I almost failed to get the shiny kongpanion of the week, in spite of me having gotten every single one thusfar in the year.

There's a special prize, one obtained only by a few thousand individuals each year, for those who can manage the feat of literally every single one in a year. And given how far we are into the year, would be rather miffed if I blew it so close.

Still, I got it now, so no worries. I've been getting numbers record-lows most of the time. Low-hundreds is my average, but I've gotten plenty in the double digits. Never have I gotten a single-digit one, alas, but I have gotten quite close. I think my record's 11? 13? Something like that. Tantalizingly close to single-digit kongpanion, but never getting it.

It's a little bit of a stupid obsession, but one I have all the same. Plus, it's something which usually takes less than 10 minutes per day, because I already have like a good 70% of the badges for games and even of those that I don't, a good 40% of them I have save data sufficient enough to earn the badge instantly because the reason I don't have it is due to playing it before it was badged.

There are plenty of badges I don't have, but mostly badges never given as badges of the day; there are badges I don't have for badge of the day, but those are rarities, coming up about once every two weeks or so.

What can I say.

I grew up on what I called "online flash games". (So called, because they were made primarily with the program of flash. Also, because one of the first places I played them was a place called at the time flashplayer.com. Which also contained animations.)

Kongregate is one of the modern platform equivalents of my childhood.

So I basically made a ton of changes--too many to really list. Like, I've made changes to/added like 75 units, for a start, and quite a number of buildings, too (including one per legitimate government, except for Republic which gets a ton more than that due to not producing good military units and having a more "civilian" focus).

But I basically tried to preserve the mold of the scenario.
I developed seven designations for civilizations:
"English" Civilizations: the Celts and Goths, with access to some medieval traits associated with the English. (Goths are the closest the scenario has to Angles/Saxons/Anglo-Saxons, Celts are already indigenous in the scenario.)
"Iberian" Civilizations: the Celts and Carthaginians.
"African" (and to a lesser extent, "Asian") Civilizations: the Carthaginians, Egyptians, and Persians.
"Barbarian" Civilizations: the Celts, Goths, and Scythians.
"Civilized" Civilizations: the Romans, Carthaginians, Macedonians, Persians, and Egyptians.
"Player" Civilizations: the original four player civilizations, Romans Carthaginians Macedonians Persians. AKA, the Player-four. AKA, the war-four. Terms to that extent.
And "Non-player" Civilizations: the original four NPCivilizations, Egyptians Celts Goths Scythians. AKA, the peaceful four. Terms to that extent. (Of course one of the first changes I made was making each playable, but the term remains useful.)

Each designation serves a purpose.
There are English units, there are African units, there are Barbarian units, there are Civilized units, and there are certain traits universal to the player-four compared to the NPC-four. (I wanted to maintain balance by making those that start at war not be at a disadvantage due to the war, thus, those that start at war have an edge over those that start at peace. Because a war you can't control obviously can have consequences compared to a war you can.)

I also made each civilization have specialties, based around my perception of them.
Carthage emphasizes mercenaries, thus, has a wide variety of units at their disposal...when the appropriate resources are attained. (Units which drew some inspiration from the game Nemesis of the Roman Empire.) Carthage also emphasizes early naval dominance, having a unique sea unit as well as their starting galleys buffed to be elite.

Rome emphasizes terraforming, colonization, and lategame militaristic dominance, thus, has a wide variety of powerful units at their disposal which double as a makeshift work force when needed. (Their units draw from Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, plus ALL eras of the Roman empire present in Civ 3 Conquests: Rise, Fall, and via the Byzantines, Medieval.)

Macedon emphasizes the phalanx formation, as well as trusting in the "wall of wood": naval dominance, thus, two unique naval units, one of which is the undisputed best of all naval units in the scenario.

Persia emphasizes a variety of units, as well as masses of them. The Persians were basically renowned for bringing millions of troops--while most assuredly exaggeration where their actual numbers were in the hundreds of thousands (still impressive against a fighting force which would be hundreds or maybe thousands but certainly not hundreds of thousands), they have that heavy emphasis on not only a LOT of units but also a large variety of units, units that span the entirety of their empire for where they come from.

Scythia emphasizes horsemanship, thus, multiple units based around it. They also were given, via inspiration from age of empires II, the unique Scythian Shaman unit, emphasizing elements of mysticality which I associate with them for out-of-game reasoning. (Or rather, different-game reasoning.)

Goths I associated with a mass horde of units good on the attack but lacking in defense, but also with being essentially the closest the scenario has to forerunners of the vikings--thus, masters of the sea. They also represent the forerunners of the teutonic knights to me, so they have that available to them, too.

Celts, via their Gallic Swordsman being identical to a Swordsman just fast, I associated with "mobile infantry": fast-moving versions of normal units.

And Egypt, via their lore of being a civilization on the decline, I associated with "player self-imposed challenge", which would be a difficult civilization to master, but fully possible, via two opposite playstyles equally viable for a player but which require full commitment (something the AI lacks as it goes for half of one, half the other, and that never works out): complete warmongry (of savescumming and fighting the nearby empires for dominance of Africa and Asia Minor), or complete pacifist (via having no unique units that can be used offensively and aggressively).

I also made basic unit classifications.
"Spear" units, loosely defined as "Defensive" units (even though not all defensive units are spear units and not all spear units are defensive)
"Sword" units, loosely defined as "Offensive" units (even though not all offensive units are sword units though every sword unit does happen to be an offensive unit if you count 'offense value higher than defense' as the deciding factor)
"Bow" units, loosely defined as "Support" units
"Mounted" units, loosely defined as "Speed" units (even though not all speed units are mounted, though all mounted units are in fact speed units)
"Explore" units (loosely defined as "any non-worker unit that treats all terrain as road", even if they don't have the explore box ticked)
"Siege" units
"Terraforming" units (even though all but three--one of them in the original game, the base worker--don't work due to stupid programming limitations)
"Hidden Nationality" units
"Army" units
"Naval Power" units
"Naval Artillery" units (even though thanks to a programming limitation this doesn't work; the AI sees naval bombardment and power as synonymous)
"Naval Transport" units
"Naval Explore" units
"Naval Hidden Nationality" units
And "Building/Government-exclusive" units.

Obviously, there's overlap in quite a few unit categories, but. That's the general gist of how I divided the units.

Each government was thus reimagined as having one trait which made them be unique, but vastly inferior to the three "choice governments". (Tribal Council due to free units, Imperialism due to free units in a different way via a coding oversight present even in the original game!, Oligarchy as starting government until you can switch to Imperialism safely.)

To the map, I made eleven changes.
I added rivers, rivers everywhere. Mostly just 'cuz. This change didn't really serve much of a purpose other than satisfying my personal preference.

I added roads, roads everywhere--especially near Rome, where every single tile except those occupied by a Barbarian tribe has a road, leading into the Celts, Goths, and Macedonians; everything from the silver a little southwest of Masillia to the silks in the middle of nowhere, roads.

I added forts to that same area for Rome.

I added random barricades in locations sporadically throughout the map, representing some of my favorite settlement locations. (Basically a way of saying, "I'd put a city at or near this spot".)

I made some modifications to a couple of spaces, deleting forests in favor of coast in order to allow for naval shortcuts if founding a city in the right spot. (Mostly for Ireland and England, but there's also that spot which in the Medieval scenario is where I believe it's Denmark would be; I made it possible to bridge the ocean and that sea which in the vanilla game is landlocked.)

I added barbarian goody huts sporadically throughout the map--and placed heavy emphasis on some around the player four civilizations, once more to emphasize: these four civilizations get an advantage compared to the four original NPCs.
I added Barbarians sporadically throughout the map, mostly Russia, and reinforced heavily those that are around Rome. (Mostly for grinding purposes, of causing the conscript units to become regulars and even veterans.)

I added a few bonus resources here and there, especially to marshes (every marsh spot has some kind of resource on there because if I'm gonna have to deal with clearing the marshes out due to their disease I'm gonna get something out of it, dangit!), but did add a few resources. In Africa and Asia minor, there's a little more of what was already there, basically. Ivory, Silks, Spices. One spot in Africa has gold, silver, and gems added, but takes a long time to reach. (Similarly, the Oasis in Africa also has some bonuses, but is time-consuming to reach.)
Across the whole map, I added an eighth luxury of Wool, too.

I terraformed a fair number of spots, mostly adding irrigation to deserts and quite a number of plains with the occasional grassland irrigation thrown in for good measure: wherever there was a spot that would normally be impossible to reach, I added it. Speaking of which, every island got roads pre-added, many spots got pre-mined, and many more got pre-irrigated, due to the pain of transporting units there.

The four player civilizations were given outposts. Rome's are particularly noteworthy, as they allow first-turn contact with the three barbarian civilizations, and contain units pre-loaded onto them to defend them from attack. (To compensate for this, Carthage was given more starting Numidian Mercenaries as well as starting with some War Elephants, particularly in Hispaniola. Which, I felt, was thematically appropriate--and as I learned, surprisingly devastating to go up against!)

Most extensive of all though was the adding of units.
Each NPC starts with an Army now.
To compensate for this, each original player-civilization was given three of their initial golden age unit with elite experience based in the same city as their army. (Three Legionary Is experienced elite, three Hoplites experienced elite, three Immortals experienced elite, three War Elephants experienced elite.)
I developed a naval unit, the naval blockade, which can't be build and is immobile, and had each of those four start with a fair number. Carthage blocks off the pillars of hercules plus has presence near their starting islands, Rome also has presence near those islands as well as blocking off the lower half of the passageway through the island of Crete to Africa (or whatever that land is), Persia has a naval blockade which was my attempt to simulate Xerxes' Pontoon Bridges, and named them such, though because I was lazy and couldn't pinpoint precisely where said bridge would be, they blanket basically that whole sea. And Macedon blocks off any non-Persian square in that same sea, plus some spots near Italy.
There's also a Celtic one blocking off the narrow point between England and mainland Europe, plus Barbarian ones throughout that same area.

I gave the Romans a unique unit, the civil defender, envisioned as a "mobile defender": high early-game defense, and respectable lategame defense, but with an extra movement point as to keep pace with Roman Citizens and defend them from attack (since what good is two movement if your only way of covering them is with cavalry units that specialize in offense and have virtually no defense?), and placed them on each spot with a citizen (plus a couple extra which I thought had citizens but didn't).

To compensate for this, Carthage and Macedon got one extra settler in their capital city; Persia got two. Each also got their preferred defensive unit for said settler; Carthage got a Numidian Mercenary, Macedon a Hoplite, and Persia two spearmen. I may have given them one additional defensive unit prior to that, too, considering you start the game regardless of civilization with a settler unit--and normally, lacking the extra defensive unit to cover said settler.

From there, it's just a matter of specifics for the modifications I made.

I feel I did successfully preserve the dynamic of the civilizations, too, for what it's worth. Carthage always starts out lacking manpower compared to Rome, but having more cities than Rome. Carthage can take Sicily if lucky, but once Rome launches her initial invasion, all of Carthage's islands can fall, depending on the roll of the die. Soon, Carthage gets access to War Elephants relatively early, and storms Rome, launching a counter-offensive with their gained manpower. But when Rome gains Legionary IIIs, the tides turn against Carthage. Carthage eventually loses the Iberian Peninsula, and probably their islands, too, but Rome always lacks the manpower necessary to launch an invasion of mainland Carthage, stalemating the two. Unless at any point, the player intervenes on behalf of one.

Persia starts out with a manpower advantage over Macedon, but Macedon starts with their forces concentrated densely into a tight area, and is able to launch an initial wave of attacks. Eventually, Macedon controls the sea. Usually, Macedonia can control some Persian cities, such as Icosium (or was it Iconium?) and Ancyra, but after the Persians take the long way around, they start to lose ground. Ultimately, they juggle back and forth and it takes player intervention to break the stalemate.

Egypt is at a disadvantage, but can expand aggressively to the point of being the second-largest civilization in number of cities. As an AI, she messes it up by declaring war against the only civilizations capable of destroying her (Carthage and Persia), but as a player there's an opportunity to peacefully gain control of the world or via the AI's tactic done with player manipulation of the odds, aggressive expansion militaristically.

The Celts storm the world with their Gallic Swordsman, cheap units capable of launching an endless horde on their enemies, capable of coming in and getting out.

The Goths storm the world with their Teutonic Warrior, capable of launching an endless horde on their enemies of cheap, strong units--undisciplined, failing in the defensive, but relentless on the offensive (which is how any player would use them).

The Scythians storm the world with their cavalry, capable of utilizing hit-and-run tactics. (In the original scenario, their riders had an unlisted property of treating hills and mountains as if grassland--I upgraded this to be all terrain as roads. As I found out the hard way, "all terrain" doesn't just mean friendly/neutral/no territory terrain; it also includes terrain controlled by someone you're at war with so this buff was rather notably stronger than I originally thought!) Hordes of horsemen swarming, endlessly, even better at hit-and-run than the Celts, but utilizing it in a different way.

Even decisions that I to some extent regret--notably, terrain modifications which massively amp up shield/food production--have become an asset to the scenario, since I upped the size of a town to 10 rather than 6, and city up to 24 rather than 12. (And frankly, when it comes to that size, I always found it annoying that you had to have a metropolis to have every tile in a city be filled; now you don't!)

I still have alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll that work to do and this doesn't even cover most of the changes.
How I increased turns to 250, made percent of terrain 50% (a number which is actually challenging to achieve! Not impossible, but an actual real challenge to get, rather than something where you're struggling to try and avoid triggering too early which is what 20% was for me), population up to 65% (which frankly is a bit low; I should set it to like 75% to match the difficulty of terrain at 50% but whatever), the added police and civil engineer (not that I need them since corruption is way, way down on Chieftain and due to a perfect storm shield production is through the roof), the whole second era's worth of techs, the increased ease of cultural conversions (I looooooooove culture-hugs; regardless of game, it's my favorite type of tactic and the cousin of the turtle tactic I am so fond of where you expand via defense rather than through offense), enabling Espionage (because c'mon man that was a shortcoming of the original scenario in my opinion; don't pretend that time period didn't have spies because it VERY NOTABLY DID HAVE THEM in some rather famous cases and in warfare that's actually more important than normal to have!), a few general settings modifications, governments, resource values, terrain values, buildings/improvements/wonders, units...

...But this can give you some sense of the type of aesthetic I'm utilizing. A combination of multiple games covering the period (one recentish addition was adding a few things flavored off of Zeus/Poseidon), some inspiration from myths (I tried to keep this at a minimum and mostly in the form of, "you can think of this as allegory meant to invoke the image of the myth rather than literally being it"), some rather questionable and debatable historical evidence/facts/etc. borderline outlandish speculation which are meant to be artistic liberty (for instance, I gave the Macedonians a Hidden Nationality unit called the "Sea People", because ancestors of the Mycenaeans are one possible source of the Sea Peoples even though this is of dubious certainty).

Raising both into the past of the Mesopotamia, and into the future of the Middle Ages with some flavor from beyond, but mostly pre-gunpowder. (I had to take some exception there in naval units since the curragh, galley, longship, and dromon are literally the only non-gunpowder units.)

That's what I was aiming to build. And I've built it, and have pretty much finalized it. My seventh playtest is almost complete, and while I do need to make the easter egg harder to obtain (it's a little bit broken and poorly disguised right now), basically all that remains IS the civilopedia which is an extensive project to undertake.

I even managed to mostly fix the eighth luxury. In the city overview it still gives a blank icon, but at least now it is correctly labeling each luxury (whereas before, they were scrambled). Also got it to display properly on the map, albeit the way I did so borked a prior save and probably all prior saves. A comparatively minor thing, one which the fix is fairly simple, I think.

It's just. Kinda falling into place, as something worth playing for me. Over and over again. And when I've finished, and when I've played it.

That'd be one down, at least two more to go. (Fall of Rome and Medieval Ages use basically the same map. So too does Mesopotamia albeit a little further southeast, but that one, not sure if I'd make a new one of.)

Some things, I'm not sure I'll be able to fix.
Right now, I have a couple of buildings which have the 'requires this good to be within city radius' icon checked.
Right now, I also have harbors.
I have wonders which put these things in every city.
The intention behind the harbor-in-every-city wonder was for it to be every coastal city. But it puts it in every city, even landlocked ones. The intention behind the wonder placing buildings requiring the good within the city radius was for it to place those buildings only in cities which had that.

Except.

Right now.

They're not working.

That's a technical glitch I'm baffled by. All evidence suggests that it should be working the way I intended, and yet it's not. A side-effect of this is that my cities are producing many, many more shields than intended since the buildings meant to require the goods within the city both have bonuses to shield production.

Now, in cities which build wonders, I'm okay with shield count skyrocketing into the high hundreds.

But in cities that only have normal improvements, while breaking the hundreds is inevitable with the modifications I've made, it should be the low-hundreds. (Honestly tho shield production is something which I might just have a bit of a global reset on to do over since I increased shield production and decreased corruption to degrees where things seem reasonable...at first, but then the bonuses keep stacking and stacking, spiraling into no-longer-reasonable levels as I mentioned where cities can be producing over a thousand shields.)

Having two shield-boosting improvements be in every city rather than select few cities is...stronger than my design intention.

I may also face a technical glitch in city displays since I added an eighth luxury in a scenario which only had seven. I downloaded the proper images, so things display properly (this did have the side-effect of royally borking my current save and probably all past saves, which in my defense, was not something I could have anticipated), fixing a VERY long-standing problem (I'd been using rubber as a stand-in symbol for it), which is putting me on the right track.

Revamping the Civilopedia to have everything is a massive project though. I've implemented about two dozen units...and I still have...lemme count, I made a list...54 more units to implement.
Then after having implemented all of those units, there's getting all the links to those units up and running. And a massive cross-check there.

And even after having done all those units. Then I've got wonders to do, and to tackle buildings. (I might have figured out how to do wonders, but I'm not positive; I'm a little worried about buildings so it's going to be one of the last things I tackle.) And then I'll have all of the links to them.

Plus, I need to do resources and terrain and such thanks to my modifications there. (Though, again, I might just do a gigantic reset of sorts there, which is one reason I haven't done this yet; I'm not sure if I'm going to keep things as-is or if not what changes I'll make and so on and so forth.)

All-in-all, the Civilopedia is probably less than 10% complete.

Still, since I borked my last save and did make significant changes (eighteen new units, a number of new buildings, a new great wonder, six new techs, plus changes to the way a few units work including changing what was basically "Legionary with two movement and all terrain as roads"--something I realized was broken only after I began my fifth playtest and put the unit into action, thus the need to alter it--into something that had a more unique function), I am going to launch my sixth playtest of the scenario.

At this point, I think that all the major changes are done.
If I can fix bugs, I will.
I will need to make the Civilopedia updates (which, incidentally, carry over into existing games), but this can be done progressively.
I may adjust terrains and resources and such and maybe production in some cases, but if I had to say.

The scenario should be a good 80-90% finished, it's just fine-tuning it now. Not much will change from my current playthrough to the final playthrough, other than hopefully less errors occurring.

Of course, before I do the test, I need to run a quick debug mode due to changing PRTOs of units; if I made a change inaccurately, it'd crash the game due to lacking a connection between the animation and PRTO, so. Gonna do that, then try my sixth.

Wish me luck; I'll need it, given my track record thusfar! (Of my playthroughs, I've made one as Carthage way back in the earliest stages, one as Persia way back in the earlyish stages, three or so unofficial Rome playthroughs, and then the five official Rome playthroughs. Finished the Persian one, finished the Carthage one, but of the Roman playthroughs, I've managed to finish...one. So my success rate for running games to completion is like 3/10 right now.)

I do think that the mod is a fun and creative one...if I can actually get it working well. It's not exactly challenging especially not to a notorious save scummer, but it's still. Filled with many interesting ideas, and I did my best to maintain the dynamics of the civilizations. (Having the "barbarian" civilizations start at a disadvantage but be viable to play to victory; having Egypt start on the decline and be challenging but possible to play; having Persia and Macedon duke it out with the Macedonians having an earlier edge but the Persians having the later edge, yet still having the Macedonians dominate the sea; having Rome and Carthage struggle for control, with Carthage being formidable across the game but Rome being more powerful, etc.)

I realize people tend to say "less is more", and they're probably right, it's probably too many ideas in one scenario for it to work as well as I want it to.

But I like it, dangit, and I'm the one who's making it so if I like it and will play it over and over and over again that's the important bit.

I've not been blogging about it, but I've had some pretty revolutionary insights into things lately, and I mean that in absolute sincerity; if I were actually able to properly unpack the thoughts I had, they would be pretty darn insightful and actually make you pause and think. And if nothing else, give good insight into my mind.

Now I ultimately decided. I didn't want to spend the time/effort making those blogs. I had other things I wanted to blog about which were unrelated, took less time to talk about, and so on and so forth. Things which I could unpack quickly, easily, flawlessly.

So on Wednesday, I didn't give an expansion on my reflections about fear.

Yesterday, I didn't give a narration about the nature of time (and by extent, reality--short version, time in the narration given both exists and doesn't exist, everywhere and nowhere, is an objective constant that can be measured yet subjective illusion subject to the whims of the subconscious, without this being paradoxical because there's a logic to how it works; there's more to it than that and that's a poor explanation of the thoughts but like I said I didn't want to bother with the full version and still don't).

But today, I had a thought about failure, and this one I did want to share.

Failure is fun.
Now, I realize the Dwarf Fortress meme of "Losing is Fun!" exists, along the lines of "There's no winning, only losing, so make the loss as spectacular as is possible", more or less.

That's not what I mean.

What I mean by that is.

Failure is seen as a bad thing, but in it, there comes a blessing.
When you succeed, it is seen as a good thing, but with success comes a curse.
Failure helps you learn, whereas success can cause bad habits to form, but even this is not what I am referring to.

I'm more referring to what the effects of failure and success are, long-term.

Continuously failing can be a test of character, causing someone to either break and give up or push themselves with a drive until they succeed, but this is not what I am talking about, either.

What I more mean. Is that with failure, comes an expectation--or rather. A lack thereof. With failure, there is freedom. Failure gives you the luxury of choice, at every step. Do I continue, do I give up, as a start, but. I'm more talking about. When you fail.

You are under no obligations.

The results are right there, failure, in front of you. So if you've failed at everything. Then there's no obligation to do anything. What you do with that failure is up to you, allowing you the opportunity to do what you want--even if what you want to do is continue to fail.

That might seem like something nobody would want. Who'd deliberately want to continue to fail at a task which it's possible to succeed in? But therein lies the realization. Sometimes, continuing the task and failing it is the fun part, because it is the task itself which is fun--and succeeding at the task would make it no longer be the same level of fun.

This is one reason why I think so many people are perfectionists. They find flaws in what was done, to give themselves an excuse to call it a failure--so that they can do it again, but better.

Because the flip side of failure is success.
With success comes obligations.

If you succeed once, you are continuously haunted by that success: "I did it before, so why can't I do it again?" plagues all too many people. More than that, by having succeeded, it is expected that you will succeed again. People hold you to the level of quality you have shown you can do. If you do good, then you are under pressure to always do that good.

Once you have succeeded.
Once you have made your name.
Suddenly, everything is viewed in the lens of that success, compared to it.
"This is better than that".
"This is worse than that".

But when you have nothing but failures, there's a level of equality to it. A failure is still a failure, and while some failures are more spectacular (and I mean that in both senses it can be used in, in that they are massive failures or look-better-but-still-are-failures) than others, they still have more or less the same treatment.

A failure is a failure.

But when you succeed.
Suddenly, everything must be a success, viewed in terms of "less successful than previous" or "more successful than previous". And while some of these metrics are objective, plenty are subjective. Artists, creators, writers, and so on and so forth in particular are what I am getting at here; when they have gained renown for their work, their future projects are compared to these past projects, and inevitably, some will shower praise while others, criticism.

And it was this that made me understand why.

Why I am okay with living my life as a failure--and even seek failure out.

​There's a trope for this: Victory Is Boring. But it's a trope for good reason; it's true to life. There is less excitement in success, because with success comes obligation, comes expectation, comes pressure, comes the chains of the weight of the world bearing down on you. When you succeed, you are burdened by it.

But with failure, when you fail. You can forever continue to fail. You never need to succeed as a failure, because you can continue to fail over and over again and nothing changes. Nobody expects differently. There's no pressure to succeed, because you have failed. There's only the minimal burdens of the world coming from the bare necessities of survival. (You need to eat, you need to hydrate, you need to have shelter, and these things in the modern world come from some form of success in some endeavor for the most part.)

And I realized that this is why I am acting the way I do.

I have, for the longest time, lacked the drive to succeed.
I have, for the longest time, been dreaming up ideas and then not following through with making them reality.
I've been figuring this as being my bipolar disorder for as long as I've had that diagnosis: manic episodes for creativity, depression for how the idea dies out.

But there's a constant throughout this, and it's not just in my creative works. In mafia games, in all aspects of my life.

I have proven, time and time again, that when I put my mind to it and really try, there is almost no challenge I can't overcome. (I am human so I have limitations, but these are much fewer than most, especially myself, would assume.)

I have proven, time and time again, that I can do this, I can do that.

I have proven it as a proof of concept. Yes, it's viable. Yes, I can do it.

So why don't I do it more often?

Why do I lack the investment to try?

Why do I not make the effort?

Because if I made the effort, I might actually succeed--and that's something I don't actually want.

Well. Obviously. There are some things that I'd rather succeed on. (Namely, transitioning; living with my girlfriend.) But by and large. "It's the journey which matters, not the destination" is a saying for good reason, and it is specifically this that I am getting at.

The destination of success isn't actually worth anything to me (except on the few things it is; see above).
The journey is what I have fun with.
But the only way to ensure I keep on the journey.
Is if I don't reach success--and thus, fail.

So as I said.

Failure is fun.

And that's why I will forever be one.
I'll probably, realistically speaking, never succeed. Not even on the projects I most want to, like Phyrra and Cyrus. And because I'll keep inventing new ideas and never put in the time/effort to find out solutions for the technical difficulties in my modding, I'll never succeed in perfecting my mod.

But I'm at peace with that, because I am okay with living my life that way.
It comes with its own hardships. It comes with its own trials. It comes with the difficulties, the pains of knowing that my vision will never reach others. It comes with financial difficulty and making the few things I still want to actively pursue succeeding at, harder to get. (It's easier to succeed in transitioning and living with your girlfriend if you have succeeded at getting a steady, well-paying income, for instance, so it's harder on me that I can't get that easily.)

But it is not without its perks.

And honestly I actually think this is a contributing factor to why most people don't "succeed" in life.
Not everyone is famous.
Nobody achieves most of their dreams.
Everyone has a little creativity in them, and the vast majority of the human population has an overabundance of it; almost every single person in existence has some sort of creative thing they'd love to make. Music. Songs. Poems. Stories. Games. And so on and so forth. Yet only some of them so much as start, and of those that start, only the smallest of fractions of them succeed.

Most people are unknowns.
Most people are failures.
Most people never make it.

But I think the reason why.
Is because even if they never consciously make this connection.
On some subconscious level.
They know it, and are happy with who they end up being, even if it's a nobody.

For most of my life I've always struggled with the dilemma of feeling like I am half-nobody, half-extraordinary. That I am stuck in the middle of being ordinary and being special, that I am not normal enough to really fit in with more normal individuals and yet not special enough to make it big as a star, not talented enough to become the famous person I've always dreamed about being.

Yet I think that with this realization, I can be more at peace with myself.

I still won't ever fully "normalize", because with my brain wiring that's not possible.
I still won't ever succeed.

But now I feel a sense of serenity about it, that this is not a bad thing. That this is an alright place to be in.

You might think that this would mean, thanks to this realization, I'd give up on some things.
Oh no.
Furthest thing from it.
I'm doubling down on doing them.
Even knowing that I'm going to fail, I'm going to do them--specifically because I know I'm going to fail!
(The mythbusters quote about "Failure is always an option"? More like 'failure is always the ultimate option'.)

Honestly if I actually succeeded at this point I wouldn't know what to do with it.
But I'll still try. Over and over and over again.
My lot in life likely won't ever change, especially given my lack of drive to do so since I'm mostly content (aside from hating my dad) to live as I am.
But I'll still try.
Because the failure from trying is the most fun I can have.

I ended up crashing the game! (Also, tremendously unbalancing it; I thought I was tweaking variables to make things a bit more broken, but I may have dialed the notch more than intended to make them tremendously broken.)

I have some vague idea of what I did to crash the game, but actually no not really I don't know what crashed the game there's too many possibilities.

I'll figure it out tho.

But I got it to the point where the game is runnable (at least, I think it's runnable, haven't tried playing for a long time).

For my first scenario mod, I am modding the Rise of Rome scenario. I gave each civ an extra trait. (Four for the original civs, three four the original NPCs.) I made the previously-NPC civs playable and gave them an Army in their capitals. I added an eighth luxury, wool, but I can't figure out how quite yet to get the wool art from the medieval scenario into this one (am using rubber as a stand-in for now).

I have gold and silver as resources. They display fine enough. I have the units added in that I wanted to add in. At least I hope. Haven't tried building any of them.

I have the techs added, even though they are a little messy.

I have a lot of wonders, small and great, added in and modded.

None of these have civilopedia entries, except a few units and the wonders which to not break the game have one, but not linked in the way I was expecting/hoping them to.

I think, as is, with me as the creator knowing all the changes I made, it's playable (as long as I didn't crash the game).

But it sure as heck isn't in any way shape or form. Good. Not yet anyway. I'll give it a few test-runs (I can do at least 8!), to see if I can have it work for me the way I am envisioning it to work.

Still.

That may seem like it's lousy.

​But this was much, much further than I was expecting to get!

Or rather I am hilariously incompetent at searching for the information I need to make the mods I am looking to make.

​Specifically, I've found bundle-loads of useful information. This spot gives extensive information on how to create a scenario--but it's telling me how to create a scenario from scrap, a completely original scenario unique to me. While this would be what I'd need to make the Middle Earth scenario I envisioned a few days ago (I wanted to blog about that but never got around to it), that's not what I want to do right now.

This spot looks like it will be TREMENDOUSLY helpful for me...once I actually get to the modifying. It does nothing to help me actually get there though.

​Similarly so for this spot. These are places detailing the various glitches and nuances of the game, and they are in fact quite useful! Except they're not what I need to get started.

I believe that the world editor, which I found out how to use thanks to here, is the tool I'll need to make use of.
But again.
I don't know what I'm doing, and I can't find a place which gives me that.

Near as I can tell, everyone talks about creating new content, rather than changing pre-existing content.
(Of course, I wouldn't want to change them in the base game; I am looking to make a mod I can play which doesn't mess with the originals thanks to how extensive the mod as I envision it will be.)

I am quite certain that this is a question someone, somewhere, would have asked, but my google-fu failed me in finding it. I've taken some initiative, in that, "If I can't find it, I'll ask it myself", in the steam forum (which looks like it has at least some activity in it, including some about modding), so we'll have to see how that goes.

Still tho.

This is something I want to do.

I want to play the games, as I am envisioning them in my head to be played.
More than that, in order to get there--if I am doing the work, that's some valuable skills I'll be delving in to.

This might not be the hardest thing to learn how to do, but it is still a skill I feel has good application for me to learn it.

I just have zero experience right now and am hilariously out of my depth.

I do know that everything I want to do (with the possible exception of removing population-based pollution because seriously screw population-based pollution I can understand my cities having pollution from improvements but population is punishing me for doing what the game desires me to do because by default cities WANT to grow to that size), is fully possible to do.

It's not like I'm actually adding anything.
I may slightly modify existing things.
Change some parameters.
But I'm not ADDING anything.
Not really, anyway.

So I know it's fully possible to do.

I just need to know how to do it, and I currently don't.

And while I know there is quite a bit of risk in me extrapolating on my thoughts down this avenue (seriously you have no idea how worried I am that this blog post could get me banned from sites or like have a cop knock on my door), I feel like the reward is worth it.

Basically. My detractors may have the impression I think I'm the greatest, but. I really don't. Sure, I have delusions of grandeur, I put up a facade of confidence all the time, and even get genuinely arrogant. So I'll be the first to confess there are times when I, genuinely, fool myself into thinking I'm a good person.

But whenever I'm actually honest with myself and reflect...I know I'm not. I'll talk about things I've done, thoughts I've had, perspectives I hold, but even when I try to explain why I'm a monster, I avoid actually revealing the things which make me one, because I don't want them to be known. (And frankly I could potentially even ruin my life by revealing some of them.)

Even in this blog post, right here and now, I am doing precisely that. I'm not going into what makes me a monster. I'm barely even teasing it. My statement that I am one sounds like it's empty, because I don't back it up. And people may think I exaggerate, as is my wont. People may think that what I think is monstrous of me is something completely normal. They would be wrong, because if they actually knew, they'd agree, yeah, it's monstrous.

But because I don't tell them, they assume the like of that. Thinking I'm not possibly that bad even though if anything I'm worse than I indicate. To give the tip of the iceberg, and I hesitate to even describe it that way because this makes people severely underestimate the extent of how disturbed I am, I wanted to talk about something.

What I'm about to describe, I feel would not so much as even scratch the surface of my inner monstrosity. (I've made it quite clear in the past that all of my mes, all of the me that makes me me, is afraid of that inner monstrosity, and for good reason given what it can do and my fear knowing it can and would do that.)

The evil within me can be, on occasions, channeled into good, but the evils were evils I immersed myself in willingly, with no such altruistic goal; I had no expectation of turning the evil into good, and doing so can be thought of as simply not letting lemons go to waste and making lemonade from them. It's still evil regardless, unambiguously so.

How bad am I talking?

To reiterate: everything I am about to describe. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. I am about to tell you. I don't consider monstrous. So after reading the entirety of this blog post and seeing every single thing I describe and knowing not a single one I consider to be monstrous, you should be left with a question:
"If she didn't consider any of THIS monstrous, what does she consider monstrous?"
(The answer is not some philosophical trivial BS nonsense which is completely fine with everyone else, by the way, nor is it some quirk that literally everyone has. It is actual real monstrous things, but the darkest parts of my mind I keep private from others and won't ever explain on a blog.)

Before we begin, though. This is a necessity:
TRIGGER WARNING: THE ENTIRE REST OF THIS BLOG DEALS WITH TORTURE AND MAY TOUCH ON GORE AND RAPE, AMONG OTHERS. Viewer beware!

You've been warned, so you know what you're in for here; it's...not gonna be pleasant.

​Torture is something I think about alarmingly often, and not in the more lighthearted ways. What I mean by that is, I'm not talking about BDSM here because that is in no way shape or form torture; I am also not thinking about torture in the clinical, scientific, detached, theoretical sense of it.

You know. Think about how someone can be a buff for a subject. Science buff. History buff. Gun buff. Knife nut. You get the idea. They can hold fascination over the history of the subject throughout the ages, and know details about it from various regions and points in time, and go on long, passionate rants about, saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy, the gory details of how the Aztecs would sacrifice a human being.

But they do that in a way which is self-evidently healthy and light; they're not into those things because they derive some form of recreating these things. Their interest can be thought of as trivial. They dig into the facts about those things as a side-project, as a hobby, as a passion, as a passing interest which they can be enthusiastic about, but they don't really go beyond that.

My interest in torture is not of that kind.
My torture is of the more thorough, deeper kind. I absolutely was the kind of kid that tortured all forms of life as a child. I probably left lifelong psychological damage on one of our first pets from what I did to her; I would squish ants, tried burning them with the magnifying glass trick, and would relentlessly brutalize plants in just about every way possible.

And while I eventually did swear off those ways and promised to be pacifistic, in spite of that, on some level I did shift gears from plants and animals onto humans. Where the unhealthy, darker sides of torture would be. The type of thought where it'd be, "This is how to go about it, and this is what to do to not get caught", kind of thinking.

(Disclaimer: Due to just how vividly and detailed I am in these descriptions, I feel the need to state beforehand: in case you are wondering. No. I haven't actually tortured anyone. Nor have I looked up/researched torture. But these are a collection on my thoughts on the hypotheticals behind if I did do it. I state these with a viewpoint which sounds confident and assured, that what I say is fact. That viewpoint comes from a lifetime of demented thoughts, thoughts not acted upon but which were thought up all the same. This is the darker side of having an overreactive imagination; by having the ability to envision even the most twisted of things, I am able to do...well. Just keep reading. THAT.)

People can and have called me psychopathic and/or sociopathic for my more sadistic tendencies, and frankly I don't really blame them for doing so, given my selfishness and detachment from reality and utter disregard for the rules of society and so on and so forth.

Yet to go into torture, really go into it, you have to start with a few baselines for what I actually mean by torture, here.

You can think of torture in terms of attempting to obtain pieces of information. Not only is torture proven ineffective in this regard, but also there are more reliable ways of obtaining such information. I don't really see torture as viable to this means, and this type of torture is not what I mean.

You can think of torture in terms of deriving pleasure from the inflicted suffering of others. This is closer to what I mean, where the torturer is enjoying the act of the torture more than anything else, but this isn't quite what I mean, either. There's plenty of ways to derive pleasure from the suffering of others that don't involve torture.

​What I more mean about torture is, what you can think of in terms as being "torture for the sake of torture". Torture for the sake of tormentation. Not expecting to get pleasure, not expecting to get anything out of it. The torture here is zero gain. There is nothing to be had from it. Only pain of the victim.

In other words: inflicting suffering, just to inflict the suffering. To drag others down, not to raise yourself up, but simply just to drag them down. Something transcending a sense of sadism, as it were. This is where I approach torture from, so that should give you a good idea of where I'm coming from, if you can comprehend this concept as an actual real thing. (And I'm telling you it very much is one...at least for me.)

​I've even thought about what would ultimately be one of the most excruciatingly slow, painful methods, which I call the "Hundred Permanent Paths of Pain". (Name is a bit of a misnomer, because there's not literally 100 pains involved. There's more.)

The first step in it would be to break every bone you can safely break without killing the victim. Hands, arms, legs, feet, ribs, the like; we have hundreds of bones in our body. Not all can safely be broken without risking, say, internal bleeding, but a fair number are safe to break. Keep in mind that bones can also be broken in multiple locations if big enough, and that inflicts even more suffering.

That's just the start though. From there, pull out all 20 fingernails and toenails. Rip them out of their sockets. And then, cut off the top third of each finger and toe. Then the middle third. Then the bottom third. (Each finger and each toe--even our thumbs, even our pinkies, even our big toes--has three distinct sections. These sections are harder to see in some of those extremities than others, but exist all the same.)

For all of these cut off parts, cauterization (which is extra pain) can be applied as is necessary to stop the victim from bleeding out. We're at 81 (if you count bones collectively as 1) paths of pain thusfar; the next logical step is to cut off the hands at the wrists, then the feet at the ankles. Then, cut off the arms at the elbows, and legs at the knees. And then, the arms at the shoulders, and legs at the hips. Which bumps it up to 93.

At which point, there's a bunch on the face.
Ears, 95.
Eyes, 97.
Tongue, 98.
And then you can pull out each and every single tooth they have.

The tongue and teeth come last for the purposes of hearing unmuffled screaming.

This level of agony would of course be instantly lethal if given all at once, so would be delivered over the course of days, if not weeks. And if their forcefully-blind/deaf/mute-paraplegic state isn't enough, there's always whipping their torso and hanging their neck but not enough to kill them for bonus extras (that can technically be done again and again at any time).

Step by step, the permanent paths of pain would be...well. Permanent damage. Starting out with things that can heal even if unlikely to heal correctly, and then moving on to things that won't heal but can be adapted to, and progressively on to more and more debilitating injuries, worse and worse as it goes along with the exception of the facial ones that are technically less severe, but are more psychologically scarring.

Which is a nice segue into the next section of defining torture to me.

All of the above? Absolutely nothing to me. Because while the above does hold some psychological aspects to it, it is almost entirely physically-based induced suffering. And for me, psychological pain is the true heart of where torture lies. You can inflict endless amounts of pain, but if it's physical, it's temporary. Psychological pain, on the other hand, isn't.

​This is one of the reasons, say, rape is such a special kind of evil. (I'll try to keep my talk here light and respectful, but I do consider it to be a form of torture of sorts, so I feel I need to at least mention it. And, yes, it is in fact monstrous, so ignore my "everything I say below I don't consider monstrous" line above when it comes to this section.) There is the obvious immediate physiological damage, but the psychological scarring from rape lasts a lifetime. 

Especially if after it, the victim suffers further from others: not being believed, being called names like whore, slut, and the like, victim blaming, and in a disturbingly large number of cases absolute lack of closure as the rapist walks away without any lasting consequences for whatever reason.

Even if the victim does receive a form of vindication/justice and has some amount of closure, there will always be some reminders of the incident that they can never fully remove from their minds; it will last a lifetime and never go away. They can find ways to cope, they can find ways to recover, but they'll never fully heal, because the psychological damage lasts well after the physical damage has passed.

It is perhaps one of the more extreme examples and in our every day life/the absolutely craptastic world we live in one of the most common examples of torture (sad as that may be, it's simply the facts; it happens, and pretending it doesn't won't change that it does, and is there a LOT), but I could name any number of other tortures akin to this.

For me, torture can be thought of as a performance art, subject to the whims of the audience (in this case, the audience is the victim): the key to making it be successful is to find the audience's trigger points, and figure out what works to psyche them, what gets them to react in the ways you are hoping to make them react.

Because, the real key to torture, is to never let the victim go numb. When a person is past their breaking point, they'll numb the pain. Pain will be meaningless to them. And when pain is meaningless to them, it ceases to be torturous, because it no longer has any affect on the victim.

So you rotate the torture. You give variety, introduce new hells one after another. And you give things which, preferably, can never be adapted to. Many psychological sufferings can eventually be coped with; a skilled torturer who really knows how to torment their victim will inflict psychological scarring that no matter how long it goes on for, will never be something they can adjust to.

The majority of my most disturbing imagery will end here, but I still wouldn't say the rest of this blog is safe to read, because I'm starting out with describing the ultimate torture someone could inflict on me. (One of the few redeeming aspects of these thoughts? I had them with me as the guinea pig in them. I didn't envision me inflicting the hundred permanent paths of pain on another; I envisioned them being done to me. But that still doesn't change how disturbing they are.)

The ultimate torture that someone could inflict on me is what I call "The Metal Box".
It is exactly that, a metal box, about three times the height (and thus, width and length, as this is a perfect cube) of the prisoner contained within. The walls absorb sound, so no sound from outside enters; no sound from inside echos. As the name indicates, the walls are also a cold metal.

You might think that the metal box would have no lighting, or dim lighting. Quite the opposite, the lighting within is equivalent to that of the sun (give or take), with light shining from all six directions. Not from a single location, either; the light is spread out across the entirety of the walls, floor, and ceiling, as if the very metal itself were the light itself.

There would be a small hole in one wall for a toilet, but not a hole large enough to climb through. So small a hole, in fact, that it can barely fit the contents you are dumping into it. It's just big enough that you won't die of disease as a result of poor sanitation, but offers no escape, no entertainment (it's not like a flushable toilet with a toilet seat that you can lift and lower for entertainment or a handle to flush for entertainment or tools you can use to escape). Pure baseline functionality.

There would be a water dispenser, designed similarly to that of those used for rodent pets like a hamster, such that you only receive the amount of water you need to survive, no more; it's impossible to drown yourself when you become more suicidal. It's also impossible to break it down into tools to orchestrate an escape.

Meals are delivered at random varying intervals, anywhere from as little as one hour apart to as much as two weeks apart. There is no pattern to these meals; there is no rhyme, no reason, to them. They come when they come, and don't come when they don't come.

Said meals are delivered with no tray, no plate, no silverware, nothing but the food itself, and are dumped in such a way that it's impossible to see anyone delivering the food. It just goes in, and that's it.

The metal box is, other than these features and the presence of the prisoner within...completely and entirely empty. Nothing inside it. Whatsoever. Except the prisoner, and the necessary means to keep the prisoner alive and functioning. With no way for the prisoner to derive entertainment from those necessities, and no escape route. Trapped in a metal box of a room, utterly empty.

The end result of this would be losing all sense of time, trapped with the worst enemy of all: my own mind. My own mind is my absolute worst enemy. I function because I have an outlet for it. I wrote down this blog at work; that's an outlet. When I post it as a blog, that's an outlet.

But what if I were, permanently rather than temporarily, deprived of all outlets...yet not having my ability to think dimmed, dulled, or numbed in any way, shape, or form? What if my overreactive imagination and relatively speaking fairly sharp senses were left to run amok, unchecked, ungated?

I fidget with objects to distract myself. I do things all the time to distract myself. But I always need something, anything, to focus on, because if I have nothing to focus on my brain explodes in activity, and when it has that type of outburst, nothing can stop me from just being in agony.

I need to move. But in such an environment, I would be unable to move. I could pace back and forth, but eventually my body would tire and I'd be forced to stay in one spot. As pacing helps me channel my energy, once I was no longer able to do so out of sheer exhaustion, I'd be at my wit's ends. Because I'd have all this energy, all this mental energy, accumulating, as if a bomb ready to explode...yet it couldn't be released.

That would be the truest, greatest of hells someone could inflict on me. Highly immoral, sure, but that's a given for torture since, y'know. Torture isn't exactly ethical, now, is it? Also highly illegal, mind you. But scarily enough, not all too far off of real world jails in some parts (for instance, isolation), which mind you is a contributing factor to why I want to always be a law-abiding citizen and never need to go to jail.

I simply couldn't survive in there, because the things I would need to survive are the very same things they would absolutely forbid me from having. Pencil and paper to write down thoughts? Way, way, way, WAY too dangerous. Laptop to type up thoughts? Probably even more dangerous! I'd no joke if a thought hit me that was that important, would write it down in blood, which I'm quite sure would make my living situation even worse.

What I'm getting at there is that I need an outlet. I absolutely need a way to vent, a way to express myself, a way to give my thoughts, to give my mind away in an external factor, even if it is something stupidly simple. And not doing so would be torture. Psychologically scarring, driving me insane.

So that's what I mean when I say I can think of no greater torture someone could inflict on me than that. But...I have a small confession to make:
In spite of what I just said. It's not quite fully accurate. While it's true that The Metal Box is the worst torture which someone could inflict on me, an aspect of it would actually give me respite from the TRUE ultimate torture...one which nobody can inflict on me.

That of the hell of my life, due to what can never change in it.

There are many, many, many things that people can change in their lives. It's not exactly true, but in general it can probably be said that the more things someone can change, the more privileged they are. An old story my dad used to tell me comes to mind.

There were two men.

One man kept making wrong choice after wrong choice.
The other, right choice after right choice.

As the man who kept making right choices went on in life, more and more choices opened up to him.
As the man who made wrong choices went on in life, fewer and fewer choices were available, until only two were available: death by (one method I don't remember), or death by (a different method I don't remember).

I'm horribly, horrendously butchering that story since it's been like 15, 18 years since I last heard it, but it's related to what I'm talking about here.

If you are in a position where you have the luxury of choice, you can change many, many things. The better off you are, the more you can change; the worse off you are, the less you can change. Now, even if you are worse off, you can still make changes, but your chance to make change and your opportunities to make the change are going to be more limited than if you were better off; that's just self-evident, that a poor situation/circumstances leads to less available chances to create good ones, whereas good situations/circumstances lead to more available chances.

Anyone can climb the latter in theory, but those who are already higher up on the latter have better shots at climbing the latter further than those who start from the bottom. That's just the world we live in. I don't feel I'm being cynical in stating that, either. It's real. Should it be that way, no. (I could probably go on endlessly on a tangent about equality, equity, and so on and so forth but I won't.) But it is that way.

And why I'm saying that is...

...I hold an incredible privilege, because I am already quite high up on the ladder. Not incredibly high, but middle class. (Not sure where on middle, if it's upper, lower, or right in the middle, but it's middle class undeniably.) We have debts; we have the need to monitor money; we have a bunch of things we have to watch out for that upper class people take for granted, but we also have things like 1.5 cars per person in a six-person family, about that same number of computers, a TV in both bedrooms as well as the living room, at least two PS1s, at least three PS2s, at least two PS3s, at least one PS4, an XBox 360, a Wii, numerous DVD/Bluray players, half a dozen gameboys and gameboy advances, plus the things which make use of these (movies, shows, games) in the hundreds.

If my parents had had only one or two kids with no pets (we've had two dogs, four cats, countless fish, two mice, and a hamster as pets off the top of my head and pets are ludicrously expensive to raise and keep in good health; saving our 14-year-old cat when he was a kitten cost at least $3,000 when he swallowed too much strong), then they would undeniably be upper class. (Especially since my brother is the only sibling of us three to really make any actual money.)

We're poorer than that because of said pets and extra kids (mind you, neither myself nor my younger sister were planned; we're both accidents so the aforementioned two-children scenario almost did happen), but what I am getting at here is...that's still incredibly well-off, all things considered.

I have a lot of things that are good in my life. I have warm shelter every day, due to having a house to live in. I have safe, reliable, consistent, quick, reasonably cheap transportation. I have a steady job (albeit minimum wage). I have a neverending supply of food, and more than that, the luxury of choice in what to eat. (I can't even begin to fathom how much of a privilege that is, in spite of knowing just full good and well exactly how much it is indeed a luxury!)

I have a constant supply of water, albeit due to no city water access not quite unlimited. (We have a well. And live in Western Washington. I need say no more than 'western Washington' for 'endless water' to come across.) As indicated above, I have multiple sources of entertainment available to me at any time.

I even have a girlfriend!

​I am in a position which, objectively speaking, is awesome to be in. People would quite literally KILL to have what I have.

Yet this creates torture.

Because while there are so many things I can change.
Because while due to having all of that, I have so many opportunities, so many chances to change.
What eats me up inside is that the things I most want to change.
Are the things which can't change.

There are plenty of things which can change, and my position affords me almost unlimited access to pretty much all of those; I have at my disposal endless numbers of decisions which can lead to countless numbers of possible paths, good or bad. I can change my life in those ways, with the potential to make it better!

But the ways I can change my life, be it for the better or for the worse, are the ways I don't care about changing.
The ways I can't change are the ones that I want to change.

And therein lies the suffering, the torturous part of it.

Because what I can change isn't what I want to change. I am shown, every day, with my privileges. "All of this is things you can do." Yet I am shown, by that, "You can make change"...except in the areas I want to make change.

There's hell to be had in my every day life because of that duality.

​No matter what I do, I can't change some things, even if I really want to. I have a female mind, born into a body that is biologically male. That can't change, no matter what. I could suffer a form of death. Pretend I'm just a guy for the rest of my life and hope, PRAY, that if I tell that lie to myself for long enough, that if I consistently sell the same story, that eventually it'll be real.

That's not changing it though. That's denying it. That's a refusal of reality. That's rejecting reality, and going down a road that nobody should go down, least of all someone like me since going down that road leads only to misery and suffering not just for me but potentially for others as well.

Technological advancements are an amazing thing; there's HRT and GRS or whatever name it goes by. But while those are good, they aren't perfect. The technology to make a body born biologically male 100% absolutely indistinguishable from a body born biologically female doesn't exist yet.

We're getting closer every day to it existing, but it doesn't exist now. That's no excuse of course not to use the existing technology, which I fully do intend to use...but even our existing technology is ludicrously expensive; to fully transition will cost me $100,000 or so, give or take.

In other words. No matter what I do. Regardless of the situation. I can't change who or what I am. I can't change that circumstance. I can get good at masking it; fully transitioning will help me cope with it. But nothing can change it, well and truly change it. At least not with our current technology. (Who knows what the future holds, in ten, twenty, fifty years it very well just might, but right now, no such luck.)

I am also autistic. This is not as obvious a tormentation as being a transwoman can be, but it is not without woes. This is also a mixed blessing/curse, in that there is some genuine good to come from my autism, from my ability to pick up on nuances, increased pattern recognition, and vastly boosted creativity, among other gifts.

But there are also some tremendous downsides to autism.

I will never be able to communicate as I want to.

I can try.

And I do try!

Every day, I try to get better at communicating.

But no matter how hard I try, I am hardwired to the very core to think in a way which is just different from other people, and that difference is difficult to live with. I can never convey my intended meaning as effectively as I want to. Even in words, it's difficult. I ramble. I make gigantic wallposts that nobody reads. In person, it's outright impossible.

​I can't change that. So it's torture. I can cope with it; I live with it every day, so I've adjusted to it. But I still don't like it. I don't like not being able to tell people what I mean and have them understand. I don't like my increased vulnerability to not understanding what others mean. I don't like people altogether skipping what I say.

I don't like those things, but no matter how much I try to change them. The best I can do is develop workarounds. I can turn weaknesses into aspects of strength, to exploit the most out of things. But I can never cure it altogether. I can never change it. I can try to make it work, but it'll always be a part of me that I wish was better than it is, because it is something I simply can't overcome because it's impossible to truly grasp.

I am bipolar. This is more obvious a tormentation in some ways, because the torture is something which people can generally at least grasp the concept of, but they might not understand just how bad it can be. Impulses are very, very, very nasty things. Most people have good control over their impulses. As I'm bipolar, I am forever vulnerable to succumbing to them.

Now this is all fine and dandy if the impulses are innocent enough, and good can come from being impulsive. I took track on an impulse. I took cross country on an impulse. I decided on swimming over wrestling (which my mom actually favored) on an impulse. I went to the same lifeguard training my sister did, on an impulse. And from those series of impulses which are a direct line (swimming came from needing a bridge between cross country and track, meaning without crosscountry, there wouldn't be swimming; with no swimming, there's no lifeguarding), you get me eventually getting a job.

But most impulses aren't innocent. Impulse buying is a go-to example, but I always live in constant fear that the darker half of my brain I suppress holds the full potential to, via impulses, enact those darker thoughts. I told you in the earlier disclaimer that I'd never tortured a person before, but no matter how unlikely it may seem to you--and believe me, it's quite unlikely because I've forced myself to set up dozens of safeguards--I am always living in fear of myself succumbing to an impulse which could lead to an event like torturing someone.

Do you know how scary it is to always be afraid of what you fear you're capable of doing? Impulses can lead to me hurting someone. In fact, they have. Not deliberately, of course. But they have hurt people before, and quite severely hurt them at that. Mostly online, mind you. And years ago when I was a kid fairly new all things considered to the internet. In the dark times, of the 2010 range for me (give or take a year).

The hurt I inflicted on them will never go away. It was accidental, yes, but it still happened, and it was because of poor impulse control more than anything else. (Autism may have played a part in me not realizing what had happened until it was too late, but that's ultimately not important what caused the hurt; what's important is that the hurt happened.)

Impulses aren't even the torturous part, though. I live in fear of impulses letting loose the monster within me, but I fear that knowing it to be an incredibly unlikely scenario. (I doubt that, short of some extreme trauma severely negatively impacting my psyche, it will ever come to reality. Still doesn't stop the fear though.)

The real bitch about the manic half of my depression is that when combined with my autism allowing me to sense things and connect random things. My brain is in constant overdrive, the overreactive imagination I mentioned earlier. How's it feel to have something within you, which makes you feel like your chest/brain is going to explode? It's maddening.

It's useful! It is incredibly useful for my creative efforts. But it is so overpowering that when I wave of mania hits me, I can do nothing but succumb to it. I can't do anything other than try to release the energy pent up within me, and this can and does lead to the aforementioned poor impulse control, too.

There's more to bipolar disorder than the manic half, though. The depression half of it, the low of it, is crippling. It can kill my drive altogether. It is, singlehandedly, the reason I haven't made anything of my life. At this point, probably having had high hundreds of thousands if not even millions of story/game/etc. ideas.

Not one has made it to reality.

Not. a. single. one.

To some extent, yes, the mania half is to blame because I can't focus on one if my mind is entirely on a new, different one.

But even if I am entirely focused on an idea.

If depression is running its course.

I can't do a thing.

I just shut down.

I do nothing.

I waste time, and make no effort.

And the worst part is, this can not only happen randomly, but also be induced by the slightest of causes. If I have reason to feel down, then I can enter depression no matter how minor the reason (it can be as little as a bad work day), and once in, I'm not leaving in a timely fashion (say a bad work day happened and I get depressed; it's not magically healed the next day).

The depression has its uses, yes, in that the time down is time which I've managed to turn into an artform, sometimes quite literally.

But I still don't take it well.

​Not even going into, counterintuitive as it may seem, how depression and mania can coexist simultaneously. Specifically, the danger there is combining depression bad enough to get suicidal with mania's poor impulse control; you can understand, then, exactly why that is an ugly, dangerous, combination to exist but it is perfectly plausible.

Again, I've put in safeguards to prevent it. Numerous ones. Failsafes for the failsafe's failsafe, levels of safeguarding. But all of this. Every single bit of the bipolar disorder countermeasures. Is just coping with it. It never changes that I have it.

I can make use of it; there is good to be had from it, as I have outlined.
But there is also a great many downsides to it, and no matter how much I want to change it so that I don't have those downsides.
I have those downsides.
They won't go away, no matter what. There is no magic pill to make my mind all better; it is permanently messed up, because I was born with these neurological conditions.

And the downsides of them stack.

Because the downsides of them stack.

Every day.

In spite of having the power to change.
I know that they won't change, because the ability to change doesn't mean that anything can change.
I can only change the things it is possible to change; the way my brain has been wired since birth is not a thing that can change.

You can slightly alter it. Coping mechanisms. Workarounds. But the fundamental nature of it remains the same.

So while I can get closer to being allowed to be the me I want to be. I'll never have everything I actually want.

And because of that.
That creates my torture.

I shouldn't be in a position to complain about a hellish life, because I have things which SHOULD lead to a happy, fulfilling life. And I do in fact, genuinely, feel happiness, each and every single day!

So maybe you can then understand the torture of HAVING THESE THINGS, KNOWING THEY ARE AWESOME, YET FEELING TORTURED IN SPITE OF POSSESSING THEM. Having them makes the torture in many ways worse, especially when I am told, "You have those things, why are you saying your life is hell?"

​When I have things others want above all else, how can I tell them I don't want those things? That what they consider a cherished gift is worthless to me? That what I have is their dream, yet I'm deliberately wasting it? That I don't care about the things I take for granted they want.

When I have no RIGHT to complain...what's it mean when I DO? Knowing I got good, yet I don't appreciate it. So luxurious, so nothing to complain about...yet I do ANYWAY. I know that my feelings on the subject hurt them...but I can't stop myself from having those feelings.

I can pretend I don't feel that way, that I appreciate the things I ought to appreciate, but it's still a lie. The simple truth of the matter is that I don't care about anything I have other than my girlfriend. (Incidentally. Caring about nothing in my life except my girlfriend is, in fact. Reason I would leave everything for them. Because I don't care about those things; I care about them, my girlfriend. Because I care for my girlfriend but not any part of my life, I would thus sacrifice any and every part of my life for the sake of my girlfriend. But I digress.)

​In other words. I know I am privileged, yet with the sole exception of my girlfriend nothing I have I really feel helps, making the torture worse. The torture is mental, psychological, in nature, continuously ongoing. It never ends. There's never a break in it. Never a chance for me to get a rest from my weaknesses.

They are always there, always a fundamental part of me, constantly reminding me of what I'll never have, what I'll never obtain, no matter how much I dream of having those things. All of that? Things which, by having, I "SHOULDN'T" be tortured, so because I know I shouldn't feel tortured, make the torture I feel all the more worse because in spite of having those things I still am tortured?

It's the worst pain I can possibly have. I don't feel I have the right to complain. I don't feel like I have the right to say I'm in pain. I don't feel like I have the right to say I'm struggling every day. I don't feel like I have the right to say my life is hell, my life is pain, my life is suffering.

I don't feel like I have the right to say those things. Yet I say them anyway. And I live this pain, every single day of my life. Because every single day, no matter how subtle, I suffer from gender dysphoria of my body not matching my mind. Every single day, no matter how little problem it presents, I struggle with my autistic idiosyncrasies clashing with society.

Every single day, I live in fear of succumbing to any number of problems originating from my bipolar disorder, and even when I don't, I am constantly bombarded by my own mind's hyperdrive. Processing a million different things and inputting them all at once, with poorly-assembled filters that could fail at any time.

Hells made worse by living them every day.
So isolation cures most of them, except the explosion of bipolar's mania, which is made oh so very much worse. 

Of course, all things considered. Miraculous as it may be, I am reasonably speaking well-adjusted. People who interact with me might just think I'm quiet, or a bit odd; they wouldn't really think of autism. (The last time I was asked, it was by a police officer, who wanted to make sure my stuttering wasn't because of either brain damage ensued from my car crash or from consuming alcohol, both things he would have obvious reason to take action on.)

That's because I have coping mechanisms in place.

I genuinely am able to live a happy, peaceful life. (Especially considering, and I can't emphasize this enough, I have a girlfriend that I love, who loves me, and that by being with I feel alive; they really are a motivator for me and an anchor point, as it were, a "rock" to rest upon.)

But said happy life is largely the result of wastefully squandering what I have, akin to a drug addict. An easy example to utilize here is the game of mafia, which I have so heavily integrated into the core of my life. A running joke is that mafia is the ultimate drug addiction.

The real piece of wisdom comes in when you realize it's not actually a joke. Mafia serves as an escape from the world. My problems still exist outside of it, and manifest even within it, but while I am playing it I don't have to consciously think about those problems. They don't go away. In fact, they only get larger. But while there, I can bury myself away, happily doing nothing.

I derive a sense of self-worth from it. It is self-destructive, it is incredibly harmful, but it makes me feel happy. It is a way to deal with the torture, but it does not cure the torture. It is a way of temporarily forgetting about my problems, my suffering, but it can't cure them no matter how hard I try and by immersing myself too heavily in it as I've done on occasions my life has taken nosedives, plummeting in a downward spiral.

Sounds like a drug to me.

I do have non-mafia coping mechanisms.
Even productive ones! That being, non-gaming coping mechanisms, since I play more games than just mafia to escape the misfortunes of the world.

But while those coping mechanisms exist. They can't cure the problem. Just mitigate the damage of it. 

I am always struggling between my self, and my sense of others. The desire to do good is there, but so too is the struggle to overcome my limitations, to bypass my roadblocks, my shortcomings. And I fail, time and time again. And each failure is more painful than the last, because each time I tell myself I learned, I'll do better, and that I won't make the same mistake again...so when I make it anyway, there's a sense of dread and despair, of a broken record.

And, yes, hopelessness. Always, wasting. Never who I want to be, never doing what I want to do, and when faced with this truth, using excuse after excuse. (Heck, you can find them here in this very blog!) But never changing. Half because I don't want to change things I can, half because I can't change the things I want to. So always on repeat.

Some things I most want to can't change. Yet I have the power to change plenty. An ability I knowingly and deliberately squander. Itself a form of cruelty, self-defeating, even destructive, yet I learned to revel in this debauchery as a coping mechanism.

There are good coping mechanisms, but most of mine aren't. I can change coping mechanisms, but I struggle to do so, because what I want to do isn't to change the coping mechanism, but to change myself so that there's no need to cope in the first place.

Something which I know is impossible to obtain. And the circle continues anew. A self-feeding loop.

I do, however, have a saving grace. It's a form of acceptance. Knowing that I can't ever get what I want has allowed me to come to peace to it to some extent, and I can live my every day life at least in part due to that, and I don't think that's an inherently bad thing; it's actually a quite rare gift.

I have some level of peace about who and what I am, something most people in similar situations never obtain and their response to never obtaining it is quite often disproportionately suicide; my risk of that is quite low because I know I can live this way even if I hate it.

It is also a curse though because that same tendency has a downside of feeding the negativity. It can help me, in the sense that it prevents the negativity from taking control altogether. But it can also hurt me further, because it allows the negativity to foster, to thrive.

It's actually quite possible, in fact, that this sense of acceptance is in some ways...my numbness from succumbing to the torture. It does fit a number of the symptoms; I am continuously in pain, and certainly have been pushed to breaking before. It'd make sense that if I did in fact develop acceptance as an adjustment to the pain, it'd make me more numb to it.

Granted, this being psychological pain. This being psychological torture. Acceptance as a numbing agent to the pain doesn't stop it altogether. The pain still destroys my life. It just doesn't do as much damage as it would without the acceptance.

​I don't really have a direction to take this morbid blog after this. I certainly don't have a positive spin to put on it; with more clever writing I may have managed one, but honestly I'm not sure this is a subject which would deserve a positive spin. This is a debilitating thing.

Every day, I have that torture, and every day, I know it could be oh so much worse.

I'm not even scratching the surface of my mind here.

​But I thought I'd at least give you a piece of it.

I succumbed and bought Civ 3.
And have played it.
But surprisingly...I'm not feeling as addicted to it as I thought.

Which is good, I suppose.

Still ate up most of my day though.

So I was having a discussion.
In it, it was brought up that obsidian is glass. (A fact I knew already.)
This got me to wikipedia obsidian.
From there, about two dozen tabs got opened--this is not the slipping away you think it is! They're all closed now, with no tabs replacing them, thankyouverymuch. I did waste a couple hours on the Aztecs, numerous weapons, their social status, armor, shields, and similar, but that? Got closed.

The damage done was making me think about a couple of childhood games, Age of Empires II and far more deadly...

...Civilization III.

I figured.

"Well, too bad, craving to waste my life. You can't find the correct CD and even if you did, installing it on your computer would be a royal pain."

Unfortunately.

I'm not stupid enough to listen to my brain, even when I should.

And on a whim, I searched to see if Civilization III with the appropriate expansions, was available on steam.

...It is.

WELP.

The good news is.
I haven't bought it yet!

The bad news is.

It's only a matter of time before I cave in and end up buying it, sucking my life away.

​At least it's not yet!