So if you go through the friends that I’ve introduced on this blog, you’ll find muses, artists, animators, (and soon) programmers – but you might have noticed that there weren’t any other writers.

For all I love writing, I find it difficult to find writing friends – a strange blend of paranoia (that they may unintentionally misremember one of my ideas as their own) and elitism (that I won’t gain anything out of a writing friendship with them) prevents me from seeking them out, and there aren’t a lot of creative writers in my vicinity who I like as people. Well, basically, you can guess what this post is about, ahaha.

Yes! I have a writing friend! To be honest, we’ve been hanging out for a couple of months, now, but I had still been on the fence. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I don’t throw the word ‘friend’ around very lightly – it’s a word with weight, and so I vet my acquaintances heavily before I decide to label a relationship with it. However, I’m writing this post from across her right now, after having convinced her to make her own WordPress writing blog – there is no doubt that August is my friend.

Of course, like everyone else on this blog, August isn’t her real name – it’s the alias she chose on a whim, ahaha – but you can find her at her own WordPress over here.

It’s been really exciting having someone to complain about writing with, and comparing our styles and processes has been an enlightening experience for me. Perhaps I’ll write more about that at a later date.

I know now is usually the time I break into a weird, lengthy story about the really dumb or unusual way we met, but the fact of the matter is, I don’t remember – I remember how we met as acquaintances, but I genuinely can’t remember how I came to learn that August is a creative writer. (She’s super secretive about it, ahaha)

My first real bonding memory with her is when we wanted to escape the noise of our surroundings, so she showed me this weird secret cove with arm chairs, just, out in a patch of grass. I hadn’t known it existed. Even though it was chilly, winter starting to swallow up the fall season, we spent hours there talking about our respective stories. We stayed out so late and so long that we both got sick the next day, ahaha.

We were acquaintances long before I started considering her a friend, though. We got to know each other through talking about horror movies. So our acquaintanceship began through movies like Krampus and games like P.T., which led to me talking about my own stories. Eventually, she revealed that she was a writer as well, and we starting commiserating together. It’s a lot of fun.

Even so, becoming friends with August was a weird process, simply because so many things I had taken for granted in my other friendships wasn’t present here. All my other friends are in touch with East Asian culture in some way. Ira, Aeolus, Danny, and Koshimaty are all from my high school and experienced Korean culture firsthand. Jack (whom I’ll be introducing next week!) is Asian-American and we have a shared interest in a lot of Korean and Japanese comics.

August doesn’t have those same shared experiences, and by god, did I forget that you can go through life not knowing about certain things – and by certain things, I mean things like video game literacy, manga, anime, and kdramas. Because I had surrounded myself with other complete dweebs, I had – at some point – forgotten this knowledge was not a universal thing.

You don’t realize how far you have fallen until you try to explain what a dating sim is to someone with no concept of it.

And let me tell you, it was excruciating. I’m going to die. I had to explain what a tsundere was and I have never felt more like a weeaboo. It’s completely weirding me out that she has such an utterly different life experience from me. A life without manga or anime??? I can’t imagine.

So, one of the struggles I am facing now is how to best share some of my favorite storytelling experiences with August (what’s a good gateway show into anime once someone is in their 20s???) but I’m sure we’ll figure it out. Right now, I’ve gotten her started on Death Parade, so maybe this will work out and I can eventually ease her into the wild ride that is Hunter x Hunter.

For now, I’ve gotten her hooked on The Black Tapes Podcast, which actually, I should write an M&M about. Putting that on the to-do list… I’ve been keeping track, and by the time of this post’s writing, she has told me that I have “ruined her life” or some variant of the phrase 6 times because she can’t stop listening to it. I’ve also gotten her started on Undertale as well, and she’s taken to that better than I expected.

And thus, I maintain my perfect recommendations record.

In any case, I’m really looking forward to see how her own blog develops. It’s nice to have someone I know actively in the WordPress sphere with me now. Stay tuned because I’m sure you’ll see us complaining about how awful creative writing is together, soon enough.