I came to the realization about five minutes ago that it could be simply said of me.
I need help. I desperately need help. What I need help for, not sure exactly, best answer I can really think of is "everything", I need help on everything.

But I don't want help. Help would, objectively, be good for me. But I refuse it, I reject it, I resist it at every turn. I turn it down, I lie and say I don't need it, I decline offers, I make excuses, I just. I make every reason to say I don't. When given ways I could be helped I make justifications for not doing them, I procrastinate on the few things I could do.

I just refuse to let myself be helped.

I need help.

I really think I do.

But how can I get help.
When I actively refuse the help.
How can someone help me, when I am actively refusing their help, their offers?

They can't help me because I don't want to be helped.
No matter how much I need the help.

​And that realization just makes me feel a whole lot worse about myself because a huge part of the problem is me. All it'd take to have a chance at a better life is to want it, so that when someone offered it to me I'd take the offer.

Yet I refuse.

Adamantly, vehemently refuse.

So what does that make me?

It makes me trash.

Trash that actively seeks out this pit of rot to fester in. Forever, probably, because I don't even want to help myself.
Well, I do.
But not enough to take it into my grasp.

Instead.
I am spending time.
​Playing Minecraft.
Building a hopefully-simple Civ 3 mod that would allow me to play Civ 3 as an addiction.
Playing League and Teamfight Tactics which as of today got an update (I should blog about that, too--short version, dark stars and star guardians got nerfed...which I am happy about because I love star guardian sorcerers as a comp and even nerfs to it won't keep me from running it but the nerfs will hopefully dissuade others from trying to steal the comps from me and thus I should have an easier time establishing a monopoly on the comp).
And as of yesterday.
Playing Epic Battle Fantasy 5.
Which, mind you, is a good addiction to have.

​Right now I am trying to grind the money to buy the equipment from the first shop (the...only shop I've progressed to, that screen is as far as I've gone), and to upgrade it all to the maximum level available with the crafting-items available from the repeatable enemies plus any needed from the first crafting-items shop (the steel plates are a bit painful to farm for, given their pricey 1.4k gold tag, but I think I've upgraded all the equipment that uses them).

I am so absurdly overleveled and overpowered that Matt's aoe attack that hits all foes one-shots literally everything.

There is a slight downside to this though.
While I caught almost every enemy in the repeating zone (gotta catch them all, apparently!), for the life of me I cannot capture the water slime because it'll always escape and literally none of my attacks are weak enough to not instakill it. OH WELL.

​That might seem like a grind; it is, but it's also still fun, especially when I can do other things concurrently to it. Multitasking rather than tasking to it exclusively is big.

Butyeah.

That's my life now.

Not terrible, I'll admit, it's just.
​It's not great.

And my coming out date, predictably, moves back to December 18th, 2022 as a consequence as I have also failed to work on Phyrra and Cyrus.

I've failed to do just about anything that's anything.

I've just been in a really bad headspace. I'm not even out of it, either.
Like, there's good stuff--that Projection story I talked about? I have an antagonist for it, I have a very very loose idea of the ending as a consequence, did work there plenty.
I am making this blog because I got sucked back into developing Civ 3, in this case, creating a mod for just vanilla gameplay, not a scenario, but a random map where you set the climate size temperature etc. in the menu, choose what civ you are, choose which civs you're against and how many, etc.

I'm not sure how much work I need to put in to get it working or even how to reliably test this. I think I have a remarkably good start though. My approach to this was to more or less take the idea of adding all the existing scenarios's stuff to the main game as quickly as is possible, without modifying the main game. No adding extra resources; no converting or modifying resources; nothing beyond the normal, but still having the normal be enhanced by them with little touch-ups here and there.

I think I have it more or less down, just need to put in the final few hours of work and then put it into a test.

Beyond that, also been doing lots of stuff in minecraft.
And played a fair amount of tft.
Did some summoner's rift games a while ago but not many; I've also albeit a while ago played some One For All where I tend to do well when some idiot doesn't vote on a mage whose skills do six different things and thus requires you to know the champion to not get stomped on it. (If you have a 'braindead' champion like basically every AD Bruiser champion in the game where you're mostly autoattacking and skills are meant to enhance your autoattack, that's the perfect champion for One For All because it takes no skill to play at an acceptable level. If you lock in champions like Ekko or Zoe...well mate, your funeral; even if you're a onetrick on the champion I guarantee you you're not good enough to pull off a literal 1v9 because literally nobody else on your team knows those champions well enough to play them because they require strategy, practice, and such to actually pull off. It doesn't matter if the champion is OP and broken in the hands of players who know how to use them, players in One For All don't know how to use them and if you don't know how to use the OP champion then you get smashed by the less-OP champions who require no skill.)

So I've been watching a fair number of people play Civilization 6 recently--I'd never play that game because I like unit stacking and more importantly I hate hex movement squares (I much prefer the square grid where you can move all eight directions), but this does instill a deep-seated desire to play Civilization III.

I've been watching a fair number of people play Final Fantasy VII Remake--similarly, that's a game I'd never play because they turned it into a hack-and-slash, one of my least-favorite genres of all (I'm like pretty sure that it's up there with button mashers and first person shooters for being a definitive three least-favorite), and while the game does offer a "classic" mode, from my understanding, even the "classic" mode doesn't really change it from being nothing like the combat in the original version of the game.

...But it does make me want to play the original Final Fantasy VII, which I happen to own on steam!

I've been playing a little more League of Legends, and it's been going pretty well! I've been winning most of my games, though I've had this unfortunate situation where in games that I was performing exceptionally well, someone on my team either hard-ints or outright leaves the game (often both) leading to an inevitable loss, and the games I am winning I am getting hard-carried because I have a terrible K/DA, terrible farming, terrible stats, and am often underperforming.

Right now, on that front, I'm experimenting with running teleport instead of heal--this was initially an accident born of forgetting to change it back to heal after playing a One For All, not noticing it. But in the match, I ended up noticing that with how I played, I wasn't in a situation where I'd be using Heal. I didn't need it to save my life, nor need it to save my allies. And in the next game, got similarly promising results, though more recent results have been mixed where I've looked at that and went, "...this would probably have been livable with heal", but it's something that's still not definitive, still not sure of.

Other than that, mostly going the same. I start with cull because it gives better lifesteal than Doran's Blade, nearly identical attack damage, and allows me to get gold for my items sooner, which I often need due to being terrible at farming. (Yes, I know, cull is an item you'd normally expect to be taken because you're good at farming. But as a starting laning phase item, it can still help if you're dismal, because one extra gold per kill can mean the difference between an item or no item when you back.)

And then it's Manamune start, boots of Ionian Lucidity at convenience, and then I'm usually by default aiming for Runaan's Hurricane into RFC into Iceborn Gauntlet, except for when I need the tankiness of the Gauntlet to not die. Not that most of my games last long enough for that, of course. Win or lose, most games end within 25 minutes pretty much without fail right now it seems.

I also like to play Teamfight Tactics daily and am currently working on an annoying tft quest involving rerolling more than five times, fifteen times. Rerolling six times is 12 gold--not including any champions you'd want to pick up. Since by the time you're rerolling, there can be 2-3 champions on any given shop you want, costing 3-5 gold...if you buy any of them...well. You get the idea. It's hard to do.

I could of course brute force it. Level up to six, doable by about Krugs, then economize until 50 gold, wait a turn to get 62, and then ignore champions to reroll six times down to 50, but knowing me, I'll cave to the impulses. Get distracted, then end up not rerolling six times.

Another thing I've been doing more is minecraft. I haven't been playing much on my friend's server (though, there's no reason for me to not, that world has an incredibly good start to it, I love what I have there, I have just about everything I'd need), but I have been playing a ton on the server for Girbeagly, one of the streamers I love to watch a lot. (He's one of many inspirations to me that makes me want to do things with my life, knowing that even if he's not super-duper-mega-famous, he's still successful and also well-connected with celebrities as friends pretty much and that's basically the sort of person I could only dream I could possibly ever become if I got godly good luck on my side.)

And, yes.

I actually do want to make that book, now, about Sam Sidney Tailor, Projection. The superhero/supervillain who made the one key choice to differentiate the direction in their life. In spite of me knowing just how hard, how difficult, it would be to actually write that and make it work. I am not some genius who can write out in meticulous, realistic, detail a masterwork like Worm. I don't have the head for the logistics to, sayyyyy, write out how a supervillain would pull a heist on a bank or such. I don't do research like that, but I'd need to, and I wouldn't know how to make it work, and there's just all sorts of similar details, and yet that passion is still there. I want to do it.

And you know what's not on that list?
Phyrra and Cyrus.
Well.
It kinda sorta is, but in a different way than the above ones.
The above I have passion and active desire to do and know what I want to do in them, too. 
For Phyrra and Cyrus, I want to make it, but it's different--there's currently not the passion/active desire to, and there's the hardest of hard writers' block on how to make it, too. I don't know what to do even though I want to. There's the objective knowledge of knowing that, yes, I need to work on it, it won't get done if I don't, but I don't know what I want to do on it, and how to do it.

And there pretty definitively is not time to do all of these.
I'd be lucky to get one of them to the point I'd be happy about, yet alone, all of them.

​I suuuuuuuuuuuckkkkk.

...It might be a small thing, but I decided to give the protagonist their name. I want to write the book in first person to avoid pronouns to let readers decide what gender the protagonist is for themselves, which required a gender-neutral name; I settled on Sam Sidney Tailor, since it seemed to just resonate with me.

Will I follow through and make a book of it?

Like I said, probably not.
I know how it more or less begins. Sam gets attacked by a phantom, fends it off, develops their illusionary energy superpower, and then the timeline splits off of their decision to use that power for themselves (the path of the supervillain) or for the good of others (the path of the superhero). 

I don't have an exact setting, the details of Sam's life down in the background, or the plot once they do split. The challenges facing the hero and facing the villain.

​But hey, this is more than what I had!

I developed the necessary background for the story. It more or less goes, the world is plagued by attacks from dark entities known as 'phantoms'. These phantoms randomly appear around the world at random times and go on rampages, before--if being left unchecked--randomly disappearing.

They come out of nowhere, and disappear just as fast, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

However, whenever a human is attacked by a phantom and manages to fend them off and survive...they have a chance to gain superpowers from this. This is where our protagonist gets their powers from. I also figured out the power I wanted the protagonist, who I decided--hero and villain alike--adapts the name Projection, which amounts to a specific form of 'ultimate illusion'.

In the area of about that of a house, the protagonist can flood an area in an energy, manipulating this energy to their will, but this energy is, explicitly, defined as an 'illusion'. But it's an illusion that is so, so strong as to be a local reality warp of sorts; nothing is immune to being affected by the illusion as if it were real. But the illusions can't be detected, because they technically don't exist, giving Projection a great ability to hide well.

This energy allows Projection to wrap themselves in an energy suit of sort, allowing for no need for a costume; the powers act as the costume. These illusions are absolute; nothing can break them. True sight cannot penetrate them, no sense or super sense can penetrate them, they are absolute, existing as both real and yet, not real at the same time, able to affect the environment without any true counter.

This energy cannot take the form of constructs, a la hard light. It can be manipulated in size, shape, exact form, color, and such, but mostly, it has the effect of multiple elemental powers. The energy can make energy beams, a la light beams, lightning bolts; the energy can burn; the energy can slice like wind or push like wind; it radiates as an aura of the color Projection chooses (yellow as a hero, black as a villain), and has these sorts of effects.

I chose this as the power because it needed to be a power that worked as both a hero and villain power, which was tremendously strong, but not godly strong. A power with set rules and limitations that prevent it from doing anything, yet versatile enough to allow it to do most things.

In this case, Projection has what amounts to flight by surrounding the energy around themselves and then elevating the energy off the ground, and similarly so, what amounts to a flash-step: not proper superspeed and not proper teleportation, where Projection will rapidly move from the center of their energy field to the edge of their energy field, but then has to wait for the energy to catch up before pulling this stunt again, so to speak.

The effects of the energy last after the illusion has passed. A destroyed camera will remain destroyed. Surveillance footage won't be able to make out what Projection looks like underneath their powers once the illusion is dispelled. So for all intents and purposes, the energy field is 'real', but the powers being, explicitly, illusions, give Projection the protection of their powers being undetectable, because their power while having the absolute true effect of being real, technically doesn't exist.

Because these energy illusions can't take the form of constructs, no god-like creating something out of nothing. (That, plus the limited range and the fact that it's not real and thus will disappear.) No mass-cloning, no mass creation of objects. Just a limited ability to use concussive energy, piercing energy, redirecting energy, etc.

​It feels like exactly the power I need and I love it and feel like I can actually make something out of it.

Moved back to December 25th, 2022. (That date's not gonna last.)

But today, in a spark of hope for my creativity not being dead.

Today, I came up with a story idea, and I love it--it feels like it would be easy enough to write, too. A book revolving around one critical split in time for an individual making one different choice in their life. Upon them gaining superpowers, whether they use those powers to become a supervillain or a superhero, with a dual story tracking both universes and showing the same person, just as different on the spectrum of hero/villain, and how they progress from having been identical individuals to, via their differing experiences, be different people...with a twist.

Every night, they dream of the day of their counterpart. The supervillain gets to, via their dreams, see the life of the superhero that day, and vice-versa. Eventually, near the end of the dreams, both can emerge to converse with each other, realizing that their dreams are of a very very real alternate self, and in their conversations with each other, manifest as various banter about their different decisions.

And how, while they both took different choices and have changed to be different people, they still have many core similarities. Different, but the same. They both find great fulfillment in their lives--on a fundamental level, Good Feels Good applies to the superhero, whose positive effects on society bring them genuine happiness as they see the positive efforts their contributions have made towards the world, the betterment of others, the altruism having given what amounts to a constant high of endorphins where doing good just makes them feel happy.

In contrast, the supervillain isn't pure evil, but lives a life where they consider themselves above good and evil, doing what they truly feel like, unimpeded, acting on ambition, to screw the rules of the world, the laws, to take whatever they deem to be to their liking, and to great success, living in luxury, having the thrill of the hunt, the chase, relishing in knowing that the public see them as a villain and taking pleasure in them not being able to put a stop to them. Taking everything they want, living the life they choose.

And yet, both know that the life they know, aside from being costumed so having a mask about them, is still a mask, hiding their truer personality where there are aspects of their life they don't live while masked--both of them feel 'trapped' by their role, both feel obligated to play the part they are seen as, living in partial regret of not having chosen the other option.

Once condemned as a villain, committing great atrocities, there was no going back, no ability to do good, no ability to feel good upon doing good because there was no good to be done, no opportunity, no option, no ability to see the looks of others and have their happiness bring them happiness. They had to seize happiness for themselves, they had to take pleasure into their own hands, with no choice, no option, to let it come naturally to them. A prison of being entirely self-reliant with no ability to have a life with others.

Once committed to being a hero, there was a sense of obligation, of duty, to continue doing good. The doorway into the other world was sealed off, and the continued desire to do good serves as a prison, where while happiness from their deeds would come naturally from seeing it, they feel trapped by it knowing that they can't gain happiness on their own, that they need to rely on others to obtain it. A life as a slave to others, with no ability to live on their own and get it from their own actions, entirely dependent on others to give it to them.

And beyond that--both live in isolation, feeling deeply lonely. Neither of them have true companionship, so there's a deep-seated feeling of being incredibly alone, no matter who surrounds them, no matter their circumstances, no matter who is with them, no matter the lives they have lived.

But, on seeing the life of the other, both feel like they made the right choice, in noting the flaws of the other and having seen the alternative, feeling that they have advantages to them. In particular, the supervillain self notes that while both of them have a fear of their deepest inner evils, the supervillain self notes the difference between them. The superhero self constantly lives in fear of it to this day; the supervillain self has conquered those fears, by feeling that their life is superior to that of what the inner evil could achieve. The inner evil could be so much more destructive, but would live a far more inferior, briefer, bloodier life that'd quickly be annihilated, so while the superhero feels afraid of the inner evil, the supervillain with their "above good and evil" mentality, literally feels above the inner evil, feeling like they have the superior life.

That being said, the superhero also feels some liberation in knowing they have the luxury of more options, more choices, existing. The prison is mostly of their own making, rather than the making of society. There's an active choice involved in choosing to continue to be good, instead of no choice involved in being forced to commit to a lifestyle.

And the entire book would explore the differences between these two mentalities.

That having been said.

I don't actually know how to turn it into a book.
I don't know how the story ends.
I don't know the nature of the super's powers (which would be the same in both).
I don't know the nature of the challenges they'd face, the nature of the world they live in.
I don't know the backstory, the worldbuilding, behind the book, nor a truly coherent plot. I have vague ideas of some things happening to the supervillain, but no truly coherent start to finish plot.

​So in spite of how much I love the book, I doubt I can make it.

It's just been.
Not good.
And since today was rotten.
Guess we're moving it back to December 28th.
I didn't do much productive either other than a lot of minecraft stuff in an attempt to destress after a hell of a stressful day.

12, 13, and 14, three days.
December 31st, 30th, guess that means if I don't work on Phyrra and Cyrus today, it moves to December 29th.
Really struggling to work on it right now, not gonna lie, so I'll take the hit, moving my coming out day to December 29th, 2022. And counting.

I mostly came to talk about League. There's some exciting changes! First off, death timer pity bonus movement speed. This will be a lifesaver for my iron 2 and devolving self, salvaging losing situations by allowing me to get back to lane faster without the need to spend money on movement speed T2 boots (mobis/swifties).

Granted, still will be going T2 boots early, probably Ionian with the option of tabis/mercs (defensive) or beserkers for the buff (see below), butstill, will help me out a lot.

Another important change; Ashe finally, finally, got a buff! It's to the ability I don't make good use of, but with autoattack resets on Ranger's Focus and a buff to Ranger's Focus bonus attack speed, she'll be in a better position than she was before for all-in fights.

Granted, admittedly. This makes it harder for me to justify running Iceborn Gauntlet as a second item, it might need to be pushed back to fourth item as a consequence of this, with me running Runaan's and RFC as second/third, for their attack speed, crit, movespeed, and waveclear.

Still building Manamune first though because I have vindication; with presence of mind and no other mana-boosting items/runes, a transformed muramana deals more damage than an infinity edge, by the raw numbers. So if my teammates ping me on it and flame me for it, I can point this fact out to them, that it is mathematically proven to be higher damage than IE, thus, the priority on building it.

So.

What would that leave  the build as?
Boots on convenience, Manamune/Muramana, Runaan's (higher synergy with Ashe's abilities and waveclear), RFC (higher poke range and some extra waveclear), Iceborn Gauntlet (armor, mana, damage, extra waveclear), and then a final flex item. Frozen Heart for ultimate physical tankiness; Abyssal Mask for MR; maybe BORK for extra lifesteal?

Butyeah, that's a thing I am looking forward to testing.

TFT also has some great changes. The changes I don't agree with but don't care much about: buffing ASol, Buffing Wukong, Nerfing Cybernetics/Lucian/Shaco, Zeke's Herald adjustments.
The changes I don't agree with but do care about: Nerfing Tear. RIP my favorite item.
The changes I do agree with but am sad about anyway in spite of recognizing they needed it: Nerfing Rakan, Nerfing Vel'koz. 

The rest of the changes, I do agree with though, and think they were in fact necessary.

So, we'll have to play some more of that.

​I wanna play some League first tho.

I'm just way, wayyyyyyy too tired to do work on it today.
Just.
​Exhausted.

I feel.
Terrible.
January 2nd it goes to because I already know I won't be doing it again today.

You have no clue what's going on in my mind and I honestly don't think you should.
I'm pathetic.
I'm not okay. Not alright.
The words aren't coming to me.

Normally when I am in this zone I can put words to it.
This time I can't.
And I am just.

Feeling crushed right now.
Broken. Miserable.
And the sad thing is I feel I deserve even worse than this.
I am trash.
A lousy person.
A terrible person.
Someone who is everything that you shouldn't be if you're a positive healthy person who means well.
Except I don't.
And I deserve to suffer because of it.

And yet the pain.
The suffering.
Just.
It hurts.
It hurts and it won't go away.
And it's just.
​Defeat.