How many of you can say you spent Valentine’s Day watching Battle Royale with your girlfriend?
385|1
Didn’t think so.

It was actually her idea, which makes her just as weird as me. I liked the movie and at the same time didn’t like the movie. Yes, it still had an island of kids killing each other, with badasses and sluts and cooperations that fall apart, but it was missing so much more. The only backstory was in the form of random flashbacks, and even then they didn’t serve to do much. To take a collection of 13+ volumes of manga and condense it into one movie, they ditched the amazing personality given to each character. In the movie, a guy with a bulletproof vest gets shot at, survives, then gets his head chopped off and used to hold a live grenade that’s thrown into a window. Gruesome, yes. But in the manga, the guy is described as a musical prodigy that was born into an elite family and holds elitist ideals. He feels isolated from everyone, because they’re all worthless scum. You feel his emotions when he’s trying to worm his way out of the hands of one of the good characters, and when he takes a bullet, pretends to be dead, and silently slanders and plots to kill his attacker as the attacker approaches him to examine the kill. Characters in the manga are just plain cooler.

And since I’m on a crazy streak anyway, I’m going to explain the clues in the post two posts back, just so you know I wasn’t simply spouting random shit. It’s actually possible to figure out what I was saying.

Chapter (Adams’ number added to itself, plus one) of the ramen lover’s manga, or Adams’ number plus 7 for the corresponding anime.
Douglas Adams is the author of the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, and one of the more well-known jokes in the book is that the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42. Added to itself, 42 becomes 84, and add one to make 85 (or 42+7=49 for the other). These numbers indicate the chapter and episode of the manga and anime series called Naruto, whose main character, Naruto, has a deep affinity for ramen noodles.

The chapter and episode deal with the battle between Lee and Gaara. Lee unsuccessfully used a finishing move called the Lotus on Gaara, and damaged his own body in the process. However, Lee’s mentor Gai gives his companions reassurance that Lee will win the match, stating that the Lotus flower blossoms twice. This was an allusion to the more advanced Lotus technique that was taught to Lee, which he later uses to try and finish off Gaara once again. I was trying to point out that though I failed once, I was trying again.

While that was the concept I was referring to, one might have caught onto the side concept of Lee saying to Sakura that the next time they met, he would be a stronger man. This is definitely not the case, though it would take an intimate knowledge of my ex to know that meeting with her would be too difficult for me to accomplish (and that I’d never say crap like that). However, the fourth and sixth clues put her completely out of the picture, and require less knowledge to verify.

It’s kinda odd to refer to Xinhua and QuoteDB in the same post…
To announce the breakup with my ex, I made allusions to it in a post with various quotes and a song. I included a quote about young love not coming to fruition and that having loved and lost is better than never having loved at all. The latter came from QuoteDB, but the former came from a Chinese news site called Xinhua. Completely unrelated sites. This clue was added to give context to the previous clue, namely what downfall I was rising up from.

Can you half-orbit?
During the College Trip someone made the remark that one person was hitting on another so often that he could always be seen orbiting around her. Though I liked my girlfriend before we got together and tried to be with her when situations popped up, I wasn’t as clingy as I traditionally am. This is probably the most obscure reference.

if (p==87) p=86;
In Java, this line of code would translate to: “If the variable p is equal to 87, then assign the variable p the value 86.” Notice that the permalinks for these posts end in p=xx. The post with the clues is post 87, and the post detailing the College Trip is post 86. We had gotten a lot closer during the College Trip, so I was making a reference to that post. This throws off the alternate theory for the first clue because my ex doesn’t go to my school, much less attend the College Trip.

The 3 doesn’t give me any hassle, but the sixtieth symbol sets off the XHTML alarm. Good thing I found the BSUC page.
XHTML is a web design standard that strives for cross-browser compatibility, among other things. One of the errors that will set off the website validator is the addition of a left or right triangular bracket, the kind used for html tags. To place them on a webpage and retain XHTML validity, one needs to use a numeric or descriptive code that prompts the browser to replace it with the right symbol. The repository of codes that I use as a reference is the list located at the BSUC website. The sixtieth symbol, not counting null, is <. And <+3=<3. Heart. Get it? That’s the overall theme of what’s going on…

Abound indeed.
Her name features alliteration. My ex’s doesn’t. Not only does that make her cooler than my ex in some geeky sense, but it also discounts the alternate interpretation of the first clue.

Pronoun confusion
There was originally a much more bland title, something along the lines of “who’dve thought it?” Boring, and not at all flattering to my self-esteem.

I’m breaking a lot of ethics in this post by referring to her as my girlfriend, as usually I refer to her as…well…her. Or she, depending on the situation. Always a pronoun without having first introduced the proper noun. However, it’s going to be messy as “her” could mean either my girlfriend or my ex, which is why there’s pronoun confusion.

I’m thinking of just dropping the whole act.