I've been cold, exhausted physically, and tired mentally basically all day.

I've mentally been very high energy. I've been in a good mood all day. As in, mentally, I've not been depressed. It's just that physically. I've been very very poorly off.

It's probably due to poor sleep from last night. So hopefully, will be better tomorrow.

​Is all I have for today tho.

Why yes, yes it is! You'd never know it from me more recently being on like a once-every-few-days blogging schedule, but back in the day double blogs were really common from me! I should give an update; for work tomorrow, I am heading to bed soon, but I wanted to talk here one more time.

I think I finished the tech tree in my civ 3 mod, at least a very rough prototype.
I'll need to double-check every single unit and every single building to make sure they have the right requirements, and I will need to adjust their costs, and I will probably want to change their icons on some, but I got them there so...big part done!

I've begun building the map. I've got a tentative half-completion of England done (resources will need to be added in and I will need to add in the non-English ), and from there, I'll need to build the rest of the world. Which means, I am progressing! It looks like it should work out.

I'll continue to chip away at the map and see if I can keep my vision coherent. The British Isles don't really look too accurate, but I think they capture my idea--I hope that I can keep the trend going with the rest of the world map.

​I think I had more to say but adhd made me forget it, as I went off to try and research lamotrigine some more. (I didn't find what I was looking for, I was looking for some anecdotal experiences with it, to see if my fears could be put to rest, but everything I found was clinical, medical, and scientific. Which, mind you, is still good info to have. It doesn't seem to have many side-effects I'm worried about. But it's still something I want to look into before I take it tomorrow.)

I'm thinking that my plan here will be to take it during the evening--as far as I can tell, it doesn't need food, so just having it should do the job, and that will give me extra time to do my research there, maybe get what I am looking for.

In my defense, I thought I had blogged, but apparently not.

Oh well, I'll make up for it with this one, which will be a fairly long one.

So I had a couple of story-worthy dreams, although the one I really want to pursue is the one that was very very vivid and surprisingly coherent.

The basic of the story:
There is a vampire war going on, between multiple vampire kingdoms.

One of said vampire dynasties just suffered a devastating defeat.

The vampire prince of this vampire coven was forced to flee, with his two servants/bodyguards (also vampires), to go into hiding, as potentially the last heir to their clan, and to potentially rebuild.

And the only place they can flee into is...the mortal world. As in, to live among us, in a normal environment. Without the resources a vampire coven would normally have in said environment. The bodyguards are barely even able to obtain IDs for them, and the cover story they have has a small inconvenience:

They couldn't get three male IDs.

One of the IDs is for a teenaged girl of high school age.

And the prince happens to be somewhat effeminate in looks...even without vampiric shapeshifting...

Point of clarity; 
Vampires in this setting, in order to better hide themselves, have minor shapeshifting abilities. They can change hair color (to some extent), eye color, hair type (to some extent), hair length (to some extent), skin color (to some extent), and body mass (to some extent), you get the idea.

They can't make a 4'6" person appear to be a 6'2" person or vice versa; they can't make a person who is naturally black appear fully Caucasian or vice-versa (no going from white to black); they can't make someone who really strongly looks like a guy suddenly look like a girl; the adjustments are subtle. Something like shifting genetalia to appear as the opposite sex and add the necessary fat to the chest is doable, and shifting from pale-white to more tanned is doable, and eyes into a more natural color is doable. But it's not "they can appear as anyone"; they don't have the ability to copy the look of someone even if that someone fits their height/build. They have to manually change everything so they use their shapeshifting not to appear as others, but to appear close to normal but easily changed into someone else.

But back to the plot.

Their cover story is that they are from northern Ireland, and have moved to (you guess it) Japan...as Japanese Transfer Students. They don't have much time to teach the prince how to blend into human society (especially as the opposite sex), but they do their best to fine-tune things to not be very obviously "not human". (Vampires here have super-strength and super-toughness and unlimited stamina, with enhanced speed and reaction speed and heightened senses.)

The hope of course being that as long as they don't do something humanly impossible, any quirks would be written off as "oh they're foreigners".

​And from there, high school shenanigans ensue.

The prince, by the way, looks like and has the basic personality of Tanya from The Saga of Tanya the Evil, in that he looks like an effeminate blond(e) and has a bit of a vicious "we're going to DESTROY the enemy" attitude, where allies are given very strict/harsh treatment to push them to their limits and enemies are ruthlessly destroyed.

Of course--this isn't the setting of Tanya the Evil; this is high school so that attitude, instead of being fitting for a brutal ruthless setting, is instead a little...out of place. (Played for Laughs, tho.) The anime that I have in mind for this would have it be mostly slice of life shenanigans where they're high school students going through high school with their vampiric quirks, but would still have the overarching plot of the vampire war, including some students discovering the vampire prince's secret and remaining loyal.

Part of the setting is that, in spite of the 'brutal merciless attitude' shown by the vampire prince, and the quirkiness of him, he still manages to attract a lot of followers who genuinely like him. His methods usually actually produce results, he's got decent ideas to help the school, he helps out in his own ways, he's got a ton of snark to him, and can weirdly be encouraging even when declining to help directly.

He's smart, and in a sense (pardon the language), "doesn't tolerate bullshit", and will in fact pursue injustices that happen, attempting to fix them. And due to being a vampire, is one of the best athletes at the school (since limiting to human doesn't mean limiting to average or below average human, at least to the vampire prince). Not afraid to say that something is 'unacceptable', and basically more annoyed than truly angry at the hijinks of high school.

Sometimes energetic/passionate, other times finding things boring, combine all of this together and you get a person who I feel like could, and would, naturally attract individuals that genuinely are interested in gravitating towards them. (You could have it either way I guess, cynically deconstructing these aspects, but this setting is more optimistic so it highlights the positive aspects of these traits. It acknowledges that it can be "too much" sometimes and acknowledges that there can be downsides, but the upsides are emphasized more due to the general idealism of the setting, in spite of the vampire war raging on in the background.)

I feel like it has a lot of potential as a story, and as an anime. I don't have an exact idea of how it'd unfold, the pacing of things, of what exactly the high school hijinks would be and what the plot would be, but it'd loosely be going through high school with the usual high school things happening 80% of the time, with 20% devoted to the world of vampires and things going on in the background, including the looming threat of the prince.

For instance, the vampire faction trying to hunt the prince visiting the school but failing to realize the prince is the prince, but the ever-looming threat, probably eventually down the line realized, of them recognizing the prince...but by that time, the prince has human allies there to help, as well as maybe one or two converts.

On that note, in this setting, 95% of vampires are born vampires--it's possible to turn a human into a vampire (one of the vampire prince's bodyguard-servants was human not too long ago), but the process is ludicrously complicated, involving a proper ritual. The vampire has to drink from the human (on that note, vampires need blood but it doesn't need to be directly from a human, although using blood bags is considered a sign of poverty) while the human drinks from the vampire, the human needs to be on the brink of death, and there is actually a ritual involved, dealing with certain ingredients, lighting, and even a ritual circle.

That's about all I have note-wise there.

I would like to add though that today marked me receiving my medication for my bipolar disorder.

I'm starting it tomorrow, but I want to voice what might be a stupid fear but is a fear all the same.

Off of medication, I came up with a story like the above in my dreams.
What if the medication prevents me from ever coming up with something like that again?

More than that, I have a deep connection with something more spiritual in nature.
My body radiates an energy, constantly. I can feel it across my body, and I constantly feel like I am venting excess energy through my hands (which is one reason I actually like wearing fingerless gloves; it feels like the gloves help me relegate the energy excess more easily).

This natural energy of mine (it's loosely a light blueish color, cyan or aqua or something along those lines), I very much do not want to lose my connection with.

Beyond that, I also have a second energy bound to me. It's not from me like the natural energy, but it is something that is symbiotic, is fully benevolent. Some sort of 'golden thread' wraps around my body and through my natural energy, I feel like I can interact with this golden energy. I don't want to lose my connection with the golden energy.

Occasionally, there's a third also-not-malevolent energy attached to me, an energy that feeds off of my excess energy and takes the form of what looks like sparks of lightning to me, and I also don't want to lose that.

I realize that medication effects on spiritual connections isn't that well-documented, since...well, to have documentation on it requires belief in the spiritual in the first place, and most medication studies are far more scientific than spiritual.

But I don't want to lose what I have.

And the scary part of medication is that I might not realize I've lost it while on the medication.

But obviously, this is just a fear at this point, not realized. I haven't even started the medication. It may turn out that the medication doesn't affect my dreams at all, so that I still generate stories like the vampire prince who is forced to live as a mortal teenaged girl. It may turn out that the medication doesn't shut off my energy flow and connection to the energies I mentioned above.

We'll have to see, but if it does happen and if I do notice it, then I'll need to switch.

Still tho, if it doesn't affect my dreams badly and doesn't affect the spiritual badly, is probably a good medication for me.

I haven't done my research yet on Lamotrigine, which I intend to do before starting it tomorrow, but I imagine it will be reasonably good for me in the long-term, as long as it doesn't produce either of the effects I am worried about. (My psychiatrist was of course worried about more medical/scientific side-effects like a rash, but to me? Nah. I'll have to report that if it happens, obviously, but my concern lies elsewhere.)

And wouldn't you know it? I actually got a fair amount done!

I finally climbed out of Gold in TFT, and then downloaded and played a few killer games onstream of DBD!

I also did a little bit of minecraft (my original plan to stream tonight since there's the newish update and I need to work on Castle 4-0), but while I did a little, and was motivated from watching my favorite streamer play minecraft, after doing it for a while, in spite of being hyped for it earlier, for whatever reason, I just...wasn't feeling it. Dunno why.

Ah well. Stream still happened, still did well!

​So, good day overall!

...But while I was having a bad brain day, it was still okay. Managed a decent stream and things are okay. Could be better, but also could be worse.

I'll be going to bed fairly​ soon, but I do have a bit of work to do before I can.