"And really, I'm of the opinion that helping people enjoy - not necessarily reading, it can be other things - absorbing information is much better than stuffing them with the most optimized information possible that everyone thinks is a perfect example of that medium available. One gets you a person that reads a lot, the other gets you a person that vaguely remembers hating English."

"I see what you mean."

"But that gets me started on the education system being incredibly flawed and it might be smart to run now, I'm a horrible malcontent."

"I don't think you're horrible at all."

"Well, thank you. But I understand why some people would not like to listen to me, anyway."

"I like listening to you just fine."

She feels like this is the exact set of actions she would have taken if she were fishing for compliments. She's not, but she's aware that it's a thing she could do. She doesn't mind them, but she'd rather not go fishing.

"Thank you! Now! Let's see if I can come up with a topic I can actually talk about. ... Uh. Do anything fun over summer break?"

"No, I'm very boring."

"Well, did you enjoy the break?"

"Yes, it was fine. I might have lied about being boring. It depends on how bored you are by piano lessons."

"I haven't had any, so I can't really say. Being able to play the piano sounds fun, though."

"It's nice."

She smiles.

"I kind of - lack in creative hobbies. Unless you count impassioned essays, in which case, those. I am good at those."

"What do you write impassioned essays about?"

"The proper essay format ones are for school, the less proper essay format ones are for arguing with people on the internet because sometimes I just like wasting my time."

"Have you gotten in any interesting internet arguments recently?"

She considers. "I mean, yes, but it's - I'm not arguing with people about morality, social justice, or something - I'm arguing about efficiency, because I am absolutely insane, so - I'm not really sure how to relate that into a neat tidy 'this is what I do in my spare time' format."

"...Well, now I want to know what you've been arguing about the efficiency of."

Giggle.

"Depends on my mood. Sometimes it's stuff that matters, like - I once was arguing about the viability of food charities to various parts of Africa, but lately it's been arguing about an MMO and how to properly play a class in it."

"I definitely don't have any opinions about that."

"They nerfed the spiritspeaker class and I am very upset about it," she says, sagely.

"What did they do?"

"The class is based around having summonable minions that help you fight. There's a skill that lets you summon all of your minions to your location. Then there's a buff you can cast on yourself that heals you and creatures around you a little bit every time you use a certain type of skill that the summon skill's part of. It's meant to be combined with retreat skills, help a party get out of trouble while the minions run interference, but when you combine it with the summon one you can summon all of your minions and heal them at the same time. Completely useless in player versus player, because anyone with half a brain will remove the buff in half a second, but in PvE it's good for soloing things you're not supposed to if you're smart and combine it with some other skills and - well, long story short, they changed the skill to a different type so summoning your minions doesn't activate the healing buff. It's very annoying. Especially since it wasn't even a game breaking ability, I know of some more game breaking abilities that are much worse."

"You're right, that does sound annoying."

"So annoying. I don't even play the game very much and I'm annoyed. The game's had a lot of changes that don't make sense lately, this one's just the one that personally affected me and ticked me off. I think once I'm done arguing with people on the internet about it I'll stop playing entirely."