...But I'm pretty darn surprisingly close.
I'm taking the day off of mafia stuff (as I normally do on Saturdays), and health stuff continues to not be the best of things, but I am mostly on top of my life right now, because I just felt inspired today. It sounds weird to say, but it honestly feels like a mixture of simultaneous mania and depression coexisting for different areas.

Maybe a touch of autism/adhd in there as well.

Basically.

I started the day working on the civ 3 mod--the most worthless of the worthless thing to do. I made very very good progress there, but I got burned out from working on it so much so I didn't want to work on it more today.

But the usual timekillers aside from it I felt apathetic about. I don't feel like playing League tonight, or TFT tonight, or Epic Battle Fantasy 5, or offline Chrono Trigger, or Stardew Valley, or offline minecraft work. That leaves precious little on the list of timekillers.

So what came to mind that was left?

Two things. Neither a waste. Both which I should be trying to do more of anyway. Not mutually exclusive, either, as one is better later at night when my family is asleep and the other can be done before then.

I basically...came up with streaming (probably building minecraft), or...working on Phyrra and Cyrus. I was thinking of things to do, and the folder with my Phyrra and Cyrus stuff just...caught my eye. I kept staring at it, going back to it, and the inspiration just...struck me. Because it called out to me.

I don't even know what I am going to do there, yet. I think it'll be script-work though because it all starts somewhere and there is a very good place to begin.

​Wish me luck.

Amazing what one day of, so to speak (and I do ask for a pardon on the language, I don't usually cuss especially on here but it's an expression), "getting your shit together", can do to make your life less of a hot mess.

Now, granted.

I had very strong incentive to do so.

I needed to catch up on my emails in order to get into my online health stuff, which I needed to access in order to schedule my endocrinology appointment, which is how I start a physical transition.

And I did so (well, mostly; still have some work-related emails from my mom I should read, whoops, forgot about them), meaning that I will be starting my physical transition a little less than a month from now if all things go well.

I still have a long ways to go before I get everything more or less on top of. There's still a bunch of things that I need to accomplish and it's a long list--but I have started it and I am making very good progress on it. I am actually close to being where I need to be, and that's better than I've been in literally months.

I am slowly retaking control of my life, and that is a goal I have had all year long.

It's slow progress. Two steps forward, one step back. The step back each time being rather costly, not insignificant, not something trivial, but the two steps forward also being the same, being important steps towards the future I want to build for me.

I have to keep moving forward.

Tho I should also note.

In spite of the need to look forward, I am doing work towards looking to the past--via slowly updating the blog's archives with tags. I had to revisit the first month of my blog because I realized I had use for a 'food' tag and this may continue to happen if, when I am doing tagging work in the archives, I realize "okay this is a tag that I actually need" and new tags mean that even after I get to blogs that have tags, I need to add any new tags that weren't there that would've been there had I had the tag earlier.

Examples of this include my The Descended tag (the tag used for the webcomic I have the most work on aside from Red Hood Rider) and the Pets tag (why tf did I not already HAVE that tag and only think of it a few days ago???), but also this is the whole reason I want to embark on this endeavor, as it also covers the birth of Phyrra and Cyrus.

Phyrra and Cyrus were not tagged with that tag, because at the time I didn't know how much of the blog would have them in it--it was only later, after much much work was done, that I added the tag and did not apply it retroactively. I want to have, via the Phyrra and Cyrus tag, an easy to access list of every blog entry I made there.

This, while technically a look at the past, is still a look towards the future.
Because if I have an ease of access for all the Phyrra and Cyrus content, that makes it easier for me to work on that project in the future.

Which I still have an ambition of doing.

I've got other things right now that are higher priority and I don't know how I will actually pull off Phyrra and Cyrus. But I want to make them real.

I don't think anyone really thinks I will make them real. For a start, thinking I will make the colliniverse real requires you to know I have thought up the colliniverse (the name of the universe for Phyrra and Cyrus since INFINIverse and variants thereof are sadly already taken) in the first place, which only a select few do.

And even if you did know, do you believe that someone with no experience, no credentials, and no money, with zero experience or real ability to edit or animate can, with their amateurish scriptwriting (which is a form of writing they have zero real experience with), manage to make an entire Animated Series from scratch?

You'd have to be delusional to think it could be done.

And realistically speaking, most of the time I am not delusional. Meaning most of the time, I don't believe I can actually do it. After all, I've got nothing. No connections in the industry. No education in any aspect of the industry. No manager to help me manage things. No clue how to make it happen. No idea how to get the funds necessary, no idea how to present a project that can be funded and to get the funds without having gotten the project done, leading to a loop of "can't fund the project without showing it to the world, can't show the project without funding".

How could I believe in me to be able to do that? I can't, most of the time. And if I can't, why should someone else? Why should someone else believe in me when I don't believe in myself?

But I still want to try. You fail every shot you don't take, so a shot at success is better than no shot at success from having not tried at all.

And right now I am, perhaps due to the euphoria of the chance to start transitioning: feeling rather delusional. So I think I can do it. I can have it all: transition, and make my work a reality for everyone to see. Are the chances of this high? No, but they're not nonexistent, either.

It can be done, smartly, methodically.

I don't have a plan yet because, again: I have some more important, bigger things on my mind at the moment, understandably so.

But sooner rather than later, when I have a better hold on my life and future, I want to steer that future towards making a difference, in a big way rather than a small way. Being parts of communities and spreading positivity within them is nothing to be laughed at; it's nothing to brush off, it's something significant, but it is in the grand scheme of things still smallscale.

And there's nothing wrong with making a difference on the smallscale, is better than not making a difference at all and is better than making things worse.

But I still have the ambition to make things better in a big way.

It all starts with taking control of my life.

And that starts with me transitioning.

Which I am getting closer to, now that I've booked that endocrinologist appointment.

I would say "in my defense, I have been busy" doing a lot of things, which is true!
...But mostly the lack of blogs has been pure sheer nasty depression sticking its ugly face out and taking control of my life.

I am however, trying to fight back. It's not an overnight process where I will suddenly magically have a fix for everything, but I'm working on it, trying to get more and more on top of it. I've actually done a ton of stuff, gathering makeup supplies, shopping, etc. But I've got a lot more work to do.

I started with a list of activities, divided up into one-time things, daily/weekly things, and additional/optional things on top of those, and then added in a need to remember login information for various different important things.

So far, this is what I've got;


ONE-TIME THINGS:
-Catch up on emails
-Do tax stuff
-Regain access to any sites I need to (at least one but see below)
-Restart unemployment (I messed up by not doing it so need to restart it)
-Seek psychologist (so that I can begin transition)
-Pursue namechange
-Finish makeup collection

DAILY/WEEKLY THINGS:
-Shave (daily for face)
-Comb hair (do with shave)
-Makeup (daily once I've got the supplies)
-Shower 3-4x / week + change (Monday, Wednesday, Friday?)
-Dental Hygiene (2x/day)
-Unemployment once restarted (weekly?)
-Shave (chest Wed, legs Fri, arms Mon)
-Pills once gotten (at prescribed time/method/etc.)
-Checking email (daily+)

ADDITIONAL DAILY THINGS:
-Once on pills, exercise:
*Daily: jackknives/crunches alternating
(start 10, increase by 5/week up to 100)
*Knuckle Pushups Monday / Wednesday / Friday
(start 5, increase by 1/week up to 100)
(use corset or similar for back form)
*Squats Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday
(start 10, increase by 2/week up to 100)
*Walk/Jog/Run;
Walk 1 mile/day, increase by 1 mile/week;
After up to 5, add jog for 1 mile on top of walk (6 total);
After 5 jog + 5 walk, add 1 mile run;
Max out at 15 miles / day

BONUS ADDITIONAL/OPTIONAL ACTIVITIES IN A DAY (Possible activities):
-League of Legends
-Teamfight Tactics
-TFT Hyper-roll
-Chrono Trigger
-Stardew Valley
-Epic Battle Fantasy 5
-Minecraft
-Art
*Finish self-portrait
*Finish Elemental Ruby
-Phyrra and Cyrus (scriptwork, songwriting)
-Job Search

-Storywriting (the below are stories I have a recent desire to work on)
*Coat
*The Bandit Seven (supervillain/"hero")
*Vetra (superhero/villain)
*The supervillain trio story
*Threadripper and Kinesis (supervillain) story
*Requiem (supervillain)
*Projection (superhero + supervillain) story
*Heroes 4 Hire (superhero)



ACCOUNTS I NEED ACCESS TO:
(I probably should not list these publicly even on a blog nobody reads so, uh...there's a bunch here just not to be listed)

So that's what I've done.

It's not enough, but it's at least a good start.

...But as it is quite late and I am doing this after a night where I streamed (there's usually a good reason I don't blog on days that I stream--I get so tired when streaming that I usually go straight to bed after streaming), my thoughts are not as coherent as is ideal.

I feel like I should mention some of my mystical beliefs.

I've always been a believer in more of the spiritual side of stuff. I have my own beliefs, so I don't blindly believe in all of the (as the streamer I watch defines it) "woo woo" stuff, but a fair amount of the witchy things that I watch from this streamer I put a great deal of stock behind, including her tarot readings, whenever they resonate with me.

The tarot readings basically told me that I needed to apply for the jobs, which I did yesterday.

But they also gave me hints that streaming Chrono Trigger tonight was a good idea, and the universe aligned to make it so; there was nobody online that I wanted to watch, no professional game of League of Legends I considered a must-watch, I had done everything I needed to do in the day, so it all lined up and felt good to do.

Streaming is fun to me, even if the possibility of monetizing streams is a one in a million probably-impossible dream...but there's multiple reasons that I feel like doing it even if it isn't a viable career.

The first is that streaming might allow me to connect in other areas. Streaming isn't exclusive to games. It also covers art, even writing! And, yes, even talking about things! It allows me to talk about passions tonight, for instance, tonight I touched upon my first-ever story that I began writing! Even if streaming isn't the key to my future, it could serve as a tool to help me key in to my future.

A stream could end up helping me focus on a project, a story, help talk about it, get it more tangible. A stream could connect me to people. A stream could help me find people to make projects of mine I am passionate about come to reality.

The second is that streaming helps me relate to streamers I watch. Watching streamers eats up a significant portion of my life. Every waking minute, I have at least one stream, often two (sometimes even three!), in the background. And in those communities, most of the people I am close to, some who could maybe be worth calling 'friends' (not sure if they call me friends and I'm not sure if I am objectively close enough to them to be worthy of that title but I would call them friends), are also streamers.

By streaming myself, I get to better understand their own experiences with streaming. So that when they talk about it, I know what they mean from experience myself, so that I can relate to them better. It allows me to connect with them more, talk with them more, interact with them more, from a perspective that is more knowledgeable than that of someone who hasn't streamed.

​The third is that streaming is actually amazing practice at just talking. I am not the most competent at talking, but I am getting better and better at it...via streaming. Streaming is actually teaching me how to talk, a skill I had lost from a year of quarantine where talking was kept to a minimum. Streaming to help me prepare for the outside world would be reason enough to stream, but there's more!

The fourth is that streaming allows me to practice other good practices, too. Streaming is giving me practice at managing social media. Streaming is giving me practice at social networking. Streaming is giving me practice at basically...well, being able to manage my life and aspects of it. These skills should, if I keep practicing them (and I do so every time I stream!) translate to any future endeavors of mine.

If I ever write something.

Whenever I make art.

The practices I am practicing on streaming, translate to those things.

It could even be a key for me creating a passion project like Phyrra and Cyrus! After all...if I am actively networking and keeping folks updated, the skills I am practicing now could translate into managing updates on a passion project and keeping it going, showing it off, etc.

But fifth and finally?

Streaming's just fun to do. Even if nobody shows up, even if I am talking to the air. I wouldn't do something I didn't genuinely enjoy. I think that I could actually be good at streaming, so if I could make money from it eventually, that would be cool! But, inherently, that would just be a bonus. It would be an extra. Even if I wasn't good at streaming, even if I never make money from streaming, even if streaming never helped me out?

It wouldn't need to.

Because streaming is just fun for me. And do I really need any other reason than that to stream? It's fun. It's relaxing. It's something I genuinely enjoy. After all, I am playing games in my spare time anyway; when I've the ability to, why not stream it as well? I wouldn't stop playing Chrono Trigger if I wasn't streaming, after all, but if I am playing it I may as well stream some of it.

This has actually gotten me to talk to someone at least once! I think twice, actually. Me being me, I didn't do nearly as much talking as is ideal so the folks I talked to probably lost interest in me, but hey, it was still nice to talk to them about a game I am passionate about, and that is something that I can't do while playing the game and not streaming.

I can talk about a game I am passionate about when not playing it. Say on a forum, on a discord, in a twitch chat (not that twitch chat talks have any permanence), you get the idea. I can play a game I am passionate about when not talking about it. But the only way to do both at the same time is to stream it. (Or record it, but same basic principle.)

And talking about games I am passionate about while playing them is fun. I enjoy myself a lot.

​I think I had more non-streaming stuff to talk about but I can't remember. This should suffice for a blog tonight tho.

I may not have played League today, but I did just about everything else! Including some minecraft time, but notably. I actually did Phyrra and Cyrus work. I only finished 2/8 of the songs I need to (the opener/closer of season 1), but that's still huge! Writing two songs in one day is a huuuuuuge accomplishment. Smaller than ideal since one was partially written and there's a BOATLOAD of stuff I need to get done for Phyrra and Cyrus, but this was something that did need to be done.

Sooooo.

​Success!

That depends on what I manage to do tonight. So tomorrow, I may move it back one day, two days, or no days, depending both on tomorrow and today. Basically: I might not be doing Phyrra and Cyrus tonight (tho it's not off the table altogether), but I did have an idea which I want to investigate. (Basically, I was thinking of making a tiktok and releasing daily videos with a particular gimmick.)

​But today, in a blog that will last until at some point the site inevitably removes the content, fails, or something of that sort. As in, a blog that will presumably last a fair amount of time rather than remain invisible. A public blog that may not last forever because no website does and websites can pull stunts like deleting content on them. (And weebly isn't a site I have much trust in.)

I wanted to, in a broader platform, put on here what amounts to a slight copy-paste of blog-worthy material I've been placing elsewhere. (Heck, it was those answers which actually got me back to blogging here.)

Someone asked me what I think is my most useful talent/skill. I told them that it's my bottomless barrel of creativity and ideas.

I literally come up with a bunch of ideas every day. Some are for things to do in games. E.g. builds in League, ideas for things to do in minecraft, comps to test out in tft, customizing modded versions of Civ 3 in the Civ 3 editor.

Some are for things in real life, which I would do if I had the resources to do.

Most are for various different forms of entertainment, though:
Video games that I come up with that I'd love to create, if not for lacking the skills.
Webcomics that I come up with that I'd love to create, tho sadly most are too ambitious given my level of skill.
Stories, usually novels (but occasionally shorter ones), that I (mostly--some are rather ambitious) have the capacity to create, if I focused on them and dedicated myself to making them.
Songs that I lack the skills to create.
Music that I mentally compose but have no way of bringing to reality.
Animated stories that I would love to create but which with what little research I have done would cost in the range of one million dollars to actually fund (due to animators being expensive and voice actors being expensive--keep in mind, one million dollars is the amount I estimated with animators/voice actors working at just below market rate, and that it's closer to 1.5 million if they charge market rate or higher).
(Heck, I've also come up with ideas for becoming a streamer, doing tiktok videos, maybe dabbling in youtube creation!)

I can pitch to people my ideas and they will always go, "That sounds so COOL!", pointing out how awesome, amazing, and unique the idea is, how incredible it sounds, how they wish it was made (so do I! My greatest regret is that all of the beautiful things inside my mind that will never be created because in spite of how rich their worlds/characters/etc. are I cannot make them all), and how they wish me luck in my creative endeavors.

But then I can't actually make them.

Yet they appear on a daily basis.

Literally almost every day, I am creating a new idea.

But even if I could commit to an idea, each idea would take, what? A year? Two years? At minimum to pull off. (Some ideas I've calculated could take ten years to pull off!) A year or two, for one idea; new ideas, every single day.

I make new ideas faster than I could ever create them.

And few, if any, of them are bad. Most are wonderful, vivid, unique, breathtaking, highly creative, and just...overall. Something that should be made, which had every right to be made.

They just...aren't.

And then there's always the chance.

That I go my entire life without bringing any of them to a fully, wholly, entirely realized life. Where they are, in completed form, distributed across the world for all to have access to. There's a chance literally nothing I ever dream up ends up being made. After all. I've been actively trying since I was 13 (I've been making things my whole life, but 13 was the first time I had the idea of marketing these ideas to others outside of my brain), and that was 14 years ago--

In 14 years of trying, I've yet to succeed. In 14 years of trying, I've not once managed to pull it off. I've always fallen short, I've always failed, eventually, at some point.

That doesn't mean succeeding on my own is impossible, or that I've given up entirely. I haven't. I just need to be realistic in accepting that, yes, I've got a very high hill to climb.


Not gonna lie tho--
Something I really really wish I had was a sort of 'life manager', or at least, 'idea manager'. Where I could have someone who could keep me on-track, keep me on the road to success, remove the distractions from my life or at least strictly budget them, force me to work on things even when I don't want to, find ways to work with me to focus my creative energies, brainstorm my ideas with me, and with their push, get me to make them real.

But, I don't think that's something I can get. Not for free, anyway, and I certainly don't have the money to pay someone to do that. It's also something which I imagine would be more effective to be done in-person, both because I am liable to forget things online, procrastinate, etc., and it's harder to get things on-track online compared to in-person. I can definitely say there's a huge difference between my dear friend reminding me to do something and my mom or older sister (both of which I live with) reminding me to do something.

The former, I may do, but not always, and often with delay. The latter, I may do with delay but almost always WILL do, often immediately.

I know that if I had someone who could do that sort of thing for me, I would, guaranteed, succeed--but waiting for a person like that to show up and accepting defeat before then is something that will mean I never will succeed.

So I try to make do without, to try on my own. With a very very low success rate, but trying > not trying, waiting, and hoping that in the future some mystical force will come to my rescue/aid.

I was also asked what ideas I would make if I had the time/focus.

​The big one would be Phyrra and Cyrus, an anime-style 2D animated (ideally posted onto the web) series. Separated into four seasons, each approximately 12 episodes (tho I believe the last season would do better with 2-4 extra, for 50-52 total instead).

The basic premise; the world (the working universe title was INFINIverse/INFIverse, but I found out both of those names for a universe were taken so I settled on colliniverse, the origin of that being the collision between INFINITY and Nothingness) is a High Fantasy world. The protagonists, Phyrra (a swordswoman) and Cyrus (a tactician/strategist) Thaumason (Thaumason is pronounced almost identically to 'Thompson', just instead of a soft 'puh', it's a soft 'muh', and is about as common a surname in Lilim as Thompson is on earth), are twin (fairly mature-for-their-age) 11-year-old adventurers, with aspirations to become the greatest adventurers of all time--even in the world of Lilim (the name of the planet), this is an unusual oddity, since most adventurers start at least at 16, if not 18, with the average adventuring age being 16-36.

They didn't want to wait that long, but they realize their young age will be held against them. Their goal is to seek out the legendary artifact, the Book of Infinity (which, in actuality, is a remnant of INFINITY itself, but to explain that I'd need to give an explanation for what INFINITY was), which rumor states is able to grant the user(s) any power they imagine, including ability to magically age oneself.

In the first episode, they succeed--they find the book in the same chamber containing the four major elemental books (Book of Fire, Book of Water, Book of Air, Book of Earth), and they manage to actually activate the book of infinity...which triggers the curse/trap of the book. Designed to kill any individual who touched the book, when both of them grabbed the book at the same time, it instead switched their souls, placing Phyrra in Cyrus's body and Cyrus in Phyrra's body. However, it also gave them access to magic (magic, in this world, can be learned by anyone...but it takes approximately 30 years to master, and even 'spellbladers', who use specialized specific lesser magic oriented on one specific trait, are typically in their 20s), as well as the ability to access and master the four elemental books.

To escape, they activate the book of air, summoning its guardian, Gora the Rock Golem (all elemental books are protected by their opposite element), who helps teach them the spell necessary to leave. And from there, their adventure continues. The cast of the Thaukama (Thaumason + Nakama portmantu) expands to include Ace Samson, a teenaged adventurer skilled in tracking, ranged weaponry, and medicine (think the DND class of 'Ranger'); Cedrick (don't have his last name memorized, oof), their initial rival adventurer, a spellblader whose magic is specific to telekinetic control of platinum spheres; Kaze, the Wind Shade (guardian of the book of earth); Myra, the Siren/Mermaid/Sea Serpent (guardian of the book of fire); Bard Tune Song, a teenaged street rat (think an even more hypercompetent Aladdin) whose father was a powerful Demon that resembles a werewolf; Clara (also don't have her full name memorized, oof), an apprentice Paladin (Paladins being a specific spellblader school specializing in light magic); Hera, the Dragon Phoenix (guardian of the book of water); William Grant Clemency, an Adept (basically, can see the true nature of things) who is nobility in Lilim's New World (largely uncivilized new continent, think America circa 1700s); Lilian Rose Wolfe, a tailor; and Alena (also don't have her full name memorized, oof), a young Botanist/Alchemist.

Throughout their adventures, they fight monsters, villains, evil overlords, and make their name known, all while seeking a way to undo their switched souls...because as long as they are in each other's bodies...they won't age so much as a day, and are stuck eternally 11 until such a time as they figure out how to undo the curse permanently.



I can explain more, like the way the four worlds (afterlife, demon realm, spirit realm, mortal realm) work, the way spirits work, the way demons work, various magitek items involved in the setting (they have stuff which basically is on the level of a smartphone), etc. but I think the idea is clear enough.

I originally thought that there would be much much heavier themes involved regarding the body swap, that it'd touch more heavily on issues like effectively being trans--but over time, I realized that in spite of the body swap, it's actually only a minor thing. Something that, yes, comes up, and yes, is essential to the plot, but which is only a minor thing. It's a story of adventurers first, a coming of age story second, and has the issues of the body swap only third.

I have names for almost every episode; I have mentally worked out almost every episode; I basically know what happens, when, down to the episode, with entire plot arcs mapped out.


But, 1: I have no experience writing for an animated project, I have no clue what I'm doing, and,
2: Animation is ludicrously expensive. Initial google search I did right now says one second of animation is $150 at the cheapest--times that by 60 for one minute, times that by ~25 for the length of the episode, times that by 48-52, and you get: $225,000 * 48-52. (I did a google search two years ago and I think that one said $30/second, which is cheaper, but still hugely expensive.)
Just for the animation.
And then you've gotta hire voice actors.
Not to mention, composers to compose the music for the series.
Not to mention, video editors for sound effects.

It might be possible to get a kickstarter going for the project. But to get a kickstarter, I need to be in a position better than what I am in now. Plan is to write the initial script for all the episodes, try and map it out loosely scene by scene, roughly estimate the amount of time it takes, finish the lyrics for the openers/closers of each season, maybe make some loose storyboards of panels screencapping loose ideas of what I want to make, and hope the fuck that by the time I get all of this done, it's gotten me enough competency to know what I am doing to the point where I am able to justify a kickstarter to fundraise it.



All of this is ludicrously ambitious, I know, but Phyrra and Cyrus is the project I have most wanted to complete for over two years now.


If I give up on an ambitious project that I am very much out of my depth for? If I decide that I need better connections before jumping off the deep end, if I decide that I need to be established in an industry already before branching out?

Well, the main area I'd do that is in writing. Right now, mostly superhero stories. Well, one's a superhero story, but most of them are supervillain stories; I've thought up at least four different ones. Most have some inspiration from Worm, but each is distinctly their own universe, with their own rules, their own premise, their own characters, etc. Writing them is comparatively easy, and they're largely fleshed out enough where I could make any of them reality; I just haven't done them yet.

When it comes to talents I would like to have but do not possess, the obvious answer would be the ability to animate things myself. (That, or the ability to do everything necessary in editing videos. Either skill would save me a ton.)

But in skills not applicable to my ambitions...life skills. Washing/drying laundry (my mom showed me how to do it once or twice, did not stick as a skill, need to learn the ins and outs of it), washing dishes or at least how to properly handle a dishwasher (how to organize it, what to put where, what I need to do to run it, and when run, what to put where), cooking food, and also: doing makeup.

Laundry and dishes I think I can maybe figure out how to fumble through on my own, cooking is something that I haven't really done but which I may have the ability to fumble through on my own, so of these I'd say the skill I'd most want due to it being the one I least think I can fumble through on my own, would be learning how to apply makeup to myself.

I've seen makeup be applied to people before, and even have them talk through the process as they were having it applied. But in order to get good at applying makeup, I'd need to have all the supplies in front of me, and be able to freeze-frame, frame by frame, analyze with clearly visible what's-what things, step by step, work through it, and figure out what makeup is right for me.

Tho that said.

There's one skill that's both project-related, AND, real-life related: voice manipulation, as a skill/talent. Changing your voice takes lots and lots of practice and is something I lack right now, so I REALLY loathe my voice right now. And if I put in the work to have a more feminine voice, then in the process, I might pick up the skills to be able to voice some characters, or if not, at least give a better model for what I envision their voices to be. Or if not, at least hopefully allow me to sing better. Basically, lots of stuff with my voice would be useful for projects, but it's something that also would help for transitioning, too.

(Basically, overall: for a project? Animation. For real life? Makeup. For a combination of both: voice.)

​I was also asked what in 2020 I'm thankful for. In that, I instantly found my answer: ​increased presence on twitch and one community in particular there where I joined their discord and even am involved on their minecraft server.

I realize I don't have the setup for streaming, in spite of what I would want, and I realize that being involved in those communities isn't letting me spend time creating things on my own that have a tangible permanence to them (by which I mean, being involved can make me contribute to jokes, uplift spirits, etc., and my contributions there aren't meaningless since the community wouldn't be quite as good without them, but because I am one of dozens upon dozens there, while every drop I add into the pond matters, none of my additions there are something people will remember as being from me years from now; they helped, they were important, they meant something, but while you might remember the general vibe I contributed, you wouldn't remember my specific contribution to the vibe, because it's not my community, it's a community I am a part of).

Which is to say: doing stuff there isn't, for instance: making a game, writing a story, making art, making an animation. So spending time there isn't helping me succeed in any of my life's ambitions/dreams.

But I am, explicitly, okay with this, because I value that community in my life that much. They're worth it. I've asked myself if I would rather succeed in my goals or spend more time in the communities I love and remain a nobody, a person who hasn't succeeded at anything with tangible permanence to it, whose only successes are contributions to communities I am a part of but explicitly not the head of. I've asked if I'd rather strike out and succeed on my own while giving up on the communities I'm a member of, or if I'd rather remain intimately a part of those communities at the cost of increasing my odds of never succeeding in my grander goals.

The two are not actually mutually exclusive, of course. Spending less time in a community doesn't mean a total severing of ties with them; being intimately a part of a community does not mean I am guaranteed to fail at my grander ambitions.

But if it ever did come push to shove a choice between the two. I think I'd take the community I feel at home at, over the shot at success.
Ideally, I get the best of both worlds, obviously. I'm intimately involved in the community, but still trying to strike out on my own. But I value the community I'm spending time in more than I value a shot at success.

I want to succeed, but if I didn't succeed and spent a life in mediocrity, obscurity, in nothingness, but remained a part of communities I'd cherish, I would be content with that. Not happy, because I want to succeed. But content. I even developed a theory that was, more or less: almost every human has dreams and ambitions of doing great things in their lives, but most give up on these dreams and ambitions and fade into obscurity without being memorable on the grander scale of things; my theory is more or less that the conclusion I reached was the conclusion they reached, too; that it's alright, that it's okay, to not become famous, to not have tangible permanence in a legacy lasting after you are gone, if you are happy with the community you've built in life. The two are not mutually exclusive, but if forced to choose between one or the other, community > fame 9 times out of 10.

It's important to not accept defeat, to not give up, but it's also important to see how strong you value things. I value the community I've become a part of more than I value success in tangible permanence. And I know getting both isn't impossible. (Heck, basically all of the mods in that community have done exactly what I aim to do. They're becoming successful writers, artists, etc., and are successful streamers, who're building communities of their own! Yet they're still a part of the community. But their own communities, while overlapping with the community I know them from, are explicitly THEIRS, not just a carbon copy clone of the original community. I want to build a community of my own, that is truly mine, unique to me, and still be a part of that community. I know it's possible because I've literally almost a dozen examples from that community demonstrating their successes. It's just something I'm struggling with.)

I apologize for the haphazard lazy throwtogether of content I put elsewhere copy-pasted to here, but I figured it'd be good to get up on here, too.

Not that anyone reads my blogs, butstill. At least in theory, my blog is more accessible than the original location.

Well, in real life, anyway.

Four months without blogging should give you an idea of where my head has been; not great.

New, at the latest, coming out day: April 26th, 2022. That's a loose estimate, but an apt one, because I've worked on things a couple times or so, and this is what I loosely mathed it out to be, approximately.

​In addition to wanting to get back into blogging, I also want to clean up some other aspects of my life. Things will not get better unless I make them better.
Short list:
-Stay more on top of blogging
-Stay more on top of my emails (need to do this)
-Stay more on top of brushing my teeth (oof this is not going well)
-Actually do work on a project during times that I have felt 'bored' rather than wasting the time.

Now is one such time. I'm not feeling league/tft right now, I'm minecrafted out for the day, I am actually staying on top of mafia stuff (aside from tracking the queue forum), so now is the perfect time.

Well, admittedly.

I've lost two hours since I started that...

...But it was a really productive two hours, as I managed to sort almost all of my stuff on my desktop.

I'm still not sure what I will work on.

I'm thinking of attempting to write in a google doc the Phyrra and Cyrus loose script for the animation (which should be here in the notes written down what I did get done before), since I still remember my loose idea for every episode. I should also be able to find the notes reminding me of each episode's name.

It'll take a little bit of time to do, but hopefully I'll make progress.

Wish me luck on my endeavors!

​I definitely need it...

But at least I haven't dropped another day, been doing work every day.
The two main things I've been working on; trying to get details done on Phyrra, and also trying multiple times to get the aesthetic of Kaze down--I thought that Kaze would be literally the easiest character in the cast to draw. He's a shade. Living shadow that lashes out strikes of air, slicing, dicing, piercing, thrashing, ripping, pulling, twisting, throwing, just, air itself in the form of a shadow.

The aesthetic I drew from could be summed up as from two sources; Kazeshini from the filler arc of Bleach, combined with a Darkness Elemental from Dragonfable.
A male, but incredibly effeminate form--very thin, pretty short, but still recognizably masculine, and yet a being who is mostly formless. White eyes and an occasional slasher smile, but no nose, no ears, no form beyond shadows that flicker like black flames. Recognizable arms and legs, with a recognizable chest, but for this to be bathed in shadows that make it not look like human skin. Anthropomorphic enough to still appear to be arms, legs, a torso, a head, but with enough obscurity to not give clearly defined edges. Where you can't tell where 'skin' begins because there is none to speak of. Where the shadows bleeding off of Kaze don't give a center of mass, because there is no center of mass.

I've tried multiple times to nail the aesthetic, but every time came up with frustrating failures. So I ended up biting the bullet and actually googled for the reference images from the two main sources of inspiration for Kaze.

And there you have it. (Yes, I did have to refer to an image of kazeshini not from the show itself, because none of the images from the show gave me the references I was looking for.)

The Darkness Elemental on the left, from Dragonfable, was one of the main aesthetics I was going for with the look. See the face, the shoulders, the chest? and the look on the arms (albeit, the arms on the darkness elemental are much much too big when it gets to the firsts)? That somewhat-transparent, wreathed in black darkness that oozes the aura of a blaze?

Now just give it the more anthropomorphic shape of kazeshini on the right, and you've got Kaze. This image shows perfectly the proportions of what I want Kaze to be--the thin, but still masculine, chest, with the approximately right proportioned arms and head, with the slasher smile and the killer eyes. (Bonus; this image has hair which looks a bit like the black flame-like aesthetic I am aiming for, at the forehead.)

It should be so easy to draw. Pencils provide the perfect medium to do it--you can nail the aesthetic of a living shadow, of flame-like wind sheathed in darkness, just by using pencil mark after pencil mark after pencil mark.

But it's still so darn hard to nail.

Still, tho.

​I'm trying!

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!