HOLY MOLY I ACTUALLY GOT A RESPONSE BACK FROM MY JOB APPLICATIONS THAT WAS NOT A REJECTION LETTER!

They actually want to hear back from ME as soon as possible. Now, this is no surefire way to get a job, especially since tomorrow I have lifeguard work and then family night, with a busy weekend.

Butstill...I GOT A HIT!

I ACTUALLY GOT A LEAD!

Feels good. Let's hope Monday's not too late for them. Technically the email was sent two days ago, but I was...well, kinda busy back then. Shoulda probably seen it sooner, but oh well. I got it when I got it, so they'll get the reply as soon as I have had the time to properly prepare one.

If it's too late...well, dang. Oh well. I won't get that job. It's still a first, and shows promise for more.

And if it ISN'T too late......something could actually come from it!

I might actually be getting somewhere!

Oh, man, is my counselor gonna be surprised when he hears the news a week from Monday. (We went down to every-other week.) This is a really big thing.

~MILESTONES~!

...And now, sleep.

So as I type this, it's 10:15 pm, and as soon as I finish posting my blogs for today, yesterday, and the day before that, I'm going to bed and actually being RESPONSIBLE.

Of course, I type faster than my computer (after just waking up anyway) can keep up with, so that does mean I have to pause and wait for it to catch up every time I suspect I may have made a typo.

And on that note, I might as well briefly talk about my day. I did end up telling the half-lie, but I think it's for the best I did so. This might not make sense to normal people, but to anyone who knows about rituals...they'll understand what I mean. Basically, mafia-playing is the late-night activity I do, but not quite the latest activity. The ritual I have is starting after 8, because of Jeopardy. Usually, thanks to either shows (which are all on break) or dancing, the earliest I start is 10 PM, aka right about now.

Sure, I can theoretically start sooner than that, but the RITUAL I have, the routine I've built, the habit ingrained in my system, is to start late at night. It holds for six (now five) of the days I am typically online. (The exception is Saturday, thanks to anime, and also, it being a weekend and therefore the one day I do not hold an obligation of SOME kind.) So while it was not impossible for me to start earlier, the mental inhibition was there and would have to have been forcefully overcome. Because once I start making my rounds, I cannot stop mid-way through; I must see it to completion.

That might sound silly, but in this case, not my fault. Site culture actually demands as much; you must give every game equal attention, and if you don't, you get justifiably called out on it. Obviously, this is a little bit of an inconvenience, since not all games have an equal motivation to be played (though as of late, my motivation is lowering all-around), but it's something that I've learned to live with. It's also my own darn fault for being in so many games, which is why I'm trying to (gradually) scale back on them. (For instance, there was one game that I really wanted to replace into, which had MULTIPLE slots needing replacement, but ultimately, I decided it would be a very bad idea for me to play, unfortunately, with my current load.)

Anyway, I'll have some catching up to do tomorrow, but it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. I also am getting much, much, MUCH closer to launching my ambitious game to run, but as this blog is highly public and read by people who may be joining the game, obviously, I can say no more. (The idea of a game rewarding knowledge of my blogs isn't exactly a bad one though! I just don't want it to happen accidentally, so shutting my mouth on the subject now.)

What I was largely getting at with this, though, was that I had a bit of a panic attack when--in the middle of writing something--my browser crashed, likely due to a background game. (Whoops!) Back when I was working on it, and this was the tie-in to my first subject (I just kinda got sidetracked so the segue failed), is that on the desktop I did this for, that usually doesn't happen, but all the same, I was typing fast enough that I had to wait for any typo.

Other than that, the only notable thing I did was read the first volume of IS, a manga about Intersex individuals. I got a tip about it from a reader of the webcomic Rain, which, if you may recall, was one of the reasons I decided to work on creating Red Hood Rider.

Not much you can really expect, when I got up at 2 pm. That's 8 hours awake, rather than a more normal 16, owing to the extreme time I went to bed yesterday (4:30 am) and the extreme time I have to wake up (6 am) tomorrow.

Soyeah. Pretty sure my computer's warmed up enough for me to post this, and it's 10:30 anyway, meaning just about on-schedule for bedtime.

And I'm actually a bit tired, too! Might not actually get to SLEEP until midnight, but oh well, the sooner I start readying myself......

Uhg, I really need to start getting to bed earlier. For a start, on Thursdays from now on I have to get up at 6 am, so I need to be going to bed early on Wednesdays, AKA tomorrow. (It's to the point where, frankly, I'm gonna lie to the people I play mafia with and tell them I cannot play tomorrow. I CAN, it's just that it would be safer if I permanently forbid myself from playing on Wednesdays until my work schedule changes.)

It's also a very bad habit to go to bed at 4:30 am. This is at least the third day in a row it's happened, maybe more. I need to break that habit, especially since going to bed that late and/or waking up so late is something that has a ripple effect: one bad habit leads to another, such as in a rush to go to bed, forgetting part of my night routine. There's always something. It could be that I forgot some sort of liquid after pills (which will irritate my throat), it could be forgetting to take the supplement, it could be forgetting the pills, it could be forgetting to brush my teeth, it could be more than one thing, the point is is, going to bed this late makes me always rush and forget at least one thing.

So, yeah. Gonna lie tomorrow, say I can't do something which I can. It's a lie, but it's a well-intentioned lie, for my own health.

Anyway, with luck, that'll give me some incentive to spend some time blogging. I anticipate not having much time (I'll probably wake up at either 2 or 3 pm), but I should have at least 1 hour of free time before dance tomorrow, and with me promising not to play mafia tomorrow, that should mean worst case scenario I still have two hours before midnight tomorrow. Oh, actually, much more; there's no dance event tomorrow, pretty sure. So that'll help.

Still think I need to tell the lie, though.

So...see you tomorrow, I hope?

Interesting thing happened today, but it's late, so I won't get a chance to talk about it until tomorrow. But basically, what happened is that an automatic personality tester (as in, one where instead of answering biased questions, you just dumped text in) apparently thinks I am at the absolute LOWEST percentile for artistic interest.

No, seriously. For the whole of six months (January through my last blog post), I dumped the text of them into the analyzer, and the result said I was in the 1% percentile. Absolute bottom of the bottom, when it comes to art.

I thought that, at first, it was a sign that--in spite of mentioning webcomics often--I haven't really mentioned DRAWING that much.

But that percentage never budged, even when adding in blogs entirely devoted to artistic drawings I had made.

...So apparently, the calculator is taunting me, is how I interpreted it.

I'm slightly curious what the profile would be like with ALL my blog posts, but to do that I'd either have to manually dump it in (which would take hours) or hope that the export of my entire blog (something I can do) can be converted to text that I can dump in.

Either way, something to consider doing, but my point is...I need to draw more, clearly. And talk more unambiguously about what kinds of things I'm making, and projects I've worked on.

It did compliment me on my job-searching skills, though! In a sense, anyway.

Anyway, sleep for now.

You know what the awesome part of being a writer is? (Speaking of writing: my younger sister returned two hardcover books to my older sister. Inkdeath and the last Harry Potter, if I recall correctly. I was planning on borrowing them and taking samples from them for the third draft of my novel. I don't have the time to read the books all the way through, and even if I did, I'm not sure I'd have the focus for it--I'm not as good at that as I used to be--and even if I did, I wouldn't be accomplishing the intended task. But what I want from them is to get some good examples of what those authors do in their writing, because I want my book to be as polished as possible and there's only so much I can fake without direct, hard references telling me, "Oh yeah, that's how they do it!" Harry Potter in particular was recommended for my dialog issues. But I digress.)

Sometimes, juuuuuust sometimes, instead of your characters having beliefs of their own that mean nothing to you (all good writers must be able to do this at least a little--think of any antagonist which is engaging and you can get an idea of what I mean)...instead of your characters inheriting your beliefs (which is the most common, and there is absolutely NOTHING wrong about this at all and I do it all the time as a result)...sometimes...you inherit your characters' beliefs.

This is, obviously, a very rare occurrence. I am fairly certain that many authors, both professional and amateur, know what I am talking about, though, because it isn't too hard for your characters (if they truly take on a life of their own) to surprise you and do things you thought impossible or at least had never intended of them. Speaking for me, personally, adapting characters' beliefs as my own has happened maybe two or three times I can think of? Something like that.

...Well...today, I just added another instance. And it is from the most unusual of sources too, in that it's basically brand new. (The other times all came from well-established characters as I fleshed them out.) Funny story, there. It started last night, actually. I began thinking about one of my favorite superheroes I have created during commercial breaks for adult swim. He's existed in multiple stories, at multiple power levels. He could even exist in the Rubyverse, though I have no plans for him at this time.

And when I say superhero, I more mean supervillain in his case because for some reason, I've always envisioned him as an antagonist. Not evil, just not exactly a good guy. For some reason, he's always an opponent of the protagonist, I don't know why, it just works out that way. His name has always been 'Carat'. Well, actually, 'Caret' is what it's supposed to be, but at least 'carat' is closer than 'carrot'.

As you may be able to deduce, his power, at its base level, relates to exponents, the "^" sign of course having the technical name of 'caret', where he gets the name from. He can exponentially increase, or decrease, properties of things. This is his base power. What varies is the strength of that power, and beginning last night and continuing into this morning, I toyed with what it would be at its absolute strongest: above god level.

At the weakest, and a signature attack of his across all versions of the character, Carat (I figure that he could maybe have accidentally misnamed himself in-universe and by the time he realized his mistake, he decided to stick with it...a-la exactly the out-of-universe reason for the misspelling) can exponentially increase the mass of, say, grains of sand. Then, by throwing said super-dense grains, he can exponentially increase their velocity. Result? You get a shotgun-like barrage with each penetration potentially delivering the piercing power of a 50-caliber round.

Yes, that's him at his weakest. Now imagine if he can exponentially increase the size of the grains as well. Imagine having to face super-dense rocks the size of cannonballs moving at supersonic speeds. Tip of the iceberg for what the more overpowered version of the character can do. Exponentially increasing his resistance to damage makes him nigh-invulnerable. If you somehow damage him, exponentially increasing his regeneration makes him instantly heal from that. Exponentially decreasing his aging also means he can live basically forever.

Exponentially increasing his reaction time, and exponentially decreasing yours, makes your movements slow. Exponentially increasing how quickly he thinks, how quickly he analyzes, how intelligent he is, how knowledgeable he is, and so forth means he can instantly figure out how to fight basically any opponent. Exponentially increasing his exponential increases is not impossible, either, allowing him to metagame his own powers.

It was at this stage that I realized this stronger version of him (like I said, some of these things all versions can do, other things only his stronger versions can do, and I was focused on the stronger version today) would actually be kinda lonely: nothing could ever match him. Were he ever to die, it wouldn't be in a long, drawn-out fight he would enjoy. It'd be by a cheap surprise attack he wouldn't be able to adapt to, and he knows it. So basically, he'll either always win his fight, or he'll die before he has a chance to enjoy the fight.

And while the potential applications of the power are great, they also become addicting. Exponentially decrease the amount of sleep you need, and exponentially increase the amount of rest given when you do? Blinking your eyes gives 12 hours worth of sleep, along with the accompanying amount of dream amplification. Exponentially decrease the amount of food or water you need? Never need to eat or drink. Exponentially increase the enjoyment of food you eat? Congratulations, you've just had the best meal you've ever had, and you will never have food tasting that good again unless you use your powers for it...at which point, now you've become addicted and must ALWAYS use your power to get that enjoyment because otherwise, the food tastes dull.

In short: the lament of a character who is that powerful is that they will never be able to have the experience they truly want. So, I developed logical weaknesses. The first logical weakness? No matter how much you put it to the power of, one is always gonna be one. So while he can exponentially increase the number of rocks in hand if he has two...if he only has one, then he cannot. This limitation isn't that hard to overcome. One ton, for instance, is one ton. It cannot be increased or decreased, right? Except one ton is 2,000 pounds, which can be increased or decreased.

There might be more, but the second logical weakness I developed, tied to the first, and this is important, is...the power of zero. If someone's power is 'zero', at their very weakest, they nullify Carat. Why? Because anything to the power of zero is...one. In short, Carat's exponential increases or decreases...are absolutely nullified, and the things he was exponentially influencing are set back to their base, fundamental, normal level.

...At the strongest, the power of zero, however, is actually even stronger than Carat. "Damage inflicted: zero." Instantly healed. "Ability to harm: zero". Instantly takes your ability to fight away. "Amount of life left: Zero." Instantly kills you. "Number of years lived: zero." De-ages you out of existence. "Existence: Zero". Removes you from existence altogether, as deader than dead. He can raise the dead just as easily. "Time passing: zero." Freezes time. "Amount of time spent dead: zero." Brings the dead person back to the state they were in at the very moment of their demise. Then, it's a simple matter of eliminating the cause of death. For instance, if old age was the cause..."number of years passed since 25: zero". The power of zero just de-aged a person who died of old age down to 25.

This is just in giving zeroes. The scariest part is that taken to its logical extreme, there's absolutely nothing stopping this from being a valid sequence. "Number of things I can't do: zero." And, with an unlimited number of things he can do, he can then start taking zeroes away, an equally powerful tool, and the one that overcomes the logical weakness I thought of for his power: if a person believes, truly believes, that 'zero' means something other than what the person with the power of zero believes, then they will be affected by the zero in that matter.

Basically, if they have no concept of zero, he gives them his. If their concept of zero is similar to his, then his concept of zero power will work. The only weakness is if their concept of zero is entirely foreign, because then, he cannot "give" the power of zero to them, since they already have a different idea of zero, one which he cannot understand. He can overcome this weakness with the above method, but I figure that doing so requires him to first think about needing it, but he has a similar problem to Carat, in that--with nothing to challenge him--he's probably as strong as he needs to be and wouldn't think of it, and even if he did, might not even want to remove that unique, special definition of zero.

...And all of this is set-up for the conclusion. If that is the weakness of the power of zero, what kind of definition would be so foreign, so different from our typical understanding, that it would be enough to defeat him? And this is where the new character comes in. This brand-new person, made just to fight Zero, asked Zero--and by extent, me--the question, the defining question: "What if zero isn't nothing...but rather, everything?"

They presented a compelling argument, too. Well, at that point, I'm not sure whether it was them or me doing the argument (probably both), but the point stands: this character, who I don't even know the identity of, was able to ask something that could significantly influence my personal meism: in this case, with an idea, that zero, in a sense, that nothing, is a blank slate: anything can happen from nothing, including the continued nothing. Zero could become anything at any point, including continuing to be zero. It is only when nothing becomes something, when zero becomes a value, that the things it can be become constrained, that the values it can be become limited.

This seems so stupidly fundamental now that I actually have realized it, the kind of thing even a child should know (it's simple math!), yet it was so groundbreaking for me to think about, I'm actually laughing as I write this down. I still haven't fully grasped what this'll translate into with the grander scale of meism, but I know this was something BIG.

Well, don't have much to really say for today. I technically have the time to blog, but not much, especially when distracted. Sorry.

So you know how on some days, you coulda sworn you had something to talk about, but ultimately, you can't remember? Yeah, well, today was one of those days. Unlike most of those days, though...I deliberately found something to fill in the gap. In this case, I figured I'd give you an insight into how my mind works. Specifically, demonstrating my overreactive imagination, and how it has contributed to the sheer amount of chaos, disorder, and junk in my room.

Specifically, by giving an example of what I could have added to it today, but had the restraint not to. (I took pictures on my phone instead.) What do you get when you mix two hairpins (one black, one goldish-brown), one large paperclip, two small colored paperclips (one white, one yellow), one normal (albeit thinnish) paperclip, and five identical ridged paperclips?

...Why, a superhero team of adventuring gladiators/extreme sports athletes, of course!

Yes. Really! That is how my mind weaves things together. It started with two of the ridged paperclips. (I found the other three later.) See, paperclips have this pre-built association in my mind, as a combination of a surfboard (singular), skis (plural), a shield (on the arm), and yet also an offensive weapon, blasting energy in a matter nearly identical to Chad from Bleach's El Directo. Sometimes it can also act as a blade, penetrating and/or slicing, too, though not always; the above are the essentials.

So, I built a character using those two (and then, three, and then, four, and then, five) paperclips. I built another one at nearly the same time, but you'll see him below; I'll focus on one at a time. This character started as nothing significant, as far as surfers are known. His signature attack, 'Tornado Strike', spins hyper-focused energy/wind in a tornado, emanating from the tip of his board/shield while it's on his arm, and letting out a jet of energy from behind to propel the attack forward.

Very powerful, but nothing unique. Then, he gained a second board. With this, he could double his attack, naming it the 'Twin Dragon Fangs'. Aside from attacking with a slight curve, from two different directions, it's not just a double of the tornado strike; it adds something in: both vortexes now spin on TWO axes rather than just one, and given that they collide with each other on the opponent, this destructive force rips at them when the two collide.

Where he truly became unique is when he gained a third board, something that--while I've had other characters do before--in the setting I developed, was something never done before, earning him the name 'The Juggler'. Surfers already have the ability to switch their board from their feet (where they use it to surf through the air), to their hands (as a shield), to a weapon, but usually it's only one or two boards for good reason: the amount of coordination needed to handle switching three at a time is immense.

If he times it right, he can use all three to attack in the same moment (despite attacking usually requiring at least one hand on the board) and this version is called 'Three-pronged hurricane'. What this also adds is a third axis of rotation to each of the three strikes. With this triple rotation, over three points of attack, all at the same instant, basically, there's no way to defend against it all at the same exact time for basically any opponent, since blocking one tornado--while not impossible--usually requires one hand, and they have three they must defend against.

This ability is further evolved when a fourth board is added: 'Spin Cycle' continues with adding a fourth direction enveloping from all sides, but doesn't keep it there. After a set amount of time, all of the attacks reverse direction, effectively doubling the bombardment against the foe and further catching them off-balance.

So what is gained by a fifth board? Keep in mind, this is where juggling truly comes in, because between two feet and two hands, obviously, you've only got four places for a board to be. Well, the fifth ability, simply named 'Five Pointed Star', allows for this ability to continuously function. A limit of his previous strikes is that they all have a set limit on how much "fuel" they have, so to speak. The attack comes, burns out, and slowly dissipates, meaning that if the opponent survives the initial assault, Juggler is left extra-vulnerable to counter-attack because he just spent a lot of energy on a focused strike.

...With Five Pointed Star, as one part begins to burn out, another comes in. It staggers the attacks slightly, such that as one begins the assault, another is recharging, effectively allowing for a technique that is both good offense, and when used properly, the perfect defense.

(Sunday note: Today, two days after creating him, I added a sixth, seventh, and eighth layer: 'Sever Slash' rips open a hole in spacetime such that by the time you see the attack you have already been hit by it, 'Seven Sins' forces the target to relive all the pain and suffering they've ever endured plus all the pain and suffering they've ever inflicted on others, directly and indirectly, and 'Eight Elements', the ultimate attack, is a continuous barrage not just of wind and energy, but of everything all at once.)

His original opponent, and later Lancer, is someone who was known as The Black Rider, champion of the ring. He was possessed by a demonic blade. In this case, you know that bifurcated dual-tip blade I associate with energy so much? The one serrated on one side and smooth the other? The fact that I mentioned hairpins (especially a black one!) should have been a giveaway for this. While this ability is rare in any of my universes, it's not unheard of for the ends (the part that normally shoots two small bolts of lightning, one combined bolt of lightning, or a ball of lightning) to act as a "thruster", propelling the target forward.

This does mean the actual pointy end is facing backwards (the reverse of what you, normally, would want as a fighter), but the black rider had adapted to this and utilized it to run circles around all surfers, when surfers are generally considered the masters of the air. (It's true. Even things like circular shields--you know, the kind you can get from imagining pennies, dimes, etc. as if they were in the air--are second to the surfers speed, because the same blast which propels them forward to deliver their signature strike also happens to propel them forward, with great speed and agility, in the air.)

He fought Juggler before Juggler was Juggler, and won, but for the first time, was soft enough to let Juggler live, albeit barely. (Juggler had to be beaten to an inch of his life and thrown out of the arena in order to be disqualified, since even in that state, he wasn't gonna give up.) When Juggler returned the next year, the only reason he still won is because he had also been training.

In his third fight, he lost, and recognized Juggler as strong, but asked for a rematch next year. The next year, his final fight, he was renamed 'Twin Rider', because he had gained a second, holy, blade, which counteracted and removed the curse from his original blade. He still wanted a good fight, though, and fought Juggler. With just the addition of Spin Cycle, Juggler stood no chance, but when Twin Rider was shown Five Pointed Star, he was happy to lose, conceding defeat once he survived an assault.

Eventually, they encounter a really big surfer, with a freakin huge board, who openly challenges them both. While large, he proved just as fast as Juggler and Twin Rider (who are about the same speed: really, really fast), just as mobile, just as agile, just as aerodynamic, just as acrobatic, basically, an equal in all areas in maneuverability and dexterity...with one key difference: he's got a freakin huge board.

So what does that mean when he uses a basic blast? His basic blast, one which is unpowered and can be fired off repeatedly, time and time again, is enough to just barely get through Twin Rider's defenses, but not enough to actually land a blow. One shot. Repeated shots, on the other hand, prove a bit more problematic, again because he's just as fast, but so much significantly stronger than them.

This, all before he reveals his signature attack: Behemoth Blast, a charged blast. One which he can charge to any strength, drawing in energy from all around him. An attack of potentially infinite strength, which he can very quickly begin gathering energy for, simply by waiting a few seconds between attacks. Ultimately, he ends up unable to puncture through Juggler's defenses, and joins the group, quite obviously, as The Big Guy.

The next uses a seemingly harmless thin surfboard. The danger comes in when it's revealed he can absorb attacks. Attacks he absorbs then gain power inside his body, always there on the surface. In short, if he was struck by metal, he could turn his body metal; if struck by wind, he could turn his body into a whirlwind of destructive force. This absorbed power remains, gathering strength. In fact, if he lets it remain inside his body for long enough, he can become such a master of the technique as to surpass the original owner.

...And equally as strong? He can unleash what he absorbed, using up all that built-up power, in a fine point. Most surfers use a blast which is equivalent to being punched really, really, REALLY hard: blunt force, pushing the target back while inflicting some area of effect damage. His technique is a piercing technique, specifically designed to deliver all that power onto a single, thin 'bullet' of sorts, compacting all the strength into a single shot.

This was enough for Juggler to, on the spot, admit, "Yeah, I can't beat ya." But his power has two inherent weaknesses. One, once released, it's one-shot, meaning if his opponent survives, he has to start over from scratch on gathering up absorbed energy and releasing it. (Though, if he's already absorbed that power before, obviously, he's familiar with it enough that any time spent mastering it won't be lost.)

And two, he can only absorb one power at a time. When faced with Twin Rider, he absorbs the (weaker dark) blast just fine, but is then defeated when Twin Rider delivers the (stronger light) blast, instantly overcoming his defenses and shocking the kid. The final member of the group?

An assassin, who can turn invisible and teleport, with two boards that are specially designed to cut. And his special blast power? Focuses all on a burst of speed to close distance on the target, because his boards contain various poisons (and antidotes) he can inject into the target. I forget how he was defeated, but the latter three basically come with Juggler because Juggler gets them out of trouble with the law. (Twin Rider was the one who offered to travel with Juggler in the first place, after his second defeat.)

Now, how long do you think it took me to make all of this?
That world, I built up there, a full team of characters, some of their personality, how they meet, what they do, and all that good stuff.

...Believe it or not? I made all of that, literally ALL of that worldbuilding, in two, separate, half-hour breaks. Without once thinking of them while on the guard stand (so, not an hour and a half). And during those half-hour breaks, I was multitasking, and when I was doing those multitasking things (job stuff, mostly), I wasn't thinking of the above. The only time I was? When I was just sitting in the back with nothing better to do.

So I tracked down random objects. Using things that to any normal person would be discarded junk. And from them, I built a fairly typical team of mine. (I use hundreds of variants on this sort of thing all the time.) If I had to guess the actual time spent making the team, I'd say a total of 30-45 minutes, tops. All of this. Literally every. single. bit. I worked out in that timeframe. Because I could. Because I saw opportunity. Because I was bored, essentially. I made in that time, what it can easily be said to be better than the basis of most stories is. A fully realized idea, conceptualized in less than an hour.

...Is it any wonder that I'm a writer?
I do that literally every day on a smaller scale. That is why I have so many scattered toys, random twigs, sticks, pins, bottlecaps, loose change, tabs, hairpins, hairties both broken and unbroken, and whatnot, all around me. Every time, they were things I envisioned as being the objects of power (well, not necessarily supernatural; some are science-based or even just plain normal though magical is the norm) of a person, a combatant, and built it up from there.

...Incidentally, on a completely different subject but tied to the above thought processes, this was one reason why at the peak of my mafia-playing skills as mafia, I was so darn good. The buzzword they use is narrative weaving. Taking completely unrelated ideas, and tying them together, to make something coherent.

There was a reason I absolutely dominated my games as a mafiate; I was able to manipulate the flow of information as to naturally tell the stories convenient to me, and the best part is that I usually didn't have to actually spell it out for them; they would take the pieces I laid out for them and connect the dots as I had arranged them to be connected.

At some point, I lost this ability. I don't actually know why for sure, but I have my suspicions. Namely, I think it had to do largely with the feeling of being "at the top of the world", so to speak. I was at the point where if I put any serious effort into the game as mafia, I was going to win that game. I didn't have anywhere to go except down. I was frustrated, wondering "what do I do?", and basically, thinking that there was nowhere I could go, nothing I could do, to get better, and I think that influenced my mindset on the game.

Now, detractors will of course say, "I was there. You were never that good." But it doesn't matter what they say. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. Regardless of whether I was or wasn't that good, the simple fact remains undeniable that I believed I was that good, and the above holds true off of my BELIEF regardless, because emotional state is everything in a game like mafia.

So at some point, I had given up on games as mafia. I had stopped efforting, and I lost my ability to play that well. Since then, I've recovered my drive. I've gotten better. But my skills as mafia are still not what they used to be. I've weaved a narrative a grand total of one time. Only once have I returned to where I was before. (Everyone who knows where I play probably knows which game I consider this return. Doin' the impossible, that was my style.) Mostly now, it's mediocre. My play as mafia used to be defined by "controlling every aspect of the game"; now, it is defined by "surviving just long enough to maybe be of use to my team". Not a bad mafiate member, but not a good one, either.

And actually, this might seem surprising, but I'm okay with that. This isn't intentional sabotage on my part, after all. Maybe subconscious sabotage, but I would never willingly weaken my play as an alignment for any reason. I see it as room to improve. This can be frustrating at times: The feeling after being mafia a few games in a row and having not felt any growth in them? Incredibly agitating. "I didn't get better". "I used to be better than this". "I have fallen back into some bad habits, but haven't picked up the better ones". That feeling sucks.

But the challenge remains there. "I can do better." "I will do better." I think that, eventually, I'll be able to reach the point I want to be at in regards to playing mafia games: the point where I'm doing well as all alignments, but still have room to grow. Whether I regain and then begin to use narrative weaving, who knows? Only time can tell. I do predict that eventually, my writing skills will come back into my play, but in a very good way.

For instance, the scriptwriting I do every day (I've blogged about this before) is a very handy skill to have for dealing with "what ifs" in games, especially as town. "What if X-Y is a mafia-mafia pairing?" as a basic thought I can explore every angle of. I don't think I make full use of this ability. I do however think I use it, on a subconscious level, with no effort put in, because I've got good instincts for calculating that sort of thing apparently. That's just one example of what I'm talking about. I'm sure there are countless more.

I'll continue to play mafia in the foreseeable future. I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I've gotten as good as I can get. I don't think I'll ever stop improving. I think I can get better and better, never perfect, but closer each game and each experience. It's a very productive outlet for my creativity (who knew mafia games could be art? Well, in my head, every game is!), which allows me to grow as a person. And besides. I wouldn't be doing it still if I wasn't still enjoying myself!

So through a combination of first-hand experience and basically everything I've read online, there seems to be two main problems that may be the cause of all these other problems I have, including my ridiculously slow healing.

Namely, need for sleep, and need for a better diet. Now, I've thought, to some extent, those were problems being caused by some other, greater problem. I still stand by that, actually. I was doing fine, then I had trouble sleeping. I was doing fine, but then I had trouble gaining weight and even started losing some.

...So while they might not be the root causes, they are on what I think is the second-lowest level. Sure, something is causing them, but that doesn't mean I can't leave them untreated.

Specifically, it might be possible to build some slightly better eating habits, and some better sleeping tricks. I don't think they'll all be viable and I don't think they'll all work. But if they make any difference at all, I think my whole life will be better as a result.

So gonna try them out, bit by bit, piece by piece.

I'm technically breaking two or three just by typing this blog before I go to bed, but oh well.

I'll figure out how to write earlier.

So I'm typing this as I prepare to leave for whatever event is planned for my square dance group that isn't square dancing.

Anyway, it turns out, just after I last blogged, I had an archive binger. I can tell I did, because I got a huge, two-day spike in page views, 200 or so on the 13th and 300 or so on the 14th, which fits just about right with someone visiting literally every single page of mine, and to them, I once again say: hi! Thanks for reading! And, sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

Stuff happens. Getting my blog up now, though!

So I lost the race against time to blog today, sorry.

I'll blog tomorrow. I got everything I needed to done tonight, so we should be set to go.