Did I say talk tomorrow?

Shoulda known better, given family night and TKD test.
Talk tomorrow, will be needed anyway.

Blah!
Talk tomorrow, nearly 5 am, need sleep, sorry.

So today, I did work on a soft-reboot of The Descended.
...Wrong webcomic. I know! I'm supposed to be working on my other webcomic, not that one.
But the whim struck me to refine the world of Soano, so...I did so.

In particular, one of the things that was always dragging the comic down was that, while I had some idea of what the geography would be like in the world, I didn't have it nailed down. Until today, where I managed to extensively map out the workings of the world, basically every major area. I even drew a map! But I'd have to scan it, so maybe later.

Soano has five continents: two of them are major continents where most important events happen, and three of them are minor continents where almost nothing happens. The major continents are Gaiitia and Faraand. The minor continents are Aatlaan, Saela, and Reino.

Gaiitia is located on the western hemisphere. Its shape is loosely akin to what would happen if you meshed North America and South America into a single continent. Its function in Soano is basically akin to Eurasia: it is the continent that most major recorded instances for the last few hundred years (at the very least) have occurred. It's a political, and adventuring, hotspot. It is divided by the Yule Mountains (I'll need to look at my notes to confirm that's their name), which start at about the midway point in the continent and work diagonally up and to the right at about a ~50-60% angle until reaching the shore at where Yeras Wharf used to be.

This produces North/West Gaiitia, and South/East Gaiitia. Prior to about 20 years ago, Faragawa was the most important city on the continent, forming the foundation for the loose nation of Fargawania. After the city fell into ruins from a mysterious attack, the nearby city of Helops reformed the nation into Helopia. Helopia had many trials, from a demonic invasion to a war with Aqiria, a nation on the North/West side of the Yule mountains, which Helopia eventually won. However, about one year prior to the events of the comic, Helops suffered the same fate as Faragawa, and this time the whole nation was wiped out.

Once the hub of trade for the entire continent, now people must avoid "The Corrupted Lands", for fear of encountering the monsters that dwell there. It is considered suicide to adventure within, because the ruined nation is one of only two places known to spawn godkiller monsters. What's even more scary, it's the only place witnesses have observed godkillers be eaten by monsters even worse than godkillers. (The only reason they survived, they surmised, was because they'd be like an ant would to a human: not appetizing enough to be a meal.)

Still, the land remains important, since Aqiria took in the survivors of Helopia, and formed The Helosian League, a supernation of alliances between many races and nations which has influence basically all over North/West Gaiitia above the equator, along with some influence in the easternmost parts of Faraand, a large part of Aatlan, and even the Myraneans.

In the northwestern-most portion of Gaiitia, there is an ice tunnel, which leads to Faraand. To the west at that same latitude, you get the frigid sea. South of the frigid sea between Aatlaan and Gaiitia is the Black Waters, formerly part of the Green Sea, but which has been corrupted along with the land of formerly-Faragawa.

South of the black waters, you get the Green Sea: this warm waters is where the majority of trade routes currently head, bridging Gaiitia, Aatlaan, and Reino. On the western side of Gaiitia, you get the Arid Ocean: so named because it is one of only two oceans which are difficult to cross and which contain virtually no land. It is the mariners equivalent of a desert, because there's nothing until you've crossed the whole thing in one continuous, draining trip.

The other such place is to the south of Gaiitia, the Empty Ocean. It starts just to the western side of the southern tip, because once out there, there's nothing until hitting Reino from the far side, or stumbling into Saela. It's theorized that the empty ocean may be responsible for Reino's unique properties.

Reino, which is basically shaped like a ring on your standard map, is effectively a hybridization of Antarctica and Australia: it's remote, at the southern end of the map (and evenly split between western and eastern hemispheres), mostly a jungle, and everything is trying to kill you, but it has extreme value for its resources. It's the other location where godkillers can be found.

Aatlaan, which is shaped suspiciously like Africa with a shade of South America, also has some minor Australia traits, in that the land is mostly barren. However, its location makes it an absolutely vital trade hub, and there are still many resources to be found, for those daring enough to brave the wasteland. It is a very common adventuring spot as a result, because there's a ton of loot to be found, but not quite the same level of suicidal risk associated with Reino. (Most Reino residents are scientists and traders, there to provide a stop for ships who are on their way.)

To the east of Aatlaan is the Oceaner's Sea, which is roughly akin to the Mediterranean Sea: it is the trade route of Soano which basically all ships pass through. In the middle, at the coordinates 0,0, lie a series of small islands: the islands of the Myraneans, AKA, the Sea People. (Humans who have adapted to living on water their whole lives, essentially.)

From there, you can get to four of the five continents without traveling into any other sea or ocean. Faraand to the north, Saela slightly to the south and east, Aatlaan to the west, and Reino to the south.

Moving on to Faraand, it is the second major continent in existence. Its shape is basically a combination of North America and Russia, and it actually serves a similar role: it is a bountiful land, with vast unexplored areas. There are far fewer nations than on Gaiitia, with a great deal of isolation. It is the largest continent, albeit not by much, and the only continent that crosses both the latitude and longitude lines that are equivalent to GMT and the equator.

Though, that said, the crossing over the equator does lead to Saela, but more on that in a sec. Faraand is where most adventurers start up. This is actually a bit of a self-feeding loop: adventurers start from Faraand. They ascend to godhood, and protect their homes from threats as a god (because nobody wants to mess with a god). Legends of their exploits spread to locals, who themselves become the next batch of adventurers.

It helps that Faraand is the only continent that can help serve adventurers from level 1 to level 800. Gaiitia is better suited for 50-200, Saela is better suited for 100-300, Aatlaan is better suited for 300-600, and Reino is better suited for 700-999. Like Gaiitia, Faraand also has a division in regions, but the division is more arbitrary rather than geographically-inclined: south/west is called "Somewhere", North/east is called "Elsewhere, southeast at the tip of Saela starts Nowhere, which transitions into Saela.

The major three locations I've mapped out are the Eastern Plains (south of Acadia, and contrasting the Western Plains which exist in Gaiitia), the "road to the middle of nowhere" (where Argus starts out), and Acadia, the current base of operations for the Elementals/Latens, and Argus's home town. Acadia is not considered the capital of the nation, and is actually a very small town, but it's a versatile location because adventurers can find equipment of any level in the local store, and is of extreme sentimental value to many adventurers that consider it their home.

Saela is basically shaped like a sideways South America, but with a touch of Africa thrown in. It also, geographically, would be about where Australia is on our maps, except Saela is over twice that size. Similar function, though: while it is suited for adventurers of a mid-low level, it mostly serves as a land of material goods, which are mined and processed and distributed throughout the world. There are many cities throughout the whole continent, but the majority are along major trade routes.

So like I said, there's two major continents, where the majority of human+ intelligence comes from, and three minor continents, which are less populated. The result: still a bit of a patchwork map in heavy need of detail refinement, but a far more detailed world for them to exist in.

Now, dangit, Bree, go work on the comic you're supposed to.

But I'll talk about what little I can. I started getting up as normal, but then, just went back to sleep, out in the living room instead of in my bed. That ate up three hours. After eating breakfast and daily morning (well, not so much morning today) stuff, I left for the Y, where I was planning on registering for tae kwon do, something I need to do every couple months or so. It was a bit of a wasted trip, but at least I did confirm my new work schedule starts next week, not this week, which is good to know!

Got gas on the way home (actually, had to go a bit out of my way for it, since the way home is straight and I had to turn right), and then...well, my mom was on the desktop. So did I do writing, like a responsible person would?

...Well, just before this blog post, a few sentences, sure. In the rewrite, I'm dealing with the lengthy flashback part which I absolutely hate with a passion. I need to pick up a third-person perspective book and see how other third person writers write their dialog, because this has been my bane for ten years. (I started seriously writing about when I was 13, and my 23rd birthday is coming up, so yes, basically a solid ten years, I've had the exact same struggle with third person dialog. There's a reason so many of my better stories are written in first person!)

I just don't know how to make it work. How do you keep it from being two characters just talking, one quote after another? How?!? By adding descriptors? But there's only so many ways to say "He responds, now he responds, and then there's a further response, leading to this response"! I can break it up somewhat by incorporating body language. But that's not an easy task either. Describing the motions is easy enough, but then how to transition back into the dialog?

I mean...here, take a look at a couple recent bits.
“Is it a ritual?”
 
Sharp mind and a good sense of curiosity; he may surpass me yet. “Good guess, but not exactly.” Leaning down on his knees and facing his son, his blue eyes melted with warmth. “We got gifts. Remember what I said earlier?”
------------
“She’ll figure it out anyway, always does, but by then, I’ll have you hooked. I’m going to give you something you won’t ever want to let go of.” Patting the boy’s shoulders, he finished. “Knowledge. It may not seem like the best present now, but trust me…sooner or later, you’ll love it.”
 
While keeping one eye on his son, the man stood up, turned around, and began walking. “This route’s a longer walk than most, so we’ll have time to talk as we get to where we’re going. Before we you go further, recognize you shouldn’t take a step more if you want to stay at your age. This is the real world; most adults don’t understand it as well as I do.”
------------
Yeah, the dialog itself may be slightly awkward, which certainly doesn't help, but...transitions are HARD. I can't figure them out at all. Not getting repetitive, in dialog content OR in text, is really dang hard! I mean, you can see it just here when I'm blogging. That double-usage of hard? Okay in a blog. If you're at all familiar with me as a person, which literally every reader of my blog is (because only a few people, mostly friends, even bother to read it), you'd already know my natural writing style is verbose and very repetitive. But...as a WRITER.

Not only can I not afford such repetitions, I hold myself to a higher standard such that even if I could, I never would. No matter what my natural writing may be in average-day online conversation, me as a writer is just about as different as the sharp contrast between real-life me and online-me: sure, there are some vague similarities, but we're polar opposites in almost every way. Same goes for my writing. My posting's mundane.

I mean, I do try to make it flow well, sometimes even tell a story, but first and foremost, I'm just doing online talking. Speaking, through text, at a rapid rate.

As a writer...my writing's deliberately with a message, with intent, rather than accidentally having some. Everything I do is carefully, meticulously, finely crafted. The result is that whereas my every-day speech is sometimes artful, it's mostly me; my writing is art, and sometimes has elements of me in it, for better or worse (usually worse).

Hope that makes sense.

Anyway, that was a big of a long tangent. If I wasn't writing, but was in my room, what was I doing? I already told you I wasn't being responsible, so no drawing, either. Not even reading.
Gaming.
That Nemesis game is a bit addicting, but I removed the CD and am planning on putting it back in storage, so today will be the last one lost to it. To describe my experiences, I actually think that I'm a better player this time through than I was years ago. I managed to win the battle where you're defending against Carthage, which I had lost the first time through, even when getting Rome's reinforcements.

I also won the first map in the Carthage campaign. I think this is something I may have managed last time, but what I definitely did not manage was to capture the city, which this time I did. Unfortunately, I quit the campaign there while I was ahead, because I'm pretty sure I was about to lose, big time.

See, the thing is...while I fully, fully, fully anticipated the betrayal, what I did not expect was for the goal to be so ridiculously hard: sneak a general by their fort to the pass they came from? There's only one route there, which takes them directly past the city I'm now supposed to capture. And in a war between my city and theirs...my city, by my own doing partially, is royally screwed with low food, no gold, and whatnot, against a fully functional, fully upgraded, fortress.

Now, I played underhanded expecting the betrayal. See, when they captured buildings, I let the enemy recapture them, and then I immediately took them for myself. In this manner, I managed to control over half the map. Doesn't matter, though, because they refused to give me troops after a point, and had, to put things mildly, a freakin huge army.

Controlling the majority of buildings (including all three raiders on the map) doesn't do much good if he has literally hundreds of troops to my maybe-80. And this was after I had let him fight the enemy troops. Like, I was deliberately not engaging the enemy troops unless absolutely necessary, instead letting him get his armies massacred, because, again, I saw the betrayal coming.

It's just that seeing it coming, and being able to do anything about it, are two very different things.

The remaining three scenarios are all sieges. One siege, I put some serious time into. I was doing pretty good, too, but then suddenly, I was overwhelmed when roman troops appeared out of nowhere, and I went from 3 armies to none in seconds flat. They said to slow the attacks, capture the stone outposts; this, I did. The attacks were infrequent, and each didn't do anything. So I continued my efforts, until BAM. Suddenly, SURGE OF TROOPS, SIEGE EVERYWHERE, OH GOD WHYYYYYY.

A second siege was basically "how to survive a select number of Roman troops".

Now, I actually did fairly well in this one! The goal wasn't to capture all the roman positions. It was to eliminate all the roman armies. And I got it down to half of one army. Half, of one army. They started with like ten or so, against my three or so. So, with some smart defensive play, I was this close to winning...except, I didn't have enough troops to pull it off. I was out of gold, and low on food, and with zero population to spare. (The minimum settlement population is 10.)

The third, the Punic Wars from the Roman side, I started, but didn't bother to go far. I figured I might stand a chance, but I probably was screwed. So! Aside from the tutorial, I won one campaign I never could before, and got further on a second than before, attempting three others I'm fairly certain I never tried before (all three looked unfamiliar), which means I'm better than before.

This was not all today, thankfully, spread out across the last few days, butstill. Good distraction, time for work. (Well, Jeopardy is first, but I'll be back at it soon!)

That means no long posting. But I'll say I did get half of what I set out to do done today, and then some. Still need to do the important half, which is actually writing my novel and drawing my webcomic (I'm not gonna make July if I procrastinate any further), but...progress is progress!

I'm mad.
Very, very, VERY mad.
Seriously ticked off, mad.
I spend a whole hour, at minimum.
ONE. WHOLE. HOUR.
Typing up a beautiful blog post.
It was magnificent.
It was finished!

All it needed was a title!
I thought I had even copy-pasted it as a precaution!
But apparently, that didn't take.
And you know what happened?

Weebly, while I was in the blog post editor, decided, for SOME reason, "oh, your session is expired, let's throw out what you're doing and force you to log in again, it couldn't have been that important now could it?"

It's not like I poured out significant time into it or anything.

OH WAIT.
I DID.

I. WAS. LITERALLY. SECONDS. SECONDS. SECONDS. S E C O N D S! FROM. POSTING. MY. ENTRY.
Not minutes.
Not, "oh, let's make this one change here and there".
SECONDS.
And it's all gone.
All of it.

THAT TOOK TIME TO WRITE.

It was well-written.
It had a nice flow to it.
I emptied the details from my brain, fully confident that, now in text, I wouldn't need them up here. I dumped it all in there.

And now.

GONE.

uiapejfp93q84fuj439p8fgjuviav9iweajiw3jmf93pgijmp9qijgv9ivnieaaaaaaagjuighjuhhhggggggggi94gSJFHIJFIES!!!!!

Nothing like this.
Nothing.
Has ever happened before.
So how was I to expect complete and total disaster?

I'm just...not in the mood for continuing right now.
I know. That's kind-of selfish. I'll have to retell the detail about my mouth. (In hindsight, that part was a little bit squicky to be without a trigger warning anyway, so next time I'll make sure I have one.) I'll have to retell the details of the Rubyverse one by one. Things covered in my now-lost second entry. I'll have to save the third for another time.

I should be restarting while the knowledge is fresh. About the registration, about the draft, about villains, about superheroes in war, about black ops, about medics, about the loophole abuse, about it all.

But.

The mood is gone.
Right now, there's a war in my mind. Apathy on one part. Rage in another. Desire to continue anyway and let this blog be a segue into it as yet one more. Sadness also is there. All in all, there's that heavy siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.
Part of me wants to call me a quitter for this.
That same part says I'm giving up.
Maybe it's right.
But...while there's a large part of me that doesn't want to give up...
...There's another part of me that does.

And...I just don't think I can redo it all right now.
I could, in theory.
I can force my muse to make it, overcome all the (correct) assertions that what I'd write would be a pale imitation to the lost original.
But...I don't think I'd be able to succeed, and even if I could.
I just...don't want to.

I need a break from blogging, to do...something...something else, not this.
Because this frustration, it's just...AHG.

That moment when the very thing you were doing for comfort becomes a source of pain?
That moment when the thing meant as a stress relief is now causing extreme amounts of it, along with the following anger?

That's this moment, right now.

Very happy at the moment, and ridiculously excited. There's a lot going on today, so I'm gonna be rather busy. For a start, since there was a change in schedule, I have an episode of DBZ Kai to watch. Later tonight, there's also a Lumineers concert that I'll be listening to live, on the radio. But in-between those, I have blog posts to write!

Starting with this one. I actually wrote an entire song, well and true, properly WROTE the song.
Well, for the most part.
I'm missing the bass guitar for the chorus, and since the song is founded on that (it's the strongest, main instrument--this is a variant on THE tune), I can't write the chorus until I figure out for sure what it'll be.
But otherwise!
Start to finish, I've written the entire song. The bass drum, the hi-hat, the snare, the bass guitar that provides the foundation, the electric guitar that provides support (this is an inversion of the norm, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that it's been done before), I figured out everything for the song. It's not that unusual.

Eight measures of the bass guitar (which uses the one-and-two, three, four variant on THE tune), at some point with the electric guitar joining in. When the electric guitar joins in, it matches the beat that the bass drum does. (Though it's not playing the same note over and over again, obviously.)

Then, eight more beats with the percussion: the bass drum hits on one, the hi-hat on two, and the snare I've currently got matching the one-and-two, three, four, with the 'two' being both sticks hitting at once (I forget the term, and am too lazy to look it up).

Then, the first verse begins.
I know,
I wanna be free
Just go,
Wanna be me.

Saving from
Those oppressing
Using love
In what we preach.

(As it) just so
Happens to be
Laying low
Is temporary.

Yeah I know
I wanna be me
So with love,
I'll plant my seeds.


Then comes the chorus. If it matches verses (the above verse was double-length), it'll probably be 8 measures.
While I don't know the most essential two parts, I can tell you that the bass drum and hi-hat are now at 1, 3 and 2, 4 respectively (double), and the electric guitar has doubled its notes as well. The snare is now set at 1-and-2, 3-and-4, with the hits on 2 and 4 being both sticks.

After one time through (or two, if the chorus ends up only being 4 measures in written words, most likely), we get to the second verse, which I'm just now writing for this blog post. (Both time and space constraints prevented me from writing it before.)

Rivers flow,
Neverending
Sometimes slow,
Always progressing.

(Do ya) stand alone,
Against history
Or join the boat
Be accepting.


Then you get the chorus again, and a transition into the bridge. For that, no percussion, no electric guitar. Just the bass and the singer. In this case, the bass is modified to be closer to the tune (specifically, the "string instrument" part): kind-of staccato (that is, as sharp as can be), and in the original one, two, three-and-four formatting THE tune uses. (This song was built using that tune as a template, deliberately rather than accidentally.)
The lyrics for the bridge go as such:
My prayer,
My dream,
Is fair
For free

My hope,
To see
I've sown
Some trees.

My prayer,
The dream,
For fair,
And free

I hope,
I'll see
My sown
Kind trees.


...It miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight be obvious, but on a spur-of-the-moment writing (I literally wrote the music first, and needed lyrics to fit it, rather than the normal vice-versa, so I...improvised), the song has an obvious message in it about being pro-love, all kinds of love, especially of the !cishet variety.

I absolutely love what I made. The best part is, since I wrote this all down, both in here and on the original piece of paper, and it's based on THE tune (which I have burned into my brain), I can never forget this. I can replay it, endlessly, as often as I want to. Now, granted. Me being human, I can't bring all of the elements to life at once. It'd be impossible enough in reality, but it's actually not easy to do even in my head. I've meshed two or three parts together at the same time, and they work well together, but the only way I could confirm it all works together is to actually write the song in the first place.

What I do need to do is give some additional notes. When I wrote the lyrics, the voice I was mentally singing it to, the tune, was definitely Curt Cobain, as in, some Nirvana tune. (Maybe Rape Me, but I'm only like 40% on that.) I was not writing the lyrics to be an exact duplicate to the bass notes, and if you try saying them out loud, you should be able to tell as much. There may have been some Foo Fighter influence as well, which probably came in about half-way through the first verse, where I decided to name the song "The hope". (Result? In an absolute split second, my mind instantly went, "It sucks" and began throwing around extras like "The pain, it's real", and such forth. Dave Grohl, this is what you've done to me.)

The electric guitar? Takes heavy cues from two songs. One, What I've Done by Linkin Park. The second, using similar notes and timing, is some other song by some other artist. I don't actually know the song, I don't actually know the artist. I can't recall the full nature of it, either, because Linkin Park is blazing through my mind dominantly right now. It might be a band that uses trumpets prominently? Something like Cake, then? But I can't be sure on that, either. (I'd say like maybe 10%.)

So, yeah. Neither the vocals nor the electric guitar are meant as an exact duplicate of the foundation bass guitar, though the electric guitar is closer.

Anyway!

One down, two to go! (At least two.)

Uhg. So right now, I'm in a state where I kind-of wish I were sick, because being sick would be a nice, convenient excuse to be slightly less miserable at home.

But while being really sick would allow that small comfort, I know it's not true sickness. It's not cough-cough pseudosickness. It's not sore-throat pseudosickness. That, I can fix easily. That, I can also live with easily.

Oh, no. It had to be, and if I describe this in explicit detail it'd venture into the TMI zone, digestive issues. Some stomach pain of some kind, to use the most general terms. (Specifics, again, are TMI.)

Furthermore, I'm kind-of burning up at the moment, but not enough for it to actually be anything that'd register. My house, and especially my room, is for some ungodly reason an oven; it's 81 degrees out there and my room (which is normally cooler) is WARMER than that somehow.

Did I mention it's 11:45, 15 minutes from midnight? And that, every night for the last few weeks or so, I've been sleeping under blankets because if I didn't I'd end up too cold?

So this heat wave is making already-uncomfortable conditions that much worse.

I do have a couple of things I want to do though. Like maybe pursuing a written letter about my daily life with autism, which would be interesting.

I also owe you all a ramble on freedom, but while I don't have much time to do anything (anime starts in 15 minutes), I don't quite have THAT much time, so it'll have to wait.

Sorry.

So you know how when I listed all the computer games I played as a kid, there was one game that I said was about the Roman empire, but I couldn't remember its name?

The good news is...I found the game!
The bad news is...I found the game, installed it, and it works!
At least I can't be addicted forever. While I looked it up and apparently there are cheat codes, at least during scenarios, the cheat codes don't work. Meaning that the only way to beat the RIDICULOUSLY-hard campaign is to...fair and square, as intended, beat the ridiculously hard campaign which I was never able to do! So my addiction to it is gonna be short-lived.

Anyway! The name of the game is Nemesis of the Roman Empire. It has four civilizations you can play as. Romans are one, haven't replayed them but by memory they've got the toughest, most expensive units in the game, taking time to build up a force but dominating once they do. Carthage is a second one. Not sure which they are, if they're the civilization using the desert-theme or if that's the Iberians, but whichever uses the desert theme, they rely a lot on gold, except for Elephants. Their units are expensive gold-wise, but cost very little relative to the Romans if memory serves, especially with strategic usage of the blacksmith.

The third civilization I believe is the Gauls. They were the tutorial civilization...I think. Two civilizations are vaguely similar from memory, I just don't know which two they were.

Anyway, the civilization of the tutorial, whatever it was (stone-structure-based), is food-centric in contrast to the desert-themed's gold-centric. Most of their units are cheap, costing very little gold, but use quite a bit of food.

The game allows units to level up; units that level up gain health primarily. The game also allows units to have items, with items often granting some sort of bonus, with some items able to be used, like healing water. A major mechanic of the game is that units can be assigned to a hero, becoming a higher level and getting an experience bonus when attached to one. Heroes also serve as major unit hubs as a result, efficiently transporting them together, and serving as great ways to keep track of several things at once.

There's no building buildings in the game. Instead, a major component of the game is capturing buildings, that start with a loyalty. When loyalty reaches zero, the building converts to be on the side lowering its loyalty. Loyalty doesn't lower if units loyal to the building are nearby.

Another major aspect of the game is that food, in addition to recruiting units and being used for various upgrades, must be fed to units. All units have a food rating. When they get to 0 food, they slowly begin to starve, losing HP. (I believe the minimum is 10% of their full health. They cannot die from starvation.) Units do tend to heal when well-fed though, at least most seem to. There are, of course, healing units to speed this up.

All in all, I have very fond memories of the game, but while playing single matches is all nice and fun and all, the campaigns each feature at least one level that, where if you make so much as a single mistake, you get overrun and annihilated in short order. Seriously, at one point, I remember even looking up a walkthrough for one of the levels, and the strategy the official walkthrough gave was basically, "Do what you were doing, just...do it better, and faster, with greater accuracy."

No, seriously. Keep in mind that by the time I was even trying the campaigns, I had played many matches on single-player with tweaked difficulties here and there. Still didn't make much of a difference; I got massacred. If memory serves me, not on the first level of the campaign. Oh no. The campaign lures you into a false sense of security by giving you some easy missions any ol' player can complete just fine...and then...BAM! MOTHER OF GOD, WHY ARE THERE SO MANY UNITS COMING AT ME OH GOD I'M GOING TO DIE WHERE DID THESE GUYS ALL COME FROM?!?!?

Granted, this was years ago, so I don't know how I'll fare with more experience.
My prediction:
...However traumatic my memories were, I vastly underestimated how bad it was.

So today, I said I'd elaborate on my depression. Aside from the obvious not getting work done, there's the classical symptoms I'm also displaying: heavily getting distracted on trivial things, the urge to play games instead of work, the musical muse inside of me being RIDICULOUSLY active, it's all there.

It's even worse than normal, actually. Even my subconscious is depressed. My dreams as of recently have all been fairly dark. Main characters would die, often pointlessly, and sometimes, were flat-out giving up on life. These dreams have been fairly violent, often with downer or at best bittersweet endings to them. They even feature shooting the shaggy dog moments, where hope is built, a setback is given, the characters struggle to reach the next objective, but fail, and so on, until a final end comes, which is often one of the scenarios I talked about, including a downer ending.

Now, mind you. As far as creative juices go, this can cause great storytelling. Some of my best story ideas have been spawned from the darkest depths of my imagination. Heck! My current novel runs on a fairly dark world. Butstill...

It's not a pleasant place to be.

Right now, frankly the only thing keeping me from playing Majesty (my latest gaming urge) is the inability for me to do so, since 1, I can't locate either of our Majesty disks, and 2, even if I could some sneaky windows update disabled the ability to do so. (As in, Majesty was working just fine for YEARS on all our machines, then one day, on vacation, both myself and my brother tried using it. Both of us using the same computers we had used, which had played the game fine for years, and yet suddenly, inexplicably, the game refused to run.) The latter, now with internet access (which we lacked at the time), is something I could maybe possibly troubleshoot. But with the former, I can't.

Oh well. At least I'm not readdicted to Civilization III Conquests. Which can, and has, eaten up days of my time. (I did have a brief relapse where I played the Mesopotamian campaign again, this time as the Sumerians instead of Persians, on one higher difficulty level, blowing my previous score out of the water, but I stopped myself there. Once through each campaign was enough.)

Soyeah.

Depression. It sucks.