I missed a day of blogging.

As much as I am trying to attempt to stay on top of things in my life, some things slip through.

I need to do followup doctor stuff for instance (they've slipped through) for instance even now, though today has been better than most for staying on top of things.

It's still got weaknesses, but it has also gotten a lot done, including a comic showing off my stupid sense of humor.

I didn't quite nail the execution behind this comic though. It was difficult to capture the whole concept.
My basic concept was: person comes up, reads the door.
Person knocks.
Person is told to read the sign.
Person tries to use various secret knocks.
Person leaves out of frustration.
Person returns, with the epiphany.
Person speaks 'Secret Knock', and is allowed to enter.
(Kinda sorta in the style of, "Speak Friend, and Enter" made famous by Lord of the Rings.)

Unfortunately, showing in a comic various different forms of possible secret knocks is rather difficult. After all, to display variants on knocks you kinda need sound, and all knocks written are written the same. I could maybe have attempted to show different variants on knocks, but space was also an issue in that I could only fit so much in a panel and also I could only make it be so long in a comic.

So unfortunately, I had to basically skip the "person tries to use various secret knocks" step and leave the comic's contents far more implied than explicit.

So I didn't get the comic quite as I liked it, but for a comic I made in MS paint in about an hour's worth of work while multitasking, that's still not too shabby. It could be better, obviously, and didn't get what I wanted, but I still think it works because when reading my own comic, I DO laugh at it.

If I laugh at my own comic, that means I have succeeded in the end. It was funny to ME.
And while I realize it's probably not funny to most people, I knew that from the getgo as the humor style is rathe niche and something fairly specific to me.

Still, tho, I'm ultimately satisfied with it and rather proud of what I did.

I'm slacking in other areas of my life I'm sure.

I can't stay on top of everything, after all.

But I AM trying to do as much as I can to stay on top as much of what I can.

So I'll start with a note about my blog; it would appear that my fears of messing up past entries are, sadly, not unjustified and that entries can in fact lose stuff from my updating them with tags. It has, as far as I know, only happened to one entry, and it was only a loss of bold in emphasis that already had italics, so the original entry was still preserved as far as I know, but it still means I need to be very very cautious.

I am not going to stop the effort to update the blog, but I AM going to let you know that it happened.

As for the scary part, this has been the scariest day since coming out, for much the same reason--family.

My brother read my coming out post on linkedin and came over here absolutely furious. I didn't hear everything he said, I was wearing headphones both to protect me from my father's eating and also to protect me from my family:
Silence was what I thought was the best course of action, with silence being safety. I didn't want to be perceived. I didn't want to be seen. I didn't want to stir the hornet's nest. I didn't want to make tempers flare up.

So I did my best to make myself as small as possible. Invisible as possible. Scarce as possible. I did my best to draw my aura inward and make it be small. (I don't know if any of my viewers for this blog believe in auras that we exude, but I always feel like I radiate an energy. I usually am overflowing with it, and I can expand it, which makes me more noticeable when I do, and I reversed that process, shrinking it to be as small as possible.)

I turned out my light (so that my brother wouldn't come over to do that himself), I avoided eye contact, I wrapped myself in a blanket, I tried my best to basically be as nonexistent, non-present, as possible. Tuning them out and hoping that my lack of listening intently would register in them not perceiving me, a la "if I can't see them, they can't see me" in a not quite literal but more metaphorical sense.

All in the name of making sure I wouldn't face something even worse.

Some of the things that my brother said I had answers to, but I couldn't say them at the time for the above reason: I was so scared that I was afraid engaging the enraged individual was the worst possible course of action, and giving him answers was precisely that.

He asked me if I forgot that we were connected on LinkedIn. As a matter of fact: no, I did not in fact forget. It was, as far as I was concerned, a win-win. If he never viewed my coming out post on LinkedIn, then nothing would come of it. And if he did​ view the coming out post I made there, he would have me explaining things far, far better than I did on the night I came out, because I am more able to speak online than I am in-person especially when scared, stressed, etc.

I was counting on him having the ability to read it, because I knew that if he read it, he would have a better idea of where I stand, why I did what I did, what I was aiming for, what I intend to do, have better information on my perspectives, etc.

He was furious that I called my father a bigot, but that is objectively true, as is my callout of my fathers homophobia and transphobia. These are not things that are inaccurate. After all, the definition of bigot is: "a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group."

My brother tonight literally showed precisely why that definition applies for the male members of my family. And the definition of homophobia/transphobia also is apt. "having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against gay people." and "having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against transsexual or transgender people." are precisely what has been displayed.

I could have said much much worse than I did and kept it mostly relative to the situation at hand. I could have said much much worse about my father and explained much much worse aspects of him in regards to others.

I did not, because I kept it mostly to only what was the relevant issue.

My brother wondered if I wanted to share what I said with the whole world--explicitly so, yes. I'm not an idiot. I know my family isn't going to spread the word to others that I have come out as a girl and that my name is Bree. I needed to take initiative in that regard and make sure nobody wouldn't know. I reached out to as many people as is humanly possible in as many ways as is humanly possible to ensure they had ways of knowing, because letting everyone know is the only way that it will get around.

​My brother basically called me a liar when I said that my father had, repeatedly, when I was a child threatened to throw me out if I "chose" (his words) to be gay. My father didn't remember telling me that, either. But I most definitely remember him telling that to me. Repeatedly. It stuck with me, burned into me, in ways that neither of them would know. I didn't misremember that. I didn't lie about that. I didn't misconstrue that. It happened, repeatedly, this threat.

My brother was also furious that what I said in such a public place could potentially jeopardize work potential for my father were that needed, or something to that effect. I admit that this is not something I have a good response to, as my response to it mostly boils down to: it wouldn't be a threat to him if he didn't actually hold those problematic viewpoints. If the entirety of the professional world refuses to hire (or fires) you because of things you have said/done and viewpoints you hold, there is probably a good reason for it.

So the way I see it: either there wouldn't be a consequence if the professional world saw it and didn't deem it unemployable (in which case no harm no foul) or if the professional world saw it and deemed it unemployable it could be fixed by just...reevaluating and reexamining your stances and wondering if holding that belief is truly worth losing a job.

Another thing I didn't get a good chance to say is that my viewpoint of my father has actually softened. He has been more bark than bite, not actually following through on threats. I'm concerned that my brother's outburst tonight might change that, with him taking action now that he is aware of what I said about him, but time will tell there:

If he takes actions, the words I said were justified and need no taking back.
If he doesn't take action, then I will admit the words I said were overly harsh. A verbal statement of a bigoted belief may be unpleasant but if left at nothing but being a verbal statement, it is MOSTLY harmless. (Not entirely harmless, but in the grand scheme of things, still mostly does little to no harm at least in comparison to having acted on those words.)

Until today, my father has entirely been the taking no action approach, just words with nothing beyond the words. If that continues, then my softened stance on him will continue to soften. I can amend what I've said on him before, to note that while there is still a lot of bad, there is a lot less bad than I thought, and a fair amount of good as well.

I can maybe forgive him, even, and more or less manage to overlook the flaws in favor of, maybe, eventually, with a great deal of time to mend emotional scars, find flawed-familial-love for him. If it remains true that his bark is worse than his bite, that he says words but won't act on any of them. 

I can apologize for a fair amount of what I have said. It may or may not still be true, depending on the nature of what I apologize for having said, but I feel like if there is genuinely not as much malice as I assumed, I owe at least that much for words spoken while under the assumption of malice being present.

That might not make much sense, people might think I am being overly forgiving for behavior that shouldn't be overly forgiven, but I promise you it's not, it makes sense in my head, I just don't have the words to quite explain the concept. It's basically:
If he's less bad than I thought, then he deserves acknowledgement for being less bad than I thought. Being less bad doesn't mean there's no bad but it still means the characterization of him being that bad is incorrect and would be worthy of remedy.

But this is only an if he is less bad than I thought.

With my father's vague statement of him changing his approach/mindset, I'm not sure what will happen. If he displays malice towards me which was absent before, I apparently was dead on the money in having been rather justified in my characterization. Him not having shown the malice before doesn't make the characterization wrong if after a little provocation of me expressing myself and being honest is enough to cause malice.

But if he doesn't change for the worse, if he remains the same, then I am fully ready, willing, and actually kinda desperate in wanting to change my characterization of him. If there is no malice to be had, then my assumption there would be malice was wrong, and I want to make that adjustment.

​Unfortunately, I don't know, yet. It's really up to him I suppose. We'll have to see, moving forward. What he does in the near future makes a difference so all I can do is wait on him to see what his attitude is.

Another thing my brother was upset about was that I have said things across multiple social media platforms, the scope and scale of which he doesn't know and callouts of familial matters there are things he feels I should not have shared.

​To be blunt though. It's about my life and I can share any aspect of my life with anyone in any medium I choose--including my interactions with family, my experiences with them, my expectations of them, what I am afraid of from them, what I have seen from them, etc. Anything they do or say in my presence is just as much owned by me as it is owned by them, because it was done or said in my presence.

If they have things they wish to do or say that they do not wish to leave the family, then they should either ask for it not to be shared and/or have less family involved in it. Basically if they don't want me to say I have heard them say bad things, then they should not say those bad things in my presence, is what I mean.

If they do say those bad things in my presence, then I have the right to share them in the manner I see fit. I do not share everything about my family to everyone. I only share what I feel I need to share, what is pertinent to share, what is relevant to share, what is necessary to share. I often leave out details deliberately so as to retain some modicum of privacy and decency and respect to my family.

But ultimately, my life is MY life, and interactions with my family are still part of MY life. They are also part of THEIR lives, sure, so not sharing every aspect of those interactions is fair enough. But when the interaction is important enough, I am not going to keep it secret just because they had a part in it.

I realize I did not hear all of my brother's ranting. I did not hear all of his complaints. I did not hear everything he was mad at. I could have misheard some of what he said, misinterpreted some of what he said. And even IF I addressed everything he was mad at and did so without having misheard or misinterpreted him, there's no guarantee that if he heard my defense of my actions that he'd be satisfied.

In fact he'd probably only get even angrier than he already was. Any point I didn't hear, extra anger. Any point I misheard, extra anger. Any point I misinterpreted, extra anger. And every addressing, extra anger. Heck, he'd probably get angry that I am in my public blog stating that I am anticipating he'd be angry.

But I still felt like I should write it down all the same.

He can call me a traitor all he wants; he can call me an ingrate all he wants. But I am staying true to myself. I am staying true to the path I have chosen for my future, at least to the best of my ability. I was already prepared for him to say I am not family anymore. I have been ready for that for years. I knew it would happen when I came out and I knew I was not going to live my whole life without having come out so I knew it was going to happen.

Ultimately however. I stand by what I am saying. I am staying true to myself. If he cannot accept me as I am, then the burden of that is never on me. He can believe I am making a mistake. He can believe that I have betrayed the family. But ultimately, those are his beliefs, and no matter how much he believes them, they have zero impact on the truth and they have zero impact on me or my path.

After all, if being true to myself, and being honest about being true to myself, and pursuing being true to myself, is enough to make me a traitor to my family...then that's not exactly a family worth calling family, now, is it? I know I am a girl. I know my name is Bree. I am determined to pursue transitioning. I am determined to be known to the entire world as Bree.

​This will happen no matter what. My family cannot stop me. They have a choice in whether to accept my path or to reject me, but that is their choice. Not mine.

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.

Still been in a pretty trash mental state and also been somewhat consumed by what amounts to, to dangerous degrees of neglect in other areas of my life, an obsession with completing a story I found to read online, Everybody Loves Large Chests.

I've wanted to make a blog entry there, but have been too tired, too preoccupied, too exhausted, too distracted, too forgetful, and so on and so forth and just haven't. But, to put a long story short: I picked up the story approximately 3 weeks ago. I believe it was 3 weeks ago's Friday, making it 22 days ago, approximately at the very end of July.

In that time, I've gone from the very beginning to closing in towards the end of the story. I've read what has to have been 3-5 years' worth of content, in 3 works. In a story that I believe updated very frequently, nearly daily, for a long long time, with each update containing literally hundreds of words. Hundreds of words, almost every day, over 3-5 years, and I've gotten through all of that.

I still want to blog more about that story, but that isn't why I actually came to my blog to make a blog post, believe it or not. (Come to think of it, did I actually make a blog mentioning ELLC before? From that story I got a perfect reference image for Elemental Ruby and I know I wanted to make a blog about it, but I may have neglected it and left it as just something on twitter. OOPS. Ah well.)

​What I actually came here to blog about is something else that I've wanted to blog about for quite some time, but never really had a good chance to do so. Well, having a breakthrough there thanks to the recent part of the story I'm reading which got me in a philosophical mood where I was really pondering some deep questions I actually made some progress there.

And the subject at hand?

Religion.

​I do not follow any faith. I am not too terribly religious at all, in fact. While I respect people's beliefs, deep down the vast majority of them I cannot find myself actually truly believing. But while I don't follow their beliefs, their beliefs can and have inspired my own beliefs.

I am a deeply spiritual person. I am also fascinated with "witchy" stuff, as it were, which is why I always enjoy watching a Witch doing twitch streams (originally every Wednesday but now three times a week, even!). 

I've wanted to do a blog detailing my, continuously evolving, beliefs, especially since certain aspects of my belief system I know I could forget and need to rediscover later. I even considered writing a "Book of Meism" at some point, being a Biblesque piece of literature (well, probably closer actually to Dante's Divine Comedy in that it had a couple of main viewpoint characters on a journey through the universe and it was through the lens of the guide and the main character that my beliefs and viewpoints would be shared, and the final punchline at the end of the book would be a summary of some of the most important aspects of my Meism beliefs).

​Unfortunately me being me, I never actually did most of this so a lot of my beliefs have regressed, where I lost important spiritual discoveries that I had worked hard to develop, but at the same time, other aspects of me have progressed, where in some senses there was a draw and discard aspect of my beliefs. Drawing in new things that got added into my beliefs, but losing core aspects of my beliefs, not out of them becoming obsolete or being replaced, but simply due to having forgotten what should not have been forgotten, where I am lesser because of the loss, but it's not all bad because I'm also greater due to the gain.

My meism draws a lot from various sources. It actually has a fair amount of scientific viewpoints mixed in with various religious beliefs and also concepts that I fully believe in such as various forms of Systems and also dreamscapes but also involves spiritual realms and entities and a fair amount of what may be called "woo-woo  stuff".

​I've lost the details I put into pioneering this theory, but one thing that I had a belief in and still do I just forget how it works is a tie between the realm of dreams and imagination and a spiritual realm, how the two in spite of working completely differently can accomplish much the same end result because they are not entirely separate, they are linked.

I believe that there are spirits, guides, entities, angels, ghosts, and whathaveyou, although I've lost the details in how I tied them into the above, our world, and more.

I believe in a form of life after death, and it is actually from this that a lot of my core beliefs are derived from, from this form of life after death, it literally ties somehow into almost everything in some way shape or form although in most cases I've forgotten how. (Again, consequence of not writing down breakthroughs in my belief system.)

And I'll talk a bit about this form of life after death because it's vaguely tied to the breakthrough I had Thursday Night as I was going to bed (so like, technically speaking 7 am on Friday morning but I still call that Thursday Night).

Basically, a belief I've had for quite some time is that any entity capable of 2/3 of these is worthy of being called God with a capital G:
-Omnipotence, being All-Powerful, able to rewrite the rules of reality and/or outright break them, in being able to mold, shape, create, etc. the Universe and even Multiverse as they will;
-Omniscience, being All-Knowing, able to see not only into the current universe but to see into EVERY universe, past, present, and future, seeing all of the infinite branches expanding out endlessly;
-All-Loving, being able to empathize with humanity, loving them, cherishing them, wishing humanity the best, always trying to help them, always trying to do the right thing for them, always trying to guide them, because they don't want harm to come to them.

But a long-standing question of mine has been. Any entity with 2/3 of those could qualify for being God with a capital G, sure, but...how could our world exist as it does with an entity, a being, that is truly 3/3 of them? 

For the longest time, I had only one possible answer/solution to this, but on Thursday I developed not one, but TWO possible breakthroughs. Note that, by and large, most of these are not mutually exclusive. You can have a God that is 2/3 and a different God that is a different 2/3 and you can have a God that is 3/3 and theoretically, all three Gods with a capital G could exist--all of them worthy for being called God with a capital G but not truly being the 'one true God' as we tend to think of God with a capital G as. We tend to think of capital-G God as singular, as in, if you pray to God, then God is the highest form, the ultimate (and sometimes only) divine being, singular.

After all, if there were multiple Gods with a capital G, 1: wouldn't they be gods with a lowercase g, and 2: who would your prayer to God with a capital G be to? Every thank, every wish, every prayer, if there's multiple Gods with a capital G surely there would be some sort of conflict in who you are praying to, right?

Not to me. I'm not sure that there's three Gods with a capital G, but I do believe in at least two. One much much much stronger and more fundamental than the rest as that God is directly tied to my belief in life after death considering that God basically IS the life after death. (Not quite, it's more complicated than that. God and Heaven at not entirely one and the same entity, but they are linked together.) That God is omniscient and all-loving because it is literally made out of all of us and vice-versa, with us shaping that God and that God guiding us but sadly is not omnipotent.

That God I strongly of strongest beliefs in is able to subtly guide us, through various forms of connections that I don't remember the link to, in the spirits, angels, entities, guides, whathaveyou, to subtly try and direct us down the better paths we can live but cannot rewrite the rules of reality, merely subtly guide them. Small miracles that are not impossible but are freak occurrences for the better, and helping hands to try and give us help.

It's a two-way street as well, because one of the core aspects of my Meism is that we have an influence on our reality. Reality is slightly shaped, and molded, by us. I don't mean just through physical actions, I also mean through perceptions, beliefs, etc. Our minds, quite literally, make it real, to some extent. Not to the ludicrous examples shown in media where we think, therefore it is, not to our beliefs singlehandedly fueling gods or God, but still there in a form. Where we helped shape and mold the universe as we know it, as part of God. Not to the point of God being omnipotent, mind you.

(Again, sad to say, the details of how this process works have been lost. I thought them up, I had them, but I've since forgotten how the exact process works. I lost so much that I don't even truly remember why I gave my belief system the name Meism but I know that name was not chosen arbitrarily, that it was actually tied to this 'we shape the world' and connection to the God that is connected to the afterlife/heaven/it goes by many other names which is the all-loving all-knowing not all-powerful entity.)

​This was a big part of my only answer to the trifecta for a capital-G God. I believe in a God that is 2/3 for sure, but beyond that, I've been less certain. I don't know if there is a God that is all-powerful and all-knowing who happens to not be all-loving, but if such a God exists, they would have a thought process utterly alien to any human, with humanity utterly incapable of comprehending that God's thoughts, and vice-versa, too, with that God unable to truly comprehend humanity.

It's definitely possible that God exists, but I'm not sure.

Still, though, that's what I was getting at. ELLC made me revisit the subject of the trifecta for a capital G. The first and for a longest time only solution was that there couldn't be a God that was all three, that we could have one or two Gods (theoretically three I guess but I don't imagine an all-powerful God that was all-loving would be so blind to humanity even if they aren't all-knowing so I don't think that combo exists, it's the other two 2/3 combos which are plausible imo) that were 2/3, with the omniscient all-loving God definitely existing and the other all-powerful all-knowing God being possible but being more of a maybe rather than a definite.

​The breakthrough was in realizing there was not one, but two, possible ways for there to be a God that is actually still all three.

Neither of these ways is truly mutually exclusive with each other, and neither actually contradict my first belief. Neither of these I am sure about to the same extent I am sure about the God tied to the afterlife. (That is the only God that I am positive exists, but I continue to explore my faith for considering, thinking about, etc. the possibilities, plausibilities, probabilities, etc. of the other potential Gods with a capital G.)

The first idea I came up with, and the second overall solution to the trifecta for God issue, was simply a breakthrough in realizing the infinite nature of the multiverse.

What I mean by that is, if the multiverse is constantly branching out infinitely, who's to say that God hasn't done more? There could be realities where God has directly intervened, where God has directly influenced events, where God altered the rules of reality, either blatantly or more subtly.

...And that we just so happen to have the misfortune of being in a reality where God didn't​ do that. Think of it in the terms you often see time traveling to the past rationalized in fiction where it is not in fact a stable time loop:
The moment an individual travels in time, they are not traveling back in time to their own timeline, their very existence in the past automatically branches reality out in two. Their original timeline still exists, and the altered timeline from their presence also exists.

Now instead of a time traveler, imagine it being God intervening blatantly and overtly. The reality where God intervened blatantly and overtly exists, but the reality where God doesn't intervene blatantly and overtly doesn't magically disappear just due to God having made the intervention. That reality continues to exist.

Of course, God could delete the reality where God did not intervene (or vice-versa I guess)...but why would God do that? It'd be murdering, killing off, all of the individuals ever born in the reality God deletes. Yes, those individuals would still exist in different realities, but just because they'd be 99.9999999999999999% identical doesn't mean they are quite literally the same exact individual across reality.

Each individual in each individual reality is slightly different. Which makes each individual in each reality their own person. And if God is truly all-loving, then how could God decide to effectively kill off one version in favor of another? An all-loving God would love all of God's children, and each individual reality would have their own version of the individuals and God would thus love every single version of them.

​In other words; it's not that God can't intervene or God refuses to intervene. It's that God already can has and does, but we just so happen to live in a reality that these interventions are either minimalistic or nonexistent, and while better versions of us exist where God did more than what God has in our reality, God didn't have the heart to delete our lesser, so to speak, 'inferior' reality because we are still different people, even if we are less happy versions of people there are more happy versions of.

There will always be versions of us that are worse off than we are and there will always be versions of us that are better off than we are and given the infinite nature of the multiverse, they basically all exist. (Now, granted: infinite may not be truly infinite. There might actually be far fewer paths than we think, but I still believe the ever-expanding tree of the multiverse still has 'branches' so to speak, meaning it is our responsibility to try and live the best lives we can and to give the best lives to everyone else we can so that as many of these branches as possible are better. Just because the possibilities are endless doesn't mean some possibilities necessarily actually exist, so it is best to try and steer the possibilities towards the better ones, just in case.)

​If this is true, then it actually does solve things to me. A God that is all-loving, truly all-loving, cannot in good faith kill off individuals born into a less-fortunate branch of reality, in spite of having the power and knowledge to do so. Such a God could still make as many branches as possible be as good as they can be, but we just so happen to be in one of the less-fortunate ones. Not the least-fortunate I'd imagine but not the most-fortunate.

It would thus fall to us with our own influence on reality (see above in how the God that is tied to the afterlife works) to do everything in our power to shape it as much as we can to maximize the good and minimize the bad, because while God already does that, we live in a version of the reality where God didn't do that because God refused to delete our reality after having creating the maximized-good/minimized-bad path.

​The second breakthrough idea I had, the third solution to the divine trifecta of capital-G God being omnipotent omniscient and all-loving was surprisingly simple.

What if God Himself (used 'Him' here because the dominant religions in the world which believe in God with a capital G usually refer to God with male pronouns, have tried to avoid using it but can't think of a non-pronouned way to say this even though I don't believe that any God with a capital G could have a gender, as any God with a capital G would be an entity that is explicitly genderless) made the universe in order to more or less experiment with something?

For instance. If God existed before anything else, then the question is: how did God come to exist? If God was the first thing to exist, a being all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, could it be that God has in common being a bit philosophical in wondering things like how God existed? I realize it can seem paradoxical for an all-knowing God to not know how God came to exist, but in some weird way it actually makes sense to me that God may not know how God came to exist in spite of otherwise being all-knowing because there's a bit of a loop. If nothing existed before God and God was the first thing to exist, God needed to basically will God into existence but if God didn't exist then how did God will God into existence? 

If God were to have some form of desire such as pursuit of figuring out the existence of God, then our entire reality could be a sort of experiment towards that:
All of the universe coming into existence as a first version of that. What caused the universe to exist and what caused the big bang of the universe?
The birth of life on our planet is another.
At some point, there was no life on our planet. But then at some point, life existed. What caused something that had no life to gain life?
You can in evolution probably have various other pinpoint questions.
Like what caused the birth of sentience?
What caused the birth of sapience?
We can, to some extent, answer many of these questions with our understanding of the universe with our scientific knowledge of evolution. Mutations that are favorable to propagating existence, the whole process, with a mutation being the cause of that.

...But what in that mutation made sentience/sapience emerge?

​And so on and so forth.

In that sense, the development of our world could be a bit of an experiment of God's. And if God relates to us, truly, then it is perhaps possible that God is an imperfect parent, that God has a, so to speak, "human" element.
Ain't no rule which says that "omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving" also means perfect and infallible.
In fact, it explicitly does not.
God is not necessarily a perfect being in spite of being all-powerful and all-knowing. Just because God is all-knowing and therefore would know of God's faults and imperfections does not necessarily mean that in spite of being all-powerful God would necessarily work to fix them.

A bit of a human mindset, sure. Humans might know what a problem is, but not necessarily choose to fix it in spite of having the power to do so. They are flawed, imperfect, and often selfish. Who's to say God cannot also be selfish?

After all, just because God is all-loving does not mean God necessarily cannot have desires. Humans can be fairly selfless, love their fellow humans, but they still usually are still somewhat selfish, and understandably so; if you give literally every bit of yourself to being selfless, you have nothing left for yourself and the result is that you quite literally die because selflessness without restraint, without holding back, is fatal without some selfishness to reign it in.

​God could be similar. God, being all-loving, would see what humanity wants and the suffering we go through and the misery and such and hurt and want to try and help us out, but have His (again apologies for the pronoun) own needs and wants and desires and be unable to intervene overtly for us while still attending to God's own desires.

I'm probably not explaining this adequately but both this idea and the second made a huge amount of sense to me as both being at least plausible.

Again, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

God could love everyone, but have some selfishness, but still not have the heart to delete less fortunate realities (ours among them), and there's still a different (technically lesser) God that is attuned to the afterlife.

Still figuring it out.

But I felt like recording this so that it's not forgotten.

...But it's too long for me to record on twitter and I want to preserve this thought.

A stream I was on tonight touched upon the Star Trek 'verse and the subject of the Borg came up.

What the Borg offer me is something that if it were actually delivered, I would consider it a godsend.

The Borg, in theory, share their thoughts with the entirety of the collective.

As someone who is autistic, who struggles to think of words, that sounds like a dream to me, because explaining my thoughts to others is something I struggle with and having it instantly just happen would be amazing.

A common downside to that is "there are some thoughts that I wouldn't want to share", but for me, personally, I actually wouldn't mind sharing the bad with the good, because the bad can help contextualize the good, and vice-versa. A lot of the best ideas/thoughts/feelings/etc. have spurned from some of the worst screwed up stuff in my head, where they wouldn't have existed at all if I hadn't had the negative parts.

If I shared all of my thoughts and ideas to everyone, they would get out there and be in the world, rather than trapped in my head to die with me.

And because it would communicate them to others, so long as the Collective survived, so, too, would my ideas, meaning that even after I died, part of me would live in the Collective for all of eternity.

More than that, the Borg Collective would also help to give me a purpose in life. A directive. Some people, like me, actually lack that direction and could use it. Living for others, serving others, serving the Collective and being told how you can do so effectively? Not a bad deal.

Plus, being a cyborg would presumably extend my natural lifespan.

So if the Borg actually were the Collective they boast about, it'd be neat! And several episodes of Star Trek shows beyond TNG actually show that. (Mainly Voyager I believe.) Where splinter cells of the Borg Collective without a connection to the Borg Queen actually live up to that ideal and show off all the good the system can give.

But unfortunately--the Borg aren't the collective they boast about, they are, explicitly, conquerors. They aren't interested in sharing their knowledge among the collective, they're interested in forcefully making every living lifeform one of them, and of suppressing their ideas and creativity to fit the mold of 'Borg'.

Instead of being what amounts to the ultimate form of Socialism where every individual does the most to help everyone else (what they could be), they explicitly are modeled more on an Imperialistic mindset, think USA USA USA brainwashing of "forcing everyone to be more like us".

The Borg Queen is, explicitly, out to conquer and suppress the ideas of others and to use their knowledge only when it furthers their goals of conquering others. They are out to deliberately remove everything that is not-them from the universe.

If the Borg were to actually offer, rather than demand, acceptance into their collective, there would be droves of people who would willingly become a part of their collective. Both in our universe and in the Star Trek 'verse. There's plenty of planet-of-hats that have ideals which resonate with the theory of the Borg and thus if the Borg offered rather than 'making-it-mandatory' assimilation to them, they would join willingly.

But the First Contact film tells us explicitly; the Borg Queen is not looking for an equal, for a counterpart, for people to willingly join and become an equal; the Borg Queen is explicitly looking to quash resistance and force everyone to submit by force. They don't want them to join willingly, they want to actively suppress the ideas of others.

In that regard I've always considered the Borg to be a bit stupid, and a shame for showing off a system that would be a dream if it was what they actually offered, but instead of offering it for real, they throw it away in favor of imposing their way on the world forcingly. Just some generic conquerors, whose ideals are empty and unfulfilled.

The idea of the Borg would be a better Federation than the actual Federation, where those joining would willingly work together for the betterment of all. The idea of the Borg would live in a similarly-Socialistic-ideal to that of the Federation, just with higher efficiency thanks to the direct mind link.

But while the idea of the Borg is better, the fact that they don't actually deliver means that it's a waste. The Borg are idiots for trying to forcefully assimilate everyone and make everyone their enemy; the Borg are idiots for not delivering on what they offer; the Borg had a good theory to them, but by the Borg Queen's selfishness, never deliver on it.

And the extended Star Trek 'verse shows this off. I remember quite vividly, for instance, one episode of Voyager where there was a colony on a world that was former Borg, cut off from the collective, and at the end of the episode, they reconnect to each other, recreate their own micro-Borg-collective, still cut off from the Borg Queen, still cut off from the Borg as a whole, but connecting to each other, and in that episode I vividly recall thinking, "This is what the Borg should be!!!".

In that splinter cell, that micro-Borg-collective, I seem to recall that at the end of the episode, they were all linked to each other, sharing their thoughts/knowledge/ideas/feelings/etc. with each other, and working together with unity and purpose, but critically still having some amount of individuality to them because it wasn't being forcefully suppressed by the Borg Queen.

Especially since in that episode, they did that willingly. They all had the choice; they all chose to be Borg again rather than having it forced upon them. But they were the Borg as the Borg should be, rather than the Borg that actually exists.

A Borg Collective which offered people the chance to join their collective willingly, where everyone joining did so by choice, where their thoughts, feelings, etc. were shared with everyone, and they worked as a collective in harmony with purpose? Literally could be a Federation 2.0 in being a good system that works well.

But a Borg Collective which is out to conquer everyone, which is out to make everyone be them, which is trying to force everyone to join or die, which is out to make everything theirs with no choice, suppressing those within, forcefully oppressing the masses and creating absolute unity under a stagnant system that steals in order to survive and expand and is in itself sterile without the outside opinions that it works so hard to actively destroy?

It's such a waste.

But I digress.

I am not a real Trekkie so I'm sure a true Trekkie or even someone who like me is just a casual Star Trek nerd/fan who is more educated could go, "Well, actually..." to me and point out the flaws and why the Borg system isn't as good as the Federation system or something or so forth, I'm not a true expert on the Star Trek 'verse, I'm just a casual fan who happens to be passionate and opinionated.

​I still felt like sharing my thoughts in a more permanent form tho.

I can't go into full details, but as it is public that it was me I can at least mention this much; today made at least one consequence of a screwup I did yesterday official. (It is possible there may be further repercussions down the line. Given it was an accident and it was unintentional, I am obviously hoping there won't be, but given the nature of the offense and how I was already on thin ice before, it's definitely possible that I could face further punishment down the line for the messup. It'd suck, but I cannot say it'd be unwarranted, because I did genuinely screw up, so the punishment I received is the absolute minimum. I do mean it when I say I will count myself lucky if it is the only punishment I get because I mean it when I say it was worthy of being punished, accident/unintended or not.)

Basically, while I still cannot share the full story, I can go into the basics. On the site I play mafia on, I was in a mafia game. I believed myself to be within the rules with my posting--a first clarification in the rules, there was extenuating circumstances which led me to believe that I was still within them thanks to a case of unfortunate events. (In short, a private communication was similar, but much shorter, to the public communication. I believed, erroneously, that the private communication was just a shorter summary of the public communication. It was not.)

This led to the rule needing to be clarified a second time, and I received a minor punishment for the first with it being expected that future violations of the rule would give no such leniency because after both rule clarifications, the policy was as unambiguous as possible.

So how did I screw up?

Well, I was typing a post made that I believed to be within the rules between the first clarification and the second. I was unable to post it before the second clarification, and the initial draft of said post, while it'd have been fine if posted prior to the second rule clarification, was not okay to post after the second rule clarification.

I knew this.

So I revised the post, to make it fit within the clarified rule.

I double-checked it; I triple-checked it; I was absolutely sure that I had fixed it, fixed the post typed before the rule clarification to fit within the guidelines set after--and to be fair, true to the Spiderman Homecoming 90% meme, the post did in fact mostly fix the original issues! I caught most of them!

...Most, but not all;

I missed...one.

I missed one spot, that violated the rule that was clarified a second time.

It was, obviously, accidental! It was, obviously, unintentional! I did revise the original post and tried to remove the rule violating aspects of it...but missing one spot? Completely and totally my fault. And I had already been warned and punished for the rule violation.

Again, to reiterate--this is completely and entirely my fault. It wasn't deliberate, but not being deliberate does not mean it didn't happen. It did. Accidental or not, it still transpired; unintentional or intentional, it still occurred. And once it did, once I failed to spot it, once I had broken the rule that I was immediately told not to break again, I needed to face the consequences, face the punishment for it.

It sucks, but when you screw up, it does carry consequences. I literally have nobody to blame but myself. The punishment I have received is the least amount of punishment I could possibly receive. (So if I receive more, while that'll suck, it'll still be warranted. I cannot argue against punishment. I can explain the circumstances behind it and I can explain my viewpoint but my viewpoint is that whatever punishment I get will be justified, not be too harsh, and be absolutely what I deserve because of my mistake because again, mistakes carry consequences and I made one. Knowing I made a mistake and regretting that I made it cannot undo it so all I can do is live with the consequences of my error.)

I obviously can't explain more than that (this much should be acceptable), but that was one thing which happened today; action punishing me for the mistake I made yesterday night. I knew it was coming, obviously; there was no way to possibly justify not punishing the action because it's a cut and dry clear unambiguous situation with no other possible resolution, with no other possible punishment to give.

Knowing it was coming, knowing it was justified, didn't mean it doesn't sting tho. It absolutely does. And it was one of the first things I woke up to see today. Not the way I really wanted to start my day, but I had to face the music sooner or later because again. I messed up, so there were going to be consequences to having screwed up. Unfortunate as the accident may have been, regrettable as the unintentional breach was, punishment was unavoidable because there was no possible leniency to be given and it was warranted and justified and if the punishment I got is all I get then I am in fact to be considered lucky.

Still sucks tho and again. Starting my day that way? Not exactly pleasant.

There was some good to counterbalance that, tho.
Today for the 4th of July I got to wear another dress! I took a shower, which I desperately needed, and changed into the dress. My family, who were all there, were by and large (being who they were)...less than impressed. Nobody said anything but when all of them realized I wasn't wearing my favorite (because it's long enough to basically act like a dress) T-shirt and was in fact wearing a dress that gave me notable curves, I managed to catch them having some rather...unfortunate expressions on their face.

Suffice to say, most of them did not approve of my apparel of choice.

And, yes. There was in fact tension to be had, there. Conversations were mostly natural but there were still occasional pauses--this is normal enough, but in this case the pauses seemed "different" to me somehow, in a way that felt directly resultant from me.

​Then there's again the fact that the entirety of my family aside from my younger sister deadnames me and misgenders me actively...and also the self-loathing every time I respond to the deadname rather than telling them "that's not my name".

Again, nothing really specific to the date in question, but something that there's a disconnect between what I tell myself and what goes on in reality. I tell myself, "every time they deadname me, I will tell them 'that's not my name'". Every time they actually deadname me (well, almost; I do occasionally have the smarts to not respond at all), I respond out of habit.

After all, I've used my deadname for 27 years in real life. It's literally instinct to me, especially from voices I know, in tones I know, asking questions that are normal from them. As someone with autism, inertia is unfortunately, working against me here; I've built up 27 years of inertia ingrained within me to instinctively respond to them on demand when they use my deadname.

So far, good to bad is two to two if you count 'good dress' and 'shower' as two separate goods.

​More in the bad; I had only one meal tonight and it was two hot dogs. Admittedly, hot dogs with chili and bacon, but my normal hot dogs in a night? Four. I didn't have breakfast; I didn't have S'mores (I couldn't stomach them), I didn't have hamburgers, and I had half my normal amount of hot dogs. (I also didn't have corn on the cob but I never have corn on the cob unless there's melted butter with the butter-spread-stick and the hold-corn-without-mess-prongs, which we had neither of.)

I did have a plate full of barbeque chips, which by my estimate is somewhere in the .75 give or take .25 range for meals (as in, could be as small as half a meal's worth, could be as much as a meal's worth; it was a lot of chips but individual chips aren't that filling), but given 2 hot dogs is half of my normal meal, that meant tonight the maximum amount you could say I had was 1.25 meals' worth of food.

You're meant to have three.

And while I admit, I was more thirsty than hungry.

So a lot of the time, I wasn't hungry at all.

A fair amount of the issue was digestion. I wasn't feeling 'full', I was feeling like I couldn't stomach more food.

Normally, this is easily solved by, ahhhh...so to speak, emptying the system. Using the bathroom productively and flushing from the system something more than fluids. But I couldn't do that all of tonight, which meant, to my body, I had too much within me in spite of often wanting more.

I suspect the issue was circadian rhythm based.

My circadian rhythm is all out of whack, due to my rather not-the-best sleep schedule, but as of late, I've had a sleep schedule that is at least somewhat consistent if unorthodox; going to bed in the 5-7 am range, and then waking up in the 1-4 pm range. Today I was woken up a full 40 minutes earlier than I was planning, which I suspect may have contributed.

Unusual sleep schedule that's maybe not the best for digestion anyway + disruption to that sleep schedule via being woken up early + me not having food immediately (it took 1-3 hours or so for me to get the food) = suspected culprit for me having had less room. Also, maybe being thirsty all day may have contributed, with my only fluids being coffee (which isn't zero-calorie so does have some fill value even being liquid in nature).

Basically, lots of things could've caused it, hard to say the exact culprit, maybe multiple adding up, but it happened so that means I had less than optimal.

​Later in the night though, I decided to stream...
...And I got my first-ever raid! It was amazing! It was mostly lurkers aside from the broadcaster, but the broadcaster who raided me remained active for the vast majority of the stream and they and I had a fair number of similarities so I really enjoyed chatting with them and bonding with them.

Which means my night has ended on a bit of a high note. So, so​ glad I decided to stream on what amounts to a whim!

Anyway, bed now.

We'll have to see what tomorrow brings.

...And frustratingly, while there is a spark of creativity to be had in the depression, it is rehashing material I already have made, rather than creating actual new material.

Basically.

When I am depressed, I frequently get bouts of creativity, in spite of the depression. That is to say. There's a difference between manic phases where I'm inspired to create things, and depressed phases where I'm inspired to come up with things that I later create when manic.

Which is to say.

During Manic phases, I am almost never coming up with a brand new idea--the mania is putting effort into creating an idea that I had at an earlier time.

Said earlier time is usually a depressive phase, where I was suffering from depression, where I couldn't get the ability to create something, but I at least write it down (or make mental note of it), with the hope of making it later.

Yet there are also depressive episodes where instead of creating new material, I simply reinforce the memory of older material.

Which is all fine and good if I didn't write that material down the first time, but utterly worthless if I did because it is giving me literally nothing new.

Tonight is one of those nights, covering the superhero/villain stories I've been thinking up as of late.

There were at least one or two supervillain stories taking place in fantasy settings.

I actually wrote a partial blog on one Worm-inspired (with the way superpowers work) superhero group, Heroes 4 Hire, although I went into extensive material I didn't blog about, some of which I don't think I ended up writing down anywhere but which I believe is mostly memorized (aside from some side-characters, probably). I believe it was to be written in third person.

I'm pretty sure the next Worm-inspired story, Requiem, about the titular supervillain (whose powers have nothing to do with 'his'--it's complicated--supervillain name, a common theme of the story being deception and subversion of typical trends of supervillains), who is...probably one of the most interesting POV characters I've ever come up with. (The entire story being first person past tense, narrated by the titular character.) Short version short: a closeted transwoman gains the ability to create a second body, which she uses to live the life of a normal (slightly younger) girl, but because she still has to live in her original (pre-transition, still closeted) body and she could at the time only be conscious in one body at a time, eventually she ends up venting her frustrations with the creation of a third body, who becomes a supervillain. (Incidentally, this allows them to have 2/3 bodies conscious at the same time.)
The power evolved is something of a combination of Genesis's power from Worm (basically, consciousness in an illusionary body) with Harem's power from Grl Genius (basically, it's one brain in three bodies, so it is still fundamentally the same person in all bodies), with the side of Mystique and Ant/Giant-Man, in that the projected form has the basic shape locked as human, but can be any sized/shaped/formed human. Her original body, the closeted one, is still fragile and frail, her projected second body is technically empowered but actively avoids using her power and maintains a constant form and is trying her hardest to live as a normal human, and their third body is usually in the form of a male villain who is the public head of an on the rise villain group.

Then there was the story, pretty sure I did a partial blog on this one, about the (also first person) story about Projection, the name of someone whose life splits into two parallel universes (alternating in viewpoint between the two), one a hero, the other as a villain, with them dreaming about the entire daily life of their other universe's self. This one does have one slight Worm-like aspect to it, but of the three takes the least. (Heroes 4 Hire takes an almost identical concept to 'shards' like Worm has for explaining superpowers; Requiem has semi-frequent battles against Kaijus invading from the Eldritch Dimension in a way strongly resembling Endbringers; this story has superpowers being closely tied to the emergence of creatures who're mostly small, but on rare occasions spawn gigantic endbringerest/kaijuesque city-destroying threats.)

And then there was the story that I can best describe as "Dungeons and Dragons meets My Hero Acadamia meets Worm" in that it's an Urban Fantasy based in modern times of a D&Desque world with modern technology and magic, while existing, being largely obsolete, adventuring being an outdated career, etc. (think pretty similar to that Pixar picture with the two brothers seeking their dad, actually, tho I had this idea before that film was released), with a twist; a significant portion of the population (especially prominent in humans, which is theorized to be a contributing factor in humanity's dominance as the most prolific species) has the ability to transform into a hybrid form between their race and some other race. Human-dog having a werewolf form is easier to explain, but it can also be, sayyyyy, elf-troll hybrid form, or dwarf-dragon hybrid form, to give an idea of the variance involved.
And then, of those with this transformation, a small number of them have defies-the-known-rules-of-the-universe (magic having been studied to a science, magic is a known rule of the universe) superpowers, superpowers that go beyond the scope of any known magic, racial ability, etc. (I quite love this story; the Worm similarities come from the protagonist and her goals, tho I admit I do struggle to write her. I'm also not quite sure on her identity. I'm not sure if she's a her, if she's genderfluid, if she's nonbinary, or if she's a transman. Her alt-form is male; that I know, but I haven't figured out her identity. Also, tho I am a transwoman, I was raised 'male' so it's unfortunately painfully obvious that her writer hasn't lived the life of a woman and that she's being written by someone who was raised 'male'. I'm a girl, but I struggle to write from the mindset of a woman whose femininity is a major plot point. I've written POV characters that were female, but whose character wouldn't change at all if male. This is a character who fundamentally would be different if male, and in the writing it shows how bad I am at this. Regrettably.)

​And then there is the story whose only title I can think of is, "Threadripper and Kinesis", with the point of view character being the villain protagonist Kinesis. This is the first story since Heroes 4 Hire to feature a decidedly male protagonist (I specifically wrote Kinesis and Threadripper to be brothers), tho I admit it is also the least distinct of the stories I've got. It's got the same aesthetic as the other stories; supervillain protagonist duels regularly with hero antagonists, with the story documenting their rise to power. But the closest thing it has to a unique draw is the brothers' reasons for becoming villains: a genuine belief that the lifestyle of a villain where you are prepared for constant betrayal and your allies turning on you and heroes wishing to jail you is better than the lifestyle of a hero where any betrayal is devastating and the mortality rate is much higher for both them and their loved ones. (Mortality rate from villains is almost exclusively either other villains, or heroes going on a roaring rampage of revenge to avenge slain loved ones where the villain killing said heroes' loved ones seals their fate.)
This is the story with the best romance out of any of my recent adventures into superheroes/villains, tho, so I am actually considering playing that up and making this my first romance novel.
(The only other romance novel I've ever considered writing has the basic high concept of "I can write a Twilight that is better than Twilight", just with a different supernatural common entity from vampires and werewolves. Which actually wouldn't be just one book, mind you. It'd be three core books, each with their own unique female protagonist. But I digress.)

​And most recently?
I've begun to develop a supervillain story, loosely inspired by multiple different sources. Taking from the Fitz-Simmons Agents of SHIELD dynamic, taking from Narbonic's Dave-Helen dynamic, and the Dr Kinesis-Alice dynamic from Evil Plan.

Which is basically.
Some works have a hardware-software duo; some works have an omni-bio-scientist and an omni-tech scientist.

This work splits the difference and divides it up into three characters. The protagonist, a transwoman who starts the story having recently graduated college with her multiple phDs in multiple fields (expert in biological matter in general of all kinds, from fungii to virii to bacteria to humans to animals), who also is a young mother (due to an accident in experimenting on herself--short version short, she accidentally impregnated herself with her own biological sperm, squicky as that may sound, and she is constantly worried about the development of her daughter as a consequence; she originally got into her field to improve herself, but stayed in the field to do everything possible for her daughter).

She also has the superpower of what amounts to an alternate dimension which works a bit like Star Trek transporters with a side of replicators (this explanation should be familiar to those who saw me talk about how Riders work in Red Hood Rider; same basic mechanic, only more powerful here); she places objects into her dimension, where she stores them; she can recall them (and even duplicate them en masse) out, and these copies last for a considerable amount of time and are enhanced in durability due to basically being hard light).

To use this superpower effectively, she has a masters in coding (she needed working understanding of programming code to help her understand the 'coding' of her superpower), and in the process she gained an associate's in some hardware-oriented field as well. (Research not fully done on this story, cut me some slack.)

She is hired to be the third head of a supervillain organization led by two other supervillains, the hardware and software guys, who basically have a similar diversification. The one with the superpower of healing has a masters in (some human-oriented medical field, research not done yet) to use it and a minor in the alt-field; the one with the superpower I've yet to come up with has the minor in (bio field) and master in the healer's field.

All three are, essentially: supergenius mad scientists that're aspiring evil overlords, with superpowers to use on top of their existing scientific abominations (since they do do mad science with both modifying their own biology and using mad science gadgets, on top of also using their superpowers).

I've made all of these stories in my head.
I've, tonight, made new material for none of them.
I've done writing on none of them recently.

​Thus, depression sucks.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And overall.

I just feel like.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"...Wait, didn't you say that yesterday?"
Yeah funny how that works out.
Turns out shortly after my blog entry, we lost it again! For almost a full 24 hours. Fun times.
Now I did try to sleep sleep sleep the troubles away and now that my power is back, hopefully for good, I have a ton of catchup work to do, but there were plenty of eventful things I think are worth talking about.

Yesterday, my family made the decision to drive to Denny's for dinner--we had no food prepared and no way of preparing food with the power out, no generator, nothing. On the drive there, my mother and my sister were both rather alarmed by my father's haphazard driving; his carelessness made them rather...on edge.

And while I have utterly desensitized myself to thoughts of various different catastrophes by playing the scenarios out in my head (I have talked about this before on my blog, about a month ago, a little bit more if I recall correctly, so you can find me talking about it there--normally, I would be all too happy to talk about it again but this blog is going to cover a ton of things which leave me with a need to rush the rest of the subjects).

I found myself sharing similar sentiments.
Which is rather surprising.

Because you know that headspace I've been in? The rather negative one where I haven't had a reason to live? I'm still in it and even now to some extent am still feeling it.

And yet.
My mind was filled with thoughts of.

"I don't want to die."
I had an overwhelmingly strong urge to live. My will to live is still there. I don't know what's driving this strong power, I don't know what the basis of it is, I don't know where it comes from. But it was most definitively, positively, overwhelmingly there.

I was sharing my sister and mother's concern, because I didn't want to die.
I don't know why I didn't want to die.
I still haven't figured it out.
But I don't want to die.
And in fact, to the quite opposite: I am afraid to die. It's terrifying me.
I haven't a clue why.
I still don't know why I am alive.
I still don't have a reason to live for.

You'd think that in order for me to have this strong, overwhelming urge to live, I would have some sort of motivating reason, underlying justification for not wanting to die.

But if it's there, I haven't found it yet.
In spite of me not having a reason to live.
In spite of me being in that negative headspace.
Of thinking.
"The world might just be better off if I were not in it", more or less.
That terrible headspace I blogged about less than a week ago, that I never left and am still in it even in this very second.

​That doesn't change that the feeling was there, that fear of death and very strong desire to never let it pass, as long as I have any ability whatsoever to fight against it. (Mind you, realistically speaking, this is a bit morbid and grim, but I don't expect to live to an old age. The two most likely causes of death would be either in a car accident or more likely, due to something like cancer from not taking good care of myself, not checking in with doctors regularly, and the doctors probably not searching for the signs of the diseases that would kill me until it's too late. If I did get, sayyy, skin cancer, and the doctors didn't notice it until it was stage four and had metastasized to multiple organs in my body...I'd be pretty much a goner in no time flat. If that happens, not much I can do about it, but you bet that I'd still try to do something.)

And knowing that deep down.
I very much am fighting to stay alive.
Even if I don't know why I am fighting to stay alive.
The fact that the fight is there is, in of itself, empowering.

It's a little disappointing, not knowing why I want to live.
But I do know that I want to live.
I haven't discovered the reason why I want to stay alive, so I need to keep searching for a reason to keep living, but knowing that I want to live is, in of itself, just that tidbit, enough to keep me afloat for as long as I remember it. (Which is one reason I'm writing this blog, mind you! It'll make it easier for me to remember the feeling that was there, even if I don't know what the feeling is for or about, so that I don't forget.)

That was one thing which happened during the outage.
There were a couple of extra things as well, though.
One thing was working on a webcomic project which has many, many, of the same themes as The Descended does, with a similar core cast size (four protagonists), following a 'villain' in his rise to power, that has a notable beginning and end, in a Fantasy setting (albeit an Urban Fantasy setting of sorts; religious notes about it but not a lot of actual nonhumans otherwise), which I wanted to blog about ages ago yet never got around to it.

In fact.

If you check my December blog entries, at or after December 13th of last year (that is to say, December 13th, 2019 or so), you'll keep seeing me refer to "I really need to blog about this!", and then I never did because I am a moron about that sort of thing.

Well, blog entry made! Or, started, anyway. Still need to finish it.

Basically, I don't know if any blog readers will remember it, but around December 13th, I had mentioned that there was an idea for a webcomic that I really really liked and which was really really fun, but which I didn't have the skills to pull off. The webcomic, Freakshow High, remains something that I cannot make for a vast majority of reasons; I would need a co-writer who would take my basic ideas for the setting to come up with characters and plots which I would collaborate with them on.

Traditionally, I have never been involved in a collaboration which went well. Admittedly, though, that was me working on other peoples' brainchilds, rather than someone who shares my ambition and can see what I am going for, fleshing out my concepts to make something of their own that I just so happen to also have credit for. Butstill, I imagine that's a bit of a tough ask.

How do you get someone to be a co-writer for a webcomic by telling them, "take this basic idea and then make it so that I can make it"? I mean, I think that some collaborative efforts actually have worked out from similar, but the question is could I do that? I'm...not so convinced. Even if I could, the point remains, by myself, I wouldn't be able to make it in any world no matter what; I'd need help, help of a specific kind.

However.

Freakshow High did revive the artist within me.
And more than that--the worldbuilding narrative-writer within me. (Which I think is reflected in my dreams. The last two nights, my dreams have been amazing, cinematic, masterpieces, beautiful, fluent, works of art with fleshed out characters and deep, intricate plotlines and amazing worlds with simply stunning visuals, that I was really bummed out to wake up from because I knew that my awake mind couldn't continue their plots and that I wouldn't get the stories back if I went to sleep so they were killed mid-project, essentially.)

I did a 5-minute drawing of the protagonist from that series, Hey You.
It was done in actually closer to three. In ink. With no reference images. And it was better than most drawings I've made in pencil, with no time limit, using reference images. Was it perfect, no, there were obvious flaws born of me improvising on the spot. But for what it was, it was the best drawing I've ever done...

...Until I drew the Dean of Freakshow High, Dean Master Satan Hercure, in a similar timeframe. I called it a 5-minute doodle concept sketch, but it was done in three, and it would be passable as being in an actual webcomic page.

I did better than that, too.

For the first time in years.

I designed a webcomic logo to apply to the webcomic. Not the most inventive of logos (Freakshow High, underlined by bull horns that surround the text, with flames on top of it), but still an actual well and true proper logo for a webcomic, even knowing that it's for a webcomic that I'll never actually be able to make on my own.

And it goes further.
That worldbuilding I said I hadn't done and was feeling uninspired to do?
That didn't last!
I created a list, incomplete, of attendees to Freakshow High, with details about them.

Demons are among the 'infernal' attendees, who more or less feed off of energies radiating from their source of specialty, particularly emotions. Each demon has a unique specialty (though these are usually genetic, with a clan of demons sharing their specialty), but can still sustain themselves off of other methods. Think a lot like Cubii as portrayed in Dan and Mab--they are usually attached to an emotion (mostly negative ones), and feed from the energy radiating from it.

They may occasionally gain abilities pertaining to their primary source of sustenance, which can include things such as minor shapeshifting or invisibility among others.

Devils who the Dean is among, are among the 'infernal' attendees, and are not to be confused with Demons. They more or less get their energy from contracts, sustaining themselves from bargains, both written and spoken. This is neither inherently nefarious nor inherently benign. They are obligated to fulfill the terms of these deals for their duration, but have the power to terminate any deal they want to at any time. They also have very loose definitions, open to interpretation, on what a deal is. (They can call things deals which weren't intended as deals, with some creativity, and with specific interpretation of wording, get away with breaking the spirit of a deal in favor of rules lawyering the wording.)

They have reasonably decent shapeshifting abilities.

Succubii who should not be confused with Incubii and should not be confused with Devils or Demons, are among the 'infernal' attendees. They are, technically speaking, all hermaphrodites, who in spite of being hermaphrodites do true to what you'd expect, usually appear female. They do indeed feed off of the type of energy you'd expect, love energy, most potently from sex, but they can recharge themselves simply by hanging around people who have a bond of any form of love--familial, romantic, platonic.

They get the most energy from having sex with someone and more or less 'draining' them, but they can sustain themselves just passively by being around strong bonds. Due to having the same resource pool as Incubii, they are bitter rivals with Incubii by and large, absolutely loathe being compared to them, will probably murder you if you make the mistake or even if not give you a rather lengthy lecture on the differences between them.

To a lesser extent, this also applies to Demons. Most demons can partially sustain themselves off of the Succubii territory resources, and some demons specifically require it as their unique specialty, but Succubii are a different species altogether.

Incubii who should not be confused with Succubii and should not be confused with Devils or Demons, are also among the 'infernal' attendees, and much to the chagrin of Incubii and Succubii everywhere, you could take the paragraphs above about the Succubii and apply them to the Incubii--they are, technically, hermaphrodites, who in spite of being hermaphrodites usually appear male. They feed off of love energy, are bitter rivals with Incubii as a result, loathe being compared to them, would probably murder you for doing so or at least give a rather lengthy lecture on the differences between the two, and these differences to a lesser extent apply to them and Demons.

Imps are among the 'infernal' attendees, who're anywhere from 25-75% the height of an average human. At their tallest, they just look like a shorter human; at their shortest, they are like the size of a dog or big cat. They make up for this by having limited illusions and shapeshifting capabilities, which allow them to, should they so choose to, appear normal size, something aided by their wings naturally supporting flight.

Fairies are basically more insectoid Imps. About the same height, with the same illusionary and shapeshifting powers, who have wings that allow them to fly.

The Fairfolk are much as you'd expect the Fae to be: basically alien in thought process, but incredibly attuned to the world otherwise. They have unparalleled hearing and sight, which non-Fairfolk suspect is the reason they appear to be crazy (because they see and hear things others do not, and can't turn this off), and like the vast majority of attendees to Freakshow High, have no limited lifespan, accumulating knowledge and also quirks as time passes and they get bored, usually choosing to obsess with something. 

Gorgons can paralyze people with eye contact--note that this is an activated power, not something that always applies at all times. Their hair is indeed snakes, but these snakes can take on the appearance of dreadlocks and can be cut to any length the gorgon wants their hair to be. These snakes are prehensile so long as they are in snake (not human) form, allowing gorgons to manipulate objects using their hair.

Lamia are basically the land-equivalent of the merfolk: they are basically anthropomorphic snakes. Think like a centaur but instead of the bottom half being a horse, it's instead a snake. However. At puberty, lamia's tails will split in two, allowing them the option of either slithering, or walking on two 'legs'. (Yes this is blatantly ripped from One Piece, I thought that was incredibly neat, deal with it.)

Lizardfolk are pretty much what you'd expect; anthropomorphic lizards of various kind.

Dragons are, well...exactly what you'd picture a western dragon to be. Gigantic creatures, winged, scaled, four legs, tail, claws, teeth, with a big breath weapon. They are inherently master level shapeshifters, though, and almost always take far, far, more reasonably-sized shapes, usually humanoid. They are some of the strongest creatures in existence and do indeed have a taste for greed, but they are not invincible and do lay eggs unless they maintain their shapeshifted form 100% of the time, so they almost never appear in their natural forms.

Merfolk are also pretty self-explanatory, with the add-on I mentioned ripped from One Piece: they are amphibious, able to breath both air and in water, are the best swimmers bar none in the water, and at puberty their tail splits in two allowing for them to walk on land rather comfortably while still maintaining their ability to swim.

Fishfolk are not Merfolk; they are basically anthropomorphic fishes. Whereas Merfolk can vaguely be thought of as terms of literally half-man, half-fish a la Centaurs being half-man, half-horse, Merfolk are instead just hybridizing human and fish features throughout their whole body. It's a little cheap to do especially given what I already stole, but again, you can more or less just look at One Piece's depiction of Fishmen to see what I am getting at here.

Insectoids are to insects what Fishfolk are to fish, humanoid versions of various different insects.

Werebeasts are pretty self-explanatory: humans who have the ability to transform into a different, usually mammalian, creature, in various different forms: full transformation (fully become the creature), hybrid form, and partial transformation (where they're mostly human but have a few features accentuating them that come from the creature they are a werebeast of).

The most common of these by far is the werewolf, but there are plenty of others like werecats as well. You can indeed be either born as one or gain it as an infection; the infection can only be transmitted on a full moon, and there is a slight difference between those born werebeasts and those who're infected; those born have full control over their transformation from birth and are not obligated to transform during the full moon, whereas those infected need to learn how to control their transformations yet no matter how much control they gain they are always going to be in either their hybrid or full-beast forms on the full moon.

Vampires are pretty self-explanatory as well. No, they don't fry in sunlight, but the sun does weaken them. They're pale in complexion. They drink blood; this doesn't need to kill the target. They can be transformed or exist from birth; transforming requires draining someone then giving them blood when they are on the brink of death. They don't explode when impaled by a stake, but leaving a stake in their heart will paralyze them and put to halt their regenerative capacities; long enough will kill them.

I'm not sure on what abilities they have for sure. Do they have hypnosis, shapeshifting, turning into a mist, etc. powers or not, more or less, haven't decided that yet, but they are more or less your standard fare for vampires who aren't ridiculously weak and yet also aren't ridiculously brokenly strong, either. Average run of the mill vampires pretty much, who don't have stupid quirks (they're not compelled to count, repelled by holy water, do not require invitations, can cross running water, are unaffected by crosses, you get the idea), but don't have dominance either.

Witches are a separate species from humans, technically, but for all intents and purposes, are basically just "humans who can use magic". This magic is genetically passed on from parent to child no matter what (general rule of thumb: almost every single attendee of Freakshow High is fertile and capable of having children with almost any other attendee of Freakshow High, which means that yes, you can have someone who has anywhere from 2-20 species in their lineage although it should be noted that you're not going to have best-of-all from this, you'll basically inherit one or two and then the rest basically don't exist aside from having a small chance your descendants manifest them, think dominant versus recessive in that you'll have a few dominant with most recessive), and on every rare once and a while, can appear in someone who previously lacked it.

They are disproportionately female, but not inherently so. (Usually any witch who randomly gains powers in spite of lacking a lineage of it will indeed be female though.) There's plenty of male witches, but they still call themselves witches in spite of that term usually having a female connotation to it.

Their magic is currently not well-defined, though what I have in mind is more or less, "very very versatile and capable of a lot, but still having set rules to follow which make it not capable of anything, with limitations to what is possible", I just didn't put in the actual work yet to set said limits and such.

Ghouls are creatures that are 'cursed', more or less a generic term that applies to many types of things. A wendigo would be a type of ghoul, for instance, due to the curse of consuming flesh until passing it on. These curses can be of numerous different natures. Common curses that create ghouls originate from Witches, but they can be from plenty of other sources. As long as they retain enough autonomy to function in the supernatural society, however, they are more than free to attend Freakshow High and work towards whatever goals they have. (Some curses can be ended, others are eternal.)

Zombies are not the infectious type--they are, specifically, people who were raised by the voodoo magic of a witch. This applies to all zombies, but normally, most zombies are automatons that have no free will, give no thought, are basically raised creatures that are slaves to the one who created them to do their bidding and nothing but their bidding. However, it is a not-too-uncommon happenstance where zombies gain sentience and with it, a sense of free will. They think, they are no longer mindless, they no longer are slaves, though they may remain servants, they just aren't nothing but a body. They have a mind and thus are entitled to everything which comes with it.

In this sense, zombies are technically speaking a very specific form of construct, but they are classified differently because constructs weren't actual people before gaining sentience whereas zombies were. The personalities zombies gain may or may not reflect who they were before. They may or may not have memories of who they were before.

Constructs are magically-created golems that have somehow gained sentience. Whereas golems are mindless automatons that have, of sorts, 'programming' that they follow, constructs can think, have free will, and are thus entitled to everything that comes with it.

The quintessential example of a construct would be Frankenstein's Monster (though depending on how much of Frankenstein's monster is nuts and bolts and how much is flesh he probably qualifies more as a zombie); that is in a nutshell what a construct would be. Something artificially constructed that has gained a will of its own.

Ectoplasmic creatures, which I am calling 'ethereal', are also numerous in attendance.

Ghosts are the most famous of the 'ethereal' species, due to more or less being the ones who overall have the best abilities. Like all ethereal species, most ghosts are not born, but while they have incredibly reduced fertility, they are not actually sterile, so it is possible for an ethereal creature to be born as an ethereal creature rather than simply randomly existing by happenstance.

They have optional invisibility which they can trigger at will. Like all ethereal creatures, they can fly--and of the ethereal creatures, by shifting their legs into a ghostly tail, they can achieve the fastest flight speed of any ethereal creature, and are basically to flight what merfolk are to water.

Wraiths are ethereal creatures who have the ability to teleport. In this sense, they can rival ghosts in speed in flight, by repeatedly teleporting over and over again, but while they can shift from one location to another instantly, this is not something they can spam indefinitely. (They can do it in rapidfire short-term, and there's no hard-limit to what they can do, but they do get winded the more they use it.)

Banshees are ethereal creatures who more or less have the ability to shout really really loudly and painfully. But it's a little more complicated than that; they basically have mastery of sound of all sorts. They can mute sounds that would normally be made, or crank up sounds that would normally be inaudible. They can't travel at the speed of sound, but they can otherwise fully manipulate sound in ways that make them basically unparalleled masters of sound.

People know them as shouting really loudly and painfully though because while Banshees are capable of really complex, nuanced uses of their power...inherent in being a Banshee is basically an innate sense of drama queen (note that there's a dead even split between male and female banshees), an inherent hamminess, laziness, desire to play things up, and the like, and also an utter lack of awareness to how they are perceived by others, who think that their loud screeches are 'true art' and that the people who cover their ears are haters that don't understand, more or less.

​Phantoms are ethereal creatures who have the ability to phase through matter. This is an optional ability. Other ethereal creatures are still very much physical, which is something you might not expect. And all ethereal creatures thus have the ability to interact with objects (which is why I didn't add poltergeists to the list of ethereal creatures originally, though I have since reconsidered), and be interacted with.

Phantoms can optionally disable this interaction and optionally pass through walls and such.

Specters are unique among ethereal creatures as having the ability to shapeshift. They can choose what form they appear as, which makes them one of the stronger ectoplasmal creatures since they can fly and more or less choose what mass and shape they have, which can have a number of rather useful effects, even allowing them to somewhat mimic the powers of other ethereal creatures. (Take on a form small enough to pass through a wall if the wall has a crack in it, for instance, or accelerate themselves by physics, and so on and so forth.)

Poltergeists were originally not in the list because all ethereal creatures can interact with objects, but I decided to add them in with them being unique among ethereal creatures as being able to do this from a range with them having telekinetic powers whereas other ectoplasmal creatures require touch.

Bigfolk are basically your Yetis, Bigfoots, Sasquatches, and such.

Sirens are similar to Banshees in being masters of musical noise, but with more of a pleasant take on it and also being more seductive, with their sounds inherently containing hypnosis to them.

Among the attendees would also be a word that I imagine exists and I could find but was too lazy to for this blog because this is a massive tangent from my true blog entry, involving a catch-all term for Satyrs, Centaurs, and Minotaurs.

I also included from Greek Mythology Harpies, Chimeras, and Sphinxes (who would also take on the Egyptian mythology there as well as the Greek one), with the intention of adding more similar with research.

I also added in Ratmen, anthropomorphic rats, and Avians, anthropomorphic birds (aka birdfolk).

One classification I also added was something I wanted to be distinctly separate from Witches, Necromancers, who more or less are masters of the dead, having a high attunement to ethereal creatures, can raise the dead, and perform some low-level magics separate from Witch magic that revolve around various aspects of humans specifically.

And that's a list I expected to be incomplete.
It's all I have.
But it's something I made on December 11th with a little added on December 13th (though for this blog I did a little bit of on-the-spot decision making, namely, including Poltergeists).

I did far more than make the attendees though.

I did an estimation of the size of the school, somewhere in the range of 200-500 students.
Given that number, I estimated that there'd be around 15-30 teachers and probably 20-60 total faculty (since not all faculty would be teachers though there would of course be people with multiple jobs).

I named the town the school of Freakshow High is in, and modeled it as being a fairly isolated town-city: not small enough to be a town, but small enough that when most people think of a 'city', they're going to think more populous than what this is. (To put this into perspective, probably about the size of Snohomish or Monroe here in the state of Washington. Not entirely rural, but also not exactly a metropolis. No skyscrapers, but a fair amount of industrialization yet enough undeveloped land that there's plenty of trees and the like around.)

The school is in Edenville, and I even gave Freakshow High its sports teams' names: the Edenville Devilsnakes.
I think that the size of a small city-town is somewhere in the range of 2000-10,000 though I admit I would need to research this a bit. (Not exactly sure where but it's not a big enough deal for me to focus on.)

I have character bios on Hey You and the Dean, a fair idea of Hey You's background and where they came from, the like. A ton of work I put in.

And yet in spite of all that, it is a project I will never make because I would need help to make it.

...So what was all of that build-up for?

...Because on December 13th, sharing a sheet of work scrapbook paper that the first half contained the additions for Freakshow High.

...Was a webcomic project that I could​ do on my own.

This is a long, long blog post, so, uhh...lemme pull it back and remind you of exactly what I was on about since I realize we went on the longest tangent ever. Go way back to the, "One thing was working on a webcomic project which has many, many, of the same themes as The Descended does, with a similar core cast size (four protagonists), following a 'villain' in his rise to power, that has a notable beginning and end, in a Fantasy setting (albeit an Urban Fantasy setting of sorts; religious notes about it but not a lot of actual nonhumans otherwise), which I wanted to blog about ages ago yet never got around to it.", section of this blog entry.

That project is what I actually set out to talk about.
I can't make Freakshow High on my own.
But if I so chose to. (I probably won't, but I have the choice that I could.)
I could make this new project.

​This new project has the first chapter more or less mapped out. It has a set beginning, end, and various middle parts set out. I know what I want to do with it if I were to do it and I know how I would do it, more or less.
I have the main characters modeled out as well as the three other demons in the setting. (The minions of the three other demons, the later lesser followers of the titular demon, the lesser followers of the three other demons, the followers of more holy divine powers, the lesser followers of more divine holy powers, and random people who aren't followers of anyone? Yeah I have absolutely none of them modeled out.)

Which is to say, the most important characters, I know what they look like more or less and know their personalities in a nutshell.

I have done rather extensive worldbuilding and can talk about every aspect of the world; it's a fairly simple world to pull off easily enough. It's neat, it's beautiful, but also fairly simple to grasp once you get into it, just get a few of the basic bases down and you can follow along rather freely. 

And like Freakshow High, I did more work than that.
I made a really really cool logo for it that I can draw repeatedly and easily because while simple, it is easily replicable. (It is probably not a very original logo concept, but it is still something I took time to design which I feel like I put my own spin on that makes it a signature of my webcomic.)

I even made the webcomic's slogan too.

During the outage, I went one step further and drew the cat in the series, too. Mind you--I did so in about three to four minutes, with zero reference images (this was at Denny's so no kitties to use) and zero erasing. I drew a cat in five minutes with zero references and in spite of that, it actually looks passable as being a cat. 

The only reason I didn't draw more was due to lacking time, usually being busy with other things.

But all of the pieces to make the webcomic are there if I were to so choose.

That project is one which I'm not sure I want to mention by name, but ehhhh...sure, I'll risk listing its name; it's Bazu's Fourthsworne.

To keep a long long story short:
There are four rulers of Hell, the Foursworne, and Bazu the Broken (full name, Bazu Fourthsworne, the Fourth Foursworn) is the weakest of them. (He is associated with snakes and the color yellow.) He was UnPersoned by the first foursworn, trapped to rule the smallest section of Hell and with no presence on earth and no followers and no means of manifesting.

The story follows his rise to power after he is, through a sheer stroke of luck, manifested by pure happenstance in a ritual that had every reason to not go right but somehow actually did go right. (It was deliberately written wrong as to sabotage any efforts to make it successful, but by a one in trillion chance occurrence, managed to fulfill the conditions that had been left out.)

The main characters aside from him (this contains first-episode spoilers by the way):
Creed, his summoned Avatar. Creed has four forms: possessing the cat, possessing the cat but transformed into a humanoid form (that of a little boy), using the cat as a way of manifesting an incomplete form (very loosely modeled off of Ryoma Hoshi from Danganronpa V3), and a fully manifested complete form where he is the will of Bazu incarnate.

Adam Caine, the person who did the summoning, becomes his head follower, basically what you'd get if you combined the Pope with a King in that he has almost absolute authority over Bazu's domain (which, as noted, at the beginning of the story...is nothing, but Bazu makes it clear that as he gains power, so too will Adam), second only to Bazu himself.

Lilith Edenson, one of the people present at the summoning, becomes a servant of Bazu by making a contract with him. During the summoning process, Adam killed his sister--Lilith, in love with her, was very much Not Okay with this. Contracts with a demon can be broken down into more or less trivial (the demon does something and in exchange the servant does a single task for the demon and is then free), difficult (the demon does something hard to accomplish and in exchange the servant has lifelong servitude, but is free once they die), or impossible (the demon, via the contract, accomplishes something that shouldn't be possible for the demon, in exchange for the person making the contract becoming an eternal servant, damned to forever be the slave of the demon), to more or less keep the long story short.
Reviving Adam's sister, whose death was integral to the success of the ritual, was an impossible feat, which via the contract, was achieved, but as a consequence, Lilith has become an eternal servant of Bazu.

And the actual protagonist of the story (because Bazu is more of the deutagonist), the one whose perspective the majority of the story is told through:
Evelyn Caine, preferring Eevee (not Eve), is the sister of Adam Caine and more or less FWB with Lilith. (Lilith is a lesbian, Eevee is pan, Lilith's love for Eevee is stronger than Eevee's love for Lilith but they have communicated their feelings. Eevee does love Lilith, just...not as much as Lilith loves Eevee, and Lilith has accepted this and is okay with the status of their relationship since both Eevee and Lilith are happy with it.)

Since Adam, her brother, becomes basically a lord of the damned helping Bazu accomplish his will in exchange for becoming more powerful, and Lilith her sort-of-lover is eternally indebted to Bazu to always serve his will, she more or less tags along with the group of them.

She is heavily a deadpan snarker, will heavily riff on Bazu, has a low opinion of him, will insult him, and so on and so forth. For his part, Bazu considers her expendable and will often trick her into doing things that are far more dangerous than they may seem, to further his own ends, and has no qualms of letting her die again and no intention of reviving her a second time should she die again. He demonstrates, both with his actions and his words, that she is essentially cannon fodder for him, a useful tool, but not an actual asset.

She doesn't really have a reason to help Bazu but more or less nonchalantly tags along and inevitably ends up helping him anyway. Sometimes by choice, sometimes to help Adam (she is his sister so she does care for him), sometimes to help Lilith (she does care about Lilith more than she cares about a friend), but often just because Bazu manipulated things that way.

Because Bazu is, specifically, the Demon of Charisma and is the most charismatic bastard around. Not the smartest, not the strongest, but his charm is why he was basically removed from the mortal realm; he was too much of a threat if allowed to roam free...

...And yet, the story follows precisely what happens after he does exactly that.
​From Eevee's viewpoint, by and large.

I love the project and I like it a lot.
I can make it, too.
Will I?
Ehhh...not sure.
But it's primed and ready for me if I ever decided to.

So what else?
I kinda have a growing urge to mod Civilization III again.
I don't want to work on the Across the Ages project--that was a bit too cumbersome. I do like what I was doing with it, but it just was something that had too many issues that I don't think someone of my skill level could work out.

Instead, I wanted to work on a more toned-down attempt at a modified version of the Rise of Rome scenario.
My first modified Rise of Rome scenario was my first, and grandest, venture into modding Civ 3 stuff.
It had a ton of stuff done but was atrocious overall and I basically made it ridiculously easy mode regardless of who I was playing on, adding everything and the kitchen sink to it.

This toned-down version would have a few modifications that would risk pushing me into that territory, but which with luck I'd be fine with.
The basic idea, 7/8 playable, Egypt still on the decline, but with each civilization having specific traits of theirs emphasized and played up. 
I'd remove pollution as much as is possible (this is just a quality of life improvement), add in Wool in locations as close to the Medieval scenario as is possible and no other locations (which would actually make it difficult to achieve for half the civs, which is a good thing!), turn silver/gold into resources, add in the wonders from Mesopotamia that aren't included, two outposts for Rome to allow for contacting the Celts and Goths (one in England, one in approximately Germany near the rivers there) with one unit on them, an extra Carthago Novo unit for Carthage as compensation, an outpost for Persia to allow first-turn contact with Scythia and similarly an extra Macedon unit as compensation, and then the draw to the scenario:

The units.
Goths would have a focus on raw offense, forgoing defense but having offense rivaling or even exceeding even Roman units.

Celts would have movement speed, traveling extra distance. Their units would have bog-standard attack/defense.

Carthage would have units that take less shields to produce, but require more resources to make, emphasizing their cheap mercenary nature. These units would be loosely equal to normal units, but some stronger and others weaker.

The Scythians would have units that treat all terrain as roads, but no extra movement speed, to differentiate their units from the Celtic units. Their units would have bog-standard attack/defense.

Rome would have their units be able to use all worker actions, have the strongest overall units in offense/defense (including a defensive horseman that'd be able to match their citizens), but pay for it in having those units be more expensive overall in terms of shields.

Egypt would have unique units, but have all of them be weaker than units from other civs, to represent their 'on the decline' nature.

The Greeks would have amphibious warriors/swordsmen (who would have stats equal to other swordsmen otherwise) and be self-balanced against the Persians for their spearmen to be loosely equivalent to the Persian swordsmen with Persian units having higher offense and lower defense and Macedonian units being equal in both.
Their units would be stronger than Carthage, but weaker than Rome.

I wouldn't touch things otherwise for risk of turning things too complex and ruining the simple idea as it is now.
Now, admittedly--there would still be about 75 units in the scenario, but that wouldn't be "75 units plus the ones already in there", it would be "75 units including the ones already in there".
Maybe bump it up to 80 when you add in leaders, armies, gallies, and workers.

But I am pretty sure a total of 80 units in the game or thereabouts, is not more than most scenarios.
I'd have to double-check to be sure, but I feel like if it's not actually much more than is in most scenarios, no real harm in striving for it.

It feels incredibly doable, I'd just need to do it.
Hmm, what else...I think that beyond that, it's just 'catching up' stuff.
I need to play a few TFT games to get the quest there.
I have eight days to play two RANKED (yes, RANKED) games of League, and to also play one of Garen, Jax, Draven, or Leona. (Sadly, I only own Garen of them. The one I'd least one to play.)
ARURF is life and I want to test if my build with a mana champion works on ARUF, where cooldowns are at 80% and every item is thus over the CDR limit. But also mostly to see if a manamune can transform into the muramana in ARURF.

I have obligations that I am days late to attending to, and these once I finally finish this blog entry (I think I've been writing this blog for an upwards of six hours?), those are going to be what I probably focus on.

I have a vod to watch and multiple videos to watch to catch up on. Probably about 12-24 in total. Most of them ~10 minutes but at least four of them are longer.

​Busy, busy times.