I did have a desire yesterday to write a blog about my plurality (the nature of my median system), but I ended up getting too tired to write it. And as for tonight...well. I got nuthin'. I don't have the mindset to write about the thing I was going to yesterday, and for things for today...coming up empty. Still not in the mindset to write the misophonia blog, either. I already blogged about the progress on Civ 3.

And I'm pretty sure my last blog mentioned Epic Battle Fantasy stuff? I guess just in case I can cover it again. Basically, I spent an entire night just listening to Epic Battle Fantasy music, because I just...wanted to, the nostalgia was strong. It was on a whim that I went to spend the night listening to EPF 3 music (particularly the normal battle music and boss music from that game).

Since then, I've actually made good progress in the game. I beat a couple of bonus zones, and I even managed to beat one of the bosses I thought would be among the hardest in the game; the underground Neo Valkyrie fight where it regenerates health every turn, makes two bombs that can TPK every four turns, deals ridiculous damage, and has over five million HP.

It did take me multiple tries, mind you, and tweaking my strategy multiple times, but I ultimately pulled it off by giving my main party 100% bomb resistance (130% for NoLegs, the member with the weakest ability to heal), high wind resistance, immunity to most of the status effects, and lots and lots of haste (between Viking Monolith procs and casual haste procs which in some instances stack). From there, I used Temperance on Matt to boost his attack power to the max and spammed the earth spike, with NoLegs applying max curse and weakness and Natt healing, syphoning, and when free to attack, either applying weakness or applying tiredness from gaia blossom (which deals good damage, too).

It was very very close, since I ran out of SP on the bombs, Natt couldn't syphon both the spawned bombs, the bombs were one turn from exploding, and I was out of revives, low on health, with the bombs going off spelling out a TPK--but I did end up eventually pulling through, barely, to finish it off, on my last party member's last turn.

I'm basically, slowly, progressing through all the top half of the map. After that, I know there's a really really really nightmarish fight in the snow area of the bottom half, which I'll get after going through the river and doing a full cycle or two of the frozen area before steeling myself for the fight that isn't technically a boss fight but which is still nightmarishly difficult. (I don't even remember the enemy, probably either a Mammoth or a Monolith that's gargantuan.)

After that, we'll be getting to progressing the game with the fall area with the tomb and such, which will take us into new content for the game.

​I'm slowly progressing.

So I was planning to say that I had binge-read the entirety of EGS in less than a week (I forget when I started, might've been Monday), but I'm not technically there, yet in spite of it being Thursday. Darn close, but not quite.

I'm blogging about it now though, because relevant?

​The author talking about his experiences compared to a list of autism symptoms. And me going.
"...Huh. The author sounds like he has the EXACT same issues that *I* have."

There are many, many comics from the comic that I considered linking to my girlfriend with me just saying "...THIS IS ME", though for whatever stupid reason I ended up deciding not to in spite of so many of them being so appropriate for describing me.

And as the author says himself, him having a sort of "write what you know/I know myself best" attitude, and from this, having put aspects of himself into basically all of his characters (which I'd know of all too well because I do literally the exact same thing), that makes a lot of sense.

What I wanted to cover were things he talked about, because I don't talk about them much.
But the ironic thing is...some time near the start of this year or thereabouts, half the things he mentioned in the comic I linked I was considering blogging about anyway. And with him talking about them there, a little hard for me to not instantly stop my bingeread and instead focus on writing the blog.

I relax via movement rather than standing still--like the author, I fundamentally cannot stand still in place. It's something that not only is physically painful, but mentally excruciating so I instinctively, reactively, add in some form of movement to it to make it work.

I love pacing and always have. It is something that I do to just...relax, focus my thoughts, to just get my brain in a good mindset for doing what I want to do; many of my best ideas came from a result of pacing back and forth and then just a spark of brilliance hit and then ignited because I was allowed to play around with a calm, collected, focused mind.

Many in my family fidget, but I am by far the worst offender; I am basically never not fidgeting. If there's no object to fidget with, I make an object to fidget with. If there's nothing to make an object to fidget with, I use my own body as my fidgeting material. (Which, to be honest, can be equal parts healthy and unhealthy. I can clean out gunk and whatnot that's accumulated, but I can also rip skin off in my fidgeting without realizing what I did until after I did it.)

I did have a speech impediment when I was younger, and while I was able to overcome half my issues, my issue with stuttering never went away in spite of having spent years at it and taking lessons to try and avert it. Is the main reason why I prefer typing over speaking; I just stumble over my own words which is much harder to do when typing. (Harder. Not impossible.)

But the main thing which piqued my interest?

The mention of oversensitivity to stimuli, and specifically how that relates to the author. Obviously, I have misophonia, so I know about that oversensitivity to a select stimulus, but what he described is something that I wanted to talk about because it happens to me every day I am at work.

I thought it might just be the unique acoustics of the pool deck at work, but thinking about it, it's probably just a me thing. Or an autism thing, more specifically. I am ridiculously sensitive to certain sounds, able to make them out when nobody else can. I fundamentally cannot filter out everyone talking, and it shuts me down entirely.

I think, ages ago, years ago, I wrote a blog touching on that, in fact, now that I think about it. I likened it to the Robert Downy Jr. Sherlock Holmes film in the dining scene, where he was exposed to so many stimuli and had no way of blocking them out. (I've also used it as a descriptor as being part of what curses Sloth in Phyrra and Cyrus; he has a souped-up version of that as a permanent curse on him for his sin, making his life a living hell as a result.)

But what the author said? I can verbatim quote and have it apply to me:
And yet, somehow, I often have trouble hearing what people have said and have to ask them to repeat themselves, which I find all sorts of weird.

I have this super sensitive, hyper-awareness with my hearing, able to hear the ever so slightest of details, whose hearing is sensitive enough to not be able to drown out all of that noise...and yet...when people actually speak to me, I have no clue what they are saying most of the time. Not because I don't understand the words they're saying (though that can happen, because duh, lack of social understanding), but because I can't hear them no matter how much I try.

They can say something, I won't get it, I'll ask them to repeat themselves, I still won't get it, I ask them a third, sometimes a fourth time, and if they haven't given up on telling me what it was they were saying, maybe I hear them. (At which point, then I have to process what they said correctly, which again. Challenging, because duh.)

I'm also uncertain about the sarcasm thing. Often at work when patrons tell jokes, I might not be able to tell, in large part because of the above issue (not having heard them until they repeat it, and their repeated version of it obviously won't have the same tone as their initial version did because they're trying to make me hear it, which I guess sacrifices some of the subtextual clues, or so I hypothesize), but I was raised in a family filled with deadpan snarkers, and am myself one. (Well, as often as someone like me can be one, anyway.)

Online, in fact, snark is my signature style. I'm fond of puns and whatnot, and I often attach the emoticon ':P' to it which ruins the snark, but I am a ridiculously snarky person who as part of the snark, inherently makes use of sarcastic comments and the like.

Misunderstandings are abundant, though, moreso than they should be.

Unlike the author, though, I know for a fact that I have no sense of personal space.
I also know that I am incredibly fond of tactile feedback. Like. I am obsessive about it. I tend to not like touching people (I don't have a sense of personal space, but I just...have an aversion to touching people? But it feels mostly like I don't know if it's appropriate more than anything else, unless it's a child in which case no duh I don't want to touch the child who I know has a runny nose and does the child thing to deal with it rather than the adult thing, and I am quite aware of the hypocrisy of that given I am an adult who still does the child thing to do but I guess I'm a hypocrite in that way), and I rationally know that surfaces everywhere are littered with germs, but...

...I just...like the feeling of them, even if I know they are germ-infested. But that said...I'm kinda selective with what I touch? I only touch certain things, and otherwise leave things untouched. Some things I just instinctively reach out to touch, even if I've never touched them before; other things I instinctively reach out to touch out of established habit; yet more things I just don't touch for whatever reason even if similar things I do touch.

Soyeah.
Just...got some more perspective on things that I thought were me-things, that might in fact not actually be just-me things.

...Since my creative whims are being interrupted by having listened to music in order to drown my dad out. However, that having been said, I still have three very valid things to ramble on. Let's start with the most recent. A couple of days ago, on Thursday, I had a series of dreams, one after another, which were all amazing and awesome dreams filled with adventure. Mostly after I'd waken up, as part of my powernapping.

There was one which stood out above the rest.

It didn't take me very long to dub the story idea...
Phyrra and Cyrus.

Phyrra and Cyrus Thaumason (yes, that is Thompson, and yes it is just about as common a surname for the setting--it's not exactly 'Smith', and while it's not a top-ten surname, it IS a top-15 surname; incredibly common and unremarkable) are prodigal twin siblings. They are considered to be incredibly talented for their age--at 11 years old, both are already accomplished adventurers.

Phyrra is a bit of a Genki girl--she is energetic, enthusiastic, radiates an aura of brightness and happiness, is sweet, naive, and innocent. Additionally, she is incredibly polite, and fairly formal. However, she is also reckless, hotheaded, and a blood knight who loves the thrill of combat. Her specialty is bladed weapons, especially swords. She has blue hair, which is let down. She is also bisexual. (Well, at her age, more like biromantic, butstill.)

Cyrus is everything Phyrra isn't. He is calm, cool, and collected: a thinker, cautious by nature, who prefers to avoid combat when at all possible. He'll use any method to avoid conflict, be it running away or preferably negotiation. However, if a fight is inevitable, his fighting method is to be decisive--whereas Phyrra likes to have fun fighting and thus doesn't think much about winning, Cyrus when he plans a fight plans how to end it as swiftly and effortlessly as possible. He is blunt, unapologetic, rude, cynical, and a bit of a jerk, but he really knows how to use anything.

This is why his preferred weaponry is environmental weaponry. For instance, if surrounded by rocks, using a sling would be a good option; when in a forest, wooden weapons such as a spear would be ideal. When he has to default to a weapon, his choice is the universal staff, a tool versatile, yet pragmatic, and easily carried. He has protagonist-styled spiked red hair. He is demisexual. (Well, at his age, more like demiromantic, butstill.)

The duo sought after the usual things. Fame, fortune, but mostly...respect. A secondary caveat to this was them wanting to be treated as any other person would be, not discriminated against as being children. A tertiary aspect of this was them being self-aware enough that they aren't yet adults, and being frustrated that, yes, their minds still do operate as those of children, albeit incredibly gifted, mature, prodigal children. Though they have the experience and talent of adults, they know all too well their thoughts and critically emotions are those of kids, still.

In the adventure which kicks off the story, the Thaumason Siblings set out after a legendary book, the Book of Endlessness, said to be able to grant the reader(s) limitless abilities, among them age manipulation. Their idea: find the book, and use it to wish to be adults, such that they could so to speak "skip ahead". They were, of course, aware of the risks in doing so, but deemed it worth it because what would be lost from that wouldn't be something they'd miss, as far as they were concerned.

They didn't even think the book was real or if it was what it'd be able to do, but they found a fairly reliable rumor of where it would be if it were, and decided they'd try. 

By the way, this was envisioned as an anime. Western Animation would work, but it'd have to be one of those two. It doesn't really work as any other media. Not live action, not even manga that well (though it'd maybe be possible? I just think the magic would be lost without it as an animation).

So keep that in mind.

The first episode opens up with them entering the dungeon and more or less showing off their base abilities and natural personalities as they progress, filled with the special siblings banter only siblings can manage. (Seriously, I don't know how to explain sibling banter to someone who has none. It's just...something people with siblings kinda get and know and understand. They see sibling banter in fiction and they can often tell if the writer has siblings, sort of thing, in that if you know it you know what's real and what's forced.)

Eventually, they find the book, and begin to read it.

So the full effect of the book is that it unlocks the full magical potential of the reader, who takes on possession of the book as being its "owner". Magic exists in this setting, and it's the type that anyone can learn...but learning it takes years of study, such that the youngest magic users are in their 30s if they started when they were children. It is a dedicated, life-long study, akin to getting a doctorate in a field. You spend basically half your life to learn the beginnings of it, and you still even after learning it are no master.

Understandably, this makes magic users uncommon. And this isn't something where you can be a prodigy and learn it at a disproportional rate. There are magical prodigies who can use it in their 20s, but that's the prodigal level. It is the level of a genius, who not only is a genius, but also has essentially a "sixth sense" for muscle memory to learn the magic, or even eidic muscle memory for the process.

...By which. I mean. Magic is something that the entire body uses. It is something which is physically exerting, because it is using "muscles" of sorts which you have to be trained in how to use. I can say it is effectively equivalent to having a person who has used nothing but their hands their entire life, trying to learn how to use legs they've never used. They might see people walk and get the theory, they might know how it is done, but if they try to stand up, they're going to fall.

This is why even prodigies take into their 20s to get it, and most magic users are in their 30s, and magic is a bit of a rarity. Because it is not something you learn to use overnight...and even if you did. That's just for using the magic at all. You still need to, once you have learned HOW to use magic...learn individual spells. Magic isn't a do-anything power. Now, granted. Spells are near-infinite in number and have many different variants. But knowing how to use magic doesn't mean you can use magic because you also need to learn how to use specific spells.

Learning spells? That you can be a prodigy at, by studying hard and grasping them quickly and rapidly. But to learn a spell, first you must learn magic. It's impossible for people to learn a spell without first learning how to use magic, because without knowing how to use magic, the spell is just words on a page with pictures; they have no frame of reference for what it feels like, basically.

Now, granted. There are workarounds. Some people are magic-users-lite, who have unlocked partial magic casting, which they use for a very limited select set of spells applicable for the bits of magic they are using. This still takes years of training, doable in your teenaged years if a prodigy or in your 20s if you're more average. You can think of this as instead of using two arms, of using one hand (fraction of one arm which is half of two). 

However, even including those, magic's still not too terribly common. It's a thing, which exists, but which people still don't make wide usage of. The rules governing it are seen as an extension of physics--in a world which has always had magic, after all, the rules governing the universe are such that from a scientific point of view people don't differentiate between magic and not-magic. So it is considered a science, well-documented, well-recorded. People understand what it can, and can't, do.

So back to the book. The book? Basically, it instantly allows the owner to become a mage, regardless of how little they had trained their magic before. It does not grant them the knowledge on how to use said magic...but within the pages of the book are the recordings of basically every possible spell that the unlocked magic can use. (And this being limitless potential...that's basically every spell.) With the caveat...it will only show pages the owner is actually in the now capable of casting. 

...Sounds awesome, right?

...Well, the problem is...the book has a self-defense mechanism, and it's not just an easily-bypassed dungeon. In fact, it has more than one, but all of them work on the same principle. The book of endlessness has a defense mechanism which works as a double-reversal, on the principle of "being finite". Normally, when reading the book, the owner will start to find themselves aging rapidly, their time disappearing from being endless to being finite.

If that fails, the walls enclosing the space rapidly progress inward--the endless space becoming finite.

...However. The book's reversal mechanism doesn't quite take into account if two people simultaneously read it to both become the owner. Or rather...it does...and it does the only thing it can: use the reversal in...a very, very different method.

...And it is by this method that the entire rest of the story is set up, because that reversal? A reversal of spirit between the owners. Or in other words. A body swap. Phyrra gets stuck in Cyrus's body; Cyrus gets stuck in Phyrra's body. And it gets worse; they are, for the entire duration of this, now stuck permanently at eleven, never aging. (The opposite, reverse, of what they wanted.)

Yes the series would have plenty of shenanigans where Phyrra (in Cyrus's body) would need to try to pretend to be Cyrus, and vice-versa. And at times, awkwardly enough, the reverse (the two are actually in their correct bodies...but with people who only know Phyrra in Cyrus's body as Phyrra and vice-versa, them needing to try and pretend ANYWAY). You know the like. (So gender stuff would be featured a fair amount.)

...Oh, and the walls start to close in on them anyway.

Fortunately, the book is intricately linked to four other books: the book of wind, the book of earth, the book of fire, and the book of water.

Phyrra, in Cyrus's body, rushes over to the book of wind, activating it. Each book has a defense mechanism of summoning a Guardian. The Guardian's duty is to kill the owner of the book, or failing that, to serve them until such a time as the owner no longer owns the book.

Gora, a rock monster (his design is from a combination of sources, among them being that one rock monster that Kurama faced early on in YuYuHakusho), the Wind Guardian, comes forward...and gets introduced to Phyrra. Guardians, as creatures belonging to the spirit realm, can see beings in their true spiritual form, so has a unique form of double-vision where he can see the body of Cyrus but he can also see that it is actually Phyrra. Phyrra wins him over with her sheepish grin and polite manners.

...It also helps that he is not immune to being crushed in spite of being made of rock, so he starts to panic when he noticed and swiftly teaches Phyrra the 'wings of levitation' spell, which "shuts off traps", and the enclosing walls qualify, thus saving their lives.

Gora notes that they're just children, and can't find himself to do anything other than help them.

...And thus, the story begins, concluding the first episode.

This trio lasts for quite a large amount of time before other members of the Thaukama (Thaumpson + Nakama, it's the best I could come up with for their group name) join. In APPROXIMATE order:

Kaze, the Earth Guardian, is summoned when Gora is badly injured in a way the kids need the aid of the earth book in order to fix, a task that Cyrus (in Phyrra's body) undertakes. Kaze is a homicidal maniac. (His design is directly lifted from Kazekirimaru in Bleach's Zanpaktou Rebellion filler arc.) He is a killing machine who excels at slicing opponents to shreds, and unlike Gora, he is not so easily dissuaded from murdering his book's owner because of him being a child.

Phyrra does combat with him using her wind magic augmenting her blades, a fight which she does respectably well in and Kaze acknowledges her talent, yet notes that no matter her potential and no matter how prodigal she may be she is still inexperienced in the ways of the wind which he has had eons to master, so she is at a disadvantage.

After healing Gora and watching the fight for long enough, Cyrus challenges Kaze, noting that he is to be Kaze's owner, not Phyrra, and that if he is to be worthy of that, then he should be the one who earns Kaze's respect. In spite of using the element which has a disadvantage (the reason Guardians are the opposite element to the book they are guarding is twofold--to kill any would-be expert of the element, and to provide coverage to the expert of the element should they decide to subjugate themselves), Cyrus does in fact manage to prove himself.

Ace, age 16, the first non-Guardian member of the Thaukama, is an expert marksman. Give him any ranged weapon, and he can hit almost any target. He specializes in pistols, but using muskets is still viable. He is a highly competent archer even though he doesn't like to use bows, and he can make do with a crossbow even though he thinks them cumbersome. He can hit with a sling, and can throw darts and the like fairly well.

However, perhaps his most valuable asset is not his combat skills, but rather, the fact that unlike Phyrra and Cyrus, he is trained to survive out in the wild for long durations of time. He knows advanced first aid techniques, such that he is an expert medic, and is a survival expert, knowing what's edible, what's not, what's poisonous, what's not, how to prepare foods which would normally be toxic such that they are edible, where to find things, how to prepare against environmental hazards, and the like.

I haven't given him a last name yet, though he does have a loose appearance. Brown hair, fairly shaggy, wears a cowboy hat, has a trenchcoat, combat pants, and for shoes maybe combat boots. I want an aesthetic which is, overall, something that would say 'pragmatic in most environments'. (I mean obviously he'd need a different getup in a colder environment, but I want something which works reasonably well in the forest, jungle, desert, sea, and the like, while still offering high combat readiness.)

There would be other human members of the Thaukama join before this, but I haven't fleshed them out in much detail.

Myra, Fire Guardian, a Siren (with a Mermaid form and Sea Serpent form), is summoned by Cyrus (in Phyrra's body) when the siblings are entering into an area they anticipate fire magic being useful for. She is equally as lethal as Kaze, loving to eat or drown to death anyone. (None of the Guardians are pleasant individuals; the siblings having 'tamed' them is noted as being an incredibly unusual occurrence because the Guardians are explicitly MONSTERS.)

However, because she is a Siren, immensely beautiful and alluring, Cyrus is basically smitten, addressing her as...
...Mom.

Myra is taken aback, and briefly insulted by the term of endearment, because it'd imply she is seen as an older individual whereas she loves the thought of being seen for her beauty and charm.

Phyrra explains to her, also addressing her formally as Lady Myra, that while she might be looking upon children, her charms are not lost on the children. Cyrus's reaction is as it is because he sees her as absolutely gorgeous, and everything he imagined his mother would look like. Phyrra puts on her own charm so to speak and says that Myra is basically everything she'd hope to be when older, and explains that if they ended up aging in spite of Cyrus being in that body, that Cyrus wouldn't complain too terribly much about turning out that way, either, more or less.

This flattery and sweetness and all-around awe at her flusters Myra quite a bit, and while she is quite adamant she is not their mother, inevitably, she does end up being the Team Mom anyway.

At some later point, the Thaukama get stranded on an island--to get off, they need to make use of the wind and water books in tandem, so Phyrra ends up summoning...
Hera, the Water Guardian, a Phoenix/Dragon who has many of the typical traits of the latter. She loves to hoard money, she loves to eat people, she loves burning things to ashes, and demanding tribute in the form of pretty maidens (that she explicitly-as-can-be-while-still-having-it-as-implied has sex with, so yes she is a lesbian but yes she is also a rapist), but in spite of all these unpleasantries (I repeat. The Guardians are not nice people. They are MONSTERS. They enjoy killing things among other atrocities), she does have a rule--
She will give her blessing to anything which survives the fire. "Reborn through fire" is in fact still part of her design, coming from the phoenix half, and through the ashes of her flame, she will give prosperity to the individuals whom she deems worthy of continued life.

Phyrra willingly undergoes this trial, passing, and earning the fourth and final guardian as a companion.

There would be at least one more human member of the Thaukama to join after this point, a girl about the same age as the Thaumason siblings, but I haven't named her or put much design into her character. (Her presence is more plot-related.)

This took me more or less...like.
Ten minutes to think up.
Literally all that happened in the course of a powernap.

I'm not sure how many episodes there'd be. Quite a number, though. At least 24/26 (depending on whether a season would be 12 or 13), possibly double that (if you count 12/13 as the half-season and 24/26 as a complete season). I don't think it'd run longer than that, though. (In fact, 48 already seems like it might be pushing things.)

The setting is such that I could write an endless amount of material for it, and the series epilogue (I know exactly how things go from the confrontation with the final Big Bad onwards) leaves things rather open-ended both after, during, and before said epilogue in that there is the possibility of writing FAR more material than documented.

But I know what kind of material I have, what kind of material I want, what kind of story I want to tell, and about how long that story would be, and that's not as long as you'd think it'd be. I wish I could make it, but this is miles beyond my league. I don't have the ability to start to finish map out the story, yet alone, line for line the dialog happening such that every single moment is mapped out.

Even if I did have that scriptwriting skill, I don't have the art skills necessary to draw the scenes I know I'd need to.
Even if I did, I don't have the animation skills necessary to make said scenes come to life.
Even if I did, I don't have the audio editing skills (there's names for that but I'm too lazy to bother looking them up) to basically work with the sound.
Even if I did, I would need voice actors for these roles, able to consistently deliver the wide array of things I'd need them to (there is one point which requires an incredibly professional level of performance in order to nail the moment I have in mind and it WOULD be screwed up with sub-par voice acting)...and this is something I can't exactly do myself.

So I would need those voice actors, something I can't get around no matter my ability to get around those other limitations.
And they would need to be high-quality.
And they would need to be able to deliver on a schedule more or less.
...I mean.

...Those services exist.

...But they sure don't exist for free.

You quite literally get what you paid for.
So if you pay nothing, then you find almost no voice actors. The few who bite are likely low-quality, and are going to be working under their own time constraints rather than yours because they are effectively volunteering.

So EVEN IF ALL OTHER FACTORS WERE ACCOUNTED FOR.
I couldn't do this on my own.
...And all other factors aren't accounted for.
I do need the audio editing skills; this is not something I have the software for, nor the training, and I have little in the ability to learn these things and if I did I wouldn't learn them well enough to make use of them to the level they'd need to be at. The only way I get what I want is with someone who's an expert, which means again hiring someone. More money aside from the voice actors.

I do need the animation skills; this is not something I can do. Yadda yadda, more rambling, end result: hiring someone. More money. Oh and as an aside...said person would need the ability to not only closely work with me, but also the audio guy. (Who would need to work well with both the animation guy and the voice actors since the audio guy would know what was needed there.)

Just animating isn't good enough; to animate something, first I need to show what needs to be animated. This is done through a combination of scripts and art. I need help on both because I cannot master both.

I can write the overall narrative.
I can flesh out moments.
But I can't on my own make the script. I'd need writers to help me. I'd outline some things, they'd outline others, collaborating until I got a narrative and product that I was satisfied with. All the while working with artists who'd draw these images to give character reference art and scene reference art.

More money.
More collaboration, even.

...You can see where this is headed.

It's not possible for me to make, because for me to make it I'd require a fully staffed animation studio. Proper hardware, proper software, proper staffing, properly paid.

It's literally one of the best ideas I've ever had, up there with the villain song setting (which I envisioned more as a film or maybe miniseries) in how good it'd be...and yet.

It'll never come to be.

​Ah well.

I'm gonna take a break; when I return, I might ramble about the other things I need to, the perfect RPG stuff and the webcomic idea (which I actually could make because I have the skills necessary, I just never will because 98% of my ideas are never going to see the light of reality thanks to how much time/effort the 2% which do take).

Yep, sure descriptive of a name, but really I have a fair amount to talk about. For a start, how ticked off I am at my parents for different reasons. Literally the MOMENT I was starting this blog entry, my dad started snacking on food without warning me and yes, it did in fact from the SECOND he started trigger my misophonia given that the smack sound instantly rang all the wrong bells in my head and was practically an instinctive hatred of it.

My mom is for entirely different reasons. I am outright considering no longer leaving the house anymore for any reason because it seems she literally cannot be trusted to not mess with my stuff when I'm not around. No permission, nothing. On Friday, she "cleaned" my room, and MASSIVELY screwed up a VAST great number of things.

Her excuse is a smell, a smell which is irrelevant because nobody enters that room except for me, and it's not something *I* care about. She clings to it being her house, but it's a part of her house that nobody else ever enters and it's not because of the stench. It's because it's my room, so no DUH nobody's going to enter there because...they shouldn't be entering there!

She had more excuses. Like that she wanted to actually be able to hang up my clothes...
...Except my clothes were just fine where they are. It's more convenient for me and frankly it should be more convenient for her to just keep them where they have been--in the spots where they are easy to access and grab and use. In the hall right next to the bathroom, and in the bathroom itself. Guess what? That's where I actually have need for them because I change IN the bathroom for the most part, particularly useful after showers. If my clothes are right there for me to grab, then I am more likely to actually change them. But by putting them in MY room, where it's OUT OF THE WAY because I nowadays basically only go into my room to sleep (and "sleep" >_> <_<), it's LESS LIKELY I WILL ACTUALLY GO TO CHANGE because that's just not how my brain works. Thus, less effort for me.

And it should be less effort for her because it's less distance. Like. The bin's right there, and the bathroom's right next to the laundry room. My room is further down the hallway, and my closet is EVEN FURTHER down my room. She also has to open my door (which is always closed), close it, open it again, and close it, all the while risking letting a cat in because in spite of disciplining both of our cats, they are in fact able to make mad dashes inside the room (because cats are attracted to the forbidden), and while *I* know how to stop them from getting in, SHE does not. Because again. This is MY room, I know all the tricks about it, I know how to handle it and deal with it.

There was no rational, no reasonable, reason to clean it up. Except she did. She kept on going on and on about it, in spite of her having essentially desecrated what is my safe space. It's mine. My place. My spot. Where things were arranged in the way I more or less wanted them to be in. And there was years of history behind everything and where it was. And I knew where the important things were versus the unimportant things.

She screwed it all up.

For the half of the room which was originally my brother's, this wasn't inherently necessarily a bad thing. I still think she likely permanently damaged/screwed up many things there which she had no way of being aware of, but things in that section were by and large less important to me, being miscellaneous things I accumulated and yet didn't decide to properly store.

But for the half of the room which was mine--as in, the part my beside was next to--everything was important. It was ordered in a very specific way. With things arranged that way for a combination of all my endeavors. I had art stuff and story stuff laid out in there, and I also had textbooks but they were textbooks laid out in such a way that they were things I made use out of. And she just threw them all in the same place, mixing and breaking everything.

That was on FRIDAY.

You can guess what happened today.

I specifically told her NOT to do more. MY OWN SISTER AGREED WITH ME. My own dad largely thought that my mom was being irrational. Literally EVERYONE ELSE LIVING IN THE HOUSE. Basically told her that she didn't need to be doing the things she was doing. It was made very clear that it was not okay, and if more were to be done, I should be there for it.

NOPE!

Apparently, the message just didn't get through because she did more.

Without my consent.
Without my oversight.

And just further wrecked what was there.

She has no way of knowing the damage she causes with this.
She has no way of judging these things.
She has no right to do that.
And yet she did.

So I am just...

...REALLY ticked off.

I almost don't want to blog about the things I was originally coming here to blog about, ticked off.

But that having been said.

I think talking about those things will in fact help me cool down a bit.

Basically, there were four projects I mentally worked on today. This being a Sunday, where I work, that's to be expected, but none of the projects are what I'd call "productive". They were, rather explicitly, time wasters. I still thought them worthy of blogging about.

The first project, which I was working on as early as this morning when I woke up with the song stuck in my head, was to write a round dance (I settled on Cha Cha) to a song used in Water Fitness. I didn't know the name of the song, which makes tracking it down a little difficult, but hey, I'm home now so hopefully I can find it. Lessee... (*slight break in blog entry to google search*)

...Initial results, not promising. (Rats.)
I might, might, might, might have in those results found a song which could potentially maybe be it, except all of them sound too...

...Well, not it. This is for a Water Fitness class. If I had to give it a genre, I'd have called it Disco. (It might be techno instead, but if so it's an earlier techno song not a more modern one, I'm pretty sure.) I'm almost certain it's a song of about that age, too.

The songs I got in my results for the only words in the song I can actually make out (and even then I'm not sure I'm making them out correctly, it's difficult to tell for sure) were all...vastly different from that.

The part that I remember is basically what I think is maybe the prechorus and the chorus. It has the (female) singer build up, holding the same word and getting increasingly more intense with it (for either three or four measures as I count it in dance-time music which might in song-time music be six/eight measures), and then after that, there's (also female) backup singers singing along with the main singer for the verse, which is a little bit repetitive but in an incredibly catchy way.

There are at least three instances of saying two words, which sound like "Hit me, hit me, hit me" (I can't remember the exact number), each instance of the two words ("hit me") being approximately one beat (as measured in dance time music), and keep in mind this is a pretty fast-paced song (if I weren't describing it in dance beats, I'd say the if-I-heard-right hit-me's are 'one-and-two-and'), and after the instances of those two words, it sounds like "with your love" (and there's at least one word after that if I recall correctly; I got a result which indicates it might be 'thing'), and then there are more words following it that are part of the chorus that I can't make out that are at a slower pace, and then it runs through them a second time, with much the same (although the words following which I can't make out might be different the second time through, is a common enough thing to do in songs with a repeating chorus where half remains the same and half is different).

I didn't find it. Admittedly. I didn't listen to the whole songs; I first looked at their lyrics to see if they were plausible matches to what my mind hears, and then tried listening and skimmed the songs, and yet nothing sounded right. One other distinct part of the song which is actually how I remember it is what sounds like...well, not a flute, but some other wind instrument, a wind instrument which kinda sorta sounds like it's electronic but is probably not actually electronic.

I can't find something which sounds like that, which is a shame, since I think the bit I mentally composed to write the dance to was pretty neat. (Then again this wouldn't be the first time I've made a pretty neat round dance to fit the chorus without really doing the rest. And certainly not the first time I've made a cha cha. I seem to like writing chas for some reason, I suppose because I find it the easiest rhythm to write moves for, dance to, and also fit the music. Portugal the Man's song which I know isn't called this but I call it "Rebel Just For Kicks" is another; Kongos's first big hit which name slips my mind at the moment because I can only think of I'm Only Joking which was their second big hit is yet another. TWICE in fact.)

The second thing on the list of things I thought about was heading back to a story I thought I was done with, the Sensation story, and I build more on the very beginning (before Sensation became an epic badass), and also much later in their child Seraphim's story specifically about Seraphim eventually gaining younger siblings.

Said younger siblings have the same abilities--the immense magical power overwhelmingly so, and the ability to sense things, but unlike their eldest sibling, they chose not to pursue things beyond a few things. Basic necessities, parlor tricks, magic with mundane utility, pragmatic things, things that essentially help but aren't really groundbreaking or big or really innovative for the most part.

In the word of one of the siblings, "Creativity, a thirst for knowledge, innovation, and attention to detail are not genetic traits". They then list the actual genetic traits, and state that's it, nothing more, and that Seraphim was the only one to inherit Sensation's usage of those.

...Of course. In a point of minor irony for humor value. Said sibling stating this was doing so while using magic to paint an artistic picture of some obscure battle they would only have known about by having deliberately done research on--a task requiring creativity, a thirst for knowledge, attention to detail, and some level of innovation albeit mundane in nature.

But the point is meant to get across that they are their own persons. They are different. Their personalities aren't the same. Their gifts are mostly the same, but what they are best skilled at utilizing the gifts for is inherently different. The younger siblings could in theory do what Seraphim did if they wanted to, but they don't want to, and even if they did, in practice they wouldn't be as good at it because they simply don't have the same mindset as Seraphim does.

In other words, because everyone is different, you can't just assume that the child of a prodigy is going to be a prodigy themselves. Seraphim was, but Seraphim's siblings in spite of having the same theoretical capacity to be ones...aren't. They just lack the personality suited for the line of big-use magic that Seraphim and Sensation before had fallen into. And furthermore, because Seraphim filled the role, there was no longer pressure for the role to be filled.

In short, in the magic world, there is often pressure for the next generation of mages to inherit everything from their predecessors, such that nothing should be lost and talent would be nurtured, cultivated, and over time, magnified and refined to perfection (or as close as possible). Since Seraphim of Seraphim's own free will already did so, Seraphim's younger siblings were never bugged, never bothered, never forced, to do anything except what they wanted (aside from the requirements their abilities necessitate).

Speaking of mages, that actually brings me to the third idea I worked on, simultaneously to the above because the Sensation/Seraphim story setting takes some cues from this setting.

In this case, I am referring to the Fate/Stay Night setting. I know that it technically has a 'verse name, but I am not a fangirl of the series to the point where I actually know it, I know way too little about the setting having mostly experienced it through Fate Zero and a little bit of wiki reading here and there, be it the Fate/StayNight wiki or on TVTropes and largely a combination of both.

...Still.

That having been said.

In spite of my lack of knowledge (who knows, for all I know the historical figure I was thinking about is already used in one of the various settings and thus my entire idea would be worthless since it could never exist), I did loosely draft up a Hero who I thought would make a potentially interesting take on the Berserker class:

William Wallace.

I envisioned him as being massive. Ten feet tall, massive, and with the bulk to match. His only weapon would be the Wallace Sword (what else?), but he wouldn't need any other. (He'd wield it with one hand in spite of it being a two-handed sword because why not.) Some artistic liberties would be taken; the sword would be basically a claymore in size, in that it'd be a big freakin' huge longsword, broad yet of rather considerable length.

I also envisioned him as having two basic abilities:
Freedom's Call, a passive aura which basically is a blue flame surrounding his torso (which is bare because why not), gives a rather-distinctly-non-Berserker-sounding trait: it redirects any blow which would hit the torso or head to the extremities. Furthermore, wounds sustained while Freedom's Call are active would heal at double the normal rate.

...And Martyr's Freedom, wherein the Berserker side comes out. The blue flames instead cover the extremities and his sword, granting him three times the normal speed and five times the normal strength. The tradeoff is that not only does this remove Freedom's Call, but also that any wounds sustained in this state take four times as long to heal and cannot have their rate of healing accelerated by Freedom's Call.

In short, he can fight and fight and fight with it being incredibly difficult to deal any meaningful damage to him (though I imagine given the setting there would be attacks capable of bypassing Freedom's Call, which would be perfectly acceptable since it's not meant to be some absolute completely infallible defense), but he's got no remarkable abilities while in that state; when he chooses to fight at full-power, he is a much more fearsome opponent, but any damage dealt to him really leaves a mark.

Granted, I have minimal knowledge of the setting, so even if he's not an existing Hero...I'd have NO clue how well this would work in terms of being a viable Hero to summon. 

He wasn't the only one I started to work on, either.
I also thought it might be neat to have a Caster who uses two dice, with their attacks being luck-based: cast the die, and whatever results come up, specific spells are cast from it. Their strongest attacks would be matching dice, with the two strongest being snake eyes and box cars yet also having reasonably powerful spells cast from doubles in 2, 3, 4, and 5. The default attacks (easiest to cast, most frequently cast, essentially signature moves not hard to pull off) would be the results of rolls common, e.g. the various combinations resulting in a total of '7'.

I didn't really flesh out the possibility beyond that, though. Didn't think of what historical figure and/or legend would fit the above, didn't think about what the abilities would actually be, but I at least thought the possibility had potential as a Caster in that setting. (I guess it could also be a mage's special ability but that wasn't as appealing to me.)

The final thing I toyed around with was just me basically coming up with the idea for a game of mafia using some mechanics, though I didn't really flesh the idea out. I can share this on the blog though because were I to ever actually follow through on this idea and make it a reality, then everything I say now would be either public knowledge in the game proper or have been publicly known to have been scrapped from the game's design.

For a start, the first day's deadline would be 14 days. (Shorter than what I typically run, but a convenient number to use.) From the second day onward, it would be 10 days. Days, however, are divided into multiple parts.

-Dawn: Results from the night are posted and any pre-day, post-night actions (which I would need to make at least one of) are used. It would last 24 hours.

-Morning: The thread would be open as if a normal day, though some actions may exist that are exclusive to Morning. This period would last seven days on the first day, and five days all days thereafter.

-Noon: Which, frankly speaking, should really be called "Midday" (to match Midnight), especially since Midday is actually a word, but I digress. This is not a phase, proper, so much as a milestone; just like in real life (where noon only exists for one minute before it is no longer noon), it is marked, announced, and moved on from.

-Afternoon: The thread continues to be open like in a normal day. Any day actions not exclusive to Morning would be able to be used during this time. This would be the remaining seven/five days.

-Twilight/Dusk: Actions modifying the result of the afternoon and following phases are submitted. Thread would be open during this time, with no flip posted. This period would last 24 hours.

-Evening: The lynch is posted, yet the topic would remain open to discussion. Some night actions unlock during this time and are possible to submit though there would be no Evening-specific night actions featured in the game. This period would last 48 hours.

-Night: The thread would be locked, closed from discussion. Night actions would be submitted, with the results at Dawn. This period would last an additional 48 hours.

-Midnight: The inverse of Noon, a milestone posted at the half-way mark of Night, announced and then moved on from. The game might feature actions only available past midnight, but this is something I cannot be sure of.

The game would also feature a modified lynch mechanic.

-The lynch would use plurality rules--the person with the most votes is lynched, at the deadline for the end of the day (as in, the end of the afternoon).

-Achieving majority in numbers would not achieve a lynch. As in, with 13 players, 7 would not lock the lynch in on a player. (Though the player is by plurality probably screwed.)

-However, if a lynch wagon has a supermajority (75% of players on the first day, 66% of players on every day thereafter), then the day will instantly skip to the Twilight/Dusk phase.

-That being said, while the moment a supermajority is reached a lynch is locked in for the day (and thus all votes thereafter would not count), if the day was still in Morning it will last the full duration of the Morning, just skipping Afternoon. As in, the thread will still be open for discussion, and any Morning actions can still be submitted along with any other day actions. 

I'm not quite sure if this is a good explanation.
But basically.
If no supermajority is reached, day ends when afternoon elapses.
If supermajority is locked in, then votes will no longer be counted; they are locked in and can no longer be changed.
If supermajority is reached in the afternoon, the game will instantly progress to the dusk phase, ending the day early (exactly like what reaching a majority lynch would do in most games featuring majority lynch rules).
If supermajority is reached in the morning, the thread will remain in morning, with actions being able to be submitted and the thread remaining open for the full seven/five days...
...But votes cannot be made anymore.

The idea behind the diversity in phases there would be to play around with the nature of roles in a game a bit, to have it such that they would work in some innovative and creative ways, modifying the experience of the game in a unique and hopefully-interesting way.

That having been said.
While I love the idea.

...It would be so.
so.
so.
so.
so.
so.
SO.

SO.

Ridiculously easy to screw it up. I'm also not entirely sure I have the ingenuity to actually craft a setup which has roles making adequate use of the mechanics, at least not my first time running the game. It wouldn't be the first time.

I've run a game which had an absolutely wonderful mechanic...but had such cliched roles as to make the mechanic nigh-meaningless. I've since drafted plans for at least one sequel game if not two (not to mention potentially designing a modified version of the mechanic into a semi-open game featuring a pick mechanic where all possible roles would be known from the onset, rather than a closed where none of the roles are known), and those games will if I ever run them make much better usage of the mechanic. (Although I obviously cannot describe how.)

And this mechanic feels like it would be much the same. I'd craft the roles for it, and over the course of the game, I'd see what players thought I would do, and with them making random comments giving me inspiration, and me going, "GOD why didn't I think about that?!? That would have been much better than what I actually did!".

So even if I didn't screw the mechanic up (which would be ridiculously easy to do because it is something which is pretty complicated and not hard to make mistakes on), I'd probably screw the setup up, in that I wouldn't make the setup live up to the idea. 

I guess I could run it in some future day some time in the distance, but I'm not too optimistic, which is why I'm blogging about it here. (Again, though, for emphasis: me posting it here does not mean I can no longer run it, because everything I said I explicitly want to be public knowledge from the onset to the point where if any of the things I stated changed I would state they had been changed.)

I suppose that's about it for now.
​I should probably get a nap in, I'm anticipating today being a very long one since I don't do anything tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They're not the only place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Soyeah. That about sums it up.

And a fair amount happened, but my mind is a bit jumbled and scrambled up (it's a bit late so maybe that's why), meaning I can't really talk about it coherently. Still, I'll try. For some random reason, we had fresh-brewed coffee tonight. I usually eat after my dad, but today I ate before him. This being the day after Thanksgiving, our meal was leftovers.

The film we watched was The Hitman's Bodyguard. You could tell that the actors had a lot of fun making it, because none of them were really taking things too seriously. In spite of this, they were actually acting. It was a pretty standard film otherwise, but I quite liked it.

​I feel like I should be saying more, but that's all I can think of. Guess that means I need to sleep soon.

Weeelll...nooot...exactly, as it turns out. Typical Sundays involve me making a pre-work initial blog, and then updating periodically throughout the day. Usually it starts with a little bit of real-life stuff, but quickly transitions into things I technically shouldn't think about during work but do anyway:

Philosophical things, religion, spirit, poetry, songs, stories, mafia games, art, and all sorts of similar "distracting" thoughts. I give you deep insight into my mind, be it my creative process, my emotions, my thoughts, my feelings, random facts about my family, or even random quirks about my body.

...Not so much today. At first, in spite of the significance of the date (more on that in a second), I thought I'd be without material today altogether. But it turns out I do in fact have something I can talk about today! (Aside from the obvious which I wasn't going to make a big deal of.)

Basically, today's my actual real birthday (which I suppose if I lacked material would be maybe worth a ramble, but right now isn't my focus though I will talk about it in a little bit), but this being a Sunday, I expected nothing in ways of actual acknowledgement of this outside of family (and maybe online friends).

Directly, of course, this has been true. No "Happy Birthday"s, no gifts, no presents, not even a Caught Ya card which are sometimes given for this purpose. (Don't be depressed, though. Once again, for emphasis: This is Sunday. I don't think I can quite convey what that means, but essentially, it means this is the norm. The default. The standard. What would happen to ANY employee with a Sunday birthday, is not exclusive to me, thing. Where I'd quite frankly be surprised if anything was done. That's just how it is, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.)

...Except...

...All the same. I ended up with gifts anyway. Aside from the pool not being busy today and me not having to enter the men's locker room (both big bonuses for the day), today I saw...
...My corrected order had come in!

Now, this is a complete and total coincidence, of course. I could tell it wasn't meant as a gift--after all, it was just them giving me what I had actually ordered, which they were going to do regardless. (I'm 100% positive I'm not special in this regard and they likely were doing the same for everyone whose orders were wrong.)

Plus I found it in the Aquatics Office area (AKA, my bosses' work station), so it is probable they intended for my supervisor to hand it to me the next time we both would be around. Meaning it was mere happenstance I stumbled upon it during my birthday. Yetstill, DANG does it look good! (And I imagine feel good as well but I can't check that for another five minutes as of me writing this sentence.)

Now, for those who have forgotten, are new readers, and/or are too lazy to check.
Basically.

The Y (where I work) was having their annual merchandise catalog, where you could order various swag as an employee in particular. I believe it's part of our annual fundraising though I'm not positive. Regardless, there were five items I wanted. I ordered all five, used three years of accumulated Caught Ya cards, and then paid the remaining $50 out of pocket (literally, the cash came out of my jacket because I apparently kept about $100 in literal-pocket-change inside of my coat pockets).

Now my family has seen only one of these. They believe it was given to me by the Y as part of my job. (Which I haven't corrected them on because from a certain point of view you could argue that is technically true; the stuff I got isn't things a non-employee could get even though there's swag which non-employees can.)

And if they figure out that I have more, they may eventually ask, but I've developed a half-truth story to tell them (I am after all a storyteller so while I may flub the details especially if they interrupt I will probably be able to entertain them by telling them).

Basically, my official story is that the Y was offering employees the chance to purchase gear, but offered discounts for turning in caught ya cards. I asked three questions (all of this is true thusfar) in succession: "Is there any expiration date on these Caught Ya Cards?" Nope!
"Is there a limit to how many Caught Ya Cards you can use?" Nope!
"Is there a minimum price you have to pay?" Nope!

So I turned in three and a half years' worth of Caught Ya cards (still all true) in order to get some free gear (which is still true because when you look at the prices at least two if not three items would be covered by that amount of Caught Ya cards meaning I got them for free--I just chose to pay extra in order to have other stuff in addition to the free stuff, where the story ceases to be all true and becomes only a half-truth).

And the full list of items once more:
-Female Lifeguard Shorts. Officially, I got them because they were cheap and yet look official, they allow me to use my swim suit as a spare rather than a necessity, and they're more comfortable. (All true, especially the last I've found.) Unofficially, it's also because they are feminine and bring out more of my womanhood as it were.

-Female V-Neck Shirt. Officially, I got them because of wanting something to wear as an emergency spare to my lifeguard T-shirt. If necessary, under the hoodie. Unofficially, I got them because heck yeah I want them. <3

-Lifeguard Hoodie. This one's all official with nothing unofficial, except maybe it being a potential reference image for Red Hood Rider down the line. Basically if the pool air gets cold again (it shouldn't but it could), I'd wear it as my default guarding shirt: still being in an appropriate uniform but being dressed appropriately for the climate. It also makes a nice emergency shirt to wear (and is thus, a spare) if, say, I need to get into the water for whatever reason. This is one of the items which was gotten wrong and yet is now fixed. <3

-The red staff jacket. The one my family knows I have. Mostly official here, too. I wanted something to wear over my guarding outfit when I'm not on-duty, yet which wasn't as heavy as my jacket, and which if things got really cold could even be worn underneath my jacket to keep me warm. It's pragmatic on every level. Unofficially, it also makes a stellar reference for Red Hood Rider because a lot of the patterning is almost exactly as I envisioned for Ruby's hoodie.

-And finally, the gray staff t-shirt. This one's also pragmatic in that I want to wear it as a workout jacket rather than getting my lifeguard t-shirt all sweaty when I work out. It's also something I want to wear underneath my tae kwon do uniform. I'm technically not staff when there (I'm an unofficial volunteer), but the idea is essentially that I'd feel more authoritative and have a greater command when wearing it. Which I now actually have!

So it's nice to have that as an unofficial birthday present.

Now as for my birthday plans...well. I'm not sure if my family is planning to eat out or eat at home. It's not going to be a family night I'm pretty sure (we had it on Friday for good reason, after all), but this does make a difference all the same. If we eat at home, then I'm basically home all day once I get home from work, and probably have free time but not assuredly so.

If we eat out, then it's to Denny's, for as long as it takes for them to receive our order and us to actually eat it. And then when I get home from that, I would definitely have free time, just less so than the equivalent amount of free time from eating at home. (Because of the wait time, drive time, size of meal eat time, etc.)

Basically, high but not guaranteed chance of an extra couple of hours or so with no real break in my online availability, versus guaranteed chance of no real break in my online availability but at the cost of an initial break in availability (the gap between coming home and leaving) plus the time spent eating (two hours or so).

Denny's also has the con of triggering my misophonia via being right next to my dad, but. While I get less time with those I'd really want to spend time with. And there's the misophonia. I kinda sorta still want the Denny's anyway? My mind is like, "I want to eat out please let us eat out I want to eat out I hope we're eating out and not staying at home", which isn't something I can rationally explain since rationally I should be saying the opposite yet my mind is basically set on it.

Oh well. It might not even be relevant. While it's my birthday, it's largely dependent on my family. What they assume, what they choose, what they want, what they think. If they put the decision in my hands then I would have to choose but my plan is to ask them what the dinner plan is and then schedule around what they tell me.

Regardless of what our dinner plans are, though.
I can tell you without a doubt what my plans following dinner will be.
Spending time with my two lovely girlfriends. <3

It might be difficult to schedule that, we might not get time together at the same time (i.e. it might end up being one girlfriend then another if schedules don't work out), any number of things could crop up (I haven't really discussed plans with them if you couldn't already tell in that they know it's my birthday and I did vaguely suggest we should be together during my birthday but I suck at having solidified things beyond that given that I didn't so. HEY MY GIRLFRIENDS LET'S HANG OUT!), but dangit.
It's my birthday.

​And there could be no greater gift than spending time with the ones I love. <3

Let me list them so you can have a good idea of what exactly I mean by that.

So this morning is a Monday--I tend to typically take showers on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. (Tuesdays are pointless since Tae Kwon Do that night, plus school in morning. Similarly, school on Thursdays. Work is on Sundays. Sometimes I shower on Saturday, but only if not on Friday too.)

In spite of me waking up with an overabundance of time to do exactly that, first and foremost, my thought when I woke up?
"I want to interact with people."
So the first thing I did, not shower, not even eat breakfast.
Was interact, was talk, to people. (And read a little webcomics as part of that, but mostly talk to people.)

It was only a brief interaction, butstill. The point is, instead of doing the stuff I was supposed to do, I wanted to talk to people, and did. By the time I was done, I didn't feel like taking a shower. I wanted to continue talking to people. I did eat (albeit only the bare minimum because my dad burnt my breakfast again--my sister offered to make me scrambled eggs, but I declined since I didn't want to impose and also to let the burnt eggs go completely to waste so I ate what I could), and then went straight back to the people.

I could have done schoolwork. Nope, people more important. Talking to them, interacting with them, was more important to me. I could have done mafia game stuff which I should be doing especially since I'm struggling to balance mafia life with school life. Nope, people were more important. (Albeit, some of them being FROM my mafia game life. Very very very closely in fact. To the point where at least 80% of my blog readers come from there I'd wager.)

I did have a minor distraction self-inflicted of reading TVTropes on Tom and Gerry (mostly to affirm that my memory of the show, of them being frenemies, vitriolic as their friendship may be, was not me misremembering and as it turns out if anything I was under-remembering just how strong that dynamic was), which was a nice trip down childhood lane (I was raised on cartoon shows), but that wasn't a huge distraction; I avoided reading anything except for the things I was looking for, essentially. (Well for the most part.)

So mostly. Just people. Talking to them. Lots and lots of talking to them, entering discussions with them about all sorts of things, good long conversations. (Also even if not a full wall, conveying my love. <3) I mean, not terrible ways to spend time, but it is me spending time on those things rather than spending time on things which are actually productive.

(Side note but I should mention how much right now I hate my classmates in college. Everett is notoriously heavy on smokers and it seems like literally everyone in my degree does except for me; I cannot stand the smell of cigarette smoke. It assaults me in not just smell, but also taste. This doesn't even have to be from them smoking; it can be from clothing. In my mouth. In my throat. In my nose. And it's the most repugnant odor I can be exposed to. I have hyper-sensitive senses, smell among them. I have nothing against people choosing to smoke. But I don't want to deal with their stench after they've done so. I'd rather smell cow manure, which is surprisingly pleasant. Or gasoline, also pleasant. Or even burning hair, not so pleasant. It's just a whole 'nother level of ick I don't want to have this and is basically the smelling/taste equivalent to my misophonia. Speaking of which my class contains a disproportionately high number of people who trigger said misophonia. They assault my nose. They assault my tongue. They assault my throat. They assault my ears. The only two senses they don't assault are touch and sight, and those are pretty dang hard to assault. But I digress. Back to the topic at hand...)

Continuing my impressive feats today, I wanted to leave my other non-shower hygiene until close to when I left: brushing my teeth, my hair, and shaving. This, largely for aesthetics and also the pragmatic reason that doing my hair doesn't keep it nice for very long so the closer to leaving, the better. (Similarly so for shaving; hair grows too fast for my comfort.)

...Thaaaaat.

...Ended quite predictably.
As in, half-way already to the college I felt my face itching, touched it, and only then realized: "Whoops".
Yep.
I forgot.

And ended up doing nothing about it.
So I look (and probably smell) like a mess.
I've got a face which is all kinds of irritated (not only for the hair but also for the lack of shower), and I'm trying not to think about it as to not trigger dysphoria. (Which...is a little hard since I'm self-conscious right now. I just...I know my image right now. I know how I look. And...I hate it. When I put effort into my appearance, I don't hate how I look because I look androgynous enough and I know with work I could make it more feminine. Right now I'm just...unambiguously not and that's all kinds of...blehg.)

In a shocking turn of events, once at the college, what do I do?
The work I promised I'd be doing?

...Well.
I'm here typing out this blog entry; that should give you an idea of just how much work I'm getting done!
This well and truly is an impressive statement, innit? Of just how spectacular I am at adulting. At managing my life, doing the things I'm supposed to be doing.

...Today is gonna suck.
It already does to be honest but it's gonna suck so much more when class starts and all that work which was supposed to be done isn't. (I did mafia over the weekend instead which I don't regret and yet at the same time do regret and yet...yeah.)

I am so utterly screwed.