Sure enough, not enough time for me to do what I want to do!
I had a double ramble planned with two topics, one revolving around Bard in Phyrra and Cyrus and the other covering a dream I had last night which I extrapolated into a fairly interesting anime story idea. (The dream was that I was watching said anime show with my siblings, and then later watching it by myself on my TV...in spite of not having had cable TV for at least a year or two if not more.)

Alas.

I need to go to bed, because I've got work tomorrow.

​Tomorrow will also be a "so many things, so little time" day for the record. I'm anticipating about half a dozen obligations by my estimate. I'll count it as a win if I get half of those done; I'll double my win points if one of said things is girlfriend time. <3

Unfortunate, but expected.

Anime night, so. Watched Attack on Titan (my siblings insist we've watched it subbed and thus can watch the new episodes, but hearing the voices, I'm QUITE certain that we didn't so I don't know what the heck they were thinking but oh well), a few episodes of Tokyo Ghoul (we're at around episode 8 I believe), and then a series I can't remember the full name of (half of it is Seraph) involving vampires and demons (got to around 7 there).

​With that, I need to go to bed.

That is, when I call myself trash. Often, I am. Often, I can be excused temporarily from a task, so long as I actually follow through on it. Have that happen, no harm done. Not trashy of me, just real life ensuing.

What makes me trash is when I am excused temporarily from a task, promise to do it, and then break that promise, making another promise which could just as easily end up breaking. And doing this with multiple promises at once, such that when I choose to fulfill one, I am breaking another because I only had the time to fulfill one.

That is pretty much an accurate summation of what's happening right now, and if not trash, what would you call a person who did that? To some extent, it can be justified. Yesterday, work left me physically, mentally, and emotionally drained--and then after that, on top of it all, I had other things to do once home. (Among them, desperately-needed girlfriend time, which while eating up time, is one of the only ways to recharge me emotionally because sometimes I just need to have that interaction in order to not feel dead inside.)

It turned out to be worse than I thought; I was actually coughing (albeit very subtly) by the time I would be going to bed. Because I was pushed past my physical breaking point. Meaning, while I wanted to fulfill some unfulfilled obligations which I had promised to do...

...I couldn't. I just couldn't. Not with how I was. It'd have been utterly impossible for me to do.

...So I was planning to do it today.

Except most of today was spent sleeping (see also, needing to recover), and once I was awake, I was informed of something that was 50% me not remembering, 50% me having no way of knowing in advance. Those two might seem like they contradict, but they don't. What happened is, we knew our parents might be gone overnight. (And when our parents are gone overnight, on Saturdays, my brother comes over for an anime night.)

Until today, I had no way of knowing that in advance. I could have still planned for it in advance, though, simply by remembering it; I was in fact the one to bring up the subject on Thursday before even my sister did so I was literally the one who basically was indirectly planning for it, and yet I didn't remember this a day later on Friday.

And now it's basically midnight, with me working my same Sunday shift early Sunday morning. With a chance of family night tomorrow (though I don't think so).

At least one promise I made for Friday was a result of an earlier broken promise, too, so I am breaking a promise that was breaking a promise.

I am pretty much. Becoming the worst of the worst kind of failures. The one who has so much potential to succeed and you can see it and you see the promise of success, only to see it dashed, but you maintain hope...only for it to be dashed, but you keep on waiting, because you have belief in them...which keeps getting shattered, over and over again, until eventually you give up on them and accept that they failed to deliver.

There's no more painful way to fail than that.
Yet that's what I'm doing.
​Which is, pretty much. Trash.

It's a day filled with fun stories. Meeting my brother to buy fireworks, and for the first time ever, testing out his new car--a pickup truck--or rather his new truck's ability to carry four people.

He told us that it was a four-seater.

This is a technically true statement.

It is not a four-door truck, though, and those rear two seats are...well. They're not the soft seats all cars use. They're four solid blocks: two square cube blocks for seats, and two square cube blocks for the...back thingies. (What's the back half of a seat called? I'm sure it has a name.)

Additionally, while the passenger side door will open just fine and well from the outside...from the inside...you can do absolutely nothing as the inside handle is broken. (A fact he wouldn't know, as he'd have no reason to use that handle.)

Once home, we planned events. Parachutes first (7 recovered, 1 had a parachute deploy but became a POT--prisoner of tree, in that we know exactly where it is but can't retrieve it; miraculously, there were no MIA, but there were 4 KIA due to 'chutes not deploying), then food. LOTS of food.

I had what is almost the ultimate double cheeseburger: potato chips, green beans with bacon strips, and actual slices of bacon (four of them), with ketchup, four slices of cheese, on two burgers. I had half of a bacon-wrapped hot dog. The first half tasted delicious! But then, it began to just taste like fat wrapped around fat...and with conflicting flavors of fat that did not compliment one another. I eat bacon; I eat hot dogs; eating both at once was not for me, at least not also with ketchup.

I also had extra green beans with bacon strips.

Corn on the cob was available, but I tend not to have it, mostly for a petty reason: my preferred method of spreading butter on my corn is the melt-in-microwave method and utilizing a special brush dipped in the melted butter to spread it over; I am the only one who likes it that way, so it's never done anymore, meaning I rarely if ever actually have corn on the cob anymore, even when I have room. (This was one of the rare instances where I would have had it.)

Oh, also, prior to that, we had coffee. I put ice into mine to slightly cool it and make a makeshift iced coffee. It did ever so slightly dilute the coffee (I could taste the water), but it also worked; instead of overheating because it was hot with coffee making it worse, I ended up at feeling the perfect temperature, so I'd say the slight loss of flavor was well worth the tradeoff of cold coffee (which frankly tastes better than warm coffee anyway) and better internal temperature regulation from digestion.

We then watched a film, Lucy. Wasn't exactly anything I really was that invested in, but wasn't exactly terrible, either. Then came the S'mores. Last time we used the charcoal grill: "I think we might have used too much lighter fluid." (That was for Memorial Day weekend I believe.) This time when using the charcoal grill: "I think we might not have used enough lighter fluid."

Not a single marshmallow caught fire this time--a first!

Granted, not a single marshmallow was really as well-done as we prefer them to get, except for those who spent an enormously large amount of time on the task.

Then came the fireworks. We use a $80 pack of fireworks we buy, in conjunction with a few (in this case, 4) Roman Candles, and if necessary, mortars (though it's rarely needed as most of the time, mortars are included in the pack including this year).

That probably doesn't perfectly sum up the day, but it hits most highlights.

I had family night, too long a blog to type up, and I was tired, so I didn't remember that I hadn't typed up that tremendously long blog up.

I have work today which I'm going to start prep for soonish, and when I get home I don't imagine I'll have the time to do the blog, but a preview of what I guess will be tomorrow's blog:

​In addition to whatever I do tomorrow, I have two separate bits on the perfect RPG (one worldbuilding of sorts or rather character building, the other more mechanics building), plus a spew about a new webcomic idea I had. Said webcomic idea involves mythology to say the least (I should save the full details for the full blog), and that's part of why I ended up not blogging yesterday, actually.

Because of the new webcomic idea, my mind wandered off to classical mythology. Because of my mind being in classical mythology, it wandered off to Zeus/Poseidon. Zeus/Poseidon, for reference, is to Greek Mythology what Majesty is for High Fantasy--that being, a lovingly affectionate parody of it, wherein the cliches and stereotypes are played up for laughs, which has NUMEROUS numbers of gameplay hours and ENDLESS numbers of hidden dialogs to discover at various different points.

I ended up buying the game on steam and troubleshooting how to play it in windowed mode without it being messed up. Basically, the game has an in-game option for windowed mode...but its windowed mode makes the user interface half-invisible...essentially rendering the game unplayable.

Playing in fullscreen is something I'd never want to do for numerous reasons, among them being that it messes up my screens, basically making every window I have go from whatever they were into a specific windowed mode up in the upper left corner with a specific size. Though admittedly the main reason is I like to stream for my girlfriend something only possible in windowed mode.

Also, the in-game windowed mode options render text much more difficult to read because the resolutions they offer by default are warped from the game's natural proportions, so text is squashed. I did find a workaround, albeit one which requires a third party program, causes the game to not be recognized by my streaming program (something there's a workaround for), and which has weird scrolling dimensions that I haven't been able to fix.

Basically, I get the impression you're not supposed to automatically scroll to the far side of the map when interacting with the user interface, but this is currently unavoidable. Similarly, the scrolling for the bottom is also off such that the lower 25% of the screen auto-scrolls. Incidentally, there's less scrolling to the left and top--the level of scrolling there actually looks like what it's SUPPOSED to be.

But ANYWAY.

The point is, I have that game now, and got it working.

I had a cat interrupt me mid-blog so if I had anything else to say then her sitting on my lap broke that chain of thought, so I suppose that's it for now and probably for today; I have a staff meeting to prepare for.

There was not a two-day gap in entries with today being a double-entry. My previous entry was made on Wednesday, just past midnight. I forgot to adjust the date on the entry to reflect that.

Anyway!

Today is Valentine's Day. It's my first one with a girlfriend, though unfortunately they have a long day today (and I had a long day yesterday meaning neither definition of the 14th is viable for us to have a date) meaning no intimate time given that I work tomorrow and thus can't stay up. I did however get free food from Denny's, because my mom and dad decided to eat out and allowed us kids to tag along.

I also on the way down developed a new power for Ruby in Red Hood Rider.

...Hey!
Don't go rolling your eyes, sighing, or just thinking "...again?" or the like.
Trust me on this! Just...bear with me for a while. What I'm saying is something that you'll actually think is something which would be too good to not have.

Basically, it's not a power specific to her--it's a universal power of all vampires.
This new power is actually a consequence of one of the very most basic aspects of vampire physiology in my setting. In my setting, while vampires can drink through the mouth (which is considered stronger than sex; on a willing participate the kiss of a vampire is better than an orgasm; on an unwilling participant the bite of a vampire is explicitly akin to rape), the primary method vampires drain blood is through their fingers.

The new power is extrapolating based off of that, by virtue of a required secondary power of sorts--it's not even much of a power. Basically, vampires can for a limited period of time breathe underwater, via sucking in the oxygen from water to go directly into the bloodstream...but this is not something which allows them to stay underwater indefinitely. Their draining is meant specifically to drain blood from people, not to drain oxygen from water.

So how long it extends their ability to remain underwater, I'm not sure exactly. Lower figure would be ten minutes, higher figure an hour or two, but it wouldn't exceed that. It also isn't exactly healthy for them to do. This can be thought of as an emergency oxygen system, to be used only when the primary oxygen system has failed. It's also something which is specific only to water. It doesn't work anywhere else.

And even given this...my use for it?

...A skit.

A gag.

An omake before the start of an episode, as a one-off joke...and even then, with the explanation being mostly in the author blurb with it only implied in the comic image proper. This is why it's not really something to groan about her having; it's not something story-significant. It's just for the sake of a single piece of humor, one which is in a setting that while fully canonical is detached from the main story altogether. Isolated and remote, with it only serving to vaguely segue into a new episode.

In this case, the skit would go something like this, with Angel Wings saying,
"Sally is calling you."
And Ruby's response?
"Please text her to tell her I can't answer her right now on account of (new panel) me slowly drowning to death." with the new panel revealing that her leg is tied to a magical chain which is attached to a big weight with her underwater.

For obvious reasons, this would be before Gary becomes the elemental rider of water (since he could fix it far faster, obv).

I'm thinking that this makes a better omake than whatever I had planned before as an introduction to one of Ruby's Rogue Gallery villains--in this particular case, you might have guessed it's the mobster. I don't remember his last name (as ashamed as I am to admit I the creator can't remember his full name) but his first and middle name are Mac Rose. Because what superhero setting is complete without a local mobster that is an antagonist of a hero.

The shackle is an anti-magic one, if you hadn't guessed, which would of course prevent Ruby from just summoning a bow to sever the chain.

Soyeah. Not a new power which serves any practical purpose.
I mean.
I could make it serve a practical purpose.
I'm sure this is a power lots of people would love to have and it is technically one extra thing.

It's just that it's one extra thing that I consider completely and entirely irrelevant to the story outside of a single gag. And honestly I don't really see much of an issue with having characters possess powers which are displayed for no other reason than Rule Of Funny, since...well. I aim to entertain. The moment has a bit of black humor involved, but I still think that if handled well it'd be a good addition to the comic.

The problem was more or less weebly trying to be greedy jerks--to post a new blog entry, I need to hit a specific button. The New Post button, which is at the bottom of the screen at the right. Without it, making a new blog entry (aka, a New Post) is impossible to do because...well, in order to make a New Post, you need to hit the New Post button. (Go figure.)

...Except. Last night. That WHOLE ENTIRE AREA (and then some). Was being COMPLETELY AND ENTIRELY COVERED UP. By weebly telling me that I can customize something (something to do with a footer) if I upgrade. AKA, I pay them money to use the site that I've been using just fine for free.

Frankly, I'm never paying weebly a cent and I'd explicitly forbid my girlfriend from paying for me because HECK NO I'm not going to cave in to that kind of junk. If they tried forcing it on me again, I'd just stop using them and move to a different site. (I mean. In that case. I might need to pay weebly so I can use my site...but it'd be the smallest payment possible for the least amount of time possible and be purely so that I could make the announcement of "SCREW THIS, I'M OUTTA HERE!" and announce where I was moving the blog to.)

Fortunately, whatever it was, it was only temporary. Things are back to normal, so yesterday's blog is now up as it would have been last night were I able to.

As for today! No family night tonight, that'll be tomorrow. But today I worked, and that means...yep! I was trapped in my own thoughts again.

In this case, I was working on a few details of the Disease setting (which I call the Epidemic series). I've named that book of mine before on my blog, albeit only once or twice and way back, by now probably over a year if not two. Basically, it's a post-apocalyptic series which has a few details:

-The titular disease was a manmade virus of sorts that was engineered by the Big Bad (and a secondary villain helping).

-The disease consumed a great deal of many modern technologies. A lot of older things work (for instance, cars from the 80s and first half of the 90s), but newer things were 'eaten' by the disease (which I know is a bit questionable, but the disease is explicitly supernatural in nature given...well, just see the below).

-The disease propagated itself everywhere. It exists everywhere, categorized in "dense" areas (mostly, forests, jungles, etc.; areas where there is lot of flora and fauna to store it) and "scarce" areas (mostly, cities, where it isn't stored as well).

-Plants were unaffected, but in scarce areas, will wither and die if prolonged contact with humans not having a specific gift is maintained.

-Non-human animals were also unaffected.

-Humans still with, so to speak, "the blood of youth" as it were (as in, loosely speaking, below the age of 30) were given superpowers, which the disease powers. Off of where they spent the most time acclimating in the first few weeks, their powers took one of the two types mentioned. (Scarce powers are more precise but lack power; dense powers are more powerful but lack fine control.)

-Humans over that age either were killed off by it or were transformed into beasts the story dubs Darmichrons. They're on average about 8-10 feet tall, have massive strength, speed, endurance, razor-sharp claws, and carnivorous teeth to match; they maintain their human intelligence, but have the primal instincts of an animal, and are driven to be monstrous sadists who hunt the surviving humans for food primarily, but also for sport. (These are who I'll be talking about.) They are capable of speech still.

​-The series protagonist is patient zero: the person first infected with the disease.

Darmichrons are the earliest villains in the story, although they later fall to the status of cannon fodder in spite of them being dangerous. They've got immense regenerative abilities on top of everything else and incredibly tough skin--what this amounts to is that projectile weapons (e.g. guns, bows) are ineffective against them (thus why the heroes use weapons like swords primarily, when not utilizing their powers), and even most attacks don't work.

They do have weaknesses (touching plants won't harm them, but get a plant inside of their body and it's poisonous to them; they have an unexplained mystical weakness to silver; they can't penetrate through brick mortar buildings; they're vulnerable to the elements e.g. being burned alive, drowning, freezing, electrocuted to death, and similar things which the heroes exploit), but they're still monsters to face.

One particular trait about them is that when they are in small enough groups, they still think individually, but when they get into a large enough mass, a hive/swarm mentality takes over. As in, "the death of a few will ensure the rest get to eat", where to overcome a force they essentially rush them with superior numbers and utilize their natural skills. They no longer speak, but they don't need to; they instinctively know what one another are doing, and as such are able to coordinate attacks such as that whatever force they are attacking is overwhelmed with minimal resistance.

I'm quite fond of my creation, by the way; they took inspiration from vampires, werewolves, zombies, and largely from Chiropterans (or however they spell that word) from Blood+, among other sources. But! These are all preexisting facts; I was not working on the above.

I was more working on a later plot point. In the sequel story to Disease (which was originally part of Disease before I decided to split the book in two), there's a point in the story where the protagonists need to make an alliance with a group of Darmichrons. (This is also not new and always was a part of the story from basically the get-go.)

Said group of Darmichrons was larger than any other group in existence (and thanks to what I've planned elsewhere in the story, that might mean a group upwards of 100,000 or so), and had one key trait: somehow, they were able to overcome the hive mentality and regain a level of individuality in spite of them being together...yet in spite of having regained it, still maintained many of the aspects of their hive mentality. (Basically they got the best of both worlds.)

Still not new. But before, I just had the heroes meet up with them with nothing extra attached. Yet I thought about a few facets of the consequences of this culture, and devised an alternative meeting method. It starts with the heroes sending their half-Darmichron (capable of freely transforming between human and Darmichron) in as a scout.

He reports back that it was a good idea they sent him in, because if they hadn't, they'd all be dead--the Darmichrons have guns. THIS is new, but it seemed to just fit so perfectly and logically. A normal Darmichron would never use a gun, because of their sadism and desire for the thrill of the hunt; a gun's cheating and more than that, anatomically, it's basically impossible for them to use standard firearms.

These Darmichrons given they have a society which has human intellect and has some facets of them subdued (including the sadism) in favor of the community were able to figure out bypasses. (After all, guns aren't that hard to modify and Darmichrons are big enough that they can carry something like a shotgun as if it were a Dillinger, in that it is a small-arms for them rather than taking both hands.)

The heroes have the ability to sense Darmichrons from a distance (this is how they stay alive: by running from fights they don't think they can win, or being entrenched and prepared when running's not an option), but guns have a range longer than that distance.

The Darmichrons use them as both their main defense against superpowered intruders, and to hunt said superpowered individuals--because they are nigh-immune to bullets, there is no risk of friendly fire. However, humans are just as vulnerable to being killed with guns with superpowers as they are without them. (Alright, so a few have abilities which make it difficult to kill them with gunfire, but the vast majority of the heroes are not immune to bullets.)

So the Darmichrons have a huge advantage. The heroes haven't used firearms ever since the apocalypse--because their main opponents that they go up against are Darmichrons who're immune, they had no need to use them; firearms were a waste of space.

Darmichrons' main opponents are humans...who aren't immune, and thus had good use for them. It just took specific circumstances for them to be able to create that environment where they used them. And it's a huge advantage, since it means that in addition to their natural strength/speed/etc. granting them a huge edge in melee combat (no need to carry a melee weapon when your teeth, claws, and appendages are lethal enough on their own), they have the ranged weapons to make it such that the melee was never necessary.

This is, of course, precisely the type of advantage the heroes were hoping to gain, which is why they wanted to seek the alliance in the first place (since the antagonists at this point are an army of superpowered humans and the heroes are comparatively outnumbered).

Of course, to the chagrin of the humans, they meet said Darmichrons by them ambushing the heroes, albeit not killing them. (They followed the half-Darmichron back, shot warning shots at the heroes to let them know not to move before the heroes sensed them, and then moved in closer.)

They explained their curiosity, since there are three core rules of their society,
Darmichrons don't hunt Darmichrons,
Darmichrons don't hunt with humans,
And humans need to be hunted; they won't come into the nest.

The reason they didn't attack is because they possessed the curiosity that two of their basic rules had been broken, so they do in fact listen to the pitch the heroes make. (The alliance is made, for two reasons. The antagonists would wipe the Darmichrons out once done with the heroes, and that the heroes give the Darmichrons multiple things that they were incredibly okay with--a complete continent to call their hunting grounds where if humans were found it was at their own risk; any excess livestock to be exported to said continent; various different levels of therapy to re-introduce elements of humanity, everything from at the lowest level making them omnivorous rather than carnivorous and at the highest level allowing them to become fully human again, with them being able to choose any treatment even none if they prefer themselves the way they are.)

I thought the idea made a lot of sense at least. Then again, I'm the only one who knows the full story, so all my ideas for the story make more sense to me.

I ended up not having work this morning as I thought. I did of course have my staff meeting this night, and I got just about as much sleep as I would have if I had worked anyway (I took a shower, waited for my hair to dry, then napped, but the time the hair was dry came well after I'd have been done with work), meaning I am extra tired and today was just all-around disappointing in terms of doing things.

Oh well.
The day is lost...but there's always tomorrow!

So I might as well give one today! Christmas actually contained a lot of thoughtful gifts this year. Every year, my family at least tries to get things good for each other, but this year, everyone was basically entirely successful with every member of the family, a first as far as I can tell.

Including myself, mind you. My brother got me two really, really, REALLY nice fidget rings. Unfortunately, they're not that photogenic but that's a shame because I really want to show them off in their full glory because seriously WOW they are amazing. They have a black chain in the middle of the ring for spinning, and an ornate design on the outline. The one I'm wearing is all-black, too.

There was a slight flaw: the ring's too big for my ring finger and yet too small for my middle finger...however, more on that in a second. There's a reason it's still such an amazing gift. My brother joked when I couldn't get it off my middle finger that it was a cursed ring...but seriously, this ring is so amazing that it absolutely demands a story be written with it as a central object.

I was thinking along the lines of a binding object, a contract of some sort perhaps or maybe death-related, definitely full-blown supernatural urban fantasy though specifics beyond that I haven't worked out. I do think it deserves at minimum one story--honestly the ring's so cool that it could have three, four, even five different full-fledged individual stories each with their different takes on the same object. It was THAT on the mark.

My older sister got for me a gift of many pairs of gloves that work with touchscreens (i.e., allowing me to use my phone with gloves on), plus a single pair of fingerless gloves. Now, these fingerless gloves are the same type of material as my more flimsy gloves. That being, the material which is like a type of clothing. Wool? I dunno, but it's a really common type of glove which is prone to tearing with a short life expectancy especially with long fingernails.

You can probably figure out what I mean by the description. So it's not exactly the fingerless gloves of Ruby. That being said, I've felt the closest I've ever felt to being Ruby since adorning them. As in. I lost my glow-in-the-dark bracelets a long time ago. I lost my bat ring a long time ago. I ran out of the hairties which I associate as being Ruby's instead using a much thinner type (and out of laziness now only have one instead of the signature two on the left arm).

So I've felt a little bit distanced from being her, in that I've had a harder time conjuring up imagine spots where I was roleplaying as her. It wasn't impossible, mind you, but it was difficult--more difficult than other characters. Sally my lifeguard tube acts as her bazooka; Hanna I play with her god-tiered wind powers; Gary I can do a lot with; Vili is easy; D.D. is also easy; Whitney and Amy I tend not to play around with that much but if I did I wouldn't have much trouble.

Yet I've been having difficulty for a while getting into the shoes of Ruby, in spite of her being the character that launched the whole Rubyverse as someone originally based in part off of me before she gained her own life/identity. Something that troubled me deeply.

And yet. The moment I put on the fingerless gloves. Instantly, it just came rushing back to me. The magic, the sensation, of her. Of Ruby in full form. It's not the right material and certainly doesn't have the square gap in the palm. But it still has made me feel much closer to her.

Not to mention, they're just kinda...really, really cool. And feel fitting, appropriate. They have merged with me, becoming natural literally overnight. They are a part of me, and a really awesome one. And there's one more thing. You know how that ring I mentioned was too small for my ring finger? Yeah, well...with the fingerless gloves on, it fits perfectly. It doesn't want to fall off, nor is it smothering my finger. It's removable, but not accidentally.

And the colors are complimentary as well, given both are black. Yet not the same black, different blacks so the ring is not invisible on the glove. So overall...I'd say that my older sister's gift hit the mark and was dead on the money in terms of being good.

My younger sister gave a gift which I have wanted for years as well, albeit one which has progressively gotten weaker and weaker in me as the years have gone by. A bit like Deck The Hall Ball in that regards; my parents gave it to us as a Christmas gift years after I had wanted to go, and yet the year we went was sandwiched between two awesome years as a year which was mostly unremarkable. (Though I did rather enjoy seeing Jimmy Eat World live, I wouldn't be able to note any other band there. They had plenty good enough performances with stage presence, it's just that...they weren't as memorable as bands in other years would have been.)

In this case, the gift given? One-day pass (believed to be Friday) for Emerald City Comic Con 2018.

The reason this is a gift that I've wanted for years that has gotten progressively weaker and weaker in me is that I have been a comic artist and avid reader of webcomics for years. Many, many, many of my online friends would be going to events like these, and I couldn't go to meet them in spite of it being in my back door practically.

I have always wanted the chance.
And yet.
I've lost current contact and familiarity with most of the people who might be going there.

ComicFury has literally thousands of people who I know, dozens/hundreds of which who might be in attendance, and yet, I last contacted them...my god how long ago was it? Was it almost a year, or is it almost two years now? Three? I lose track of the time. I simply...haven't been there in spite of my desire to be there. I love them all so much. I love it there so much. I just haven't been able to stay there no matter what I try and it's not their fault, it's always something stupid on my end.

Life gets in the way. I make promises I break. Even knowing I'm bipolar, even knowing I am autistic with inertia, I end up with issues, where I get things going and when I grind to a halt I get a ridiculous fear and it stacks and stacks and I just don't go even though I want to.

They're not the only place.

Comics I read off of ComicFury, I am behind on.
Many of them probably have way too many fans for me to ever get to know them, and it's not like they'd really remember some random reader who comments under the name Bree. (Something I may or may not even be able to tell them given that my older sister will be in attendance as well--something I think is for the better overall since it gives me a way to have an anchor, a root, because I have no way of really knowing anything will be okay.)

Some of the fans for said comics might. Even that's a stretch. For instance, while I became a vocal commentator on Go Get A Roomie for a few months, it was only a few months of a webcomic that's been going for years. Who's one commentator to them?

There is of course the slight chance of meeting people from the site I play mafia on, but the experiences I'd look forward to are the above ones. Meeting these people I called my friends. Meeting these people who I looked up to. Meeting these people who I engaged in various conversations at length, often with good banter. Showing them the shy real me who is an introvert in spite of my rather promiscuous activity when I am around.

I don't...really get that without reconnecting. I can attempt to come 2018 and getting closer to said event, where I begin to comment again and look out for announcements of attendance. But that's why this is a diminished thing from what it could have been--me years ago needs no reconnecting because me years ago was already there actively all the time. Me now does need the reconnecting because I am just a tremendously stupid individual who can't control her life.

However. All the same. While not quite as "on the mark". This is still a good gift. Because while the above might lead you to think I would be bitter...it's the opposite in fact. I am thankful that I now finally have that chance. I am hopeful that I might get the ability to reconnect with things I have wanted to reconnect with for ages. This represents an opportunity. It could be an opportunity for disappointment and suffering, yes, but it can also be an opportunity for me to really get to get things I've lacked for far too long.

I'm not sure how I can really explain my hope, my vision, my viewpoint there. But basically. I have faith that it will be something where good things will happen as a result of me having tickets to go there. Never in the way I anticipate of course even though the way I'd 'anticipate' would be awesome, but it will be there I am sure of it.

Besides that, I also received the gift of wireless headphones for my desktop. They need some hardware to be installed that we don't have at the moment (the anticipated date of arrival is this Friday I believe?), but these would allow me to not be limited by the ridiculously-short cord on my current headphones. I could potentially sleep in my room with them, or eat with the family while my dad is (listening to music to drown him out), or do things more freely without removing the headphones, and so on and so forth.

A pretty pragmatic, useful gift if not one which has the level of emotional investment those other ones do. It's not working yet, but when it does it will help a lot I imagine. Won't be perfect I anticipate that of course, but oh well. My point is, I got some good presents this year, and also gifted some good presents, too. My brother is notoriously hard to shop for but I believe he just might actually play the remastered Crash Bandicoot games I got for him. My older sister actually really liked the bracelet and necklace I got for her. My younger sister got some earrings, a ring, and one other item I forget and she seemed to think they were nice.

I think I have a reasonably competent sense of a metric for "gifts that they are putting a happy face on for the sake of politeness" versus "gifts they actually think are good", and basically, this year I felt disproportionately there was a higher amount of the latter than normal.

After gifts, we ended up playing a game called Dreamwood between us siblings (which I won) and, after it finished, did our annual Gauntlet Dark Legacy playing until dinner. After supper, we had two rounds of full-family Uno, then a second round of Dreamwood for us siblings again.

My brother got disproportionately lucky--in a perfect storm, he captured TWO of the strongest item cards in the game, giving him a +2 bonus when making 2/3 attack types. (For reference, creatures have difficulty ratings between 3-9 for most monsters. So any rating of 3 he was guaranteed to get, any 4 he had >random odds of getting with one card, etc.) He put it to good use, gaining an insurmountable lead.

To our credit, we did try to stop him early and often. I failed four times in a row to capture monsters that he on his turn proceeded to take. (I had >random odds, too, I just got bad rolls which landed me squarely in last place.) Eventually, however, I managed to capture the literally-strongest-item in the game (+2 regardless of attack type, capable of stacking with other items), albeit being too little, too late.

It allowed me to go from last to second (although because I took risks out of desperation of knowing I was last that ended up working aside from those early failures which placed me behind, I had already gained some ground), but it was literally impossible to catch him.

He ended the game with a move which was ridiculously lucky, too--he was attacking the strongest card in the game, with a 1/32 chance of success. His +2 bonus, two cards, and a one-time-use card allowed him to have a 3d4 + 2 (rather than a 2d4 + 2 without the one-time-use card), which had a 96.875% chance of failing because he needed nigh-perfect rolls on each of his dice to beat the monster...and he did.

Not that it'd have mattered since if *I* had captured the monster, my point total would have been one below his point total without said monster. Like I said, he had an insurmountable lead. But by capturing that monster, he stomped us all. It was simply impossible to recover from the early setback. (Seriously, the guy captured two of the hardest items to get at the earliest stage of the game and as a result got two of the best items to allow him to cruise :easymode: through the rest of the game. It's dumbfounding that he got so lucky, but them's the breaks.)

It was a pretty fun time, though honestly in spite of all the fun I had with my family, I'd still have preferred to spend my time with friends instead. (By which I mostly mean my girlfriend.) Something I thankfully got some of later in the day and also today.

​Soyeah. That about sums it up.

Though, I think it best to wait until tomorrow to tell stories about today. I know that it's a risk to wait a night, but that's better than a half-asleep me trying to narrate it late.