Probably won't get one for a few days, given my current spring break work schedule, but I'll get to you as soon as I can.
I also will start Red Hood Rider as soon as I can. Did some mental review on Episode 2 today, increasing my desires even more.
Well, no entry today. Haven't had a chance, with how busy I've been.
Probably won't get one for a few days, given my current spring break work schedule, but I'll get to you as soon as I can. I also will start Red Hood Rider as soon as I can. Did some mental review on Episode 2 today, increasing my desires even more.
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So...I'm writing this on the third, dunno if it'll get posted today or not, though. Basically, I dun goofed.
100% positive I got a virus on my laptop. I would very, VERY much not like to discuss the details there, because it was entirely my fault and I'd prefer not to explain how I screwed up so badly. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure my security measures for my laptop would make anyone who has literally any computer knowledge whatsoever run away in horror, so I'd rather not go into detail. (No, it's not having no protection at all. No, it's not having whatever the default is and nothing but that. But it's pretty much just as bad.) So far, I think things are maybe going okay? I've killed every executable that was questionable, and closed my browser as a precaution (also, spybot immunization doesn't like it when you have a browser open so that, too), but most anti-malware regrettably requires internet access, so I can't cut the internet to my computer, meaning the virus probably has an edge. Basically, I've guaranteed that I can't leave my laptop unattended for the whole night. I obviously have antivirus measures, and I think they will work. Of course, the virus I got (I think some sort of adware on steroids?) by its nature I will only be able to test via trying to open my browser, so I won't know if it worked for a long time (presumably, files will be quarantined first), but yeah. Long, boring, ridiculous day. I dare not connect my flashdrive to my computer, and I won't open my browser until it's time to test to see if I dealt with the virus, and while the desktop is being used by my mom anyway if it was open I still wouldn't be able to use it thanks to the constant need to attend my laptop. Meaning I'm stuck in here, with very limited options on what I can work on. You might wonder what could come from this. For a start, mosquito bites; there's a mosquito I'm pretty sure in my room that's interested in me. I've batted it away and told it 'shoo', which normally seems to work (I don't actually get bitten that often, believe it or not), but with this amount of time spent for this amount of time, it's probably still gonna feed at least once. But it's also a nice reminder about constant vigilance (ha, ha, yeah, I know, half my blogger fanbase will get the reference) and to basically not be a complete and total idiot, utter moron. Mind you, that series of good habits will probably drop quickly, out of a lack of necessity. I don't usually visit sites that COULD give me a virus. (Meaning, mostly? I stick to a few sites outside of google image searches, which I never visit the web page of: not COMPLETELY safe, but RELATIVELY safe all the same.) I mean, that pretty much tells you part of the idiocy I went through today (that being, yes I did visit a site that could give me a virus), but exactly WHY I did something so ungodly stupid as that I would very much like to drag down to my grave and never reveal. So, what's the real gain from this? Literally the ONLY thing I can do in my room is work on Red Hood Rider. My notes should be safe enough to access; they're already on the computer, and I sincerely doubt anything I could do would corrupt them. This is the current plan, actually, to script Episode 2, and maybe script out Episode 3 if I get the chance. The OTHER thing I can do? Actually draw Red Hood Rider. Maybe the comic itself, even, mood depending. If not, then still at least productive drawings. For instance, I've wanted to draw the cast for a long time. Dark Ruby. Lord Ventrella. "Ryan". Gary in his outfit. Sally, in and out of uniform. Hannah, before. Hannah after, both in and out. Dale. Dion, for that matter. Herald. D.D., in all her forms. Vili. Whitney, all three. Amy. Maybe even work on the Rogues Gallery a bit. I need to work on them all. But first...my mom did say I need to eat, and she's right. With Locals Only coming up in an hour (god, I've been debugging my computer for two hours now), my options are eat now, or eat at 10 seconds before the food would be put away. That is a bit of a risk, but it should be a negligible one. So, uh, yeah. I screwed up. Big time. HUGE. And now I've got no excuse to slack off on making Ruby as a result. So, mixed blessings I guess. From the worst screw-up ever, I can get something productive. Go, me? (Status update: you're seeing this, meaning I'm trying it out. I think I got it? It's hard to say for sure with these things.) Probably shoulda done this first, since the philosophical ramble was much, much more interesting than this will be (well, unless you're among the one or two fans of Red Hood Rider who really likes to learn more about the Rubyverse), but oh well. I wrote this second at work, so it's getting posted second.
Anyway, so I have a bit on vampires. Bear with me for a little bit, this will all seem a little unrelated at first, but it's all tied together. (Common theme in my posting.) Lord Vladimir Tepes has suffered a grand total of two defeats in his entire vampiric life. The first was at the hands of the Jagen coven, who were the power behind the Ottoman Empire. (He had initially been their ally, but was betrayed, leading to the war. He was victorious initially, then defeated, and regathered himself with the help of the Darkblood coven. He only had the one defeat, though, because his second "defeat" was a preplanned disappearance act. Hey, it might not be fully historically accurate, but give me some artistic liberties, here. He did get even with the Jagens later, but more on that below.) The second was at the hands of Van Helsing, the Grandmaster of the Hunters at the time, who was also 1/8th vampire. (The specifics of this being: he had immunity to vampire illusions/hypnosis--an ability he later trained all hunters to have--and could himself use a very limited version of them himself, mostly just to prove a point that, yes, vampires can do that and you need to be careful around them. He was pretty spry for an old guy, capable of fighting even at 80 years old, and he had increased longevity, living to be 110. Other than that, he was a completely normal human. No enhanced intelligence, no enhanced strength, no extreme supernatural abilities, just a crafty, clever human who was good at his job.) Dracula of course retired after the second defeat, but he did so content, in part because of having Leah in place and having basically half the world in his domain. How much of the world did he control? (Leah still controls it all, even.) Well...his coven, along with the Darkbloods and a couple of other covens, were major early investors in America. We're talking, shortly after his first "death", early, meaning basically at the 1500s. One coven controls Florida and about half the southern states. (Namely, states like Texas. Think Spanish-then-Mexican-then-American states, and you've got that coven.) Another coven controls the New Orleans area and the heavier French sections of Canada. A third coven controls parts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (think: Vikings). The Zu clan controls Alaska and the Yukon, not to mention Hawaii. The Darkblood Coven controls the west coast: California, Oregon, and the majority of Washington. (Mostly Western, though.) And in modern times, British Columbia along with northern Washington belong to the Jagen coven, post-WWI, circa 1930s to be a little bit more specific. But literally the rest of the United States and Canada is their domain. Yeah, I realize I subtracted quite a bit of the continent with those other covens, but that's still the vast majority of North America as their domain. It's not all; they have control over other places in the world, too, such as the entirety of Australia. That's just the tip of the iceberg, too. So, when I say they're the second-most-powerful coven in the world...there's a darn good reason for it. (And, of course, they're on very good terms with the Zu coven, the third-most-powerful coven in the world which controls the majority of Asia...meaning that if the Zu coven ever does get demoted to a clan, they'd probably have the resulting Dragul coven be the most powerful vampire coven in the world. The Darkblood coven is more influential, having more powerful members and deeper roots in communities and being very involved in the political world, but they don't have the same land mass the Dragul coven does.) This power was most evident during World War I. The Jagens had a hand in both Germany and the Ottoman Empire (thus, the alliance). They lost, and by the end of the war were a mere fraction of their previous standing. This is where Vladimir Tepes gets his satisfaction from, knowing his coven (who, you know, is basically most of the United States) was a major factor in crushing his foes. To the Jagen's credit, they did learn their lesson. They stayed completely out of World War II, and by that point had invested in their current holdings. You might note that, by the line I have given, three major covens' boarders converge in Washington: The Draguls (they control some of Eastern Washington), Jagens (power diminished, but still large), and Darkbloods all reside within, with the Zu coven and another major coven not too terribly far away, thus, why they hold their council in Earth Ridge during modern days: it's the location most convenient for the majority of power players among vampires. So today, at work, nobody's in the pool currently, meaning you're getting your first, well and true, proper blog post for the month. In this case, I wanted to talk about the for corners that build a pyramid around the majority of ideas. Around concepts themselves, really. (Trust me, this will all make a lot of sense later. Well, relative to ME that is.)
I define the four corners as biology, law, society (also known as unwritten law), and personal. To explain these, we need something for them to be about. For most of them, my go-to example would, in this case, be murder. Once I begin to explain, you'll see why I chose something like that. For the biological stance on murder, there are many justifications for it. This is one of the reasons why I so strongly dislike biology as a reason; of the four corners, I find it the least-valid. Many things which aren't acceptable could be considered such using it, and many more which are acceptable may or may not have any biological support (hard to say), for instance, saaaaaaaaaay, being a lesbian. Or being a transwoman. Things like that. Frankly, if there is a biological explanation for such things, I don't even want it known, because these are things we should be accepting without biology. Yet many people insist biology trumps all, and advocate such things as unnatural and wrong. But back to the example of murder, you could, via biology, excuse crimes of passion: "I was so overcome with rage, I just couldn't help myself!" That might be (and probably actually is) true, but it doesn't make the murder any less wrong. Panic also works as an emotional excuse, via triggering the instinctive fight-or-flight response. Still doesn't justify nor change how wrong the murder is. Yet these are things that murderers will exclaim all the time. You might have caught onto the implication here already, but just to reinforce it... ...If biology doesn't work as a reasoning, what about written laws? After all, it's basically universally illegal to murder someone, so surely laws are infallible rules, right? Now, this is ignoring factors like corruption which is inevitable in any system. This is ignoring how no system can ever be perfect. This is talking about the system which governs every-day life. Well, sure. Laws work nice and fine as a general guideline, but there's plenty of reasons they don't work as an absolute. Among them being some of the above, but an egregious example goes back to murder again. A fine example of laws failing? It is 100% legal for a man to murder a transwoman in many countries and even STATES. This isn't some third-world or archaic law, existing only in the backwater portions of the world. I'm dead serious, this is something, absolutely real, about the first world. OUR world. Legalized murder, no joke, of a person who has committed no crime unless you consider existing to be one. The hope is, obviously, that such laws will change. I have confidence that, eventually, they will. But as of right now, in the current world? I think you can understand my lack of regard for that corner. I obey laws, but I do so because 1: they usually overlap with my own habits/beliefs anyway, and 2: ignoring them is more trouble than it's worth. (Duh.) But they are no absolute rule to follow. So what about social? These are the inferred, rather than explicit, 'rules', so to speak, that we live by. No explicitly-murder example here, since it is generally considered unacceptable in most forms of society; we don't call it murder for no reason. But the problem I have with living by social rules (aside from having Asperger's and therefore not even having a solid grip of them) is twofold. Society's rules were not always right. It used to be accepted that slavery was a given. That would still be true to this day if everyone followed the mindset of "the current social rules are absolute". If everyone accepted those as a given, never questioning them, then of course it'd still be around, because nothing would cause it to change. Yet nowadays, slavery is of course near-universally considered unacceptable. For that to have happened...somewhere along the line, someone had to have had the thought. The exact thought may be different, but the one I choose to use is "all people are equal". And somewhere along the line, for whatever various reasons...it grew, until it dominated, becoming the new social norm. (For the most part.) Then there are other similar fights. It used to be a given that women should be subservient to men. Maybe not universally, but in a lot more places than not, this was the case. (Note also that this is something that also makes a fine example of why biology is not the best justification, as throughout time men have constantly provided biological "proof" of this "fact".) That battle is not yet completely over. In many places, it is still considered acceptable. However, overall, in the world, women are gaining a lot more of the respect they deserve, with each and every generation increasingly agreeing: the idea of women being subservient to men is wrong. Yet there are other problems with society as a pillar aside from this slow progress. For instance...cultural divides in values that largely stem from Western/Eastern hemispheres, but for the most part, those differences have neither side clearly in the right nor wrong, both having valid points about their view and valid criticisms of the other. And, given that there are still many battles to fight...it's not something I can throw faith behind. There is still far, far too much discrimination against people on the !cishet spectrum. While people who are gay are mostly in the clear these days (mostly; it's still preeeeeeeeeeeeetty harsh), other non-heterosexual orientations aren't nearly so lucky, and that's not even beginning to go into the hatred towards transgender and gender non-conforming individuals that, right now, is considered the social norm. So, in general, society as a whole hates and fears LGQBT+ individuals. But, like laws (which are inherently linked to society in the first place), eventually, society should be able to sort things out, right? Maybe. Hopefully. Eventually, sure, but when? Ten? Twenty? Fifty years from now? Bluntly, that love and support just doesn't exist right now. On the small scale, sure, yes, it does, but by and large, when looked at from the whole, it doesn't. That's evident enough by how even people within the !cishet community hate on others within the !cishet community. They should be supporting each other, and while that is fortunately the case a great many number of the times, it should be literally all the time, no exceptions, no excuses for hatred. So, progress is being made...but at an abysmally slow rate. The people actually loving and caring of those like me are currently the social minority. Given that, you'll forgive me for not living my life as society by and large would demand. (Because society would demand me be a normal guy. I'm not. Very much not. Normal guy is the exact polar opposite of what I am. It's taken 22 years for me to accept that I am a weird girl and not have any shame in it.) And that's why I use personal beliefs as my guiding system. These are things not given to me by biology. These are not things I follow because there's laws about them. These are not things I follow because everyone else follows them. These are things that I have developed on my own. My values, my beliefs, my views, my concepts, all have been given thought. Maybe they have reasons, maybe they're just instinctive, but they all come directly from me. These things might be influenced by the other corners. These things might take cues from them. After all, if there's a good law that I like, no reason to complain about it, now, is there? And, heck. By and large, for the most part, my values, my beliefs, the things I see in the world, overlap with society as a whole, overlap with laws for the most part, and may have biological backing (who knows). To put it in example, back to murder one final time...I find that life is one of the most precious things in the world. And taking another life, unless in the physical need of oneself or another, to be wrong, because robbing the most precious thing in the world from it is a crime. But do note my wording here. I do not consider killing for meat to be wrong (meaning, yes, I eat meat), because it is in physical need: we are omnivores, not herbivores, and we evolved by eating meat. (As in, we were comparatively dumb tree animals when we ate plants, and it was eating meat that helped turn us intelligent in the first place.) Hunting is fine, even as sport...provided the one condition of nothing going to waste. Wasteful hunting (a la the stereotypical "shooting buffalo from the train for sport") I see as wrong, but even if the hunt is more for fun than need, so long as there is no waste I have no issue with it. The physical need of oneself or another also is important because it covers killing someone in defense of either yourself or a loved one: someone getting jail time for defending themselves is absolutely abhorrent. (For instance, if a woman killed someone who was trying to rape her, there is absolutely zero way it is acceptable for her to be prosecuted.) And the 'physical' bit in there is also an important disclaimer. If you're a guy, going on this date with a hot girl, and then you suddenly discover that her biology does not match her looks (i.e., she's trans), you do not have the right to "defend your manhood" and kill her. You do not have the right to defend your honor, your integrity, your heterosexuality, by killing someone; that is not defending yourself: it's murder. Now, obviously, this is just my own personal beliefs at work here. I'd like to think they're pretty good ones, and as a result, would certainly like it if others began adapting them or at least similar-enough ones. People are free to disagree, because they have the right to their own personal beliefs. But this is more or less how I put things into perspective. Thought that those who read this blog might enjoy the insight into me. Well...making an entry didn't work out.
My parents went away for the whole day, and I saw an opportunity I just couldn't resist. Waste of a day, for the most part, but it was at least fun. No entry for today.
I know, brilliant way to start the month, miss the first day just after having gotten the blog up and running in the first place. Couldn't be helped. Between not knowing what to say on April Fools Day, and it being the day we celebrate my dad's birthday (my sister even came over in a surprise visit!), resulting in a full family night, there just wasn't really much time to get an entry up. I'll be posting this one tomorrow, and hopefully I'll think of something to blog that day, too. |
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