10 000 views

10 000 views already! Seems like a milestone to come upon quite quickly. It feels like only a few months ago I posted my 1000th blog post (when in reality it’s been two and a half years). As I said in that post, at the height of my blog’s popularity I was averaging 200 views a month (between 5-14 a day), which frankly astounded me because I had never intended for anyone to read it except incidentally. Changing the name and url of my blog drastically cut down views because google still linked to my old url’s which no longer work, but since that change they’ve slowly built up to about 150 views a month.

And you know what my most popular post is? Outstandingly, by a huge margin, it’s my Katawa Shoujo: Shizune and Misha’s path. Why this one, and not any of the other excellent (better?) ones? No idea. Must be one of those situations where its popularity builds upon itself. I guess my blog is going to be known for my love of that game that made me a better person. (To be fair, I did put a lot of effort into those posts.)

To celebrate my 10 000th view, here’s the long-awaited sequel to my favourite search terms that people have typed into google to find their way here. (For the original lists, see here and here!)

• “weald and orgasm videos”
• “arrogant taekwondo instructors” and “arrogant oh do kwan”
• “neaning of scalebtino” (This redirected someone to my blog on the Kinsey Scale. Probably not what they were looking for! XD)
• “what does it mean when you dream calling xin?”
• “how to weald the kung fu long staff” (I’m so touched someone thought that I would have any idea.)
• “the tao, violence, logos 1”
• “morrowind taoist monk build” (YES! Someone getting into Role Playing as much as I did!)
• “skyrim astrid hot” (twice!)
• “master moy lin shin drinking whiskey” (Oh dear XD)
• katawa shoujo changed my life (me too buddy. Me too.)
• wu-wei dao karate belts
• female ninja iga ninja village
• old tatami apartment tokyo
• “what could you prefer in a life patnar looks , intelligence &weald”
• “aunty dreem weald bathing photo”
• weald class big vagiena
• “weald.sex.big.ass” (How my blog turned into some kind of porn database is beyond me)

My 2003 Diary

2003 was one of the hardest years of my life, and I didn’t much relish the thought of going back through my diary to see what sort of person I was back then. I’m glad I did though – I learned a lot of important things about the way I used to think, and about the sorts of things that were important to me. It was also the year I grew up – for the most part, I put less faith in fantasy and accepted my grim reality. They were dark times.

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Like the two years previous, I pretended my diary was a human girl I could share my secrets with as I searched desperately for safety, companionship and affection in the world. I was quite obsessed with romance and intimacy, until half a year of high school led me to abandon this childish fantasy and bleakly accept my diary as an unfeeling book to record my thoughts and feelings in.

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My relationship with my brother was at its worst. There were constant violations of privacy, trust and safety. For instance, he set up bugs in my room so he could listen to what I was doing -they didn’t work very well, but I felt like I was under surveillance and had to be very careful not to bring his wrath down upon me. I felt the exuberant happiness of freedom whenever he was away, and discovered the safety of isolation. I lived in fear of him, and thought he was trying to ruin my life to the point where I committed suicide. However, at the end of the year I recognised that he wasn’t always terrible, I just tended to write in my diary when I was feeling awful about him. Things with my parents weren’t great either – there was much fighting and fear in the house.

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I turned even more religious, if such a thing were possible. As well as striving to be an officer and a gentleman, I was obsessed with sin and salvation, and was convinced that God was punishing me for thinking about sex. Eventually I came to believe that challenge wasn’t punishment but God’s way of making me grow stronger.

***

I felt outcast and alone, and suicide was often on my mind. To get through these dark times, I believed if I could just will myself to do something then I could do it. Sheer willpower pulled me through the huge amount of pressure I put on myself, to literally “be perfect”.

***

I learned how to read and write ancient runes, largely to hide information from my brother. (Fun fact: runes pop up from time to time, like the Moon Runes in The Hobbit, and I greatly delight in being able to read them.)

***

OCPD was getting its hooks in. I got up regularly at 5am so that I had enough time to “get ready” for school. I was always playing catch-up, and desperately wished to avoid being held accountable for not meeting my ridiculously high standards.

***

In this turbulent sea of hurt and pain, the internet was my life raft that connected me to friends across the world. One of those friends was Ivy, a girl a year younger than me who I recognised as someone who would soon outgrow me in wisdom. I spent a lot of time in the early morning reading Zelda fanfics (including a certain Forest whose url I can recite to this day), playing games on newgrounds and eventually finding RuneScape. Truly, if not for the internet, I might have died that year.

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After many months of this pain, Beki, a girl I met on MSN, helped me realise that I had to face my problems in real life, not fantasy. It was the start of everything changing.