Did tiktok, am doing nothing else. Gonna sleep sleep sleep and hopefully, be back to doing stuff tomorrow.

...But I think I somehow managed to fix the issue I was having before. I'm not quite sure which of my two tricks was what let it work, but hey, beats going to my laptop to get it to work (which was my alternative solution to the issue).

So, hopefully, back in business there.

I did get distracted from writing today in spite of coming up with a key character, but oh well, still feel good today.

Either the software stops being free, or it crashes, or it malfunctions/corrupts/fails to record, or even IF everything says it's working in the test...the audio fails to record.

I know the audio works--every test I run says it's working and if I were to record live on, say, discord or twitch or skype, the audio would come through loud and clear! But for whatever godforsaken reason, the audio isn't recording and it is immensely frustrating to deal with.

It continues to develop in my mind, and I had a bit of an idea with it:
By taking advantage of it being a first-person story, what if the protagonist could, mistakenly, have self-diagnosed himself (with the help of those he was surrounded by as a kid) as a sociopath, without him actually being one? For him to have been called a narcissist, sociopath, psychopath, etc. due to struggling to understand the feelings of others and seemingly lacking emotions of his own. (But him not actually being any of those.)

Over time, as he got into the teens, he learned to fake these responses, and even exaggerate them: he became a large ham, grandiose, extremely bold, outgoing, confident, even arrogant, showing the typical traits of a supervillain: charm, incredible intelligence, witty banter, a level of snark, a fondness for puns, grandiose demeanor and overcomplicated plans, a fondness for loquaciousness, and the like.

And while he maintains a respectable social life, he's still even now polarizing with a lot hating him (and him knowing they hate him) even though plenty like him, and him remembering the comments from when he was younger and couldn't fake these responses.

Still convinced he's a sociopath, and very aware that all of the traits he displays are perfect for being a villain--and then he gains his superpowers and realizes they are perfectly suited for being a supervillain. And he wants the infamy of it as well as the fortune a supervillain can accrue, and just basically assumes that due to being a sociopath with the hamminess of a villain and power set suited for a villain, along with what his ambitions are, of being recognized and appropriately feared and having the pull, the weight, appropriate for his status, that it's inevitable he is going to be one, so he starts his plans to become one.

And then, panicking at the presence of a known threat that could harm him (he's invulnerable from the outside, but some threats can bypass external armor so to speak and this was one of them), in public before having donned his uniform, he uses his powers, and people assume he is an emerging superhero.

He initially thinks this could be an opportunity to take down the superheroes from the inside, thus setting up the narrative for the story, but there's a rather obvious twist, which becomes quite obvious to those with familiarity with conditions: no, he is not a psychopath or sociopath. He's not even a narcissist. Or any Cluster B personality disorder, or Cluster A, or Cluster C, or Haltlose, or Immature, he's none of those.

He is, however...an incredibly high-functioning autistic individual, who despite being on the autism spectrum, is high-functioning enough to have not gotten diagnosed with it, with people assuming he was just a normal, if a bit "mean", distanced, etc., kid.

And yes this does take inspiration from my own life with what I've been called before. (I've been called a narcissist; I've been called some condition similar to narcissism which may be in the Cluster B or Not Specified sections, don't remember what it was; I've been called a psychopath/sociopath; I am in fact none of those, as it's actually being a high-functioning autistic adhd-laden bipolar disorder-suffering transwoman.)

But that's exactly why I think I can write it and write it well.
The ability to mix fiction tropes, like Good Feels Good and multiple supervillain tropes like Large Ham, with a dose of reality with it being a very real underlying condition that went undiagnosed, is right up my alleyway.

And I kinda think I can do it.

No I mean literally: work.
​Can't say much more than that, buuuuut: I did adulting!

Another superhero/supervillain story.
The premise has to have been done before, but it still fascinated me:
Stories with a villain protagonist who aspired to be a hero are a dime a dozen. I call it the Worm model off of one of the most prominent example. 1.5 of my recent superhero/villain stories features that as a fundamental mechanic, even.

But how many stories are there where there is a hero protagonist who aspires to be a villain?
How many stories are there where a wannabe supervillain accidentally ends up as a superhero (rather than wannabe superhero accidentally ending up a supervillain)?

It can't be zero, buuuuuut, I decided to make one myself.

The protagonist is appropriately powerful for a supervillain--in order to succeed as a supervillain in the setting, you need storybreaker-level powers because you're not only outnumbered (as villains don't really have backstab-free teams and also competition in the form of other storybreaker-level supervillains), but also need to fight against heroes who can have storybreaker-level powers and even if not, you have their powers, and are by virtue of being a villain a criminal who has the entire government hunting you. FBI, CIA, NSA, you get the idea; you're the enemy of everyone, so you need to be strong enough to handle it.

And the protagonist has that level of power, a 5-element system:
Minor control over 'earth', in the form of self-invulnerability: the 'brick' part of Flying Brick, indestructible, who has enhanced (tho very very low by superhuman levels) strength and limitless stamina. (Regen untested due to said indestructibility, but theorized as being limb-regeneration level.)
Some control over 'fire', in creating fireballs.
Decent control over 'electricity', mostly lightning bolts but also minor electromagnetism control, able to attract/repel, boost or interfere with electronics, etc.
Decent control over 'wind'--no ability to summon tornadoes or hurricanes, nor the ability to cut using wind, but the full 'blow you away' aspect of it, with the wind acting essentially as a minor form of telekinesis, able to push things away or pull them closer, able to lift them up or push them down.
...And complete and total, god-tier control over 'water'. Complete and total control over it. Able to create it, able to turn it into gaseous vapor (which he has total control over in this form) or solidified as ice (also total control), able to absorb it, and yes...able to control/remove/implant it anywhere, including from people (so, could instantly kill someone fairly easily).

Yet when making preparations to make his debut as a supervillain...
...He is forced to defend himself, and others, in a way that makes people think he is a hero.

Pragmatic as he is, he thinks of this as an opportunity to infiltrate the heroes, learn everything about them, then betray them, but things end up...a little more complicated than that.

I've already begun to spin the cogs in my head for how this would work; I have a problem with making superhero/supervillain stories for sure.

What did I do again?

That you'll find out when I'm not rushing to bed, but basically.

I'm hopeless; I'm basically the goddess of unfinished ideas. (If I were to be a deity, I swear, that's what I'd be the deity of. The goddess of ideas that never came to fruition.)

Just, tired, maybe sick, exhausted, just unwell.
It's shown in what I've done, too.

For no apparent reason, I was extra tired today, as early as 1:30. I was barely able to hold out for this long, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it, but I'm glad that I did.

I was watching the LCK tonight. I was convinced the first match of the night would be the highlight of the night as T1 vs GenG is what I would presume it'd not be controversial to call the battle between the second- and third-best teams in the LCK, with the winning team being second right now and the losing team being third, with Damwon, the world champions, obviously being first.

It delivered the high-quality battle of greats start to finish, where the teams were neck and neck all three games and the fact that there were three games is proof enough of how closely the teams were matched to one another.

After it, I was exhausted, but I wanted to stay up to watch Damwon against BRO, because I like Damwon (I've liked them ever since their challenger promotion series and have watched them ever since as my favorite LCK team) and I love how they've earned their spot as world champions by being the best and I love watching their matches.

And I also like to watch them stomp, since they often do.

However.

I got an entirely different experience in this pretty textbook David vs Goliath matchup. I like Damwon, and I still think they're the best team in the LCK, and I still love watching their games, and yes I do think tonight was an anomaly and in the future I will continue to root for Damwon, but let me just say.

I was expecting to root for Damwon tonight and to cheer them on as they stomp.

I ended up rooting for BRO before the end of the first game, and was rooting for them the entirety of the second game.

BRO are probably still at or near the bottom of the barrel of the LCK, and while Damwon will probably catch some heavy flak for the fluke of tonight, they shouldn't feel ashamed in my opinion due to it being exactly that, because I do believe BRO is indeed that low normally.

But from now, even if they end up being 2-0'd in every single match for the rest of the split...I will be rooting for BRO in all of their future games because when a team does what they did tonight and you get to see their faces as they realize what they've done...it actually brought me to happy-tears. Rare is the times where a league team captures my heart like that, even rarer when they do it while facing a team I already like and would normally cheer for.

...And frustratingly, while there is a spark of creativity to be had in the depression, it is rehashing material I already have made, rather than creating actual new material.

Basically.

When I am depressed, I frequently get bouts of creativity, in spite of the depression. That is to say. There's a difference between manic phases where I'm inspired to create things, and depressed phases where I'm inspired to come up with things that I later create when manic.

Which is to say.

During Manic phases, I am almost never coming up with a brand new idea--the mania is putting effort into creating an idea that I had at an earlier time.

Said earlier time is usually a depressive phase, where I was suffering from depression, where I couldn't get the ability to create something, but I at least write it down (or make mental note of it), with the hope of making it later.

Yet there are also depressive episodes where instead of creating new material, I simply reinforce the memory of older material.

Which is all fine and good if I didn't write that material down the first time, but utterly worthless if I did because it is giving me literally nothing new.

Tonight is one of those nights, covering the superhero/villain stories I've been thinking up as of late.

There were at least one or two supervillain stories taking place in fantasy settings.

I actually wrote a partial blog on one Worm-inspired (with the way superpowers work) superhero group, Heroes 4 Hire, although I went into extensive material I didn't blog about, some of which I don't think I ended up writing down anywhere but which I believe is mostly memorized (aside from some side-characters, probably). I believe it was to be written in third person.

I'm pretty sure the next Worm-inspired story, Requiem, about the titular supervillain (whose powers have nothing to do with 'his'--it's complicated--supervillain name, a common theme of the story being deception and subversion of typical trends of supervillains), who is...probably one of the most interesting POV characters I've ever come up with. (The entire story being first person past tense, narrated by the titular character.) Short version short: a closeted transwoman gains the ability to create a second body, which she uses to live the life of a normal (slightly younger) girl, but because she still has to live in her original (pre-transition, still closeted) body and she could at the time only be conscious in one body at a time, eventually she ends up venting her frustrations with the creation of a third body, who becomes a supervillain. (Incidentally, this allows them to have 2/3 bodies conscious at the same time.)
The power evolved is something of a combination of Genesis's power from Worm (basically, consciousness in an illusionary body) with Harem's power from Grl Genius (basically, it's one brain in three bodies, so it is still fundamentally the same person in all bodies), with the side of Mystique and Ant/Giant-Man, in that the projected form has the basic shape locked as human, but can be any sized/shaped/formed human. Her original body, the closeted one, is still fragile and frail, her projected second body is technically empowered but actively avoids using her power and maintains a constant form and is trying her hardest to live as a normal human, and their third body is usually in the form of a male villain who is the public head of an on the rise villain group.

Then there was the story, pretty sure I did a partial blog on this one, about the (also first person) story about Projection, the name of someone whose life splits into two parallel universes (alternating in viewpoint between the two), one a hero, the other as a villain, with them dreaming about the entire daily life of their other universe's self. This one does have one slight Worm-like aspect to it, but of the three takes the least. (Heroes 4 Hire takes an almost identical concept to 'shards' like Worm has for explaining superpowers; Requiem has semi-frequent battles against Kaijus invading from the Eldritch Dimension in a way strongly resembling Endbringers; this story has superpowers being closely tied to the emergence of creatures who're mostly small, but on rare occasions spawn gigantic endbringerest/kaijuesque city-destroying threats.)

And then there was the story that I can best describe as "Dungeons and Dragons meets My Hero Acadamia meets Worm" in that it's an Urban Fantasy based in modern times of a D&Desque world with modern technology and magic, while existing, being largely obsolete, adventuring being an outdated career, etc. (think pretty similar to that Pixar picture with the two brothers seeking their dad, actually, tho I had this idea before that film was released), with a twist; a significant portion of the population (especially prominent in humans, which is theorized to be a contributing factor in humanity's dominance as the most prolific species) has the ability to transform into a hybrid form between their race and some other race. Human-dog having a werewolf form is easier to explain, but it can also be, sayyyyy, elf-troll hybrid form, or dwarf-dragon hybrid form, to give an idea of the variance involved.
And then, of those with this transformation, a small number of them have defies-the-known-rules-of-the-universe (magic having been studied to a science, magic is a known rule of the universe) superpowers, superpowers that go beyond the scope of any known magic, racial ability, etc. (I quite love this story; the Worm similarities come from the protagonist and her goals, tho I admit I do struggle to write her. I'm also not quite sure on her identity. I'm not sure if she's a her, if she's genderfluid, if she's nonbinary, or if she's a transman. Her alt-form is male; that I know, but I haven't figured out her identity. Also, tho I am a transwoman, I was raised 'male' so it's unfortunately painfully obvious that her writer hasn't lived the life of a woman and that she's being written by someone who was raised 'male'. I'm a girl, but I struggle to write from the mindset of a woman whose femininity is a major plot point. I've written POV characters that were female, but whose character wouldn't change at all if male. This is a character who fundamentally would be different if male, and in the writing it shows how bad I am at this. Regrettably.)

​And then there is the story whose only title I can think of is, "Threadripper and Kinesis", with the point of view character being the villain protagonist Kinesis. This is the first story since Heroes 4 Hire to feature a decidedly male protagonist (I specifically wrote Kinesis and Threadripper to be brothers), tho I admit it is also the least distinct of the stories I've got. It's got the same aesthetic as the other stories; supervillain protagonist duels regularly with hero antagonists, with the story documenting their rise to power. But the closest thing it has to a unique draw is the brothers' reasons for becoming villains: a genuine belief that the lifestyle of a villain where you are prepared for constant betrayal and your allies turning on you and heroes wishing to jail you is better than the lifestyle of a hero where any betrayal is devastating and the mortality rate is much higher for both them and their loved ones. (Mortality rate from villains is almost exclusively either other villains, or heroes going on a roaring rampage of revenge to avenge slain loved ones where the villain killing said heroes' loved ones seals their fate.)
This is the story with the best romance out of any of my recent adventures into superheroes/villains, tho, so I am actually considering playing that up and making this my first romance novel.
(The only other romance novel I've ever considered writing has the basic high concept of "I can write a Twilight that is better than Twilight", just with a different supernatural common entity from vampires and werewolves. Which actually wouldn't be just one book, mind you. It'd be three core books, each with their own unique female protagonist. But I digress.)

​And most recently?
I've begun to develop a supervillain story, loosely inspired by multiple different sources. Taking from the Fitz-Simmons Agents of SHIELD dynamic, taking from Narbonic's Dave-Helen dynamic, and the Dr Kinesis-Alice dynamic from Evil Plan.

Which is basically.
Some works have a hardware-software duo; some works have an omni-bio-scientist and an omni-tech scientist.

This work splits the difference and divides it up into three characters. The protagonist, a transwoman who starts the story having recently graduated college with her multiple phDs in multiple fields (expert in biological matter in general of all kinds, from fungii to virii to bacteria to humans to animals), who also is a young mother (due to an accident in experimenting on herself--short version short, she accidentally impregnated herself with her own biological sperm, squicky as that may sound, and she is constantly worried about the development of her daughter as a consequence; she originally got into her field to improve herself, but stayed in the field to do everything possible for her daughter).

She also has the superpower of what amounts to an alternate dimension which works a bit like Star Trek transporters with a side of replicators (this explanation should be familiar to those who saw me talk about how Riders work in Red Hood Rider; same basic mechanic, only more powerful here); she places objects into her dimension, where she stores them; she can recall them (and even duplicate them en masse) out, and these copies last for a considerable amount of time and are enhanced in durability due to basically being hard light).

To use this superpower effectively, she has a masters in coding (she needed working understanding of programming code to help her understand the 'coding' of her superpower), and in the process she gained an associate's in some hardware-oriented field as well. (Research not fully done on this story, cut me some slack.)

She is hired to be the third head of a supervillain organization led by two other supervillains, the hardware and software guys, who basically have a similar diversification. The one with the superpower of healing has a masters in (some human-oriented medical field, research not done yet) to use it and a minor in the alt-field; the one with the superpower I've yet to come up with has the minor in (bio field) and master in the healer's field.

All three are, essentially: supergenius mad scientists that're aspiring evil overlords, with superpowers to use on top of their existing scientific abominations (since they do do mad science with both modifying their own biology and using mad science gadgets, on top of also using their superpowers).

I've made all of these stories in my head.
I've, tonight, made new material for none of them.
I've done writing on none of them recently.

​Thus, depression sucks.