A huge, huge, HUGE breakthrough on Phyrra and Cyrus.
I wanted to give the full blog today, but I was too busy today dealing with stuff to do that, so all I can really give you is that I'm on the verge of naming their world...and have successfully given their 'Verse a name: I gave it a working title of The INFIverse.

Now.

That might sound like a lame name.

But it's anything but.

That name has regards to do with the coolest creation myth I've ever made, and it took me HOURS of brainstorming to hash it out.

A quick google search indicates that I'll need to come up with something else as Infiverse seems to be taken even though I am quite specific about it being INFIverse (the extra letter capitalization holds meaning), but a working title which needs to be changed because it's taken is better than no title for the verse at all!

Still, since the name's apparently taken I'll need to work a little bit harder, but I'm oh so very close.

I also--and this is directly correlated to the creation myth--worked out what the most popular religion in Phyrra and Cyrus is. Quick note, there's no confirmed deities in existence, be it lowercase god or uppercase God, and yet there's numerous religions in existence revolving around the few aspects of the creation of their world that they don't have explained away with science.

Basically there's a very small gap in their knowledge, and that gap is where religion enters the picture; monotheism is more common than pantheism, and I developed the name of the most popular religion. It's probably the name of an existing religion but then again what isn't: Voidism. Again this'll make sense when I explain the way their world was created, which I can't wait to do, but unfortunately need to wait until tomorrow to do.

​I'm just so excited!

Apparently my subconscious is genius, because the idea was spawned from a dream, too. Now, granted. Most of the fleshing out I've been doing over the last twelve hours has been a conscious effort, and given the nature of this, I can't claim credit for MUCH (just the original stuff such as the lore I'm beginning to build), BUTSTILL.

Anyway. Today, the new idea?

A game.

This game was inspired primarily by Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim (and some of the better elements from the hypothetically-if-one-did-exist-sequel which is a shame that they never made. What's that you're saying? Sorry, can't hear you over my lamenting that Majesty never was given a sequel game, you'll have to speak up louder)...

...But throwing in STRONG elements of Nemesis of the Roman Empire (a game literally nobody seems to know anything about existing pretty much; even MAJESTY is less obscure apparently), with fair amounts of Age of Empires II (plus a little from Age of Empires 1 I guess) thrown in for good measure. (Not really Age of Mythology and certainly not Age of Empires III, but the monsters in this game can I suppose take cues from Age of Mythology.) I suppose you can say Starcraft holds some influence, too.

Yes, that would mean that it'd have a bunch of mechanics which are RTS in nature and take from some more traditional RPG styled games, so this isn't "Me imagining Majesty's sequel as it should be"; this is a new game, with inspiration from Majesty. Inspiration, nothing more. You can see the aesthetic of Majesty in the game I envisioned, but you can also clearly tell that this is a separate game, not intended to be identical in any way.

Where do I begin?

I literally gave up my morning shaving/hair brushing/teeth brushing and critically nap in order to write down notes, and I wrote down three full pages worth of notes at work not to mention a fourth mini-page (mini mini page, half of a sheet which is I estimate 1/4th of a normal page, so 1/8th extra) continuing, and these pages were pretty cramped, so I got a LOT of work done on this idea; it was a borderline obsession and I am positive my performance at work was notably suffering (bad because my bosses were both present, but oh well for this I consider it worth it).

Hmm...I suppose I'll start with some of the mechanics.

So this is a game featuring a zoomable map: able to zoom in fairly closely, but also to zoom way out until the units are basically dots, and this zoom is designed to be functional and sane with every zoom in-between, a way to view as much as the kingdom as necessary. (And yes I call it a kingdom, because of the games I listed, Majesty still is the strongest influence on the game.)

Said map can be ROTATED, too. It can be rotated 360 degrees, viewable from any angle at any zoom. It has four "preset" rotations found on buttons, with the default being north (okay so this I took from Zeus: Master of Olympus/Poseidon: Master of Atlantis).

There is a minimap always visible, which has various different options toggled for how/what is viewed.
There is a tracking window below the minimap, to track something the player designates, including the option to rotate through things/places.

The commander would have various different flags (you'll get more about this later on why these are necessary): "Attack this target"; "Don't get near this target"; "Don't go near this area" (for things in the unexplored area which you know are there); "Go to this location"; "Defend this".

The game would have VARIOUS different speed options. Everything from 10% to 1000%; moving in slow motion to moving absurdly fast, faster than a human can realistically follow. The game would also feature the ability to PAUSE. The player can't issue commands when paused (no spells, no commands, no recruits, no upgrades, etc.), but the ability to pause allows for much faster translations between commands for the micromanager especially when paired with the slow game speed.

The game would feature hotkeys, easily set, to allow for fast tracking of specific units/formations/buildings, along with a command to zoom to the selected.

The only REAL resource would be gold--stored both in the treasury (max: 99,999,999), and in various buildings. Gold stored in a building can be used for any purchase IN THAT BUILDING (for instance, a hero building with gold can use gold to recruit a hero without depleting the treasury) and does so by default, BUT, purchases can also be made using the treasury.

In other words, there's a universal source which is used when there's nothing else to use, but you can use locally if you don't want to deplete the universal source. Said local sources feed back into the main source via the economy, anyway, but more on that later.

Said gold is generated over time--automatically a small amount deposited in the treasury as a 'daily income', some from certain items, and collected both from units/buildings (many buildings generate gold, other buildings have gold deposited in them, and both can have it collected; think tax collector from Majesty) and from harvesting gold deposits on the map or from trading. (Resources on the map aside from buildings are destructible; you can destroy them in order to build, but it's a bit wasteful since there's a limited amount you can harvest.)

Thus, it's never possible to run out of gold even though with careless spending it is possible to find yourself a bit short on gold for an inconvenient duration of time.

Every unit within the game would have an AI--every unit. Even units who, under normal circumstances, should never need to be artificially controlled. (Due to a specific level with the quirk of zero obedience, which you'll learn about below.) Each AI would be unique to that unit, but following a pattern. This is the Majesty coming out, you might be able to tell.

Even Peasants and Tax Collectors had their little quirks to them which made them act in weird ways. (Often stupid, but that's beside the point.) This would be that. All units have an AI setting which works on autopilot, and all units with that AI setting follow patterns which, at least theoretically, are optimal usage of their abilities. Non-heroes travel together in groups, for instance.

​In spite of said AIs, the majority of units can be ordered. Henchmen and heroes tend not to really respond to direct orders (though henchmen can be ordered to follow directives, basically, differing behaviors IN their AI), but even they can do so and if not, that's what flags and spells are for. (Still more on that below.)

Most buildings are constructed and thus destroyable, but some buildings aren't destroyed, just demolished/converted. These buildings can't be permanently destroyed, simply rendered currently-unusable by their current owner by whatever method (including being converted into having a different owner). 

Heroes can always capture/convert structures; some units also can. Alternatively, demolishing and then rebuilding can be done if not capturing/converting them. Obviously, there are a predefined set number of these per level. They are structures of importance. Settlements are the most important (as they are basically the equivalent of a Palace in Majesty), which often (but not always) are surrounded by permanent (rather than temporary) walls and usually have prebuild (rather than built) towers.

Yet others would exist to serve numerous different functions, including Outposts acting as mini-settlements giving some, but not all, of the abilities of a settlement and acting as a combination of other buildings as well including a trading post (something which there can be an unlimited number of, but it gets costly to build, so finding an outpost helps).

As mentioned, most buildings are built--when building buildings, a ring (let's call it the green ring because Majesty) surrounds all existing buildings to let you know where they are in relationship to the new building (which has its shape phantom-overlaid onto where it'd be) that has a circle around it so you know how to get things as exactly distanced as you want them to be.

Furthering that, the game would also feature the option to turn on a grid function, which would give a fair idea of where things are and thus allow for optimal building placement ease, among numerous other factors.

​There would be MANY buildings both built and constructed (found then built/converted) that would contain items--some automatically handed out, some for sale. And similarly, there would be various different magical items littered throughout the map which have various different effects. These items are mostly for heroes, but units can have some of them in limited quantities. (Heroes have unlimited capacity for items so long as there's no redundancy. The only redundant item they can have unlimited of is a healing potion.)

Some items are deposited in buildings for passive effects, e.g. passive gold regeneration. Items picked up not for buildings' usage can be either passive (provide a continuous bonus of some sort) or active (used and then the item is depleted by the amount indicated). Some items can even be manually triggered by the player, albeit mostly in those who have higher obedience.

EVERY unit levels up, regardless of type or task, getting better at their primary function and gaining health. 

Upgrades for equipment, items, units, buildings, and even heroes exist; many upgrades are automatically given to NEW units of the type and older units can pay to have them (heroes, they pay from their personal pocket; non-heroes, the player pays from the treasury). Heroes can do this automatically or in some cases be ordered to; non-heroes will never do it on their own because it would take from the treasury so they need the input.

Upgrades are also global--no researching the same thing twenty different times. Research it once, and it doesn't need to be researched again. 

But back to the AI...
...Every unit has an "act independently" setting. For many, this can be disabled--sometimes temporarily, other times permanently--in order to have them act in specific ways determined by the player. This is usually for units rather than henchmen or heroes.

Units have the ability to move in formation. (Heroes do not. Henchmen also do not, but peasants are classified as units so peasants can.) These formations can take...well, various different formations. Tightly clustered, spread out, single file line, double file line, you get the idea. They move at the speed of the slowest unit, together, acting as one.

Units have the ability to "attach" themselves to a hero (which automatically makes them a formation moving with the hero; heroes have the option of 'move at default speed' or 'move at formation speed' so you don't slow heroes down unless you intend to), which makes all the units assigned to the hero have +(hero's levels) levels for the duration of the time they are attached to the hero.

The units attached also get increases to all their stats proportional to the hero's stats, including accelerated XP gain rate. Formations attached to a hero can also be larger than formations with no attachment to a hero, allowing for a larger army to exist. These units will always move with the hero (to the best of their ability) and do what the hero is doing (to the best of their ability).

Almost every unit and the VAST majority of heroes has AT LEAST one upgraded form. (Heroes don't have more than one.) They usually have more than one.

ALL units have passive health regeneration. Heroes regenerate HP faster, with attached units getting that bonus regeneration speed to a lesser extent. Units (which include henchmen and heroes) can garrison--garrisoned units heal faster, among other benefits.

Certain buildings heal MUCH faster than other buildings when garrisoned within. And yes, this does stack so having units attached to a hero garrisoned inside a rapid-healing building can swiftly regenerate an army which was moments before almost all dead.

Permanent buildings never increase in cost (if they have a cost at all), and of built buildings...some buildings (towers, economic buildings, hero buildings) increase in cost whereas others (unit buildings, upgrade buildings, various defensive structures, etc.) don't. 

Units/heroes never increase in cost to recruit, nor is there a cap on how many can be recruited (other than whatever game engine limitations I'd encounter). Maps could be of varying different sizes. Small, medium, large, huge, gigantic, etc. 

In spite of what I said earlier, there are other resources...which are, completely, totally, 100% optional: they enhance things (especially playing as certain civilizations), but are never needed for anything. 

Food can be consumed to increase unit regeneration, or in the civilization with organic buildings, be used to repair/upgrade an organic building. It is NEVER used to create units/buildings...except, of course. A "food caravan" unit, which transports food from one location to another.

You can also trade food for gold. (And, yes, vice versa, too, but this is something the game recommends against.)

Stone can be consumed to repair buildings at an accelerated rate. In the civilization specializing in it, stone can also be used to provide a passive regeneration to said building if said building has a garrison, no need for a repair unit to be on site. This also applies to upgrades. It is NEVER used to create units/buildings...except, of course. A "stone caravan" unit, which transports stone from one location to another.

You can also trade stone for gold. (And, yes, vice versa, too, but this is something the game recommends against.) In fact, this is the primary purpose of it, to be harvested for extra cash.

Wood can be consumed to repair buildings at an accelerated rate. In the civilization specializing in it, it can also be used to repair/upgrade a wooden building. It is NEVER used to create units/buildings...except, of course. A "wood caravan" unit, which transports wood from one location to another.

You can also trade wood for gold. (And, yes, vice versa, too, but this is something the game recommends against.) In fact, this is the primary purpose of it, to be harvested for extra cash.

​Among other traits, heroes have unique names, FAR more independent AI, can carry more items, USE said items automatically, gather items on their own, among numerous other traits; they are the elites which make up the core gameplay, with all non-hero units (be it henchmen or regular units) essentially as cannon fodder to help support them/provide the backbone of the economy and military force such that heroes are placed in less danger.

Like units, heroes come in numerous different types. I've got 25 (maybe 29; maybe 34; maybe 30) heroes with associations (4 tied to one thing which if they have upgrades is instead 8, 12 tied to another, the four base heroes associated with the 12 which are their upgraded forms, five civilization-specific heroes which if they have upgrades is instead 10), and the plan is to have APPROXIMATELY one hero per basic unit type (plus upgrade to said hero) plus any "quirky" hero I want that's not a unit type, so if I had to estimate, I'd say I'm looking at somewhere in the range of 60 unique hero types as a fairly conservative number.

Why is it so conservative? Well, you'll be able to check my math on this later when you see how I got this figure, but by my calculation, when you tally civilization choice (five civs) with the other mutually exclusive choices, my mental math said that was 240 unique combinations. (5 * 4 = 20, * 2 = 40, * 2 = 60, * 2 = 120, * 2 = 240; five civs, and you'll see what the *4 and the four *2s are below.)

​BUT ANYWAY.

As I mentioned. There are different civilizations. These civilizations are not simply "one or two small differences but basically interchangeable". This isn't quite as extreme as, say, Terran vs. Zerg vs. Protoss would be (or more accurately, Roman vs. Carthaginian vs. Gaul vs. the fourth civ I can never remember the name of but which is my favorite to play as); you do use basically the same things.

It's more in the middle. Think more like Age of Empires (at least Age of Empires II Conqueror's Expansion, don't quite remember if the original had civ traits), but slightly more extreme than Age of Empires. All five civilizations have specialties, all five civilizations have quirks, all five civilizations have unique units/traits (PLURAL), but not really much in the way of penalties and absolutely nothing "off-limits" aside from the uniques of other civs, obv.

The player can and is pitted against both an enemy civilization and monsters. (There are various victory conditions. You could theoretically have a level with no monsters even though none exists; you could theoretically have a level with no enemy civilization and some do exist because there are plenty of monsters to challenge your kingdom.)

Monsters spawn from lairs which follow many building rules. They are not all destructible, but many (especially ones which appear after the map was created) are. They can be the entirety of the enemy for a level, because they present a formidable threat.

Monsters have "roaming" mode, "destroy building" mode, "Attack units" mode, "Attack everything" mode, "Specialized" mode for some, and "defend thing" mode. Kinda like the flags, except you don't get to see it in them; you just have to observe which mode they are in from their actions. (Making a beeline for your settlement? Probably destroy building. Chase hero? Probably attack unit. Engage on sight/when attacked and wander around? Roam. And so on.)

Non-hero units have various different "directives" they can be given. Directives aren't orders, per se. They aren't things which say "do this", so much as they are: determining which type of AI path the unit will use. Among these settings:
"Never attack, ever"; "Don't attack unless in self-defense"; "Attack only explicit threats nearby"; "Attack any threat, but do not pursue"; "Attack any threat and pursue".

Henchmen in particular have VERY strong usage of these directives. These directives, unlike for other units, can actually be globally set. (But can still be given on an individual basis.) "Value life over duty" (flee), versus "value duty over life" (ignore danger) would be an example, albeit not quite the best way to word it. 

A better way to say it would be: "Flee if danger nearby"; "Flee if attacked"; "Never flee". The first on line of sight; if an enemy is spotted, RUN AWAY to the nearest garrison. The second when an attack is sensed; if registering that they have been attacked, RUN AWAY to avoid being killed.

Units, especially heroes, may flee from battle, especially when low on HP. They have threat assessment; the accuracy of this assessment is based on stats, and accounts for their situation with all the information they have in their line of sight versus the situation of the enemy for as long as they can see in their line of sight. Enemy too strong, they will run for their lives.

Units fleeing seek to garrison themselves in the nearest building, ideally high-healing garrisons, but they'll take anything they can get. This is more specifically "seek best garrison to garrison", but 'best' is often just 'nearest'. It's MEANT to function as 'gets unit functioning at fastest rate', though.

​The game would have various different cheats (with a witty dialog for the cheat) easily used by control-C and with a quick method of entering them...say, by hitting. Well. Enter. I've thought up a little over half a dozen; the completed list would be probably closer to two dozen. I'll post them at the end because they're on page three and four of my notes and I'm not even onto page one of my notes (though I'm close).

The game would feature player spells: cast from the treasury, depleting gold reserves, to have numerous different effects. Some of these spells come from buildings which are mutually exclusive, showing that Majesty influence some more, and yes there is a high level of redundancy in them, great overlap even when choosing the other side.

Some units would have special abilities, but mostly, the realm of spellcasting is reserved for heroes, who have NUMEROUS spells/abilities they have access to; it is one of their main defining characteristics, their unique abilities that their hero class possesses which no other hero class has.

That being said, because all units follow some basic classifications, heroes follow some of these same classifications. It's not quite as simple as "magic melee range", but it's along those veins at the very least in that they take the same penalties/bonuses that units do when facing specific types of opponents.

Another benefit of heroes is (okay so this one is from Age of Mythology) that they do bonus damage against monsters--the main foe in the game, frankly, because while doing battle against an enemy is all fun and good and all, the main threat other than incompetent friendly AI is going to be competent unfriendly monster AI.

Now, that's just what I covered this morning.

Okay.

So.

This is a very long-ass ramble (sorry, language) as-is even to me right now as I'm writing it. But. Small confession to you as you are going to be reading it. I will be editing in content from the four pieces of paper above into the sections appropriate, such that related topics are, loosely, categorized together.

Meaning that from your perspective, there's going to be a LOT more in the above than from my perspective as I am writing this because from my perspective, that content is "below", down here, where I am writing right now except not yet written, even though to your perspective that content is in the above.

Hmm...lemme take a screenshot of the scroll bar. (This is an imperfect method, but oh well.)

...Bonus points. If I edit any of the content visible in that screenshot, you'll be able to go, "hey wait a minute, that's not what I just read". (Well. Assuming you're masochistic enough to read the thing twice.) But ANYWAY. That gives you a fair idea of what the blog looks like right now--it is already long, but it is still only a FRACTION of what it WILL be by the time I am finished.

​SO.

Moving on.

All units have a "home" building. When garrisoned in their "home" building, units have accelerated healing even if this home building doesn't normally offer accelerated healing when garrisoned. Hero homes have a limit to the number of recruits they can have--I'm just gonna plagiarize and say that's four, in most cases.

All other unit recruitment buildings have no limits; you can have hundreds of henchmen and thousands (god forbid if the game engine could take it) of units and they could theoretically all spawn from a single location.

I want to do some research into Age of Empires and Age of Empires II to plagiarize units from them (I'm not gonna pretend otherwise), but some unit types I was able to come up with off the top of my head were:
Spearmen
Light Infantry
Heavy Infantry
Archers
Light Cavalry
Heavy Cavalry
Cavalry Archers
Converter(*)/Healer/Buffer/Debuffer (probably not all as one unit but probably not all as four separate units)
Armored Transport (one form which is easy to think about: a siege tower)
Armored Ram (battering ram)
Unit Siege (pierce) (Ballistae)
Unit Siege (spread) (catapults)
Building Siege (distance)
...And most, aside from some siege weapons, would have heroes of them.
*Heroes can't be converted and only some henchmen can be; conversion is mostly a function for units and some buildings.

​​When I designed the game, I designed the game to, like my inspiration, have four "Ages".
And get ready for this, because this is where things get important. You're about to get some rather important namedrops.

The first age: Dawn of Harmony. This is the age where civilization comes to fruition, where life begins to inhabit an area which was previously uninhabited. It is the birth of, in the current location, all that is to unfold.

The second age: Dawn of Magic. While magic is ever-present at all times, both in Harmony (before) and in all ages after, the Dawn of Magic represents the time where the existing civilization has established the roots necessary for branching into magic; magic is something best done with the support of a thriving economic settlement.

The third age: Dawn of Religion. While religion is ever-present at all times, both before its dawn (Magic/Harmony) and in the stage after, the Dawn of Religion represents the establishment of structure and continuity in the civilization. People strive to live for something "grander", and now have the resources necessary to accomplish it.

The fourth age: Dawn of Technology. While technology is ever-present at all times, in all the ages before its dawn, for technology to thrive, it requires harmony, magic, and religion to be established first. Because in order to be at the forefront of technology, you need to have the people, the roots, the support, the structure, the continuity, of everything else already there.

And from this...you get the game title.

WOW this far in an only now I'm namedropping it?

You bet.

Now granted.

This is a pretty good title. What that means is that there's like an 80% chance that a game by this title already exists. If it doesn't, then there's like a 98% chance that a game with this subtitle exists (e.g. "GAME TITLE: Dawn of Order"). Butstill. IN SPITE OF THAT.

The working title of this game that I invented today?

Dawn of Order.

The idea of that should be self-evident. You, as the player, are hoping to become the master over the kingdom, to establish order where before there was none. Conquer any rival kingdoms, and conquer any monstrous threats lurking in the wild, to establish an era of eternal order where civilization's laws reign supreme. Your goal, the goal of the player, is to bring about this utopia, to bring about the Dawn of an era of Order.

This can be done in any of the for "ages", obviously, but in terms of lore it would be a kind of "fifth age", coming after the other four, when a kingdom has achieved everything there is for a kingdom to achieve.

The victory screen for any level is thus, "Order Obtained!", a white and blue screen with glistening buildings; the defeat screen for any level is thus, "Chaos Consumes..."; it is red and black flames and ashes. While we're on the subject though, this game features unique introductions to every level with voice narration (same as Majesty and Zeus/Poseidon), and has unique ending screens with voice narration for everything except for freestyle; similarly, every level's defeat screen (while featuring no voice) has a unique narration outlying the horrible fate you just suffered and what will happen next.

​By the way, units when they die are, mostly, gone for good. They die, they're dead. An exception: heroes, when dieing, produce a gravestone to be resurrected within a window of time. Deaths are announced with a loud narration from the hero. (All units have dialog for doing every action in the game--hero dialog is unique to the hero type, thus each hero death can be identified as belonging to that specific type of hero, and their name displays on screen so you know WHICH hero it was.) You know. Just like Majesty.

Generals, when they die, also don't die for good. They can be resummoned. What are generals? Generals are heroes carried across levels. At the end of a level, one of each hero type you possess can be promoted to become a General. The maximum number of Generals you can have is (number of settlements you control) * (number of the age/"dawn" you are currently in), e.g. three settlements in the Dawn of Religion age = 9 generals.

Generals in freestyle are for freestyle quests only, but Generals are shared between Quests and Campaigns (including the bonus level).

Speaking of which! There's three types of levels: Freestyle levels are...well, freestyle. They're random matches, basically a single game with no story. Just complete the objective of the level which you set before generating the level. (I'd want to look up those victory conditions both in Majesty and also Age of Empires to see what they offer.) 

Quests are exactly what they are in Majesty: isolated self-contained stories, with very little relation to one another. Some quests are unlocked by completing others, and you can carry generals from one quest to another, but otherwise they have no tie with one another; they are each almost their own freestyle game, except there IS narrative for the level, and there's unique quirks not found in freestyle for every quest.

Campaign contains missions. Each mission unlocks at least one other mission; all missions require at least one other mission to unlock save the first one of course. For the most part, this is linear; complete one, do the next. The order is flexible in some cases, in that sometimes, say, three different levels will open up, but just as often as levels open up, they close up with the next level unlocking only after all the others are completed.

There are five campaigns (plus the bonus level). They can be done in any order, but the RECOMMENDED order is the order they happen in the story, because these being campaigns, there is a continuous narrative to them and they take the Starcraft route of "this campaign happens after the conclusion of the last campaign, and before the next campaign". Each campaign covers a race.

The first campaign doubles as a gradual tutorial (though, Quests offer tutorials on gameplay mechanics in much the same way Majesty quests do), and thus is the longest, at 25 episodes; the other 4 campaigns are 13 episodes each. Which is 77 + bonus level episodes/levels in the campaign mode.

Let's see...for henchmen, they are "Collectors" (collect from buildings), "Caravans" (transport goods to other buildings, usually gold), Gatherers (special units which must be manually recruited; can be converted; gather gold/wood/stone/food from the land and deposit it in buildings which can take those resources), Guards (self-explanatory; generated from specific towers mostly but also important government buildings), Builders, and Peasants (can do any of these tasks and also has a weak pitiful attack they can use; is a jack of all trades, which is manually recruited, has different AI, and can be converted).

Buildings change aesthetic with the four ages. Many (but not all) buildings also have upgrades. Some from the building itself, others from other buildings. (Imagine having to try and upgrade every single link in a wall--not viable; that's an upgrade done from another building. But there are plenty of buildings where sometimes you want the lower-level; that's an upgrade done from the building itself.)

There are never more than four levels to a building, which means there's 4-16 aesthetics for a building. (One each age for level 1, level 2, level 3, and level 4. Each level adds four possible aesthetics.)

As can be expected, some buildings/units are only available after other buildings/building levels/research are completed. Furthermore, some buildings/units/upgrades (both unit/building upgrades) only when reaching a certain age/dawn, also as can be expected.

And, true to Majesty: Some Hero Buildings are mutually exclusive with one another. There are twelve total such buildings.

Four of such buildings are the Buildings of the Orders. There are for "Orders". These are people who follow a set way, and refuse to settle in a kingdom which has set in a different way than theirs.

The Order of Harmony focuses on resources. They emphasize the importance of living in harmony with nature, and see magic/technology/religion as serving only one use: to further that end; any magic/technology/faith not serving this agenda they think to be an abomination standing in the way of their goal, thus their hatred of the other three orders.

In other words, they do not ban such things, but they live in the natural world, bringing out the most from it and allowing for a plentiful fulfilling existence. It is the oldest of the Orders, but also the smallest. It's certainly not the weakest though!

The Order of Magic focuses on Items. They emphasize the importance of pure thaumatic energies, harvesting the mystic arts in numerous enchantments, items, and spells to further civilization. They feel that nature should be harvested for its resources, technology should serve to simply further understanding of the mystic arts, and that religion is good only for instilling the learning process of magic.

Thus, any usage of those not following that agenda, they abhor, and the other three Orders have ways mutually exclusive with their own. It is both the second oldest and second largest of the Orders, but no mere second in power.

The Order of Religion focuses on Units, instilling within all a sense of inner strength from divine protection. They believe that faith in the higher powers allows for an enrichment of life, and feel that all resources should be used as offerings to this lifestyle. Nature should be harvested for sacrifices and for sustenance, magic should be uses by the faithful to inspire miracles, and technology should be used to spread the word to the masses.

Thus, if those things are not being used in the way the order deems appropriate, they are banned. It is the largest of the orders currently.

The Order of Technology focuses on Buildings, representing the march of industry to create a powerful economy in the modern world. They believe that the resources of nature exist only as fuel for their machines, that magic serves only as a source of power for new, interesting, innovating technology, and that religion serves as a fine way of providing divine inspiration, nothing more.

They don't see those ideals as outdated, but they do hold about them a certain level of arrogance in thinking all those things should serve them. So the thought of them existing independently, and even of them operating under the ideals they are superior, is taboo.

Orders can be thought of as loosely akin and equivalent to Races (Gnome/Elves/Dwarves) in Majesty: Pick one, exclude the others, and get some significant changes to the kingdom's functionality based on your choice. (More on that below.)

​Good news, just passed page number one.
Bad news, just passed hour number three on writing this ramble.
Oh well, continuing on.

Now would be a good time to talk about the races. Races are, explicitly, the "civilizations" of the game. Human/Zerg/Protoss, Roman/Gaul/Carthaginian/The one I forget the name of, the NUMEROUS different choices in Age of Empires from Huns to Britains to Franks and so on and so forth there.

​Each race has MANY unique buildings, units, items, and upgrades. Each race has AT LEAST one unique hero and AT LEAST one unique spell. So there's not just aesthetical changes; there's actual serious differences between them.

Humans are the default player race. The majority of quests use them, they are the first/longest/tutorial campaign, and generally the metric by which all other races are compared to. So, yes, stereotypical as it may sound, they have no real strengths nor any true weaknesses.

Elves have an affinity for the resource of Wood; some of their buildings are wooden, grown from the ground. (Wooden buildings do not require wood to build, because once more, the resource of Wood is OPTIONAL.) As a general rule, their buildings tend to be cheaper, but more fragile.

Fae (think insectoids meets zerg) have an affinity for the resource of Food; some of their buildings are organic, birthed, and consume food like any living creature would. (I'm not gonna stress this every time, but yes, NO FOOD REQUIRED TO BUILD; FOOD IS OPTIONAL.) As a rule, their units are cheaper, but much weaker.

Orcs have an affinity for the resource of Stone. As a rule, their buildings are sturdier, but also more expensive.

Dwarves have an affinity for Gold; as a rule, their units are stronger, but more expensive.

Again. THESE ARE NOT THE ONLY DIFFERENCES. These are not superficial changes. But before I can go into the details of changes more intimately I'd need to research various games to more or less lay out what those exact changes actually would be.

So yes. There are extensive differences beyond the ones listed; each have significant gameplay separation from one another.

Next on the agenda for this game is the rest of the mutually exclusives.

I call these the "Divides". Each Divide can loosely be thought of as "Open"(Selfless) or "Closed"(Selfish).

Harmony Divide: Gathering of Protectors (Open) vs. Gathering of Masters (Closed).

The divide in Harmony comes from Harmony not being a unified concept. You can understand the idea of "live with nature" well enough, but these opposing Gatherings have entirely different ideas of what that means. The Gathering of Protectors believes that it is the duty of all who accept Harmony to not only live in nature, but protect it from outside harm.

In contrast, the Gathering of Masters believes that to live in nature means to be the masters of nature. They still believe that nature should be preserved, but it should also be directed and controlled to the benefit of all who accept the way of Harmony.

Magic Divide: Council of Elements (Open) vs. Council of Enhancements (Closed). This can actually be thought of in another term, "elemental magic versus non-elemental magic", or "elemental magic versus pure magical energy". The Council of Elements believes that magic should be used to harvest the power of the elements. The Council of Enhancements believe such things to be superfluous and wasteful, and that the pursuit of pure mystic energy produces a more "pure" form of magic they feel should be taught to all who embrace Magic.

Religion Divide: Temple of Love (Open) vs. Temple of Wrath (Closed). I need not explain why there would be a divide in religion, but to explain those concepts, it is simply the thought of "God(s) is Love" versus "The Wrath of God(s)". Both feature prominently in all religions pretty much, and yet they are at odds with one another. Divine acceptance, versus Divine retribution. Caring for others, versus empowerment.

And this is thus the divide; the Temple of Love believes in protecting all who accept religion into their lives, whereas the Temple of Wrath believes in punishing all who stand in the way of those who accept religion in their lives.

Technology Divide: Company of Progress (Open) vs. Company of Profit (Closed). This is simply a choice between being idealistic and being pragmatic. The Company of Progress believes that technology should be used for the progression of all aspects of life. The Company of Profit believes that technology serves to make money.

Harmony/Magic/Religion/Tech Divides are akin to Temples from Majesty, BUT: Choosing one "open"/"closed" only locks out the corresponding "closed"/"open". Choosing one open does NOT make you choose all-open; choosing all closed does NOT make you choose all-closed; the only times you have all-open/closed are either if a level dictates so or because you the player specifically desired it for whatever reason (probably thematic).

Also, you can probably guess this, but:
SAID DIVIDES ARE UNTIED TO ORDERS.
It's NOT "Pick Order, then pick Divide" (e.g. Order of Harmony-->Harmony Divide); that'd exclude basically half the hero roster and like 75, 80+% of the more "specialized hero" list. The two choices are entirely unrelated to one another, just like the choices between races and temples are unrelated in Majesty. You can and will have an order of technology and then choose either a council of elements or a council of enhancements.

​So the good news is, I'm through two pages; the bad news is, the third got so cluttered I needed a fourth mini page so it's the longest. Also, I need a break to eat because I start fasting for bloodwork tomorrow. So small pause, invisible to you but not to me, as I eat.

​...Okay, fifteen minute break over. Coming up on four hours now, but loosely speaking you could say this is the home stretch. So ANYWAY. Continuing on.

Order selecting gives one unique hero and has the mentioned alteration to the game: Harmony gives greatly enhanced resource gathering, building an economy; Magic gives a bunch of exclusive items which are useful for units especially heroes; Religion gives a bunch of exclusive upgrades that buff units; Technology gives a bunch of upgrades which modify buildings.

However, they grant no spells and aren't fundamentally altering the very nature of the game like race selection does.

Four heroes have three upgrades: Purely an upgrade to their hero class, and then two choices between the two divides associated with that hero. (One hero has a Harmony divide between upgrading into a Protectorate and upgrading into a Master in addition to that hero's pure upgrade, a second hero has a Magic divide between upgrading into an Elemental or an Enhancement in addition to their third pure upgrade, and so on.)

The choice between Divides is thus fairly minor. Divides do provide some minor miscellaneous kingdom influences, but nothing as extensive as the choice between Orders. Mostly, it comes down to the two heroes they offer (one as an exclusive for their Gathering/Council/Temple/Company, the other as an upgrade to one hero) and the spells they provide.

We're nearing the end of the content I have.

One unique building is the Embassy--you can build only one and when you know what it does you can understand why; the Embassy allows for the recruitment of one hero from each of the four races the player is not playing as. So as a human, it allows the recruitment of 1 elf, 1 fae, 1 dwarf, and 1 orc.

Guards have numerous different commands to them, but among them are "Flee when low in health" (can leave units/buildings vulnerable without their meat shield) vs. "Attack to death" (can lose the meat shield altogether until the replacement generated arrives); "Pursue enemies" (can get Guard to go further away than you want) vs. "Stay close to radius" (can allow guard to be sniped); "Attack strongest" vs. "Attack weakest" vs. "Attack nearest" vs. "Attack furthest away" for targeting.

Peasants have the same commands as henchmen do: Flee if danger nearby; Flee if attacked; never flee, but in addition to that, have two unique ones: "if attacked, attack the attacker" and "if threat nearby, attack nearby danger". (The former leads to them soloing the problem; the latter, a swarm of peasants deals with the issue.)

I have two things left to talk about.

The first on the list is Obedience.

Obedience is a stat every unit--henchmen, peasant, hero, whatever--has in two values: "Base obedience stat" (what the unit's default obedience value is) and "current obedience stat" (what the unit's current obedience is and thus the pertinent information to have when dealing with a unit).

Everything leads up to this, because this is the most critical game mechanic of all.

Obedience dictates how responsive units are to both direct orders and to directives (indirect orders, the "sets AI behavior to do this instead of that").

At 100% obedience, a unit ceases all action and starts to do ONLY actions the player directly orders them to do. This is almost never used; only specific units can have it, that or the use of a spell I dubbed "Mind Control" (to control the actions of a unit you control entirely...for about ten ingame seconds. With a cooldown at least 3-6 times that length).

At 80% obedience, a unit will always follow directives to the best of their ability and will often respond to direct orders given: "attack this"; "go here"; "garrison this"; "join that"; "pick up this". Pretty much those commands only though. This is the level many units tend to be at, but not nearly as many as you'd prefer. At this level, a unit will always for FREE obey the commands of flags. This level of obedience is incredibly rare among heroes.

At 60% obedience, a unit will try to follow directives, but will do so sometimes a little unreliably. A unit won't really respond to direct orders of "attack this"; "go here", etc., but orders to do those things will initiate their reevaluation process, making them more open to the suggestion if nothing else. At this level, a unit will always obey command flags; they'll need to be paid to attack something, defend something, or go somewhere, but they'll stay away from something for free. This level of obedience is where the rest of units are for the most part and is the base level for heroes.

At 40% obedience, directives given they will try to uphold, but they still use their own AI judgement to do what they think is the best thing for them to do now, a judgement which will often run counter to the player's intention. No direct orders can be given. At this level, a unit will always obey command flags...if they are appropriately priced high enough. They still will stay away from things for free though. This is the level of many heroes.

At 20% obedience, directives are more like guidelines...loose ones, at that. They basically do whatever they want to, irregardless of what's best for them to do. No direct orders can be given. At this level, a unit will almost always obey command flags; the higher the price, the higher the chance. They need to be paid to obey stay away flags. This is the level of the lowlife heroes more or less.

At 0% obedience, no input from the player can be given whatsoever, though they will still acknowledge flags most of the time especially if the price is high enough. This is occasionally seen from heroes, but mostly is a special curse from hell to be inflicted with.

This obedience system is where the heart and soul of the gameplay lies. The cannon fodder units have higher obedience; they act on their own but mostly act on the players' directives. Henchmen have medium obedience because they have a higher level of independence; they act on their own primarily but take heavy input from the player.

And Heroes have lower obedience because they are potentially fully self-automated; they act almost exclusively on their own and only rarely do they take some input from the player.

This obedience factor is where the hybrid between the RTS elements of games like Age of Empires meets the fantasy sim elements of Majesty. Low Obedience = acts like Majesty characters, in that you can't do anything to really force them to do something. High obedience = acts like RTS units, in that you can tell them what to do.

And yes, these units will do things like raid lairs, attack enemy settlements, and the like all on their own.

This is what I feel makes my game I invented truly unique. I don't think anything like this has been done before, and yet I think that if it could be pulled off it would be absolutely amazing to see.

​So what do you get for sticking with me to the end? (Or skimming four hours' of worth and just skipping to the bottom.) Why, cheat codes, of course!

woodent ya know displays the message, "My bark is worse than my bite!" and has the effect of causing every building which can store Wood to have maximum Wood stored (999).
have a meating displays the message, "I'm sick of the bare bone necessities!" and has the effect of causing every building which can store Food to have maximum Food stored.
stone cold killer displays the message, "I'm off to a rocky start!" and has the effect of causing every building which can store Stone to have maximum Stone stored.
a golden opportunity displays the message, "All the Shinies are MINE! My own. My preciousesss." and has the effect of maxing the treasury out to 99,999,999 gold.

ranger guild displays the message, "I'm a cartographer! Who knew?" and reveals the whole map.

order of operations displays the message, "The chain of command whips you until you obey.", and has the effect of allowing for all normally mutually exclusive buildings to be built: all four Order buildings, and both halves of the four Divides (so instead of having five, you can have all twelve).

dawn of fun times displays the message, "Time flies when you're having fun!", and has the effect of everything being done instantly. Buildings insta-constructed; upgrades insta-done, units insta-recruited. Entering once enables it; entering it a second time disables it.

go away displays the message, "Shoo, fly, don't bother me!" and has the effect if instantly killing/destroying/dismantling the selected unit/building.

lets roll displays the message, "Never gonna give you up, never gonna level you down, or desert you." and has the effect of leveling the selected unit up five levels.

I would also need cheats for Instant Win, Instant Loss, Kill Monsters, Kill all other Kingdoms, Kill specific Kingdom, All Spells, and no cooldown on spells which have cooldown.

But then comes the fun ones:
this is a terrible idea displays the message, "Aaahhh!!! Monsters! MONSTERS EVERYWHERE! WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS?!?", and spawns monsters across the whole map.
trouble is coming (cheat name was something else that I forgot originally) displays the message, "Well...that's not good." and spawns monsters across all four edges of the map.
doh you wanna die displays the message, "Uh-oh..." and spawns the strongest monsters in the game LITERALLY EVERYWHERE.

So that is everything I have on Dawn of Order.

I hope you think the game idea is as interesting as I do.

Otherwise I just wasted four and a half hours of my life on nothing.

And you know what that means.

In this case, I developed an old idea of mine. The cross-story language I developed which I loosely dub "Celestial". Specifically, I realized just how inadequate 101 unique characters was. For a start, there are two letters (one involving t, the other involving c; the two extra characters are closely tied to two existing characters that are closely tied to one another) I was missing (and because there's both uppercase and lowercase, that's four new characters I need to make), but I also made a big freakin' huge wish list of punctuation.

Keep in mind that the punctuation in Celestial is not quite exactly the same as English punctuation, although it's similar--what I had was essentially "partial conclusion to a thought", "full conclusion to a thought", and "full conclusion to the train of thought" (which can loosely be thought of as comma, period/full stop, and paragraph/line break, respectively).

But I realized I wanted SO much more.

I want a punctuation mark which indicates speech--as in, when quoting someone, a mark that it is a quote: Quotations Marks, ". This has obvious use.

I want a separate punctuation mark which indicates metaphorical speech/euphemisms/implications of the opposite of the stated: Air quotes (which in English would also be the quotation mark, but I want a different punctuation mark to differentiate the two), so that if someone's idea of "helping" makes things worse, or someone's idea of "saving" involves killing the person/thing to be saved, it can be made clear that they are not literally doing those things.

I need a punctuation mark for possession (since while I can write around lacking it via "the object which is mine", it's much easier to just say "that's mine"), which in English would be the apostrophe, '. This also has obvious use.

I want a separate punctuation mark for contractions (since while I can write around lacking them, it's rather convenient to use if you haven't noticed the amount I've already employed), which in English shares the same punctuation mark of the apostrophe, '.

On those same lines, I want a FIFTH punctuation mark, for isolated/emphasized concepts. In English, we use both quotation marks and apostrophes for this, and if there's a difference then I don't really know it, but what I'm talking about here is basically,
This 'thing' you are referencing,
This "thing" you are referencing,
This 'object of importance' would be,
This "object of importance" would be,
I want to tell you about a thing called 'patience',
I want to tell you about a thing called "patience", you get the idea. It is where you are placing particular emphasis on a concept which is of particular importance/relevance to the topic at hand, often one which requires some sort of additional explanation (and that can be given be it through description or by context). We do it all the time in English without really thinking about it, and Celestial being based primarily around English would need a way to do it, too, but I want it to have separate punctuation from the above to make sure it's clear.

As a just-in-case feature, for the sake of those ridiculous incidents where in English you need an apostrophe in the middle of a word be it sometimes to shorten something and yet other times to lengthen something but it's NOT a contraction (think like the stereotypical overuse of this in Alien Names, e.g. Teal'c, Bra'tak--I believe it's spelled that way--, T'pol). That kinda "sometimes pausing, elongating, or shortening parts of a word for no good reason". Well in case I ever decide to do that kind of insanity, I should probably have a punctuation saved for that, too.

I also need a punctuation mark for tied concepts. That being, when two concepts are inherently intricately linked together. In English, this can be thought of loosely speaking as being filled by the hyphen, -. It's something we'd do all the time, for instance, linking two colors together. Blue-green item, wherein it's neither blue nor green but somewhere in-between. (There are of course colors you can call that, but that's not the point. I was giving an example of the tied-together concepts, of two items which are normally separate but via the punctuation mark are merged to become a single new concept.)

On that note, it'd be convenient to have shorthand for added concepts, which in English we use and/plus, &/+. This is similar to tied-together concepts, except it is when they aren't linked together yet are still paired together. "This-plus-this", rather than "this-combined-with-this" (more or less).
Subtracted concepts would also be of use. ("It's this, except minus this".)

I also want a punctuation mark for an elongated ending, AKA, trailing off--in English, this can be accomplished in multiple ways. The double-hyphen (--) can have this effect, a properly used colon (:) can invoke the effect, and ellipses (...) are also a strong way to achieve the effect.

Naturally, this means I would additionally want a punctuation mark for an elongated beginning, too, which we have no method of differentiating between in English from the above, aside from using a line break and putting one and then the other or doubling up and hoping it comes across as the intent rather than just a double ending/double beginning.

...And also rather convenient to have? The cut off ending, AKA the abrupt ending. In English, we can use ellipses for this, but that risks it coming across as the OPPOSITE, a trailed off ending. Hyphens can work better, but because in English hyphens look so similar to double-hyphens (except when special care is taken for them to not be since most software even many wikis will auto-render hyphens/double hyphens to look different), they can still look like they are trailing off because we use double-hyphens to trail off from time to time. (At least, I do.)

It should come as no surprise then that I'd also like to have an abrupt beginning--when someone is cutting in. This is something which is usually actually a bit difficult to instantly immediately convey in English. From context, we're able to pick it up relatively quickly, but it's still something I want to be unambiguous in Celestial. Because in English, the ways we mark it are
-We don't
-We use the ellipses which can imply the elongated beginning which is the inverse of the intention
-Or we can use a hyphen, but this is a rarity even though it's the best of the methods to do so.

...What else is on the wish list?

Well right now, I have one punctuation akin to a comma, but I need three. (Well, a comma has a lot more uses than that, but I think three is the minimum I can get by with.) I have the "slight pause/stop/change in thought" use of a comma, but missing still are what I call the "interlude comma"--you know how I do these double hyphens to contain a mini thought, well they could be either parenthesis OR a comma, and as a comma I'd call it an interlude because it's meant as a brief pause in thought before returning to the original--, and the "List comma".

I am...not a technical person. I had strong grammar for a fourteen-year-old, but my grammar is anything but strong for a 24-year-old. It might be sexy when people speak punctuation to me but it's not a language I am as fluent in as I'd prefer, as one may have noticed by now. Still, you should get the idea.

For a comma, you have the "pause without returning to the start", the "pause and then return to the start" (which can be handled alternatively with two other forms of punctuation, the parenthesis or the double-hyphens), and the "list of things which need separation but are part of the same". That's not all a comma does, and that's not the best description of what a comma does, buthey. I'm inventing my own conlang of sorts, so I can use whatever rules I want.

Also on the list of things I need separated--I have a punctuation mark made for a full stop at a thought's conclusion, but there's another common use of the period: issuing a command. I feel like a language based so much around the spoken word should have a difference between the two, because when you're issuing a command regardless of the command it carries a different inflection from a statement. (Think, "You may sit." versus "Sit." 'You may sit' is more of a statement though it could be a command; 'Sit' is more of a command though it could be a statement; English has ambiguity even in something as simple as that.)

Oh and if you couldn't tell, I need at least the basics when it comes to questions and exclamations. In that right now I have no punctuation mark equivalent to the question mark, and no punctuation mark equivalent to the exclamation mark, yet alone variants I'd need/want. (For instance, naturally, I'd have something loosely equivalent to the interrobang. Because seriously it's a crime that's not a bigger part of the English language.)

There was a Reader's Digest article on alternative punctuation marks which I want to have another look at listing a bunch of others, too. For instance, I'm pretty sure that there'd be a punctuation mark carrying a similar implication to the tilde, ~, because that has at least one very common usage in that using it implies an inflection in tone which is more suggestive in nature (not necessarily sexually albeit that is common). 

So.
Four new characters from two new letters.
And a minimum of 20 new characters from needed punctuation marks.

Well, 125 unique characters isn't too daunting, if you don't slack off.
(...Oh.)

I mean the typical keyboard averages only 94 (by my count) symbols which include some that aren't punctuation, numbers, or letters. (I have no clue what we actually use ` for, and then @, #, $, %, ^, *, _, +, =, probably { [ } ] < >, |, \, and / are all things I'd call "not punctuation, numbers, or letters". ~!&()-:;"',.?, as per my above standard, would be classified as punctuation, in a sense. To those 13, add 10 numbers, and then add 26*2 = 52 letters, and it comes to be 75 punctuation/numbers/letters on a keyboard with the 19 non-punctuation/numbers/letters I listed above.)

So how hard could 125 be, really?

Especially when you're making them from scrap and are aiming for similar things to be notably similar in appearance (for instance, m and M are similar because they're the same letter just lower/uppercase; m and n are similar and have a similar sound loosely speaking) and yet still distinctive enough that they look like different characters rather than the same one just drawn inconsistently?


(...And now you know why in spite of me having had this idea in my head for literally years now I've yet to make it a functional reality.)

...So you know more or less what you're in for. (This is gonna be loooooooooooong.) I should start by asking you if you remember what I'd be doing today. ... ...Still reading? I'm giving you some time to recall it. Or if you admit defeat, to look it up; it wasn't too terribly far back I said this. Of course, it's also possible you instantly remembered, or if you're not one of my girlfriends (hey at least in THEORY I have others reading my blog!), simply don't care. In either case, I'm moving on now.

I said I'd practice Tae Kwon Do today before work. Good news! I did so. Bad news! It continues to show just how incompetent I am. For jacknives (hands above head, on ground, with outstretched legs, raising legs and arms at same time in a crunch + reverse-crunch combo), I'm pretty sure I can knock out the required 20, though I had a waterlogged stomach when I tried to the point where after 10 I decided it was a bad idea to do more.

The real problem is knuckle pushups. I struggled doing ten with bad form; I'm supposed to do twenty with good form. To some extent, me having nails so long I can't make a proper fist can contribute to that, but only to some extent. That's 95% just me sucking.

I got a picture-perfect keema-sogi/riding horse stance/wide stance, and I maintained it, something I can never manage in-class for whatever reason, and I breezed through blocks and strikes. Good so far overall, right? Well...the problem came in when after I did my eight self-defenses, I moved on to one-steps.

There are ten choreographed one-steps to perform. (After that you get free one-steps but that's a bit awkward to practice without a partner since they are literally improv.) I did...the first four. By the end of those, I was winded and dangerously pale.

So what I didn't do today? Free one-steps, ALL kicks (of which there's at least 23 by my count I am required to do on every test), and ALL forms (of which I know 12 I believe the total count currently is). Those, combined with sparring, are the most grueling part of a belt test.

And I didn't do them because of concern for my own safety. I mean. Time was technically a factor in that I set a deadline and was reaching it...but that was just an excuse I used to justify quitting. After all, I wrote this in the time I coulda been continuing to practice.

Of course. Everything past this point was added on as writing throughout the day because I didn't have enough time to write it all down at once even though I thought out most of it at one time. (The whole, "Concepts lightning-fast, words slower, writing slowest" thing, and all that. But I digress.)

For emphasis. This is me. Doing the EASIEST parts of my Tae Kwon Do routine. (Which'd by and large be in a test.) And I wasn't even putting much effort into them! Good technique and decent flow, sure, I was doing that. But with the exception of my stance for drilling (that being the aforementioned perfect keema-sogi), no effort was put into having either power or speed.

And yet. In spite of me doing nothing. I was dangerously pale.
Worse. I'm pretty sure breakfast bowls (which I had today) give better nutrition than my default eggs breakfast overall AND I didn't walk around the lake today meaning I was going in fresh. Yet my hands and other limbs are still doing the shaking thing they do when I'm deficient in something, this case nutrients of some sort. (It couldn't be hydration at fault because today I'm actually for once NOT dehydrated unlike normal.)

Now. To be fair. I'd probably need WAY more nutrition for a test regardless. We're talking, devouring a Subway footlong four hours in advance with nutrition snack food athletes use to replenish as the test would drag on. (Bananas, yogurt, chocolate milk, etc.) And even then that might not be enough given my hyperactive metabolism but it's as much as I'd be safely able to consume since I don't want to vomit during a test again. Butstill...I'm just. so. so...WEAK. (At least physically, though at times you can argue it's true mentally/emotionally as well. But that's for another time.)

​I know the moves like the back of my hand, for the most part. I could do these things in my sleep. (Aside from my mind blanking out like a moron which happens to everyone at times and is to-be-expected and not penalized.) It's instinct at this point. I can autopilot and still have reasonably decent technique and flow. With thought, the only imperfections to technique are physical limitations; the only imperfections in flow are correcting technique.

...It's just that. No matter how much I try. I can't actually surpass a certain point. I can't break the physical boundaries my body is inflicting, no matter what I do. When I do workouts, I get sore for at least a week if not two. That's a sign the workout was too intense. Easy solution, just scale it back, right?

...The problem is...when I scale back, I don't get sore at all. Which is a sign that I got nothing out of the workout and need to push harder in order to actually improve. Soreness from my understanding is essentially muscles breaking down to be rebuilt stronger. (At least in theory.) A process which is meant to last a couple of days or so for most body parts: no more, but also no less. Too little time, and they're not really rebuilding; I don't gain anything. Too much time, and I risk serious muscle damage because they haven't healed yet by the time of the next planned workout.

Yet no matter what I try, I can't find that Goldilocks middle zone, where I get just the right level of workout to give me the healthy strength conditioning I need. (And for that matter even if I did find it. Would it actually be working for my body build? I am built for endurance, so a workout should focus not on building up my immediate strength but my long-term strength and that's not something I know as much about. But what I do know is that the techniques to train sprinters and endurance runners are mutually exclusive and destructive to one another which is why you must choose between them and cannot be both. My body is more suited towards endurance.)

I'm also not flexible, at least not on my legs. (My arm flexibility is probably really good.) No amount of stretching I do changes that for me. There's workouts I do to theoretically increase my flexibility, but they have the same issues as my workouts for strength conditioning, in that they leave me too sore or not sore at all, meaning I'm not actually improving from the process.

My lower-body strength is at least adequate, but my upper-body strength is basically nonexistent. I was a long-distance runner and still am at least loosely equipped such that I'll never fail the scaled 9-minute-mile pace (for my test it's probably an 18-minute two-mile), but I'll still be breaking a sweat and I'm worried about it draining my oh-so-increasingly precious stamina reserves.

I'd be able to keep running longer because my endurance running skills are really, really, really strong (even if my pace went to hell and I slowed down, I'd be able to keep going!)--but could I keep doing the test by STARTING the ever-so-draining Tae Kwon Do portion of it?

My endurance may be fine, but without the accompanying stamina which I am lacking...I can't continue. My willpower is strong, and that would keep me afloat. I can power through anything so long as I am resolute in my conviction that, yes, I can do it. I know that, so I'm not worried about me having crippling doubts that make me want to quit. Those thoughts appear and then I shove them away because I know my own body and know that when I am pushed to the limit I can keep going past it, even if I later pay for it.

...The issue there is. I can't rely on that to pass a test. It worked last time, but only just. I'm not the one who gets to call when to quit. It's my instructor and if they tell me it's time to throw in the towel I have no choice but to since they're the ones actually giving me the test and all that.

I would be able to push my body to its limits and then past that--but there would be serious health concerns for having done so, damaging drawbacks. Heroic Red Rings Of Doom, I believe the trope is called. Or maybe (Explosive?) Overclocking. Same basic principle applies. I'd do it, but be left seriously hurt from having done it. 

My instructor has a serious concern that I might pass out in the middle of my test--or even worse. She probably has an idea of how stubborn I am and how much I refuse to give in and how much I can push my body even when I shouldn't. So she knows it's quite realistic that I'd push my body past the point where I'd normally pass out, straight to the point where she's concerned there's a chance I could quite literally kill myself by taking the test and pushing my limits so far that my body absolutely breaks beyond any hope of repair. (And honestly? Honestly. If I'm honest with myself. That fear has merit. I don't know when to call it quits. I can't accept defeat.)

Since that's something we want to avoid. It's something that needs to be worked on. Yet there's only so much I can do. What am I supposed to do? I'm advised to work out more often, maybe even every day--yet there's reasons beyond it being a change in routine/an inconvenience/etc. that I don't do just that.

At every stage, there's intent to keep going. Yet at every stage, there's a seemingly insurmountable obstacle which shuts me down and keeps me from progressing. No powering through it. No going around it. (This is the closest thing to which we have for a solution--working around the limitations of our bodies. But the limitations on my body seem to be getting worse and worse.) No route. Just...stuck. With no way to progress forward, only progressively worse steps backwards as the invincibility of youth slowly drains from me.

I'm, of course, by no stretch of the imagination, "old". No matter how you look at it, 24 isn't actually elderly in this day and age. So you might think it's too soon to think about such things. But it is pretty much scientifically proven that as a person creeps closer to their 30s, there's strong changes to their biology, which are quite literally essentially "the youth being drained", as it were.

The problems of middle-aged people start to slowly creep in because the magical regeneration, the magical energy, the magical aspects of being young cease to exist for some complicated reasons which are easy to read about but hard to really remember on the spot. That effect isn't a literal snap of the fingers, one moment you're young the next you're past your prime. It's a gradual effect. And I'm at the point where the first stages are in effect.

The worst part is knowing that it's going to get worse as I get older. It's already bad, feeling how I can't do things that I used to do with ease. It's already bad, knowing that I have to take effort to maintain what once I could do with ease, yet alone improve. So it doesn't get any better. Only worse.

Yet worse than that. Worse is the constant war within me. What is real and what's me making stuff up? What is an excuse? What is me trying to find a justification for giving up? What is nothing which I am making into something? What is me lying to myself?

...On the other hand...what's an actually valid concern? What could be damaging, harmful if ignored? What precautions are actually necessary to stop myself from being injured? (For instance, not working out a muscle which is still sore; is that really necessary?)

Every time I encounter a problem, I don't know how it should be resolved. My feet. My digestive tract. My going pale. My shaky limbs. My easy dehydration. My inability to gain weight and/or my inconsistent diet. My feeling ill sometimes when efforting. My soreness not going away.

The list drags on and on, but you get the point. I don't have any way of knowing what's an excuse and what's a real issue. And if they are indeed actually issues rather than excuses...how the HECK do I solve them?
How much help would I need to sort it?

There's only so much information people like my girlfriends can provide through the internet combined with them mostly not being professionals in the areas I am having these issues. (Though upon reading this I imagine I'm going to be bombarded with them trying anyway. <3)

So how much would it cost to be informed? And once informed, how much would it cost to maintain the correction to my problem? Even if I don't require professional supervision (e.g. professional trainer, physical therapy, constant check-ins with some special doctor)--a very real possibility mind you--there's bound to be costs: fuel, time, equipment, food, adjustments like that.

​I can't do that by myself, so how can I do it? How much support is required for me to be able to do all of that?

I just don't have the head for it.

...Though...
...Speaking of my head. This is something that I've been playing around with for a while. A few weeks at least. Often I've been holding back from doing more about Hannah/Aeris and talking about the element of air. (Even a bit about her spirit totem's unique ability, Unlimited Canvas.) Even going so far as to discuss inside my head characters outside her native rubyverse that might get some of the abilities I otherwise would shift onto her. (Think like, "pull out of thin air" as an expression meaning the air-user has the ability to literally pull anything out because they have mastery over air, including "thin" air. Which is a bit of a gamebreaking ability but it'd probably only be used by people who are up against those who also possess gamebreaking abilities!)

And the reason I feel I've done so much of that is that I probably identify most strongly with air. When I think about air as an element and what it represents, it makes a lot of sense--I am, after all, basically the ultimate ditzy airhead. I have my head in the clouds at all times. I'm crazy, I'm quirky, I'm random, I'm whimsical, yet I have a flow to me, a naturalness in how I just...am.

So those traits aren't exclusive to air (flow is water, naturalness is earth), but they are powerful in air. And while I have other strong traits like passion (fire) and energy (energy), they seem largely subservient to that whimsy, to that mood. I swing back and forth at random between things.

More than that. When I'm messing around with projecting my aura, the objects I'm making are balls of pure air. Know how when I snap my fingers I make a fireball, and can play around with it? And how with a similar gesture I can summon an energy ball? Well, that same type of ball is being made all the time​ with an ease of manipulation which is much more natural than with either of those two. And it is a ball which is not made of anything tangible--and I think it's air.

Plus. If nothing else. If you happen to think that I'm just full of it. You could say...I'm full of hot air. Perfectly justifying why I'm a fit for the air element right then and there! But also explaining why fire is relatively easy for me to access. Air complements fire perfectly and the two are like right next to one another with air fueling fire. And there's the scatterbrainedness of me.

Like, things are chaotic disjointed and just broken in train in here, as I switch around and what element would you attribute that to if not air? It just makes a lot of sense overall for me and I decided to blog about it even though I haven't really done my research on personality traits of elements.

Which I'm sure there's a bunch of if you look in the right places. I mean it'd take thirty seconds to find a cheap "what's your element?" quiz, there's a ton of those. But I mean, something deeper. Something which is broader than just "cheap knockoff of avatar the last airbender elements". (Though speaking of that show, Aang's rock trick is essentially what my hands do when manipulating the ball of nothingness. Not quite, but close.)

Some day I might actually do research on that to see if there's some serious in-depth thought about it. Something which draws from multiple sources, preferably. (For instance there's a distinct difference between western four-elements and eastern five-elements yet there is overlap between the two.) But for now, I just wanted to leave on a note which will take some explaining.

There's a line that I really, really want to fit into my stories. As in, I've resolved that somehow, somewhere, whichever of my novels I eventually end up publishing first, will have this line in it at some point. It'd be easiest to do and most prominent in the novel I was working on prior to Heroes of Gistou, because in that book it was one of the central themes in fact.

The line is just filled with hope. To the point where I may use it in all my books, all my stories, just because of how much it means. And the line was spawned from the oddest of places. I believe it was me, mentally responding to a line I kept hearing on a show. It was either Star Trek or Stargate but I think it was Star Trek. A recurring line (or if not recurring, then a line spoken which was so memorable as to be immortalized) was,
"Today is a good day to die."

I have thought that was actually a dignified way of responding to danger, in that they would look at it and acknowledge they may die, but that they are okay with the possibility and are going to go do the dangerous thing anyway because it is important enough to risk their life on.

Yet in spite of that being a good line.
I always wanted to make a character have a line to respond back to them with.
And funnily enough.
To this very day.
If you put this in quotes, it will return zero results to a google search. (Google will default to without the quotes because there's no results for the exact phrase.)

Because it is a line that I made up and nobody has used it before. (I was quite flabbergasted when I discovered that this great idea of mine was never once used before, but it is what it is!) And I love it. This line. This line was one of the contributing factors in why I fought off my suicidal thoughts and pushed through them, pressed onwards to the day after, and the day after that, and so on and so forth. This line allowed me to live.

And it might seem silly to you.
But for me, this line holds all the power in the world, especially after "Today is a good day to die."
That line?

​"And tomorrow is a better day to live."

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

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

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

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

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

...Except...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wanted to talk about souls. To do this, for me I find it simplest to start on the other end of the spectrum: the body and mind, and work my way up to the soul. So do forgive me, this might not sound so coherent at first; bear with me a bit and then you'll end up with some semblance of coherency by the end!

Basically, on the physical level, we have the mind and the body as two different things. The things are interlinked. The mind, for the most part, controls the body. It thinks, and it controls actions, and the body does those actions. But it's not entirely dominant over the body; it does not have full dominion over the body. The body is responsible for many physical things, which can have an influence over the mind.

Exhaustion for instance is an easy thing: if the body is tired, doesn't matter how much the mind is awake the mind will cave in eventually. Emotions are dual-level. Some emotions come from the mind and are then felt from the body, but other emotions come from the body and overwhelm the mind. In fact, emotions are almost something outside of both.

But basically. The point I'm making here is. The Mind Is (Mostly) Not A Plaything Of The Body; the body is mostly controlled by the mind but the mind can be influenced both positively and negatively by the body. For instance, a female mind in a male body often leads to dysphoria when the body gives distinctly-male-anatomy urges.

The link between mind and body which also holds emotions is the spirit. The spirit is essentially the sum of the parts and then some when it comes to mind and body. The spirit self is our "true self" as it were. Our spirit selves can change over time as our perspectives of ourselves are altered. For instance, someone who is 20 years old probably doesn't have a spirit who looks like an 80-year-old; someone who is 80 years old might have a spirit that's 20 years old in appearance but is more likely some other appearance closer to their current form.

Our spirit selves always have the appearance of our mind's eye. A pre-transition transwoman isn't male in spirit, but rather, female. And appears that way more likely than not. Our spirit selves often are going to be relatively close to our own appearance more likely than not.

For instance, it could theoretically happen that a Caucasian blue-eyed short-haired blonde would have a spirit self that's dark-skinned, orange-eyed purple dreadlocks...but it's not very likely. More likely is simply a look close to what they see in their every-day body. 

To put it another way. The spirit is essentially the heart and core essence of a person. It is what we are, in the current moment. It is shaped both by our soul (our core personality which could never ever possibly change) and by the real world (our body/mind), in that it is a link between the two, shifting as we see things. 

I'm not quite sure if I'm describing these well enough (I feel like there's so much I'm leaving out), but that takes me to the final level: the soul. What is the soul, if not the heart of who we are? The soul is the heart of everyone we could ever be. In other words, whereas the spirit is "us in the current moment", the soul is "us in every possible moment". Because souls transcend space and time, existing outside those boundaries to me.

Souls represent us at the fundamental level, linking us to our spirits across any and every universe, existing in a form transcending what we'd know of being consciousness. Souls don't so much think or feel, as much as they do experience and then share. Souls share with other souls, and blend together. 

This is, loosely, where soulmates begin to form for me. Because souls that begin to blend together tend to be more compatible with one another. And because souls transcend space and time, it can even be possible for multiple people living at the same time to have part of a merged soul. In short. There are multiple people (not just a singular one) we can be compatible with on the fundamental level.

This is also why people who're soulmates can have relationships not last, too. Their souls might indeed be mated together, but that doesn't mean that in our universe at that particular time their vessels, their spirits, will experience the link between. So we can in fact have more than one soulmate, because souls tend to be a bit...flexible.

Now to be honest.
I'm not all too familiar with the anatomy of a soul.
This is all just my belief anyway, sure, yeah, but even for it just being my own belief, most of this is just speculation. I don't know the details. I don't know if I'm just making up stuff or if this belief in the system I'm describing is coming truly from me. But I hold it all the same.

Essentially in summary, souls exist in a form outside of our universe. The link to those souls is our spirits, which exist in our current universe. Our spirits are intangible and ever-changing, ever-evolving. Our mind and body are the physical vessels in which our spirits reside.

Our spirits also hold some traits which will remain true regardless of our mind/body and can even override them, e.g. a female spirit causes a female mind even if the body is male. But they're not immune to influence since a spirit may change appearance off of experiences from the mind and body. The soul is essentially the archive of the spirit as it were, both documenting and dictating much of what the spirit is, has been, and will be. And this archive seeks out other archives to cross-reference as it were.

This probably makes no sense.
But basically.
Not all love is between soulmates nor are soulmates going to necessarily always have love.
Yet the two have obviously a very huge overlap, in that--yes. Those who're soulmates with one another will find each other, will have love for one another, and will be able to make it work because they are connected on a deep, fundamental level and they know it. <3

I'm not sure if they're angry at me or really really smiled upon me, it's hard to tell, but on the way home I realized that my car was basically...completely and entirely out of gas, running on fumes. As in, empty gas light coming on, running on fumes.

I was rather concerned, but I did end up making it home, so overall, I think I need to thank them some more. It might not be the best of things for the gas to have gotten so low (how did it get that way? I coulda sworn there was enough for me to get to college tomorrow, maybe even back home), but it could have been much, much worse and I'm glad it didn't end up that way.

Oddly enough, no omens accompanying it, unless you count me reading a spam post about Range Rovers as being an acceptable substitute. I did do that, thanks to a comment on Go Get a Roomie. (Rather, a response to the spam comment.) So who knows.

I'm grateful I got lucky though--I normally don't push my luck that much. I have a very good sense of what my cars can and can't do. I just have that natural attunement to them. I know when they need gas. I know what's cutting it too close. I know when I need to do something, so how the heck this sneaked up on me I'm at a loss for. It's not like I don't look; it's not like I look and carelessly assume with reckless abandon that I'm good. I put actual serious thought and effort into calculating whether I'm good or not, and yet somehow this slipped through the cracks.

​Ah well. It'll be dealt with.

Also running on empty: my body. I go to bed in an hour so I debated on whether to blog about it or not (my significant other will be nagging at me the moment I hit submit and they go on to read this because they are online waiting for me to post it), but ultimately you never know.

Basically, the eggs I was made today...
...Didn't look so good.
So I didn't have them.

Meaning I had no breakfast. No food at school, either. And I stayed late at school to do extra schoolwork. And then here I am at home. Near bed, not having eaten all day. Oddly enough though, my hunger has been on-again, off-again, not a neverending constant stream: sometimes I'm hungry, other times I'm not hungry. The whole time however I am aware that I probably SHOULD be eating in spite of the inconvenience.

I have considered skipping food for the day, and going without, as I'm really close to having done so anyway. Yet I know I probably shouldn't and I definitely won't get away with it now that I'm talking about it on my blog. So I'll be forced into eating something, something I'll probably even enjoy at that.

Still. I'm currently on the clock here. Get food, get it before bed. Because screw the wrath of the traffic gods--it'd be nothing compared to the wrath of an angry concerned loved one. <3

...As in. "I've seen more cop cars in the last week than I have in two months", lot. Had many, many, many close encounters with them, too. Including a cop car behind me beginning to flash their lights and siren when previously they had not done so.

Suffice to say, I'm having a 'what the heck' moment, because this makes absolutely no sense to me. If we had a holiday, I'd understand, but none exists. And by my understanding of how the process works, police have to meet a certain quota per month...which leads to an increase in patrols at the END of the month.

Not the beginning of the next month.

So why the heck I'm seeing such an increase in activity from the local law enforcement is beyond me. It's like they were nowhere before, and yet now they're everywhere literally overnight.

It's at about this point that I am trying to reinforce my piety to the traffic gods, as cops are agents thereof. I mean. I'm already driving an unfamiliar car. (And car issues fall under their domain.) I don't want to incur the wrath of the traffic gods, so I'm hoping to weather the storm and let my faith pull me through.

Of course. The easiest way to do that is to be a ridiculously safe driver. Yet while I do that 90% of the time (and actually the car I'm driving encourages it even further by having basically zero acceleration), I can and do slip up. It's just a subconscious thing. I drive at the speed which "feels" right. I drive at what speed the car tells me to drive it at.

Most of the time, that correlates to the speed limit, or at least approximately close thereto. However, not always. And when it doesn't, it's because my car wants to go faster, basically every single time. And that doesn't even begin to go into perhaps questionable judgement calls I can make.

I do try to be a good driver, yet sometimes I'm just guessing at what I need to do: run/slam breaks on yellow, when to merge into another lane, when to go at a stop sign, little things like that. I never quite know if I've made the right decision or if I was a jerk or even worse than a jerk, did something explicitly illegal.

I mean. I don't really care for laws.

I DO, however, care about being CAUGHT by laws.

Though that's the subject for another ramble, one I have always wanted to make but which I shouldn't make while at school.

So on that note, see ya later.

It just wasn't a disaster. My dad insisted that we leave early to drop my car off at the mechanics--and I was terrified that he had me driving the car which was problematic. Especially given the bad omen of the day. But we made it there just fine...

...And it's at that point I realized. (Well actually it was five minutes later as we were driving away from the mechanics so we had to go back to check and confirm.) I didn't have my shoebag with me. The one with my cell phone in it, my driver's license (remember, I was driving), and my dance shoes in it. On the night for dancing. It ended up being at home, but I only learned of this now, because we didn't have the time to go back; we had to go straight there.

So I did have the misfortune of a minor inconvenience. (Ow my feet; not using dance shoes for two hours of dancing...really accumulates with time.) And at any point, a major one could have happened. (Remember, the omen doesn't always mean something bad will happen, so much as it does mean something bad could happen if I'm not careful to make sure it doesn't.)

But I didn't get pulled over without my driver's license handy, so. It turned out good. That is, assuming the yellowish-red light my dad forced me to run doesn't get counted as a ticket. (I don't think that camera has one, no cop stopped me, and it really was my dad's fault for forcing me to do that given he ran a yellow light with me behind him and me not knowing how to get to the destination with him turning onto the freeway so it's not like he could pull over and wait for me meaning he could have left me utterly lost with no way to find him. NOT amused by that.)

Why?
The omen.
That's why.

Which omen?
The omen.

I'm superstitious, remember?
Well the omen is encountering a Range Rover. Now granted. Right now I'm not really that much Ranger. She does tend to come forward when she's called on or when the mood fancies her to do so, so right now there's more of her than normal but I'm still not exactly her right now.

Butstill. Even when she's not actively a part of me. She's still a part of me. One of the mes. One of my selves, even if not the active self. So the superstition applies to all mes, not just to her. So when I see a Range Rover. I always think to shift the second R over: Ranger over. Thus, the bad omen.

And here's the thing.

I saw one in the parking lot for school.
But then I forgot about it by the time I was getting ready to leave--and the funniest of things happened.

I narrowly avoided a collision with a car. Somehow, I missed that they were coming, and accidentally cut them off. I imagine they had to slam on the brakes and honk at me. (I did back up and let them go in front of me, and I think they got the idea that, yes, I just genuinely didn't see them and I meant no ill will and wasn't trying to be a jerk.) So the omen was warning me of that, meaning I'm safe, right?

...Then I saw another Range Rover on my drive home.

Welp.

Unless said omen was warning me of the cop I saw on my private road (I doubt it), that means something terrible is going to happen to me and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I've taken as many preventative methods as I possibly can, yet something will inevitably end up happening. Which won't be pleasant.

Now granted. Said something could be a minor inconvenience in the grander scale of things. But all the same, I am doomed to encounter some form of bad luck today, so all I can really do is try to make it a small bad-luck thing rather than a big-bad-luck thing, and beyond that just brace for impact because dang​ does fate have a funny way of warning me about incoming disasters.

Probably on the way to dance, especially since most of my time prior to that will be spent asleep.