​Today, November 15th, 2025, marks one year legally married to my wife, Kelsey Marie Lewis. We were legally married on Friday, November 15th, 2024. While we effectively eloped, leaving for a vacation a week after tying the knot, it still marked what has been a defining part of our journey through life together. We're still planning to have a proper wedding ceremony down the line, but the day of our dreams didn't need to happen for us to commit to spending the rest of forever together.

The last year has been marked by many challenges and setbacks, many of which will continue, and some which will even get worse. But it has also been marked by renewed dreams and hopes. Our marriage has brought us to raising and taking care of our puppy, Parker, who brings us endless amount of joy. He makes us laugh and he is very loving and smart, giving hugs and kisses and is learning how to even cuddle with us.

We have in the last year done a lot to set the groundwork for a better future for us, and while a lot of it hasn't gone as we wanted and there's a lot more work to do, the journey has been one which I have been filled with endless amounts of happiness to embark upon. kels has made me pursue dreams I had previously given up on, and encouraged me to live as my authentic self. They have given me the strength to stand up for myself and the courage to confront problems rather than run away from them.

They have given me so many experiences I never would have even thought about experiencing, and their sense of adventure has broken me out of my shell. They are how I have begun to reconnect with things and people I love, and have given me perspective on what matters most in my life. A lot of what I had taken for granted, I have a newfound appreciation of thanks to them, and their passions are enthralling to watch them pursue.

They're nerdy, they're ambitious, and they're a great planner. They always know how to make life be more interesting, and for them, I would do anything. Their loves have become my loves as well, and they have done more than anyone could possibly know to give me a level of fulfillment, enrichment, and contentness I never thought possible. They bring me comfort and give me encouragement and life I could previously only dream of. I love them so much, and while this may be just the first year legally married, I wish it to mark a lifetime of our future together. <3

I've got oh so many things I should update people on but blogging isn't a priority in my life.

Still, tonight I decided to kinda just...express a few ideas and I figured, hey, these ideas might be stupid, but I still wanted to share them with my audience.

So, without further adieu; 

Stupid political ideas I personally would love to see tried, despite the flaws:
-Cap rent at 30* the minimum wage per month for Studio apartments, 40* the minimum wage per month for one-bedroom apartments, 60* the minimum wage per month for two-bedroom apartments, and 90* the minimum wage per month for anything larger.

My idea here is that if you assume someone is working 30 hours at minimum wage, they should pay no more than 1/3rd of their monthly wage for a one-bedroom apartment. So, if they're working 30 hours a week then that's 120 a month. 120* the minimum wage would be their entire monthly paycheck, so 1/3rd of that would be 40* the minimum wage.

If the minimum wage is $10/hour, then that would mean monthly rent is capped at $300/month for a Studio, $400/month for 1-bedroom, $600 for 2-bedroom, $900/month for larger.

The law could be worked to offer incentives for landlords to make rent cheaper than these amounts, too.

-Make it illegal for phantom job offerings to be posted. If businesses advertise they are hiring, they must fill the position listed after they have candidates apply within 30 days of the posting. They may not take the posting down and then re-post it. Require every business listing a job to actually hire for the job they are listing.

-Make it illegal for businesses to throw away products that are still good. Require they go through a process of offering them at a discount and if they still can't sell the product of giving it away. Potentially provide incentives to businesses to donate these products.

One particular area to target for this would be food products and similar living products that come with expiration dates. Make it so that half-way through their shelf life they're discounted and offer incentives for them to be given away before the end of the shelf life, so that places like food banks are receiving food that isn't already past its expiration date. (I admit I don't know how to handle the particulars of this or the logistics involved, but the idea is to increase the amount donated and decrease the amount wasted and to make sure the donated products are still usable.)

-Make it illegal for businesses to hire externally before offering internal promotions. We were raised on the false pretense that anyone could work their way up the capitalism chain to the very top, but these days instead of promoting employees to higher positions companies vastly prefer hiring externally to fill vacant higher positions. Force them to work the way we were promised they would, and make it so they can't hire externally until internal options have all been expended.

This would pair really well with the phantom job offering being illegal, too.

-Make it encoded in law minimum wage increases by the expected amount inflation will. This wouldn't work perfectly, but would prevent minimum wage from remaining stagnant for decades/generations while inflation and the cost of living continue to increase.

-Make it illegal for anything to be resold unchanged for higher than 200% (double) the price it was originally bought for. This one would likely need fine-tuning to account for items that are of extreme historical significance, things deliberately designed to be limited in number, etc. But for every-day goods, make it illegal to price gouge past a certain point. Vendors need to turn a profit but they shouldn't be able to make that profit 500-1000% the amount they spent to get the product.

-Make it illegal for anything to be sold for higher than 500% or so the combined price of its components. This would similarly need fine-tuning to not stifle hand-crafted artisans' products, it would need to be targeted towards big businesses and corporations and industrial mass-produced items, with the aim being the same, to prevent them from large markups in a way bypassing the above.

(I do have more ideas for tackling inflation, shrinkflation, etc., but I don't have the words for them tonight.)

-To handle internet safety, instead of requiring IDs (coughcoughUK) in a way which is universally despised and leads to authoritarianism, make the law instead require companies/websites/games/etc. to recognize devices/internet connections/etc. which are in "family mode"/kid mode/have parental guidance controls turned on. We have the technology to do this already, they already collect that data, this would just require them to regulate off of it rather than allowing them to collect data on everyone. (I might not be wording this well but I hope you get what I'm going for.)

This would also pair well with education reform in making it mandatory for kids to learn internet history in an age-appropriate manner similarly to how sex ed is done in age-appropriate stages. Stick to really basics at younger age, scale it up to more details for tweenagers, as kids become young teens give them more info, etc. (Again, not worded well but I think you can catch the drift.)

Make it mandatory for places to also give this information and make it available to the adults/parents. Meetings, as public service announcements, etc.

Are these ideas pragmatic? Probably not! Good? Who knows? Unrealistic? Very likely! Incredibly naive and overly simplistic? Undoubtedly! I called them "stupid ideas" for a good reason! I'm not a lawmaker!

But I'd still love to see things like this tried, because I personally like the ideas.

Now granted. These don't touch on a lot of other areas which probably should be.

How to help local communities, particularly farmers. (I have ideas for that, too!)

How to help disabled folks who can't work a minimum wage job for 30 hours / week.

How to make sure media is preserved.

I've got a lot more stupid ideas for those and many more, too.

But I figure, hey, what harm is there in expressing these ideas? They've been sitting in my head for years now, I figured I might as well voice them as things I would love to see tried. Despite how stupid they probably are.

​So I've been wanting to talk about this for a long while now, but I decided to pull the trigger on outlining one of the most important pieces of background lore in my current novel, Records of Farn.

Specifically, revolving around the eighteen Demon God-Lords, also known as the Abundant ARGON. Each of them is the demon of one sin, and yes, there's eighteen sins because seven is wholly uncreative.

They are the eighteen most powerful demons in existence, and by virtue of being gods, their existence is literally written into the code of the universe.

I've hundreds of pages of notes on the Abundant ARGON alone, both because I used them to figure out how divine beings work on farn and because I found them to be interesting characters.

I don’t want to spend too much time summarizing the mechanics of demons, demon gods, and the Demon God-Lords, and how each differ from the others, but I will Breefly mention that each of the Abundant Argon could desperately use therapy, but by virtue of all demons being prideful and stubborn and masking their weaknesses, none of them are likely to ever seek therapy from The Immortal Therapist (who I should also talk about at some point, just...not today).

So instead, I wanted to give a rundown on each of the eighteen.

Loosely speaking, the first demon is Belreach, The First Damned, Demon of the sin Creation, and the father of all demons. He wasn’t created as a demon, but some unknown force tasked him with creating the concept of a demon and the limits on them. He achieved this, but in his own desires, made himself the first of such beings.

He was the original King of the demon realm, ruling over all demonkind as an initially uncontested ruler.

There’s a deliberate lack of detail to him, because this is a time period predating most deities even existing, so a lot of the details to him are deliberately left undefined. However, I will say, he's not currently master of all demonkind, despite being their Progenitor, and only commands a fraction of them.

The next two demon god-lords, who technically became demons before Belreach, are the sibling-spouse duo of Bemoheth and Athaneva. And yes, sibling spouse in the Zeus Hera sense, invoking all of the pantheons which have a male and female sibling duo who are married. It’s one of the main reasons they became demons.

If you were to add an L and i to Athaneva, I think the anagrams would be clear, they're basically Behemoth and Leviathan.

They were originally proto-spirits, the form of being that would eventually coalesce to become Great Spirits, and were SUPPOSED to be the top two in the pantheon of Great Spirits. However, when Belreach began defining demons, these divine beings decided effectively "sure, why not?" And just became Demon God-Lords. Because they could.

Athaneva, The First Chaos, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Chaos, as she is quite literally primordial chaos. She defied what she was meant to be and lives to cause as much as possible.

Bemoheth, The First Beast, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Existence, as his very existence as a demon is blasphemous to the very universe, again because he was meant to be the top God of the Great Spirits, but as a proto-spirit opted to not become the first Great Spirit and instead exist as a demon.

Together the duo are considered the Progenitors of all monsters, because they are what birthed monsters across the land of farn.

There’s not really much to their characters, because they are self-explanatory. Their essence is simple, and their power as primordial gods unrivaled except by other primordial gods.

The fourth Demon God-Lord is Luden, the First Fallen. He is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Pride.

He is the ruler of the citadel, the central fortress in the middle of the demon realm. By virtue of the Abundant Argon meeting in his realm, he is the de facto leader of Demon Conferences.

He is considered the King of Demons, and if you couldn’t guess, he's the reason Belreach isn’t King of demonkind. He was a bit of an upstart, but gathered an army which waged a demon war, conquering land after land, built the citadel, and then resisted Belreach's siege of it.

The two, with Mastemo’s help, eventually reached a truce, which would ultimately end up dividing the demon realm into sixteen parts, controlled by the eighteen Abundant Argon.

Sixteen, because Athaneva and Bemoheth share a territory, and one of the Abundant Argon has her realm as a small portal half outside the demon realm.

You might ask who Mastemo is. I'll cover him later, because he's one of the younger Demon God-Lords. So, if he's one of the younger Abundant Argon, how was he there for the first Demon Conference? Because all eighteen were. I don’t wanna ramble too much on it, but basically, the Demon God-Lords by virtue of being written into the code of the universe have always existed and their presence can be felt throughout all of time, despite them having tangible timeframes they manifested on farn. So while only four Demon God-Lords had manifested, all eighteen were still present.

But I digress. Luden is loosely based on the concept of Lucifer as a fallen angel, who becomes the ruler of hell as the father of sin, and so on and so forth, Christian lore insert here, you get the idea. He has a rather Darwin approach to demons, survival of the strongest. If a demon isn’t strong enough to figure out how to survive, then they don’t deserve to live.

His backstory is something he deems only his equals of knowing. What's known is that he was originally a member of a different pantheon, which by the nature of the pantheons around at the time could only have been either Ellun’s Pantheon or him being among The Archangels.

He was originally genderless, and part of his sin of Pride was him becoming exclusively male, abandoning any genderless, genderfluid, or feminine forms or parts and fully embracing the identity of male.

I know the details of what his backstory is, but I don’t want to share them. I'll say he's really complicated, in a way I think is really cool, but I don’t want to reveal what the convoluted circumstances were.

I'll say he was the first Demon God-Lord whose presence had tangible consequences of ripple effects on farn though. He was the cause of one Archangel suffering a brief episode of diverging from the intended path of Archangels, which then set off a chain reaction across every pantheon including influencing the other two Archangels to suffer a temporary divergence from the intended path, which in turn would create circumstances leading to the birth of over half of the Abundant Argon.

In short, what he did was so egregious, it shaped the majority of all misfortune on farn. He might not have invented demons or been the first, but he is effectively the indirect architect of every misfortune on farn to follow. Including the fifth Abundant Argon!

And that would be Lilith, The First Succubus. She’s the Demon God-Lord of the sin Lust. Now, Lilith is a main character in Records, so unlike the rest of the Abundant Argon, she actually gets a chance to tell her backstory. I'll say she was the first mortal to ever ascend to Godhood though.

One of her secondary titles is "The Last Primordial", because she is the last, the youngest, of the Primordial Gods, the Old Gods, the gods predating the landscape of farn as it is currently known.

And the reason she is the last of them is because of her being the first mortal to become a god. She put an end to an era of various pantheons waging a divine cold war against each other, because they all had to pause and collectively go, "Oh shit. Our actions can have consequences birthing Gods equal to us in power."

Now, obviously, all of the younger Abundant ARGON still formed! So obviously, there was still divine beings intervening with consequences. But her ascension to Demon God-Lordhood represented a cosmic shift in the effects of the divine on farn, with their influence scaling back from daily and nearly omnipresent to more passive and only on occasion.

Because she showed mortals could become gods equal in power to all prior gods, there was a sudden need for caution in actions taken, because rival gods born from mortals would be likely to hold grudges against those who had led to circumstances of such extreme suffering necessary to birth a God.

The next Demon God-Lords don’t have a strict order, but formed less than 200,000 years ago but over 70,000 years ago.

Sanatas, The Destroyer, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Wrath. He's effectively Poseidon, Krampus, and Satan rolled into one. He was a proto-Beastkin, a tribal leader, who was very angry at the oppression his people were facing at the hands of Mountain Humans (read: Caucasian Humans).

The result of this was him becoming one of the four Abundant Argon associated with The Apocalypse, as in, his presence on farn is a sign an apocalyptic event is likely to occur on a grand landscape-altering scale. Bemoheth and Athaneva are two of the other three.

Trisairo, The Exiled Fae, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Order. She became a tyrant, ruling the fae realm with absolute order and strictness.

Now, fae on farn are pretty much exactly what you would expect them to be; inherently agents of pure chaos. Their only rule is that rules are more like suggestions. So imagine the scope of beings like that exposed to what Trisairo did. She subjugated divine beings of chaos to the very antithesis of their nature. She introduced gender to previously genderless fae, and her control over what shouldn’t be controlled had devastating effects on the fae.

It led to the creation of The Fae Arbiter, a creature which is simultaneously fae, and yet, not fae. Simultaneously has power over all fae, yet is entirely powerless. Simultaneously exists only to resolve issues of cosmic scale, while also existing to provide the best for all fae. Both mortal, yet immortal. The ultimate contradictory fae, who is everything and nothing simultaneously. (Think Schroedinger's Cat.)

Milodee, The Dragon Reject, is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Blind Obedience. To understand her, I would have to explain the nature of dragons, but I don’t wanna go into a tangent on an entire different pantheon of gods. Loosely though, Dragons--similarly to Fae and Spirits--are inherently divine beings. Milodee was the youngest of the first generation of dragons to inhabit farn.

Dragons inherently seek having a hoard. They are inherently greedy and selfish and arrogant and seek power and to assert their dominance over lesser creatures, usually by ravaging lands.

Milodee rejected her dragon nature and fought for the people. However, this rejection of her nature took a toll on her, and left her vulnerable and weak. She sought a solution, and someone promised her an answer, if she followed his will without question. And she did. But he both literally and figuratively backstabbed her, and was just using her.

The turmoil of her inner conflict, the betrayal, the loss, and the toll the horrific tribulations she suffered because of her betrayal led her to go on a Lilith-scale rampage, ascending to demonhood despite already being divine. From the ashes of what she burned down, she used the lessons of her tormentors to build her own empire.

She went from always smiling and having a wide grin to permanently wearing a stoic look, because she was just that broken. But, part of her original protector nature remained, as she now serves as the enforcer of a divine treaty whereby all of the gods of every pantheon are to keep their influence to the old world, not the new.

So that's eight so far.
The next SEVEN can all directly or indirectly trace their origins to the same place. Only three of the remaining ten formed without any direct tie to the following.

Seidonia, the farn equivalent to Atlantis, was a continent midway between the new world and the old world. Topla, the main city on the continent, was the capitol of the Toplan Empire. The Toplans (read: Atlanteans) had magical advancements loosely equal to or slightly superior to modern day farn. In earth terms, they had technology rivaling 2025 level of technology potentially slightly better than what we have now.

The Toplan Empire spanned both the new world and the old world, over 70,000 years ago. In their minds, they brought enlightenment to the primitive cultures around the world. Those who they were colonizing and conquering had a different opinion of their actions.

Eventually, zealotry, arrogance, corruption, and apathy led to the circumstances where Dabadon, The Commander, would undergo his demonic Ascension around 70,000 years before the modern day. Dabadon is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Slothfulness. He, along with Sanatas, Bemoheth, and Athaneva, form the four Abundant Argon signaling apocalyptic events, because they all together were responsible for sinking the entire continent of Seidonia, with all one billion inhabitants. The consequences of an entire continent sinking to the bottom of the ocean also sent tidal waves across the world, wiping out nearly every coastal city overnight.

However, this catastrophe still left what would be deemed The Toplan Legacy, a mythical claim to being the true heirs of the greatness which was the Toplan Empire. In short, the backing behind every colonial and imperial mindset to follow, all aiming to reclaim the lost glory of Seidonia.

It starts with Toran. Toran was the easternmost outpost of the Toplan Empire, a trade colony established to easily connect with the farn equivalent to Asia. Toran can be thought of as the farn equivalent to Troy.

Toran was, by some method, displaced in time by approximately 60,000 years. Potentially 66,666, if we wanna be extra dramatic. I haven’t canonized the METHOD of time displacement. It would either be a magical glacier of sorts locking them in place a la Dylan Hunt Andromeda style, or it would be them literally being flung forward in time, where they just were one minute an outpost of Topla, and the next find out Topla has been gone for over 60,000 years.

Regardless of the method of displacement, them being time displaced by 60,000 years or so is canonical. (Only the method hasn’t been established by me.)

Toran would go on to form the Toran Empire, spanning the farn equivalent of the Mediterranean Sea, forming their own outposts. They would expand into areas the Toplan Empire hadn’t, both further east and south, colonizing effectively the farn equivalent to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, spanning upwards to India.

Their adventuring culture was structured largely like Danganronpa, with adventurers highly specialized to ultimate extremes, hyper-competent to Godlike extents in their chosen fields, and using those fields to accomplish great feats.

The cousin people to the Torens, the Tinians, are the farn equivalent to one iteration of Greece. Tinia was another Toplan outpost, but unlike Toran, Tinia had to take The Slow Path forward. They were ethnically and culturally identical to Toplan at the time of the sinking of Seidonia, and stories of their Toplan heritage and the displacement of Toran survived the 60,000 year gap.

When Toran reappeared, the two cousin people were happy to see each other, and established good relations with each other. Toran freely shared their Toplan technology, culture, and history with their cousins.

The Tinians, however, eventually felt betrayed by the Torens. Toran had an easy path to expand their Empire to match and in many ways exceed that of the Toplan Empire. Yet Tinia could only expand into the bitter hash northern regions, inhabited by people who were adept at pushing the Tinians back.

The inability to freely expand into the Norkan regions left Tinians feeling like the Torens were deliberately stifling their growth. The Torens in contrast felt it was best to let their cousins strike out on their own. After all, they did make progress in colonizing part of the Norkan region.

Which is very important, because the Norkan descendants will cling to that loose thread. Norkans are loosely the farn equivalent to ancient Germanic, Celtic, and Norse people all rolled into one, and Norkan raiders would through their descendants form one of the modern superpowers of farn. But that's lore for a different day.

The important part is that the Tinians idea of striking out on their own was declaring war on the Torens. The two were evenly matched in a long stalemate.

Eventually, there was a call for a truce, to be signed within the impenetrable walls of Toran. The Tinians expected the Torens to be so arrogant they wouldn’t expect it was a trap, with them planning to Red Wedding the Torens within their own walls.

The Torens, however, weren’t that stupid. They suspected shenanigans, and thought they had sufficiently prepared.

They both ended up surprised by the other, and instead of the desired decisive blow, it was closer to a mutual kill. Technically, it was a Tinian Phyrric Victory, because they actually achieved their goal and had off-shore survivors who would retreat from the scene of the disaster.

However, this was because of the birth of a new member of the Abundant Argon, Deumos, The Deceiver. As an adventurer, he was considered the Ultimate Analyst, and yes, those who know their Danganropa lore can guess that means he became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Despair. He predicted everything about what the Tinians would do, and was ignored. The Torens lost the battle because their impenetrable walls were their main advantage, and lacking it, he was their last survivor, and he massacred the Tinians who survived the bloody battle.

Tinia lost all of its military, the majority of its leadership, and most of its navy, so was left vulnerable to invasion on all sides. The Toran colonies of Ranmoa and Thyrrga briefly united in vengeance to strike out against Tinia from the south and west.

Meanwhile, the Norkans reclaimed their territory from the north.

And completing the pressure on Tinia was raiders from the east, led by Belchevore, The Consumer. Since this is one of the two dark ages in farn history, loosely akin in time and effect to the Bronze Age Collapse, not much is known about Belchevore, other than he was likely an Insectoid race of some kind whose conquests led to his demonic Ascension. He became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Gluttony.

After Tinia inevitably collapsed, the unifying force between Ranmoa and Thyrrga collapsed, and the two both laid claim to the title of Toplan Legacy, leading into The Legacy Wars. If you couldn’t guess, Thyrrga is the farn equivalent to Carthage and Ranmoa the equivalent to Rome, with this the Punic Wars. Like on earth, Ranmoa would ultimately win, establishing the Ranmoan Empire, spanning the geography you would expect a Roman Empire to.

The downfall of the Ranmoan Empire was the same factors of most empires: greed, corruption, and apathy. They wanted to continue expanding, but lacked the resources to. So, they forcefully drafted the peaceful scholar Mastemo and enlisted his help in perverting his knowledge into weapons of war. Mastemo was not amused. You may remember that I mentioned a Mastemo, The Forsaken Scholar, who is a member of the Abundant Argon? Sure enough, this is him. He destroyed the Ranmoan Empire and demonically ascended to become the Demon God-Lord of the sin Knowledge.

The fall of the Ranmoan Empire left numerous splinters, who were united by King Arnos, or King Arneros, who is basically a combination of King Arthur, Jason of the Argonauts, and King Charlemagne the Great. He was a nautical adventurer turned great King, who united these fractured people to form the Federation of Ranmoan Children. Tragically, his early death led to the Federation of Ranmoan Children having a conflict which led to private businesses effectively seizing control of the Ferachen Empire as it was now called. These private corporations effectively ran everything, including adventuring, as a for-profit venture, breaking thousands of years of traditional regarding adventurers largely working closer to socialism and/or communism in structure.

Suffice to say, this latestage capitalistic hellscape did not end well, and eventually, Zeboel, The Striker, the next member of the Abundant Argon, would destroy the Ferachen Empire in a rebellion which led to their demonic Ascension. (Zeboel being the only explicitly enby member of the Abundant Argon.) They became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Envy.

This led to the farn equivalent to the dark ages, because while the Ferachen Empire had a valid claim to the Toplan Empire Legacy, its collapse left only the distant memory of greatness, with fractured nations forming in its wake.

This led to the landscape you would expect for the middle ages through the Renaissance in Ycasia, the farn equivalent to western Europe. Nations eventually began to form mostly finalized boarders, gain stronger independent cultures, warred with each other, had kings and nobles and so on and so forth.

Eventually, this would lead to two more of the Abundant Argon manifesting as a consequence, in different parts of the world.

Bothai, The False Chosen, was a prodigy adventurer and great leader, who represented a threat to the elites of society. One of them sent Lilith to assassinate him, and much to her chagrin, she was forced to execute this, impaling him through the chest from behind.

His dying corpse landed in the ruins of a temple to Deumos. Deumos had, by this time, run afoul of Milodee and been effectively banished from farn. He tried to claim that because he was a descendant of the Toplans and there were descendants of Toplans in the new world, he could lay claim to it. His Loophole was considered insufficient, and he paid the price of having his entire following, history, and very existence erased. But Bothai, dying, bleeding out, on his temple, allowed him to connect with Bothai, and make a deal with a demon. Deumos would save Bothai’s life, in exchange for possessing Bothai and Bothai becoming an agent of restoring Deumos's presence on farn.

Bothai, already in the mindset of seeking vengeance against those conspirators who killed him, agreed. I want to turn this story into a webcomic, but the end result was Bothai becoming Deumos's equal, becoming the Demon God-Lord of the sin Ambition.

In a different corner of the world in a similar timeframe, the various nations of Ycasia were colonizing the continent of Angea, displacing the locals, enslaving them, etc. Rarma, The Ensnarer, a child of a white father and black mother, could pass as a tanned white person, but was very much a child of both worlds, with all the trauma that entailed. I also am planning to tell her story, but the short form of it is, she met a guy who became her one true love. They became warlords together and effectively declared war against all other warlords and every nation colonizing Angea. Eventually, Rarma ended up mortally wounded. Her husband kept her in stasis, fought off all enemies, and healed her enough to revive her, but in the process, he himself got mortally wounded, and a just-revived Rarma was too weak to reciprocate the stasis. The two had saved each other countless times, but she wasn’t able to save him so immediately after he saved her.

She took this quite poorly. She embraced the worst traits of both herself and her husband, expanding their plans, following through with them, and didn’t just fend off the opposition. She brutally CRUSHED them, conquering the entire continent.

She was driven to demonic Ascension by the maddening irony of how she could have everything she ever could ask for--except the one and only thing she wanted. Because not even the Abundant Argon can revive the truly dead, her lover was gone for good. So she became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Greed.

All seven of those trace back indirectly to Luden, because Luden’s actions drove the actions which created the Toplan Empire, and through the sinking of Seidonia, the resulting chain of events.

To chronologically backtrack a bit, Phaimyustazael became the Demon God-Lord of the sin Fear(also Deceit) a few thousand years before modern times. Less than six thousand, but over two thousand. You might wonder why his name is so convoluted, and it's by his design. He is the Demon God-Lord of contracts. Whenever you think "deal with the devil", it'd be him you’re making a deal with.

As the demon of contracts, he's an expert at making people who arrogantly think they have bested him painfully realize they have been tricked by Phaimyustazael, The Trickster. To understand why, you have to know how demon true names work.

The true names of demons are well-known. So a contractor or summoner knowing a demon's true name offers them no power over that demon.

UNLESS the demon ACKNOWLEDGES their true name in the presence of their summoner or contractor. If they explicitly say, "yes, this is me", then they are bound to the one who brought them to farn. This is why demons have hundreds of aliases and titles. They use those to avoid acknowledging who they are to their summoner.

Phaimyustazael, by virtue of his name and the spelling thereof being ridiculously hard to get right, weaponizes this. He will acknowledge misspoken versions of his name and typos thereof, to let contractors THINK they have been given full control.

But because they didn’t perfectly pronounce his true name, it doesn’t count as being his true name, meaning they actually hold no extra power over him, and they find this out the hard way.

The youngest of the Abundant Argon in manifesting, even though she’s been around for all of eternity, is Rothasta. I originally had her title as "The First Inquisitor", but I am realizing that all five of the Primordial Demon God-Lords have 'first' and none of the other 15 do except Rothasta, so I am looking for a new ?adverb? between 'the' and 'Inquisitor'. Currently I am going for 'Sullen', but that may change later if I think of a better replacement for 'first'.

Rothasta is the Demon God-Lord of the sin Sacrifice. She was sent by a now-long-gone nation to prevent demons from crossing through a portal connecting the demon realm with farn. While guarding this portal, she would never age, and so, she was an eternal guardian of preventing mass demonic incursion onto farn.

She did this as a mortal for at least a thousand years. She was informed nothing remained of her nation. Everyone she knew had their lineage die out, and all records of her kingdom were lost, erased, etc. In short, nothing about her mortal life remained, and she had no reason to keep fighting. But she did.

Until about a hundred years ago, when she just...snapped. She had known she had consumed the essence of enough demons where she could become a demon god for over a thousand years. She chose not to. Until one day, she just...didn’t. She just succumbed. And became the seventeenth of the Abundant Argon.

As for the eighteenth Abundant Argon, they have yet to manifest on farn. Their effect on the world has already been felt, with them a member of every Demon Conference, but they haven’t yet actually manifested on farn, so their identity is unknown because the events leading to their birth as a Demon God-Lord haven’t yet transpired.

Because of this, the eighteenth Demon God-Lord could be anyone, and be the Demon God-Lord of any sin.

Of course, I know who the five possible eighteenth members of the Abundant Argon would be, each representing a different possible eighteenth sin. While anyone COULD be the eighteenth, only five people have the circumstances where they MIGHT become the eighteenth.

The eighteenth Demon God-Lord could be the sin of Insanity, Clarity, Regret, Conflict, or Pacifism.

And you might wonder. "Why is there only 18, and not 24?"

Well that's because the circumstances surrounding these people mean that any one of them becoming a Demon God-Lord would change the landscape of farn in a way which would prevent the circumstances for the other four.

In short, it’s not that there must be eighteen Demon God-Lords, never more and never less.

It’s that it’s only possible for eighteen individuals to become Demon God-Lords. Seventeen already have. Five people could be the eighteenth, but any one of them becoming the eighteenth changes the other four in ways making it impossible for them to become one anymore.

The best way I can think to explain this spoiler-free is to ask you to imagine a hypothetical.
Say all five candidates for the 18th were friends, and the only trigger condition for becoming the eighteenth Demon God-Lord was a tragedy where the other four died.

Sure, if there were multiple trigger conditions, then it would be possible to have nineteen to 24. But because the one and ONLY trigger condition for this hypothetical is the other four possible people being killed, there can always only be one final demonic Ascension to Demon God-Lordhood.

While any of them COULD be the final Abundant Argon, only one trigger condition can ever trigger, because that trigger condition prevents the other four triggers from being possible.

Since all eighteen of the Abundant Argon have been at every major Demon Conference starting with the first, they have always known they would have eighteen in total, thus why Mastemo proposed calling the Demon God-Lords The Abundant Argon.

They knew that no matter what, circumstances would play out to have that number eventually. Not because it was set to be eighteen, but rather because it just happened the circumstances behind the formation of the eighteenth would prevent any future possibility of more Demon God-Lords.

I hope that clarifier helps explain the concept. Where it's not a rule of "there must be 18 exactly", and instead it's just "well, 18 of us form at some point".

The only other thing I want to clarify is that about half of the Abundant Argon have kingdoms on farn and permanently reside there, and the other half only dwell on farn when summoned.

The five primordials, Sanatas, Dabadon, Zeboel, Phaimyustazael, and Rothasta all have no kingdoms on farn, and exist on farn exclusively through summons and contracts. They mainly dwell in the demon realm.

Milodee, Trisairo, Deumos, Belchevore, Mastemo, Bothai, Rarma, and the eighteenth Abundant Argon, all possess kingdoms on farn. (Or in the case of the 18th, WILL possess a kingdom.) Effectively, their subjects are a form of permanently summoning and contracting them.

There’s a lot more to demons, Demon Lords, Demon Gods, and Demon God-Lords, and how each is different from each other, and how demons work, because I only touched on the bare minimum of the mechanics involved.

And most of the Abundant Argon have a lot more to their stories and characters. I didn’t cover any of their secondary domains, which is what they are usually actually worshipped for. People pray to the Demon God-Lords to provide them something, and while it CAN be their primary domain of their sin, it's usually actually their secondary traits they get worshipped for.

For instance, Lilith’s primary worshippers are slaves praying for freedom, as Lilith’s secondary domain is freedom from slavery, loosely speaking.

Each of them, including the eighteenth, have secondary aspects to them. At least one pro-something and a correlating anti-something. But I think describing all of them is best saved for a different ramble.

I hope you enjoyed this one!

Hi, I am writing this across every platform I can, in order to best reach out to everyone and give them the rundown of things.

If you don’t know me, my name is Bree, aka, the Range of Bree System, aka Ranger, aka mastina2, and in most places I go by rBree2.

My elevator pitch for myself; I’m an autistic plural(median system) transwoman lesbian witch with ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety, and numerous disabilities both physical and mental. I’m 32 years old as of July 23rd, and legally married to the love of my life as of November 15th 2024.

Although, tangent; we're still hoping to have a wedding ceremony (we effectively eloped) in October 2026, pushed back from the initial plan of October 2025. But I digress.

Over my life, I've accumulated a fair share of interests. Writing, games, music, songs, Dancing, Poetry, art, Webcomics, and more. (I blogged daily about these things for nearly 10 years continuously!)

I've pursued all of them as a potential career casually, but never been able to get my foot fully through the door on anything. Professionally, I've been a lifeguard and later Aquatic Lead (formerly called a Lead Lifeguard) my entire adult life, for nearly 11 years (minus one missed year due to covid).

In online spaces, I am mostly known for my supportive nature. I bring joy and positivity to the spaces I choose to inhabit. I give my time, energy, and support to friends, loved ones, and even relative strangers who I happen to share a space with.

In my mind, everyone I talk to is a potential future friend, because every friend I have ever had, I got from talking. I share memes, I make silly wordplay jokes, I just vibe with folks. I provide my presence and provide that source of constant engagement. 

I talk about my passions, my interests, my life, and listen to them talk about theirs. I find their stories fascinating, and I am pretty good at remembering what they tell me, too!

Whenever people run into issues they want advice on, I give what I can. When people are down, I provide perspective. I help people see the best in them, when they can’t, and I provide ways for them to recover, rebuild, and keep going forward. 

I give my life perspective to share that they are not alone, and I give them guidance. I am in many ways a teacher and a counselor/psychiatrist/healer. I give people a way of reframing their life, in a way which encourages healthier mindsets.

One of the main ways I share small reminders and tips is with my daily check-ins. I started them to encourage everyone to check in daily to let people know they're alive and okay, and chose to encourage engagement by providing small boosts to the day, little things which can shed perspective on all their negative self-talk and allow for fighting against their weaknesses and building on their strengths. 

I want to share those with a wider audience than what I have, so I’m working to expand into other media. I eventually want to make a year-long calendar, and/or a year-long prompt journal. I've begun plans on making a series of 44 card oracle decks, too!

I've turned these daily check-ins into a webcomic, and occasionally into videos. I started a subreddit dedicated to providing them as well, and added a tag for it on the subreddit for my presence as a content creator. 

Speaking of which, I am a content creator.
I create videos of all kinds. On TikTok I primarily post memeposts, wordplay which I think of.
On YouTube there’s a variety. I vlog, I talk about passion projects, I provide longer uplifting messages, I educate people on subjects I’m familiar with particularly plurality, I provide unedited longer form recordings of gameplay for games, and I perform the various songs I’ve composed.

I stream on twitch. (And upload streams as raw vods to YouTube.) I’m a variety streamer, although lately I’ve been playing almost exclusively Cozy Farm Game type games such as Stardew Valley and Disney Dreamlight Valley.
Besides Cozy Farm Games, I primarily play RPG games, one-off story games, and childhood nostalgia games.
I also stream both art and my novelwriting process.

My current novel, Records of Farn, has as its own Elevator Pitch, "The genres of High School Hijinks/Shenanigans, Shonen, Shojo, Light Novel Isekai, and Harem blended/mixed into one, to tell an Epic surrounding around the effects the isekai’d protagonist has on the fantasy world she finds herself in."

Farn is a paracosm, with as much history as earth. It’s as old as earth in billions of years, had a planet collision to form one moon in a similar timeframe, developed primitive proto-life in a similar timeframe, sapients began forming around the same time, modern sapients appeared around 200,000 years ago, and civilizations have risen and fallen in parallel times to earth. The main difference is farn is a place where magic and religion are real, so the history of the planet is interwoven with mythological figures who explicitly had a proven tangible impact on the world.

Since this means there’s billions alive in the modern day, with hundreds of countries, cultures, and countless pop culture, I will never be able to tell the entire story of the planet, because to tell it all would be as impossible as telling all of earth’s history.

However, Records is specifically focused around the introduction of one transplant from earth, Vee, and her arrival on farn, and how her arrival transforms the planet thanks to the influence and consequences of her actions on the world stage.

Vee was designed as a protagonist to represent under-represented demographics. Namely, she’s a polyamorous plural transwoman lesbian with ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, and anxiety. I asked the question what it would take for a person with those specific traits to be the one of eight billion sent as most qualified to farn, with her and farn evolving side by side.

I initially planned for three books covering the majority of the world. Records would cover Vee’s first three years in farn. I would write a sequel set after, and then an interquel between the two, with the interquel covering a lot of the expanded lore, filling in the gaps neither Records or the sequel would.

But I ran into a problem; I realized Records would, in its entirety, be akin to the entirety of The Lord of the Rings in length. I was effectively writing an entire series of light novels, or the entirety of a lengthy Manga like Bleach, or the entirety of an anime with hundreds of episodes, in one single book.

My first solution was to break it up by year. Year One as Vee’s first year, Year Two as her second, and Post-Graduation as her first year out and about fully in the adult world.

...Yet I've run into the problem where just Year One alone is likely to be around 2,000 - 4,000 pages in length, and the other years are likely to be equally as long.

...So my current plan is to return to the roots. I took great inspiration from light novels, so why not just have each book of Records be one or two Arcs, a la a Manga Volume, or an anime Season?

That will likely leave the first book at a reasonable 400 - 600 pages.

And I am actually pretty close to getting it written! It’s about one tenth done for a first draft, and the hardest parts of setting the framework are almost completed, with snippets of the rest written and a pretty comprehensive timeline established.

I just need to put in the work to make it.

And I have a lot of plans for the expanded farn universe. I genuinely believe that Farn as a franchise is, if handled properly, worth a billion if not multiple billions of dollars. (Mind you, I have no interest in even being a millionaire yet alone a billionaire, but I think my world has that much value.)

I think if I could successfully pitch it to a service provider like Amazon or Netflix, Records of Farn would make an INCREDIBLY good anime. We're talking, Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen levels of animation and popularity. There’s enough characters with their quirks and backstories for endless amounts of investment in the world, and with a show to provide their official looks, that opens the door up to merch. Figures, shirts, you name it, anything which could be sold and distributed to people on a worldwide basis.

Especially since it wouldn’t end there!

Records has a planned sequel and the interquel still, both of which could be adapted to be their own, shorter, anime series!

And then There’s the expanded world lore.

I have in mind a Battlestar Galactica slash Lost type live action soap opera dramafest covering the distant past revolving around the continent of Seidonia, the farn equivalent to Atlantis, and how it led to the rise of Dabadon, the Demon God-Lord of Slothfulness. I have always thought that, given the opportunity, I could successfully pull off what all the pale imitators who tried to copy what those shows did, tried to do but failed. I feel I understand what made those shows work, and how I could artificially recreate what was accidentally made by circumstances of the time.

I also have in mind a musical, covering the downfall of the Federation of Ranmoan Children, aka the Ferachen Empire, and how Zeboel the Demon God-Lord of Envy was birthed from that late stage capitalism hellscape.

And then There’s a novel covering the rise of Rarma, the Demon God-Lord of Greed, and how she conquered Angea, putting an end to the era of colonialism in the old world.

And There’s more!

I also have in mind a book-slash-anime series called "Fallen Farn", a 'what-if' alternate universe covering one possible rendition of what farn would look like without Vee’s influence, one possible way things pan out without Vee accomplishing her full potential. In essence, it shows one possible world which diverges from the canonical farn at a point where Vee easily could have failed, and shows the consequences of that failure in an alternate future separate from the canonical sequel and interquel.

That’s four to five anime series, one musical, and one live action series, beyond all of the original books to be written, all with the potential merch to match!

And the sequel I intend to write has the theoretical potential for sequels after it to be written, too!

That, aside from how there’s at least one fictional MOBA video game which easily could be turned into an actually real one.

By my estimation, I have compiled 6,000 pages of notes for farn, and there’s plenty more unwritten I’ve stored exclusively in my head. A veritable Similarian of notes!

When I say this is a potentially billion dollar franchise if properly enabled, I well and truly believe it to have that level of worth. Farn is a rich, interesting world, truly equal to earth in scale, and that provides the ability for a truly endless amount of stories on every type of media.

And farn is just my current obsession as a paracosm.
I've made more, like the Rubyverse of my webcomic Red Hood Rider of equal scale to farn. (Heck, even The Descended is sizable.)

I've been writing stories since I was 13, and that has led to dozens, even hundreds, of rich worlds I can with relative ease write and bring to life, as I aim to with farn.

And I have more passions than just farn, too!

I also want to write and illustrate a children's book series, with an illustrated picture book containing captions which rhyme, telling subtle easily digestible morals to children through the eyes of the protagonist. Messages like "you might not like going to the doctor, but it helps you stay healthy", how to play safe, how to explore, etc.

I am a talented enough artist and wordsmith to pull it off, where I could potentially write a new book every month and release dozens in the series.

...But all of this, all of these ideas, all of the creativity, all of the passion, all of the support I give others, all of the love, kindness, education, resources, and so on and so forth I provide? All that joy and positivity, all that potential?

...Is in jeopardy, because I myself am in danger by the dire straights of my current life circumstances and the desperation thereof.

My work recently made policy changes which in effect removed accommodations for my disabilities. My work already strains me above 25 hours per week, and removing the parts of the routine which made it bearable is exhausting me to the point I genuinely might collapse at any given moment.

And on top of that, I have been given extra job responsibilities without any extra pay for the compensation of the increased workload. I’m doing more work, with less accommodations for my disabilities, and getting no increase in my pay or benefits from it.

Just my one job, now averaging closer to 36 hours a week, a full ten more than I can realistically handle with accommodations, while having those accommodations removed, and doing extra work for no extra pay? Is genuinely pushing my body and mind past breaking. I very well may perish thanks to my job if conditions don’t improve.

But it gets worse. Despite all of the above, my job doesn’t cover the cost of living. Me and my wife are both employed at soul-sucking jobs which are taxing us beyond our breaking points because we both have disabilities, but despite two jobs, we still aren’t making even close to enough to even survive.

Despite how our current jobs could already kill us, we're looking for second, even third, jobs, to get four to six sources of income, because that’s what we need at the moment.

Our apartment complex illegally upped our rent by $100 last year, without any notice. And when we renewed our lease, we went from having all utilities except power included for free, to being charged for every utility. Garbage, sewage, water, all previously free, but adding an additional couple hundred dollars.

Excluding power and internet, which together are an extra $300, our monthly rent went from $1700 to $2000, without any notice. Our first indication we would be charged for the utilities was the first monthly bill after we renewed our lease.

And this extra $300 in rent has slowly been building up to drowning us to a point where we can't keep it up, and last month finally was the breaking point.

In July, we received a $2,000 bill we had to pay. That was our rent money, and since we had to pay that bill, we had nothing left for rent.

So we have received an eviction notice. We have through August 7th to pay the rent, at least $2,000 but potentially $4,000, or we get evicted on August 12th.

We've been trying to pursue every aid resource. We've hit walls on food stamps in navigating the bureaucracy. We would qualify for legally disabled and get the benefits from it if we could actually afford to go to the doctor, but we can't.

My health insurance at the end of last year upped my monthly rate from $150/month to $550/month, a $400 increase I couldn’t pay. So I've been without health insurance all year long, and even if I had it, I wouldn’t be able to afford even the copays. We've been catch-22'd price gated out of qualifying for disabilities.

If we could afford to see doctors and receive their care, then it would be shown medical intervention isn’t enough to make us fully functional members of society, that we are in fact by the legal standard considered disabled. And that would open up the resources of disability to us. But because we can’t afford doctors, we can't get those resources, when those resources would likely enable us to afford doctors. We're trapped locked out of receiving the care we legally should qualify for.

Housing resources have largely given us no leads. We've pushed cheaper housing and programs to largely no effect.

We've tapped just about every resource left, and have nothing left.

And all of this builds on top of each other. My job exhausting me, trying to navigate the bureaucracy of receiving aid exhausting me, my own body exhausting me, hunting for cheaper housing, everything is adding up to breaking me, and if I do break...There’s no fixing me after.

All of the ideas, all of the creativity, all of the joy, all of the positivity, all of what I do, all the good I could ever do, all of the passion, all of that is on the verge of disappearing. Forever. Of being gone, permanently lost to the world.

So this is a final call for aid.

And to give a tangible answer to what you can do to help, there’s actually quite a lot!
You can send items or food directly to us. Either through throne (which has surprise gifts enabled), or through me DMing you our address.

You can spread the word. Share this, in post form, in video form, however you can, anywhere and everywhere.

Advocate on my behalf to any agency you think will listen.
Legal agencies which might take up me as a client for the illegal things I’ve been enduring.
An agent and/or manager who you think might believe in me and my vision such that they're willing to take a chance on me and believe that I can actually create what I believe I can.
Aid programs you think could work with me.

Jobs which you find that could work with us and our disabilities, ideally remote work which pays a significant amount.
Fundraising organizations or individuals, who might be interested in campaigning for us.

Or even just directly plugging how to support us.
You can support me through twitch subs and bits, albeit at a low payout to me.

You can donate to my kofi,
Or even commission something from me if you want a tangible return on your investment in me.

You can donate to our GoFundMe.

And you can spread the word to others.

You can follow, subscribe, and watch my content. (Ads on twitch when I stream, potential monetization on TikTok + YouTube.)
Here's a list of my links, my carrd.

Spread my content, spread the word of my need. Spread the word of the things I've gone through, of what I am hoping to do, of what I already am doing. Tell people about me, in any way shape or form you can.

I’m running out of time.
I have so much to offer the world.
I just need some help surviving in it.

​I've previously shared I intend to make my daily check-ins span as many forms of media as I can, in order to reach as many people as I can and spread that daily dose of extra energy to as many as I can for all those who need those little reminders.

I intend to make oracle decks about the daily check-ins.

When I have a year's worth, I intend to make a calendar and/or diary/journal filled with a full year of them.

I sporadically provide daily check-ins mostly as YouTube videos (although I'll likely expand to TikToks as well), and obviously, I've begun making them as a webcomic.

Today, I made the decision to expand the places even further. I've added a flair to my subreddit for providing them, and created a new subreddit for daily check-ins as well.

Not only do I think the idea of providing daily proof of being alive and okay is a good one, but also I feel like the affirmations I choose to give are life-saving. Those small boosts might not universally help, but all they need is to help one person one day and I have done my job. So despite the increasing workload and lack of personal payout (even if I could truly monetize these daily check-ins, I don't think I would really want to and any efforts there would be born out of necessity rather than out of choice), I wanna keep expanding them out.

Everyone deserves a dose of good, of perspective, of support, of energy, of motivation, of reminders. I can't reach everyone but I can reach as many people as possible if I keep doing what I am. So here's to hoping.

And while I don't wanna monetize my efforts, if you wanna financially support them, a reminder I do have a ko-fi. Me being alive and okay is not a guarantee, but for as long as I can, I will continue. <3
 

 
I turn 32 as of today, because I was born on July 23rd, 1993.

I'll be writing my check-in for today, presumably one involving birthdays, later. As for celebrating, I...don't really have the means to, today. I don't have the money to buy anything, or the means to really go anywhere, and even things at home I'm not sure I can do since it will depend on when I need to transport my wife back from work.

But at the same time, I figured I would make a blog entry about it.

Birthdays are a time I have struggled a lot with feeling positive emotions about. I don't know at what point exactly they went from something I looked forward to, to being something I just got negative feelings about, but it was over half of my life ago. I was a young teenager. What caused the shift, I'd have to unpack a lifetime of trauma to know. Could be anything, or a combination of things.

Maybe it was my family scheduling our summer trip to visit our grandparents around my birthday every year. With mine as the first birthday to not be celebrated on the actual day. (A thing later adapted for all of us due to life circumstances.)

Maybe it was me drifting apart from my friends, who as they aged outgrew the childish things which bonded us together while I myself didn't.

Maybe it was just the decrease in meaningful gifts.

Maybe it was a feeling of the sameness of every celebration, with nothing unique about them.

Maybe it was a general sense that people didn't get me, that people were forgetting me, that I was irrelevant, that people didn't understand what I really wanted, with the gifts I got being increasingly further away from the gifts I was hoping to get.

Or maybe something else.

Who knows.

Regardless of what caused the increased cynicism, pessimism, dread, and just tiredness/exhaustion regarding my birthday, it was there until a couple years ago or so.

In fact being honest, maybe the first birthday which I didn't feel this way was last year.

I don't remember if my birthdays in 2020 - 2022 were good or not, but I remember my 2023 birthday was one of the most depressing, and it was on the cusp of one of the worst times in my life by virtue of being the worst time in the life of my wife. (Although at the time, they were just a friend of mine, and in fact, the tragedy which was my 2023 birthday was what led to us dating. So my 2023 birthday gift from the universe was the love of my life, so I can't complain too much about how bad the day was otherwise.)

The first time I can remember feeling loved, appreciated, seen, and truly felt like people "got" me, was last year. My 2024 birthday. For the first time in half my life, I felt everything "a child should" (to quote a song) on the special day. I felt loved, I felt positive, I felt optimistic, I felt happy.

And it gave me hope for birthdays in the future being like that.

My current life circumstances mean I sincerely doubt I will have that this year, unfortunately. I've been struggling to avoid eviction, to make ends meet, to try and survive the crushing weight of society, that I haven't been really able to let people know, and prepare, and set time aside to celebrate me. I've tapped whatever resources they would normally give to me as a birthday gift, by virtue of having needed to ask for help prior to my birthday.

People who might otherwise give me birthday gifts instead gave me support to survive prior to my birthday, so I am very unlikely to receive anything except words today. I might not get time, and I definitely won't get gifts. And while it sucks, that's the reality of my current situation. I don't have the luxury of celebrating me this year, so this year will be a return to the previous standard of disappointment--but crucially, not with the accompanying dread that was there before.

I recognize that my current life circumstances are, explicitly, temporary, and not the new norm. The hardships and trials I am facing right now will not be there next year. The pain, the suffering, the weight of the world, will not give the same burden next year as it has this year. As crushed as I am right now, I know it is just the one time, and that next year will be better.

So as much as it will be hard to feel as loved as I was last year given how badly things are this year...I remain hopeful that I can keep celebrating. And hey. You never know. Last year I got something I hadn't gotten since I was a kid; a surprise birthday party. Maybe I'll be surprised today, since the day has just started.

But even if not...that's okay. I know how loved and appreciated I am every day. I know I hold value to people, and that I matter. I know how much a difference I make. I know how much I am loved and the amount of support I receive regularly is a blessing. I am fortunate, I am lucky, to receive a lifetime of love every day, so why would I need extra on my day of birth? I receive the amount of attention and love every day that many only get on their birthday.

So I don't need today to be special.

It would be a pleasant surprise if it was!

But I don't need it to be. There's no bitterness, there's only a small bit of sadness, and that small disappointment is because I know if life circumstances differed I could be receiving a lot more love and support today than I actually will, but ultimately; I am okay, well and truly, because today I am reflecting on all of the love and support I have already received.

I am eternally gracious, and can never have enough gratitude.

And above all else; I am looking forward to next year. I know next year can be better than this year. While this year has a lot of suffering, hardship, and pain...next year I truly believe will be better.

So while today will be a struggle to truly have a happy birthday, I remain optimistic that next year I will have it with interest. And even if not. I don't need a happy birthday when every day I am a level of content and fulfilled to have happiness. I have the love of my life. We have a puppy. We're building a life together. I am surrounded by loved ones who I love and who love me back.

I have ride-or-die friends who actually ride with me.

And that's all I will ever need. They are the greatest gift I could ever ask for, and I have them already, so I don't need more on my day of birth. I have them every day so if the thing I most wanted was to be given only on my birthday, then every day is my birthday because every day I have them in my life. <3

Not just today, really. 
More like this last six months. 
I’m at the point where I don’t want to exist in this world anymore. I’ve lost hope this is anything other than the worst timeline. Not just in world events particularly the USA, but also on an incredibly personal level.

I am just...

...how can I live in this world. 

And what purpose would I have to live in it.

I know that life has the meaning we assign it. That the purpose of living is what we choose. 

The problem is, I am running low on reasons to live.

So, so low.

And even my strongest points waver.

I've lost my hope creatively. Last night broke me. I had the time, energy, and motivation to write. But the spark was dead. Not for the project. But for everything I wrote. 

I’m constantly tethering on the edge of losing my wife.

And things just keep getting worse and worse. 

Every bit of effort I have made hasn’t panned out.
My work is sapping my lifeforce.
And I have $4000 in bills to pay this month, despite having less than half that amount.
My car is still at the mechanic in need of a new engine. 

I am on the verge of losing everything. My job, my apartment, my ability to drive, my wife, my will to write.
And I...am struggling so hard to find a way out.

This is something I've been wanting to do for years, on again off again, but rarely do I get the chance to actually follow through.

This was spawned by me doing some research for my novel, and part of that research involved reading a lot about Biblical stuff, and concepts like Lucifer, Satan, etc. (All of this for largely background lore I don't strictly need, although in this case it's slightly more needed because I am technically working on defining an ability of the protagonist Vee, so it's got relevancy.)

The first disclaimer I want to give; my beliefs are always ever-evolving. My understanding of the world is always changing. This will not be my final belief system, not even remotely.

The second disclaimer I want to give; I don't explain things very well. I might explain a concept you actually agree with, but my explanation is so bad that it makes you disagree with it because I am so bad at explaining it. A lot of what I believe in is stuff that if I were able to properly explain it, I think a lot of people would actually believe in, in some form or another.

And the third disclaimer I want to give; this is just my personal belief, that ever-evolving, poorly-explained belief. It is something I personally believe, but I would never push this belief on others. I will share it, I will discuss it, but mostly because I am actually looking for other perspectives. My perspective is mine alone and is limited to my own knowledge and ways of looking at the world. Others will differ, and fundamental in my belief is a need to incorporate the beliefs of others, because they have perspective and knowledge I lack.

So with that said, a loose outline of my belief system;

Loosely speaking, I believe that 'God' and 'Heaven' are one and the same. That at the highest level of existence, all entities are one collective entity combined, outside of time, space, reality. At this highest level, this level of existence sees everything that ever was, everything that ever could have been, everything that is, and everything that could be. Sees every universe that exists and every universe that could exist and every universe that could have existed. All that has ever been, all that ever could be, all that ever will be, all exist together in this form, collective, but also still containing a level of individuality. Basically a hive mind, one unified being, but also made up of all beings that ever exist in any reality.

It's important at this point to bring up those universes, and the nature of the illusion of time and space, so I'm gonna talk about 'destiny' and 'fate' here.
There's two terms in relation to universes:
"Every universe which could exist from the current point in time", what COULD happen in 'the future',
And,
"What universe will exist from the current universe in time", what WILL happen in 'the future'.

It's important to note that everything that could happen, does happen in a universe, but every universe has a version where things did happen. So the former is basically all of the possibilities viewed before they could happen (or looked at after the fact); the latter is basically what in the current universe actually did happen (looked at after the fact, even if it's thought of as before).

In this sense, the future is both mutable and subject to change, but also set in stone, and has already happened.

Because what you can do is many things, but what you will do is only one thing.
You do one thing in every universe, just a different one thing in those different universes. So you do everything across all the universes, but you do one thing in any one universe.

For these two concepts, what can be done and what will be done, you use the terms destiny and fate.
They are not interchangeable, and which concept you tie to which word is totally arbitrary, the important thing is to be consistent in your application of which concept has which word.
If you say what will happen is fate, always stick to fate being what will happen;
If you say what will happen is destiny, always stick to destiny being what will happen;
Never use what will happen to occasionally be fate and occasionally be destiny.

In recent times, thanks to the influence of TVTropes (although in older times, I had these as vice-versa--again, my belief system is ever-evolving!), the way I tie the concepts to the words is,

I call "what will happen" as 'fate', because of the Trope "You Can't Fight Fate". Fate is what will happen in the current universe.
I call "what could happen" as 'destiny', because of the Trope "Winds of Destiny, Change". Destiny is what could happen.

Notably, we cannot consciously change which universe we are in. We can consciously control our destiny, because we can control what we could do, but what we end up doing is always set in stone. However, I've come to the belief that subconsciously, a lot of us do forms of timeline hopping, where we go from one universe where something was set to happen to a different universe where a different thing is set to happen. But I digress.

I wanted to talk about Fate and Destiny, because it's important to understand by my belief, 'God'/'Heaven' exists able to view both, as this state of being is above both, is everything. And in this state, there is both a level of inherent empathy and also apathy towards what happens in the lower levels of existence. Because everything is going to happen, there's not much use in trying to influence the lower levels of existence, but there is a level of "that really sucked"/"this should happen in less universes"/etc. to those experiences.

There is simultaneously an understanding that no amount of intervention will prevent at least one universe from taking the sucky path, while also an understanding that the sucky path sucks, and should be as few universes as possible.

Because this level of existence is every experience possible, it inherently has a level of love, care, and understanding. Having experienced all of the pain and suffering of every possible person, it knows the profound level of harm to come from lives lived under the pain of harsh lives...but it also knows the intense level of joy, of creativity, of passion, of all the good and positive from lives lived while bound by existence.

And having seen both the bad and the good, this naturally biases existence towards a net drive to influence Destiny to be the better paths whenever possible. In short, basically all entities that exist on lower levels of existence, including humans, are naturally biased towards trying to do 'good'. What is 'good' is hard to define, but loosely, it involves showing care, compassion, love, empathy, understanding, and learning from others that exist, to provide assistance to them, and to help the future be better than the present.

​I believe humans evolved living by those standards, the standards of a community. Where we would help others, where we would support others. People would pursue what they most wanted and do what they thought they were best suited to do, and receive support from their community to cover their weaknesses. No human can be good at everything, but all humans can be at least good enough at enough things that in a community, you can cover the bases where anyone weak at something can get the help of a human who is good at that something. Covering each others' weaknesses with each others' strengths.

​They built towards a future better for their community, by helping support each other and set up for success, because of an innate inherent drive to show compassion and care to each other, and a drive to build a better future for those yet to be born.

​But I digress. 

Below this Heaven/God is various levels of entities in various forms of existence on various levels of understanding and knowledge about Fate/Destiny and such.

Here is where my understanding is at its weakest.
I'll say fuck the idea of angels/archangels being higher than pagan deities/gods/entities. That's repackaged Christian bullshit.

I vaguely believe that deities/gods/entities/angels as we know them are all different names for the same thing, entities that exist on a higher level than our own world, but lower than the afterlife of 'Heaven'/God. (By the way I use the terms Heaven and God out of convenience. It's easy to understand, but not something I actually prefer.) Connected to both.

It's important to recognize there's numerous levels, but I don't know what those levels are precisely.

I will say this; those entities at all levels can and do exist in lower levels too, but largely by choice. Connection to higher self is something which can be damaged by baggage but never truly severed entirely, whereas connection to lower self is something always there and chosen to experience, loosely speaking.

​I believe deities can and do frequently incarnate as humans. That these deities, these entities, these higher selves, frequently exist as humanity. 

Every human ever has multiple levels of existence, essentially. And these humans receive guidance from both their own higher selves and the higher self of others--guides, if you will.

Some can see all possible worlds, some can see what the current possible world is, some can see both, some can see neither.

And they try to guide every human to the best version of themselves and their communities.

I'm a little tired so I can't really complete this, but loosely, people have a high degree of agency and choice, and guides try to guide that agency towards futures better for both the person and the community and the people to follow.

People can be whoever they want to be, but some choices are better in some ways than other choices.

This is not nearly all of the belief, but it is as much as I have the energy to convey today.

I hope this, despite being incomplete, is entertaining and engaging and not offensive. Hopefully I can talk about my beliefs and how they retain to our actions and communities and such more next time.