When it comes to the pool, we're closed for an extra week I believe though I'm not sure if it's a full week or not (which does make a difference because full week means no work for me for two weeks, whereas like five days means I start work after a week break), so that means a little more free time for me since that's no work, no tae kwon do for 1-2 weeks. (Tae kwon do is definitely 2 since my instructor will be gone.)
Part of shutdown week will potentially mess with our lockers though, so we were instructed to clean everything out--in my case, four bags worth of stuff. (I coulda fit it into less, but one thing in my locker got sticky from a mysterious icky gooey brown liquid which dripped into my locker from a higher-level locker and I didn't want to contaminate the others, plus I separated my bags into categories: loosely-work-stuff, loosely-miscellaneous-swag, and outdated-junk.)
I also had (and to some extent, still have) an incredible soreness in a spot I can't really do much about. The Y has some really, really great rollers. These rollers can be used to help alleviate stuff. Usually for the legs by my understanding, but can also be used for most of the back, sides, maybe even some of the arms.
...Not so much for right next to the neck. Or rather. The Vulcan neck pinch spot.
So...Thanks!
Who knew Spaceballs could actually be so useful?
Butyeah. It's in a spot where I can manually used my arms to 'massage' it, but my idea of a self-massage is "nothing nothing nothing maybe something keep going it's stronger ow ow ow ow ow OW OH GOD STOP". It's worse on my left than my right but it's the same spot for both. I have literally no clue how to make that pain go away.
It's too low for neck stretches (yes those are a thing and I know a few albeit mostly from self-experimentation) to reach, and yet no arm stretches engage those muscles, at least none that I've found (and keep in mind I tried on the ground, sitting, standing up, using bars to lean both ways, and so on and so forth). It's like a magical spot of "nothing YOU can do works" in that it's begging for someone else to fix.
I'm not even sure what that muscle is used for. As in, as I was writing this I tried moving my arm and shoulder and whatnot in every way I could think of (admittedly on a rushed notice I coulda missed any number of positions even ones which're common), yet as far as I could tell, none engaged the sore spot's muscle.
And yes when I'm directly applying one hand to an area, I can tell when that muscle is being used. It's actually not that hard to do. I suppose it's also possible my skill there is imperfect, butstill. It's annoying. It's painful and I don't have any solution for it.
Years ago I may have had a similar problem, with raising my shoulders...but I fixed that problem and I know it hasn't really returned as far as I can tell. Like. I can tell when my shoulders are raised more often than I can't because I instilled that awareness into myself and...they're not raising. At least not more than they should, I'm pretty sure. Like. When I'm doing many tasks (including typing right now), I can force my shoulders down some, but doing so actually engages muscles. As in, the muscles to push down. If I were having a problem with my shoulders raising higher than they should, I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be the case.
So health concerns all-around. My feet aren't any worse, but they're still not getting better and yes they are worsening with time. I should talk to my mom about that since she is back as of yesterday, though I should run errands that I didn't get the chance to do yesterday first. (This blog among them.)
At work, I composed a song. This song had a mixture of a Billy Idol and Bon Jovi vibe, with maybe some other Rock bands' influences (be it something more hard or something more alternative), but mostly those two. Unlike many of my songs where stanzas go from one directly into the next, this one actually has pauses between them, and yet also accelerated beats at different times. Some words are drawn out while others are shortened.
In my mind's eye I can sing it but out loud I can't quite nail it past the first half of each verse yet alone the transition into the prechorus. Still, I'd offer to sing it out loud anyway if I were actually the only one home, but since I am not, it'll have to wait until some other time. I wasn't feeling very creative with my titles, so this one just as a generic WIP title of "Freedom".
This visage viewed is not mine
Is it really rude to say it's not fine?
Can I not say that I have rights
Can I not make objections to a lie?
I can't control how you feel
I am laying low but staying real
Why do you insist I'm a cheat
Why have I been hurt constantly
I'm not the threat
I'm not the threat
Nothing should've changed
Nothing but my paaaaaaain.
Heeeeeeeeeeey.
I want the freedom
To live my life as me
I want the freedom
To be who I want to be
Ohhhhhhh!
I want the freedom
To make what I mean
I want the freedom
To face all my fears.
I strongly stand by no retreat
I do not want to die nor to leave
Yet there is no real deceit
Yet there is nothing wrong with me
Don't say sorry you don't know
I am already on the go
This is not just me alone
This has got to be no load
I'm not the threat
I'm not the threat
Nothing should've changed
Nothing but my paaaaaaain.
Heeeeeeeeeeey.
I want the freedom
To live my life as me
I want the freedom
To be who I want to be
Ohhhhhhh!
I want the freedom
To make what I mean
I want the freedom
To face all my fears.
Give me my life
I have my soul
You put me through strife
So heartless and cold.
I want the freedom
To live my life as me
I want the freedom
To be who I want to be
Ohhhhhhh!
I want the freedom
To make what I mean
I want the freedom
To face all my fears.
I want the freedom
To live my life as me
I want the freedom
To be who I want to be
Ohhhhhhh!
I want the freedom
To make what I mean
I want the freedom
To face all my fears.
...It's one of my best compositions ever in my opinion. It's a little bit of a shame I have to classify this song as a "cheat" though, in that I'm not exactly writing it to an original tune. It's a mixture, hodgepodge, of existing tunes. If I sung it out loud, you may be able to hear what I mean. Of course that'd be assuming competency on my part as a singer; you probably wouldn't be able to tell which singers I am channeling when, because that would require me to actually be...well, singing, rather than my..."singing".
Which is exactly as terrible as you'd think. Even when I'm singing to an existing song (songs that I write can have the composition of the tune change midway through unexpectedly because they are things I have in my head and thus, I am prone to slipping up and messing up by midway accidentally changing the tune and losing my groove, which for someone who relies on "scripts" is akin to being derailed and thus obviously I'd suck), my voice is terrible.
It doesn't matter if I've sung the song since childhood. I mess up on my timing, I mess up on the tone of a song (as in, placing emphasis in the wrong spots which can change the feeling/meaning of a song, as I demonstrated with the "I'm just a girl" bit), I mess up on the breathing (it's important to time breaths correctly), I mess up on the lyrics even if I have them sitting before my face, I do any number of wrong things, and even if I didn't, I've been described as tonedeath in that boy am I impressively bad.
It really is a sight to be seen--or rather, sound to be heard. Doesn't stop me from trying anyway though! Which is why I'm sad I can't do so right now in this blog post. Ah well. Will when I can. It's still a good song. I might be borrowing the underlaying tunes I wrote the song to in my mind's eye, but while those songs had those tunes, they did not have my rhyming scheme nor did they have this type of lyric nor did they have this type of transition nor did they really have...well, basically most of what you see.
It's still entirely my own song to have written, it's just that if it were actually sung it'd become clear where I took my cues from. Still, I'm quite proud of the alliteration-to-repetition that I placed in there, with rhymes midway through each verse as well to basically double the flow. That's all me.
I could have gotten even more creative with the patterns but I decided that this was good enough to make a killer song. Albeit one with cues from existing songs. (Thus the "cheat".) I'm just happy that I can continue to write good material and share it with the world.
The lyrics should be obvious enough in their subject. I left it ambiguous enough where it could refer to any number of topics, but tried to make it clear that yes this is indeed the viewpoint of someone oppressed by bigotry, namely, someone who is trans. The song is more or less them coming out, stating desire to take control of their life, and then firmly planting their foot down to take steps to do so, standing by their ground, not backing down, not allowing ignorance and indifference (at best) to stop them from living their true life.
Not a bad goal to have if you ask me. (Did you know that back in the day I used to write songs which weren't related to my life? Nowadays I can barely even remember them because this process of writing songs I relate to is just so instinctive and natural.)
Essentially all of my yesterday was spent on a date with one of my girlfriends after work, as I mentioned yesterday. We watched RWBY, getting through to the penultimate episode of volume 3. (We woulda finished volume 3 with time to spare if not for a certain incident which I could be mean and lay out but will be nice and just leave a generic "I told youuuuuuu" here.)
The whole while, however.
There was a particular thought going through my head.
There's no way to do this without including vulgarity so pardon the language but basically:
"Oh fuck. Fuckidy fuck fuck fuck. I AM NOT STEALING."
...Thiiiiiiiis of course referring to Red Hood Rider. (RWBY's Ruby is even called 'Red' by one of the villains consistently! And in Red Hood Rider, MY Ruby is always called Red Hood Rider by villains at all time, in a difference between friend vs. enemy in that enemies call her Red Hood Rider and friends call her Ruby.)
Of course I had known about the existence of RWBY long before I started Red Hood Rider. I even knew about the main character there being named Ruby. I did not however know one iota beyond "it's RWBY, with a protagonist named Ruby". I didn't know what RWBY's Ruby looked like. I could figure RWBY's Ruby as a protagonist would be a leader because let's face it all protagonists are leaders (except when they aren't), but I had no clue what RWBY's Ruby's personality, backstory, and character interactions would be like.
...And. To my relief. They actually are quite different in terms of personality (well for the most part; there are some similarities), team dynamics, team interactions (RWBY's Ruby-Weiss interaction doesn't quite have the same vibe as Red Hood Rider's Ruby-Sally interaction), and so on and so forth.
But they do have rather similar appearances (especially in outfit) much to my horror--especially notable is MY Ruby's Black Ruby Superpowered Form, where she's a full-vampire, accessed through Forbidden Art #3 Dark Messiah and is more vampire than magical girl but has access to both sets of powers still. The reason for this is that's the only time MY Ruby has both black hair and has her hair at that spiked not-quite-shoulder-length.
Just for the record, by the way. I may actually have stolen her hair aesthetic from somewhere...but not from RWBY. Black Ruby's hair takes cues from Ryuko Matoi, yet invoking the image of her hair constantly having flowy, fiery movement which is slightly lifted up, in anime-almost-DBZ-Supersaiyanesque-fashion. (You know the look.)
This would be more obvious for those who'd remember the full sketch of Black Ruby rather than just the cropped version that I made into one of my prominent avatars (which has just her head). In that, she has a rather revealing outfit, because the aesthetic I was going for with Black Ruby was more or less "almost a stereotypical bad guy villainess with domm overtones", in that she was meant to invoke a feeling of 'evil' yet 'powerful'/'controlling'.
I was particularly mortified to learn there were eight main characters too, considering a fundamental premise of my story is that there are eight elements, and thus, eight elemental riders, forming a power rangersesque superhero magical girl team. (Riders were after all envisioned as blending all three of those genre together.)
...I can only hope that RWBY doesn't have one or two permanent additions to the main cast down the line because in Red Hood Rider, the Ruby Gang (the name of MY Ruby's team, which you can tell is a riff off of 'Scooby Gang') has ten full-time members, thanks to two members not being one of the eight elemental riders.
Also inconvenient would be RWBY featuring HeelFaceTurns because I have at least three in my story that I can count. (Well one of them is more of a HazyTurn, but that's made clear from the get-go and the villain's motives never change, nor does the villain's personality change, it's just that they have good reason to not be fighting the heroes all the time.)
Also also inconvenient would be RWBY featuring an extensive cast of villains rather than a smaller team of like 4 or so because Red Hood Rider has a full-blown rogues gallery of like 20 or so villains (many of which have specific riders they are associated with most heavily), and like. There's a bundleload which is different. My setting, my Rubyverse, is mine.
I made it from scratch. With vague knowledge and aesthetics from genres I haven't been immersed in. I made it before watching Madoka in spite of several things (including the very ending) being similar between the two. I made it before watching RWBY in spite of some similarities between the two including both series' protagonists being named Ruby. (It's not that uncommon of a name.)
I made it from one drawing that I only made a full two years later. And then building that at-the-time-nonexistent drawing. And then building upon that. And building upon that. And just having things keep going. And then importing concepts from other stories. The eight element system. Much of the mythos behind grander universes. All sorts of things I have been making since my very earliest memories of childhood.
So I hate any resemblance to another work. Especially because I am a copier. I am a cheater. I am someone who will blatantly steal things from others and use my own versions of them. You would not believe the number of stories I started to write which were taken from anime. (Heck I have at least two which stole from Bleach if not more.) I mean I put spins on them, unique twists and turns to really make them have the flavor of being my own in spite of their obvious source of influence.
...But.
My Rubyverse, the world of Red Hood Rider. Is not among them. It is not something I made to be an imitation. It is not something I made to be a copy. It is something I made to be mine. My own work. From start to finish. Red Hood Rider is named as so because it is a combination of Little Red Riding Hood, Robin Hood, and the idea of a Kamen Rider. It's a pun of sorts.
The name Little Red Riding Hood is something which comes from my childhood. I was called that by people in soccer. (At the time they were attempting bullying, but me being me, I had absolutely no clue they were doing so. It didn't affect me at all and was just like "why are they calling me that?" with an inquisitive tone because I genuinely had no clue what they were attempting to do I just kinda was there.) It existed because I had a red and black hoodie I always wore.
That hoodie was my favorite hoodie. I've always wanted a hoodie that had a hood, that had a zipper running down the middle, which had zipped pockets, and had a string to adjust the hood. I liked the aesthetic of red and black. So when I designed Ruby's hoodie, I designed it to combine all of these traits into my dream-hoodie as it were.
The name Ruby came from the association of Ruby-->Red, in that I knew rubies were red. I also knew that Ruby was a name that exists commonly enough. I'm pretty sure that people actually call their kids Ruby. (I mean gemstone names aren't that uncommon a thing.) So it was a natural choice for me to make. Plus it has a similar enough name to Ryan (the name I knew I wanted to be Ruby's birth name) that everything just clicked as right.
Every choice I made, I made for good reason out of it being what felt like I should do, and the inspiration for these things was by and large...nothing except my own experiences. I watch/read/play various media all the time. But I did not deliberately incorporate any of them into my Rubyverse.
And yet now that I've started watching, the accusations can inevitably come. Before I could say with a straight face inspiration was impossible because I'd never seen RWBY--heard of it, but not actually seen it. But now I have to defend the viewpoint that inspiration was impossible because I'd never seen RWBY at the time even though I have since done so but here are the reasons why it wasn't inspired by RWBY as my proof it is mine.
...A lot more convoluted, innit?
Which is why there's the mixed bag.
I do enjoy the show for what it's worth and I don't regret seeing it because anything worth watching is something to never regret having seen. But that won't stop me lamenting this when I get around to keeping Red Hood Rider going.