Unfortunately, I got distracted. Seriously distracted. As in, almost 3:30 am, distracted.
Well, it happens. I'll just figure out something for tomorrow.
So this is the part where I was supposed to make an entry for today.
Unfortunately, I got distracted. Seriously distracted. As in, almost 3:30 am, distracted. Well, it happens. I'll just figure out something for tomorrow.
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So, obviously, I don't really have anything to talk about right now, other than that I was totally right about yesterday. (I know myself fairly well.) Maybe I will have something to talk about later, but I sincerely doubt it. Even if I did, then I'd run into the same problem I've had since last week: no time to actually write-then-post about it. This, owing to the busy nature of my spring break work schedule, where by the time I have access to my computer for blogging, I've long since run out of mental energy.
And that's why I'm making an entry right now. I don't really have much to say, but I figure I'd keep you updated on my life anyway. I suppose there is stuff to talk about. Lately, I've felt my online identity has been changing a lot. I haven't logged onto CF as Ranger for over a month, again, and honestly at this point, I'm not sure I want to, which is the scary thing. I absolutely love the community there. I want to be a large part of it. (I'm a small part of it now, joining hangouts as I can, chatting as I can, playing games as I can, but compared to what I used to do, that's paltry.) ...Yet there's a fear there. It's different from before. Before, there was a mental block of there being too much to do. Now, though, it's more like...it's more like I've accepted that I'll have lost some history next time I log in, so I'll just have to jump straight into what's readily there...yet there's a fear that I'll just end up trapped in an endless cycle of coming back in, getting a busy life, becoming imbalanced, not logging in, and falling out, rinse and repeat. Because...that's exactly what has been happening the last few months. So my identity there has grown weaker. And...I'm honestly not sure what I can do to fix that, aside from maybe starting Red Hood Rider up again. I've been doing small things here and there, planning, mentally mapping, even working on the script a little bit, but not nearly enough. I actually think this would be a good idea. Red Hood Rider has, in the year since conception, become a balancing point in my life. So if I actually got it started, I feel like my CF life could become balanced. I need to actually reach that point, and yet, it keeps getting delayed. It was delayed in January because of being blindsided by work. It was delayed in February because of life. This delay continued through to March, until I said that I would take control of my life, which I did eventually do, as shown by me actually blogging now. I told myself I would start in April, yet it got delayed because I willingly signed up for two weeks of busy work on consecutive spring breaks. (One for one school district, another for another.) By the end of this week, I won't have that excuse anymore. But will I actually start up after that? That's where the doubt and, frankly, frustration comes in, because yes I do know myself, and knowing myself and projecting what my actions will be, the consistent picture in my mind says, "Oh, I'll tell myself I'm gonna work on it now, but then I won't." The worst part is, what little work I've done, I've felt roadblocked as soon as I started. The passion would flare up. I would have no excuse not to. (For instance, two weeks ago, when dealing with my computer issues.) So I would begin...and then go slowly. Paralyzed by indecision on what to do exactly. And then, after finally settling down into doing something...finding my drive to keep going vanishing at an alarming rate. With me making every excuse in the world to stop. I'm not sure how to really explain that any better. This isn't quite what I'd call inertia. At least, not my understanding of inertia. It doesn't feel like a loss of my desire, either, because clearly, my desire is still there. It's not artist's block, nor writer's block, because it's not like I'm drawing a blank and unable to do anything. It's simply me not making progress, for no tangible reason. The momentum is trying to build, so I should be overcoming inertia. Yet I'm still not moving, and I don't know why I'm not moving in spite of seeing every reason why I haven't moved. I know that I can't magically wish to have my will be done. I know that I have to be the one that finds a solution, to figure out the problem and find a way to work around or through it. But given how difficult this is proving to be, I still find myself desiring that mystical answer, to have it literally done for me, to have it suddenly materialize and allow me to pursue my dreams. Yet the world simply doesn't work that way. I'm not really sure where I was going with this. There was other stuff I wanted to maybe cover, but I think it'd be best saved for some other time, because I just want to leave the above as-is. I might not know what I am really saying, here, but I figure as far as blogging goes...at least it's something. So, I know my flurry of entries yesterday served as compensation for not blogging anything of real value all week (I kind-of cheated with the Red Hood Rider entry; my written version was shorthand), but unfortunately, I'm gonna need to recompensate, now in the opposite direction, because I'm already dead tired and am probably not blogging anything substantial today.
I'm writing this at work because I'm anticipating a crash once I get home. See, I agreed to work for a few extra hours, but said extra hours effectively eat up my entire day. Admittedly, I'd spend most of that time asleep; if I wasn't at work right now, I'd be napping still FROM my normal work shift. But since I'm not sleeping now, that means I'll need sleep later. Thus, writing now, as to have actually written something for today at all. I discovered that weebly actually does have the ability to install an in-site search. This is something I've wanted to do! It'd make finding things on my blog so much easier. It would also make people who want to skim for content able to find it far easier than they currently do. (I know at least one of my readers does a search for Red Hood Rider content by searching for 'Red Hood Rider', which is why I try to include those words whenever I talk about Red Hood Rider, as to allow them to find the blog post.)
Because right now, in order to search my blog, you have two options. One, manually. As in, going through the archives, bit by bit, page by page. By the month, by the previous button, whichever of the two methods you use, sometimes both. This is, understandably, rather tedious, especially since--while I do occasionally miss a day--I probably average about 1.5 blog posts a day, which has been going for a year and a half by now. Wouldn't at all surprise me if I had around 600 entries on here. Finding what you're looking for would then, obviously, be rather difficult. Two, using Google. This is the method I was told was used, and that I have adapted. "site:http://alltoohuman.weebly.com", and then whatever you're searching for, I believe is how it's done. (Would have to double-check.) Now, on the bright side, the on-site search feature would save you the trouble of doing that. The bad news here, however, is that said feature is apparently not available for free. (Like expanded statistics aren't free.) Meaning, that while it's there, I can't actually use it. It's dangling right in front of me, taunting me, telling me, "this is what you could use!", but I can't have it and never will since I have no intention of ever paying to have this blog run; I chose weebly in the first place because I needed a free place to blog. Free, and having an interface I could actually navigate. (For instance, I believe it's possible to blog on something like tumblr, but I could never figure out how that site worked, so never did. I'm sure there are other blogging-friendly sites out there, but again: at the time, I did some research. Weebly was the first name that came up that seemed to satisfy all my needs, so it won out.) So, unfortunately, it will remain impossible to search from just the site. (Though I wouldn't know how good the search feature would be until actually trying it out. Who knows, maybe it'd suck and not be worth it, anyway?) Even if the upgrading is a one-time thing (I think it's a subscription thing, that is, paying either by the month or the year), that's still a cost I can't afford...or even if I could, wouldn't know how to actually handle. Ah, well. I've grown accustomed to weebly, so I've also grown accustomed to the inconveniences it gives. Honestly, if a better site suddenly materialized in front of me, I probably wouldn't switch over at this point, thanks to how much I've invested into this one. My blog has become a significant part of my life. It is also readily available to people who are close to me, as a way that they can keep updated on my life, when I can update, anyway. It's known, it's in use, it has a lot of history behind it, all of that makes it a place I just don't want to leave. So I'll have to live without a search function, sadly. Sorry that I can't incorporate a change like that to make the blog better. Though, if you do have any ideas for how I could improve my blog, I'm all ears. I've been doing this for a year and a half, sure, but I'm still every bit the amateur I was on my first day. So, last night, I couldn't do mafia stuff, since mafia stuff requires me using a proxy, and my go-to proxy was down. That particular proxy is part of a network, which contains about a dozen sites that are literally identical down to the last detail save the name of the website. (It's handy, because for some reason, on Chrome, my browser on the desktop, I eventually run into some sort of memory error which never goes away, so I've been slowly running down the list and using new ones each time that error renders my current one unavailable. Which does have the alarming realization that, eventually, I'm going to need to find a different proxy which works just as well and which is about as safe. Obviously, proxies aren't exactly the safest thing to be using in the first place, but adblock seems to keep them in check.)
I figured that I'd wait for a while. I was waiting until 4 AM (starting at like 11 PM), and it was down the entire time, as verified by downforeveryoneorjustme. So today, on my laptop (which fortunately doesn't have that problem), I tried using my proxy site...and it's still down. Meaning I can't do mafia stuff right now, and won't until the site comes back on. Not a problem, I did everything I needed to earlier yesterday back when it was still online, and I can go for 48 hours without serious consequence at minimum and there's usually extra leeway on weekends anyway, but still...very inconvenient. Well, my mom's going to be using the desktop all day today, taxes and all that, which means that I've got no excuse not to use my laptop. A bit inconvenient for things like internet activities, but I can manage.
Theoretically, anyway. My computer has this annoying habit where it takes literally five minutes before it recognizes that, yes, I actually DO have a connection to working internet. This, on the best of days. As in, even when my computer doesn't have lag, it still has that issue. This has always been the case for my computer. Even on other connections, albeit not as much. Connecting to, say, the college's internet took me some amount of time, but it was usually through some complicated problem on the college's end: their internet not always being available, their process not always working, things that applied to both my laptops at the time. It also happens with other internet sources, where the speeds are what you'd expect of an internet connection about 11 years ago: not quite dial-up, but not significantly better. This would last for minutes before the laptop would finally pick up speed. But it's most egregious here at home. At those other places, I'd expect the interference. Public networks are always going to be wired in that sort of way. But at home, it shouldn't take as long. Yet it does. I can't speak for internet speed these days, since I haven't tried using it recently, but I think it's better. (Of course, I'm about to run an immunization, so that will slow my computer down, meaning I won't be able to tell right now, either.) This is why I generally prefer the desktop. Though, I do need the laptop still. For a start, I do my blogging on it (which is why you're getting an entry today), and also all my writing (I have my notes compilation on here, making it most convenient), not to mention, Red Hood Rider. (Most of my The Descended stuff was on my old laptop, which is dead. It might theoretically be able to be salvaged, but I haven't tried.) But for most every-day stuff, my desktop is vastly superior to my laptop, which is a few years old now and cluttered with a ton of stuff. (I think it's at least three years old, and I don't think it was brand new when we bought it. That might not seem like it's old, but given how much stuff I've used it for, wear and tear on it means that it's most likely on the second half of its natural lifespan. Desktops can last for years upon years, sure, but laptops--while theoretically being able to last just as long--in practice tend to have a shelf life of a few years.) I mean...doing a google search on how long they last, apparently my intuition on this isn't too far off: 6 years is the estimation, with 3 years usually being the replacement; a computer running slowly probably has some behavioral issues, so to speak, and is getting a little senile. There ARE four main culprits, and admittedly all of them are possible. A virus of some sort isn't impossible to still be on my computer. I know there was one almost a week ago, after all (my fault there), and there's no guarantee I got rid of it, but my computer was slow even before that and it's not impossible there was a virus even then that I was not aware of thanks to invisibility. A failing disc drive is also possible, since the hardware DOES get stressed with continuous usage. And, while I use it far less now than I used to, there are still some heavy-usage periods (spending hours on the internet, playing games, etc.), and those earlier times where I WAS using the computer basically continuously all day had to have left their mark. Not enough memory to support all the added programs is also a potential cause. I have a LOT of stuff on my computer. A lot of installed games (Majesty, Age of Empires II and III, Starcraft, Civilization III, maybe one or two others), every discover and download song (speaking of which, I need to get this week's) for the last two years or so (not quite every D+D song ever, but the vast majority of them), art reference images, art programs, notepad files, Word files, schoolwork files, you get the idea, it adds up fairly quickly. I mean, with Firefox open and nothing else (unless you count Task Manager, or having the music files shown and my art files shown in two windows, which should be basically nil resource-wise), I get 50% memory usage right now (better than 70, which is what it has been at times), and my CPU is averaging 80%. (Admittedly, that's because of some Windows Service host process, which I never have quite been able to figure out what it is. I've kind-of assumed it's automatic updates being downloaded, but I don't actually know for sure.) That's not terrible, but it's not great, either. And I'd honestly be surprised if there weren't corrupted/poorly-behaving programs on my computer. Many antivirus programs warn of such inefficiencies, after all, mine included, but unfortunately, none offer to clean it up for free, as far as I can tell. I'm sure something for free would exist, but I don't think I'd be able to track it down, or even if I was, I'm not sure how much good it would do. (Apparently, it's a few gigs worth of data that could be cleaned, if I remember correctly, but not too terribly much considering that my computer I BELIEVE has 500 gigs.) So basically, for a computer-illiterate person such as myself (well, that's not quite true, I'm not an absolute idiot; I know more about computers than about half of my family does, but I'm certainly no expert and my knowledge is based mostly off of second-hand things along with intuition and experience, not actually hard-informed facts), I am happy with what my laptop has given me. I should probably start actually backing my files up as much as I can, given this information. (I regretted not finishing the process for my old laptop, after all, even though I DID back up a fair amount of it, somewhere.) But while I will certainly be sad when my computer does finally die, and lament the loss of files I either didn't or couldn't save, in a way, I see my laptop as every bit alive as a pet would be, treating them with the same level of affection and intimacy. I love my computer. I will talk to my computer, mostly sweetly, but occasionally scolding it when it misbehaves. To me, it is well and truly alive. But like a pet, it will not have the same lifespan that I do, eventually growing old, exhausted, tired, broken bit by bit, and sputter out and die from whatever various source deals the final blow. So I'll be sad. I'll lament the loss of my fond companion. I will remember it, I will treasure it, but I'd move on, having a new computer take its place. It's the cycle of life, just electronically rather than physically. (For the record: this exact same process also applies to cars. I treat most inanimate objects with some degree of respect, but objects I come to have affection for on a significant level become even more particularly special. Cars, laptops, to a lesser extent, blankets, pillows, watches, water bottles, flashdrives, even mechanical pencils and erasers. They might not fit our description of life, but they still HAVE their own kind of life, being created, existing through their usage, being worn down with time and age, and eventually having a 'death' when they have some failure of some kind from the decay they suffer.) Basically, can't really ask for more than what I've been given, so I'm happy with what I have. WAY too tired to actually write anything, sorry. Long day. I'll have time tomorrow, but I won't naively suggest I definitely will; I'll blog if I can, and if I can't...well, then I can't. (Obviously.) Do apologize you're getting nothing from me.
I know, I haven't done a real blog post all week long. Bear with me for a while. I've had work every day and activities each night. Overall, I've been left exhausted every day. So, until this ends, entries will be scarce. And to think: this is working half a normal work day. (Well, 5/8ths of a normal work day. Or, really, 5/9ths given typical work days have a one-hour lunch time.)
Is really starting to reignite the dread of a full job in me. ARG!
So much to say, and yet it's so late, and I get up so early tomorrow, and so much of it I won't remember to blog about later. This sucks. So, today, I wanted to talk about elemental teleportation. Obviously, this is a power that Hannah has by default pretty much, but I wanted to talk about how other elements can use it. Remember that this is not at all out of line with how the elemental riders have been defined:
From the get-go, I basically said they were limited in their powers to what they have available, they just get really, really creative with their usage, from popular culture (e.g. watching Avatar gives great ideas for fire/ice/water/energy/air/earth users) to each other to scientific theories they interpret as convenient to metaphors to literal wording exploitation to watching each other and being inspired by what they see. Not to mention, plain rule of cool. So on that note, it would be possible for every element to develop their own method of teleporting, even if Hannah is the only elemental rider shown (well, except Whitney) who has that capacity. They just have to find a different way to go about it, working through the process of their element. For Fire, I haven't actually developed a method for teleportation, but I imagine such a method should exist. Presumably, because I haven't thought of it and I'm generally fairly creative with this sort of subject, it'd be the hardest to do, but this is one reason that my eventual hope is that other people will set stories in the Rubyverse: so that they can go nuts and be creative as they like, with this being one thing that I'd look forward to them seeing a solution for. Ice, however, is the hardest to master that I have actually thought about. This one I've actually explained on the blog before: Ice is one of the primary elements covering the subject of time, more specifically covering how to slow time down. Because time is tied to spacetime, this gives a very limited control over spacetime, allowing manipulation over a short distance to warp into a specific location. This is where Whitney earned the moniker "Sky Shinobi" (she originally registered as a professional superhero under her given name, only changing it to Sky Shinobi after she had already earned the title): she would use Ice's innate ability to determine the opportune moment to strike and cause the desired chain reaction, slow time down, and teleport in, usually from above (thus, sky), seemingly out of nowhere, strike, then disappear again, like a ninja...aka, a shinobi. Water is also hard to master, but it's possible, via the concept of 'Slipstream'. Why can water-users theoretically use the slipstream? Because it's a stream, and streams are covered by water, the same way a sound-wave is a wave. It's extremely difficult to master, however. For a start, first the water user has to even be aware they can control the concept in the first place. Then, they have to somehow work out the mechanics of slipstream, because slipstream is an incredibly-vague concept that is incredibly open to interpretation, so simply knowing about the word isn't enough for them to have control. Even if they have the imagination and creativity to devise a viable system, they then also have to have incredible technical precision to navigate slipstream with the mastery necessary to make teleportation viable, and even then, they have to have a vast amount of energy at their disposal. Gary theoretically qualifies for all of this, so he could technically use it, but I have no plans for him using it at this time, especially since slipstream has a limitation: it can only be used for long-distance travel. To travel a short distance, they must first slipstream away to a distant location, and then slipstream back to the desired close location, doubling the energy requirement. Earth is pretty similar to Water, except it uses wormholes. Why do wormholes fall under earth's jurisdiction? Because it's a wormhole, and worms are an inherent part of nature, a sub-section of Earth. Like I said: wordplay is a huge part of the diversity behind what elements can do. Exploiting the exact wording of concepts is how basically every higher-level technique is created using the elements, with a few exceptions that rely more on metaphors. Anyway, the rules of wormhole travel are that it's easiest to make a mid-ranged transit. This is because opening up a short-ranged wormhole takes a lot of control and energy, and opening up a long-distance wormhole takes a ton of energy maintained over the whole time it takes. Like Gary, Sally does have the theoretical capacity to learn this method, but I have no plans for her actually using it. Maybe she doesn't learn it, maybe she does and simply never uses it, but I don't have her ever teleporting by her own power as of this time, and I don't intend to force it in. I haven't quite worked out the specifics here, but I imagine that Light works a lot like the transporters from Star Trek do: converting matter into energy, transferring the energy to somewhere else within the directional limitations, and then converting the energy back into matter. It's easier to master than the above, especially given how well-known the concept is, but I imagine there are still some difficulties, namely, in figuring out the connection between Light and energy conversion in the first place. (It's not an energy technique, because energy mostly covers...well, energy, not matter, though there is a little bit of matter in that element.) Speaking of Energy...Energy, as of right now, doesn't technically have teleportation. I imagine it could have a method (I thought 'hyperspace' might be a viable fit for the Energy element, but never worked out the details there), but it'd be largely redundant. Why? Simple: because energy-users don't need a teleportation technique. Now...my knowledge of DC canon is a bit iffy, especially since they are constantly and consistently changing what said canon actually is. But I believe that, at least at some point, The Flash could run around the entire world in a little bit over seven seconds flat. Think about the implications there for a bit. In seven seconds, he can make a round trip and end up exactly in the spot he started in. That means, in seven seconds or less, he could be anywhere in the world. Of course. He achieves this by running really, really fast. So it's not true teleportation. And there is time passing, so it's not truly instantaneous. But it is, effectively, teleportation. It is being in one location one moment, and a different location the next, faster than humanly possible. And this is Vili's preferred combat tactic. There's a reason she's theoretically one of the strongest elemental riders: combining the superpowers of The Flash and Magneto (and then adding in some extra that not even they can do) produces a superhero who can do a ton of things. So while they might not have teleportation, it's because they don't need it, their innate ability to move really, really fast is more than enough to compensate. (Technically, an Ice user of sufficient power can slow time down as to allow for a similar trick, even without warping space, because slowing time down is easier than manipulating spacetime, but they must be able to slow time down everywhere, for an extended period of time, which takes a VAST amount of energy, but is not impossible.) As such, energy users are much higher up the chain of ease for teleportation than others, even though they don't actually use teleportation, simply because they mimic the effects of teleportation better than most actual teleporters do. They are, however, beaten by darkness users, who land in second in terms of ease. I've talked about this a bit before, but basically, darkness users have a myriad of different ways they could teleport. (Okay, so technically, that's true of all the elements: these are the ones I have thought of, and are probably the easiest for the elemental user to master, but just because they're the method I list doesn't mean that other methods don't exist.) One of the easiest is simply to open up a void, and instantaneously travel from one spot to another using this. Think sort-of like Portal, in that they simply open up a gap, pass through it, and exit through another gap of their creation. This does mean their transportation, similar to Earth and Water, is not instantaneous (they have to step into it), but it's easy to think of (it's not too uncommon in popular culture), it's easy to master, it's quick, it doesn't require much energy, it's probably the most commonly-used method of elemental transportation even though it's not at the top of the teleportation chain. That honor belongs to Air. Because Air deals with concepts. There are multiple ways someone using Air can teleport, yes, but Air teleportation, at its simplest, can just be the user thinking. Literally, just a thought. "I want to be at *location*." Boom. Instantly, no time delay, no need for movement, and with the capacity to bring others, they transport to that location. And, it also works with people...even if they don't know where that person is! "I want to be where *person* is." They think it, they will it to be, and instantly it is made so. This is why Hannah is the teleporter of the team. Short-range, long-range, makes no difference. She can go anywhere she pleases, in an instant, without consequence. It uses basically no energy at all, it's so ridiculously easy to do, it happens in an instant, it's safer than most teleportation methods, it's basically the ultimate elemental form of teleportation, and among methods of teleportation is still one of the top methods. (I'm not sure it's the top method. There might be a non-elemental method which trumps it. Maybe more than one. But it's among the top methods.) She can carry momentum, or she can stop dead in her tracks. It is, literally, thinking of a situation to be in, and then going into that situation. Falling at terminal velocity? (Well, that's not a problem for an air user, anyway.) Teleport, and she can be at a dead stop on the ground. (This is unique to air: energy has to stop momentum. Darkness, earth, and water require momentum. Light maintains whatever state the person was in, though it may reduce momentum by virtue of the transfer. Even ice creates momentum!) Vice-versa works too! She can be at a dead stop, and teleport in motion. There's limits to how fast said motion can be (as fast as they are capable of naturally moving, which for an air user would probably be around 250 MPH: very, very fast, but fairly low on the superhuman scale all things considered), and said motion is only a temporary speed (they lose momentum rapidly), but they can do it all the same. Basically, it's not at all unfair to say that while other elements can teleport, air is the element best suited for teleportation. And this is why Hannah is the first we see using it, and the most prominent user of it in Red Hood Rider. She simply does it better. It can be used for literally anything they can think of, though Hannah usually only teleports at the request of another. |
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