So let's blog about the story idea I had yesterday!
I envisioned it as a manga-styled (probably not literally right-to-left, but art-style, plot, the everything, stereotypical shonen manga) story, and named it 'SirPlus' (because while I imagine that pun is known, it's not something I think would be an actual story's name, whereas Surplus, the title that I'd otherwise want, would almost certainly be taken), after the titular character's eventual codename.

So to describe this story, I need to give some background info. The main inspiration is YuYuHakusho, with a significant dash of InuYasha but with sides of various other series which feature things like Ki or an equivalently-named body energy source.

The idea spawned from wanting to run a series featuring five energy types--and this being a stereotypical shonen series, yes, the protagonist can, eventually, tap into all five of the energy sources (and his codename derives from his ability to do so, thanks to a commonly-used reference chart for the nature of the five energy types).

The five energy types are as follows:
Holy Energy, considered the opposite of Demon Energy, has a few requirements. The user must be pure of heart (but mind you, 'pure of heart' has a very very loose definition; a chivalrous pervert can still be considered pure; someone who is pure evil is still pure; a well-intentioned extremist with pure intentions counts, and so on and so forth).

You must learn how to use Holy Energy while you are currently alive. (Mind you, you can use it if you've learned it even if you are dead; if you were a spirit who was through any means given a 'living' body, you can then learn it while using this body even if said form is only temporary.)

You cannot be a pureblooded demon; no demon can ever learn holy magic. Heck, while means of becoming a demon (though rare) may exist, if someone knows how to use Holy Energy, they cannot become a pureblooded demon. To become one, they'd have to give up their Holy Energy capacity altogether.

And finally, you must have training in how to use Energy--usually, this is easiest done if the energy you are training in is Spirit energy, but Body energy is just as commonly used (mostly because Body energy can be learned by literally anyone with training whereas Spirit energy has some requirements of its own).

With the exception of Kekkaishi, Shrine Maidens, and Holy Monks (each of which is a special exception because they use a specific variant of holy energy), this energy type is not inherited genetically. You can be born the child of a Holy Energy user and be unable to use it; you can be born the child of a family who nowhere in their family has anyone ever used Holy Energy and yet have the capacity to tap into it; you can be surrounded by Holy Energy users and never learn it yourself; you can have never ever ever encountered a Holy Energy user in your entire life and yet still pick up how to use it.

Literally any non-demon can use it, so long as they meet the specified criteria; pure of heart, currently alive, not a pureblooded demon, and trained in how to use Energy (so basically, Holy Energy is almost never the first of the five energy types learned unless you're a Kekkaishi, Shrine Maiden, or Holy Monk).

However, in spite of this capacity of anyone being able to learn it, it is the least-learned type of energy out there of the standard four. Its primary users are the Kekkaishi, Shrine Maidens, and Holy Monks, who learn it as part of their family legacies. (You don't need to be born into one of those three to take it up, but it is certainly much easier if you are born into a family of one of those three. You also aren't required to use that specific form of Holy Energy. Someone who is the child of a Kekkaishi can learn customized Holy Energy magic which doesn't involve Kekkaishi barriers at all.)

Kekkaishi, Barrier Warriors (who have an approximately equal number of active female and active male members), are mostly defensive. Their barriers can purify evil within them (which also gives them minor healing abilities, a frequent attribute of Holy Energy), but otherwise it takes creativity to use them offensively. Creating small spear-like barriers; crushing someone between two barriers; creating a barrier and removing the oxygen from within to asphyxiate those within; creating a barrier and exploding something within to create a contained localized explosion, etc.

Shrine Maidens (who are mostly, but not exclusively, female...though they are still called Shrine Maidens even when male and wear the Shrine Maiden clothing regardless of gender) are mostly offensive. They have limited healing abilities and are very skilled at detecting evil, finding weak points in enemy's defenses, and offensive usage of magic, mostly through either enchanted physical arrows (these are more powerful) or outright pure energy arrows (these are less powerful but have unlimited ammo and don't require lugging around a physical bow/quiver).

Our protagonist's mother is a semi-retired shrine maiden. She no longer travels across the country (something active shrine maidens are expected to do), but she still helps out at her shrine, around town, and trains the next generation of shrine maidens. Our protagonist refused to take up the family tradition, so isn't trained in shrine maiden holy magic, but he is trained by her in how to fight, skills he'd later transition into his own style. (He ends up using customized Holy Energy eventually, although it is not the first Energy type he learns even though he's obviously known about it his whole life.)

Holy Monks (who are mostly, but not exclusively, male) use a balance of offensive and defensive applications of their holy magic. They use charms, they use enchanted staves, they use holy fists/elbows/knees/feet, can launch some energy attacks, ward against attacks especially from evil, purify evil from an area, etc. 

All three have plentiful membership and all three have similar tendencies. Some stay local, to help out around the town, whereas others roam around the country (even world), helping out others, and it is expected for them to protect, to heal, to ward against evil and so on and so forth.

All three also happen to have been taught and learned that while a fair share of their enemies would be demons, demons are not inherently evil nor are all evils in the world originating from demons and are quite aware of what their fellow human beings are capable of, both the good and the bad.

But speaking of demons...

Demon Energy, on the opposite side of the spectrum from Holy Energy, is innate to anyone with demon blood in their veins. It is also exclusive to them. There's not much more to say than that. Only demons can use it, and every demon inherently uses it. Obviously, some demons use it more than others, but every demon has the capacity to use it to at least some degree.

Spirit Energy has similarly complex requirements to Holy energy. The user must have died--but mind you. This death doesn't require you to currently be dead. Clinical death counts. And, yes. That loophole you probably just thought of? It is exploited. If you are dead for less than a minute, it still counts as a death even if you are immediately revived.

Because this aspect of spirit energy is known and well-documented, it is commonly exploited in fact. Obviously, unlocking it via this method is considered dangerous (there's always the risk the revival fails), but it is still an oft-used albeit slightly dangerous method of unlocking this energy type for use.

In extremely rare cases, near-death experiences (especially accompanied by some combination of: latent untapped body energy potential, extremely strong presence of Spirit Energy in the area over a sufficiently long period of time, a brief comatose state accompanying the near-death experiences) can unlock it.

Spirit Energy also takes training to unlock and master. One need not unlock another type of energy first to use it, but it's certainly easier to learn spirit energy if you know how to use a different type of energy first. It is also much much easier to learn if you are a spirit, especially in a currently-not-in-a-living-body state.

Mind you--spirits who have obtained a living body don't magically lose access to their spirit energy; once unlocked, it's unlocked permanently even if you're well and truly fully alive the entire time.

Life Energy, on the opposite side of the spectrum from Spirit Energy, is never used by anyone even though almost anyone can use it. The 'almost' comes from it having a pretty simple restriction: its user must currently be alive, thus, spirits can't use it (and thus why it's considered to be on the opposite side of the spectrum).

Only a spirit sacrificing a revival method can use it without consequence; only a spirit with a currently-living vessel can use it, but doing so drains the life of the vessel. Life Energy is, simply put, sacrificing your lifespan. All beings, even demons who have lived for millenia, have a lifespan, and using life energy shortens it. It is irreversible; it is not something which you can just go use and then try to replace by using a different energy method (say, a demon trying to use a demon power to maintain their immortality).

Once gone, it is gone. It will shorten the time you have alive, permanently. It is finite in its supply. It is a measure of last resort, to be used only when you are ready to give up your life in a last-ditch effort to well and truly fight to the bitter end in defense of your objective. It cannot be forcefully used. It cannot be coerced out of someone. If you were, say, controlling the body of someone you wouldn't be able to kill them by making them use life energy. It requires conscious, deliberate, fully willing, thought to use as a measure of last resort, where you have pushed yourself to your limit and need a final push to actually accomplish the job.

As a consequence, unlike other energy types, it usually cannot be drained from others. (Energy drainers are in of themselves fairly rare, but they exist. Yet none of them can drain life energy. Well, almost none of them...) There's a minor exception; an antihero character (might be a rival to the protagonist? Not sure yet about that) can drain it...but only from those who consent to the drain. He tells them that he can fight, he can save them, but that they need to, say, give up one year of their life to do so and asks them if they accept; only if they do does he have the ability to use their life energy in the amount quantified.

There'd also be one vampiresque villain biting the neck of a victim with the ability to drain it--but only if the victim has absolutely no defense, no way of fending off the attack. No training, no resistance, no awareness, and no incredibly strong latent energy of any type.

The protagonist only uses it once, but it was a very notable instance.

The final type of energy, Body Energy, also called Ki Energy, is something literally anyone can learn to use. Everyone has it; everyone can use it. There's no restrictions; there's no limitations. All it takes is to train in it, or to be innately gifted with it and exposed to a sufficiently large trauma as to forcefully unlock it. (And for obvious reasons, the former is far more common than the latter and is the preferred method.)

None of these energy types are limited in what they can do; the only limits to them are the aforementioned requirements to be able to use them in the first place. They can do literally anything the user wants them to, provided the user has both the sufficient reserves of the energy (again, none of these energy types exist in unlimited quantities for a person; everyone has a finite supply at any given time) and the sufficient training in mastering what they want to do with it. (If you want to launch a fireball, you can't just spontaneously think 'launch a fireball' and it'll happen; every technique you use is something you need to train your body how to learn how to use.)

Now, there is a bit of a 'trump triangle' to energy types. Holy will, usually, be able to overcome Demon energy. Demon energy will, usually, be able to overcome Spirit energy. Spirit energy will, usually, be able to overcome Holy energy. But these aren't hard rules so much as general guidelines of "all other factors equal, one energy type has a slight advantage over the others".

For what it's worth, Ki is mostly neutral to all three but could potentially overall be at a slight disadvantage; Life energy is mostly going to have the advantage over all three but harvesting it is not going to guarantee victory.

Now it is worth mentioning: you know how in basically every single anime show ever, each and every single person has different moves and techniques? How they are customized to the individual; some series may have some standardized techniques and some series may have characters who trained together using at least one of the same moves while having personalized unique individual moves to not be completely identical; same principle applies here.

Energy, regardless of type, is highly customized to the individual. Each and every individual learns their own techniques. They name their own moves, they discover the motions for their moves on their own, they learn how to channel the energy and how to shape it to do the desired effect, all on their own.

They can also be taught by another how to do it, by being trained by them. Seeing it done, going through the motions of it being done, and so on and so forth until they learn how to accomplish the technique.

Thus, while there are standards, while some abilities (e.g. Kekkaishi/Shrine Maiden/Holy Monk ones) are standardized, most powers are unique to the individual. And even said standard abilities? Can be modified/customized by an individual, quite often, to somehow mold them differently from their original form/shape.

So these energies both simultaneously are and are not "magical do anything" energy types. You can do anything that you have trained yourself to be able to do. Shoot a spear of energy is something that if you trained how to do you can do, but if you wanted to spontaneously shoot a spear of energy, good luck. Create an energy shield is something that if you trained how to do you can do, but if you desperately needed to defend against an incoming attack and shouted 'shield!' without having actually trained yourself in how to create a shield...good luck.

This training isn't just mental, nor is it just physical; it is a combination of both. You need to actually practice, you need to actually learn, you need to actually figure out how something works, in order to do it. And skills don't instantly transfer from one energy type to another (with the exception of life energy which would never be used if it didn't have this ability setting it apart from the other four; nobody's going to willingly burn off their lifespan to train in how to use it, obv). You can't practice a skill using demon energy and then try to use that same skill using spirit energy; to pull off that skill using spirit energy, you need to practice using it with spirit energy and figure out the difference.

Mind you. Once you learn how to use one energy type, it's usually not that hard to transfer this knowledge into applying a different energy type. If it took you ten years to learn Ki, it might take you only ten weeks to figure out how to use spirit energy techniques that are similar to your body energy ones. But it is not an instant "it's active, therefore I can transfer one to another".

The main advantages to having access to multiple types of energy are as follows:
-As mentioned, certain energy types can have the edge over other energy types, situationally. So knowing how to use multiple types allows you to respond in the way most likely to give you the advantage.
-Certain energy types are more easily suited for certain skills than others. While every energy type can do what the others can, certain energy types have easier times doing specific tasks (say, forming an energy blade) than others do.
-The body only stores a finite amount of every given energy type at a given time. You don't have unlimited body, demon, holy, spirit, or life energy; they are a resource that is depleted and needs to be restored with rest and recovery.
...However. It's not "your body only stores a certain finite amount of total energy"; it's "your body only stores a certain finite amount of each energy type".

So basically, having access to two energy types doubles your energy pool; three, triple. Four, quadruple. All five, you can fight until you drop dead from expending your life energy which would presumably be the last to be fully depleted.

I wanted to make a story based around that concept.
What I came up with was that the protagonist was the son of the aforementioned Shrine Maiden and, secretly, unknown to him until much much much later in the story, the demon Rakan. (His father's actively involved in his life. Has a part-time job, is involved in housework, and the like. So the reason it's not known isn't because his dad's not around; it's just that his parents never told him that he's half-demon and never told him about his demon lineage so while he knows about his mother being a semi-retired shrine maiden, he has no clue that his father's a semi-retired monster.)

Rakan is...well, the pioneer of the Demon Bullet and Demon Blade techniques (the protagonist's first techniques were ki-based versions of these techniques); for centuries, he's been known for his rampages where he slaughters and literally devours humans.

He derives no pleasure from consuming human flesh, nor does he need to in order to survive. (He can live just fine off of normal food.) However, whenever he consumes human flesh, he gains a temporary huge boost to his power...and 1/100th of this boost is permanent so if he were to consume 100 humans he would effectively permanently boost his power as much as he would temporarily from a single serving.

He does like to fight opponents who put up a fight. Mind you, 'putting up a fight' does not translate to 'can actually threaten him'; usually when he went on his rampages he'd find the people taking up arms against him and shred them to pieces slowly. Enjoying the hunt, in a sense. And if someone tried to just...not fight him, he'd find a way to incentivize them into doing so.

In his own words he fully admits that while demons are not inherently evil, he is. (Well, mostly. He's under no obligation to his wife not to commit such acts. He never promised not to, he was never asked not to, she never instructed him not to, but out of love just chose to not do so anymore. Not because it'd be preying on her kind. Just because it seemed like a romantic gesture to him. He's got no intention to start eating humans again, but he didn't change his morals or anything of the sort. In his own words, "I fell in love with her, not the human race she belongs to.")

It'd have been fully possible for him to increase his power by nonlethal methods: consuming recently deceased corpses (they need to be fairly fresh for him to get the power), or even taking nonlethal bites out of a person (which even with the best of healing abilities will leave a scar, but which is easy enough for him to do). He killed humans because he thought it fun to do.

This earned him a lot of titles.
Rakan the Devourer.
Blood Bullet Rakan.
Demon Blade Rakan.
SerpentSlayer Rakan.
Lord Rakan. (The title demons, particularly those who consider themselves his servants, call him.)
Ninth Hell Rakan. (Basically, the ninth demon to be considered so powerful as to be hell on earth.)
Rakan the Slasher.
The Striped Tiger.
Crescent Heavenkiller Rakan.

He insists "most of those titles I earned by killing some dude who had a few of his own"--
Said person those titles were earned by killing? A demon by the name of Ivan the Unkillable, AKA, The Unslayable Serpent, AKA, DragonGod Ivan, AKA The Hand of Heaven. (He was later revived and thus, is still actually alive. Still, the act of killing him was enough to be worthy of attention.)

Ivan was a demon considered powerful enough where if he were so inclined he could've been powerful enough to be a Hell--and only wasn't one because he was actually fairly saintly in that he was a genuinely altruistic demon with no ulterior motive, a down-to-earth demon who was friendly and amicable...just, immensely powerful. (And is half the reason why people know demons aren't inherently evil even though quite a lot of demons are.)

Rakan insists that the only reason he was able to pull it off was that he had just fed on an entire city's worth of people and thus was at the absolute highest possible peak of his power, and in his own words, "I thought he was just some schmuck who objected to me slaying a city; if I had known who he was, I would've run."

Rakan certainly didn't help his reputation when, after the aforementioned event, there was a conference held in the afterlife on whether to hunt him down and kill him due to him being such a large threat. Rakan killed himself (after setting up a revival mechanism so that he'd be brought back to life) in order to invite himself to the conference and offer his viewpoint explaining the matter.

This would basically be akin to party crashing in on heaven when you're Lucifer and saying, "Yo, God, sorry about the mess I caused downstairs, but it was an accident, I swear; I came here to apologize for the misunderstanding." He said that the city slaying was done as an experiment, he found it boring, he promised he would never do something on that scale again, explained he had no intention of challenging people like Ivan, and promised to do them a favor so long as they didn't put out the kill order on him.

He got what he wanted; they decided not to put out the kill order on him...by instantly on the spot classifying him as the Ninth Hell--threats so dangerous that nobody is to try and kill because they are just that dangerous. (He later paid off that favor simply enough; they asked for him to be present in a place, which convinced one of the other nine hells to negotiate rather than fight as they were originally going to until Rakan was there.)

He also said that he would mitigate the damage he'd do by continuing to do what he was already doing: hunting down demons (particularly evil ones) of notable strength and killing them, so that they wouldn't menace people. He had ulterior motives for this, of course; not done out of any sense of altruism, but simply done to seek a challenge, in that he wanted to have some good fights against opponents he knew he could beat but which he'd still have some difficulty in bringing down, where it wouldn't be easy to massacre them.

So he is, as far as demons go...rather noteworthy, rather notorious, both by spirits and by other demons because of his actions over the course of centuries of carnage and mayhem. 

The protagonist inherited his father's powers, albeit dormant. As he is half-human, his demon powers passively grow stronger with time without him needing to consume human flesh. (He can consume human flesh to gain that immediate power spike and 1/100th of said power spike permanently being added...but as he's no desire to partake in cannibalism, for obvious reasons, opts not to.)

There's a tradeoff, though. Our protagonist is a really big eater who needs to eat a ton of calories to fuel said demon powers. In fact, when activating his demon powers, he consumes his own body fat and looks unnaturally muscular as a consequence when using his demon powers. He has the power to surpass his father quite easily, it's just that in his current state he can only use his demon powers at their fullest for a limited amount of time as a consequence of currently requiring that consumption of his own body to activate them.

Mind you, that is not a normal demon trait; it is a trait specific to "newblood" demons, where their demonic powers can only be activated by a trigger mechanism of some sort. His trigger mechanism just so happens to be his father's trait of consuming flesh. Given enough time to develop, he'd be able to use his demon powers without the need to consume his own body flesh, and consuming his own body flesh would be an optional thing done to give his demon powers an immediate power boost.

I guess I should talk about the world the setting takes place in.

In this setting, demons have faded in and out of common knowledge. Sometimes, they're out in the open and everyone knows about them; other times, they're in the shadows and very few humans are "in the know". In the current modern era the story is set in, people are slowly transitioning from a long period of the former into the latter; demons aren't completely out in the open, but they're less and less secretive.

There's not an unlimited number of afterlives, but there is a very large number of afterlives for dead people to go to; they will go to the afterlife most suited for them. Some could be described as 'hell', most would be described as some form of 'heaven'. There's a transitionary realm between our world and said afterlives, where there's a collective bureaucracy of spirits who help make the transition of spirits into the afterlives easier.

The existence of spirits is not public knowledge, but it's a bit of an "open secret"; basically everyone who uses energy or is closely tied to someone who uses energy has some awareness of spirits' existence. They are, after all, heavily involved with the world.

Usage of ki is something everyone knows about, though. Everyone knows how ki works; everyone knows ki exists; everyone knows what ki does, and so on and so forth. Not everyone learns how to use it; in fact, most people don't. But it's a thing that everyone knows about.

Martial artists are a big thing, as are organizations that travel across the world. Some official, some unofficial, some international, some by country. Militaries and Police Forces usually have many members trained in the usage of at least one form of energy; Detectives with powers investigating usage of powers are a thing; etc.

The setting would, obviously. Have Loads And Loads of Characters. Some muggle, most not; some who start muggle and gain powers, most who were already using energy of one form or another at the beginning of the story. (Our protagonist starts off not having any, but very very very quickly learns ki, as the need arises.)

There's probably more details to the story than these, but this is most of where the idea came from.

It's a big​ project and you can maybe see why I wanted to make it. I really love the idea.

Mind you, I chose that wording carefully because while I'm not as bad as I was yesterday, this is more a reversion to be what I was two days ago--that being, still depressed, just...not as painfully so. I am still down and can feel that I am quite down, I just am not as horrifically down as I was yesterday.

I'm not upbeat, I'm not energetic, I'm still fairly lethargic, I'm down, and I'm just not enthused by most things, but I'm at least at the point of feeling like I can live, whereas yesterday was actually kinda DANGEROUS levels of low.

Soyeah. Not gonna lie. I could be better. I could be much, much better. I would love to be absolutely entirely better than where I am at right now. I even kinda have an inkling of a desire to be inspired, a desire to work on something, a desire to be passionate, so maybe I'm on the rebound.

...But I know I'm not recovered yet, because while there's that small portion of desire, it's not actually focused on anything. If my lack of focus were because of too many things, I'd know I'd be recovered, but my lack of focus here is because there is no thing. No single thing, and no more-than-one thing. Just nothing. 

I have the desire to be inspired, which is good, but nothing actually inspiring me, which is not as good. In actuality, I feel like I can kinda sorta express where I'm at with this, kinda sorta. I feel like what I want to do isn't so much as work on anything, so much as I want to talk about something. On here. On my blog.

I want my blog to basically, were it to actually have readership (which I know it doesn't, stats be damned, because I know there's no way that I'm getting at-lowest 30 readers a day, at-highest 110 readers a day; I'd expect maybe one tenth of those to be real, 3-11 people per day).

If people were actually reading what I was writing. For it to actually be something that was inspiring to them. That was uplifting to them. I need not write uplifting content myself. My blog entry could be entirely a long entry about why my day sucked, but what I kinda want is that if people actually read my blog, for them to actually have some thorough enjoyment, entertainment, enrichment, enlightenment, from it.

You know.

Basically.

It's the same dream I had when I first became a writer which kept me being a writer for all those years that I was a writer.
It's the same dream I have for being a webcomic artist, and for sharing Phyrra and Cyrus with the rest of the world, even after having had the writer within me be basically dead for novelwriting.

It's to have others feel the same way about what I wrote, that I feel about things that I read. You know how I go on about all these things that enriched my life? How Dan Shive was a massive inspiration to me once I read his work. How Grrr Power was a massive inspiration to me once I read the comic (okay admittedly you never got the full blog entry there but you did get a part of it).

How Worm was an incredibly uplifting, inspirational, piece of work in spite of it being incredibly dark, just because it represented how you can do so much and make a work so incredible online using just sheer willpower combined with clever planning basically, determination combined with competent storyboarding, to lay out a guideline to a plot.

And so on and so forth.

That's been going on since I was a kid. When I was young, I saw that Eragon was published by a person when they were a teenager--I knew that the Inheritance Cycle was, objectively speaking, not a too terribly well-written book series filled to the brim with flaws, but the inspiring fact about it wasn't the quality of the books (which I felt were entertaining in spite of being flawed; think basically "like most mainstream films these days" which are absolute junk in so many ways but can still be mindless entertainment that you get creative ideas from).

It was that a teenager managed to write, then successfully sell, the book he wrote. The books sold, and they sold well. That they sold so well, no matter what you think of the quality of the material, means that the author did something right. Same principle applies to the Twilight Saga. I enjoyed reading it, and the books sold well. I objectively know about all of the flaws in the series which have been pointed out to the point of being old, boring news.

Everyone knows the books are objectively junk--but they were still enthralling enough to be an enjoyable read in spite of knowing all the flaws therein, and the books still sold incredibly well. You can say whatever you'd like about the author; you can say whatever you'd like about the quality of the books. But the fact that they sold incredibly well, combined with my subjective experience of enjoying them in spite of knowing that they were flawed. Means that you have to acknowledge that objectively, she did something right.

She was able to sell something that was flawed, and make people buy it in spite of its flaws, and even enjoy it knowing all of what is flawed within. For all the flaws of the writing you can find, the fact that it had that effect, again, means that there was something being done right.

And that's the effect which has always been inspiring to me as a writer. Knowing that in spite of the flaws of the writing, it is still possible to make a product that people genuinely enjoy, and can derive entertainment from. More than that! That they can be enriched in their lives from having read a work in spite of the flaws of that work. That they can be inspired, that they can be uplifted, to the point where they dream big and can maybe do something that they otherwise wouldn't.

In other words.

My dream of dreams is basically. To be able to have it so that I do for others, what others have done for me, throughout my life. Picked me up, made me stronger, made me more enriched, made me more inspired, made me the dreamer that I am. I want to make other people dream. I want to make others be picked up by what I do.

And right now the only way I have of doing that is through the one thing that I've never consistently failed at for the longest time of anything I've worked on. Which is my blog. Yes, I occasionally for whatever reason miss an entry in spite of the aim to be a daily blog. But the simple fact of the matter is. By and large. For four and a half years.

I've kept this going.

Do you know what else I've kept going for four and a half years?

Pretty much nothing.
Nothing that's me, at least.
Sure, job; tae kwon do; dancing; counseling. Stuff like that, been doing longer than four and a half years. But it doesn't really count as being me. Those things are a part of me, but they aren't a part of my expression of me.

Every dance I try to write, I don't finish.
Every time I take up songwriting I never go anywhere with it.
Every time I try to compose music, I keep it in my head and do nothing with it.
Every time I write a story, I never end up following through with it and publishing it.
Every time I start a webcomic, I end up abandoning it, even after having taken precautions against abandoning it.
Every time I work on a project, I end up abandoning it, even after knowing about my bipolar disorder and taking steps to counteract it.

I have listened to uplifting speech after uplifting speech. People who succeed say the same cliched lines about why they succeeded, not because it's a cliche, but because the cliche is cliche because it is true to reality and they all say the same thing because the same thing held true for each of them. I forget the exact words, but something along the lines of willpower being temporary, of how the drive to work is temporary, but you need to keep doing it, keep efforting at it, even when you don't feel like it, force your way through it, keep at it, and if you really want it, you will put in the work necessary to get it done.

More or less, something along those lines at least. And I have tried to implement that advice before--tried...and failed. I have, consistently, failed. In spite of knowing about the autistic concept of inertia. I know that once I get rolling I can keep things rolling but that when they screech to a halt they stay stopped with a near-impossibility to get started again. I take measures to prevent the stop, and even if the stop happens, I tell myself that I have the strength of will to push the stopped train, inch by inch, until it's moving again.

...But I never actually do and all the planning in the world falls apart because I, frankly, just suck. I dream. I dream the dream, I never bring the dream to reality. For all of those things. For all of those ideas. They all fail. I've gone into this before, about how while I dream of succeeding, I'm actually happier in my failures, and hypothesize that's why so many people who don't make it big can still be happy and why quite a number of people who do make it big are often not-so-happy in spite of having made it big.

Who knows, maybe that is true. I honestly don't know anymore. I am a contradictory being. Old enough where I'm expected to more or less be solidifying myself, young enough where I can't actually do so and am constantly, consistently, second-guessing every single thing about everything. All my beliefs, all my thoughts on myself, how I view things, everything, I doubt it all and I constantly revise everything including my outlook on life.

But I'm going on a bit of a tangent, there. My point is...I generally am just. A failure in general. Yet this blog is pretty much the one thing which I don't think I have failed at.

I've had plenty of blog entries where I didn't succeed.

I like to pour my heart and soul out every single entry, so when I am forced to blog-dodge for whatever reason. Forced to make an empty, substanceless entry. Forced to make nothing. Or whenever I forget to make an entry. When anything like that happens. Obviously, it's not a success.

But by and large. Four and a half years. Four and a half years, I've been doing this blog. And by and large it actually has succeeded. It hasn't succeeded as often as I'd like. It certainly hasn't succeeded in all the ways I'd hope it'd succeed, in part because those hopes are by and large contradictory. I've wanted different things out of my blog at different times, so of course my blog can't be all of them.

But it's still been most of them, most of the time. Even this entry. It started out as any other would, and yet now has been built up to be something actually unique. And there's the charm, I feel, in my blog writing. There's where I derive some hope from.

I want what I write on this blog. No matter the subject. About me. About me talking about my latest passion project. About whatever caught my fancy. About something I read, something I watched. About whatever I have on my mind when I make a blog entry. I want what I write here to be something that readers can get some enjoyment from.

I want as many people as is possible to read my blog, so that as many people as is possible can find something, anything, in my blog, which made it worth the read. I want a blog which is worth the time and effort to read. After all.

It's four and a half years.
And counting.
Of content.
Filled with entries that are this length and longer.
Like, what's my longest entry? I wouldn't even know, but it'd have to be something probably ten times as long as this already-lengthy blog.

I know that even I can't read all four and a half years of my blog.
I can't even really stand to skim too much of it. I just don't have the time/focus to review it all, even though I know that I'd actually be better off if I did review what I wrote/said from time to time so that things that I said that I didn't want to be forgotten, aren't actually forgotten.

And if I.
The girl who wrote the blog in the first place.
If I.
The person who made the entries in the first place.
If I.
The person who can read 800 pages in a single night and then some.
If I.
The person who could read almost all of Worm in the span of weeks, and then finish the rest in the span of days. When that work is over a million words long by some significant amount.

If I can't do it.

Then I doubt anyone else could. And even if they could, I doubt that they would.

Sure, some people like to stay fairly current on my blog; they read it every day, or if not, they binge-read it every few days, every week, every month, you name it. Some people do that, and can do that. That's not too hard to do; keep current on something updating every day.

But starting from the beginning? Yeahhhhhhh nobody can start from the beginning, read every entry, and get caught up, while having read it all well and truly having read it all. It's impossible.

But believe it or not.

I'm actually kinda proud of that.

It's enough content that it's impossible to keep track of it all.

Instantly that means it's worth more than most other things.

I know that my few readers, such as they are, have changed over the years.
I know that they come and they go.
That I legitimately do have a small readership who stay...but who said readers are that stay, tend to change.
But right now the closest I have to inspiration to do something is...well. Just this. My blog.

At this point, I think that the closest thing I'll ever have to a lasting legacy is in fact this blog.
Not any story I'll write; I won't probably ever publish even though that's been a lifelong dream of mine.
Not any webcomic I'll start; I won't probably ever finish any of them no matter my desire.
Not any ambitious project, e.g. a video game, Phyrra and Cyrus; you actually think that I, me, Bree, could actually have the conviction necessary to see it through, by myself? Nooooooooot a chance in hell. Maybe, maybe, MAYBE with the right support network I could see them through, but that would require that support network be perfectly placed and able to push me in that direction actively and consistently and continuously and to keep me from slacking.

Realistically speaking.
This blog is it.
It's all I'll ever actually have as lasting proof.
Because after I'm gone.
You'll have random scattered notes everywhere about random scattered ideas I had. In bad handwriting, with most of the papers having long-since deteriorated due to whatever various poor conditions they were stored in having withered away the penciling/ink to the point where the already-basically-unreadable writing is turned utterly-illegible. 

The ideas die with me.
And because I will probably never actually get those ideas to reality.
They will never be made. They will always just...disappear, when I (hopefully very very very far away) eventually die.
Which, mind you, I know is morbid and is obviously something which isn't something that many people (including myself) like to dwell on, but is a hard fact of life. Much as we like to dream of being immortal and plan on living forever, everyone including myself dies eventually.

Since I don't want to really ponder on it much further, not going to say more on that than that, but what I'm focusing on is how this blog is basically...well. Assuming it isn't taken down at some point. (Which would really really suck and screw you weebly if you ever do that to me.) It's the proof I was alive. It's the proof I was a person. It's the proof I existed. It's the best insight into my personality, my being, my existence, that will remain. It's the record of who I was as a person.

It's not a perfect record, of course. But it's a lasting insight into who I am--and it is something which is there available for everyone to see. It is available to all, which is one of the things which I've always wanted. I've wanted to share myself with the world. I've wanted to share my being with others, open up and just. Tell them about myself. Tell them anything and everything about me.

Basically lay out my life's story, except for the things about my life that I want to keep private to only me or those that I choose to share those things with. (E.g. things that I tell my girlfriend and only my girlfriend are...pretty self-evidently, going to have a level of intimacy to them.)

This blog is who I am. It's not all of who I am, but it is who I am, as is recorded in time, in history. And I know nobody reads it, in spite of my dreams otherwise. But that doesn't stop the dreams from existing. Of this blog. Of my writing here. Being the thing that I get from others all the time.

Of being something that enriches the lives of those who read it. Of being something worthwhile to have read. Of being something that people actually enjoyed experiencing. Of sharing my visions with others, and those visions having inspired those others, in spite of them having been mine.

I guess that typing this out has made me feel even better than I was before, a little. Because that spark is there. Mind you. Beyond continuing to blog every day, not gonna do anything with it. I could, theoretically, have ways to spread my blog to others. When I comment on webcomics that allow you to link to a site, I deliberately avoid linking to any site including this blog, even though I could easily do so without consequence and have said link theoretically lead to potentially more exposure. Same for comments on Worm; I left a few and had that option, but chose not to take it.

I could theoretically explore post options more; there's options for search engine optimization. There are sites which I have profiles on that don't link to my blog even though both ComicFury and the site I play mafia on contain the blog link; on the ones that don't, I could add it in.

By having an increased presence on other sites, with a link to the blog, I would in theory be able to get an increased number of readers. Heck, all of those are free but if I really wanted to, there are paid options to expand what I can do using weebly's software (paid options which can go to hell as far as I'm concerned; I'm never paying so much as a cent to weebly and if they try to force me to, they can kiss my presence goodbye; I'd find somewhere else to blog).

That I can list these options but am not going to do them tells you what I mean--I could do more with my blog to increase its exposure, and with luck, increase the odds of my dream coming true, of me succeeding in having it be what I dream of dreams it being, of it being uplifting, inspiring, and so on and so forth.

But beyond making entries like this.

I won't actually do that.

So the dream will remain just that, a dream.

​But it's a nice one to have, isn't it?

It's just that with shutdown week at work, I don't work for six days (stupid bloody staff meeting scheduled during last day of shutdown week means I don't quite get the full week). No work, no need to go to bed at midnight. Also, with depression set in as well (it comes and goes but is still definitely here to some extent), I had free time.

Lots of free time.

As in.

"Binge-read about 840ish comics in a night", time--albeit spread out across two comics. One appears to be on a hiatus for whatever reason (the tvtropes page didn't mention why, but it's probably something which I could track down the info on why if I searched, but I don't need it to recognize that not updating for a year is a hiatus for some reason), but was quite the good read in the form of dream*scar.

The other still updates, and is called The Fantasy Adventures of Jack Cannon. Though I haven't read them yet, I also picked up two extra comics which I may or may not get around to binge-reading this week. I just...kinda...felt like reading, I guess? Depression tends to be the time I do a lot of that. Comics can be kinda uplifting to read (even if the content is anything but--within reason), and for some reason I just am really good at reading stuff.

Those 800 pages? It was done in less than three hours. That's about my estimate, at least. Didn't mark the exact begin time, but I know that I started well after midnight--I started on TVTropes, with a browse based around the EGS trivia page (image liiiiiiiiinks), and it was only from there after reading multiple pages (well parts of them anyway) that I found the comics, which is where my estimate comes in.

I'm guessing that the TVTropes browsing concluded at about 1:30ish? Okay so maybe it was under four hours, but I was finished before 5:30. Depending on my start time, then, guess it may or may not be that impressive. But to give you an idea of the TVTropes browsing I did, it was the pages The Atoner, Chirping Crickets, Conveniently Seated, Deadly Upgrade, Defensive What, Defrosting Ice Queen, Differently Dressed Duplicates, Distracted By My Own Sexy, Dope Slap, Education Mama, Fantastically Indifferent, Faux Yay, Filler Strips, Flat What, Gender Bender, Hates Being Touched, Humanity Ensues, and Hyperspace Mallet.

I started after midnight, made my way through all of those, then started the webcomics, and did that in less than five hours, sooooo. Reference point, kinda sorta. Point is. Pretty sure that's not a normal reading speed and that most people can do less than that in that amount of time.

One of my gifts, I guess.

Once more, by the way, my conclusion's the same as I made originally; reading vastly enriches my life, but largely gives me nothing except a method of doing something other than sleeping to deal with the depression. When you don't feel like doing anything else...it is something that at least feels like it had purpose, because, again. Enrichment. I feel genuinely enriched by the experience.

Not, mind you, particularly inspired (though there's a really good EGS sketchbook entry I'm deliberately not moving past because reading it was incredibly inspiring and I'm hoping that rereading it will get me reinspired when the depression wave has faded), but still enriched. I don't see anything productive from spending the time reading the stories/tropes. But it still felt good, and it felt like it was something that I was better for having read. 

Which, given the depression, is about as much as I can really ask for.

Oh and by the way--speaking of the time. Did I mention it's almost six am? I should probably go to bed soon. The coffee I had six hours ago's by now fully worn off. Not that that was what was stopping me from going to bed mind you. But. It contributes. I'm not particularly tired (tired enough to go rambling on in the magic productivity zone of "tired enough to wander, not tired enough to not be able to be any semblance of coherent"), but I can feel the sensation of tiredness and even if I couldn't...

...Objectively. I kinda know I should be going to bed anyway.

Soyeah.
Spent the night reading.

​Now to spend half the day sleeping.

A really, really big, nice, screw which is one of my favorite imaginary weapons to play around with due to the raw potential found in the spiral shape (and, no, that's not the gurren lagann within me; I was fond of spiral-based weaponry before that show ever existed, yet alone, watched it--but after having done so, spiral-shaped weaponry became even more broken than it already was in terms of powers go for me because it went from "really, really strong" to "basically the strongest if it exists in the setting").

It actually got me thinking of it being a drill--again, not because of gurren lagann. Because the drill was the weapon of one of the seven original grandmasters of the blood masters and I imagined the screw as having the ability to cause its wielder to bleed for a power-up, leading to the obvious association. (The original drill that inspired the blood master was a drill from some childhood toy, WAY predating gurren lagann for the curious. At the time, I was expanding out the original blood master idea and turning whatever items I had on hand in my bedroom near my bed into items that could be made into being their weapons. The original grandmaster and his rival? Two different versions of the Capri Sun yellow straw. One thin, the other thick. No, seriously. When I said 'had on hand in my bedroom near my bed', I meant exactly that.)

Took me not too terribly long to track down the two pertinent blog entries on the subject where I go into the drill-style blood masters. Keep in mind that's for the blood masters as they exist in the rubyverse, not as they exist in other stories although the two are obviously closely linked. (The blood masters exist in no less than three different universes. One, Mythe, being my ripoff of Lorithia, the world of Artix Entertainment games, which is where the concept of grandmasters originated from; a second, where the urban fantasy elements originated from and actually the original story idea came from, was the origin of the characters who were imported into the Rubyverse; the third being the Rubyverse.)

But I wanted to expand upon the Guy clan style, relating to the drills. The Guy clan was always more or less the "just kinda...there" added on attachment to the Blood Masters. The founding member was a protagonist. His rival was a secondary protagonist; his main supporter that was originally unpowered before his nature as a latent blood master was discovered was also a secondary protagonist.

The dragon clan was a power that I was reusing, but while having not much of the same role in the story, was notable at least for having visible role in fights, because I had a clear, unambiguous idea of what the power was and how it worked (because it was a power I was reusing).

The seventh grandmaster was an import from a different setting technically speaking. Originally, the grandmasters were their own story (so I guess technically blood masters exist in no less than four different universes), but I decided to import them into a grander narrative (which was itself imported into the rubyverse) and that setting, Mythe, had in its "modern day" the seventh grandmaster coming in about 20 years or so after the first six, where the order of the blood masters was fairly established and no longer new, but still relatively young as an order.

I knew all of their functions quite well.

But both the Guy clan and the Gentleman clan (who I completely forgot what weapon I originally had for him; katana? rapier? Legit have no clue what I used; as far as the rubyverse is concerned it's a rapier but heck if I know what it was originally), I didn't really expand on beyond them just being there.

...The history of blood masters in my creative works is incredibly complex.
I suppose I should say it simply.
Two separate, unrelated, stories, involved blood masters, which worked similarly but differently.
One was on the microscopic scale; I was manually manipulating objects I could hold in my hand, treating them as weapons, and imagining the characters using them in a fairly medieval setting fighting both grand armies and superpowered evil blood masters. There were no other individuals in this original original setting.

The other was more on the macro scale; I was personally roleplaying as the blood master. This one was the modern urban fantasy setting. The blood masters were one of a few surviving clans in the modern days, after centuries of shadow warfare behind the scenes throughout the millenia had wiped out most other clans.

The "evil" blood masters were a main antagonist here, just like the other story, and just like the other story, they were "basically functioned as if they were vampires" (an element not found in the rubyverse mind you), capable of extending their lifespan artificially by draining the blood from others. Most blood master fights were with other blood masters, not always the evil-not-quite-vampires, either.

There was no unified blood master order in this setting; blood masters exist as a grand clan but are first and foremost individuals living their own life in that setting. They do have sets of rules, mostly for dealing with blood masters that break the rules or to bond together against threats to the masquerade (other clans, evil blood masters, etc.), but by and large existed independently from one another.

Other clans existed, but were rare, with most of them having gone extinct. One notable, thought-extinct rival clan was the shadow masters, whose powers were of equal scale and devastation to the blood masters. It is notable that this was the setting where blood master power tiers originated from.

Both settings were developed contemporary to one another. With me playing god in one and me playing the part of a character in the other--both have equal claim to being the originator of the idea of blood masters; I'm not actually sure which one came first because both came so early as to be impossible to tell. Separate, different, unique ideas.

The original grandmaster idea was then imported to Mythe. (Where the origin of the bloodmaster-vampire alliance came into being.)
Then when I imported the ideas to the rubyverse, they were combined into their rubyverse format.

But ANYWAY.
That's a bit of a tangent.
I wanted to expand on the Guy clan, the drill clan, because the screw I have was really conductive to that.

I said originally that the Guy clan focused on redirection; catching an attack and bouncing it back with extra power, basically--but I realized that in actuality, that's only the start of their powers. The spiral nature of their drill would allow for them to have one of the greatest ranged attacks of the blood masters with the highest piercing power, capable of penetrating otherwise-impenetrable targets. (Granted, they wouldn't be alone in this high-range, high-piercing power. Both stave styles would have bullet-like shots from their spears; the blood whip is incredibly long-range; the bow-and-arrow style is self-evidently ranged. However, with the exception of the dragon's blood whip, none of those are a continuous attack, whereas the Guy clan's spiral attack is continuous.)

The razor-sharp edges of their drills make for incredible slicing power as well, especially when spinning, creating a little bit of a gore-fest when they are in melee range. But I realized that they had an extra advantage; mobility and zone control almost unrivaled.

Drills being drills, they can...well...drill into objects, including the ground, to more or less achieve controlled detonations/controlled collapses/etc. Demolishing buildings, rocks, trees, tunneling under opponents, etc. Obviously, to do this over a full battlefield you need more than just one blood master (they regenerate blood at an accelerated, not unlimited, rate and drilling underground uses up a fair amount of blood), but it gives a nifty explanation for why they were out of focus in my mental image of fights between blood masters and rival armies--

They weren't very visible on the battlefield because their role was to control the battlefield in areas invisible to "my" observation point as "god" from the "sky". Certain key members like their leader? Sure, visible, fighting on the surface, but their lack of prominence in spite of their potential power now has an explanation whereas previously it did not.

I also learned that with the particular screw I am holding, the drill weapons could have an additional boost not otherwise available to them: serving as a blood-fueled rocket. (The back of the screw can be seen as a point where energy blasts out, rocketing the user forward in the direction the screw/drill is pointed.)

It'd work by channeling blood both into the drill (creating a magnified blast of wind to basically reduce resistance/drag to nil) and the 'pommel' of the drill, where the boost is--granting the Guy-style blood master limited flight if pointing upwards, as well as being able to close an incredible amount of distance in an instant, and allowing for shooting around the battlefield.

Know how in animes you have some characters who can, as fast as the eye can see, bounce back and forth (sometimes on just air)? The ones which build all that momentum, evade, and strike with incredible speed/power when they stop bouncing around? The Guy style blood masters can do exactly that. 

They can even weaponize this exhaust.
By flipping their weapon around and by grabbing the razor-sharp drill, channeling their blood into that back? (Making it function a lot like a wizard's staff.) They launch what is basically a big laser beam--not with the same pinpoint focus/penetration power as their normal attack, but with every bit the same range and with a MUCH wider beam, allowing them to mow down unprotected masses of enemies.

However, this gave me the idea for why the Guy clan isn't basically the default clan, for why they're a fairly small subsect of the total number of blood masters. Each and every single one of their non-redirection attacks? (They still have that basic ability, too, it's just that it's their basic ability, not a more advanced one.) Each and every single one of their signature moves outside of redirection.

Drilling underground.
The super-penetrating ranged drill attack.
The rocket.
The laser beam.

All of them use up blood at an accelerated rate, draining the blood master's resources faster than other styles, making their achilles' heel be the duration for which they can fight at peak efficiency. They are masters of bringing absolute sheer destruction and control to the battle, but can only provide it for a short time before being reduced to a support role, where all they can do is redirect and amplify. (Mind you, they are very efficient at this because in spite of their attacks draining blood, they are very efficient at using their blood. Or maybe it's because their powerful attacks drain so much blood that they are efficient at using blood. Same end result.)

Again explaining why they didn't have much prominence.

Feels like a really neat explanation to me, which is why I felt like making this blog post. I just kinda expanded on something that had always bugged me, and now have it at a level where I am happy with what I came up with.

Granted.

This is for something that nobody will ever get to see the light of day on.

The original grandmaster story was a generic one, which I have dozens of different similar stories to. Not dozens, actually. Hundreds. Even thousands. I'm not making it.

Mythe as a setting I kinda lost interest in beyond the one story. Plus, at least one of the very key fundamental stories to the setting of Mythe (actually, at least two), I've forgotten most/all of the details of. Fundamental parts of the setting's background/lore/backstory I've forgotten. I could work with it, but I probably won't.

These details were never relevant to the urban fantasy version of the blood masters--which, by the way, I actually wrote at least part of the story for. I even emailed it to an online friend of mine so in spite of having lost the original I could at any time pull up what I wrote and post it if I felt like it. Could continue it if I wanted. (Technically, could also do this with the relevant part of Mythe, because I did write part of the origin story of the seventh grandmaster.)

And all of this? This is canonical material in the rubyverse, sure...but is offhanded pretty much. I'm not sure any of this will even get mentioned in the rubyverse. The blog pretty much contains all my plans for what will be mentioned in red hood rider proper; Gary goes to visit a blood master in order to increase is control over his Water Rider powers. They may get brief mentions from vampires, too. That's literally it.

So pragmatically speaking.
For all intents and purposes.
What I just went into detail about, figured out, spent time extrapolating out?

Utterly, 100%, completely and entirely irrelevant and worthless. Word of God material, All There In The Manual material, but not something seen in canonical material proper in spite of being considered canon.

OH WELL.
It made me​ feel better, so that's good enough for me!

Aside from how I have work tomorrow and need to get up at 6 am (so there's pragmatic reasons for it as well), I simply am feeling really really tired. I can't drink coffee, I can't nap without screwing up my sleep, and words are having that blend-together effect, soooooooo.

I'll need to hold on for an hour yet.

Wait, me making an entry before midnight?

Why yes. Yes, I am indeed making an entry before midnight, to help facilitate the process of going to bed at midnight. Usually when I say "bed at midnight", by the time I run all my errands (blogging, pills, and petting the kitteh), it's usually 10-30 minutes past midnight.

Soyeah, earlier blog today.

Today was obviously mother's day and doubled as our birthday celebration for my younger sister. There were plenty of good times to be had (ha I typo'd that as 'bed' nice subconscious telling me what I already know I want), and we watched Spaceballs.

I always wish that I had a way of sharing the events of a typical family night with those that I'd want to share them with, especially on days where the family doesn't end up discussing stuff like politics. (Which is usually done really late at night when my older sister and I are both out of the conversation and usually when my younger sister isn't in attendance, i.e., mostly done between my brother and my dad.) Especially the full family nights with all six members rather than partial ones with four or five of them.

They are just...special family moments, hilarious, fun, unique, irreplaceable. It's something that if you have it in your life, you just know it, you just get what I am referring to, but if it's something you haven't had, it's literally impossible to get, to experience, to understand it even if given vivid descriptions.

Families have in-jokes and those in-jokes aren't understood by outsiders, but even without in-jokes involved, even on a night to night basis, you just have to be there to appreciate it all, and even when I sleep, even when I park myself on the computer (a place where I am usually seen--not entirely unjustifiably so--as "out of it"), I legitimately do.

Also it helps that tonight during family night I felt particularly sexy. In a feminine way. I don't know why, I'm pretty sure I looked anything but, but I felt that way and feeling that way while with family is a rarity to be treasured, given how it normally doesn't--can't--exist.

Speaking of femininity, I felt fairly feminine today at work, too. It's kinda weird. When I first started wearing my underarmor shirt and pants, I felt incredibly feminine when doing so. However, today was the first time I was without, and I felt more feminine without than I was with, in spite of me being quite positive that I got a boost to my femininity when I initially started wearing the look.

Similarly, I am quite positive that when I initially started wearing my V-neck + sweatshirt combo at work for warmth, I felt more feminine...but when I stopped using that look, when I went back to the t-shirt, there was that very same boost in femininity.

It's weird. Rationally, logically, it's probably that the change from the norm feels different and that difference feels empowering, feels feminine to me. But I personally like to hold the theory--however implausible it may be--that each and every time is a permanent increase in femininity. That I was feminine when I began, and slightly more feminine when I wore the sweatshirt, then became more feminine when I removed the sweatshirt, and became more feminine when I started wearing the underarmor, and became even more feminine today when removing it and going back to just the t-shirt as I was before.

It's a nice thought to be having, anyway.

Apparently, when I'm tired like this, my mind wanders more easily. While that isn't very productive for making a coherent blog and leaves each subject in less detail than I intended, I believe a fortunate side-effect of it is an overall longer blog from multiple thoughts I'd otherwise have not blogged about; I thought this blog would be a paragraph or two and just look at what it is now.

Butyeah. That's my blog for today. Will probably also have my pills a bit early, so I can instantly plop down to sleep the second midnight rolls around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the main thing which piqued my interest?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But to go into things a little bit...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I can't make myself want it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just don't.

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

That's no excuse to not write.

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

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

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

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

Almost did it.

...But didn't.

Not because I forgot.

Because I lost interest.

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

It was a choice not to.

Because right now?

The writer within me is dead.

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

But as of right now.

I don't want to write.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, I'd like to reiterate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because I think in mafia games.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One comic a week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mostly have memorized.

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

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

What makes this all be scary?

Well do the math, here.

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

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

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

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

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

Butstill.

The scary thought?

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

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

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

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

And yet.

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

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

And yet.

Instead of that.

I get a comic that never started.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heck.

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

And using that basic map.

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

I could make it be amazing.

Absolutely stunning.

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

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

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

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

​And you know what else this applies to?

The thing inspiring me to make this ramble?

Thaaaaaat's right!

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

So everything I just said about The Descended?

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

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

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

Lots of that stuff, I forgot.

The majority of it, I remember.

And just like The Descended?

Critically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...Except...

...She evolved.

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

AND FURTHERMORE.

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

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

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

So much about the series I've lost.

But in spite of her being largely out of focus.

Crucial details like that?

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

A draw and discard.

Mostly memorized, some lost, but lots gained.

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

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

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

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

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

And yet.
Now.

I want to.

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

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

And I want to do it.

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

Yet if I don't start it now.

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

But in spite of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It takes money that I don't have.

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

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

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

But I want​ to do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And another form teaching can take?

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

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

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

Was so that I could teach those children.

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

Ultimately.

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

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

Supporting them, loving them.

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

Ultimately, though...everything I just said?

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

I want to transition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The hunt proceeded about the way I'd expect it to--every year, we say we need to make it easier (especially on me and my brother). Every year, in spite of insisting that has been done, it proves to not be the case. This year, my older sister swore she made it easy, yet almost every single hiding spot was of a difficulty rating I'd associate with being a hiding spot for my younger sister--the one who she's allowed to be mean to with hiding.

At least three of my eggs were duck taped to surfaces.
At least twice, I ran into the problem of having correctly identified where the egg was, searched for it, and not having found it, and thus making the obvious conclusion; I searched it, it wasn't there, so it wasn't hidden there--except it was.

Suffice to say.
Once. again.

I finished last.

I didn't find a single egg on my own.

Not. one.

Not a single egg, I could locate without a hint.

Normally?

Normally, people can find 2-4 eggs on their own.

Not. one. Could I find without basically being told the answer.
Because the answers were absolute bs hiding spots--hard enough that my younger sister would have trouble with a fair number of them.

My younger sister, the one who my older sister will pull evil stunts like hiding an egg inside of the refrigerator light (okay so that was my younger sister hiding my older sister's egg, butstill), who hid an egg inside of an empty orange juice container, who's hidden eggs inside of salt shakers, from light fixtures, inside the garbage can (with protection), the list goes on and on.

Evil spots like that.

She gave to me.

Suffice to say.

I was not amused.

I have specifically told her.
Time and time again.
Easier.
Easier.
Make it easier.

So I don't always finish dead last.

Yet each year.

Instead of easier.

It's getting harder.

In spite of her saying she made it easier.

She's not telling a deliberate lie, but she's absolutely lying to herself if she thinks that the spots she gave me this year were in any way easy.

The easiest thing to find was my basket, and that's mostly because baskets come in only two hiding varieties: nigh-impossible, or ridiculously easy; last year (or was it two years ago?), she learned that the nigh-impossible way simply wasn't something I'd handle well.

Yes, I am incredibly bitter, why do you ask?
It's not the dead last bit, honestly. It's that there's the sheer level of dissonance between what she said and what she gave me. She said it was easier; what she gave me was something which, egg after egg. I kept saying. "This isn't an egg for my difficulty level!" It was hard enough last year, but this year was ten times harder. 

If you keep on.
Time and time again.
Finishing last.
And time and time again.
You say.
"It needs to be easier."
And you are told.
It is.
Only to find it harder.

You'd be pretty miffed, too!

That I have, so consistently, finished last is a testament to how unskilled I am--yet she consistently is treating me like I should be getting better, rather than worse, and I am getting exactly that. This egg hunt, I wasn't functioning brain-wise for the first half of it. That wasn't what made it hard, though. I knew that even functioning at 100%, I'd never have found those eggs on my own, because they are simply not eggs that are my level; they are things way too hard for me to find in the best of conditions.

Me NOT in the best of conditions, though, made the impossible task just...laughable. Like. Pathetic. I am just entirely frustrated by the whole thing, because the hunt is meant to be equal parts fun and challenging--yet with each. and every. single. passing. failure. There's no fun. There's no thrill. There's no reward.

There's no exhilaration in being hand-fed the answers--which was what every single egg was.
There's no exhilaration from finishing last every single year.
There's no reward in. consistently. failing. Because in spite of saying it needs to be easier. It never actually getting easier.

My younger sister, hiding for my brother? She knows how to succeed at making it easier. My brother found some eggs on his own, without help, and none of the eggs he had were at sister-level difficulty. I saw all of them and went, "yep. For us two, that's an appropriate level difficulty for an egg".

She nailed it.

She did what needed to be done for him.

My sisters hiding each others' eggs are deliberately as evil as humanly possible--that's fine for them, because knowing each other as they do, they can usually find most of their eggs without hints because they simply are that good.

But when my sister hides my eggs at that difficulty level.
Instead of the difficulty level appropriate for me.
Instead of the difficulty level which my brother's eggs were at.

It's not fun.
It's a joke.
A bad one.

It's just...

...How could she just.
Be that blind.
To what I am actually able to do?

I literally can't do it at that level.
How could she think what she gave me was at the level my brother's eggs were at.
When the level my brother's eggs were at--the level which my eggs should have been at--was leagues easier than what I actually got?

It turns what should be a fun even into just a pile of pure frustration.
Losing when I feel I legitimately deserved to lose is one thing. If my eggs were hidden in places akin to the places my brother's eggs were hidden, I'd deserve to have lost and there'd be no bitter feelings. Disappointment, sure, yeah, but not bitterness because I'd know that I lost because of stupidity.

Losing because I could never have ever possibly won?
Because the difficulty level was not something appropriate for me?

It's just...why. It's not like I didn't stress it enough. Easier; I said to make it easier. I emphasized that I had lost last time, I emphasized that it took me longest to find mine last time, I said that I needed it to be particularly easy in comparison. Quite explicitly. Clear as could be. E a s i e r.

...Instead? I got eggs that were hidden in fairly creative spots, most never-before-used, never-before-checked; the times they had been used/checked, it wasn't meant for me and I wasn't acutely aware of most of them. And the two eggs which I believe were repeats of mine in previous years? As mentioned, I searched the spots, and when I didn't find an egg after searching them wrote them off because of course when you search thoroughly a spot and find nothing you're going to assume the spot wasn't used.

It's one thing to just casually search through an area and not find it--we miss eggs doing that all the time, par for the course. It's another thing to literally be running your fingers through where the egg is and not feel it and not see it and with the texture feeling like there's no egg there and the visualization feeling like there's no egg there, concluding that there is no egg there...except there was.

I am just...not impressed. There's a difference between making it challenging, and making it impossible-without-handholding-help. Challenging for me is still simple stuff. Challenging for me is still cliched stuff which has been done before. In casual searches I am prone to missing things. It doesn't take much to fool me, but I can usually realize, "oh I didn't look here well", go back, and if there's an egg there, find it. Because I knew I hadn't searched it as well as I should, and going back, give it the proper attention it needs to find it.

Simple stuff--but still enough to give it a hunt.

When I miss an egg because I did look there well, when I did look thoroughly, or when I miss an egg because I've just given up on it on the sheer inability of me to have so much as a clue as to where it could possibly be because there's just nowhere left I could so much as fathom.

That's not difficult.
That's not challenging.

That's just sheer cruelty. And as I said--my sisters can be evil to each other as much as they want to be, but they're not supposed to be that way to the other two, me and my brother, when hiding ours.

...Yet that is exactly what I got put through.

After having had a thoroughly miserable time last year, for much the same reason.
And maybe the year before that, too.

She's not learning the lesson, and the only lesson I'm learning is that I'm a worthless piece of junk.

This is just.

The polar opposite of what our egg hunt is supposed to instill.

It's supposed to be entertainment.
It's supposed to be uplifting.
But every year.
I am just...increasingly more and more dejected.
Because all I am getting.
​Is how trash I am.

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

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

So while we're here.

Might as well talk about it some more.

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

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

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

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

Given how much I pride myself in my writing.

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

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

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

...Why is that significant?

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

Which is what Phyrra and Cyrus are supposed to be.

It gets better.

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

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

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

...But it gets even better.

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

When body-swapped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So in a sense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think you get what I mean.

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

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

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

I am comparing to the show.

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

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

Getting a bit late, so let's get the blog in for today, since I need one for today rather than relying on the one from yesterday that just so happened to be past midnight. Let's start with the Civ 3 mod work. Right now, I'm documenting the various technologies, and specifically documenting what things are assigned to what techs.

It is slow, meticulous work, especially since in many cases, I don't actually know. But things are coming together, slowly but surely. Mind you. This work is just a prelude. I'm working out what is assigned to what tech, mostly so that I can make sure techs have the correct chronology and to see if there's any unnecessary techs that can be cut out to reduce on the clutter.

Right now, I have 9 wonders not assigned to techs (all middle ages ones, want to get that scenario to get them best placed), pretty much most small wonders not assigned to techs (I need to check on them to see if they even are assigned to techs; most I think are not), and 36 buildings not assigned to techs (mostly, government ones/made up ones and medieval ones).

Who the heck knows how many units I don't have assigned, but quite a number. Still, though, if I can actually nail down the exact contents and chronology of techs, then I'll be able to figure something out.
My goal here is more or less to see what techs are prerequisites for other techs, as well as to make sure both unit and building progressions continue correctly, as well as to appropriately time buildings/wonders as much as possible. (Given that wonders will be souped up to include "puts building in every city" for pretty much most.)

Documentation is, again, documentation rather than work, but all things considered, this is progressing amazingly quickly. Like, I was not expecting to be doing as well as I am with the tech tree; I was expecting it to be an absolute, complete and total nightmare, and while trimming the tech tree down so that it's any semblance of functional will be difficult, it's not altogether impossible thanks to what I'm doing now.

Also, ultimately, the tech tree doesn't need to be aesthetically pleasing. It can break the boundaries of the science window...so long as it is still functional when doing so. Techs overlapping by a pixel or two, techs with a pixel or two off the edge of the screen, techs with coordinates placing them in slightly obstructive spots, etc.

(Speaking of techs, I need to figure out how to get the science adviser to have commentary on each of them, another thing for the to-do list.)

As long as it can be figured out reasonably intuitively, that's all that matters. Since the arrowheads between techs were never going to be lined up anyway (that requires some sort of messing around in some sort of specialized program or something of that sort, the simple version of it is that it can't be done in just paint--the only program coming with the computer--so as far as I'm concerned that equates to not being able to do it at all), it was always going to be something which people would need to figure out on their own.

And I'm fairly certain the logical progression I have makes sense. At least it does to someone who's played both the vanilla game and all the scenarios, with an idea of what sort of things to expect.

With that out of the way.

It's early enough that I can talk about the idea I wanted to yesterday.

It's a superhero setting I'm dubbing with a working title of the Quadraverse, a superhero setting heavily inspired by the world of parahumans, the setting of Worm. (Three of the four main characters were more or less built with the idea of, "what could I do to make a fairly realistic cape for that setting?", with the fourth technically also fitting but having been created after I knew it'd be a different one.)

I'm not going to bother looking up if the name "quadraverse" is taken, because this is a story idea that I won't ever actually make. Given I won't actually make it, doesn't really matter if the name's taken; I'd have to change it if it were taken, sure, but since I'm not going to make it, not worth looking up to see if I need to.

Because all good superhero settings need a slang name for supes, this one uses the term "Duals". This name has three layers to it. The first is the obvious; duals have a dual identity, a civilian life and a life of crime, heroics, or whatnot. The second is in acknowledgement that no power has inherently one use. A stereotypically good power can be used by the worst of villains; a stereotypically evil power can be used by the most heroic of people; all powers thus have equal potential for good and evil.

But the true and final meaning of it: every human has a soul...but duals have a second soul, from which their power draws from. This second soul is what allows them to control their power; its link to the first soul, but separation from it, acts as a conduit, a control circuit. It allows people to not always have their power on, it allows people to have passive powers, it allows people to access their power and have an innate, inherent, instinctive control over it, safely, without the risk of being hurt by their own ability.

The story I invented revolves around the formation of the fourth iteration of a group, Heroes 4 Hire, which as the name suggests, has four members that are heroes, who perform heroics for a price...sort-of. Across all iterations of the group, they have held a common mandate in how they operate; they are genuinely heroic and altruistic, but also pragmatic and recognize that they're human and thus, can't always help everyone.

Basically, they operate as a group with a separation from any governing entity; they are independent from the government, albeit having a partnership with them. The main reason for this is for personal freedom; no bosses, no rules, no regulations, no need for PR, no need to obey commands, no need to do things they don't want to, no need to follow things by-the-book at the cost of doing the right thing, no need to be burdened by the law, no need to be under control of people who don't know how the world works, no need to be influenced by corrupt politics, no need to be bossed around by people whose motives are disconnected from heroics.

Heroics done the way they want heroics to be done...and done when they want to. Flexible rather than rigid schedules. The right to choose not to save people, the ability to decline without consequence, simply because they are not obligated to accept a job. They can take breaks, they can rest, they can do things at times other heroes are indisposed, they can do things other heroes can't.

And yet--while they do aim for personal gain, they can take jobs for free, if they want to. Doing good on the street just for the sake of doing good, not because they were ordered to. Just because doing good was the right thing to do. Yet they reserve that right to take jobs for personal gain, to earn money, to make a profit, to actually make significant money off of their efforts.

The group isn't quite full-time, but is so dedicated to it that they basically are anyway; the things they do outside of their hero work are mostly passions/hobbies of theirs. (Even if said passions/hobbies involve a profession where they can make money.) Heroics is their life's work, their job, and as a proper job, they need to get paid enough in wages to at least make do, but preferably live a little luxuriously.

The group has received flak for this, the group has had trouble because of this, the governments partnered with them receive criticism for allowing a group with no oversight to effectively act with the same authority as groups with oversight, but they live care-free enough to not be that concerned about it.

The first iteration of Heroes 4 Hire had the following members (mind you, these weren't the ones who I got the inspiration for the setting from; that's the current iteration):
Spear-It, the team leader, had (well, has, he's retired but still alive) an ability to summon a "spirit" form. Said spirit form would function almost entirely the same way a normal human would; he could see through their eyes, smell through nose, hear through ears, etc. He could do this without distraction, able to fully control his own body naturally and his spirit form separately. Said spirit form was entirely invisible, not so much as a single piece of evidence it existed, and utterly intangible in all regards (aside from his ability to sense via touch through it).

There was no visible link between him and his spirit. There was also no known range to his spirit. The spirit could function even when he was unconscious. The spear part comes in the form of the spirit form being able to summon an unlimited supply of phantom spears, which were the only part of the spirit able to affect the physical world...and could do so tremendously effectively, puncturing through just about anything with ease.

He was the big guns of the team, handling most of their offense.

...After he announced his name to be Spear-it, the rest of the team (originally planning to let him name them) wisely decided that they'd pick their own names and not leave it to him as originally intended.

Ribcage, who shared the second-in-command position on the team, was (well, still is) a tecchie (read: tinker; this setting's slang for technology-based heroes) who specialized in creating bars, usually used for entrapment. (Spear-it's proposed name for him was Bar-ier.) He handled containment and served as the team's defense.

Chain Link, the other second-in-command of the team, was a person with the power to see how all things are connected to one another. (This is a power which you see used on occasion quite effectively.) This basically made him an invincible combatant, able to perfectly chain things to have the exact desired outcome he wanted, but in spite of his combat potential, he usually acted as, in tandem with Ribcage, the team smarts, coordinating their efforts to maximize their effect.

He retired at the same time the rest of his team did, but came out of retirement to fight in the event that would later become known as the Fall of London, and like most heroes who fought there, died in the wake of the disaster. However, he'd later be revived by the antagonist Horseman. (See below for more details there.)

Spear-it's proposed name for him was Ball-swing (off of the idea of a newton's cradle).

Port, the final member of the team, had (well, has) the ability to shoot from his fingers, stretching out as far as he wants, portals to wherever he thinks of. Since he can open as many portals as he has fingers, and these portals need not be directly in front of the fingers (the portals, oval-like, are connected to his fingers with an energy-string; this string can be all bendy, like this ~, to vary their exact location).

Since they could extend as far as he wanted them to, and could be to anywhere he wanted them to, and each portal was as large as he wanted them to be (within reason; the minimum size was that of a finger and the maximum size about twice the size/width of a person), and he wasn't limited to just one, he was quite effective as a method of transporation, especially since as long as he kept the portals open, they were two-way.

Spear-it's proposed name for him was Fingerport.

Eventually, the first generation of Heroes 4 Hire decided to pass the torch on to the next generation, giving their blessing for a group of young upstart kids looking to get into the heroics business to make use of it, as long as they strived towards the same goals as they had.

This group was comprised of the following:
Streamline, the leader of the group, was a genius tecchie, whose work pretty much allowed for the existence of other tecchies (Ribcage included!). As a young kid, he make three pivotal breakthroughs, paving the way for the inventions tecchies would make use of: the Graviton Manipulator Field (allowing for easy flight), the Light Loop (a way to make a continuous loop of pure light), and the Space Compactor (a way to have things unfold from a compact form).

To the modern day, as a tecchie, he is world famous for said breakthroughs, and is well-known as the creator of ten technologies making use of these inventions:
The Lancenet (a compact weapon which extends out a long distance, with the aim to capture and control), LightBlade (basically a lightsaber), LightClaws (a blade below the shoulder, essentially, mounted on the hands from the wrist below, acting both as a personal shield/defense system and as a powerful hacking weapon at close range), Ringboard (a hoverboard that's ring-shaped), Spearboard (same basic design, only unfolded to not be a ring), Triboard (basically combining the benefits of the spearboard and ringboard), Wheelboard (basically a souped-up, compact, motorcycle; you grab onto the handle, and two gigantic wheels unfold from it that you can then steer; a bubble encases you and you move at a maximum speed of ~400 mph, which doubles up as, when in its compact form, a really effective staff weapon), Medboard (a better stretcher/backboard that can also serve as a restraint, with a built-in system capable of both analyzing the person strapped in and putting them in stasis if need be, useful not only for saving people but containing criminals for transporation), Stun Cannonboard (a stun gun with a wide beam that has no recoil and can travel in the air), and Stun Gunboard (aside from the Wheelboard, the only 'board' not capable of being airborne, a gun version of the stun cannonboard which comes equipped with various tools, like scans, scopes, etc.).

To this day, the group is able to function from the profits of the patents he got on them. Many of those things are in high demand, in both the private sector and the government. Medboards, stun gunboards, and wheelboards most famously, for their sheer versatility as tools.

He was the older brother of Webster.
In spite of being world-famous for his breakthroughs and his inventions, his career as an actual hero is relatively obscure.

Timewarp, similarly to Ribcage, held status as being shared second-in-command. His power was to shift people forward or backward in time--they'd stay in the same spot, but they'd be in a different time. If he sent people forward in time, they would disappear in the interim time altogether. If he sent people backwards in time, their past self would vanish from existence. As a result, he could only send people backwards in time a maximum of 24 hours, but forward in time as much as he'd like.

He mostly used his power as a form of recon, as well as a way of controlling the environment; his ability wasn't limited to just people, and could be anything. Good at search and rescue. If a person was dead or in too bad of shape, simply shift someone back in time to a spot where they'd be able to help avert the disaster in the first place.

Gridlock, the other second-in-command, had the power of creating geometrically-based constructs out of something not quite hard light but not quite pure energy, in-between. Think forcefields, made out of methodical mathematical precision, except not limited to just forcefields; he could make lines, he could make spheres, he could make anything he could think of, so long as it followed a basic abstract form/shape. So no meticulously creating, sayyyy, a car, or the types of things you'd see a green lantern make. 

Making a grid was his signature move, thus his name, one which was utterly unbreakable.

Webster, the younger brother of Streamline, is the only member to be in all three iterations except for the first, and thus, I'll be discussing his power when I talk about the rest of his current team. However, I'll say that at the time, he was the rookie of the team, the youngest member.

As a whole, the second iteration of Heroes 4 Hire were a group of close-knit friends. The first iteration were loose associates, who over the course of their career bonded; the second iteration were bonded before their career in heroics started. They started as soon as they were legally old enough to begin (which was years after Streamline had made his breakthroughs, although he hadn't made all his inventions at that time), and not long after earned the respect of the first iteration, who carried their blessings on to be worthy successors.

However, while they had many successes in their career, eventually, they took on a job they shouldn't have--at the behest of Chain Link's desperate request, they helped out in the event that'd become known as the Fall of London. All but Webster were killed in this encounter, like most that participated. Having gotten in well over their heads, they were simply outclassed.

Gridlock and Timewarp would later be revived by Horseman (see below).

The third iteration of Heroes 4 Hire, led by the shellshocked Webster, were based largely around replacing his lost teammates.

Canvas, his replacement for Gridlock, had the ability to paint reality in front of him.

Rigger, his replacement for his brother Streamline, was a tecchie with a specialty in jury-rigging devices together; he would connect things, devices, technologies, that were otherwise unrelated, to create a hodgepodge of various useful devices, albeit haphazard and prone to malfunctions. This power was more versatile, able to make anything from anything, but more unreliable, because the things created weren't guaranteed to work.

Spacewarp, his replacement for Timewarp, didn't exactly warp space--instead, he created the vacuum of space, surrounding him. As in. It literally was like anything surrounding him in a ten-foot radius was physically transported to outer space, with all the effects that would entail. No gravity, no air, really cold, etc.

However, Webster in his inexperience as a leader made a mistake when recruiting them; they were focused too much on the 'Hire' and not enough on the 'Heroes'. Eventually, all three of them at once turned traitor on him, out of pure, sheer, unadulterated greed; not satisfied with their earnings, they betrayed Webster and allied with a villain in order to seize more money than Webster could ever hope to offer them.

For their trouble, Webster killed them all.

However, undaunted, he eventually succeeded in recruiting two new members, and eventually, managed to recruit a fourth and final member for the fourth iteration. (The story would follow the fourth member as the protagonist, in spite of Webster being the main character. He joins a month or so after the other two are recruited.)

Which leads to a team comprised of:

Gong has a fairly lame-sounding set of abilities. His skin turns into a metallic brass-colored substance. In this form, he is pretty much indestructible. He doesn't need to breathe (though he can't eat or drink in this form, meaning he does need to exit it), he is resistant to most powers, has some heat resistance in particular, things that pierce or slash will bounce off harmlessly, etc.

However, his main power is in the absorbing of kinetic energy and soundwaves...which, at will, he can unleash in the form of an omnidirectional, audible, blastwave, emanating a series one after another of shockwaves. He is, quite literally, what you'd expect a gong in human shape to be.

Yet this power has some added benefits. His footsteps are absolutely silent, making him good at being unheard, and they allow him to run at an increased speed, giving a limited form of superspeed. Yet by far the most intimidating factor about him isn't what power he has, but what he's like without it; he stands at a quite tall 6'6", and has an absolutely ripped physique, lined with muscles, solidly a wall of pure strength.

That's not a power, by the way. That's just a result of gifted genetics plus a hard workout regiment he stuck to long enough to produce those results. Yet in tandem with his power, they make him utterly unstoppable. He's indestructible, but he packs a mean punch, which can be augmented by unleashing his shockwave. He's a lightning bruiser, fast, implacable (you can't knock him down), invincible (you can't hurt him), and yet strong enough to hit hard.

That's not to say it's impossible to win against him, of course. In terms of superpowers, this is basically just B-list, if that. He's just smart enough to pick and choose his battles such that he never encounters an enemy who could puncture through his power. (Which would be possible; his own teammate might be able to, and it was the 'might' which was enough to cause him to back down from attacking said eventual-teammate. He was in no rush to test the theory out.)

He used these skills to become a freelance bodyguard/bouncer/enforcer, and picked up the skills you might expect from this. Again, these are trained skills, not from a power, but he's quite excellent at picking up on deceptions (both from people and from facts), is a skilled chef, knows how to mix many drinks, and is well-versed in the culture of music (and is respectable good as a deejay).

He ended up working for Webster after fighting Overload in their first encounter, which Webster intervened in and offered them the deal--one which he decided to take, since the pay was decent enough and the cause was something he could support.

He's by far the oldest of the group, being around 27, give or take a few years.

Overload has a fairly restricted power as well. He's got an incredibly limited form of dynakinesis. He can trap energy of most forms (particularly, light/heat/sound), and then cause it to build up, charging up, until it has built up into a bomb. He can then unleash this charged up energy in one of two forms: an omnidirectional blast, or a directed-from-his-palm beam.

If he's knocked unconscious while charging, he'll default to unleashing the omnidirectional version. This ability is only as strong as the combination of "strength of the energy captured * time energy has been building". He is limited in how much energy he can catch to as much as will fit in his right hand (the only way he can use his ability, in fact).

So if he's literally just grabbing air, and stirring it around in his hand, to build up a charge, it will eventually be deadly, but takes a long time to get there. Whereas if he's grabbing a shockwave, then it doesn't take much time at all for him to charge up a lethal strike. Another restriction is that once he starts charging, he can't start charging something else without first discharging what he's got.

The omnidirectional version is weaker and limited in range, whereas the beam version is very easily predicted. Prior to working for Webster, he did not use his powers much, pretty much only using them for self-defense. He followed his older brother into the life of a petty criminal in fact--picking up skills like pickpocketing, lockpicking, hotwiring, hacking, general thievery stuff like optimal ways to break and enter, the like.

Webster incentivized him to stay by appealing to his inner good nature, his ability to secure their future financially and legally, and most of all, by using his connections to get Overload's brother out of the trouble he was in (Gong was hired by people looking to collect a debt), so that they'd be able to clean up their act and use his power for good.

The new recruit, protagonist character, joining after this event by some small amount of time, is Emblaze.
Emblaze, simply, has the power to see and manipulate (to some extent) the souls of those around him. When he is closing his eyes, he can sense the souls of everyone within him (and manipulate them) within 350 feet.

When his eyes are open, he can see and manipulate the souls of anyone he has visual contact with--this contact can be miles away (say, through binoculars), or even through a video feed from a monitor. Heck, he can see (but for obvious reasons, not manipulate) the soul of someone from a recording.

This manipulation is not unlimited. He basically can sense the emotions and intentions of a soul, and can either amplify or dampen them, giving him a limited form of mind control. He can't make an angry person not be angry at all, but he can make the anger turn to hatred (intensifying it), or lessen it to its smallest amount--and because people usually feel more than one emotion at a time, he can cause a different emotion that was present to become larger, achieving much the same effect.

This is a power he uses with extreme caution. Prior to joining up, he was a con artist, scamming people, but used his power to make sure that they were blissfully, happily, unaware of the scam--and if they found out, they'd end up with their lives enriched from the experience rather than ruined. (He picked his victims well, so that at the end of the day, if the con was found out, they'd have a good laugh, learn from it, enjoy it, and move on with their lives.)

That was the extent he was comfortable using it, though after a disaster struck, he went out to help people--being able to sense where they were, he could locate them, and sensing their emotions, he was able to subtly manipulate said emotions so that things like fear were lessened to more manageable levels, lessening pain, lessening panic, basically working as a rescue worker, to relieve them, and that got him interested in being more altruistic.

He was also a gambler, using his ill-gotten goods to "waste" the money earned. Quotation marks, because for any game with a human element, he could use his power to subtly cheat. Mostly, he did it for a good time, though, and made it so that his opponents were having the time of their lives. Upping their feelings of tension, suspense, the like, and rewarding them on occasion with a thrill of the game, even as he swindled their money slowly.

His power also has a nice side-effect: remember how I described powered people as duals, because their powers come from a second soul? Guess what he can sense...and manipulate. He can't make powers disappear, so he's not a power nullifier, but he can act as a power dampener, bringing powers down...or as a power amplifier, increasing their potency.

Because he visually sees souls as flames, this is where his namesake comes from; he fans the flames of the second fire in powered people. This power also serves as a radar for incoming threats, allowing him to detect danger from any direction, and allowing him to understand the general nature of a person's powers.

Every soul has a unique signature, powers no different, and yet, similar souls have similar signatures, so if he's seen a soul of a certain power, he can generally put a ballpark on what sort of power an individual possesses. This power was how he was able to realize Webster in his introduction to the team was using a body double. (Webster, after his second team betrayed him, notably became a bit paranoid.)

He's the youngest of the group, at only 16.

Webster, the leader of the group, is the second-youngest, physically 17 and technically only 18. (Overload's also 18, but with a birthday a few months earlier.) Timewarp saved him by sending him a year into the future, documenting it, and he happened to survive the process.

He can be summed up as "two parts Taylor Hebert, one part Spider Man, one part every character using string-manipulation abilities including Razor Floss and antics like Doflamingo". His power comes in two parts. The first, at a linear rate, is an ability to generate an unlimited quality of silk.

This silk can take on whatever properties he wants it to. Sticky, not sticky; thin, thick; flexible, rigid; insulates from heat/electricity somewhat, etc. Already this is a very powerful ability, but if he just created the silk without a method of manipulating it, it wouldn't make him leader-worthy.

The second part of the ability: as long as a strand of silk he created has a direct link to his body, he has complete and total control over everything about it, a high-level form of telekinesis which serves to make the already-durable material nigh-invincible. (It's almost an immovable object, but sufficiently gamebreaking powers can penetrate through.)

Keep in mind that the strand of silk could be thinner than can be seen by the eye at the point of contact on the body...but there's no limit to how long the strand can be, so down the line it can unfold to create a gigantic construct out of silk. He can be miles away, and then create a clone a mile away...because of a single thread, which spirals out to create a fully humanoid shape, out of nothing but silk.

Indestructible silk, which can be razor-sharp.

What's more--because controlling this silk to such a fine degree requires him to basically "understand" what's happening to the silk, he has the ability to feel and hear through his silk (as long as the silk's still connected to him). (No taste, smell, or sight, though.) Everything his silk touches, he will feel with a perfect understanding and hear with a perfect level of knowledge as to sounds going on.

And he has been weaving silk into everything, for everywhere, for years now. This gives him a limited form of combat clairvoyance; if something is so much as nearby his silk (and his silk is everywhere), he'll know where it is, what it's doing, etc.

He wraps silk around everything, and this serves three purposes. One, it allows for him to call upon reserves of silk faster than he can generate them. He can still generate silk fairly fast, mind you, but in a pinch, he could need more than that amount, and if he's covered an area in silk, he can call upon it at will. Two, it allows for him to sense everything, everywhere.

And three? By creating a solid layer of silk covering something, he gains an understanding of said something...allowing him to make a fully functional copy of said something out of silk. Granted, said silk copy will only work as intended while he's got a connection to it, most of the time (unless the different properties between silk and said something are such that it doesn't matter that it's made of silk and not the material(s) of said something; a chair's probably still gonna work as silk even when cut off, but a helicopter sure wouldn't), but once he's copied an object once, he can create it from memory.

And he's been copying objects for years.

He's also used his power to its fullest multitasking degree, listening to every audiobook, music album, video, film, tv show, video game, etc. that he could (granted, lacking the visuals to go with the audio), effectively allowing him to have memorized every aspect of pop culture in existence and be insanely knowledgeable about everything.

And, yes, as a hobby, he does read the dictionary. He's also studying engineering and art, to make better use of his power, because studying those two fields is directly correlated to his usefulness. He can tie people up ridiculously easily, bind them, trap them, and whatnot, but also makes use of massive walls of silk, shields, and weapons. Swords, staves, even an automatic harpoon gun. Blunted or sharp. Whips, razor floss that cuts through everything, not to mention, creating light as a feather body armor for teammates.

He fights a lot using swarms of silk clones, and competently at that, because he can receive the memory of training from dozens of clones. (Think Naruto's shadow clones; he basically makes a ton of clones, has them attend multiple martial arts schools, and learns everything he can from them.) Also, he's learned how to manipulate his silk to create vibrations enough where he can talk through the silk as well.

And he's quite aware he's only scratched the surface of his power. He reads up on a lot of fiction to see how powers work in other settings, he reads a lot online about how powers work in his setting (which gives a bonus of making him familiar with those he's likely to encounter), drawing inspiration from everything. And anything related to powers he deems useful which he can't get a full appreciation from just sound, he'll obtain and watch/play in his real body so he can see it in person.

I feel like I'm not properly explaining many of these peoples' powers, especially the latest generation of Heroes 4 Hire, but it's time to move onto the antagonists of the story.

A group deliberately made as a mockery of Heroes 4 Hire, called Villains 4 Hire. They are, quite deliberately, structured in a way meant to antagonize Webster in every way, as they oppose him on every level. Including how their members' abilities work.

Spread, their leader, has a power that's basically Canvas's--this is through no coincidence, and is deliberately something meant to torment Webster about his past failure.

Executioner, their second in command, continues the trend as having a power that's basically Rigger's.

Void, continuing the trend even further, has a power that's basically Spacewarp's.

Horseman, their final member, has the ability to revive up to four individuals--said individuals revived are revived with absolutely no memories, no free will, no personality, but retain all their skills, including powers. (This does have the side-effect of not working on tecchies, though.)

He can only resurrect an individual once, but a resurrected individual can continue functioning until destroyed beyond the ability to...well, function. Lop off the head, no problem; cut off an arm, no issue, still works. While there are far more effective uses of the power (imagine reviving a kaiju-like opponent, e.g. reviving something like whatever kind of entity in this setting would be akin to an endbringer), for maximum psychological torturing of Webster, the three revived are the three that he saw killed before him, making a mockery of their deeds as heroes; Chain Link, Gridlock, and Timewarp.

Mind you, just because there's theoretically better uses of the power doesn't mean that the revived individuals are by any means weak; Gridlock's power is nigh-invincible, Chain Link's power still functions (and Chain Link can still speak; the revived aren't mindless, meaning he still serves as mission control...just for the villains now), and Timewarp is a useful scout to have and can cause confrontations to literally disappear from existence.

Why only three?

Horseman can use his power on people who aren't dead, but are on the brink of death, and by that, I mean, life support, would die if taken off it, individuals. However, if he uses his power on someone who isn't dead, they retain their memories, free will, personality, and such, while also retaining their status as being quite alive. Since he has no control over someone revived this way, he can only use it on an ally.

In this case, Void's being supported by this method, as Void--prior to being recruited by the Villains 4 Hire--was on life support, and needs Horseman's power to still function; if Horseman removed his support, Void would fall catatonic instantly.

That's about all I got, and is about all I will get, because the idea's as matured as it can get.

Soyeah, that was my setting idea I talked about yesterday.

Now I've been writing this blog for three hours; I need to eat, then attend to whatever I have time for before bed.