All Too Human - All Too Human

I'm an idiot.

1/30/2015

So Wednesday night, a little past midnight, I was feeling a bit tired, but nothing that I couldn't push aside if I wanted to get some work done. However, I decided that I could get stuff done on Thursday, so I might as well get a good night's sleep.

...Come yesterday, I did art during the first half of my afternoon, which while not a waste of time is something not exactly productive. During the latter half, though, I ended up playing for the Kongregate badge of the day in Frontier, an RPG of sorts involving trading.

Thing is, though, the badge was a bit of a grind, so by the time I was in a position where I could get it, it was already like two AM, and I didn't finish the game until an hour and a half or so (at minimum) after that, where I got both the wealth ending and the enforcer ending. (Enforcers first, but not by much.)

Which means, quite naturally, absolutely nothing got done. At all. Because I was too busy beating a game. I got the golden kongpanion, so it's not time entirely wasted, but it was in fact a rather large waste of time, just as the art while not strictly speaking a waste of time wasn't productively-used time.

So now I've got only a mere fraction of the time I want to have. My saving grace, though, is that this Sunday, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeveryone's gonna be occupied elsewhere, meaning I'll have time to do stuff (my later activities are both cancelled), buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, that doesn't help me for things that have to be done before then, which I have enough of to be bothersome.

Thus, I'm an idiot. REALLY shoulda known better than that. *facepalm*

I did art today!

1/29/2015

That's right, for the first time in months, I actually drew something! Not just doodles, I mean an actual drawing! I'm not 100% on the anatomy (I think I gave him too much torso--especially lower torso--and not enough leg, making him be a bit "wide" rather than as he's supposed to be, tall), and definitely messed up the perspective a little bit (on the arms), and made a mess of the area the weapon's in (whoops), but other than that?

I'm looking at it.
And looking at other artwork I have of him. Both fanart, references, and actual artwork, finished, and sketches. And while they're all vastly different, I think that I absolutely love the design I've finally gotten, and that with some practice, it'll be easy to make. It's actually a fairly simple design all things considered. But it looks awesome.

Right now, the art drawing (well, I'm not sure it's quite a drawing, but it's better than most sketches even if not as refined as most drawings) I have of him is a bit of a transition, showing Davos in a fairly neutral expression: not childishly naive (his default), not emotionless hardlined killer, not psychotic emotional killer, but a fourth stage, where he resembles...well, a normal adventurer of his age, albeit one with an aura of experience of someone older.

And yet, the expression on him and artwork means that I can see even the subtlest of shifts causing him to go into any of the other three. His design is sharp. It's young, attractive, strong, and yet conveys that there's more to the picture than what we're seeing. I absolutely love it, so as soon as I can, I'm going to scan it and show to you. And then I'm going to whip out my drawing programs and see if I can put to use the skills I've been mentally honing for half a year by now. (I haven't actually gotten to the point of coloration of a scan in...quite a while.)

I think I've got some awesome tricks up my sleeve. Multiple layers for slightly-different colors to give good texture to things. Less of that on metal, to help emphasize its metallic shine. Having a metallic shine. Some lighting blotches. A filter for the light, a filter for the colors, and non-computerized non-black lineart as a start.

I've been holding up so many tricks in my mind that I'm not sure I'll be able to get them all out successfully. But I really think I'm onto something big here, in artistic skill for me. So I might blow some people's minds. I think I can actually do art. Respectable art. Art that'll take me a while to do, and a while to do entirely from memory after that, but art, actual, true, good art, made by me. It can be done, and when I do it, it'll be magnificent. Look forward to seeing it!

I love the comic Rain

1/29/2015

Seriously, not only is the comic itself amazingly awesome, but so too is the writer an incredibly-brilliant, strong-willed, kind woman. I can only hope to be half the woman Jocelyn is ten years from now.

Basically, in addition to having made the webcomic in the first place, she is very active in responding to her readers, and very often will get into a good discussion, and she can raise some surprisingly-good points. As just the most recent example, she described rather nicely how being a transwoman helped to define her, and that if she was born cisgendered as she wishes she was, then much of what her life is right now may never have existed.

In fact, she raises the point that, scarily enough, she could very well be acting like one of her currently-not-so-pleasant characters is acting. That it was only because of being transgendered that she was able to create such a beautiful webcomic. She also said that it's possible to find happiness, and to me is basically acting as a beacon of hope. It can happen; I can get what I want. There's struggles involved, but the struggles make us stronger.

That was a pretty awesome train of thought to see from her, and well worth the ramble it was, a good read. Cannot recommend the comic enough for anyone who is even remotely curious about any aspect of the LGQT+ community.

What a day!

1/28/2015

So I came back from college and got to take a 20-minute nap. This being a 20-minute nap, you'd think it'd be even less likely for me to make anything productive, but to the contrary, I had yet another lucid dream, this one so pleasant that I struggled and struggled to maintain it but to no avail.

There was a song. A song I made. Nothing already existing. Brand new material, a song that I had made. And I knew it was me who had made it, not someone else. A 100%, completely original, production of mine. And it was AWESOME. I could hear the lyrics, both the chorus and the verse, and all the supporting instruments. It had a female lead singer--me, as a woman--and a male backup singer. It had percussion supporting it, and bells, and one or two guitars as well.

The song was best described as being alternative, with a little pop and mainly rock in it. It even had a music video playing; the song I believe had to do with either building or toppling walls (I can't remember, but lean towards the latter given the fire I also saw in the video), and the band was playing the song; I even saw the bandmates aside from myself, albeit only glimpsing them. That's right. Start to finish, in a nap, I managed to lucid dream-write an entire music video, from the lyrics to the song to the imagery.

...And yet, the second I had perfected it, it instantly began to slip away. I cried out, "No! Don't go! Let me at least remember some fraction of it so that I can record it! Please don't go!" But the more I tried to hold onto the song, the more it slipped away. I wasn't even half-way done with my nap, and the entire song had slipped away, vanishing and disappearing, likely forever. I can give the vaguest of descriptions of what it was, yet not a single note, not a single word, remains in my mind.

It all just...disappeared. Which was...well, rather saddening, to say the least. If I had a way to describe it, I'd loosely say in the same vein as "the best song ever written...a tribute", in that it was a moment of genius, so good, so perfect, that it was basically the peak of what's possible, and anything I could hope to create would only serve to be my attempt to pay tribute to that achievement, that passing flame.

...But I see this as a good thing, in a way. Why? Because it shows that I had the talent, at least in theory, to pull it off. This wasn't a case of a dream that sounded like a good idea and then when awake the idea doesn't make sense; this was a dream that WAS a good idea but is buried away in my subconscious somewhere, still, with the potential to be brought out. In other words, it's giving me something to stride towards, something to strive for. I'm better than I think I am, and if I choose to, then I could actually make good music--perhaps never achieving that standard, but setting a high bar anyway.

On a somewhat-related note, the square dancing club I attend on Wednesday nights voted on a theme tonight. There were many options available, but my sister designed some really, really fancy ones, the Phoenix-themed one by far outclassing every other outfit there. The designs were absolutely beautiful, to the point where others said they'd love to wear it and I made it quite vocal that I'd like that sort of fancy clothing.

...But we only had five eligible people for voting, all of whom are young (emphasis "young") teenagers. So what did they end up picking? Nerds. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. Fortunately, this isn't the club I actually compete with, so I don't have to wear the outfit. Thing is, though, had they picked a good one, then I would have supported the club and gotten it anyway, but with that decision, well, I made my displeasure rather strongly known.

I swear, the decision for a nerd outfit over a much more elegant design (there were more than just the thematically-appropriate and aesthetically-awesome Phoenix, too!) is the type of thing that in their boots would seem to me to be something that's like, "I enjoyed it at the time, but oh, god, what the hell was I thinking?" ten years later. Yeah, that type of thing. Which they're entitled to having, of course, it's just that I don't have to like the choice.

But I digress. The point is, it got a conversation going with my sister. (Older sister, just for clarity.) She reconfirmed that I had a taste in fancy, elegant clothing, and that I'd probably wear it if I had it available. (And I would.) She then went on to note how that'd mean that my clothing would be similar to hers, and that left me feeling a bit happy.

In a way, it makes me feel closer to being Rain with Kellen as my older sister. (Though my older brother is nine months younger than my older sister, they're effectively in the same agegroup, having the same circle of friends and basically the same culture, so there's even that parallel, too.) In a lot of ways, I look up to my older sister as an idle, striving to be more like her. She has absolutely no clue to what extent this truly is, but it's there, all the same.

I love how long and beautiful her hair is, even envying it. I like her aesthetic choice, in clothing, in jewelry, everything. It's really what I would wear if I had the ability right now to wear it. And I do suppose that musically-speaking, she's a bit of an inspiration to me. On that note (ha), though, an additional highlight from our conversation was how she talked about a student who heard her playing a song of hers, and the student said it deserved to be published and famous.

Frankly, with what I've heard of her music, I agree. I asked her if she's ever considered it, and she said she has, but doesn't know how. I strongly encouraged her to do some research, and basically said that it's probably a more complex version of getting a novel published: difficult to get done, but possible all the same.

Speaking of which, she misheard me initially and thought I said 'album', which she thought made no sense about me publishing. I surprised her by telling her what any long-term reader (or archive binger) of my comic would know, that actually, I do compose music in my mind (even having done so this day, as previously mentioned), but I lack the formal training to bring it to life. She said I could always use her piano to figure out the notes, and show her, and she'd write it down, so that's something that may happen sometime.

All-in-all, very good day for creativity. My spirits are fairly high.

Past Midnight, Shut Up, I Know XX

1/28/2015

Though I had something to talk about earlier in the day, I forgot what it was again, so the first thing that happened to me that I could think of a blog post for happened just before the shows, and as I discussed last blog post, the shows take me anywhere from 11 PM to 1 AM. The latter in this case.

So what was the thing? Not much, really, just a weird experience. I didn't have much time between eating supper and the shows, having only half an hour. Being dead-tired, as always, I decided to do something I don't usually do, though: take a nap, on the couch. Normally, with a full crowd out there and over such a such duration, nothing productive comes from it.

...This one did. I had a lucid dream in my nap. I basically had a shadow in front of me, which I can best describe as being that of a giant ant. I thought it was cast from behind me, so turning around, for brief seconds, I thought I could see a small ant, but then I couldn't, and yet the presence (now behind me) had grown much stronger, lingering directly over me.

And the weird thing? My body was tingling. As in, I could feel something. Something that didn't feel physical, nor mental, nor emotional, but that my body could feel being real, and I'd loosely call that as "spiritual". It honestly kinda felt like what you might call a possession. I even asked the entity as much, but upon me making this declaration, I was jolted awake.

...Not a nightmare, no. But it was...weird. It felt so real. Yes, I know, gigantic antlike thing should make me know it wasn't, but it did kinda feel like I had a lingering sensation left in me even after the dream had ended. And laugh all you want, but something about me is that to some extent, I actually do believe in that supernatural stuff existing in some form or another.

Just because our current understanding of science can't explain such entities doesn't mean they don't exist, after all, since it also can't prove they do not. To you, it might seem silly to believe in ghosts or other otherworldly entities, but while I firmly believe that accounts of them are exaggerated, I actually have always secretly (albeit publicly mocking) felt they were real, somehow. Like, somewhere deep down inside of me, I felt that they existed as a real thing.

Not just ghosts, but other entities. (Some which can be called gods, others demons, some Eldridge abominations, with maybe an occasional rare angel.) I have an online friend deeply involved in the occult, and said friend could probably explain the concept better, but basically, I hold a bit of a unique belief in otherworldly, spiritual entities that do exist, just not in the physical, material way we typically define existence, and that it's generally only in rare circumstances that said interaction takes place. In short, I believe that our true selves can represent a bit of our spirit selves, so to speak, and that born from our spirit selves is a realm that's weird and yet exists, a sort-of dreamspace if you will.

And I now sound like a crazy nut. A lunatic.

...To be fair, I am, pretty blatantly, but I generally at least try to hide it. Like I said, the average person probably doesn't believe in such hocus-pocus bogus. And I'm not even giving it justice in my description. (Which is a shame, since while the beliefs of others may be close, my belief is my own.) Thus, why it's fairly easy to mock, especially given how much I insist that I just "feel" it's real. But, well...I did. I do. I just have always felt that sort of thing, in spite of all logic saying otherwise, is not fiction, but just a not-yet-known form of science of sorts.

To be not quite ghostbusters, but not mere ghosthunters, being 'ghost'interacters. It sounds silly, and yes it probably is. By all accounts I shouldn't believe in such nonsense. But I can't help it. Deep down on my most fundamental level, I'm just too spiritual not to. (Note that my belief in such things is not mutually exclusive with thoughts of, say, an afterlife. The concepts actually augment each other: if there IS such a thing as a realm where phantom entities exist, and humans' spiritual forms--which can be a little bit beastly or can be fairly human and can be weak or godly-powered according to my occult friend--then it supports the idea that we have souls. Nor is it mutually inclusive, though, because just because there'd be a spirit realm doesn't mean there'd be an afterlife where our souls would be destined for. The two are separate beliefs. Afterlife which I hope to be real but neither disbelieve nor believe, and spirit realm which I feel is real in spite of logically knowing I'm spewing insanity.)

It actually has quite a large place in a fair number of my stories as a result, though a number of said stories I keep in my head. But it's there, all the same. That belief in something that should get me laughed at because there's no evidence it's anything other than occult indoctrination is part of who I am. Mainly expressed through stories, so largely hidden from public view, but occasionally coming out in moments such as the lucid dream where I almost felt possessed.

...I'm really not describing things fairly well, because I'm struggling to find the words to convey the concepts. I'm basically trying to explain to rational minds why I'm mostly rational aside from the oddity, but the oddity is something that defies description to the point where I can't really explain it, making it seem like it's a far bigger thing than it is.

Soyeah, you can call me a crazy lady now. It's one thing to hold superstitions. (Which I hold plenty of, mind you.) It's entirely another to believe in the supernatural. The more I talk about it, the more awkward it's becoming, because I keep on feeling I'm sending the wrong impression here.

Ah, well. You can just write it off as one of my quirks.

A look into my life:

1/26/2015

So I thought I'd share with you my schedule in a typical average week, to give you a general idea of the sort of stuff that happens to me. Might as well start the week on Monday, with today as an example. I wake up at 7, extremely groggy and tired, both not having much sleep thanks to a late bedtime (those quick errands? Yeeeeeah, not so quick) and thanks to not sleeping well at all (I woke up several times because I couldn't tell the difference between a lucid dream and reality, sometimes thinking that I was in a dream when it was reality and often vice-vera, with just the first being a panic attack that it was actually Monday afternoon and I had slept until 4:30 PM with it dark out already, rather than it being 4:30 AM as it was).

I take a shower, but because I'm a beauty queen (really, it's mainly to compose my thoughts for the entire day, let the events of the night flow over me, let my creative juices begin to flow, and generally, recharge my body), it takes a minimum of one hour and can take up to an hour and a half. (Today was an hour and fifteen minutes.) Then comes breakfast: three overeasy eggs, yolks still in-tact, which I eat along side two pieces of buttered toast and a cup of coffee with creamer.

Frequently, I don't finish the toast, though, saving it for an afternoon snack. Instead, I take a nap until 9, at which point, I leave for the college. If I have homework due, then I work on it; if not, I'll spend my time on leisurely activities, because my class doesn't meet on Mondays in spite of Mondays technically being a class day. (My parents, of course, are unaware of this fact, but I like coming to the school on Mondays. Helps me.)

At around 11, I head back to where I was dropped off, to be picked up by my dad. Then, when I get home, it's shortly before noon, giving me two hours of free time. Now, on days like today, I spent it on leisurely time, but I'm progressively convinced that timeframe is best spent napping, because I leave for work at 2.

Then, I work from 3-8. (On that note, it was INCREDIBLY busy tonight. Really, really annoyingly so, in fact.) At which time I come home. Now right now, that leaves me about an hour of safe leisurely time before Castle (which I'm spending typing this up), though I know this'll change once Dancing with the Stars begins. After Castle ends at 11 PM, I have from then until whenever I decide to go to bed (usually later given the lack of work on Tuesdays), but it's typically an average of 1:30-3:00, though it can go as early as 12:30 to as late as 4:30.

On Tuesdays, I get an extra hour of sleep because of no shower, and eat slowly for approximately half an hour. (I can take up to an hour to eat, because my eating takes the place of a shower in that it serves to ready my thoughts for the day, but when doing so, I get no nap! So I typically make sure I've eaten fast enough to have half an hour of naptime to spare.) Otherwise, the routine is the same: leave at 9, class 'til 11, get home at noon, and there, I have about 4.5 hours of leisurely time available before I leave for Tae Kwon Do.

Tuesday nights are of course busy, with FaceOff (great new season!), Agents of SHIELD, and Forever, so I generally don't get further leisurely time until 1, given that I also watch the program dividing up showings of FaceOff (original and repeat, 9 then 11, with the program being 10 and midnight). I usually am smart enough not to spend too much leisurely time and use it for sleep, but all the same, I do spend some amount of time always, generally an hour or two, placing bedtime at anywhere from 1:30 to 3:00.

Wednesdays start the same way as Mondays, but I go basically straight from home (aside from a brief nap, no more than 15 minutes) to work, leaving at exactly noon (because I typically get home a little bit before, you see) and getting home at around 4:30 or so. This gives me 75 or so minutes of leisurely time before I leave for square dancing, which takes me until about 9:45 or so to get home from. And from there, it is leisurely activities throughout the whole night. (Wednesdays are one of the main free nights, in fact.) So again, generally an average of 1:45 AM or so bedtime, though given a lack of activities on Thursday, generally later. (3:30 is alarmingly common.)

Thursdays are the same as Tuesday pretty much, but if I have round dancing, then I leave at 6:30 rather than 4:30, at the cost of not getting home until typically 10:30 (as opposed to 8 for TKD). But from 10:30 until I go to bed, I have leisurely time. However, given the lack of activities at all, I abuse Thursday nights quite a lot; most of my work gets done these nights.

Fridays are 50/50 on shower/not shower, but fortunately, there's no time limit on when I'm woken up--generally, though, I get woken up at between 11 AM and 1 PM. Given that Fridays are family night, that gives me until 6:30-7:30 (depending on sibling arrival times) for leisurely activities, and I barely do anything after those 4.5-8 hours of free time have been used up. (Unless I got hooked on TVTropes, in which case I may spend additional leisurely time browsing, anywhere from 3-5 AM.)

Saturdays are like Fridays, except movie night begins between 4 and 5, meaning only 3 free hours, excluding breakfast. I do have a small 1.5 hour window between movie night and anime beginning, though. Anime has been ending at 3 AM so far.

And Sundays are the nightmare. I get up at 6 AM, because I need to leave at 7. I eat half my breakfast, because I need the nap to function at all. I work until I get home at 1:30, and then leave straight to round dancing. That lasts until 5, but it's straight from there to square dancing, lasting until 9, and taking until about 10:30 to get home. Knowing that I've got work the next day, I do try to limit my leisurely activities, but if you didn't noticed, I'm...a bit compulsive with them; they're obsessions.

I'm sure there's little things here and there I didn't mention, but that gives you a basic window into my life. I have plenty of free time. I don't use it effectively. In fact, right now, I kinda...feel like my life's falling apart. I'm tired and exhausted constantly. (That I probably am averaging 4.5 hours a night if that much probably doesn't help.) Today, I missed out on the majority of my homework: I BSed my way through a quiz (albeit quite well, getting 80/90, meaning only 5 questions wrong of 45), did 2/6 of the basic assignments, and completely neglected to do the big assignment. In other words, 80+32 or so out of 390 for last week's homework. Yes, 390. The big assignment was worth 200 points. The weekly assignments are worth 100. I got zero on the former, and only a fraction on the latter.

All because I feel like I'm failing my efforts to get my life under control. I kinda...feel like I may be snapping. Cracking. Breaking. There's a burden on me, pressure, and I'm feeling it. It's so...heavy. I'm always so...so tired. I lack the willpower to fight, too. I'm...well, messed up. You see how much free time I have. You'd put it to good use.

I spend it playing games.
For someone desiring control, I sure don't feel like I'm having any. I'm wasting my life. And I know it.

Past Midnight, Shut Up, I Know XIX

1/26/2015

So there are a couple of things I want to talk about. First off, among my many would-be talents is that of being a game designer. I've designed some preeeeeetty dang ambitious games. Most notably, a Final Fantasyesque game that served as a direct source of inspiration for my webcomic, and eight of my protagonists take their backstories loosely from said game's versions of them. (Note, mind you, that just because the webcomic exists doesn't mean I've abandoned the idea of the original game. I just know that I'd need a whole heck of a lot more resources than I have at my disposal to make it possible.)

And I do dabble into other ideas, too. I've always wanted to redo my old pac-man game I made for my class and flesh it out into a full, proper, pac-manesque game that has some RPG elements thrown in for good measure. I wanted to make a sequel to said game that would be an RPG. Another biggie is the game version of one of my big novels, Disease. (Disease being the novel. I forget what the game's name is.) And then I had the idea of copying the RPG mechanics from the sequel-game to the pac-man game into an RPG remake of the same story, telling it as an RPG rather than as a tower defense game.

Then, there's the ideas about turning the mechanics of my webcomic into a game, notably, ideas for making a flash game of ~5 or so characters' backstories, and then a flash game where 8 of them have further backstory, and then a main game maybe covering the plot of my webcomic. Then there's the idea of making an open-sandbox RPG that uses the mechanics of my webcomic in a game, but with minimalistic plot mostly determined by the player character.

...And then, there's a special, evil idea I have of making a vaguely, VAGUELY rogue-like RPG game where the idea is that it's basically the best bits of every genre of game (a bit like the anti-idle game in that regard), but featuring unique twists, among them being that the game is insanely hard to beat on normal difficulty and would feature incredible EasyModeMockery. How hard am I thinking? Being able to die on the character creation screen...IN MULTIPLE WAYS. And having an easy badge being earned by dieing a hundred times. (All in good fun, of course. The whole point being to actually laugh at TheManyDeathsOfYou.)

And there's yet another I devised, a bit of a cross between tower defense games and ghost tricks, where the ability to pause the game is a plot-critical ability, and basically you're fighting losing battles that on extremely limited resources, you must find ways to win via exploiting switch abilities and environmental manipulation, in said limited timeframe. Then there's the many various forms of RPG chess that I've devised over the years, in which chess pieces fight, creating theoretical possibilities of a pawn being attacked by a queen winning however improbable.

Obviously, all of these are pipe dreams, never to see reality. I'm fairly stubborn in that I like to do the work myself, and there's too much art to be done well as just a start. Throw in music, and it's even worse. Add in programing? Which I am almost absolutely incompetent in without heavy coaching? And that I'd likely need to get programs to even DO this stuff? Not to mention, the sheer, raw, amount of TIME that it'd all take?

...Yeah. I want to, but it's never going to happen. That being said, didn't stop me from making another one recently. All of the above are well-established ideas, aged fairly well for the most part in that they're all fairly neat, creative, unique ideas, ideas that are decently-fleshed-out albeit not quite enough to make it viable to focus additional resources on them.

Recently (not sure if it was today, yesterday, or Friday, but somewhere in that range), I came up for an idea of yet another game to add to the pile, with a working title of "No More Heroes". It'd be a little bit of a stealth-commentary to the number of games (particularly MMOs) with 'Heroes' in the name.

Basically, I thought of a backstory: Back in the day, there were heroes and monsters and merchants a plenty, not to mention, kingdoms ruling peasants. However, eventually, thanks to the lack of unity in the forces of evil, they were all-but wiped out by the combined strength of the world's heroes.

After this was done, though, these adventurers found themselves with very little to do. Many of them retired to farmlife permanently. Others hired themselves out as mercenaries to kingdoms now entering petty squabbles. Some began the life of a merchant, traveling to cities to trade and make hefty profits. And yet more others began to gather wealth to become lords themselves, not content with letting themselves be ruled.

The peasants, however, once so gracious for the help of these services--all of them, from their sires to the mercenaries to the merchants--were growing fed up. When the forces of evil were around, such facts of life were accepted as needed in order to survive, as methods of strengthening the forces of good and allowing them to unify when needed. Yet in these more peaceful times, all they were doing is disrupting the very peace they helped to create, greed driving them to be just as much a menace as what they once fought.

The governments were wanting war with one another, wishing to tax their people and conscript them to enable this. The mercenaries would do anything for gold. The merchants kept gypping the villagers off. So the peasants, as a whole, across the land, revolted. The governments were toppled, and the people deliberately took up simpler lives. Free of direct government, most of them lived isolated lives in farms. Some cities remained, and in them remnants of governments exist, but for the most part, they live without it and deal with their problems by themselves, whenever they arise.

Mercenaries died out in the process, their services no longer needed. Merchants were banned as harshly as governments were, and as a result, adventuring died. Some humans still occasionally travel to other towns and cities, mainly to see the world, keep contact, make sure the rest of the world still follows the rules they agreed to self-enforce, and occasionally to barter or on the rarest of rare occasions, request aid for a problem that they cannot themselves handle, with the expectation that while they've agreed to be isolated, they don't need a government to mandate that basic human decency should win over and let them help.

In short, basically an idealized version of anarchy. Sounds too good to be true, right?

...Well, in this story...

...Right. Turns out that the whole "government collapse" thing that was seen as a good thing? Actually orchestrated by the villains, weakened yet not destroyed. Peace, true peace, had existed for years...until now. Because they had bid their time, waiting for there to be no force that could possibly hope to overcome their might. No merchants, when merchants for all their selfish motivation know how to run things and are generally competent at defending their investments. No governments, when governments for all their corruption and political screw-ups are at their base meant to protect the people. No mercenaries, who for all their greed are good at their jobs. No adventurers. No more heroes.

The line no more heroes has been spoken in celebration and in passing by the people of the present...yet in the shadows, it is spoken with a menacing grin.

Thus, begins the basic premise of the game: a village has come under attack by a raid of monsters. They can defend themselves from it easily enough (the game's part-defense, and this is the introduction to it), but the villagers notice that the monsters are more organized than they should be, and fear that they may have been controlled. After some spelunking (the game's part-RPG, and this is the introduction to that half), some of their villagers come back to confirm their worst fears:

The village is going to continue to be under attack, and soon to follow, the entire world. Given the time of crisis, they consider what they want to do. The game's a little bit tongue-and-cheek with its humor. You, as in, behind the fourth wall, the operator of the computer, are selected to be an "Overseer", because they're not going to call you a hero--heroes are all dead!--or a Lord, because you've got no actual power over them. You're just the faceless, formless villager (yes, they actually say this, because they're intentionally not looking at what you look like) who they are dictating to control the operation, by unanimous vote, because the enemy is too coordinated for individuals to without direction be able to mount an effective defense.

So the overseer basically divides the village up. The majority of the villagers stay behind to defend their home, but a party of villagers sets out as travelers (NOT adventurers, because heroes are all dead!) and you with them--you communicate with the village through a crystal cube (no, not a crystal ball, the distortion is too much on those things!). This is how the two halves of the game work: you are there, helping the travelers as their faceless guide, and whenever the village contacts you that they're under attack, you act as their guide.

Here's where it gets interesting: every villager is their own person. They come with their own names, and cannot be renamed. If they die, they're gone forever. They do not level up--heroes are dead!--and are just stick figure peasants, with minimum equipment to start with. Their effectiveness therefore relies on equipment they raid, in which they can slowly become more specialized, because while they do not level up, they gain proficiencies as they continue to use things in combat, and some villagers had different specialties giving them better 'stats' in those areas.

It eventually allows for them to, with the aid of stolen magitech, do stuff like throw fireballs as if they're a mage, all the while, still being villagers: they keep basically the same health throughout the game, basically the same strength, basically the same endurance, basically the same speed, the only thing improving is their equipment and how efficiently they use it, which creates slight increases in some areas. (For instance, better armor = better damage reduction, lighter armor = better speed.)

This applies to both the defense and traveling aspects of the game. The defense aspect of the game is basically a race against time: you have a finite number of villagers, so lose too many, and it may be impossible to defend yourself. You occasionally receive traveler-given reinforcements, but for the most part are on your own. The traveling aspect of the game is basically a group of villagers traveling to other villages and even cities, hoping to get help for their village and ultimately, the world.

In the traveling bit, you gain villagers much the same way as your village does for defense: those who're willing to come along (which depends on the actions the overseer takes while in town) will do so, but they start out as any villager would: generally unskilled, with perhaps some exceptions here and there.

In short, this entire game is basically you on one hand commanding an army of redshirts and trying to keep them alive, while also having a band of redshirts taking on tasks that only adventurers should be dealing with. And this isn't a case where they're all secretly heroes the whole time; they die, they start out sucking, they're just cannon fodder, and you're supposed to keep them alive and progress through the game. Defense on one end, standard RPG combat on the other.

I love the idea, and my description here doesn't do it justice (then again, my description for most of the games I listed above didn't do them justice since I could ramble about any of them), but I felt like blogging about it all the same.

So what's the other thing I wanted to talk about? Well, today, I realized that technically, I have another story which rips from anime, this time being a rip-off of Hellsing. Made around the same time, too. It, however, has an oddity about it: I never wrote a word of the official canon, yet I wrote plenty of words on the story that were actual words on the story, not notes. What am I talking about? Well, because the story I'm talking about holds the honor of being the first of any of my stories to have a "what if" version of it...except I began writing the "what if" version before I wrote the main version, so to the uninformed eye, the what-if version would look like canon, especially since I never got to the important point.

Basically, there's one small difference between the main timeline and the alternate timeline, which holds a ripple effect on the whole story, that being, a vampire character in the main canon is alive, whereas in the alternate timeline (the timeline I actually wrote words for), he died a long time ago. The resulting difference was the time the main protagonist became a vampire. In the alternate timeline, it was earlier, and created a setting that was highly-slapstick-humor, seemingly a lighthearted typical anime I suppose...except to the point at which he became a vampire in the main timeline. Because he was already a vampire, the attack played out differently, but much, much for the worse, and ultimately, in the alternate timeline that started out being lighthearted and having slapstick humor, the protagonist slowly degenerates into becoming the monster that he's fighting.

To the point where the alternate timeline has the villain say, "If you kill me, then you'll end up being just like me."
...And the protagonist says, "So, what?" and brutally kills the villain. And ultimately, the protagonist asks to be mercy-killed, having his wish granted. (Note, though, that TheAdventureContinues--his brother, in the alternate timeline having been in a coma, wakes up, as a vampire...and now is basically in lifelong servitude to the government for the actions of his brother combined with his newfound blood dependency. This, however, becomes a sequel manga, not novel, and is lighthearted.)

In the main timeline, the event that turned him into a vampire in the alternate timeline didn't happen remotely the same (though it did, vaguely, still happen). The event that turns him into a vampire into the main timeline (and which served as CerebrusSyndrome for the alternate timeline) is what kicks off the plot in the main timeline, and it does start out dark, but ironically, the event went better with him as a human.

Result?

In the alternate timeline, the protagonist got worse and worse.
In the main timeline, the protagonist became better and better, initially a cold statue, an instant expert at becoming a lethally-efficient killer after a bit of voluntary TrainingFromHell. (Him having more focus in this version during his training, because in the alternate timeline, his training was "sure, why not" and the event happened after training had finished, whereas here, not so much.)
He had better support, though, and eventually meets a woman who helps to rehumanize him. (Whereas in the alternate timeline, said woman ends up as being brutally killed by an opponent during a vicious fight, and he notes her as just one further casualty.)

It's...highly confusing everywhere outside my head, which is why I greatly desire to rewrite the whole thing and describe it again. It's still a bit of a Hellsing ripoff in both versions to some extent, but both versions were some of my favorite vampire stories I started to write. I hold the story--both main and alternate--in high sentimentality, even though the writing I have of it is all on the alternate timeline and all abysmally bad.

Soyeah, been a nice long chat, but I've got work to do. It's 3:15 AM. I have homework due tomorrow, and a couple of (hopefully) quick errands to attend to.

A note about the 24th:

1/25/2015

This note is made 15 minutes into the 25th. About 2 minutes after finishing my blog post for the 25th. The blog post for the 25th was the revised story one. It took me a couple of hours to write, starting at 10:30ish. The blog post saying it's past midnight was the blog post for Friday the 23rd. Because I started the blog for yesterday during yesterday, but finished today, weebly glitched out and placed it before. So switch the order of those two blog posts. It's an unavoidable glitch as far as I know.

Shut Up, Past Midnight, I Know XVIII

1/24/2015

Like...lots of stuff happened today. It's not that I haven't been around to blog, though. I HAVE been. I've, at multiple points during the day, had a chance to write a blogpost, although family night admittedly limited me after a while.

...Yet in spite of that...nothing. The events are there, and happened, and are worthy of noting, but...well, the best description I have of it is bloggers' block. The content for a blog post is in my mind, but I simply can't bring it to life right now.

...Which, given that this is a daily blog, really, really sucks, but I'll manage to find workarounds.

Revisiting a story of mine:

1/24/2015

So taking a trip down memory lane, I randomly remembered an important story of mine that gets very, very little love but had very, very long-lasting impact on me. I'll start with the basic background of the story: it started as a DigiPrep (I don't believe it was Digipen yet) project, on claymation. I created two clay figures, and used pictures to display an animation. My strength being that of a writer, though, I had a story in mind.

And while the opener was my own creation, the story it ended up landing into morphed into a cheap Noein knockoff. See, this was when Noein was showing on SciFi's AniMonday program, along-side Gurren Lagann I believe. It quickly became one of my favorite anime of all time, so naturally, I would steal from it in a story. This being somewhere between 13 and 15 I'd guess, though (so, at minimum 6 years ago, but probably 7), obviously, my writing sucked (no, seriously, I'm staring at a copy of the original file and it can only be called, objectively, godawful), I didn't have the idea fleshed out that much, and I had too many other ideas, so I didn't get very far in the story.

...So why is it, unlike my other dead-end projects, actually memorable? Well for one thing, you may recall that my other anime-knockoff story is one of my MAJOR side-projects, and my current novel--while distinctly my own--takes a few large cues from both Gundam 00 and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. In short, the stories taking content directly from anime have left a huge impression on me, this one among them.

For a start, the weapon I made for the grunt (a tall, lanky humanoid made from purple clay) I cut in half was shaped loosely as a rifle but looked more like a gunblade to me; it has then since inspired many of my characters to use a weapon of the same design...including the predecessor to Sinaer (Aersin), which got incorporated into Sinaer's backstory. (In other words, Sinaer used to use a gunblade before switching to her staff.) That's just one modern example, but I do mean everywhere. Technically speaking, I still have the original clay gun somewhere buried in my bed, though it wouldn't surprise me to learn it's been completely destroyed. (In fact, the protagonist of the short was also there, and may have suffered the same fate. Speaking of him, though......)

The other character, the protagonist, was a shorter, sturdier (frankly a bit fat, but meant as muscular) loosely-speaking humanoid figure, wielding a katana in his right hand. I gave him a weird color scheme, yellow jacket (because there wasn't any white) and red pants, because I meant for it to be an inversion of what I was wearing at the time. (Black jacket, dark blue pants. Which, coincidentally, I still am, just a different type of jacket and pants, with an occasional black pants thrown in.) However, I ran out of clay for his left hand, and to get that shade of clay was impossible, so I ran with what I had, giving him a slightly-exposed left arm, basically allowing the aluminum foil to show. (In other words, I created a cannon on his left arm.)

That wasn't the original plan--I meant him to use the katana in both hands--but I made it work. The katana, for its part, was as well-crafted as a wire-based, aluminum-wrapped clay sword can be: way too long for the height of the character, rounded instead of having two points, but otherwise decent.

Anyway, I named him Mijarna. (Why? I dunno, I was fond of nonsensical names back then.) What was there was a being with a cybernetic left arm (I decided he could transition between the energy cannon and a mechanical hand), wielding a katana, who wore casual clothes otherwise. There's more to him than that, but basically think of him as being my take on the bad-future main male protagonist in Noein's equivalent. He stayed there.

So what made it so important? Did I constantly come back and wish to expand on it?
...Well, yes, I did, but not for the reason you might think.

The reason the story is so memorable is that it gave birth to the concept of Mijarna, someone who eventually evolved to become my roleplay character of choice, with a heavily-modified backstory. That Mijarna was a farmer, who instead of below the elbow had lost his entire left arm (a concept I have only used one other time--and coincidentally enough, that story I also revisit constantly). This being a fantasy setting, though (albeit a magitech one), he had not gotten anything replacing it, being disabled. He was a young man, about to attend 'The Academy' (the setting of our roleplay, and the inspiration for my usage of "The Academy" in other stories--given the degeneration of the roleplay, it gained a negative connotation rather quickly), so didn't have a sword; he used a pitchfork instead.

The roleplay went south fairly quickly, because the group of friends I was with (save for one aside from myself, who has also had a character named after him be a planned character in many, many of my fantasy settings) was...a little bit immature. They were volatile, a bit hostile to each other, and prone to whims. They didn't have what it took to hold a coherent roleplay together, and the person running it (I think that was me?) not being the best gamemaster certainly didn't help, so it quickly fell apart. But while the roleplay stopped, the characters it created were forever burned into my mind.

I planned on making a story featuring them all, as I imagined it could have played out had things continued, with the drama inside the characters rather inside the people controlling them. (Thus, the birth of The Academy being evil and driving its students evil and/or insane.) This is how Mijarna became an established roleplay character, with the events of that hypothetical story (I never started it, I don't think) serving as his backstory.

After further expansion, I decided he became a politician, but that he lost his lands in a war, and this is where he got his artificial arm grafted in, to become a warrior, basically tying the original Mijarna into the roleplay Mijarna as is my wont, and created someone capable of using fire magic, tech, and a lethally-efficient swordsman, all the while remaining casual.

That's the roleplay character.

But back to the story that spawned Mijarna...the original version of Mijarna...I continue thinking about it every once and a while, and tonight, I thought of some pseudoscience that would flesh out the concept and by extent, the characters so much. The basics behind this tie into the central plot, and thus, everything. Basically, it ties into spacetime and the multiverse. In Mijarna's world, he explains how scientists (his parents and the love interest's equivalent's parents) developed a theory tying them together. The multiverse continues to expand since with every single point where different outcomes can happen, different universes result based off of that. However, while there are an infinite number of multiverses, with increasing diversity with every passing second, it was theorized that there are a finite number of probability-branches, relative to a point in time and space.

...Like I said, pseudoscience; I haven't fleshed the idea out any. But basically, the theory was that time travel itself wouldn't be possible, but by using these principles, many possibilities would open up: the ability to travel through space in an instant by crossing through multiverses into a multiverse where the destination you wish to reach is where you were standing before, and yet otherwise events have played out similarly enough as to make it indistinguishable from the multiverse you were in.

It would also allow for what would appear as if time travel, in that by traveling to a multiverse on a different branch, you could find a 'verse where humanity's 200 years ahead or behind. Same point in time, and same point in space, just that on the different branches, events played out in this differing manner. This traveling is called voidspace, because it exists outside of space.

...The problem is, and this is what drives the story, there is one 'verse of beings who mastered this principle hundreds of years ago, and since then, have become multiverse conquerors. Because anyone with this technology can jump between multiverses that are on different branches, it effectively means that they can expand their civilization to a near-infinite size, looting resources and land while still staying in contact with one another.

...And they specialize in invading 'verses that are near the point of reaching this discovery, as to prevent them from gaining access to the vast power the voidspace provides. So in Mijarna's verse, they invaded seven years ago, and have since conquered the whole world. These beings are biomechanoids, emphasis on the machine, and have access to all those scifi type weapons. However, they also have the ability to tap into the voidspace for seemingly-magical feats. See, the laws of physics are the same across the multiverses, but by accessing the multiverse on a localized scale, they can perform superhuman feats, like, say, controlling a fireball.

It does have a side-effect, though, shared with traveling through the voidspace: in the multiverse you're in/heading to, short-term, time seemingly comes to a still for everyone except those sensitive to voidspace. It should be noted, though, that sensitivity to voidspace can be natural, but can also be granted. Equivalent beings (that is, the same person in two verses) will automatically become sensitive to the voidspace if a counterpart of theirs has gained control of voidspace and their verse is being entered.

Additionally, the more and the longer beings are exposed to the voidspace (not to mention the greater the intensity of the voidspace being used), the greater the chance they gain the sensitivity to it, thus why the time-stopping-on-a-local-scale thing doesn't work for very long.

Mijarna's world was, as I said, invaded seven years ago. Since then, a resistance group has popped up that he's a member of, but they're trapped in a deathcamp, in a war they are very, very badly losing. They've become partially-cybernetic themselves, and have mastered voidspace, but they can't actually use it except on the localized scale, because they lack the resources. Their one advantage is that the biomechanoids they're fighting when using it on a local scale have to wield huge machines to do so. (That's localized, in comparison to the portal they use to travel.) Humans have learned to do so without the machines. But they can't even use it on that localized scale without risk of being found, since every time voidspace is used, those sensitive to it (and all the biomechanoids are) can sense its usage.

The biomechanoids were about to send a scouting party to "our" world, the world the main story primarily takes place in, and Mijarna's resistance force stalled them to allow Mijarna to make a desperate trip through. He does, thus kickstarts the plot upon--when wounded--encountering the protagonists. "Our" world is about seven years behind, but in our world, the protagonists are the ones who would make the discovery that dooms them.

And thus, the plot begins, with our world basically being the hope of every world, with them beginning to get voidspace training, but having an advantage over Mijarna: they're absolutely invisible to other voidspace travelers, but they're also (without becoming cyborgs) so naturally in-tune to it that they hold much greater innate talent--problem is, they're inexperienced and can't use it consistently, and Mijarna can't train them. They basically have to wing it each time.

The exact nature of the story (how much traveling to other verses) and number of characters I'd have, I never determined, but there'd be a fair number on Mijarna's side, requiring at least half that number on "our" side to varying different extents. This is far, far more than what I had before on the story, so I'm quite happy with this expansion.