Well, helped with a TKD test today--was alright, felt much better. I think I'm actually getting over this!
0 Comments
Uhg. It's been two weeks since I logged into CF. (Well, I've been logged in under My Alt--yes I named my alt there My Alt--and checking games and using the strudel, but no true and proper visit from ME.) Know what else I've gone two weeks without doing?
Blogging. It really, really sucks, being this sick. I'm hoping to be over it by Sunday, since I intend, regardless of whether I've recovered or not, to remedy my situation. See, Sunday's the last day of this hellish work session of mine. I blogged about it at the beginning of January, about that schedule. Also, how it would, was, and still is, taking its toll. Well, it's about to end. I'm fairly certain I'll be working just Sundays in the future, which means...I can spend Sunday Night catching up on things. Blogging among them, CF among them. Time flies by fast, I won't get everything done. I know that. But I can at least get it started. And when I get started, I keep going on and on. So...that's kind-of why I'm hoping that I'll be better. I HATE BEING SICK. So I caved in and went to the doctor today. The diagnosis was much what I'd expect: inconclusive. They can't be sure what it is, though it more or less boils down to: "probably something following your original sickness". Maybe viral, maybe bacterial. In either case, something that would go away...within 2-4 weeks.
...But desperate, I am now on an antibiotic. I generally don't take this sort of thing. It's reckless. If it's viral, the antibiotic won't help, just slightly increasing the risk by some minuscule amount that I'll make a super-bug down the line immune to it. Antibiotics are also indiscriminate killers: there's lots of good bacteria in the body I'm getting rid of. So I'll need to figure out how to remedy this. Not gonna take an official probiotic, but I think there are foods that help. Maybe yogurt of some kind. Anyway, so that's that. If it IS bacterial, the antibiotic should make it go away within 3 days or so. And given how miserable I've been...well. I didn't really want to go down that route, but I did cave in. I hate pills in general, especially ones like this. But I just...don't think I can tough it out. It's ruining my life right now. This is a level of sick I haven't been for YEARS. So...I'm still sick. It's annoying. I go the longest periods of feeling alright...and then I have an outburst of coughing. Especially at night. The worst part is...I can feel the crud (and I mean crud, or junk, but crud seems the most accurate word) in my lungs when I cough, with my body trying to get it out...yet failing, producing a dry, throat-irritating, side-aching cough of nothingness.
And I could feel it lingering. It won't go away. It's getting to the point where I'm frustrated enough I'm going to cave in to my parents' demands for a doctor visit next time they ask it of me. (Which, mind you, they have been doing a lot ever since I got sick. When I get sick, I get sick BAD.) I don't think the doctor can do anything: if it's viral, we don't exactly have much in the way of antivirals. They'd probably prescribe some sort of cough medicine, which we have plenty of at home. They'd only really be of help if what I have is a bacterial infection, which I didn't think I had. I really, really am not a fan of wasting time, money, and sometimes even being counter-productive by treating the symptoms yet not the cause. It's why I don't take cough medicine: it can't actually heal me faster, just serving as a mask of the very-much-still-active bug inside me. But still...this illness is not going away. And might not go away without either (1) too much time (and it's ruining my life waiting for it to go away), or (2) some outside help. Like I said, I'm pretty sure they can't help if it's viral, just masking the disease by treating the symptoms, not fighting the cause. But I could be wrong, OR it could be bacterial, so at this point... Just about ready to give in and go. Uhrg. I wanted to talk about Leah today in Red Hood Rider, going over her childhood a little bit, but...still sick. Still not feeling up to it. Sorry.
(Post-writing note: You know, this is why being sick sucked so much. I don't actually remember what it was I was going to talk about. It might have had to do with her father, or more likely her relationship to Victor Zu, but I'm not actually positive. Pretty sure whatever it was, I remember it, but it's not written down as far as I can tell.) So today my thoughts largely went on and on about my personal beliefs. As in, beliefs, beliefs. As in, I basically covered in my head what is my own personal religion. (As a bit of a half-joke, half-dead-serious name, I call it Meism. As in, Me-ism. Also a pun on deism.) It was basically in a book format, but the book's format was a weird hybrid of formats.
It was part religious text (duh), complete with allegory and storytelling. (Lots of storytelling, actually.) It was part history book. It was part scientific thesis. It was part philosophy paper. Plenty of stuff like that, weirdly blended together to present a fairly coherent, flexible, ever-evolving belief system, covering everything from politics to pursuits in life. Very good thing to think about, could never actually make real as I am now. It'd basically require a second person to pull off. My mind's not coherent enough to pull all these pieces together, not to mention, remember all this stuff, research all the right things, basically, I've made these little mental comments drawing from every form of media (religion, real life, and philosophy included) that tie a bunch of things together...yet I lack the more "logical", reasonable, coherent half to translate these things to others. And for that matter, to myself. Since said second person would need all the knowledge I have, and the only person who has that knowledge is me, basically impossible for me to write the book. I've forgotten, then rewritten, a lot of these things. Some stay constant, be it never leaving or simply being reinvented identical to how they were without me being aware I was reinventing identically. Others change. The bits are scattered everywhere. Gathering them together is literally impossible, especially given how half the places they are cannot be found by searching, and/or have since been deleted/lost forever. In short: I'm the only person who COULD write the text, yet I don't have the mental capacity to write the text. It's not a story. (Well, it'd be written kind-of like a story, but it wouldn't be one.) How can you translate concepts that may not even have words succinctly onto a page in a manner that flows well and makes sense, which can be tied to these other related things, slowly building up? What would the priority in the ordering be? Where do you start? Where do you end? How much repetition do you allow? Writing down my beliefs, my personal religion which is unique to me (because it draws from all sorts of sources), would, quite literally, be writing The Bible from scratch. I'd have to track down all these texts that would be referenced in this 'bible', I would have to pick and choose what to put in, I would have to sacrifice absolute clarity for the sake of brevity. It would be tying together hundreds of different concepts and ideas, with a bit of my own fiction thrown in (the story told), weaving together a narrative that is, simply put, too daunting for me. How many people did it take to write The Bible? Certainly wasn't just one person, in a short amount of time. It was dozens of people, and I think over dozens of years. Heck, the closest thing to a person writing their own Bible would be J.R.R. Tolkien, and even that was a lifetime's work which was--while certainly taking a GREAT many inspirations--largely from only a few specific places. So that's why short of some miracle in translating my thoughts into text, it's never getting written. I simply don't have the skills, and never will. Even if I could gain them, there'd be the amount of commitment it'd take; I'd certainly not be willing to pour my heart and soul into it. While making something that appeals only to me is something I'm no stranger to (that's the entire allure of Red Hood Rider, duh), there reaches a certain point where things cross from being a passionate project to an unfortunate chore. I know Red Hood Rider will never get that way, but I can feel it in my bones, if I attempted this bible, it WOULD be that way. My intuition for my capabilities in this regard is usually pretty accurate. Soyeah...sadly, my beliefs no matter how interesting and fascinating and maybe even groundbreaking they may be will most likely die with me. So I think I missed a day of blogging somewhere along the line, as a result of my sickness. I can see notes for most days scattered about, but since they're not labeled that well, whether they were intended as a blog post or not, I've lost track of things.
Which sucks for the blog. For the record, this entry is Saturday the 13th, one week after I got sick and about the time I stopped blogging. Still got so much to talk about, but still not feeling up to it. I'll see what I can do some other time, though. (Post-writing note: the entry I missed was either the 8th, 9th, or 10th. My guess was the 10th, thus, why I marked my entries as the 8th and the 9th, but I don't actually know. I did miss one day in that range, though if I had made an entry, it would've been identical in nature to those two.) Uhg...still sick. Tired. Let's not blog, and say we did!
So I'm still sick. It's not going away. Sleep's not cutting it.
Lately, a lot I've been thinking about an old idea of mine. It's actually partially made, under an alt, even using a pseudonym I find clever. I even established an artistic signature for this identity, LONG before I even developed RmII as my own artistic signature. (In fact, it was me thinking of how I had an artistic signature under my pseudonym but not real name that helped inspire me to make an artistic signature in the first place.) So, I was doing more to establish my identity as an artist under that name than I did for Ranger, at the time. Given this level of history...I'd actually like to keep some of the ideas secret, even from this blog. As much as I love integrating my identities, this is an obscure, vague secret of mine I'd like to be kept a surprise, with people unable to tell it's me. (Though it might be a moot point, since my art now looks a lot like that style, even though at the time, that style was unusual for me compared to the norm.) In case I actually make the idea, I don't want to reveal too many details about it here. But basically...I ended up not making it for three main reasons. 1: I didn't think myself artistically good enough at the time. While my art under that name was better than any of my art at the time--it's not QUITE up to my current skills, but it's close, in spite of being YEARS OLDER THAN MY CURRENT STUFF (in other words, my pseudonym was leaps and bounds better than me until just recently). I wanted it at a more professional level, so I decided to put it on hold until I was taught more. ...Yes. Taught more. Not self-taught more. Taught more. I was still in art school at the time. Yes, this idea is that old. As in, I was able to make art almost up to par with Red Hood Rider, back in March of 2011. (Post-writing note: that means, five years ago, I was able to make art which is basically on the level of my current art, under the pseudonym. Does that mean I haven't improved in five years? Heck no! It means, under the pseudonym, I was leagues ahead of myself under my normal talent. I quite literally was like a different person, who I've just recently essentially merged with.) I still thought I was going to become a professional artist at the time, so I thought I was going to get better and better with the right classes. The reason I needed this? A problem I struggle with even to this day: I needed a Cast Of Snowflakes. (I've done some successful work, with it beginning to happen in The Descended, my previous comic, but I never was able to fully flesh it out and never able to fully keep consistent with these models. For Red Hood Rider, I think I can get some done, but not much. I've planned it, but never actually made it, especially since it's a lot of extra work I'd rather not do. I'm mostly planning on trying a "keep it looking on-model for them, and have it be them via body language and unique looks", so we'll see how that works out.) And when I say I needed it, I mean I NEEDED it. It wasn't just an aesthetic preference: at multiple stages in the plot, it's a plot point, where a minor Red Shirt--yes, red shirt--on the protagonist's side, cannonfodder, a literally-no-development character, is seen as a mook in the enemy's ranks...having previously disappeared from the heroes' ranks, because he was ordered to infiltrate them for one specific upcoming moment. And I need to be able to artistically portray that! A complete red shirt, that is distinctive enough to still be recognized, allowing for attentive viewers to pick up on the plan and not make it seem like it comes out of nowhere, to help make them go, "...Why didn't I see that before?" or "I KNEW it!" That is how good my art needs to be to tell this story. And I'm not there yet. 2: I have something like 35-40 or so characters on the heroes' side. I lacked the skill to flesh them all out at the time. Still not quite sure I could do it. Personalities, backstories, looks, skills, I wouldn't need all 40 or so in extensive detail (there are red shirts!), but many of the cast, even minor members, get some amount of screen time (so, mauve shirts), which needs to be covered, and even though there's plenty of red shirts, there's still about 20 or so characters important enough to need EXTENSIVE detail, maybe more especially on a more general level. 3: The final problem is...the story involves lots and lots and LOTS of genius-level thinking: masterminds manipulating chess pieces on a grand scale, kind of thing. You know, the sort of Death Note mind match, except much grander, on a scale akin to Code Geass in how much trickery is involved. This is the largest hurdle; I'm writing these super-smart characters, yet...they can only be as smart as I am, which limits my writing skills. That...I'm not sure I can fix. But I like the idea all the same and would love to make it. The protagonist is a mysterious leader, sometimes saying he's fully human, sometimes insisting he is not, the master plotter and featured character which everything revolves around. A secondary protagonist is an audience surrogate, showing up in the first true plot arc at the end, joining as basically just a red shirt that allows for exposition because he's the new guy and yet can easily bond to others. Another protagonist is a vampire. Vampirism in this setting is much more brutal; it's absolutely kill-or-convert, with all substitutes eventually failing. This is why their company (which the protagonist is the leader of) mainly hunts vampires, but does not hunt them exclusively. There's two mercenary groups hired by the protagonist. One is an expy of the Wild Geese in looks, but not personalities, with them being more villainous and amoral. The other is an expy in attitude (still being pragmatic mercenaries, blunt, to the point, but also having kind, human sides to them), but not in looks. Another major protagonist is an ill child. There's also other characters, some fighting for fun, a few because they're blackmailed, including a character arguably worse than most of the villains but who is so skilled, he's able to help hunt villains effectively. And many, many more. If this sparks your interest, then you've only scratched the surface of why I love the idea so much. Well...it's pretty much official. Sickness not going away any time soon. Last night wasn't enough. Still sick now, probably will continue to BE sick. Just...uhg.
It works like so: I almost never get sick. When I do, it is usually from the fatigue. But because I didn't fix the fatigue, because I made it worse, the sickness got worse. And when it gets worse...it develops into a full-blown sickness which will stubbornly hold on for much longer than it should. So...I'm going to be here for a while, it seems. |
rBree2AKA: Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|