Pretty notably so.
I've been doing things every single day for Phyrra and Cyrus, but...just...
...Not today. Not while I'm this sick.

​This isn't what I meant when I said extenuating extreme circumstances though--so this will cost me a day, moving my hardest of hard coming out day to January 22nd. First failure, and less notable of a date. OH WELL. I am making the choice and honestly given being sick, I don't think it a bad one.

Slow and steady, but it's something. Every day doing work, no matter how little, means every day work is being done. Small steps, little things, maybe not the best of things, maybe not as much as I could do, but better than nothing and that's something I'll take.

In this case, decided to follow through on what I said yesterday. I tried to draw Phyrra's secondary weapons yesterday without references.

Phyrra's primary weapon is a longsword--well, a longsword that is proportional to her size. That is to say, if she were to grow to an adult size, and the longsword were to scale identically to her, it would be a longsword. As in, it is proportional to her as a longsword. It is a longsword for her. For an adult, not quite sure what that'd be. I used a google reference image of a broadsword, but heck if I know what a good sword type would be for something that by is wielder would have the aesthetic of a longsword.

Her secondary weapons are a series of multiple (about 2-4) shortswords, each with no guard (which I always think of as being the hilt, in spite of the hit being what you grab the sword by), which past the first episode, she can control with a combination of telekinetic magic and wind magic. Which for an adult, would probably be long daggers. (Think like Sting and similar being Hobbit-sized swords; for the people those weapons were designed to be used by, those were daggers, not swords.)

Turns out that you can actually find some very good references in like 30 seconds of searching, 'hiltless sword' (in spite of, as I mentioning, it not being no hilt I was looking for; I was looking for blades with no guard). Apparently, the aesthetic I was looking for is common in older Viking swords? (When you think of Viking swords, you probably don't think of them as having no guard. You think of them as having the Riders of Rohan sword, like this look, more or less. Or maybe you think of them as having a longsword. But the images I found had almost zero guard, which is what I was searching for.)

So I got some good tracework images to have as a reference. Mine are probably too long proportionately, and need to thus be shortened a bit, but I got the aesthetic right, and with the aesthetic right, easier to make!

...And thus, technically speaking, not on today, but like. It was 12:45 when I did it, if it weren't for daylight savings time, it would've been on today anyway.

So I did get some more done, albeit basically nothing. (Just sketching out Phyrra's daggers. The plan here is more or less, sketch out her sword, sketch out her daggers, sketch out her gloves, sketch out her other clothes, etc., sketch out her face, then retry putting them all together.)

I was feeling really, really uninspired today so I didn't do much, but hey, I got some work done so...not doing nothing, therefore, deadline remains!

I did a second trace, and then tried to do a drawing.
I wasn't happy with it and couldn't find a way to make myself happy with it so I abandoned it half-way through, similar to one of my drawings yesterday.

So the more I have done is mostly failures.

I'm disappointed, but I shouldn't really be surprised. I've never drawn any of the characters from Phyrra and Cyrus before. I know what they look like in my mind's eye, at least mostly, but with me never having made them before, it's not going to go well immediately.

I should be doing more, but uhgg, this is workkk.

I know I need to do work on it every day, but once I've put in some work for the day and feel an overwhelming uhg feeling, kinda hard to put even more in.

So for now, just farming in minecraft. (Need to replenish on my supplies. Mostly, I'm looking to get a boatload of torches.)

I suck.

I want to do more but can't push myself to do it in spite of what I've said.

Some work done is better than no work done, butstill.

Phyrra and Cyrus will never be made at this rate.

Barring extenuating circumstances (power outages, something drastic which leaves me with no supplies and no ability to get them, vacation), every day I don't work on Phyrra and Cyrus in some way, I move the date of coming out back one day.

I did work yesterday--failed sketches of Kaze, but still work.
Today, I already have done work--a trace of the main protagonist from The Promised Neverland. (This is work because Phyrra and Cyrus are both 11-year-olds, just like the protagonists of the series, so this gives me a sense of how to draw them right.)

I'd have done more, but my work station collapsed, causing a cavalcade of errors, including my drawing pencil catapulting out to Narnia (by which, I mean, can't find it right now).

This won't stop me, but it'll mean I need to spend time searching for it--something I can and will do, but not while watching a stream. (Am multitasking. Well, was. Losing the pencil means that the only multitasking I can do is search for the pencil, which I tried and couldn't find yet.)

Trying to make excuses not to, trying to put it off.
This is, pretty obviously, not the blog about League. I can still try to make that later, though I have some slightly different thoughts there overall.

I admit, I don't know exactly where to begin with this.

Basically, this is something I've toyed around with blogging about before but never managed to form enough of a coherent thought on it and the more depressing aspects of it overwhelmed me anyway leading to my blogs being short ones where I noted I was feeling awful and couldn't blog, or something to that effect.

It does come from a bit of a morbid place; one of the things spurning on the urge for this blog was me thinking of "what if?" scenarios where I am about to die from diseases, and then more or less going, "why wait to be dieing to do that?".

I suppose I can start with this. I won't go into details to respect their privacy, but basically. My friend, who was my girlfriend for two and a half years, is dating the love of their life, and hearing about all the things their girlfriend does, it makes me realize how much of a failure I was as a girlfriend.

I definitely had the same love. My friend is never going to stop being the love of my life, painful as that is to me since I know I'll never be their girlfriend again. But what I did with the love, is where I more or less think the failure comes in--or rather. More or less. The lack of what I did, in that I didn't do anything. I never sent gifts. I never put real time and effort into figuring out a way to meet them in-person.

You might attribute that to differences in personality, of their current girlfriend just being that significantly different, but in many ways, from what I have heard, they have quite a number of similarities to me. They've done more to progress their relationship in less than two months, than I did in over two years.

On the one hand--that's amazing for them! That is awesome for them! That is really, really good, for the both of them. It is proof that the two of them were made for each other, more or less. They are really, really good for each other, they are better as a couple than I was as a couple with my friend. And because they are so good for each other, assuming that nothing catastrophic gets in the way of their relationship, I know that they will be tremendously happy together and that knowledge gives me a lot of happiness.

I do genuinely get happiness from seeing friends, especially this friend, happy. I want them, especially this friend, to be as happy as is humanly possible, and their current relationship gives them that more than I ever could, and I do genuinely think that is a good thing.

But, it does highlight my shortcomings. It does highlight all of the "what ifs", of things I could have done better, of things I could have done differently. Our relationship wouldn't have continued if I had done things better, if I had done things differently, mind you. The feelings they have are the feelings they have and the feelings they have are that their current girlfriend is the love of their life. Nothing I could've done differently would've done anything to change those feelings so they would still have ended up together regardless. (Which, again, I feel the need to reiterate--is overall a good thing! It sucks for me, but it is genuinely better for them and since it is genuinely better for them, is a good thing.)

So what I'm more or less getting at here, is. This is not regret of "if I did things differently, maybe we'd still be together".
No, this is more regret of, "seeing what their current girlfriend has done for them, it makes me realize what I missed out on", more or less.
I could have done so much better for them.
And I didn't--and as a result, I just feel like in comparison, I am a failure compared to what I could've done.

Basically, every time I hear what my friend's current girlfriend has done for them, I realize, it's something I didn't do for them when I was their girlfriend, which I could've very very very easily have done, but I didn't. I didn't even think of most of those sorts of things. I had the love, but I did almost nothing with it.

There were times where I considered doing more. But 'considered' isn't actually doing, and even those things I considered pale in comparison to what their current girlfriend actually has done.

And overall.

I just feel like.

Seeing the current relationship makes me realize why I suck.
I feel like a coward. Too scared to do anything. I feel like a failure. Not as a girlfriend, mind you, but more as a person, with the lens of my time as my friend's girlfriend just as a way of exposing the underlying fault I have as a person, if that makes sense.

To put it another way--I don't think I was actually a failure of a girlfriend and I doubt my friend would think I was, either. But I do think I was, and still am, a bit of a failure as a person, and it is realizing that I didn't really succeed as a girlfriend which helped expose this. (Again, to reiterate, nothing would've stopped the breakup; even if I had succeeded as a girlfriend, feelings be feelings be what they are. But that doesn't stop me from lamenting the lost opportunities that have passed me by, things that we could've done while girlfriends which we can't do as friends. I could've done so, so much more than what I did, but I didn't. And that's a failure on my part.)

Like I said.
This blog is really, really hard to compose properly.
I'm still not sure my thoughts, feelings, are being properly conveyed. I'm worried that they aren't. That the wrong message is being sent.
I feel like the part about thinking their current relationship is nothing but positive, is clear enough; I feel like the part about me knowing nothing would've stopped them from entering into their current relationship, is maybe clear enough, and as per above, that this is a good thing.

But I'm not sure I'm really getting my point across.
That I feel like looking back.
If I were less incompetent as a person, then on both ends, there would be more good memories from the relationship. More for them, more for me. (There's plenty of good memories, mind you. But I mean, so so much more than what I gave. To reiterate, their current girlfriend has given them higher-quality memories in two months, than I did in two years. And what I mean is, if I had been a better person, if I had thought to do more, then we'd have had much more, I guess is what I mean. I still feel like this is poor wording to get at the concept.)

I identified the main problem, at least I hope so. It's that I was way, way, way too passive. Just as a person. And I am still way, way, way too passive. I've more or less, just been...waiting and waiting, rather than controlling, planning. I feel like I am pathetic, that I am a coward, held back by my fears (no matter how justified or not they may be), always held back by an endless number of excuses, usually procrastinating endlessly.

Those things weren't specific to my relationship, but realizing what a better girlfriend I'd have been if not for those things is what I am getting at, basically. That's what I mean. By seeing the current relationship my friend has, it revealed to me that as a person, I am passive, a coward, too timid, too afraid, making excuses (I made so many trying to avoid this blog!), always endlessly procrastinating.

Lamenting the "what if I had those qualities" of the past for what that'd have meant, doesn't do me much good though. (It is what made me think of this blog in the first place, in tandem with the bucket list, but it is not productive to dwell on.)

But what it does give, more or less.
Is motivation.
It is reflecting on that which lets me see. "Bree, you didn't have those good qualities back then, and you have all these regrets now as a consequence...so why not make the changes now, so you don't have them in the future?", more or less.

Realizing a fault I had in the past which made life less rewarding than it could've been if not for the fault, basically. Serves as motivation to move forward in life trying to fix the fault, so that in the future I won't have regrets due to the fault. That with the fault fixed, I have no further regrets from the fault. (The regrets from, in hindsight, realizing I had the fault and what would've been better if not for it, will never go away, but having fixed it helps a lot.)

This fault will be very, very, very hard for me to fix.
It won't be an overnight improvement.
I will have to fight every. single. step. of the way to put it down--and worsening it is that the fault will fight back at every single stage.

Do you think having fears combined with excuses combined with procrastination, is a combination which lends itself to trying to correct itself? No, it's a combo which tries to reinforce itself, and every time I will be trying to push those traits away from myself, they will push hard in resistance.

I am always afraid. I am always a procrastinator. I always make excuses. I am so good, such a natural, at them. And every time in the past that I have tried to fight back, they have managed to reinforce one another as to keep me passive, keep me stable, keep me unchanging, keep me immobile, keep me rooted down, grounded, stuck, in place, not moving forward for stupid fear of being catapulted back.

In fear of losing it all, in fear of losing my life, I have lost (out on) things I easily could have not lost (out on) if I was less afraid, if I didn't put them off, if I didn't talk my way into taking the path of least resistance. Which is precisely why this is so. damn. hard. It is the path of least resistance to be passive. It is the path of least resistance to do nothing. It is the path of least resistance to do as little as is humanly possible and rely on others.

I am not happy with that.
Mind you, nothing really makes me happy right now, depression does that to you, but I am dissatisfied with the idea that I am not going to have any progress in my life.

I'm not going to proclaim something along the lines of. "That changes now!". Or "that won't happen anymore". Of overnight success, of overnight suddenly becoming somehow, mystically, magically, on track.

Like--I don't even know what I'm going to do yet, specifically, to get out of this funk. I have some very loose ideas (see below) which are progress, if I work on them, if I progress on them, but like. I don't have a plan here. I kinda wish I had one because I think it'd help me a lot, but one of the excuses I made for not trying this before was precisely that, not having a plan.

So screw a plan, I'm still going to try.

It's not much of an immediate change--but an eventual one? I am setting an absolute, hardest of hard, absolute LATEST deadline of January 23rd, 2023, for coming out as a girl publicly in real life. Everyone online has known for over six years. I don't want it to be over ten. More than that, I don't want to reach thirty years old and still be trapped in the living hell of my current life.

And to reiterate this--that's the latest point. Latest. As in. "No matter what. No excuses. Nothing. No amount of fear. No amount of backing out. No amount of cowardice, second thoughts, hesitation. No matter how awkward it will be, and it will be awkward, come out, period, end of discussion." That'll be very very tough to do, but I refuse to let myself not do it.

Preferably, I move that deadline up. Within a year, for instance. But this is a date which I felt was a good starter, because it gives plenty of time for my fatass of a dad's poor health habits to inevitably kill himself (after which I could immediately come out), while ensuring I don't wait 20 years for something to happen.

I am willing to wait two years to be myself. I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that it is very realistic that he could die in that time.
I am not willing to wait twenty years to be myself--while I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that he won't live that long, it is still a considerable chance that he could, especially if he (shock! gasp!) actually cleaned his habits up. (He won't, but if he did...)

So I am setting myself a decent deadline, so that I can actually hold myself accountable. I do have this more or less planned out. Day before, shopping for girl clothing, next day, wake up early to make the announcements publicly online on places where people in real life can see it, go to the Y and talk to them there, while there text my mom, come home with her, and face my family.

It is a plan which I can adjust closer to the time I do it.
I can do it at any time, too.

The main reason I'm not doing it sooner, I suppose.
Is.
I guess.
I want to exploit the safety for a bit longer.

I don't want to be passive with that safety.
But in a sense--I want to practice, so to speak, with that eventual outcome, by pushing myself now in other ways.

Granted, said practice could just be me failing, me not doing anything, in which case. Maybe I move the deadline up.

In fact, that actually sounds like a neat idea. I don't have any clue how to implement this. But a rule of more or less, "The more I fail to be less-passive now, the sooner I force the lack of passiveness". As in, the more I fail at my current endeavor, the more I push up the date of the coming out.

The less use I get out of my current life, the more I push towards changing my life.
Right now, I am not getting anything out of my current life--so if not for this being a change I'm making literally just today, I'd be pushing the deadline to be much much sooner.

Right now, my plan is to commit to trying to make something, screw the excuses.
I want to commit to making something.
Truly commit to it.
At work, I threw around two ideas. One being a webcomic as a safer/easier option.

The other was Phyrra and Cyrus.
I have made oh so MANY excuses to put off working on my pet project there. And some of them are probably valid. I don't have a wide enough voice range to voice every character so I would need voice actors, and I probably cannot animate things on my own (though I will be looking into that).

But a lot of the excuses, I just.
I'm sick of not doing what I want to do, because I have the thought of those things causing failure. I know it won't come out perfectly, but I want it to come out. I know that I could do this better with planning--but past a certain point, excessive planning which I can't complete, just...doesn't do me any good.

I have put it off, saying I need to plan more.
I have put it off, fearing that it'd fail.

I don't know how, exactly, I will manage to make it so that I don't.
But I am not going to succeed if I don't try and right now I'm not trying. Talk, no action.

I do have a very, very loose idea of maybe a way.
I have tools readily available at my disposal to help me.
I have had many many many times where I am watching streams and gone, "I want to watch this, but I want to do something else at the same time" where I was pseudo-bored--still invested in the stream and wanting to watch it, but wanting to do something in addition to the stream, and I did nothing or might as well have.

There's stupidly obvious things I could do.
I have boatloads of art supplies.
I have an endless supply of most things I would need to try, and if I am watching a stream I can open a tab to look at any artistic reference I want. I can draw.

Granted, yes. I have made a very strongly-standing excuse which I don't have a workaround on, not really anyway, of.
I can't scan my drawings into my desktop.
And even if I could--I don't have an art program beyond paint on the desktop.

But the thing is.
I don't need to put the art on the computer.

I just need to make the art, actually make it, stop talking about it, and do it, and then see where it takes me.

Do art while doing the stream. Concept art. Or storyboarding. Just. Working on it.

I have the tools. I have the skills, and if not, the ability to learn the skills. Like, one thing that I don't have is a video editing program or whatever would be needed to make the final version of Phyrra and Cyrus and even if I did I don't know how to use one--but these are things that a quick google search would fix.

I can literally solve one of those in less than thirty seconds, and the other can be found in the same amount of time (albeit, presumably, as a youtube video or something, taking time to watch, and practice, and such).

I made the excuse of not knowing it and it being something I won't be able to do.
Ignoring that it is something I could learn to do very easily.
And there's no excuse not to.
I've been lazy.
Not doing it when I could have.

I don't know what order I will be doing things.
I don't have a schedule, not a plan, not yet.
But I am getting started.

Because I feel like if I don't start trying to make something of my life.
There won't be anything in my life.
I was okay with not doing anything in my life when I felt like I could live a life of a nobody and be content--but I'm not happy with that anymore.
So why am I still doing what I was doing, when I was in that mindspace? Why am I still doing nothing, when doing nothing was a byproduct of a mindset that I am no longer in? Doing nothing was something I was fine with when doing nothing still allowed me to be happy, but right now I am not happy and doing nothing does nothing to make me happy.

I am sure I will invent a myriad of excuses in the future, so future self, screw you for being a self-sabotaging prick.
But right now.
I don't have those excuses.
So I am going to put in the work that I can.

...In fact I was planning on it already but I realized I didn't make the blog entry yet.
Yesterday in my mega-blog post one thing which I neglected to mention--Phyrra and Cyrus continues to be something I work on. A while back, don't think I mentioned it, but I added something to Bard's character that made perfect sense and made a particular storyline feel more nuanced and natural (albeit having one necessary adjustment earlier in the story to accommodate for it).

Very, very recently, I did similar for Clara, adding a significant section to her previously-rather-underdeveloped (considering her status as a childhood friend of Phyrra and Cyrus) backstory which helps increase her role in the story ever so slightly, fleshing out an already-planned moment.

So Phyrra and Cyrus is not a project I have forgotten about.

I also did today lay the groundwork of the simplified expanded Rise of Rome scenario, too, but that blog can wait.

So remember how I said yesterday that I had bought a female bathing suit? Well today, I got to wear it. And my GOD it is amazing. It fit me perfectly. I honestly don't know why more guys don't wear something similar--there is an existing male one-piece full-body bathing suit, a really really old style no less. Or really new. Or both. You can find things similar to what I was wearing for men and plenty of men do buy them, but most men who swim...choose things which don't go above their waist.

I honestly don't know why they wouldn't tho, because I wouldn't need to be a girl to have known the experience of the swimsuit was amazing. But my god was it exactly that. It was incredibly comfortable, and it made me feel more like me. It also made me feel a little bit sexy. The whole day, I was just...exuding an aura of something I rarely display, of just an energy that I only display in my most euphoric moments. The moments where not a touch of gender dysphoria hits me, where I feel like I look like a girl.

Mind you.

While I loved it.
It was not without its downsides.
1: It was a bit warm. This is pretty unavoidable. The only things I was wearing on my torso (the area which was warm) were the bathing suit and my lifeguard shirt. I obviously can't get rid of my guarding shirt, so...not much I can do to be cooler when wearing the bathing suit underneath. Not much of an issue, given that I am skin and bones so rarely overheat anyway.

2: Some parts were initially a little itchy. I imagine that this is a byproduct of it being a new swimsuit though, because I'm pretty sure that every swimsuit I've ever worn has had that problem when they were brand new.

3: Some parts felt a little tight at times and some areas didn't quite stay in place properly. I believe the two are related, in that the tightness likely came from areas of the suit slipping out of their proper position. This is not something which is very fixable because it's an issue you deal with, with any given article of clothing. No piece of clothing is perfectly tailored to your exact measurements (unless of course...they are, but those are like...$200 business suits), and swimsuits are no exception to this. This is something which happens for all of my clothes, so isn't an issue specific to the bathing suit.

4: The straps at times seemed to be pushing in, in a way akin to having worn a heavy loaded backpack for too long. Especially the left shoulder which was bothering me about 50% of the time. Half of this can be attributed to the above--the suit slightly shifted out of the proper position, I didn't really notice this in the area it slipped, but felt the slippage in the form of the shoulder straps.

But mostly? This wasn't creating a problem; this was alerting me to an existing problem. Even without the bathing suit's straps, my left shoulder was suffering from a condition which I'd call some combination of "tight, sore, tender, stiff, fatigued". This is not a new issue. It's a known problem I frequently suffer from. From the base of my neck to my deltoid muscle, my left shoulder flares up on occasion to have that issue.

The only fix I have to it is trying to stretch the muscles, massage them a little, roll the shoulder, hyperextend it, basically try every trick in the book to loosen them up, to remove tension from them, to basically make them...not bother me. So, again. Not a problem related to the suit.

Noticing a trend? Yeah, basically, none of the problems were due to the suit and all of them are things which can be managed and were minor nuisances, not real problems. Things which are annoying, but which aren't detrimental and won't consistently plague me especially not now that I know of them (and even if they do, given time to break the suit in, they'll go away).

There is one problem which is due to the suit tho.
One which will, presumably, go away after a while, but which is still a little inconvenient.

5: So sometimes, I can randomly be aroused by thoughts which aren't sexual at all. These arousing things strike randomly, where I basically go, "what the hell, body? There wasn't so much as a single sexy thought in there, not even a kinky thought, not anything which is a fetish, so why are you being aroused by that?"

When I was initially putting the suit on, this hit me hard. (Haha. Sadly.) If I had to guess, my guess is basically that I suffered from Distracted By My Own Sexy, in that I literally said to myself, "Okay, yeah, I get it. I'm sexy like this. Now shut up. We've got work to do." And at the end of my shift when changing out, while I was wearing nothing but the swim suit, I ended up going for a while, "Okay, fine. I'll take some time to appreciate that, yes. I am sexy in this. I have the time to spare. But you need to get used to it, body, because this is going to be the new me."

Because, yeah. I feel incredibly sexy in it. It fits me, it looks good on me (well, as far as I can tell, anyway; I have no mirror so hard to say for sure), and I feel a lot more like my femininity is more on display while wearing it (even though it's not actually visible). I feel like I am more openly displaying "hey I'm a girl" while wearing it and that feels so good. Everything about it is amazing and it is incredibly comfortable.

I do think that eventually, my body will adjust to that and it'll stop happening. (It's honestly annoying and I feel a little annoyed/guilty that the arousal happens when putting it on/taking it off. So hopefully it's a temporary thing related to it being a new change that the arousal is just extreme excitement about.)

So overall.

It's perfect.

​So glad I took the plunge and made that buy.

It's a really lousy workaround, and doesn't do the original image justice, but it's better than nothing.
I used my phone to snap a picture of it, which I then through a convoluted process managed to transfer to my desktop (a process involving sending it to my girlfriend even though my girlfriend is literally my only years-long consistent blog reader in that every other blog reader I know of comes and goes with the times, making it kinda pointless long-term but OH WELL).

You can tell what I mean by the camera pic not being the best, but it's at least adequate at showing the basics behind the picture and what I mean.

As a refresher, take a look at yesterday's blog both for a reference point of the prior versions of the panel and for my description of this one. You can instantly see what I mean with the face, right? Something just feels...wrong about it.

Yesterday I thought it was the mouth. Maybe the mouth is slightly too large, but otherwise I took a quick look at the art trying a tactic: look at the image with the head obscured above the mouth (so that the mouth is the only part of the face visible); look at the image with everything below the mouth obscured (so that the mouth is the only part of the face not visible); look at the image with everything.

With the first, the image didn't quite look wrong--it looked okay, it looked passable.
With the second, instantly? "OH GOD THE EYES".
For the life of me, I could not get the eyes to match.
I tried.
I really, really, really tried to get the eyes to match.
But I botched it every single time no matter what I did. I think it's her left eye (appearing on the right) being slightly out of proportion, with the edge near the outside being larger than it should?

Butyeah--you can tell that I got really lazy from pretty much just below the shoulders. Still, the head tilt--while subtle--is hopefully there, visibly. And that was one of my main goals with this.

Overall, quite pleased with this.
​So let's show them all off, side-by-side-by-side, once more for a final comparison.

Aside from how the first is colored, the second is scanned, and the third is a junk photo.
In actual terms of quality of the art itself.

I feel like this is just a logical progression--a well and true, proper, art evolution.

It's on that note that I'd like to continue on a ramble that I originally was going to start in December, near the anniversary of The Descended, back when I first found and started archive binging Grrr Power. (Which I now read as it comes out.)

A ramble which earlier this week I began to revisit, but cowarded out of following through on it--I told myself I would write the ramble while I was at work. Even figured out how to preface it. Even told myself not to get distracted. Even told myself that I'd be a coward to not do the ramble. Even told myself I'd do it if I didn't feel like doing it.

And then at home...I didn't feel like doing it, called myself a coward for not feeling like it, told myself I would do it...and in spite of all of that. In spite of saying that, in spite of knowing I wanted to blog about it, that I should blog about it, I didn't actually blog about it.

Something I kinda sorta hinted at a little bit yesterday, but didn't get into as much as I'd like.

I'm not going to start the ramble the same way I planned in December (and heck, won't even cover a fraction of the material planned then, I'm only going to cover some of it).
I'm not going to start the ramble the same way I planned it earlier this week.

I'm going to preface it by saying that the art-me was for a longest time, "missing, presumed dead".
I thought my inner artist was just...gone.
Not gone in theory. I still thought of artistic things. I still thought of artistic stuff. I visualized artistic stuff. I was an artist in mind, still--but my drive to actually draw stuff in practice? My drive to draw things out in the real world rather than my head? It was gone.

Completely gone, for the longest time, as far as I knew.
Lingering there in the back was a desire to make my ideas real...but no drive to do it--until yesterday.

So what I say might be subject to change.
The artist within me was rekindled, so it's possible other stuff will be, too.
Also this was a ramble typed before I got passing interest in League of Legends, too, so that's another aspect of me which may come back as well.

But to go into things a little bit...

​...Well. Basically...I don't know what to do.

Or more accurately...I do, I compiled a list even, I just don't know what I want to focus on doing.
The full list also included don't-wants, too.

-I want to continue with my life on the mafia site I frequent.
-I want to finish my civ 3 mod, Across the Ages - Mediterranean.
-I want to continue The Descended with all of my accrued skills/knowledge/talent/ideas since my last work on it.
-I want to continue Red Hood Rider with all my accrued skills/knowledge/talent/ideas since my last work on it.
-I want to make Phyrra and Cyrus a reality...I really want to make Phyrra and Cyrus a reality.
-I want to be a teacher.
-I want to be a housewife, raise a family. (Of course, this is optional, but it is still a want all the same since there's multiple ways it could be done.)
-I want to live with my girlfriend.
-I want to fully transition.
-I want to live a happy, rich, fulfilling life.

-I don't want a job, beyond the one I've already got.
-I don't want to live independently.
-I don't want to write (yes, surprisingly enough, I don't want to, but like I said, the artist within me was revived so you never know) pure writing. Obviously, I'd write webcomics for The Descended and/or Red Hood Rider. Obviously, I'd write for Phyrra and Cyrus. Obviously, I'd still write down ideas whenever I had them. Obviously, I'd continue writing blog entries. But I don't want to write literature. 
-I don't want to read. (Well, I've done reading recently, but reached the end of everything I was reading.)
-I don't want to game, not much anyway.
-I don't want to watch things, not really, anyway.

Mind you,
-I do want to do those things if they involve someone else (namely/chiefly my girlfriend; absolutely I want to watch things with my girlfriend and watching, sayyyyy, One Piece episodes is the highlight of my week but what I mean by "I don't want to watch things" is that without watching them with someone else e.g. my girlfriend...I don't want to spend alone-time, me-time, time with just myself and nobody else, watching them--and this also applies to games; absolutely I'll play any game for/with my girlfriend but on my own my desire is rapidly fading).

But on my own.
Just by me, with nobody else.
No encouragement, no help, just as my own thing?
I just...don't want them.

A job is a means to an end--it provides income. To achieve most of the things on the list, I recognize that pragmatically-speaking, I need a job. Transitioning is expensive. Living with my girlfriend won't be possible most likely unless I can pull my weight and not be deadweight monetarily speaking. Phyrra and Cyrus is a project I don't want to make money yet which will be absurdly expensive to make. Red Hood Rider and The Descended both won't make money (they could off of ads, but I am against making money off of them in the same way I am against making money off of Phyrra and Cyrus).

I simply need money. Our world runs on money. And while I get a fair amount from my job--it's not nearly enough. It's minimum wage. Minimum wage in a state with one of the highest minimum wages in the US, but minimum wage all the same. It's also part-time, too, making things even worse. The only reason I have more money flowing in than flowing out is because I'm not pulling my weight in terms of paying for expenses. Food, gas, house mortgage (or whatever), car maintenance, etc.; I do none of that aside from the rare instances I put a quarter of a tank in out of emergency, or stop by a fast food place because I desperately need a fix.

I know I need the money--but I don't want a job, because simply put...well, there's more than just one reason.
One, I just don't want it. Not wanting it is itself a reason, it doesn't need a justification in of itself. I am happy with my current job (well, mostly happy, anyway, about as happy as any job would be because there ain't a job in existence which I wouldn't have troubles at least equaling my own if not exceeding the ones I deal with so I know my issues are comparatively minor). I simply don't want another.

Least of all as a replacement, but even if it weren't a replacement. Even if I worked two jobs instead of one. I just...don't want to.

Two, even if I did want another job.
I don't think I can handle it.

One day of 8 hours is literally murder on me.
How on earth people manage to do 8 hours a day, five days in a row, every single week almost without fail barring extenuating circumstances and recognized-by-the-company holidays, heck if I know. But I know that I am basically catatonic doing it once a week, where even doing it once a week is too much and I am barely functioning from it, where I would be better off not working in the final home stretch of the shift.

Even if the shift is limited to 5 hours a day.
Even if between both jobs my shift is limited to 5 hours a day.

I can't handle more than 20 hours a week. Heck, even 20 is breaking me. My hard limit, by my calculations, is 18--any more than that, and I am suffering badly. I am badly, badly suffering when I work more than that amount. I simply cannot function.

Working two jobs a week, there's simply no way I'd be able to keep it under 20 hours a week.
Heck.
Even if I quit lifeguarding (and again, to reiterate, I don't want to quit my current job), at the new job there's no guarantee I'd have the job security I do here while staying under 20 hours a week.

Say what you will about my work as a lifeguard having a job where what I'm asked to do is borderline-illegal and typically unethical and often counterintuitive and even contradictory, but the simple fact is...I've worked there for five and a half years and never once been at risk of being fired, in spite of me being able to ask for work of maximum-15 and receiving it. (Mind you, I do have to specify FIFTEEN in order to get 15; specify 18 and I end up with 25, but when I specify 15 I do in fact receive fifteen-or-less, as I requested.)

I've no such guarantee at any other job--in fact, quite likely my refusal to break myself by working more than the limit of my body can handle would end up with me fired, with me having no job. I physically. cannot. work. the amounts. that most jobs ask me to. It is literally impossible.

And yet legally speaking, we talked this over with my counselor, getting disability benefits for me would also be impossible because I can't legally prove that it's impossible for me to work that much. More complicated than that, I know that's something which people will try to pick apart, can't really explain it properly but trust me when I say that there's nuances involved where basically, if I was incredibly lucky and waited literally years I might be able to possibly receive help in some areas (e.g. housing I think?), but that what I actually need, extra money more than what I get now...

...I can't get from the government.
And yet I can't get it from a job.

A job is a means to an end, an end I desperately need, yes, but I just...can't do it physically, and don't want to do it either.
Plus.
Even if I did want it and even if I physically could do it.
There's a total paralysis in what jobs to actually do; I wouldn't know what to pick and choose even knowing these criteria. And even if someone literally spoonfed me a job--it'd require me to follow through on it and that's something I just...am not really...well. Invested in doing.

This is one of the things holding me back from pursuing an actually potentially viable teaching job in spite of wanting to teach (but more on that below)--I just know that in spite of having a passion to teach and wanting to teach, that there's just an utter freeze, an utter lack of will, to push forward and take the plunge in because for some reason that idea of having a job I just don't want.

And I can't make myself want it.

Especially since that job?
That job, which is a means to an end?

As far as my family is concerned, that job is so that I can take the steps to live independently.

...But what they fail to consider is...
...Me living independently? It's what they want. It's what they are pushing for. When they frame the question the wrong way, they get the illusion that it is something I want. Because living independently is a means to an end, it is more or less something I'd need to do to not be deadweight if I got to live with my girlfriend, to not kill my girlfriend from stress overload, to not have my girlfriend have a panic attack when I'm out of site, and so on and so forth.
It is also a safeguard in case I am suddenly kicked out of the house by my dad; if I know how to live independently, then I can survive on my own with difficulty.

But while it is a nice safeguard. And while it is something that would teach me how to be able to support in my own way my girlfriend rather than just be deadweight. I don't want it.
It's not something I desire.
Nothing in my life is inherently better with me independent.
Me being independent enables me to transition, sure--by proxy of not being dependent on my dad.
But that's not something which is a given.

It's not "independence = can transition, dependence = can't transition".
I can be independent and lack the means to transition, and I can be dependent on someone other than my dad and still have the means to transition.
The two aren't linked in that way.

So I just...I don't see the point?
Why am I supposed to be independent?
Because it's something that people "should" do?
Because it's something normal people do, especially by the age of 25?
Because it's something that would convenience others?

It's just...none of that is about me, now, is it?
Like I said--the only reason I see to be independent is to teach me the skills so that I'm not deadweight to my girlfriend, so that I can actually help out and manage some things on my own...but those skills don't require me to be independent, do they? Independence is the quickest, easiest way to teach them, sure, I guess...but it isn't the only way to teach them.

So if I can get those skills in other ways more suited to me...and I lack reasons of my own to seek independence...
...Why would I want it?

I just don't.

There's then my lack of desire to write.
You may recall that my flashdrive containing my writing broke years ago.
It's still broken, still hasn't been fixed, frankly I think my brother forgot it even existed, wrote it off as a lost project then didn't return it or something like that.

That's no excuse to not write.

I can, and have, remade stories from scratch.
Heck, because I am overly fond of rewrites, it's actually a specialty of sorts.
I can, and have, come up with dozens of story ideas. (Most compelling of all, the Worm-inspired Quadraverse story I owe you rambles--plural--about due to having expanded it multiple times since you last heard about it. And it'd be in exactly that format, a book, not a webcomic, not a game, not a show, a book.)

I can't stop my brain from coming up with dozens, hundreds, of ideas, nor would I ever want to. I enjoy those story ideas, I love fleshing them out, I enjoy talking about them, I enjoy making their plot twists, enjoy creating chronology, characters, and so on and so forth...

...But I just...
...Have an utter lack of desire to actually write.

I once came close.
I came close to creating a forum thread, recently, where I would tell people, basically, "I am looking to write, and want some writing prompts to give me a direction to write. I write as much as I can, before then requesting another prompt, and will keep going on this for as long as I can", more or less.
Figured out the rules and everything.
What my starting point would be.
What sorts of things I was looking for.
And so on and so forth.

Almost did it.

...But didn't.

Not because I forgot.

Because I lost interest.

I just lost interest in doing it.
And I have no interest in writing any new stories.
And for that matter, no existing stories.
The loss of my flashdrive, then, I realized was nothing but an excuse.
I was pissed at the time. Royally ticked off. Bummed out, in despair, at the loss.
But I could have recovered from it.

It was a choice not to.

Because right now?

The writer within me is dead.

Like I said, that's the status my artist within me was until just yesterday, so that could change.

But as of right now.

I don't want to write.

Because the writing me is dead right now.
At least the novelwriting, story-writing me.

Similarly--I don't really want to read things on my own.
I read, browse, TVTropes.
I keep up to date on webcomics--more out of obligation than anything.
Yes, I've binge-read a few webcomics recently.

But all of that? It's mostly enrichment. Mostly inspiration. It's mostly things which give me ideas, which make me feel better, which are part of another aspect: they are part of me living a full, happy, enriched life because they give me a degree of cheap pleasure, but it's not something I have any particular investment in. They're just time-wasters. Wasting time, rather than something I truly did because of a deep desire to delve into the world I was presented with.

The magic exists--and then it doesn't.
Worm is a great example of this.
I mentioned in my blog recently, either yesterday or on Friday, that I finished reading Worm.
And more significantly.
I did something like 28 chapters in only a couple months or so...
...And then stopped.
I just...didn't read.
I had plenty of times I could have read.
But for months. (Well, slight exaggeration.)
It just sat there, unfinished.

And then the magic was briefly back, just long enough for me to finish it in less than 48 hours. (Maybe less than 24, I forget if it was Wednesday or Thursday that I started but I'm pretty sure I finished before Friday?)
But it's gone again.

It comes and it goes, but it's not consistently here.
It was here consistently long enough to drive me forward to read something like 28 chapters in a remarkably short time. (I got some internet-stares when I said how much I had read in the short duration I had, akin to "...HOW", with them flabbergasted that I could read so much in so little time especially given that I read many comments too.)

But then it wasn't.
And it isn't, again.

So overall, reading's just not something I strongly have right now.

It is useful for enrichment, for entertainment, for boredom-suppressing, for lack-of-better-ideas activities.
But that's about it.

Ditto, gaming. It is equally a time waster, and due to a small selection pool of games...far less enriching of my life, other than providing entertainment and relaxation and a distraction from doing things that are more important to do.
I still game.
But when I game, it's not so much that I want to do it, as much as I defaulted to doing it.
I ran out of ideas, so I did it because I couldn't think of anything better to do and it was the thing that was most appealing or rather more accurately, least-unappealing.

Again, I'd like to reiterate.

These change when it comes to having a partner, having it not be just me.

I would read just about anything if I had someone to trade comments with about it, facepalming, screaming, making snarky commentary, the like, about it. And I don't mean in the sense of a forum where you just look at comments, place your own, respond to existing comments, e.g. on a webcomic with whatever posting method the webcomic uses (for instance disqus). I mean more in real time, where we can have a real conversation and bring attention to things the other might have missed.

That is fun. That is something that I would always be down for, that I would always enjoy. That I'd always find immense pleasure in.

I would play just about anything if I had companionship in it. Someone watching the stream of a game I play, preferably in real time, again to make comments about how much of an idiot I am being, how stupid that move I made was, how much I deserved what was coming to me, etc.

Someone to play an online game with me, where we could both fail together, repeatedly, because of my incompetence getting us massacred over and over again. Or, alternatively, if we stack things in our favor to make it nigh-impossible to lose...managing to win a victory albeit one where I didn't pull my weight. Or, alternatively, where we play against each other and I totally let them win, honestly, couldn't just be because I am absolutely utterly incompetent and they are just better than me, nope, not my inexperience, totally me letting them win.

Any of that? Yeah, that's fun. Never tire of that. Never gets old. Never would stop with it.

But on my own. With no feedback. With no network...I'm getting tired of it. I'm not creative, I'm not inventive, I fall back to the same habits and do not explore much. I play the same things I have played...and I basically just. Don't really have much motivation to play them anymore.

And similarly, watching falls under that same umbrella. Sure, watching things with others is amazing, is great, is something I want to do always and enjoy doing. A real highlight of my week, uplifting, amazing, basically something that gives me great, immense, immeasurable, pure, sheer, joy at having done, leaving me happy and fulfilled.

But on its own...well. Watching some things can be useful to gain inspiration. It can motivate me to do my own things, to make my own work, to get ideas from what I watched on things that I can improve on in my life and in my creativity...but that's about it.

I don't really want those to be central parts of my own, personal, me by myself, life.
They can exist in the peripherals, sure, I guess.
But they shouldn't be what my life revolves around.

What should my life revolve around?
Well, probably not half the things I want, but whatever it should revolve around should be something I want.

And again.
I want to continue being a part of the mafia forum I play on--because it is, like it or not, a fundamental part of my identity. It is a piece of me, a rather large part. When I gave up, progressively more and more, on every other site...at the end. Even after having given up on ComicFury...I stayed there. I stayed there when I stayed nowhere else.

It keeps me grounded, it keeps me sane, it gives me my one iota of social interaction and is the only source of resources/support network I have readily, easily, available access to. Pathetic, sure, sad, yeah, but that's simply the truth. They are all I have built up.

Doesn't help that they serve as a very nice source of enlightenment, so to speak--they have a far, far, far, far, FAR more open-minded view of the world than I'd otherwise get. I mean, liberal as liberal gets is a fairly dominant majority there, sure, yeah...but I need that to help counterbalance the fact that my family is as conservative as conservative gets.

I need reminders that my family is racist, that my family is bigoted, that my family's religious intolerance is not okay, that my family's politics are not to be blindly sheeped, that I should take their words with heavy grains of salt. And the site's one of the better places to give it to me.

Not the best, admittedly, because they have a bit of a problem with the "if you don't agree with this, you're part of the problem" mentality, and they're not aiming to educate people nor am I directly looking for them to educate me and other issues and the like, but it's still exposure to an opposite view to what my family (and by 'my family', I mostly mean "my dad's toxic, backwards views"), but I fully credit the site for being one of the largest influences in me not being an echo of my father.

Without them, I'd be the worst trash of the worst trash, most likely. A despicable human being that honestly the world would be better off without having around as a whole, one spouting hatred at all times at everything not appearing to be part of it. I was headed down that road, and while I'm not fully on the road opposite of it (to the point where some probably would still argue I am those things, a despicable human being that would be better off not around, an opinion I can't entirely dispute because yeah, I am kinda trash), that I am at least trying to stay further and further off of it is something I credit to the site.

Sure, yes. The internet is a toxic cesspool of vitriol, and this site is no different. That exists, in abundance, and perhaps moreso than on most sites. Certainly seems it is filled to the brim with those hostile, divisive emotions. And yet...in spite of that. It is not all negative. It is not all bad. I know that my place on there is largely a negative one where I cause more problems than I help...

...But in spite of that...I still want to be a part of it, because it is part of my identity.

It was one of the two places I came out on as being a girl. (The other being ComicFury.)
It is one of the main places that helped me build my confidence in my femininity, that helped me build my identity as a woman. That helped me find who I am as a person.

And it's something that I crave.
Even if I wasn't part of that site.
I don't think I'd be able to give up mafia altogether.
It's just ingrained in me. Second nature to me. As both a player and as a game host/moderator/insertterminologyhere.
If I was on any site that had mafia, I would play it--I wouldn't go out of my way to sign up for a site with it just to play it, but if I were already a member of a site I visited that had it, heck yes I would. (Which would be a liiiiiittle bit problematic since I know sites that I frequent such as Kongregate have sections for it.)

Heck.
If I was on any site that had a section dedicated to playing games...and they didn't already have mafia?
...I would start it for them.
I would figure out what I'd need to adjust, what I'd need to make it work, and then I'd make it work.

Only way it'd be possible for a complete detox from mafia would be to cut me off from any site that has any source of games on it. And I mean, any source. Doesn't need to be forum-based; if they have a chat client that has chat game support? I'd find a way to make a chat-based mafia game.

Because I think in mafia games.

I have it that ingrained in me, that I convert experiences into mafia games and mechanics. I turn ideas I see into mafia-centered things. Many of my ideas which started as a mafia game can be converted to something not a mafia game...but it also works vice-versa just as frequently, where something I thought of as a different idea becomes a mafia game because the mafia game suits the idea more naturally.

I've been doing mafia for over ten years--not half my life, but 40% of it. 2/5ths of my life, spent on the forum game. That experience sticks with you your whole life. It's ingrained in my brain. It doesn't go away. It's instinctive on every level. The good (what little there is), the bad, the ugly, it's all there, as part of me.

And because in spite of its flaws, in spite of all the things there which are sour, which there is bitterness about, I genuinely believe in the community, I genuinely feel like it is a special place, I genuinely feel like it is a place which is more good than it is bad. It's got lots of bad. Lots and lots and LOTS of bad. But the good is just...stronger, more empowering, more rewarding.

I want to make more of that good, there. I want to do what I can to make there a better place, one piece at a time. The site is, in many ways, a bit of a reflection on humanity. It is deeply flawed, it is deeply troubled, there is lots of hatred, there is lots of divides, but there is also lots of...everything positive about humanity. Bonding, creativity, socializing, humor, love, friendship, unity, you name it. 

I could drop it. (There are two situations which would cause me to; if my girlfriend asked me to, in spite of my attachment to it, I'd leave in a heartbeat, wrap everything up as hastily as is possible and then simply depart and never return again, OR, if I on a fundamental level felt the site itself had betrayed my trust. I've felt betrayed before, but that's not something that I consider the site betraying me so much as something else having done so.)

But given the choice, I don't want to. It's helped build me as a person. You can leave sites like that behind you...but it's not something you ever want to do, and this is no different. My investment, my attachment, is such that barring either condition coming true...I just...want to keep it as a part of my life.

I don't want it to consume my life.
I don't want it to be all of my life.
I don't want it to be the most important aspect of my life.
Heck, when I wrote these down, it was almost practically in the order of least important to most important. (Almost. Not quite. Not really, but you can kinda see how the later ones are more important to me than the earlier ones. It's not an exact list, being a teacher is a lower priority than my creative projects, but the reason it's lower on the list is that it has a direct lead-in to talking about the others, which you'll see if you keep reading, BUT I DIGRESS.)

So it's not an important aspect of my life.
But I want to continue keeping it AS an aspect of my life.

On that note--I want to finish my Civ 3 Mod, Across the Ages - Mediterranean.
This one's not really that important...but it's a bit of a pet project. There'd be a sense of accomplishment, of, "I did it!", and it's a bit of an education, a personal pursuit of mine, a bit of a healthy hobby of building something tangible, that you can look at as concrete, and which could lead somewhere.

Would be unlikely to lead anywhere, but could lead somewhere, in that even though it doesn't teach me coding or anything it still teaches me basic structure of how to make a game idea more or less real. It gives me the layout of the sorts of things, the details, I'd need to work out. Structure of the game, of map layout/creation, of units, of balance, of tech trees, of resources, the like.

The knowledge generated from this is poor due to me being lousy at it, sure, but it's still some sort of grasped knowledge, which I'd get better at with time and practice. And it is knowledge which does have a way of transferring over to other projects, especially if I begin messing around with things I thought I wouldn't be messing around with (such as pcx files).

The intricacies, the nuances, of making my scenario what I want it to be, would teach me how I could go about making ideas that are my own game proper, into reality, because honestly this mod basically is a game of its own at least in scope, in scale, in ambition, in ideas poured into it.

I wouldn't even probably play it, beyond playtesting it. See the game section above for why. If I wanted to make something of my life...I just wouldn't have the time to keep playing it over and over again, even though if I succeeded at making it the way I dreamed of it, I'd have the ability to.

The ability to play it over and over again and enjoy it, that? That if I could actually achieve it with the full scope and scale of my ideas, would make it all worth it in the end. So it's something I want to do, but it's not something that is at all critical. I still have desire to do it even though I work on it less often than I used to (used to be just about every day), but that's more from increased passions elsewhere I didn't know I still had.

I want to go back to The Descended, from my revival of interest there.
This is something I was going to touch on in my December blog, which was near the anniversary of The Descended. (Remember, The Descended was spawned as an idea around Christmas Break, on vacation; we were in Oregon when on my grandfather's antique computer I drew the first sprite iterations of The Outcasts, The Elementals, and The Latens. I forget the exact date, but it was somewhere in that range.)

The exact blog was spawned during the time I said I had an "epic year-end blog", promised it was coming soon, procrastinated, said I'd do it, but never actually did, with it never having materialized. There was so much more to it when I wrote it, but one of the core aspects of it was a scary thought to have.

The Descended, with my thematic nature of liking 12, had about 12 "Arcs" of content.
Each "Arc" is, by my approximation of modern standards (not original standards), ~30-40 pages long.
The Descended was, from the very beginning, at its original iteration and with each reboot, each revision, always at every single point, envisioned as releasing once a week.

One comic a week.

The Descended was the first webcomic I had which had clear start and end points and material strewn in-between.

I had other story-based webcomics--some I even knew the direction of!
But I didn't have clear ends to them. Only generic ideas of where I was heading with things.

The Descended was the first, and in some senses, still the best, at getting me a story-based webcomic that didn't just have a simple direction. It had a clear, definitive, unambiguous, ending planned to it. (Mind you, not at the get-go. Took time for that to materialize, until July if I recall correctly which is why I consider July 23rd to be an "anniversary" for The Descended, and consider the original December launch date an anniversary.)

My original plot, I lost on my old old laptop. You know, back when my old laptop was called my laptop, I referred to an old laptop? Well now it's not the old laptop because my previous laptop now is the old laptop, so it's the old old laptop. Or maybe it goes back even further? Actually, it does.
My original plot was on my old old old laptop, a laptop so old I pretty much forget it even existed in the first place. That, or it was on a desktop. It involved many more gags than the current plot, many more out-of-universe mentions, far more self-awareness, and even toyed with the idea of there being a on-the-other-side-of-screen (i.e. YOU the READER...except, GAMER) character, a gamer, controlling the actions and being dissatisfied with the outcome, "loading" to redo them...and at least at one point the characters in-universe refusing to revert.

I don't remember the details, never wrote it all and frankly I'm glad I didn't because while that was a valid direction I could have taken things in, The Descended would have been far, far, far worse off for it. I'm much, much happier with the direction I decided to take things in when I got my next plot.

Which I still didn't finish.
And which was on my old old laptop.
But which, critically?

I mostly have memorized.

The finer details, fine points, exact specifics, I don't remember--but I remember far more than I don't. It's ingrained in me as second nature. Mind you, there's not total recall. I have to focus on a moment to remember that moment, but I can generally remember more or less the structure of all the ideas I wove, the intricate narrative between the four protagonist groups of four and their pasts from before the start of the comic.

And I can tell you that works out to be about 12 arcs, with each arch being about 30-40 pages long.
The first arc to introduce you to three of the main groups and a little about them, the second arc to get more into the details, third arc to have the outcasts have their first encounter as a team while the background of the elementals and latens is explored, fourth arc the three groups meeting, and then further arcs for exploring the villains and such. Davos with an arc, Aria with an arc (so that's six), an arc detailing the rise of the fourth group (so that's seven), at least two arcs detailing miscellaneous plotlines where each character gets some growth, and then at least two arcs for the climax (that'd put it at eleven meaning I'm either merging two separate arcs or forgetting an arc, but I'm in the approximate right range, here).

What makes this all be scary?

Well do the math, here.

I took down the original page, but the original date has been preserved.
The Descended's first comic was released on December 28, 2009.
Over 9 years ago; near the end of this year, we'll be seeing The Descended's tenth birthday, and at the time I wrote the blog, I knew we were looking at its ninth.

There are 52 weeks in a year.
Do the math I've presented.
12 arcs, each ~30-40 pages long?
360-480 pages.

One page a week?
If I kept to one page a week, in nine years, I'd be able to do 468 pages.

Now assuming every arc together ended up being less than 480, then I'd be finished with The Descended.
The Descended would be done.
DONE.
Finished, completed, start to finish, a comic that was actually wrapped up and concluded, rather than on an indefinite, indeterminable hiatus.

Now, granted.
One page a week, the original schedule, is an unrealistically high goal given my innate abilities and how busy I was.
Also granted.
I improved the comic in 2012, 2013, and 2014; those dates represent more accurately the places you can call launches for the comic proper compared to the original.

Butstill.

The scary thought?

The Descended is an unfinished comic I put so much effort into, only to end up wasting it, because of stupid reasons.
Originally, writer's block, leading to a rewrite and generating a script.
Then writer's block in how to make the script real, culminating in the death of the computer.
Then in artist's indecisiveness.
Then for the stupidest of stupid reasons, because I didn't have the worldbuilding finished.
The World of Soano, The Descended's setting, is an RPG Mechanics 'Verse--one which using RPG Mechanics Terminology, but which is not self-aware of being in a comic and do not consider themselves in a game (because they aren't).

This is a rare combo, but it's exactly what I chose to use. To them, they use terms like mana, charisma, wisdom, dump stats, the same way we might talk about computers, food, health, cars, whatever. It's just part of their world, of Soano.

I didn't finish making the mechanics--I wanted it so that the World of Soano was one where anyone could run a functional whatever-they-want using it. A tabletop RPG, a video game, a webcomic, a story, I wanted the World of Soano to be accessible and usable by all, not just me. So I wanted to build the system for it...and I never finished it, and I put the comic on hold while I tried.

Stupid reasons.
Stupid, stupid reasons to stop the comic.
The hiatuses were never for that officially, because I was busy, because I couldn't keep up with my life, but it still contributed to killing the comic.

And yet.

I would be done with it if I hadn't quit.

Or if not done...close to.
I would be nearing the end of it.
I would be getting ready to wrap things up.

And yet.

Instead of that.

I get a comic that never started.

In spite of how there is now a revival of interest.
And new ideas.
Yes, those ideas are a bit "draw and discard".
Some knowledge of The Descended is irrepairably lost forever. I'll never get the finer details back, I'm sure some plot threads I devised are entirely Lost Forever, in spite of how good they were. The plot I had for The Descended was a magnificent one, one which was funny and yet told rich stories with great character depth and which went into the backgrounds of them and showed their personalities, all of them, on full, the entire way.

You got a bunch of compelling villains, too, who were largely sympathetic in spite of being antagonists to the four groups. I've forgotten all but a handful (literally, can count them on a single hand; the big bad, two who have personal ties to characters, a third who has a tie to another character, and a fourth whose final battle I remember vaguely but I remember literally nothing else).

But I've also gained things like the Aria chronicle. Her basic background was in the plot from the get-go. I knew that the revelation about her lineage would be there, but the story was all in the present/future; it didn't delve into the past at all. That whole story would've never existed, and yet now it does in full, because I toy with getting into Aria's mindset quite often (she's fun to think as and fun to interact with).

And frankly...losing ideas? The ultimate excuse I put forward for stopping The Descended?

Was just an excuse.
It wasn't a justified reason to halt things. I remembered it, how hard would it have been to just type it up again and make a better backup? I stopped because I wanted to stop...

...But I've regretted it ever since then.
Always wanting to unstop it. To revive it. To come back to it. To do it again.

Heck.

One of the things I gained was a basic map OF The World of Soano. Soano's shape was originally incredibly vague, but now I know what it looks like. (Well not by memory, but I have the paper in my room and can locate it fairly quickly to reference.)

And using that basic map.

I was able to map out the exact geography of where our protagonists begin their journey.
And even drew up a few pages for a hypothetical reboot of the update that vastly improved the reboot of the reboot of the original. (I think that's how many I did? Might be one more reboot in there?)

I could make it be amazing.

Absolutely stunning.

I know how to draw all the characters better than I ever did, in spite of having not drawn most of them in like five years minimum in some cases.

I could fix the gaps in the mechanics, patch them up.
I could make it coherent.
I could finish what I started.
I could do everything I failed to do then, now, with my current skill sets.
I know I could do it, because independently I've done those sorts of things on my own.

It'd take time, it'd take planning, but I know I could make it work, and dangit.

I want to.
Even though I know it'd take time.
Effort.
And ten years to see fruition.
I know that the longer I wait now.
The longer it'll be for those ten years to come to fruition.
So I want to do it sooner rather than later.

​And you know what else this applies to?

The thing inspiring me to make this ramble?

Thaaaaaat's right!

Red Hood Rider is all of the above, and more.

When we had easter, a result of that was me organizing a lot of stuff.
Part of that was recovering my old never-made December blog entry, but another part of it was uncovering the Episode 1 artwork (which was all drawn on paper) that I'd brought out ages ago to use as a reference and never returned to my room.

It had degraded to some extent and had been shuffled, but I did what I could during this time to preserve it and put things in the proper order.

And this is what got me set off towards the current path.
Because while there was plenty of things about the old art that I hated (the original "Hello" face panel among them), there were other things that to this day I think are drop dead gorgeous.

I managed to make amazing art back then. Circa September 2016--two and a half years ago, it'd appear.


I did intricate details that to this day I'm not sure I'd be able to do.

There are some things that are horrific and I'm honestly wondering if it's just that I rushed them because I struggle to understand how I could be so good in some areas and so bad in others. Or maybe I made them from memory without reference images and the amazing ones are ones where I cheated by using some, butstill. Doesn't matter. The point is. There's some gorgeous artwork in there.

So everything I just said about The Descended?

Applies to Red Hood Rider, even moreso in some instances.
My original plot is sort of lost. There might be a copy of it stored online (which I know where it is), but I'm not sure if that's a copy of the plot itself or if it's just most of the characters. (I know it's not fully up-to-date because the character of Brigand I'm pretty sure wasn't included among other stuff.)

The original plot I've mostly got memorized, but vast large swathes of it I have forgotten. Mostly stuff that gave characters other than Ruby...well, their characterization. Each of the ten fighting members of The Ruby Gang had immense characterization to them, and even the two non-fighting members of The Ruby Gang had plenty, and so too did support members like the Darkblood Coven's higher-up vampires, other Coven's vampire leaders, and such.

Every single Rogue got a lot of exposure, and even a wannabe Rogue got a repeat appearance. (That I remember, but stuff like that, I know I didn't.) Fighting styles, I had mapped out. Basic abilities, I knew. Details of the Rubyverse, largely mapped out and explored.

Lots of that stuff, I forgot.

The majority of it, I remember.

And just like The Descended?

Critically.

There's a "draw and discard"...
...Where I added key aspects I didn't have. Though to some extent I've re-forgotten them, when I was playing around with inventing my martial art, it was the vampiric martial art that I was inventing, for use in the Rubyverse for some of the choreographed fight scenes that were far lamer and more rigid prior to this invention.

And near the climax of the series, there was a whole Episode that I've invented...one which is one of the most important in the whole series, as it is the episode which explains why Ruby has been the protagonist the whole time, which explains Ruby's role in the Rubyverse, why she was selected to be The Chosen One. Before I had an episode covering a What If where she didn't exist, where Sally was The Chosen One, and it's still in the series at a much earlier point, but this new episode?

This new episode builds off of that rather than just leaving it, and ties things together that originally weren't.

Ruby is actually given a very strong reasoning for being the protagonist, and in it, the episode explores both why Ruby is me...and why Ruby isn't me. And how both halves of that are important to why she's the protagonist. And how everyone is a little bit me, and how they could get by without someone who is heavily me, but why in my story they had someone who is half me.

Because that's another thing which has changed about the story.

When I first envisioned Ruby.
She was born as a series of "what if"s rapidly chained together.
What If I were a magical girl.
What If I were a vampire.
What If I were both a magical girl and a vampire.

And from that, she became me in all but name, just with abilities I don't have. Me if I were a vampire magical girl.

...Except...

...She evolved.

She isn't me anymore.
She's still partially me. She's still got large aspects of me in her life, because she was based on me, she came from me.
But she became something else.

AND FURTHERMORE.

I became something else.
I diverged from Ruby, just as Ruby diverged from me.

Over the last couple of years, I have continued to have my world outlook expand and grow--and Ruby's outlook has also expanded and grown...but not identically to mine.

We've taken similar paths, but not identical ones...and this new episode just before the climax? It heavily explored this concept, this aspect, of her and why she earned her identity, her spot, as the protagonist, rather than having it just be given to her. A meta commentary on her role in the entire series, even.

So much about the series I've lost.

But in spite of her being largely out of focus.

Crucial details like that?

I didn't originally have...yet I have since been given.

A draw and discard.

Mostly memorized, some lost, but lots gained.

I wouldn't have it finished.
72 episodes were planned--each episode a little bit shorter, in the 20-40 page range rather than 30-40 page range, but with far more episodes you more than make up for that. Divided up into 12-episode seasons. Conservatively, that'd be 1440 pages; liberally, that'd be 2880 pages.

Red Hood Rider also updated at a rate of one page a week.
And was much, much newer.
When was the launch date, again? 
October 1st, 2016 it looks like.
Two and a half years ago.
At 52 pages per year, that's ballpark figure of ~130 pages.

Less than a tenth done with the series.
Heck.
Less than half way to conservatively being at the end of the first season.

But the other part I said about The Descended?
That part still applies.
I would have ~130 pages done for Red Hood Rider.
Instead of four.
FOUR.

Because I quit.
Because of real life stresses.
Because of stupidity.
Because of excuse after excuse.
Because I gave up.
Because I just...didn't do it.

And yet.
Now.

I want to.

I know how to do it, and do it better than I was doing it. I wouldn't need to redraw anything, all I'd do is suddenly have a years-long sudden improvement in the art. (Might come at the cost of it being in a different font tho as I don't remember what fonts I originally was using.)

I can make it amazing, make it stunning, I can fix my mistakes (for instance, fixing the godawful aesthetic of the ComicFury site), finish what I started, do everything I failed to do then and do it now. With my current skills, it's viable, it's doable, and it wasn't back then. It'd take time, it'd take planning, but I could make it work.

And I want to do it.

Even though I know it'll take time...and would take an amazing 28-56 years for me to finish if doing only one page a week. (Which is an outright impossible thing so I'd need to somehow manage to do more than one page a week. Like, two or three pages a week.)

Yet if I don't start it now.

It'll take that same amount of time whenever I do start it--and I'll be just as behind then, in the future, as I am now, because I didn't do it now, because I didn't close the gap any when I had the time, the chance, the method, the opportunity, to do so.

But in spite of that.

It's not the only thing I want to work on.
It plus The Descended are not the only thing I want to work on.

I really want to make Phyrra and Cyrus a reality.
I think of them almost every single day.
Again, there's a draw and discard effect going on.
Some worldbuilding details get lost; exact details of how episodes are meant to go get lost.
But the overarching chronology, what things happen when? I know by heart, and I keep on repeating them over and over again.

I really, really want to make them come to life.
They are my passion. There is an ambition there. It is a love project. A project of pure love, a creation filled to the brim with all my heart and soul, that I want to pour my everything into. I know it won't be easy. I've had a bit of an insider look into what constitutes a sound editor's job, and contrary to my original hopelessly naive belief that I might be able to do that myself realistically speaking having seen exactly what that entails I know that in theory I might be able to technically speaking do it...

...But that when doing so it's a butchered job that is a hot mess. In order for Phyrra and Cyrus to come to life as I envision it, I'd need someone else to do the sound editing for it. Because if it were me, I'd never be able to do it justice. I could do justice to The Descended. I could do justice to Red Hood Rider. (Although to get multiple pages out per week I may need to bite the bullet and get help because frankly I don't know how I'd manage so much as one a week yet alone multiple a week with no aid.)

I can't do justice to Phyrra and Cyrus. I can't do justice to Phyrra and Cyrus as a voice actor and even if I could do one voice I certainly couldn't do them all. I can't do justice to Phyrra and Cyrus as an animator least of all because I'd have to teach myself how to do it and then do the hot mess of a job at it which is shared for being what a sound editor would be.

I'd have to go back to my blog where I detailed everything about what I need for Phyrra and Cyrus to confirm this is everything, but off the top of my head, what I need?
-Animator for the four openings
-Animator for the four closings
-Animator for the show itself (the three need not be the same, though they can be)
-1-4 composers for the openings' music (one composer could do all four, four composers could do one, or anywhere in-between those extremes)
-1-4 composers for the closings' music (ditto)
-I'll handle the songwriting for the openings and closings
-1-4+ singers for the openings (probably at least one will use multiple voices and thus need multiple people)
-1-4+ singers for the closings (ditto)
-A sound editor
-Voice actors for each member of the Thaukama, each villain, recurring characters (rare as they may be), and one-off characters (this probably is 2-4 dozen people altogether depending on how much overlap there is)
-I'll handle the scriptwriting

I can do justice to the things I say I'll handle.
I can, and plan to, give direction to the animators for openings, for closings, for the show itself. (The latter is an extension of the script; of course the script, or what I call the script, covers the basic plan of what's to be animated.) But I can't do animation and have it do Phyrra and Cyrus justice.
I can songwrite and do Phyrra and Cyrus justice.
I can't sing and have it do Phyrra and Cyrus due justice.
I can give direction to the composers for what I'm looking for from them, but my skills in musical composition are lackluster enough that I wouldn't be able to properly do Phyrra and Cyrus justice if I handled this.
Having seen what sound editing entails, how involved the process is, how so much of a single second of video animation can have like thirty individual sounds (not an exaggeration, if anything that's understating it rather than overstating it) attached to it? I can't do that and do Phyrra and Cyrus justice. I'd miss too much, I'd leave too much out, it'd be too basic, too sloppy, to chaotic, to filled with things it shouldn't be and missing things it should have.
I can't voice act and even if I could I can't voice act for the number of people I need.

I can't get these things for free, I know this, too. Even an animator working cheaply for the exposure it'd give, even an animator who I could get on board for recognizing it as a love project, even an animator who could get as passionate about it as I am...well...even if I could get someone with one, two, or even all three of those traits?

It still wouldn't be free to do. Because anyone who learns animation to the level of skill I would be looking for is doing this sort of thing professionally--as in. They need to pay their bills. And animation takes time. Ain't an animator in the world who'd be able to provide that animesque high quality animation I am looking for, who'd do it in what amounts to their spare free time, because that's what them doing it for free would be.

If they do it for a cost, then because it's a job they are going to be making it a project they put some fairly decent investment into. Maybe it's not their top priority project, but they're not going to put it on the backburner, they're not going to put it off. They're getting paid, so they are going to make it and make it well because they want to live off of their animations.

If they did it for free, then they'd still need to pay their bills. They need money for food, for gas, for electricity, for supplies, for internet, for all the stuff professional artists and animators need. They need money to survive--so they need to get it from somewhere.

If I wasn't that somewhere, then they'd need to be doing something else to get the money...meaning that Phyrra and Cyrus? Not their focus. Honestly...if Phyrra and Cyrus took longer to make because the animator was working cheaply and had it as a lower-tier project while working on a higher-tier project that was more expensive and can sustain them, that'd be fine.

My concern though is with the quality; when I do finally find an animator...if it doesn't live up to my vision...if it isn't what I envisioned or even better (because the thing about good artists to a writer is that sometimes, they exceed the writer's expectations and throw in details that are even better than what the writer told them to do, and I imagine animation is similar in that it can be better than what the script called for), if it looks like junk because as far as the animator was concerned something not helping them pay the bills was junk to make at a lower quality...what was the point in making it at all?

I imagine that with the proper research, I could probably find someone who would work for free. Would be incredibly hard to find, but I could find it out there somewhere. But would they make it quality? That's what I'm looking for. And 48 episodes of quality? That's not cheap. That's not free. That's expensive.

It takes money that I don't have.

But I want to make it.
I know I can do it.
Realistically speaking I'd be funding it by season, I'd be needing to do a fundraiser, I'd need to find a way to make ad revenue to go towards the future seasons and maybe fundraise them if the ad revenue isn't enough, and even after doing that I'm going to have to find people who have a combination of those traits.

Who are willing to do it cheaper than the usual rate for the sake of exposure.
And/or who are willing to do it cheaper than the usual rate because they recognize that it is a labor of love, a project with heart and soul behind it that they genuinely believe in.
And/or who are passionate about the vision that they are able to see I have for it.

Because that's the only way I'll be able to get the money raised and have the money raised cover everything.
I know a lot of research needs to be done on my end.
I know that a lot of work needs to be done on my end.
Finishing the scripts.
Doing the storyboarding of sorts.
Filling in filler details.
That sort of stuff.
I know that all.

But I want​ to do it.

And I also want to be a teacher. Not as much as I want to make Phyrra and Cyrus, and, heck, not as much as I want to create my webcomics. But.
I love teaching. I love imparting my insights, my wisdom, my thoughts, my teachings, onto others. I like to be able to say that a person was left in a better position, because of a contribution I gave to their growth.

I just have a love of teaching.
I don't even care if my lessons are listened to, if the people I am teaching to actually learn, though obviously I take pride and joy when they do, especially if they are able to take my teaching and improve on it to make it better than what I was teaching them to do.

I just...really like passing my knowledge and skills on to a "younger" generation. 

This need not be a teaching job proper, though.
I don't need to be a Teacher to be a teacher.

For instance, I am prominently known for being an expert/"expert" at the theory behind mafia. (Depends on who you ask. Bit of both camps are accurate; I have been playing for ten years so it figures that yes there are somethings I really can teach people about and being autistic with my brain wired in nonstandard ways gives me unique insights others over those ten years have missed...but because I am autistic I am prone to poor explanations of concepts, and just because I've done it for so long doesn't mean I'm perfect or know everything or am right all the time because I'm human prone to error and also poor judgments. Could ramble on this subject all day, but here's not the place for it.)

Nothing gives me greater joy than just getting a chance to tell people about my philosophies and have my ideas be passed on to them--not necessary verbatim. Taking elements of my ideas is actually a way to turn a basic idea which was on the right track but never nailed it (which is what I often am) to be refined to the point of actually getting it.

I encourage healthy skepticism in my teachings, will tell things as I see them and have a bit of a "that's the way it is" attitude towards some stuff, but I like just...seeing people actually read what I say, and taking even some of it to heart. Like, pondering what I said, considering it, and even just going, "ehh I disagree, for these reasons".

Someone who reads my ideas, and develops their own, someone who listens to my teachings, but develops their own. Someone who paid attention and took the best of what I had to say and eliminated the worst of what I had to offer. I love having stuff like that happen.

And another form teaching can take?

The main form which I dream about it taking, in fact?
The ultimate form--parenting.
Now, granted.
I know that I'll probably be a lousy mom.
Doesn't change that I want to BE a mom.

Doesn't have to be biological children, though it could be. I'm not picky. Doesn't have to be from birth babies, though it could be; again I'm not picky. I'd consider myself no less the mother of a 4 year old than I would an infant, no less the mother of a child with my blood in them and/or my girlfriend's blood in them than I would someone who has none.

Aside from being a housewife being my dream job (again, even though I know I'd be terrible at it and it is pragmatically speaking, economically nonviable in this day and age), frankly, the main reason I think I've always dreamed of raising children?

Was so that I could teach those children.

Every time I think about it.
Every time I think about all the times I've pondered wanting kids.
Every time I think about having envisioned raised kids.
Every time I think about all the different ways it could have happened.

Ultimately.

The thing that I remember most from all of those times.

Was that I was teaching them the lessons that a mother teaches their children, more or less the type of lessons my mom taught me only being my own unique take on them, stuff like actions versus consequences, the price of pursuing what you want, the like. Giving them a drive, giving them an encouragement (because encouragement is one of the most important aspects of teaching).

Supporting them, loving them.

It's mostly that I wanted to teach them to be the human beings they end up being--and with luck, to have some pride in knowing that their lives turned out the way they did in part because of what I helped them with. (We'd certainly hope so, because the alternative to that is despair/shame/horror that their lives turned out the way they did and the constant doubt of where I went wrong. Stuff like, 'they became a serial killer', noooooooot something I'd exactly be able to find pride/joy in, is what I mean.)

Ultimately, though...everything I just said?

Literally everything--mafia, the civ 3 mod, the descended, red hood rider, being a teacher, raising a family? I'd give it all up for my girlfriend. I'd give it all up to just live my life with my girlfriend. It is perhaps one of my greatest wants. It is one of the holy trifecta, the other two being the other two I listed.

I want to transition.

I want to have a full, happy, rich life.

I happen to also legitimately think that these three things are the only three on the entire list which augment each other rather than get in the way of each other. I have a finite amount of time in a day.
I can't, fundamentally can't, every day.
Do mafia.
Do the civ 3 mod.
Do The Descended.
Do Red Hood Rider.
Do Phyrra and Cyrus.
Teach.
And everything else.

I can't do them all at once.
I have to pick and choose. (More on that in a bit.)

But I legitimately, genuinely, think that the holy trifecta are together things that not only I can do all at once, but which are borderline impossible to do without having done all at once.

​I am a girl.
Without having fully transitioned, I will never truly be able to be at peace--which will diminish my happiness.

I derive the greatest happiness and joy out of the love I have for my girlfriend. They are the most important thing in the world to me--more important than anything else and I would do anything for them.

Transitioning is something that I legitimately don't think I can build a support network for on my own--it's a little bit of a self-feeding loop. To build a support network, I need a support network. And to get a support network, I need a support network. I honestly don't think that I'll be able to manage it on my own. And while I can theoretically have access to a support network here...realistically speaking, I don't see how it ever works smoothly.

It'd be bumpy, shaky, at best. It's something that I'd barely manage to do, if I managed to do it at all. There's a very real chance that left to my own devices, I never transition in spite of always wanting to, for like...ten, twenty years. However long it takes my dad to die. And even then, only transitioning if I am not then reliant on my brother, and can find a way to manage it in the hectic situation.

It's something that in theory I can do, but pragmatically speaking, transitioning is something that I'd likely have the easiest time with if it was with my girlfriend. 

And of course--my girlfriend probably wouldn't have become my girlfriend if I hadn't known I was a transwoman, and presumably is happier when knowing that I am happy (especially if they are the cause of said happiness).

When I wrote this blog, originally on the 23rd, I titled it "I don't know what I want to do".
But it's more like...
...I don't know what to focus on doing.
I know what I want to do.

I just spend five and a half hours typing it out. (Okay that's a slight exaggeration. Started at just past 12:45, and it's 6:03 now, so it's more like 5.75 hours.)

Everything I wrote? That's what I want to do. (Mind you I didn't cover large swathes of some subjects, e.g. the massive chunks of the December blog I left out.)
It's just that they are all so...so...conflicting, and I just.
Have a paralysis on what to focus on, more or less.

And it's so persistent, I might as well link it to you!

To be a little more specific, it's the area just after the one-minute mark that I'm looping through, because there's a nice little not-actually-repeating-but-close-enough-to-trick-my-brain bit. (Not sure how to explain that better. Basically, different words are used and you can tell they're different words, but they're sung using the same notes--and especially when it's not English and especially without the lyrics showing on the opener, that's enough to trick the brain into looping that segment over and over again.)

So while we're here.

Might as well talk about it some more.

One--that song is drop-dead amazing. It is a stunning thing on its own.
But two--the animation accompanying it is perfect.

It is one of the, if not the, best openers for an anime I've ever seen. It is just. that. good.

So it figures if my praises are that high for the opener, they are equally sung for the show proper.

And that rings true.
As my girlfriend put it, I gave the show my highest possible form of praise:
"The premise is really, really similar to the book I was working on". (Specifically the book before Heroes of Gistou.)
That book featured characters who, as early as their childhood years, plotted to escape a complex ruled by non-human entities. The characters had to show incredible intelligence and wisdom beyond their years in order to orchestrate the escape. (Granted, this happened in the prologue...and all but one of them was killed because while the escape succeeded, afterwards, in the chase, they died. So the similarities pretty much end there, butstill.)

Given how much I pride myself in my writing.

That's about as high a praise as is possible, in fact.

And there's another thing I would like to point out, from a different story of mine--one not intended to be a book.

Emma (and for that matter Ray and whatshisname), The Promised Neverland's protagonist. Is 11 years old...
...The same age as Phyrra and Cyrus.

...Why is that significant?

...Because this show is more or less a validation of "I'm on target" for displaying smart, intelligent, wise, mature 11-year-olds in terms of content. Yes, they are occasionally still kids, but the show displays them actually being smart. Not fake-smart. Genuinely clever and intuitive, prodigies who are geniuses, with ingenuity and quite capable of coming up with amazing strategies.

Which is what Phyrra and Cyrus are supposed to be.

It gets better.

Emma and Phyrra are pretty similar personality-wise. Cheerful, fairly friendly and somewhat polite while being somewhat blunt. (Admittedly, bluntness is more Ray's trait and politeness more whatshisname's trait.) A bit of a doofus compared to the other kid(s) her age, but in spite of needing things explained to her sometimes, by no means actually an idiot, capable of extreme cleverness of her own...while having a charming smile, warm heart, charismatic attitude and surprising level of insight.

Which is more or less what I'm aiming for with Phyrra.

And Cyrus is similarly like whatshisname with a side of Ray, being level-headed, calm, cool, collected, a planner, pragmatic, efficient, cold, yet still understanding and not all-knowing. Someone who prefers thinking rather than athletic flairs, and is lethally calculating in maneuvers.

...But it gets even better.

When Phyrra's body-swapped into Cyrus, and vice-versa. (The state that they stay in most of the series, aside from the twice-a-month times they are in their own bodies past the prologue.)
Because Cyrus's real body looks a lot like Emma, and Phyrra's real body looks somewhat like a cross between Ray and whatshisname.

When body-swapped.

Phyrra actually looks a lot like Emma.
And Cyrus actually looks a lot like a cross between Ray and whatshisname.

(My girlfriend's probably gonna be ticked when reading this blog and realizing I already forgot his name. Or more specifically, I'm not positive of it. I kinda have 'Nolan' in my head as being it but I'm not sure that was it?)

If you took Ray's hairstyle/length and the expressions/eyes/hair color/etc. of whatshisname, then it'd look pretty darn close to what Phyrra's real body is like, the body Cyrus is trapped in most of the time.

And Cyrus's real body, which Phyrra is trapped in most of the time, being a body that I deliberately modeled to be a stereotypical shonen anime protagonist body.
...Is pretty darn similar to Emma's, because she is a bit of a stereotypical shonen anime protagonist even in her body.

Obviously, they're not basically-identical, but the resemblance is fairly self-evident.
I haven't really drawn Phyrra and Cyrus yet (I should, I know, but I haven't), but I've made reference images of them using various programs, some of which are on this blog. As a refresher, here's a dump of them all.

Keep in mind, none of these are their official look. Keep in mind, all of these were made in various programs. The first faces were made in an iteration of a program called FaceMaker (specifically this one, which the maker themselves note is not too original as there are others like it, but that's the one I used for the images shown), the most-of-body, in-profile ones are from this anime character maker, the next set which are probably some of the closest-to-vision versions are from the continuously-expanding-with-new-content rinmaru games anime character creator, the next set of generic faces is from anime face maker 2, and the full-body picture is from a can-optionally-become-NSFW, tread-carefully, you-have-been-warned, K-ON dressup 2.

I can't stress enough how none of these are official.
None of these fully capture the aesthetic.
These are mostly done as brainstorming. Proof-of-concept work. Throwing ideas around for exact iterations of what their outfits look like. I have, in previous blog entries, described their exact look, and these give you a fairly good idea of what sort of look that is, but none of them are exact. You can't even average them all out to get it, either, because some are truer to the vision than others.

These are all just loose references, unofficial things that I use as a shorthand, lazy reference, things I use because I lack any other way currently to give a visualization of the two--until I actually draw Phyrra and Cyrus myself, I don't have any non-text picture of them. I can describe them, but without using these program screencaps, I can't actually show them to you yet because they haven't been drawn yet.

Butstill.
From this, you can probably get where I am coming from with what I am saying. Take a look at this in comparison since while not the best picture of the characters it's enough.

Cyrus's hair is more red than orange and his eyes are matched to the hair pretty much (not exactly, his eyes are more like the color of Emma's hair whereas his hair is redder than Emma's hair), and when Phyrra inhabits his body as she does for most of the show, she has the general aesthetic shown here by Emma. This shot shows a lot about Emma's personality and it is one perfect for Phyrra as well, showing expressions, showing thoughts, and so on and so forth.

Phyrra's hair is styled almost like Ray's, except removing the emo-covers-one-eye part of it. Pull that hair back so both eyes are visible, and suddenly you have her hair there, albeit hanging back down to the shoulders in the back. Blue instead of black, but you can get the idea.

Her eyes are almost exactly the color of whats-his-name's eyes over there.

And Cyrus, when inhabiting her body as he does for most of the show. Has an expression which is dead-inbetween Ray's and whats-his-name's. Not quite as cynical/serious as Ray, but also not quite as "open" as whats-his-name's. Deadpan, somewhat-serious, but not looking aggressive/dark as much as Ray does here.

So in a sense.

This is me paying the highest of high compliments to the show.

Comparing it to a novel I love and hold dear is high enough praise in of itself.

Egotistical to the extreme, sure, albeit not entirely unjustifiably so. (The novel I can trace its exact origins down to the short story which is still posted online. If I recall correctly, to about 2009ish, give or take a year. Turning it into a novel, I can also track down the exact year of, which I believe but am not sure was 2011. I am pretty sure that whenever the manga this anime is adapting was made, didn't start until after that, so my work comes first, even if it ends up published later. Which I realize doesn't change much, but is why I say not entirely unjustified...just mostly unjustified.)

But hey, I am egotistical so when an extreme narcissist like me says, "this work is like one of my own!", it is as high a praise as is possible because given how high I hold my work to be, the esteem in it, saying it's as good as that is saying it is really good.

...Yet I'm not just comparing it to the novel I love and hold dear.

I am comparing it to my pet project that I hold the highest of high ambitions for.

To the point where I even mentioned it in passing to my mom today, which is a way of kinda sorta solidifying it as "real".

When I mention something online, it can stay online forever and never have a form of "legitimacy" to it.
That doesn't mean that things online for me are illegitimate. But what it does mean is that things online are harder to have be legitimate.

And to say words in real life holds power.
Hearing Bree online is nice; hearing it in person is something which is life-changing.
That's the effect I am talking about, and I think this is something anyone online can understand what I'm getting at here. How what's done and said in real life means magnitudes more, and why it is a goal so much to strive for--because it is so worth it when it is actually done. It feels like the difference between saying and doing (real life), the difference between living it (real life) and not-really-not-living-it-but-not-really-fully-living-it.

I think you get what I mean.

Saying, even as a hint.
That Phyrra and Cyrus as a project exists.

Just had a way of solidifying it.
As.
Not just "this is something I want to do, but...".
But.
As.
"Yeah I'm doing this".

Phyrra and Cyrus, that project of mine that I hold the highest of high ambitions for, the thing where I solidified it as being real.

I am comparing to the show.

That show does basically everything I'd want to do in Phyrra and Cyrus.

So when I say "The Promised Neverland is the quality to which I strive to make Phyrra and Cyrus be".
There really can't be any higher praise than that.
​It's higher than the highest of the high praises.