More specifically, about elements. I may or may not have rambled on the subject before, but elements are a thing of great fascination to me. I figured the best way to start is to start by talking about the basic western and eastern element systems.

A commonly-forgotten fact about the western-element system is that it is not, as media commonly portrays it, actually a four-element system. The western element system we are familiar with has a fifth element, a "heavenly" element, Aether/Ether, the element of the stars, what the heavens are composed of. But I'll talk about that more in a bit.

The "worldly" elements were the four elements making up the world: fire, water, air, and earth. We all know the four-element chart. Water, opposite of fire; Air, opposite of earth; Water beats fire beats air beats earth beats water is often also used. There's so many things about this system which are commonly seen. It's a pretty standard system, subverted plenty of times, and people often "get creative" by later introducing a 'fifth element' of their own (which is usually something completely different from the original fifth element but not necessarily!).

I'm not quite as familiar with the eastern-element system, but they also use a five element system. I believe their traditional system is Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. But coincidentally, at least in my own elemental creativity, I will be talking about those later, too.

The next step up is the eight-element system. It keeps Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, but adds Light, Dark, Ice, and Energy to the spectrum. This also has a side-effect of changing elemental dynamics. Water gets paired with Energy; Fire gets paired with Ice. Because eight elements are more complicated, there's a lot more diversity and interpretation in there. Do you have a wheel on elemental affinities (i.e., one element beats another but is beaten by a third)? The possibilities are far more diverse than with only four.

This is the system I tend to most commonly use, thanks to my upbringing in Artix Entertainment's first game, Adventure Quest. It was what I used in my previous webcomic (speaking of which I made art for that today!), and it's what I use in Red Hood Rider, too. I like the eight-element system because of the incredible flexibility it provides. A four-element system gives you access to some creative ideas (for instance a favorite of mine is, "four elements, four fundamental forces of the universe"), but an eight-element system just feels a whole lot more ~official~ I suppose it would be, in that when I have it I feel more grounded in reality. It provides the best balance between having a lot and having a little, because once you expand beyond eight, there's no limit to what you can give.

For instance. The obvious step up from eight is the ten-element system. Generally the simplest and easiest way to get a ten-element system is to subdivide the Earth-element. (You can blame Bionicle for what I ended up with.) You can subdivide it into any number of different things, but I have a preference for these three:
-Metal
-Rock
-And Nature.

Included in Nature would therefore be Wood. The reason I like these three is because these three are all relatively broad, yet common, elements which encompass essentially everything Earth has to offer. Metal is everywhere in our world. If Metal is not classified as its own element, it's under Earth because where else would it go? It's not fire, it's not ice, it's not energy, it's not water, it's not light, it's not dark, it's not air. It's either a part of Earth, or it's its own element.

Avatar: The Last Airbender may have popularized the idea of metal as an element (at least a sub-element of earth), but the idea has been around since long before then. It makes sense, after all. The explanation given is usually to the effect of what Avatar gave, in that metal is just refined rock, but I like to separate metal and rock.

Rock is what covers a significant portion of the Earth, too.

And Nature is what makes up life. I tend to not call it Life as an element (because that itself can be an element, but see below), but the sentiment is there: it is both flora and fauna, in that it is everything organic, more or less, in the world. It WOULD be possible to subdivide it in half, into said flora and fauna (making it basically be Wood / Nature as two separate things), but this is not something I often do.

...However, something I DO do? Often, if this still feels too narrow--and it usually is--instead of not including an element named Earth, I will include an element named Earth, which would be the broad sweeping category of "everything on the planet (more or less) not fitting into one of those three categories". If sand/dirt don't count as Rock, they'd count as this version of Earth. Things like poison, acid, gasses which aren't classified as air, and the like would also fit into here.

We're up to eleven at this point.

Then comes the biggie category. Spirit/Soul, Aether/Ether, Heart/Love/Life, Heavens/Stars/Divinity/Holy, Ethereal/Dream, Ki/Chi/Xi/Chakra/Body Energy. You can potentially get 10-12 elements from these, or you could lump them all into one element of your choice name. They cover similar concepts which is why I lump them together, but they are not in fact synonymous. I tend to separate them out into about two (maybe three) categories: "heavenly otherworldly element", and "material otherworldly element"/"earth otherworldly element".

That is: I create one element which is an element that exists outside of the normal plane of existence, on a level associated with divinity. Spirit/Soul/Heavens/Stars/Divinity are the likely candidates for the type of name I would give that element, in that it is something on another realm and that realm is higher.

I also create one element which exists outside the normal plan of existence, which is otherworldly, and yet closely mirrors and is very directly tied to our world. Think like "The Force", or similar: something which is likely to exist in most things (or at least most living things if not). This can be Spirit/Soul/Aether/Ether/Heart/Life/Ethereal/Dream/Body Energy/Ki/Chi/Chakra.

...But often, that won't quite be adequate enough, in that you can have a need to explore something which is neither of those and yet still doesn't have a negative connotation associated with it. Something which is often considered stronger, but isn't necessarily so, in that it is an element that is necessary for the others to exist and yet it is not something superior in of itself. Soul/Heart/Life/Dream/Ethereal are the most likely candidates for this element.

Of course. There is an element that can go as far back as being the ninth element. Ninth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth by this point. This element is one of my most common elements. It is, simply put: Void. Void is my staple element once I expand outside of the elemental-eight. With an eight-element system it gets lumped in as part of Darkness but the moment I free myself of that restriction, Void is in as one of my elements.

Void is an otherworldly element, yet it represents more of "nothingness" than it does "something". If I have just one between all the words I gave above, this is a binary relationship in that void is the opposite of that one. But if I have more than one, it goes something like this.

The more divine/heavenly one can be thought of as "purity of thought", more or less. The more earthly one can be thought of as "pure potential". The third would be more "purity of existence". The void, in essence, is "purity of absence". It is most strongly a counter to the first two in that it is not strictly speaking tied to death (though if death is not an element, it is likely under the realm of Void), but it is tied to the nothingness associated with a purity which stands in contrast to them.

Nothingness is itself a potential element, but it's not one I'm going to include in the list. Instead, making the list in spite of it being tied to body energy/heart/life among others, is Blood. When I expand my element system beyond the eight given, blood is often among my list, because blood serves a purpose and has a great versatility within it.

Fire, Ice, Energy/Lightning, Water, Light, Darkness, Air/Wind, Earth, Nature, Metal, Rock, Void, Blood. And then we get to choose how many of those otherworldly elements we use. At least one, with three being what we want to max out on. Which would give us a nice comfy 16-element system. This could be worked down to 15 by scrapping one. It could be worked down to 13 by two of {scrapping the second and leaving only one, combining blood with one, combining an earth element}, if I did my math right.

But this is where I tend to draw the line. 13-16 elements is about as far as I'll go. You can go further, of course. To pull up a TVTropes list of commonly-used elements (when I say 'just earth', btw, I mean "earth or an element which in an 8-element system would be part of earth"),
​-Storm (I have no clue but it's not really an element)
-Gaia (just earth)
-Machines (really just use Metal)
-Crystal (just earth)
-Death
-Poison (just earth)
-Lava/magma (seriously it's just fire)
-Sun (it's just light)
-Sound (mostly just air though this is a serious contender for its own element)
-Radiation (just earth)
-Magnetism (just energy)
-Smoke/gas/mist (air or earth)
-Explosions (mostly fire with maybe some air butyeah definitely not an element on its own for me)
-Mud (just earth)
-Hellfire (just fire will do nicely thankyouverymuch)
-Illusion (neat power, but not an element)
-Time
-Space
-Gravity (strong power but not in of itself an element--it's something some elements may control though)

Some of these are things that I can probably flesh out more, but basically, most of them are covered already. You might note looking at the list that I left some off, but that's because the ones I left off were ones which had names I didn't use but were describing things I already have used.

I'm content with my little expansion, though I think I should off of an expanded-element system list what each element would actually do. Ah well. Some future blog I suppose.

And I have no excuse for that. I also haven't blogged in that time. I did manage to get my stream for games working today so I did stream some of that, for...some endless number of hours, actually. Way, way too many to be honest. Ah well. Such is the perils of spending time intimately. <3

Meaning I had tae kwon do today. In my defense, there was shutdown week, plus I believe a second week with no class where the instructor wasn't around, so it was easy to forget what with me being home all the time, butstill, it's a good thing I remembered.

Class was actually quite good. I don't remember the details of what made it particularly good, but I have strong memories of it being good. That's about the most noteworthy thing in the day though. I'm probably forgetting all kinds of things, but such is the perils of writing an entry right before you go to bed. Ah well.

This time, the messup was in my inability to get the XSplit Broadcaster working for a game. I tried trouble-shooting with one of my girlfriends (and they have quite an amount of experience on the subject), but we just flat-out ran out of ideas and googling the problem provided no help either. So instead of me gaming, I settled for watching them.

That's actually about all I can think about as far as events in today. I mostly didn't do much of anything.

Today I did have a date with the girlfriend I had an anniversary with, which would in a sense make it our anniversary celebration. I wanted to do so on my laptop, but my laptop is apparently unable to use the internet for any advanced internet task. I can do google searches. I can visit forums and the like. Emails are iffy; I could kinda sorta vaguely maybe read them, but even that was strenuous. I could download stuff, but that stuff if it needed an internet connection (e.g. Messenger) wouldn't work.

Basically, the basics work...but anything more advanced than that won't. The laptop's on the older side, 2009. That's past its prime since computers especially laptops do rapidly age, both in hardware and in software. (Hardware, they wear out. Software, the software becomes more resource-intensive demanding more for simple tasks to the point where the limited amount of hardware can't handle what the software asks it to.)

It has only 25% of its hard drive free. The far larger problem is the memory, which always maxes out. CPU can be a problem about half of the time, though it's not something I'd call the real issue. When you put these together with the above and with my own mismanagement, you can bet that the laptop is effectively worthless for modern-day purposes.

It can be used for writing, it can be used for art, it can be used for CD-era gaming (i.e. Civilization, Starcraft), and similar basic tasks. It can even do many of those at once! (Bad idea, but it can.) But whether the junk I put on there is responsible or it's just a byproduct of the laptop's age and similar stuff, the result, the outcome, ultimately doesn't change: I can't use it to chat, which meant that didn't work out, unfortunately.

Still, we had a lovely date anyways. We got to play games by VasantJ. I played Antivillains for them, and they played Medieval Cop III, Medieval Shorts, and Medieval Shorts 2. It was fun all-around, and just a great experience. Watching them laugh was worth it, and I got to see their reactions to a bunch of stuff. I also got to pick up on a few things (and refresh my memory) I missed when I myself played the games, so it was good for me in that regard.

I just love the series and sharing it with one of my girlfriends is the greatest thing ever. I'm pretty tired though and it's incredibly late as a result of us dragging the date on, so I'm going to go to bed. It wasn't nearly as long as I wanted to be but oh well. It was good time, it was enjoyable, it was an ~experience~.

But now, I need sleep.

This time, the film I watched with one of my girlfriends was Loving Annabelle. I thought it was a good film, though it did have rather the abrupt ending. I can't really think of anything else I've done today which probably means I spent all my time on playing games. Oh, I guess some of that game time was a game I can name--Danganronpa. I'm only to day two, before anything has really happened, but I've gotten a start at least.

I also recently had my three-month anniversary with one of my girlfriends, but thanks to scheduling difficulties we haven't yet had a chance to celebrate it. (Basically they've been swamped with life stuff they couldn't avoid, so finding the time where we're both around right now is a bit difficult but we'll manage something.) That's about all I can think about for today; it wasn't really a day which was a long-ramble day so much as it was a day where I just...

...Well, was enjoying the moment. Loving my time. Having fun, having love, just spending my time in ways which were good. It's something to more feel than describe. It's one of those things where I had so much of a good experience that I can't really word my experience because it's an experience, something lived rather than described, if that makes sense.

And today has been a long, interesting day. It started with me waking up early to a noise I suspect was an animal, and deciding to sleep for as long as I could afford. (This may have contributed to why I forgot about my coffee.) With my nap finished, I went about signing the paperwork I needed to, eating breakfast, and getting ready to leave.

It turned out we arrived early, though I needed to use a bathroom and yet the office was locked for lunch. Fortunately, there was a Starbucks nearby and I used the facility there. Since using the facility of a place you don't actually use the service of is bad form (if it's even allowed at all), I bought the smallest iced mocha they had (I don't know sizes that well--12 ounce?), which was acceptable at a little under $5.

We arrived just in time for the place to be open, allowing for an earlier appointment and processing of paperwork. While there in the lobby, I discovered my water bottle inside of my shoebag might have had a slight leak, but the hope of mine is that the lid just came slightly off of what it should be and that it's now fixed. (Otherwise I'm gonna have a wet shoebag since I put it back in.)

We also met a couple of old ladies who, by coincidence, I later saw entering a completely different building in an entirely different city down the line. (We went to Snohomish after our appointment in Everett--we were there for my dad to buy cider for tonight; presumably, they were there to pick up an antibiotic of some kind but since I was in the car when I spotted them later I couldn't exactly hear them conversing.)

Anyway, as for the actual appointment: I told the assistant the problem with my feet. Getting new orthodics was a secondary purpose behind the visit, with the primary reason to be taking care of the pain, which I described in some level of detail, and also gave the length of time this had happened and how it was getting worse rather than better in spite of me doing less and less.

The foot doctor when he came in kept the actual analysis of my feet very brief. He did take a look at me and ask me a few questions (namely, whether I wore shoes inside of my house; I do not), and came to a rather quick conclusion. He made an unusual suggestion: for me to buy specialized shoes that I could wear inside, comfortable yet offering support, more or less.

Presumably, he believes the problem to be how much I walk around barefooted. And to be fair, he's probably right. I was told that he is a really, really good foot doctor if you tell him everything and while directly to his face I didn't quite get the chance I did divulge I'm pretty sure all the important information to his assistant who should then have carried the info on to him, so he should know everything.

More than that, I know from personal experience how much he'd be right. I walk on the pool deck as part of work. I walk in my house all the time. I am really really really fond of pacing back and forth to the point of it being instinctual. I stand a lot and so on and so forth--even cutting down on such things I still do them often. So if he says that those special shoes should help, he's probably correct.

The rest of the visit was spent on the secondary concern, my orthotics. I got them years ago, so there was the concern both that my feet could have changed/grown and that the orthotics could have worn down. He didn't really give me a verbal answer about the state of my feet (he did give my feet a lookover at least a couple of times so he was examining my feet meaning he was looking at things and not relying on just my verbal description), but did confirm that the orthotic--while mostly okay--was beginning to have the arches degrade. (A problem since I have high-arch feet.)

So we took scans of my feet which will be used to craft a new orthotic in 2-3 weeks, something I anticipate will be placed in my new shoes. In the mean time, we've got this other special shoe which I can't remember the name of to buy, which will hopefully help me out. (It was described to me as being completely rubber, and like a sandal, except something else. I don't quite remember what the 'something else' was, but I was told there are two variants, one which goes between toes and another which has a strap over the feet; the version with a strap over the feet can be worn with socks.)

Basically it's something I could wear on the pool deck, at home, and other various places. What exactly it'd be, not quite sure but we have a coupon at a certain store for the product so it shouldn't be that hard for me to actually get what I need since we can once at that store if it's not immediately obvious just ask an attendant essentially and from there get guidance to what I do need.

When this will happen, don't know exactly. But while I didn't get any hard answers from the podiatrist, I think that following his advice has an actually-realistic chance of helping. I'll have a baseline for what is and isn't working as well when we get the shoe and the orthodic. Worst-case scenario where the pain doesn't go away, we go back, explain the issue is still there, and tell him how long it's been since we tried his solution.

We'll just have to wait and see I guess. Hopes are high. It's something we'll have to look into. But anyway. Tonight was family night. My sister came, so it was all five of us who're in this state--my mom is, of course, still visiting her family. I don't know how long that will last exactly; I think a week and a half or so but I also don't remember when exactly she left (it was in the middle of a date with one of my girlfriends, at 3 AM), meaning I don't know when she'll be back.

But anyway. We ended up watching the film Fargo--it was pitched to us as being a comedy. From a...certain...point of view, you could say that was true. But I was skeptical it'd be something my family would enjoy because I was pretty sure it wasn't really actually a comedy. (They agreed with my assessment after the film.) My vote was for The Lion King (believe it or not, not actually my suggestion!), but I got outvoted and overruled, so I just sighed and went along with it.

Ironically enough I was probably the member of the family who got the most enjoyment out of the film because to me it was okay (just not great), whereas the rest of the family had an active dislike of it. There were many a comments of "We should have gone with The Lion King", and even "Shawn of the Dead was better, and Shawn of the Dead wasn't good". (Again, family consensus more than my own, though I have to admit much of the humor for that film is something I just wasn't enthused by since me not being from the United Kingdom a lot of the things which would enhance the viewing experience were lost on me.)

I liked Fargo enough to get addicted to a bit of a troping sprawl on the film actually, in that I had zero TVTropes tabs open prior to the film; over five hours later, I've reduced it down to five tabs open. (Admittedly most of those are short pages and none of them really link to anything I'd also add to the reading pile, butstill.) But I do admit, I would have preferred The Lion King for some personal bias reasons.

That being said, I think it was an okay film to have seen once. Past this point, definitely woulda gone The Lion King over it. (Though next time we've got this group I should remember to suggest the film Mastermind since that's a film I've wanted to watch ever since I first saw it advertised yet I keep on forgetting about its existence. Hey, they almost watched The Lion King, so why not?)

​And yeah, that's pretty much been my day. With it being close to the time most people would start their Saturday, I should wrap my Friday up and go to bed. I'm at just about the point where my midnight coffee has worn out and I'm actually feeling sleepy. (Which makes sense since if I remember correctly, one of my family members remembers reading an article which stated that science had basically proven that coffee can disrupt sleep for five hours after consumption; it's been over five hours so the caffeine should no longer be impacting me, at least in theory. It certainly FEELS like it no longer is.)

From my understanding, my appointment with a podiatrist is tomorrow. Not a moment too soon, too, given the pain. Apparently it's rather convenient because my dad also has a need to visit there so we're both going but that's not really important. The important thing to note is...finally getting my foot looked at! Here's to hoping they can identify the problem and give me a solution.

I did spend a rather significant chunk of today on a date with one of my girlfriends, but I don't really have anything to talk about outside of that. I'm sure I've had blog ideas to be inspired by (as in, things which're ramble-worthy) and there was plenty on the date worth talking about, but here at 4:30 am, there's not exactly much I really want to talk about since the first thing on my mind is bed.

Also given by my typo rate and lack of coherent train of thoughts (or rather more specifically me thinking one thing and typing another vaguely-related but not really properly), even were I to have the energy to do so I wouldn't have the mental capacity for it.

I do feel bad for a lack of good blog since nowadays my blog seems to be one of the last things I do on any given day. I do want to fix that but I don't want to promise I will. Still, good things are happening all around and I want to make more use of my blog to talk about them.

And with it, my cell phone. Which was actually convenient, because I ended up needing it today to respond to my tae kwon do teacher. I let them know I couldn't make it to a planned workout on this Thursday thanks to a schedule conflict (I have dance), and also let them know that yes, my foot injury is being taken care of. (I mean it's getting much much much worse and I don't know the details and I keep on forgetting to ask about them but I know that it's not something which was forgotten and is being dealt with.)

Today I played Don't Starve Together with one of my girlfriends. We made it to day 21, and I survived 15 of those days. (I died once to something I can't remember; I died a second time to a treeguard who one-shotted me when I didn't even know the treeguard was targeting me since I thought it was targeting my girlfriend, and it took a while before a revival could be arranged.)

Winter had come, but that's not what did us in. We were inside our camp, but to our misfortune, a beefalo had wandered into said camp. A beefalo in heat. In. our. camp. Awake during times like the night. And in the winter. Where you can freeze to death even during the day time. It didn't help my mouse died on me right in the middle of said beefalo charging, but my girlfriend was charged at by the beast, and the beefalo is just as fast as the character; there was no escaping so she too was offed by, of all things, the beefalo.

It was pretty fun. The other noteworthy game out recently which I played today? The third part of Medieval Cop 8. I cannot express enough my love for that series. It just keeps on getting better and better. That's about all I can think of to comment on for today though. Does that mean nothing else happened, heck no, but it does mean I'm at a loss for what else to blog about.

And even if I had material I'm sleepy enough where it'd be best to call it a night.