I am a winner.

Perhaps it's just me trying to compensate for my lecturer's stringent mocking of me yesterday, but today I was determined to win at everything. Any debate, discussion, Pokemon card duel or chess match, I was determined to beat my opponent and beat them down hard.

To be fair, most of the time, that's likely to be my mentality. Or at least it is when it comes to talking with Colby. We talked a bit about Spiral - nothing that would compromise the integrity of the project, just musing out loud about how we work. For instance, I criticised him to having picked up all the deliberately loose threads I'd placed. Often in the chapter directly succeeding mine. But he pointed out to me that he'd also not bitten a lot of hooks I'd thrown out.

Which was true. But I never noticed because those things I'd thrown out were almost never anything I'd considered significant to my plot or mythos. Ergo, the lines he did pick up on were all the ones *I* too had considered important. Guess we're both on the same wavelength - why else would we novel together? ;)

I'd still prefer it if they didn't all happen directly after my chapters... leave the readers with a bit of suspense about what they mean. It'd be like on Lost you see the four-toed statue and then the next episode you see it's Tawaret. But the speculation and intrigue and the sublimity of when the threads come together lies in the fact that we saw the foot in the season 2 finale and finally got to see the rest of it in the season 5 finale.

I should've mentioned the above to him during our chat today, but I didn't. But hopefully he still reads in which case he'll receive my message and my apt metaphor.

Probably an equally valid comeback he could make is that there are threads he has yet to pick up but are planning to later on down the line. That's the position I'm taking. There are things he's alludes to and I've mentioned in passing of my own chapters that will come together further down the line. Most likely in chapter 7.2.

Eugh. How did I manage to turn a post that was supposed to be about my chess match against Chris today into one about Spiral?

Chris came up for our usual Tuesday appointment. My Darkrai deck vs his Magnezone deck. Both of them are supremely good. It hadn't occured to me just how good they were until today. In terms of strategy, we've got it down pretty well. The first match I couldn't setup at all, and thus I lost. But second match, I got set up very quickly, him a little later but I was pretty too far ahead and thus won.

After that, we shethed our decks and I unfurled my chess board. I so should've bought the glass chess set I saw at Paddy's Markets for $10. But I'm too cheap for that. That and the fact that they REFUSED to lower the price just drove me away.

The frst match was really fun. He opened with the "3-move-checkmate" I'd learnt from Ferr all those years ago, and so I countered it pretty quickly. I soon got some Rooks out and was blitzing the field. It didn't take long, but an oversight from Chris made him very vulnerable for a checkmate (and I was surprised that I even saw the opening. I may not be as rusty as I imagined myself to be having not played chess in years and yearned for it for months now).

Second match was far more fun. The way he opened blocked his Bishops and thus I was able to get both Rooks out very early in the game. a quick castle from him opened up his other flank vulnerable. I very quickly acquired a lot of his key pieces (what with him having a Rook and Bishop trapped). He quickly made use of his Queen to make some threats against my side, but since I had both Rooks out and about and my knights, I was able to come to a 'stalemate' with her, allowing her in my territory but leaving it no where to run. Eventually I make a crucial mistake and forget that in an attempt to prevent a potential escape, I lost a Rook, deafening my strategy.

Eventually, however, we puts on a strong offensive with his minimal pieces left. And I put up a few *very* good offensive-defensive moves. And then when he was very close to victory, I was able to find a loophole in his defense, checkmating him ;)

And thus today I am a winner.