tldr: I literally can't even.

This year has been amazing. I originally had a really long journal typed out that I was going to post about it. I'll settle for saying this has been the best year of my life by far and it might be the best year for my career I'll ever have. It went better than I thought possible!

Yesterday I got some amazing news about a scholarship and... well, I realized that this past year has been filled with nothing but amazing news! I'm so lucky! :D

And, for the concerned, I'm not leaving the fandom. Nuh-uh--definitely not! It's true that I'm posting/reading/whatever less, and it's also true that most of my closest friendships right now are IRL rather than online. But that's not all there is in the fandom. I'm still very much active on IMs (mostly Skype) and Twitter (feel free to add/follow me).

Furry is great place to relax to me, and I think has been sort of vital to my success. I can't just dump it. Furthermore, I'd like to thank all of you--yes, that means you!--for sticking with me and making my life just a little bit easier. I would also like to thank three or four specific people for being particularly awesome, but I'm not going to call names--you'll know! One of you is just stupid close and cool to talk to about anything, two of you are really fun to game with or yap at about random nonsense, one of you just generally brightens my day, and there are many of you other fuzzballs I'm hoping to get the chance to know more deeply. I'm generally not blunt or affectionate enough to say these things outright, but trust me: you guys mean way more to me than you think you do!

The bad news: yesterday the Windows partition of my SSD remembered that it's an OCZ and decided it was morally obligated to fail. :/ No games for a while...

I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but I've noticed a significant shift in my relationship with the fandom recently. This is going to be kind of long because it covers a long expanse of time.

First off, how have I typically used the fandom? I got into the fandom through reading furry stories and, later, writing them. Never have I been too majorly into art. I'm not really a visual person--even when I have art of my characters available, I still consider my written descriptions to be more canon than the artistic rendering. Also, I don't watch that many artists. My watchlist contains 105 users and probably a quarter of those are personal friends, non-artists, pages, and writers. Half the time when someone mentions a famous artist, I have no clue who they're talking about, and that's where most of my artist watches come from. "Strype? Who's that?" "OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO WATCH HIM!" "Okay, fine..."

Point is, I got into the fandom for the prose. I just think animal characters can be much more interesting to write with than human ones. But it's been sort of shifting away from me for a while.

Reading furry stories just isn't something I do anymore. There are a number of reasons for this. Quality control on SoFurry is nonexistent and all the popular stories are just the same copy-pasted smut over and over, with the only changes being the combination of species and which stereotypical manly profession the characters fake having. Stories on FA are... wait, there are stories on FA? Throw all that together with the fact that I have to do so much scientific reading these days and, well, combing the archives just doesn't happen.

The only exception is published material, but I have mixed feelings about that. Kyell Gold is good, but he's sort of the only author with enough ethos that I'm willing to spend real money on and even him I haven't been following much in the past year or two. The community aspect of online-published stories is one of the main things that drew me to the fandom. Consequently, I have no desire to publish, and I'm sick of the writing community being so centered around Getting Published. I have a career already. I've historically just wanted to write good stories that people like; publishing limits the breadth of audience and the subjects I can cover, and I've really never gotten along well with anyone who's treated furry writing as a professional endeavor. There are people who take it seriously, but most of them I've seen spend way too much time Talking About Writing And Publishing and not, y'know, actually writing.

Heck, to even join or be involved in the Furry Writers Guild you have to be published. To be taken seriously at all in the fandom as a writer one has to do something I'm not at all interested in doing unless it's just handed to me. Which sucks because I think I'm decent enough to be taken seriously given the general standard of quality around here.

Or used to be, at least. These days, I just can't seem to make much of anything work. I sit down to write and, yes, the words come out, but the final product is not something that's worth posting. The characters, though I love them, aren't working as well together as I know they can. The pieces of my world, though precious to me, cannot quite fit together. And then I realize, even if I were skilled enough to overcome this, very few would really be interested in reading the result. Typically the pieces that I've enjoyed writing the most--like "Sweet" and "Diverging Roads"--are ignored by my current audience, whereas the confused, one-off porny nonsense stories that are honestly embarrassing to me as a writer somehow reach SoFurry top 50 or something like that. "Aria" in its non-furry form won me a $100 prize in a writing competition from an editor in NY who had pretty positive things to say about it. "Aria" received zero comments and zero favorites on both FurAffinity and SoFurry for quite some time. It has its weak moments, definitely, but it has strong ones, too.

In the past few years, I've gotten into roleplaying and made a few friends there. I thought I would hate it, but I ended up having quite a bit of fun with it; it reminded me of way back in the day when I used to do fantasy roleplays on Warcraft, just goofing around with friends and seeing what kind of crazy, creative bullshit stories you can come up with on the fly, with the bonus of being able to incorporate erotic themes, for better or worse. Unfortunately, it suffered from the same drawbacks--e.g. most of the population is really stupid--with the added ones that to most people furry roleplaying is just fursona TSing and my standards of writing are kind of outrageous for most furry roleplay sites. I've had such awful experiences that my attitude towards it has grown increasingly bitter, to where even when I'm presented with someone I know is good at it, I just don't have the desire anymore; continued disappointments have dulled me to the thrill of success.

Point is, my artistic link with the fandom is sort of dwindling. I still love the fandom, and I have a number of great friends I've met through it, but the fandom is something that you have to be either producing or consuming art in order to actively connect with, and right now I'm doing neither. Most of my activity these days is just chatting on Skype or tweeting random nonsense. I doubt I'll ever leave the fandom, but I'm becoming more and more tangential to it.

A consistent theme throughout my life is a sort of cognitive bilateral symbiosis. I cannot be a productive thinker unless I have some sort of creative vent, and I am happiest when I am creating something. Writing/roleplaying have been unsatisfying recently and I'm starting to shift more towards composing. As I get my new studio set up, I might post some of my creations on FA. "Furry music" seems sort of pointless to me, but I don't really have anywhere else to post.

Title.

I am curious to know (honestly) what motivated you to read my drivel, and what motivates you to continue doing so, for those who still do.

Do you like the smut? Do you like that the smut usually has an accompanying story? Do you like the stories? Do you just like my style?

(I am curious because there are a number of different things I am contemplating writing to get me back in the swing of things, and it's a tough choice on what to focus on!)

Thanks all!

Just a quick update...

I'm back in the country. The last few weeks have been going quite well. Better than I could've hoped for, thanks to a few recent scholarships/fellowships I've taken. Still waiting on word from one more of them. Hoping for the best... but really, in the past year I've been afforded more scientific opportunities than I'd ever hoped for. So things are going pretty swell.

In the meantime, I am extremely bored. Mostly I am playing League and trying (and failing) to write. And being sick. I'm not used to all these foreign American bacteria.

Fleeing the country. Will return in ten weeks.

Add me on Skype / follow me on tweeter to keep up.

Okay, so it's become sort of a tradition that I do this as things wrap up...

-Somehow I pulled off an A in lab, meaning somehow I've lived through the first semester of Death Year with 4.0 intact!

-I'll be spending the next three months or so in South America looking at giant telescopes!

-Lots of other great news academically that I don't feel comfortable sharing!

I made it! And it ended up going much better than I expected. Only had one major breakdown / career crisis, even. It wasn't particularly easy--every single friendship I have that's not with another physics undergraduate has completely evaporated and I no longer know how to manage free time, but... done forever!

*Sigh of relief.*

--

Now, since I'll be out of the country for a bit: I warn that I might disappear. If you want to keep in touch, the best way is with my Skype.

I'm interested in nabbing an icon for myself. Anyone have any artist recommendations? Most of the artists I know take luck I don't have to nab a slot!

Also, unrelated--I won't be at FWA 2014 this year; I'll be in South America doing astrophysics!

It's more or less on principle. Sometimes I write a little but never much, and the reason is unfortunate but simple.

Basically, I see it this way: in my spare time, the #1 project I should be working on is research. I am behind on research (given, that's comparing my progress to my own unrealistic goals), so I see it as... yes, I do have the time to write some, but I *should* be spending that time/energy doing research instead.

At this point it's unlikely I'll meet my goal, really... I'm trying to port some code from The Worst Programming Language Ever to C++ and run it on the cluster for a model. The code apparently took five years to develop across multiple writers, and I'm trying to port it in one semester because I'd love to get a paper out of it before big scholarship deadlines, but I'm beginning to see how unrealistic that is. Plus, I'm pretty sure the bad coding here would give any CS major a nightmare...

So, basically, once I feel like I've caught up, or my 'deadline' passes, I'll probably get back to it. Until then, I just feel like writing is just adding something else to my plate that distracts from research.

This is the end of week 7 of semester 1 of Death Year, and the beginning of Fall Break.

I failed the first lab practical, but I failed it slightly better than most people; as a consequence, my failing class grade is enough above the Gaussian mean that I somehow have an A.

This means that so far, I have an A in all my courses. And so far, I've only had one major mental breakdown. Overall, much better than I was expecting at the beginning of the semester.

Downside is that research has really taken a low seat. I need to learn to work more efficiently and get more research work into my daily schedule. Those of you who message me, scold me regularly to get to codin'!

The good research-related news is I'm officially going observing at a major observatory! :D Man, am I excited...

The spiral arms of galaxies represent regions of star formation; the lifetime of luminous, massive stars found within the arms is far less than the rotational period around the galactic center.

I try to stay out of politics until it affects me.

It has affected me.

There are people out there trying to do real, meaningful science at places like Argonne, Sandia, Brookhaven, Fermilab, and even NASA. And I am watching as one-by-one, these labs go dead to the world, ceasing publications, tweets, and web updates.

Letting your childishness interfere with what's really important in this country does not reflect well on you. I have mostly been accepting of our government, but this is changing my mind.

Holding science hostage is not okay.

An object dropped from a height of one meter from a neutron star of 1.4 solar masses would impact the surface with a speed of around 4.3 million mph (1.93*10^6 m/s, for men, or 1.93*10^8 cm/s, for REAL men).

Hey guys,

Just a quick (unfortunate) update about Knot Theory. I've really enjoyed writing it so far and am so very excited to finish it--the next few chapters are mostly done, but I feel so far removed from the writing mood right now that I'm not sure when I'll get in the right mindset to go back through them.

Because I just started school again, and, surprise: physics is hard. Like, really hard. Specifically junior year, known at my university as Death Year. I thought it was going to be difficult, but it managed to trounce my expectations (partially because of a professor change, but mostly because Death Year is Death Year is Death Year).

My vocabulary cannot give me words sufficient to describe the madness. Perhaps an example will help: I am sort of a hard-ass, and yet even I acknowledge a high probability that at some point during the semester, I am going to have a complete mental breakdown over how much work I have to do. Perhaps I could drop a class, but I really would rather not have to do that.

And so it is! Wish me luck...

For the curious: in light of mechanics assignments and tinkering around with my new PC and wanting to write a bit in advance, I'm taking the week off from updating Knot Theory. Check back next week!

Q: How long will Knot Theory run?

I don't know. Until I run out of content or creative energy or get trashed by school. Currently I think at least another month, since I have most of chapters six, seven, and either nine or ten done.

Q: Will updates remain weekly?

Unless I say otherwise, yes. Expect an update roughly every Sunday.

As of now, I've gone through all my 'pre-written' content for Knot Theory. I'm also moving into college tomorrow. So if there are going to be major changes with the way I update or breaks in writing, expect them soon. I'm having a lot of fun with this, though, so I'll try to keep it going!

Q: How realistic is the physics?

All real, except specific problem sets in galactic astrophysics.

Q: Do physics nerds really act this way?

We act all ways, but yes. We're a fun bunch.

Q: You suck.

That's not a question.

Q: You suck?

Why yes, I do.

Neutrinos: why do they have mass? Do they have Dirac or Majorana masses? (Do they exhibit CP violation? If so, why?) What are the properties of their oscillations?

Supersymmetry (SUSY): is this a real thing, or is just fantasy? Are there five Higgs bosons and a table of Sparticles?

Dark Matter: we know they are WIMPs. Are they SUSY particles? If not, what are they? This will probably lead to a new particle.

Color/flavor: what are these seemingly arbitrary quantities?

Matter: why are there three generations?

Matter: it is only created in matter-antimatter pairs, so why is there so much matter in the universe?

Dark energy: what is this, really, and why are our predictions of its value using quantum theory off by 120 orders of magnitude?

Constants: how do they get their value? Do they evolve?

Orvayn: who is this loser and why is he writing journals instead of Knot Theory?

Okay--I'm not sure why this bothers me so much, but it has to be said. Exhibit A:

"Hi. How are you?"

That is something a friend asks a friend. That is something a husband asks a wife. That is something a parent asks a child. See the pattern? That is something you ask when you have legitimate cause to care about the other person's response. That is not, under any circumstances ever, how you introduce yourself to someone on the Internet. I have zero social skills whatsoever and can tell you that if you introduce yourself by asking that question, you have negative social skills. Sure, it's acceptable if there's been some form of prior communication, but if these are the first words I get from you, chances are I won't really be eager to talk to you.

Why?

Let's ignore the fact that it's a copy-pasted introduction that gives me no clue as to what your diction, syntax, and personality actually are, and just focus on one thing. If you ask me how I am, there are two scenarios. Exhibit B:

1.) I tell you the truth. This usually means bitching to you about something, or giving you too much personal information, or bragging about something. None of these is acceptable unless invited. You put me in a position where if I tell the truth, I automatically become an annoying asshole.

2.) I tell you something generic, like "Fine," or "good." We have both wasted a minute of each others' time rehearsing a prerecorded script billions of other people on the planet have already had today.

Asking "how are you" is the single most boring introduction you can ever make, and it has been for the entire history of forever.

Because, listen: when you do this, I have no idea what you actually want from me or why you're even talking to me.. If you messaged me, something about me caught your attention. Mention it. Ask me about it. Tell me something interesting about yourself, something that makes whatever caught your attention interesting to you. Do anything but say "Hi. How are you?" And if you can't think of anything else to say, then you shouldn't be messaging me in the first place.

(I'm not actually trying to come off as hating everyone, though I sort of do hate everyone who does this. I'm actually very approachable and am fine with talking to anyone about mostly anything. Just, please, don't do this. It's my one pet peeve. I always picture the random furry from Sidian's comics...)

Back home, that is. Flying back to the east coast. Have a bunch of computer parts waiting on me to assemble them into a new machine.

What does this mean? I may or may not update Knot Theory this Sunday--it depends on how things go once I get home. The chapter is written, but it needs some editing and I need to do some thinking about the story's direction, so it'll take a a few hours to get it ready. If I miss Sunday, I might consider posting it later in the week, or just waiting until the next Sunday. We'll see!

I hope that when I head back to school in next week, I can do so with a car of my own...

Shortly I'll be finishing my first scientific paper and giving my first formal scientific talk. It hits me now how far things have come.

I don't think FA is really the appropriate place to brag, so I'll skip the boring details--but it feels like more or less all the dreams I've had since I was a child, cursing my education and wishing I'd been born in a larger town with a better school system, have all come true. Three or four years ago, I could never imagine that I could be where I am now. I have both been very lucky, and painfully diligent, and it has paid off in in full.

The fandom has always been sort of a safe haven for me, and I believe I owe part of my success to feeling a part of the community, even if I'm not by any means a large part of it. I don't talk to as many people as I probably should here (I am a bit of a recluse), but to those who've been a friend to me over the past two or three years: thanks for being awesome. You know who you are, so I'm not going to post any icons. And to those who have read my stories, favorited them, watched me, or commented: thanks for supporting me, even if I don't know who you are. I don't thank for favorites or watches or anything, but don't think it means I don't appreciate them. This is a silly hobby I indulge myself in, but dammit if silly hobbies aren't the most essential for sanity.

Now... wish me luck, as very shortly I'll be starting Death Year, enjoying 19 hours of pure GPA-wreckers. Oh, 4.0, I knew you well...

Oh, and to anyone who's wondering: I do expect to have the next chapter of Knot Theory up today, unless I get carried away with paper-writing.

As I'm starting to become more active on various different sites under this name (and FA's 'contact' section does not include them), I figured I should start a little running list of various places you can find me, both for me and you. This'll be updated as things change (AKA, probably never).

Twitter (as @Orvayn): I chirp on here a lot, about a random pattering of work, life, and writing things..

Weasyl (as Orvayn): Just starting here. Will slowly begin to upload my stories. Thinking one every few days, but if the response isn't of a decent volume, I'll probably stop.

F-List (in F-Chat as Orvayn Illindrel): I chat with a great deal of people here and am usually on while I'm writing or gaming. (Please do not ask me to roleplay.)

SoFurry (as Orvayn): Easiest place to read my stories in their best formatting. Also where my stories are the most popular.

FurAffinity (as Orvayn): Most-visited site. Note me here and I'll answer quickly.

FurryMate (as Orvayn): I have an account here and get e-mailed when someone messages me, but really, this site is lame so I prefer to ignore it.

FurFling (as Orvayn): I don't use this site; it's dumb and its face is dumb and its mother is an alcoholic. I cannot see a message on this site if you send it to me, as I'm not going to pay for PM on a site that focuses on something I don't care about, anyways.

YIM (as Orvayn: honestly, I'm not on this much (or at least won't be until I set up Pidgin for it on my Linux machine, which might never happen). Your best bet is to note me or catch me on F-List.

FetLife (as Orvayn): I don't post on this site, but I read Intelligence Kink threads every once in a while.

Anyone have a strong preference about this? Anyone think I do one better than the other?

I ask because I'm trying to decide whether to write a new little story in first or third and struggling with it. I've noticed my approach to writing the two are totally different.

First-person: writing is fast and easy, especially if done in present tense. It's easier to convey sarcasm, or really any kind of character voice, in this point of view. My approach is more stream-of-conciousness, focusing on writing down interesting things and making all the writing clever and fun. Everything feels a little more interesting in general, but when it comes time for The Big Moments, it feels harder to pull them off. The Big Bang is a good example of this.

Third-person: writing is slow and meticulous. I focus on picking the right words and the right diction and syntax for every sentence. I focus less on making everything interesting and more on making everything right and consistent. It feels way harder to make setup / plot / dialogue scenes more interesting--often I just get frustrated and think, "Come on, would anyone really want to read this scene? Or any of this story?" But I feel like when I stick with it and invest a lot of time editing, I have more control over the story and am able to convey emotion rather deeply. Diverging Roads is a good example of this.

Thoughts? Experiences? My headspaces are just drastically different for the two, for some reason...


ETA: mostly saying this because, well, I've kind of had it on the back of my mind forever, and when I considered writing this story in first rather than third, my whole understanding of it completely changed. Weird...

The Beatdown was basically clogging up my to-do list for the past two months, when it comes to writing. Lots of rewrites, lots of deliberating, lots of struggling with how to end it, lots of wondering if anyone was even going to read it given the nature of the content (meant to invoke disgust, revulsion, and hatred)... now that it's out of the way, I feel free!

I actually have a good bit of free time now, and I'm starting to write more! Hurrah! There are so many things I want to write... I just have to get over the intimidation factor of being afraid to screw 'em up. There are two big projects on my to-do list now for writing, and they're both extremely scary because I feel like they're going to be so hard to pull off and easy to mess up, yet so rewarding if I can do it right.

A quick question: to readers, on a scale of PORN to PLOT, what is your motivation for reading my stories (be honest, as it helps me), and would you complain if I churned out more stories a bit more skewed to either side?

I have one! (Well, I've technically had one for a while but never used it.)

https://twitter.com/Orvayn

INSTRUCTION MANUAL: enter URL and click follow. This is more for following furries and rattling off personal shenanigans than anything else. I will post story ideas and updates, but also probably use it as a vent for slice-of-lifey personal things, like 'oh I'm playing Starcraft' or 'oh I just won the lottery'. This way I can both keep people updated on stories and spam people with information they don't care about! Hurrah!

Story news: I've been writing more recently, possibly spurred to productivity in wake of the other news down below. Hopefully I will have some drafts finished by the end of the week. I've enlisted a friend to read said drafts; if you're interested in joining in, send me a note!

Other news: I apologize if I've seemed a bit out of it, recently, to anyone who's been missing me / messaging me. The last week or two have been sort of overwhelming. What initially seemed like a crappy week, filled with rejection letters and my FWA plans being cancelled, ended better than I could have possibly imagined. The reasons for that are twofold:

1.) Birthday festivities. Surprise visits from the family and lots of food and Starcraft 2 with the brother. This is more or less responsible for my disappearing off the face of LoL, YIM, and e-mail. It turns out we had more to celebrate than just my birthday, though:

2.) Just before I was about to head home, I received shocking news: I was accepted into my top choice summer research/intern program. This is a program to which I almost didn't apply because I knew for certain it was just going to be a waste of time.

This is so exciting that every time I think about it I can barely contain myself. I legitimately feel there is no single better program anywhere in the US for me right now, with my research interests. It pays, too--research experience is so much more important that I don't even care about the money, but it's hard to deny that a $700/week salary is pretty damn good. It seems silly to say this so far in advance, but this single event makes me feel as if I have an extremely strong shot at a future in academia.

(I also recently received my university's "outstanding sophomore physics major" award, which feels kind of good and has a small scholarship attached to it.)

I feel really good right now. Except for that I've sort of been out of contact with everyone for the past week except family and a few con-goers. Thankfully, it's been for a good reason!

To anyone trying to contact me over YIM--my old account has been locked, and I now use a new account with the ID "Orvayn."