lucky for me, so I like to write on Shakespeare since his plays tend to be a lot of fun. (Or, at least, the ones we studied in school, which were R&J, Macbeth, and Hamlet.) I've been planning to read the Odyssey sometime this month, to keep with my "read more things" resolution, so hopefully I can get through it, haha.

Math is extremely difficult to explain, especially if you're trying to explain it online?? I find it way easier if you write the questions out which you don't have the luxury of on an online course. I tried to explain math over Skype once and that was painful enough in itself. I don't like it when discussion is part of a grade, which is probably because I really hate speaking up in class, but I also don't see why it's necessary? If you understand the subject, that should be good enough?

What sort of stuff do they teach in a writing class? I've always been pretty curious about that, since so much of writing is extremely subjective. I did get into my choice university, but not my choice program yet-- I should, since it has about the same average as my second choice program, but I need to complete a supplementary application which is difficult to do because I'm really a very boring person and can't find anything to talk about.

My chemistry teacher spent so much of today rambling about things that aren't even related to the class. It was really getting irritating. She talks a lot about stuff that isn't related to the curriculum. ("I'll talk for twenty minutes about the properties of this substance! Oh, by the way, you don't actually need to know any of this stuff, but I'm going to continue talking about it anyways!") Sometimes I am completely baffled. I've started tuning her out because I can't tell what's actually important or not anymore. She also doesn't listen to the full question and assumes she knows what you're going to ask and answers it before you've finished asking, which is irritating because often the thing I'm going to ask is completely different from what she says. And that's not great, for someone like me, because I really hate asking for help and if I'm cut off and not having a good day I'd just leave without getting an answer to my question since I don't think it's worth it anymore. I really don't like her as a teacher. Luckily, after this month, I won't have to deal with her anymore.
I'm pretty bad at taking notes, too. When I do it's a bunch of faint pencil scratches that I can barely read if I'm reviewing, haha. And I've stopped taking notes in chemistry because so much of what the teacher says is irrelevant that I get distracted and start doodling instead.

Shadow of War is the sequel to Shadow of Mordor, and they're both games that are set in the Tolkien Universe technically even though they're not considered canonical, thankfully. The basic premise is that it takes place in between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and it's about a ranger that dies and is brought back to life bound to this character named Celebrimbor, who canonically was responsible for forging the rings of elves (which are good) and the rings of dwarves and men with Sauron (who was in disguise at the time. As a result, these rings turned out bad. The rings of men created the ringwraiths/black riders/Nazgul/evil servants of Sauron.) He did not have a hand in forging the One Ring, which is the big important ring of power that they try to destroy in Lord of the Rings, but in the games universe, he had an essential role. As a Tolkien fan I mostly bought the first game for Celebrimbor, because he has a lot of interesting history (that I won't get into, because I will go on forever about my love for Celebrimbor,) even though the games ruined a lot of things about the character. Shadow of War, the sequel, is even worse in disregarding the canon. For example, there's a terrifying spider character named Shelob (who also has some interesting history that I won't go into) and probably can't technically shapeshift. Her ancestor probably could, but it's generally been accepted that Shelob can't. The game recreated Shelob as an attractive female human that actually has motivations other than "eat things."
She's a spider. Her only motivation is to eat things. Not anymore, apparently. Um, I could go on for longer, but I think I won't, because this reply is ridiculously long already.

I have to take calculus in University, and the first year calculus course is apparently the hardest math course anyone will ever take, ever (my dad failed it, my aunt failed it, I haven't heard of anyone doing well in it) but if I pass the AP exam I'll take an easier version of the course. Math is not my strongest subject, so I'm struggling a lot. I agree, I find business very confusing and also quite boring. It's a lot of things I'm really bad at combined into one. I think it's good to have a basic understanding of business, though. I've been looking into the process of publishing and there's a lot of business considerations publishing companies have, so knowing what they're looking for couldn't hurt.

by the way hello, and what is Fangbone? ^^'

Oh, that sounds interesting! Maybe I'll check it out ^-^ What's the connection between the thread title and the show?

Oh, I see! Thanks for explaining ^^

Hi, sorry for not responding for so long! I got a really bad cold around the time I intended to reply and then forgot, haha.

Voice work sounds cool! I can definitely see how it can be awkward to do in front of other people, though. (Talking to other people in general is bad enough for me, haha. Voicing things would be fun if my voice didn't still sound like I was five.) I've never played a sonic game before, but those controls do sound pretty annoying.

I completely understand not wanting to show us the paper. Sometimes things just don't work, but at least you got it done! Now you don't have to think about it ever again.

I actually didn't find the romance too forced in Spiderman? This is coming from me, and I find every single romance forced ever. I do kind of get where you're coming from, but at least this time the romance was essential to the plot in that it revealed the villain, and the romance didn't completely take over the plot. Her character did seem a little one-dimensional, and she seemed a little too nice, but I don't think they had the time to properly develop her because movies.

As for my life, I managed to get through exams and should be getting the results later this month, which I'm a little nervous about, because I got a really nasty cold. I had to cancel plans with friends and couldn't leave the house for most of the week. I was recovering when I wrote my English exam, but I still couldn't focus for long periods of time which really is an inconvenience when you're doing reading comprehension, and I missed some exam prep for chemistry so I was a little underprepared for that one. But I tend to have good luck with exams, so I don't think it went too horribly, but I didn't do as well as I would like. I also got accepted into my program of choice at my university of choice, which is pretty great. Uh, other than that, I started the third (and hopefully final) draft of this one novel, am beginning initial editing on a different one, and can't seem to restrain myself from starting a new story because I have no self control, so I have three different projects, all very different in tone and such, going at once.

I'm sure there could be something I could do, but my voice really annoys me, haha. Probably just because it's mine, and it doesn't sound like it does when I hear it, which I understand is normal, but still. Most of my interest in voice work is stuff like reading things aloud-- like audiobooks or something-- because I've never been very expressive with my voice, but again, I don't think my voice would be pleasant to listen to for hours and I've got a bit of a lisp and all sorts of fun stuff like that!

I've always found romance extremely dull, probably because I don't understand it at all. And it feels to me that most romance is extremely underdeveloped or generally unhealthy and gross? Like, why do the characters hate each other? How is that sexual tension? That doesn't make any sense? They've openly expressed their dislike? That's gross? I'm okay with romance so long as it is well developed and healthy and also doesn't take over the entire plot. I don't read a lot, but that's largely because lots of the time when I try the plot of the book is taken over by a romance that feels completely unnecessary, and I get bored. The thing that I liked about how the romance was handled in spiderman was that at least it wasn't taking over the plot, and the part that I'd normally find boring (the Homecoming part) was actually relevant and there wasn't any "I love her but must stay away from her for her safety but I can't stay away" because I find that really annoying, especially when it's underdeveloped, which it usually is.

I hope I do well too! It will probably still be alright, and since these exams are only 30% of my final grade now, it shouldn't affect my average too heavily. I'm pretty sure my English will drop, though, because I didn't have a great essay either. I got lucky with University because there's one in my city that I can go to and stay at home, which is cost-effective, and it had a program I liked that I could get into. I'm curious, what do universities look at if you're homeschooled? Is it SAT marks and such? (Is it SAT marks regardless?) I'm not super confident in my knowledge about American education so I'm assuming that's it, but I'm not sure.

I don't think it's weird to be working on multiple projects, but these are three novels that I'm working on at the same time and they're all very different tonally, so it could get a bit confusing. I'm also worried that I'm going to abandon one while I work on the others and then lose interest. So I'm trying to just work on the oldest one, get that one done, move to the one I'm supposed to be editing, and then maybe work a bit on the new one, I'm not sure. They're all really long, too. My oldest one is nearly 80,000 words (and will probably reach that in the next draft,) my second one is 117,000, and I don't know the length of this other one but I'm currently estimating it at about 95,000 based on the length of the first chapter. And I want to get these done before I go to University, because my workload is probably going to get a lot higher, so that's, uh, about 292,000 words to get done before September! ... I'm probably not going to be able to do it. But I did get the 117,000 word first draft done in one month, so I guess it just depends on how motivated I am. I barely hit 250,000 words last year. So it's going to be a while before they're done. I want to get that final draft done by the end of this month, though, but I don't really know how I could share it safely in case of people deciding they really want to steal my stories for whatever reason. I don't know why they'd want to, but it's possible. Um, I do have a tumblr where I talk about them a lot, though, if you're interested in looking at that.

I have not been driving a lot, because the weather's been weird and the roads have been really slippery, and I try to avoid driving whenever possible. I don't think I'm the type of person you want to get driving tips from, haha. My parents keep telling me I need to drive but the problem is I never want to leave the house and am also terrified of driving alone. I'll get to it eventually, though, because I know it's important.

I definitely agree that romance seems to be in everything, especially when it doesn't need to be. In my opinion, I see no point in having a romance unless it advances the overall plot or it is actually a romance novel, which I will always avoid and therefore won't bother me. Especially if there are bigger things going on! "I'm trying to overthrow the government but which of these two average men should I choose as my lover???" -- my biggest pet peeve ever. I don't even need to pick a specific example, I'm sure it's all over YA. High fantasy tends to have less romance, which I like a lot, but the problem with that is that the reason there is less romance is because there are hardly any female characters, which is really not better. High fantasy has a lot of my favourite things (swords! battles! a lack of romance!) but often little to no female characters, and often female characters only exist to be love interests. It's really annoying. I've developed the skill of being able to detect within a few sentences of the introduction of the character if they're a love interest or not (if they're described as handsome, or naturally beautiful in the "she didn't need makeup and stuff to be beautiful, and she doesn't know it," which is really gross by the way, they're going to be a love interest) and I will avoid those stories.

Haha, that's okay. I still have little to no idea how to apply to University and I got in?? I don't know how to pick my classes or anything. I have a friend who's writing the ACT this Saturday because she wants to go to a school in America, so I think that might have something to do with it? She's been having problems applying because high school here is grades 10-12 but her school asked for 9-12 marks, and in grade 9 the government decided to absurdly switch from percentage grades to a 1-4 number system (which makes no sense and is really annoying,) so she's been having problems with that, but I think she got it figured out.

It would be nice if I could figure out a way to do that, haha. You won't even be able to read it because of the watermark! Tumblr is a weird website, there's lots of stuff on there that's unpleasant, and I mostly go on there to look at cool pictures of elves and complain about my life to the void that is the internet. It took me a while to make an account, and sometimes some weird bots follow me, which is terrible, but I've survived so far. Here's the link to my writing one! There's not a lot on there so far, though, I mostly use it to complain about how I'm not getting any writing done. There's a link to my main one on there, but it contains mostly pictures of elves.

Yeah, my parents are both very experienced winter drivers but there still are moments where they go sliding out of control a little bit. It always scares me, but they always just deal with it. On the few occasions I have been sliding, it usually takes me too long to process it and by the time I'm aware of what's happening it's over, and am praised for remaining calm when I still have no idea what's going on, haha. The one time I skidded for a long time was the first time I drove without an adult in the car and was coming up to an intersection. Luckily nothing bad happened, but my brother thought he was going to die. Riding horses would be cool, except they don't have heating, so it would be very cold most of the time, since it's cold for what feels like at least eight months out of the year here. And I feel like they would slip on ice too, which can't be a lot of fun.

I'm sorry too, I meant to respond to this and then forgot, haha. I was only reminded when I saw you like my post again and went "oh, wait, crud." I got shortlisted for a big scholarship recently (and have NO idea why) so I've been kind of busy, sorry.

As everyone who's spoken to me for more than five minutes knows, I love Lord of the Rings a lot, I love Tolkien's works a lot, but he definitely has a problem with a lack of female characters. In the Hobbit I don't think any female characters make any actual appearances, and only a few are mentioned. LotR is... slightly... better, I guess, because Galadriel and Eowyn exist, but that's not saying much. Especially because I don't really like how Eowyn's storyline went. And the Silm, which is my favourite, has a few female characters but they're often shunted aside. I can probably count all of the named female characters in Tolkien's entire legendarium on two hands. (And even if it's more, it's not much more, and most female characters only exist on, like, genealogies that you need to dig through ancient notes of Tolkien's work to find.) I think people are trying to have more diverse fantasy, which is really great! I need to read more fantasy, haha.

I complain about romance so much whenever I watch movies with my family as well. I'm pretty vocal about it. "They just met two days ago! Why are they kissing! There are more important things right now! Why does this always happen!" I don't hate romantic love in general either, I'm sure it's great and all, it just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me. I have no idea how to write romance so I stay away from it, especially because there are very few good examples of how a romance should be written, so I can't just imitate that like I do with everything else I try to write.

I'm glad you liked my writing thing, haha. I enjoy having that to yell into the void and also keep track of what I'm doing, kind of like a writing journal, but with all the satisfaction of actually complaining to people.

Horses might not cause air pollution, but I can't imagine the roads would stay clean for long. In my brief experiences with one of those old-fashioned themed parks where they had horses pulling carriages, it would probably smell very bad. And I'm also allergic to horses, which is unfortunate.

I don't have a Discord account, but I'll look into it! It would probably be easier to talk elsewhere. And you worded things fine, don't worry!

I'm glad to see you're alive!

Ooh, I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo as well! Cabins are, pretty much, randomly assigned group chats where you can complain to other people about writing. They have a maximum of 19 people but usually only one or two make the goal, half drop out halfway through, and the other half don't even start. You can create private cabins, but there isn't any way to invite a certain amount of people and then open it to others, which can be annoying. I find NaNo really good for motivation, and I need motivation because I have three current projects because I, apparently, hate myself.

I'm glad to see we all agree on how much we hate romance movies. I get that you only have ~2 ish hours to get this relationship developed but does it really, really have to be that way? If they knew each other for two days and thought "hey you're a pretty cool human and I think we should spend more time together" that's one thing, but if they knew each other for two days and suddenly it's "I'd die for you and now we're KISSING" it's... very weird. I don't understand romance even remotely yet even I know that's not how it works.

Tumblr is a hellsite, I mostly use it so I can see regular Tolkien content, because there are some really talented people in the Tolkien fandom on there. A lot of people are really angry all the time and I try to avoid all of that as much as possible, and haven't had any problems so far. I guess the thing about Tumblr is that you can really just isolate yourself with a small group of people and have a selection of specific things show up, so it can get isolated, and if you're an angry person surrounded by angry people you're going to be angry all the time? I don't know, I try to stay veeery far away from that and just look at nice pictures of elves.

I might get a Discord account, since it does look convenient. The main problem is my parents can be a little strict and I'm not 100% sure how they would react to me interacting with people I don't know in real life offsite. It'll probably be okay, as long as I don't do any voice chatting or whatever. (Which I wouldn't really want to do anyways, because my voice is really annoying and I'm slow at conversations, haha.) Swearing doesn't bother me, since I go to a public high school and if it bothered me I would not have lasted a week, though I don't do it myself.

Hey, Dawn! I almost thought you were dead Dx Glad to see you're okay!

I'm so glad that you all agree with me about romance movies. The rest of my family seems to like it, so it's nice to see others share my opinion. I would very much prefer that romance takes time to happen in movies instead of "here's a new character--oh, well I guess this is happening now." Though even then, exaggerated displays of affection still make me cringe a bit. ^^'

I don't know much of anything about tumblr except for that some of the people on there are very angry and it's a bit of a mess. ^^''

Coincidentally... just kidding it's not at all a coincidence I made it specifically for all of my friends... I made a Discord server! If you want to join, I'll PM you the invite link. But I'm also planning on getting my real life friends to join, too, (if they ever get accounts Dx) and they're mostly Christians from my homeschool co-op, so they might have negative opinions on swearing. So it would probably be better if you don't swear. ^^' Also, my brother is there. He's not on much. He's too cool for anything but school, apparently. Cx

Yeah, I agree. I remember this one pairing in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that I saw coming from a mile away, and I ended up hating the guy because of it. Lincoln, I think his name was? It doesn't help that I found him boring, too... I think. I don't remember too well actually eheh I just remember that I thought it was forced and I didn't like it

You, a bad person? :0 How'd that happen?

Ahh, don't worry about it. The only people in the server as of now is my brother and me, and my brother's rarely on. And even if my other friends join, there's an introduction channel so we can share stuff about ourselves so we can talk to each other easier. So it'll probably be fine. ^^

Hiya! I notice you have Blackbear in your signature and wow I honestly did not expect to see anyone else who listens to him on here! (Though that may just be because I never go on here ever)

@ Stream I know absolutely nothing about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I know my dad watches the show but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm a DCU fan through and through. I only know about Spiderman and Deadpool and that's pretty much it. But either way I get what you mean. I can always just Tell with Certain Shows and I'm just like "uuuuUUUUuuUGGGgggGGHhhHHHH"

Oh man, me being a bad person. That's a Story. It was pretty much me hating people for no reason??? Just because they didn't act a certain way or have the same opinion as me???? Luckily I never went out and actually said anything to anyone except my friend, but I definitely just. wasn't a good person at all. Buuut now I'm a lot more chill and I don't really care about opinions unless they're dehumanizing or something of that sort. I'm sure there's more but I can't remember atm.