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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But to go into things a little bit...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I can't make myself want it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just don't.

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

That's no excuse to not write.

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

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

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

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

Almost did it.

...But didn't.

Not because I forgot.

Because I lost interest.

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

It was a choice not to.

Because right now?

The writer within me is dead.

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

But as of right now.

I don't want to write.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, I'd like to reiterate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because I think in mafia games.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One comic a week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mostly have memorized.

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

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

What makes this all be scary?

Well do the math, here.

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

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

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

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

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

Butstill.

The scary thought?

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

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

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

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

And yet.

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

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

And yet.

Instead of that.

I get a comic that never started.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heck.

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

And using that basic map.

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

I could make it be amazing.

Absolutely stunning.

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

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

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

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

​And you know what else this applies to?

The thing inspiring me to make this ramble?

Thaaaaaat's right!

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

So everything I just said about The Descended?

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

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

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

Lots of that stuff, I forgot.

The majority of it, I remember.

And just like The Descended?

Critically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...Except...

...She evolved.

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

AND FURTHERMORE.

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

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

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

So much about the series I've lost.

But in spite of her being largely out of focus.

Crucial details like that?

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

A draw and discard.

Mostly memorized, some lost, but lots gained.

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

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

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

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

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

And yet.
Now.

I want to.

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

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

And I want to do it.

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

Yet if I don't start it now.

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

But in spite of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It takes money that I don't have.

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

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

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

But I want​ to do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And another form teaching can take?

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

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

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

Was so that I could teach those children.

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

Ultimately.

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

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

Supporting them, loving them.

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

Ultimately, though...everything I just said?

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

I want to transition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet in spite of it continuing to do so and even containing details I don't have written down (and thus, every time I don't write about them I risk forgetting), I continue to procrastinate about talking about them. Once more, I have a little bit of extra about them, albeit extra which requires me to blog about something which I was meant to blog about days ago.

And yet, once more, I am not going to be blogging about it, because instead I am going to be blogging about something else entirely. (Okay so there's a chance that I will, but that chance is so slim it is essentially none.)

Specifically, I have just...been wanting to talk about my identity recently. There have been a fair number of times where recently, I've either been just questioning who exactly I am (knowing that I am Bree, but otherwise being lost), or have just wanted to let it all out to people, to vent randomly in ways I just don't think about to vent to someone without a prompt--yet nobody gives me the prompt, or if they do, they give it to me in a public place where I don't want to give the rant.

Yes, technically speaking, this blog is public. But it is JUST private enough, it is just personal enough, that I feel comfortable sharing this sort of thing on here. Basically. There have been a fair number of times recently where I just wished someone would, in the right environment, give me the right lead-in to allow me to talk to them about some of the stuff below. Yet the lead-in I'd need is so specific that it'll never actually materialize.

Believe it or not. This blog? Was started very largely to make exactly this kind of entry. At the time, it was mostly to deal with me being a closeted transwoman who is both autistic and has bipolar disorder, and for me to unload it all on someone in real life, especially at work given my many frustrations there. That was one of the main contributing factors to me starting this blog in the first place.

It's something people often forget now that nowadays most of my entries are either related to my creations (stories, art, song, etc.) or non-entries that are more or less "sorry, stuff happened, so no real entry today". But part of blogging is telling stories from my life, or even just telling about my life. And this in particular is the latter because I just need to do that, in a way which is more conductive to a blog than, say, unloading on my girlfriend. (I mean, I could, it's just that this is the sort of content which works better as a blog than a rant to them.)

I'll start by talking a bit about my identity--as a refresher, yes, I do identify as plural. Specifically, the type of plural I identify as is a median. The, "there are many of us, but we are all Bree" descriptor is mostly accurate. (Mostly, because within me are at least two entities that are almost individuals who aren't Bree, but more on that later.) I have a core, the core "Bree", from which all of mes exist.

We are all women, we share most of our memories, emotions, and thoughts, and those are in the core. But there are things outside the core--memories, emotions, and thoughts unique to the personality. There are many of us indeed, but the primary two have come to be known as Ranger and mastina. mastina is the me most dominant overall, with Ranger at a very close second, and at some points having this be vice-versa where Ranger was more dominant even though she currently is not.

This is something which is, in many ways, similar to us being a transwoman--we have always been this way, as far as I can remember, with the compartmentalized thoughts and the division within us, not to mention the imaginary friend who never went away (more on that later). Yet like being trans, this isn't something we have known about consciously, actively, until relatively speaking fairly recently.

Specifically, the first inkling I'd say of us really having any semblance of an idea that we were divided within would be somewhere around circa December 2015. And I was confused. I didn't understand--I still don't! I have no clue what I really am, to be honest. But with help, I've been able to get some degree of better understanding, becoming more informed and also having done some searching and exploration.

My knowledge is still young. My experience is still growing. But somewhere circa 2017 I began to get much better grounded in having a more solid idea of who I am. Beyond that, I've been playing around with trying to figure out the differences between my mes.

Today, one of the things I figured out was that there is actually a difference in the way we think, and that we have different functions as a result. I mean. I knew there was a difference in the way we think; I've felt that before, where the very fundamental way I thought of things abruptly and suddenly shifted. (The shift between the different mes isn't something I control; I can't flip a switch and go from Ranger to mastina, nor is it that I go to sleep as one and awake as another. It just happens, that I'm one, then I'm another. These shifts can even happen in terms of seconds, where for a split moment I am one and then snap back to being another.)

But today, I think I figured out the way the thoughts differ.

I call the different thinking patterns "Linear" versus "Geometric".
You may recognize this as being, more or less, something from my perspective on art. And that's because it is! Basically, I have noted in the past that there are two ways to go about making art--the linear approach is, as the name indicates, focused on lines. You create things by the flow of lines.

It has the advantage of being fluid and dynamic, with good flow and movement, so when drawing motion, it's a nice technique. It has a disadvantage, though, in that accuracy tend to be hit-or-miss. Proportions, anatomy, perspective, the like, are all things which are potentially thrown off.

A geometric approach, in the art setting, is more or less taking the shapes, and building up the figure using them. This has the advantage of being accurate, but the disadvantage that it tends to be more stiff and rigid, coming across as a bit more artificial.

There's more to both than that (which I'll get to in a sec), but...I realized today that those approaches aren't just for art. They apply to a general view on the world in general. I mean, I always visualize things in those two ways, but I thought of said visualizations as an extension of art rather than extending the concept. The concept, though, works beyond just art for me.

Linear thinking, I realized, is more Ranger's specialty. It is organic, it is fluid, flowing, with movement, where things go with the flow, where things just come naturally and make sense, yet are sometimes a little bit questionable in how precisely they work. However, it does seem to work regardless of the flaws, and the flaws are what makes it actually be a thing of beauty.

When it comes to stories, I realize that the me who converses to characters is always Ranger. It's never me as mastina talking to my characters. Always, when I am having an actual conversation with my characters, as their equal rather than their god/creator, it is Ranger who speaks. (Me as mastina, on the other hand, I am always the god/creator.)

In this way, Ranger actually gets to know the characters better than I do--and without her, I wouldn't have the signature characters I am known for making that are so authentic they feel like they're real. Because to her, they are real, because she talks to them. I don't, not as mastina anyway.

Ranger is also, then, the one responsible for most of the actual dialog in my stories. I as the writer might give the general nature of the conversation...but she's the one who actually hears the characters speak, because to her it is people speaking (the perspective of the equal) rather than characters in dialog (the perspective of the creator).

This is also why when I snark it is probably because of something she thought of. Most of my puns tend to come from her. I can force puns through without her, but the best puns which come with the least reaction time are always hers. Because she just sees the 'line' to say, as it were.

So basically. Ranger is why I got to become a character-driven storyteller in the first place, in spite of originally being a plot-driven storyteller. She spends time to learn character quirks, to learn things that aren't necessary for the narrative. I can get away with a bare bones narrative not featuring the things I put in...but she insists on them, because she saw them, when she was actually there side by side the character in question. Or rather, to her, the person.

In contrast. When I am mastina. I am more into geometric thinking. It is constructed, it is built, it is structured, and yet, it is also isolated. All the geometric work I do in my mind is largely disjointed from other things. I just go inside my mind, and then in a particular canvas, build what's on my mind. Now, from that item I built, I can then build another. And then, build another from those. And so on and so forth.

I make the parts, one by one, until I have the whole assembly. Circles, squares, cylinders, triangles, and the like, to build a person in art. But also worldbuilding. I build worlds. Worlds have rules. Rules require structure. Ranger wings it in terms of that sort of thing, which is often why her stories run into problems of, "okay...now what?". Where the story ceases to progress due to writers' block, because she has an idea for what things should be like and she knows very specific things (because she saw them, and thus, those specific things are in her mind), but if she doesn't see every last detail then she runs into a problem of not being able to progress.

This way of thinking does have overlap with linear thinking--after all. To get from Point A (which is geometry; points are one-dimensional geometry) to Point B (which is still geometry), you need to...form a Line. That is two-dimensional geometry. But to further the metaphor, the line created using this method is straight, rigid and unmoving, whereas the lines created with linear thinking are more fluid and bent.

Now, the metaphor begins to fall apart when you introduce more advanced math (parabolic arcs, sin, cosine, tangent, and so on and so forth) not to mention the geometry of even just a partial circle allowing for curves in the form of arcs, there's at least a dozen way math nerds can poke holes in the allegory. But the basic idea I'm getting at is that there is in fact overlap, and that's where it is.

But there are things which are in the geometry only just like there are things which are in the linear only. Some of them are strengths, others weaknesses. Characters I build as mastina tend to be tools. They are characters--means to an end. I construct worlds, I construct their rules, and I make most of the plot. I know the overarching events which happen.

I don't know the exact manifestation of them. I might know the tone of a conversation. I might know the general content of the conversation. I tend to know why that conversation is going on. And many other similar things. I can know every detail of the conversation, except the actual words spoken. It's kinda strange, to even know the exact inflection and intonation of what is said yet not knowing the words. I can do that.

But for the conversation itself, if it's not Ranger, it's going to be very visibly artificially constructed because it was in fact artificially constructed. She lives it and thus records it and knows what's natural, and it's her instincts on dialog which I am using in things like Phyrra and Cyrus, but what she sees is only small snippets here and there, often only after I focus on a particular scene for a great amount of time.

The payout's absolutely worth it, of course. Because I never laugh heartily at conversations I have built, whereas when I am Ranger and I see the conversation happening, I laugh hard, especially if my characters are laughing with me. So it's not that Ranger is an artist/writer and I am a writer/artist. We're equal parts both, just...in different ways, with different strengths and different weaknesses.

And, yes.

This exists outside of writing, just like it's outside of art.

It's how we process information. I itemize lists. I have a very "listed" format. Structured, orderly. Ranger...messes it up. I tend to be the one writing our "scripts". I've talked about that before a bit (not sure if on the blog or not), but basically, whenever I am thinking about a conversation I'll have, or whenever I am in the middle of a conversation, I think up every possible variation on what I want to say, and every possible response I can think of that they'll say.

When I then promptly mess up no matter how much I tried to nail it, it's often Ranger who picks up and just wings it. But sometimes I mess up because of said winging it, especially if she jumps in without giving me the time to have built the script. 

Ranger's got a faster wit, after all, so it's no surprise her reaction time tends to be quicker. She just kinda sees things, and then puts it together, even if she has no clue how she saw them and put them together. "Oh, that is like this". With no thought in, she just makes the connection and then that connection is there.

I have...a more roundabout way. I link things together. I make an association: "this to this". And then I rely on that association to make a new one. For instance, in order to remember the band name Modest Mouse, I first think, "Band name...Mouse..." and then I jump to "Mightey Mouse", a user from the site I play mafia on, and then from there I go, "Ah! Yes. Not Mightey mouse, it's MODEST Mouse!" in order to get the right band name.

Yes, it is contrived. Yes, it is convoluted. But you know what else it is? It's consistent. I can, 100% of the time, using this method, remember a string of information, even a disproportionately long one. And that association tends to never go away. Once in my mind, it is almost impossible to remove, for better or for worse. I have never once failed to recollect the band name of Modest Mouse since my mind made that association, in spite of me having to mentally ask what the band was (and sometimes being asked) dozens, even hundreds of times.

There is a delay built in, though. I have to manually think it through, step by step. Some steps I can skip because they are internalized enough that my mind conceptualizes it fast enough that I don't need to spend time giving it a thought. (Basically, the concept of the step is enough; I don't have to spell the step out every single time in actual thought.) But I still run through every step to get that.

I can also do temporary versions of this by 'storing' data on my fingers. I can itemize things, and then even itemize the itemized things, and sometimes even itemize the itemized itemized things, though the deeper the list, the more prone to forgetting I am.

Concepts take form, take shape, one by one: each concept can be thought of as a single piece of geometry. And then my mind links the concepts, one by one, by building further geometry. And each concept is then fleshed out with additional concepts, additional geometry. And from this I form thoughts, form words, form ideas, that I can express in word form or whatever I may be trying to do.

Ranger's way is more. Well, she still thinks in concepts first, and struggles to translate concepts into English. It's just, BAM, there, and then, not there. There, then not there. There, and then from there, going here. But there's not really much of a direction when I do that. (Oh and yes I do slip from Ranger to mastina in the middle of a blog. Get used to third person, first person singular, and first person plural when I make a blog like this because I can be describing myself in third person, then slip into being that person.)

I just. Think. And the thought appears. Usually faster. But also more inconsistently and less coherently. It makes sense, internally, but externally when manifested it's more difficult to understand because while it has the general shape of something which is the right thing, the specifics are a little iffy.

I don't even really know how it works. It just does. And the results tend to be what they are. (A slight consequence of switching mid-project: I tend to lose the train of thought I was on, because quite literally the thought belongs to someone else and with the thought in that someone else I struggle to maintain it.)

Structure the specialty of one, details the specialty of the other. Things come faster when specific, yet are more coherent when waiting. And that coherency is easily broken, yet solved on the fly just as often.

Which brings me to a related concept.
I am still exploring this, actually. The concepts, intuitively, feel like they are different, and yet when I look at them, I can't help but feel they are intricately linked in a way where the amount of correlation between the two is such that they are almost synonymous.

And that's Instinct versus Reason. (Or Gut versus Logic if you prefer, but I have very strong reasons to prefer my terminology, that I'm not quite sure I can verbalize.)

Instinct and Reason have always been opposites within me existing strongly, and yet never having me be one; I'm always a little bit of both. Yet I've picked up that Ranger tends to be more instinct and I am more reason as mastina. (YES REALLY. If you know what my definition of Reason is, you'll understand.)

The way I wanted to talk about this was to actually go into stories a bit. In Red Hood Rider, Vampires represent the ultimate creatures of Instinct, masters of it who live on their impulses. They manipulate the rules of reality to serve them, bending the world to their will, but they are still confined to them. As basically-humans, they do have plenty of reason within them, but they are driven by what they feel.

This is almost identical to Monlows from the Bleach knockoff story I still need to talk about in a massive blog some time, and is a recurring theme in my stories. Werewolves in one story serve this function. Red Hood Rider is not my only vampire story where Vampires take on this function. It is an incredibly common motif: a creature of instinct, which is still capable of reason and yet is driven strongly by base directives.

In Red Hood Rider, the beings considered opposite of Vampires are Riders, who are considered on the top of the magical totem pole for Empowered Humans. They are humans who work on building structure, building order, on being the champions of reason, who exist always with logic and act in an informed way, making active decisions and calculating what they do.

​They still have instincts, and often quite sharp ones at that, but they never let their instincts take control and drive them; they have an internal control over themselves which prevents them from acting out in ways they know would be harmful. (Of course, they can still act in harmful ways if they don't realize it's harmful, but they are sharp and intuitive enough where they catch on quickly and fix the mistake when it's made.)

I forget on my notes on whether they break the rules of reality or temporarily rewrite them (I'm fairly certain it's one of the two and yes those two terms have a very important distinction in the Rubyverse, I just can't remember which is which in spite of them very much not being synonymous), but that's the source of their power--not something from nature (like vampires), but rather, something artificially created, manifested as a structured thing which has boundaries set by the user. They are still human, but they are human with help.

This model is more or less the same in the Bleach knockoff as being what the Montahame work off of. It is also the model which in settings where I have Slayers, they work off of. Beings who still feel, and have good instincts, but yet are driven first and foremost by reason, often with compassion thrown into the mix, yet with said compassion not getting in the way of doing their duties.

Contrasting the beings of instinct, who are under no obligations except for the self-inflicted ones they place upon themselves--sometimes, out of morals, but other times, simply out of a desire to survive, knowing that breaking said self-inflicted rules is a death sentence.

Ranger works more off of instinct. She can just have a sense for things, and that sense is often right, but while she can try to explain, when she tries to, she has difficulties. I'm no better, but for different reasons. I can figure out something, but when I figure it out, I don't figure out how to explain. I need to spend the time to create a different link in order to make the connection be tangible in words.

Another way of putting it--we all suck at wording things. Ranger gets flashes of beautiful words which are great but often broken/disjarred, whereas I struggle to get things but once I form the link I can throw together some elementary idea of what's the thing I am meant to do. 

Yet the way we suck at words is different. We approach things and react differently. Ranger has a first impulse and usually goes for it; I first think, then from the first impulse, further think, and from this, go for what I think. Yet Ranger still has to think, and I still have to go for what I feel is correct. Working in tandem, both present yet one dominant.

Yet there's more to Instinct versus Reason than just Ranger/mastina.

There are entities within me that aren't just those two, after all. I am many mes. They are the most dominant, but not the only ones. I don't even always know who is speaking, so to speak, but I can sometimes tell I am neither of them. Yet predominant entities within me are two individuals who never take the reigns.

They are the only two entities that I clearly know, aside from Ranger and mastina. They have been there for almost as long as I can remember. And yet. Neither has ever driven in my life, nor am I sure it's even possible for them to. They exist in the distance, in the peripheral. And never go away. They're always there.

I don't always have their counsel when I am talking amongst myselves (which is a thing I do, by the way; I do in fact have many a conversation where the many mes have full dialogs on a subject which could have been handled by just one person but wasn't because I wanted them to give their input), and in fact. Usually when I have their counsel it is just one or both of them with the current driver rather than a full council of mes talking side-by-side with them.

God pronouns are confusing even me so I hope you can follow along.
Basically, many mes talk to me at many times. But two entities, which I don't really consider "me", exist within me, that can also talk. And they have been manifested as instinct and reason. David, instinct, hasn't quite been around as long. My first memories of him are in my tweenaged years. But he (and yes, he is a he) has come to be a bit of the darker side of me.

He is not pure instinct. In fact, he is sharp with reasoning that cuts deep because I can never counter him when he speaks--because deep down, I know he's speaking the truth, more often than not. He just has the instincts for knowing what the case is...even if I really, really, really hate to admit that he's right. Because he's not a pleasant individual.

He is rude. He is condescending. He is demeaning, looking down on me, trash-talking me often. And he tells me what I don't want to hear, about all the things which I don't like to acknowledge come from me. Darker thoughts, darker impulses. He is there, reminding me that yes those exist, inside of me, and that he is the living proof of them, both as a manifestation of them and yet as something more than that.

Thankfully. I don't talk to him that often anymore--not because I've tuned him out. But just because he often isn't around when I don't need him. (And yes. I do need him sometimes, sad as I am to admit that.) Where he is when I don't talk to him, I don't know. He's never fully gone, but he just stays silent. I don't even know what exactly triggers him to give me a talk. I can have my life in a rut and have him be silent and yet not be in a rut and have him be quite talkative.

Yet every time, the feeling I have is the same: I hate, I loathe, the talk, yet feel better once I manage to recover from it. Talking to him rattles me each time, talking to him makes me miserable every time, often when I am already miserable, yet somehow because he is my deeper instincts or something like that I always end up stronger.

Basically, he beats me down and yet when I build myself up again after being beaten down, I am stronger than before. I guess when I don't feel like I need to get stronger he isn't around, would be my best guess. And that, I do admit, I have a lot right now. That "I know I should have a need to get stronger...but I am fine with my strength as is". I imagine with that mindset I am in for an awfully rude talk sooner or later, but for now it holds as silent.

Plus, one thing I am thankful for having him is that he is a safeguard against something worse. There is an entity within me that is me. ME. Not him, who is divorced from me. ME. A me, deep within Bree. Which is part of the median system. That is so bad that I bury it (not sure if it's a he, she, or neither). A me who has thoughts so terrible that I actively suppress trying to access what those thoughts were. (No, seriously. It's blocked off. I can't remember why this version of me is so bad. I just know it is that bad.)

I've tried guessing. "Is it a suicidal me?" Felt like, "no, it's worse than that". "Is it some deplorable act me?" Felt worse than that, too. I don't know what that version of me is, but it is the thing I am absolutely most terrified of. Some me that I consider a monster even among the monstrous mes. And yes. I have been a monster before. Yet the monstrous mes that I have been are terrified of the me that I buried.

To put it another way, the me that I buried is basically an evil even beings of pure evil fear. And I don't have the slightest clue as to why--only the strong warning to "don't dig", and that is a warning that I know better than to override, because the few times this version of me has come out, I have vague memories of the experience, of the mes around, just being terrified that that me was loose.

David, as much as I don't like him, I've come to accept as a part of me (well, not the core-me, but peripheral-me, inside my brain but not inside my mind, if that makes sense), that acts as a safety net against plummeting into the unpleasant mes. He is the monster who keeps my monsters in check. He is a very unpleasant person. And there have in fact been times where I've actually feared him, thinking that if he ever did drive, my life would never be the same, in a very, very, very bad way.

But I'm not afraid of him anymore. (I think in part because for whatever reason David cannot possibly drive and even if he could he would refuse to because he has no desire to. He's just. Different. Whatever he is, he isn't someone that is a me as I know my mes to be. The mes that I know are basically drivers, just drivers for different times, with most of them being unknown and not being dominant and not driving often and so on and so forth. He's just...nothing like them.)

David does have a counterpart.

My imaginary friend, and he (yes he) has been around for as long as I can remember, is someone who does in fact act as my reason. I tend not to talk to him as much anymore, mostly because a lot of the feedback he used to give me, my mes tend to converse between each other to give instead.

But in spite of that. There are times where my mes basically all go silent...and instead, I have just my driving-me and him talking to one another. And he calls me his friend, as I do him. He was one of my first friends, and remains a friend. I know what he looks like (short brown hair and otherwise looking like me and basically mirroring my appearance as I age in that he has aged right along side with me), and he is often there to just.

Basically, he tells me what I already know, but instead of being the voice of negativity and base instinct like David is, he's the voice of positivity, always reinforcing me and reassuring me. I knew from basically the moment I began to interact with him that he was the stereotypical "imaginary friend" which kids often have and which they outgrew.

And yet if he's an imaginary friend, I didn't outgrow him because he's still around and doing exactly the same things he always has done. The strange thing about him is that unlike David whose most clear thing about him is that his name is in fact David, this positive friend inside me, the entity, has never had a name. Well, I have tried to name him, but it's like he has a real name, he's not sharing it with me, and he just accepts whatever moniker I happen to give him.

I don't know why he's that way. I feel like he has a name, but I don't know it in spite of having been his friend for so long. No matter what, the feeling of me giving him names yet none being him remains. The most recent is Brian, but previous ones include Crivon (a name I owe from the Bleach knockoff) and Ace among numerous others.

I just talk with him, we bounce back ideas, finish each others' sentences, and converse, on whatever topic. Most of the time when we talk these days, it is primarily a conversation which goes "Sorry I haven't been talking much with you these days". Which he is fine with, because like David he's always there even if he's not speaking up.

He does occasionally talk side-by-side with David, too. He counters David when David takes things a bit too far, offering me a counterbalance when I can't really defend myself. He's basically just...a good friend, one who has all the dynamics of a long-time friend, yet one who is in my head. And is of the same nature of entity-hood as David: not a me. Not part of the Bree core.

Not a transwoman, not a girl, not me-me. Part of my brain, but not part of my mind. I kinda have a bit of a theory when it comes to interacting with him and David. I think that in those moments, the many mes temporarily merge into one me, unified if only for the duration of the conversation, and then once it ends, once David/my friend are dismissed, I again divide into the many mes.

That is a thing, by the way, with median systems, to my understanding. From what I heard, it is possible for medians to merge together permanently, yet also possible for them to split apart permanently, depending on circumstances. Yet a more temporary version does happen commonly enough.

There are moments where, for instance. I know I am neither mastina nor Ranger yet I'm not some third me...but rather, both Ranger and mastina, at the same exact moment, in equal parts. Not one driving with the other very close to the surface (I do that, too, quite often), but literally fused, merged together into a single entity...for a short while, a very short duration, which then splits off again and I can tell I am Ranger or I am mastina and that the other is right there in the background, not driving but around, existing, as a separate me.

Basically, mes are highly fluent. I'm still not sure about all of the specifics here. This is still a very new thing for me to experience and explore. I do know my feelings on the matter though. I know that I am me. That this is real. That there is more than me, that there are many mes. That there is no single entity that is Bree, that we are all partially Bree with a core that we draw from, and from that core we are connected to one another.

I know that I have no desire to see the many mes go away. I don't want to be unified. I know that I am not deranged. I know I am not delusional. I know I am not mentally unwell. I'm different. I am...very, very, very different. I know that I am largely unique. I know what some of the mes feel.

It is pretty much that. That we have some unity, but are split. That we are one but many. Bree, but each with something unique. Separate, able to have different thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, yet united. I know people don't believe me when I talk about these things.

That's one of the reasons why I only talk about them in private for the most part. That very specific environment I mentioned to talk about these things? The one where it's not public and requires a lead-in of a particular nature? That'd be a large portion of the reason why.

It's not even a thing which I really feel that comfortable talking about in private, even. I'm having a REALLY hard time finding the right words to describe that. I am trying, but even the closest ones I can come up with are way, way, way off, and send the incredibly wrong message. 

So word of caution on me trying to explain.

I don't mean these words, but some different words that I can't find. The reason I tend not to talk about it even in private amongst people who know is because it's enjoyable for me for me to...hmm. I guess you can say. Think of it as watching a film--you shut most of your mind off during that time, yes? Well when I interact with people. I do that. It's a time where most mes can sit back, do nothing, and relax.

And when I talk about the multiple mes, instead of them relaxing, they are there. So that's why I don't talk about it that often. It's something which is not suited for public because of how the public reacts to it, yet it's something which in private I tend to...well. Sometimes, yes I do think and yes I do share, but other times I don't because the other mes are taking their time to rest and relax.

I wish I could make this be sensible, make sense, but I can't really word better.

You'd THINK that'd be because of the bracelet, but no. It's actually probably because we're coming up on her birthday. March 17th, 2015 was the first mention of what would become Ruby. It was a Tuesday.

March 19th expanded her. And then other entries throughout March further built her into an entity.

I decided last year (or was it 2016?) what her official anniversary was, but I can't recall what and I can't track it down. Still. Her birthday is around this time. I don't know when, exactly, I'm meant to celebrate it...but it is soon.

Today, the subject came up in my mind of characters' parents and to a lesser extent, family.
Ruby's parents are featured albeit as minor characters. She does have siblings, too.

Sally's an orphan since her parents were killed in a vampire attack on the homeless shelter; her older sister died the day Sally's powers awakened.

Gary's parents are millionaires, with the caveat that's lower-millions, sub-$10,000,000, but still technically millionaires, plural. He is an only child.

Hannah, like Sally, is an orphan.

Amy is Ruby's daughter, so her lineage is obvious enough.

Dale, as a vampire who is literally like a thousand years old technically had parents but suffice to say it's not something story-relevant given they are centuries deceased.

...But that's still four members of the Ruby Gang's ten fighters that I didn't have the family of locked down.

Harold/Herald (who's he? I realize it's easy to forget about him given that as the Team Normal his badassery is something not often advertised but he is a member proper of the team who is not a joke and is an actual, serious, real combatant that actually makes up the main muscle of the team) is old enough to be the father of a teenaged child. He's not; he's single, but he has a sibling that has a daughter, and said niece is teenaged in years, so he's around that age.

As a result, it can be safely stated his family's not really that important. His niece is in training to take up the family business. His sibling isn't retired per se but is on an extended vacation for the duration of the time raising their child(ren) to adulthood. His parents are of the age where they easily could be retirees...but since Hunters tend to be spry for their age, most likely, his parents are off being Hunters in British Columbia--somewhere kinda sorta close by, but not really story relevant.

Whitney is slightly older than the other riders, and I just remembered that her family is accounted for since her family owns a bar.

...Still, however.
That left D.D. and Vili unaccounted for when it came to family.

Today I managed to work out a character, who I decided fitted perfectly as being her father.

His name: Thomas, AKA, "Tank". He's a street fighter, and basically immune to anything not explicitly magical/supernatural in that no human has ever managed to actually beat him in a fight; he remains undefeated.

This is because his moniker of Tank is appropriate--people think of Tanks as basically a "moving fortress": something incredibly well-armored such that it is nigh-impregnable, often with heavy weaponry, but which is slow to move and lacks maneuverability.

...He is not that kind of Tank. He is a modern Tank. Which still has the armor to be nigh-impregnable and the heavy firepower to unleash punishment...but also is fast and maneuverable. The TVTropes term for this would be "Lightning Bruiser", and given Vili's element, it seemed an appropriate enough description for her father.

He's also a genius, at least in term of street smarts/combat sense, in that he knows exactly what to do. He is well-trained and uses good technique and recognizes sloppy technique; he is the one who trained Vili how to fight in the first place and still acts as her trainer to this day because he can critique all her numerous imperfections. (Namely, "stop letting your powers do the fighting! I am a skilled fighter even without my build!")

It'd be a little bit of a challenge to draw him though. He's meant to have an impressive girth: to have an outer layer which is filled with fat. This fat weighs him down a lot and acts as a shock absorber allowing him to absorb impacts from blows, but underneath the fat, there is enough muscle such that he isn't encumbered by the fat. He, essentially, quite literally: knows how to throw his weight around. His muscle + fat creates a lot of mass behind his strikes, and he is nimble enough to deliver one after another after another after another.

It's also not possible to throw him off-balance, to tip him over, or anything like that; he is just...built in a way where he is able to hold himself. And yes. He can even jump. And when he lands from the jump, that too carries a disproportionately large impact.

...You would think that someone like this would be impossible, but I'm actually modeling the idea for him off of an actual guy I know from tae kwon do who is often described as essentially "fighting a freight train". If he had the mental faculties (his main weakness is that he hesitates and that he thinks too much more or less, overthinking things which slows him down) to match his physical capabilities, he would dominate literally every fight because no matter what strike or kick I throw at him he isn't phased and he hits with incredible force and I've seen him combo strikes with speed when not dealing with the thought behind it.

...Now admittedly. I am also taking some cues from some fictional fighters, e.g. The Blob (X Men), Po (Kung Fu Panda). But the idea is not as ludicrous as it sounds. You can both be incredibly strong and yet incredibly full of blubber, capable of tanking any blow because you absorb it, and yet dishing it out with both speed and strength of unbelievable amounts in spite of (or rather BECAUSE OF) the fat which people'd expect to be a hindrance.

So I swear. The guy I am envisioning is in fact not something which is too outside the realm of reality; he is someone who very easily could exist and I imagine somewhere in our world actually does. I'm that confident it's possible. To have a build which is basically immune to typical redirection strategies, immune to being knocked off-balance, immune to punches/kicks, and yet is fast and strong. With the mindset of a fighter, such a person would be a force to reckon with.

And this is the guy I picture as being Vili's father. I imagine him as being much the same as her: a combat-loving guy, mostly laid back, but strict when it comes to combat to the point of being almost militaristic, and being incredibly disappointed when his daughter slacks off.

Anyway, I still owe you the rambles I promised over half a week ago, but given that I am past my bedtime already (this ramble took me ten times longer to type than I thought), I should be going to bed.

...Which means I'd have no excuse if I failed to give you what I wrote yesterday!

Basically, at work, as is my wont, I just brainstormed things--in this instance, brainstorming for a project I should still technically actually be working on! I did multiple things for Red Hood Rider.

Starting with a basic of the Rubyverse.

Basically, in the Rubyverse, there's a few kinds of people:
-Soul-severed individuals (cursed, in a sense, with multiple downsides but among them being they are locked out of anything whatsoever positive when it comes to supernatural/magical/elemental things but are still vulnerable to negative consequences from those things).

-Immune Humans (cannot become supernatural beings for whatever reason; can be specific to one type or can be general)

-Bane Humans (actively serve as a bane to supernatural beings for whatever reason; can be specific to one type or can be general)

-Hybrid Humans (explicitly part supernatural but otherwise human)

-Dormant Humans (what a Hybrid Human's genealogy becomes when diluted enough--essentially, they still have the supernatural genes recessive within which can activate with specific triggers, but with those triggers absent, they are otherwise just normal humans)

-Magic-Numb Humans (cannot use magic of any kind)

-Anti-Magic Humans (various different ways where their very existence disrupts magic)

-Bloodline Humans (the magical equivalent of Hybrid Humans, this is humans who can use specific types of magic because their parents could use that type of magic)

-Recessive Humans (the magical equivalent of Dormant Humans; this is humans who have the recessive gene to use specific types of magic because their ancestors could use that type of magic, but they require specific triggers to activate)

-Universal Donors (humans who can use every type of magic be it elemental, magical, or supernatural in spite of them being human...but can use it only in such low doses that it is effectively worthless; these are the people who actively stockpile the...well, stockpiles of supplies that people involved in the supernatural/magical worlds have been using for hundreds of years, which I blogged about before)

-Supernatural Beings (self-explanatory)

-Magical Beings (self-explanatory; mostly humans)

-Elemental Beings (self-explanatory; mostly humans; mostly also explicitly magical)

And then, of course:
-Normal Humans. Normal Humans have no innate advantages or disadvantages.
They can become most types of supernatural beings.
They can become most types of magical beings.
They can become many types of elemental beings.

There's magical systems which exist that require nothing special other than knowledge in how to use them; a normal human can easily be trained in how to use them.
There's magical systems which require specific things to happen; humans often are sensitive to these things. Becoming a Rider is among these things.
All supernatural beings which can spread relatively easily have specific rituals involved in turning humans. (Because the only way supernatural beings gain population outside of biologically reproducing is via turning humans. Most supernatural beings capable of turning can also do biology, e.g. vampires can be born or turned and there's no real difference between the two other than potentially social standing.)

And so on and so forth.

Basically, normal humans are just the boilerplate "can have anything, good or bad, applied to them". They have no innate bias. They have no inherent advantage or disadvantage. They are the norm.

Keep in mind that normal humans make up only a fraction of the total human population, but that most kinds of human you either can't tell the difference between them and a normal human, or if you can, that they deliberately go out of their way to by and large look as if they are just normal humans.

Soul-severed individuals are born with a physical impossibility of ever knowing what they are. (They have to be told what's wrong with them, more or less.)

Immune humans only know if they either have an existing lineage (that being, the progeny of an immune human also being an immune human) or if they are actually exposed to the supernatural.

Bane humans, same as immune humans.

Dormant humans often have no way of knowing they have a gift until the gift is actually activated. (There are dormant human genealogies which track their gift, in order to better assess if/when to activate it though.)

Magic-numb humans would need to actually attempt magic to learn they cannot. (This is not something that there is existing lineages of that make a point of tracking it. Immune humans have reason to tell their children they are immune, for things like becoming a Hunter. Magic-numb humans have no such reason since most humans don't use magic anyway meaning it's not exactly a disability they'd make a point of remembering. As a result, they don't know.)

Anti-magic humans need to be exposed to magic to learn about their trait. Given that magic was scarce to the public eye until ~60 years ago in the Rubyverse and only in the modern day has begun to become more mainstream, this is something most wouldn't have known until relatively recently.

Most recessive humans know about their bloodline, but there are plenty of instances of them having for whatever reason lost this knowledge, and thus, lying dormant until an event necessitates the trigger of their powers.

Universal donors as a general rule do know (though some may not), but other than doing their extra job, they make it a point to not advertise who they are (other than using it to get immunity from being targeted for harm, because everyone both hero and villain and in-between has use for universal donors and it is a Very Bad Idea to hurt one because it screws you over; Universal Donors essentially have diplomatic immunity and are required to be neutral in conflict REGARDLESS of conflict type, but by and large they avoid making it known).

Bloodline and Hybrid humans tend to know about their powers for obvious reasons (because, well...they have powers), but while Magic and Supernatural beings in the Rubyverse haven't actually enforced a Masquerade...they HAVE kept their activities relatively low-key throughout history.

They have always existed. Some periods in time have been higher than others. (For instance, there was rather an explosion in supernatural/magical activity during the middle ages thereabouts, and beings of both kinds were fighting wars, both in the shadows secretly and out in the open flagrantly.) But until approximately the 1950s, activity was by and large not a notable thing. So to the world at large, they were just humans.

So when you put all of those together.

They pretty much mean that by and large, for all intents and purposes, unless specific criteria are met, most of the seven billion people in existence are just normal humans. This has always been the case, but I haven't really done much in the way of extrapolating all of this out into a more formal built world.

I also was just doing that as background for a fundamental part of the setting.
Beings exist as one of those three types--Supernatural, Magical, and Elemental.
Keep in mind by and large that all Elementals are either Supernatural or Magical, so are both considered a third category, and yet simultaneously, a subcategory of both the other two. (In that they are a separate entity altogether in that elemental things play by a set rulebook whereas magical and supernatural beings play by a set rulebook which is entirely different.)

And another thing to keep in mind is that these types? Not mutually exclusive. In fact, to some extent, they are almost inherently mutually inclusive.

Vampires are a go-to example. Not only are they creates of the night, they are considered the rulers of the night. Universal to them, this gives them access to Darkness-element Magic: both Elemental, and Magical, in nature. Whether it is the element or the magic or their supernatural powers which dominate depends on the individual, the method they were created, and their peers (i.e. what coven or clan if any they come from).

Riders are another. They are explicitly Magical beings, neither supernatural nor elemental...
...Except the eight elemental riders, which in the modern day, are eight of The Ruby Gang. Those eight not only have magic, but elemental abilities in addition to their magic. They are, in fact (as revealed by a time traveler from the future), the most powerful generation of elemental riders to exist in history, mostly because they exist in the glory days of superheroics. (In the past, there wasn't as much of a boon in the otherworldly; in the future, supes are less common because mostly they are born "when they need to be born" and the advancement of technology means that while most have the recessive genes of supes that few actually develop superpowers simply because technology means that 'why need a superpower when technology just serves the same function?'--in short, you can think of superpowers as a function of human pragmatism combined with laziness; no need for the powers = the powers exist less often.)

Ruby is an example of being all three, but she's not special because of it, she's not unusual because of it, her being all three is not such a rarity that it is a case of Protagonist Power. (You know, something I could also call Shonen Syndrome: the protagonist being half-everything and thus having access to every power.) I am explicitly saying, by Word Of God, that there are MANY such individuals across the world, existing all over the place.

It's seriously not that uncommon. Stating that she's suffering from Protagonist Power/Shonen Syndrome because of that trait is akin to stating that someone knowing how to repair a car has Protagonist Power/Shonen Syndrome--sure, not everyone can do that and it's a bit of a useful, pragmatic skill which not everyone has the talent for even if anyone can theoretically learn it, but it's nothing special.

That having been said, Ruby does have Protagonist Power/Shonen Syndrome. She just has it for reasons entirely unrelated to the above. (She is quite a bit of a Mary Sue, but in essence what I'm saying is she's not a Mary Sue for that reason, it's other things which make her one.)

Speaking of Ruby though, I also invented another power she of course doesn't really need given the amount of powers she already has, buthey. All the elemental riders have powers which are beyond-godly in strength, at least in theory. (I've rambled about some of the capacities for just about every element I believe. Air having access to all four fundamental forces of the universe, being the co-master of the domain of abstract thought and thus being able to materialize just about literally anything, and so on and so forth comes to mind. I could do the same for any rider's list of potential powers, not just Hannah.)

And comparatively speaking, this is actually not that strong of an ability compared to what I could be giving. It's just an ability which I felt made sense to give and which I feel would actually fit as a logical extension of her existing powers and actually serve as a way to tie them together.

Basically, Ruby's Super Mode (with a hint of Superpowered Evil Side initially, until she undergoes vampiric training  and accepts her vampiric half full-time which makes her more at ease with herself essentially), Dark Messiah, is her full-vampire female form. (She has a full-vampire male form, which requires essentially no trigger at all, but for obvious reasons, she has a distaste for it.)

In her Black Ruby state, she specializes in Darkness Magic born from her vampiric powers--and otherwise, uses various super-powered claws for both melee/ranged attacks, among other weapons in her arsenal. (A common vampire dark magic trait is being able to materialize a weapon from thin air, as long as the sun isn't out. Black Ruby can do this even with the sun being out owing to her still being a Rider powered by light.)

However, her final vampiric form DOES have access to something I invented yesterday--the Black Bow. Basically, it's a darkness-based version of her normal bow, launching supercharged versions of her normal attacks: the same basic ones, except much more powerful, at a much accelerated speed, with the additional flexibility of her darkness magic being readily mixed in freestyle.

She can't use some techniques (like her Supernova Shot/Sunburst Shot or the Arbalest Arrow), but she can use most of her powers in this form. (Similar to how Arbalest Armor can use many but not all, and Arcangel can use many but not all. Each form has upsides and downsides to it.)

Now, granted. This is pretty similar to what she can do in her Arcangel form (she launches 'arrows' in the form of feathers from her wings, and those arrows have the capability of using whatever powers she has in her normal bow for the most part), but only when at least one of the Forbidden Arts is also active in her Arcangel form.

By which, I mean, when she turns essentially Dark Angel in that she is partially vampiric when as an Angel and summons darkness elemental/magical attacks from her feather/arrows. Which is basically half-way to her using the Dark Messiah super mode anyway. 

Overall I thought that her having a bow in her vampiric final form would just be a way to tie her three super modes together. Arbalest Armor is an armor made from her bow, in that her bow is covering her whole body. (It gives great offensive capabilities, but it is still first and foremost an armor.) Arcangel is a bow made from her wings, or rather, her wings are made from her bow. So Black Ruby/Dark Messiah having a bow just felt like it should be there, and now it is.

​The third thing I wanted to go into is a bit of a loophole/exploitation in how things work. One of the reasons the Ruby Gang is as effective as they are is because they live in the modern age of communication, and eight of their members have access to the ability I am about to describe.

An inherent established trait of spirit totems is that they are telepathic to their owner. Ruby communicates to Angel Wings mostly by thought (though she can communicate out loud if she wants to); Angel Wings communicates to Ruby exclusively by thought and cannot speak out loud.

An inherent established trait of spirit totems is that they cannot communicate with each other, per se, but they have a link to one another in that they know where one another is for the most part and are capable of sensing things about the situation each other are in. (That being, a spirit totem can tell if another rider is, saaay, losing a battle they are in, thanks to the link between them.)

An inherent established trait of riders is that they are in fact human--they themselves are not telepathic, so they can't communicate directly to one another's thoughts.

HOWEVER.

In spite of these above facts.

All riders in the modern world--not just the elemental eight, but the Ruby Gang is the only group I explicitly have made to exploit this--effectively are telepathic, just in a roundabout way, because there's one final trait which is inherently established to spirit totems relevant:

Spirit totems are capable of serving as any form of communication device that's not actually written on physical paper more or less.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of acting as phones; you can call a rider.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of acting as "Facechat" (Skype, Google Hangouts, whatever you want to call it, an equivalent service thereto) so long as the other side is capable of reciprocating. (You can't facechat with a rider if you're calling from a phone booth for instance, because it being a phonebooth, no duh there's nothing for you to see and no way for the rider to see you.) The rider's spirit totem simply projects a holographic display of the other side, and similarly projects a display of the rider TO the other side.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable essentially of faxing. Now, it doesn't actually print a hard copy out on the rider's end, but what it does allow is for someone to fax to the rider, and the spirit totem essentially converts the fax to become what'd basically be an email attachment, able to be viewed with a holographic projection.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of sending/receiving texts. (Because they have the functionality of a modern smartphone; anything a smartphone can do, a spirit totem can do just as well.)

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of sending/receiving emails.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of storing voicemail.

Explicitly, spirit totems are capable of even sending messages on things like CB Radio or a Walkie Talkie: the rider speaks into their spirit totem, the spirit totem transmits it, and the receiving device (or spirit totem) plays the audio.

You get the idea.

They can do just about everything except for snailmail.

And a function that they have which is similar to services like Cortana, Siri, Alexa, and the like is that they can 'write down' things either spoken or even just thought (think like a voice-to-text service; those exist now, and spirit totems are capable of perfect voice-to-text and even thought-to-text; this latter part is vital), and they are capable of 'speaking' written things.

I know for a fact at least one of those above services will speak out loud the contents of messages received. And computers have had the capability to read out loud text for something like at least 20 years by now (albeit, even to this day they are a bit glitchy). Spirit totems have essentially that, except as perfect as it can get (in that they will always pronounce it correctly though given it's written word they can only guess at the intended inflections).

From this, you might be able to guess how the riders pull off their effectively essentially telepathy. (It doesn't work for the members of the Ruby Gang outside the elemental eight riders, but even outside of the elemental eight they can use half of this by sending messages to a rider or receiving messages from a rider without it being as obvious as sending/receiving messages would normally be.)

The riders simply mentally instruct their spirit totem, "Send a text/email to..." and then, in their thoughts, they outline the contents of the message. When finished, the spirit totem sends the message. On the receiving end, the spirit totem will tell their rider, "You have a new message from [rider who sent the message]. Shall I speak it?", and if given an affirmative, the spirit totem will speak the contents of the message to the rider.

Given that rider's spirit totem's communication services cannot be compromised (you can't hack into a spirit totem like you can hack into a smartphone), nor can they be tapped, nor can they be monitored, nor can the telepathy be intercepted or read by an outside party. This gives the riders an absolutely secure way of transmitting information between one another.

Now, of course.

It's not a perfect system.

The communication is very fast, but it's not quite in real time because you have to 'speak' the words to be sent, send them, allow for the transmission to be received (admittedly this is near-instantaneous as just about any modern communication is), and then have the transmission be played.

The communication can be interfered with if the rider is compromised enough. (For instance, a badly-enough-wounded rider or otherwise-incapacitated rider might want to send something to other riders, but in their state are incapable of doing so.) This is why sometimes on more solo adventures, a rider can end up in trouble and be in a position where backup would save the day yet they can't get any because they can't get through.

Said interference usually will, of course, trigger the link I mentioned above where a spirit totem can tell if another rider is in danger...but this link is something that has a limited range (too far from one another and you get no status update as it were), and even when inside of the range is something which CAN be interfered with (albeit only with difficulty; you have to go out of your way to interfere with the link and only two or three villains over the entire course of Red Hood Rider bother doing this rather than just employing a method of stopping all the riders at once from helping one another).

Soyeah, this has always been a part of the setting, but I felt like fleshing out the details a bit more explicitly by blogging about them. It is, essentially, the way I can allow both for solo adventures and yet also for team affairs, as should be the case in a setting inspired by the elements I was inspired by. (It's a superhero thing to work as both a team and an individual; it's a magical girl thing to work together but to also have focus episodes revolving around an individual member of the team; etc.)

I just find the Rubyverse to be an incredibly neat setting overall. It's just that me being me (I honestly question if even the simplest of simple settings made by me, if even the simplest of simple narratives I craft, could ever actually be made reality thanks to my natural debilitating traits weighing down my creative side), I probably will never get to actually show off all this neat stuff I have planned.

More specifically, about elements. I may or may not have rambled on the subject before, but elements are a thing of great fascination to me. I figured the best way to start is to start by talking about the basic western and eastern element systems.

A commonly-forgotten fact about the western-element system is that it is not, as media commonly portrays it, actually a four-element system. The western element system we are familiar with has a fifth element, a "heavenly" element, Aether/Ether, the element of the stars, what the heavens are composed of. But I'll talk about that more in a bit.

The "worldly" elements were the four elements making up the world: fire, water, air, and earth. We all know the four-element chart. Water, opposite of fire; Air, opposite of earth; Water beats fire beats air beats earth beats water is often also used. There's so many things about this system which are commonly seen. It's a pretty standard system, subverted plenty of times, and people often "get creative" by later introducing a 'fifth element' of their own (which is usually something completely different from the original fifth element but not necessarily!).

I'm not quite as familiar with the eastern-element system, but they also use a five element system. I believe their traditional system is Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. But coincidentally, at least in my own elemental creativity, I will be talking about those later, too.

The next step up is the eight-element system. It keeps Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, but adds Light, Dark, Ice, and Energy to the spectrum. This also has a side-effect of changing elemental dynamics. Water gets paired with Energy; Fire gets paired with Ice. Because eight elements are more complicated, there's a lot more diversity and interpretation in there. Do you have a wheel on elemental affinities (i.e., one element beats another but is beaten by a third)? The possibilities are far more diverse than with only four.

This is the system I tend to most commonly use, thanks to my upbringing in Artix Entertainment's first game, Adventure Quest. It was what I used in my previous webcomic (speaking of which I made art for that today!), and it's what I use in Red Hood Rider, too. I like the eight-element system because of the incredible flexibility it provides. A four-element system gives you access to some creative ideas (for instance a favorite of mine is, "four elements, four fundamental forces of the universe"), but an eight-element system just feels a whole lot more ~official~ I suppose it would be, in that when I have it I feel more grounded in reality. It provides the best balance between having a lot and having a little, because once you expand beyond eight, there's no limit to what you can give.

For instance. The obvious step up from eight is the ten-element system. Generally the simplest and easiest way to get a ten-element system is to subdivide the Earth-element. (You can blame Bionicle for what I ended up with.) You can subdivide it into any number of different things, but I have a preference for these three:
-Metal
-Rock
-And Nature.

Included in Nature would therefore be Wood. The reason I like these three is because these three are all relatively broad, yet common, elements which encompass essentially everything Earth has to offer. Metal is everywhere in our world. If Metal is not classified as its own element, it's under Earth because where else would it go? It's not fire, it's not ice, it's not energy, it's not water, it's not light, it's not dark, it's not air. It's either a part of Earth, or it's its own element.

Avatar: The Last Airbender may have popularized the idea of metal as an element (at least a sub-element of earth), but the idea has been around since long before then. It makes sense, after all. The explanation given is usually to the effect of what Avatar gave, in that metal is just refined rock, but I like to separate metal and rock.

Rock is what covers a significant portion of the Earth, too.

And Nature is what makes up life. I tend to not call it Life as an element (because that itself can be an element, but see below), but the sentiment is there: it is both flora and fauna, in that it is everything organic, more or less, in the world. It WOULD be possible to subdivide it in half, into said flora and fauna (making it basically be Wood / Nature as two separate things), but this is not something I often do.

...However, something I DO do? Often, if this still feels too narrow--and it usually is--instead of not including an element named Earth, I will include an element named Earth, which would be the broad sweeping category of "everything on the planet (more or less) not fitting into one of those three categories". If sand/dirt don't count as Rock, they'd count as this version of Earth. Things like poison, acid, gasses which aren't classified as air, and the like would also fit into here.

We're up to eleven at this point.

Then comes the biggie category. Spirit/Soul, Aether/Ether, Heart/Love/Life, Heavens/Stars/Divinity/Holy, Ethereal/Dream, Ki/Chi/Xi/Chakra/Body Energy. You can potentially get 10-12 elements from these, or you could lump them all into one element of your choice name. They cover similar concepts which is why I lump them together, but they are not in fact synonymous. I tend to separate them out into about two (maybe three) categories: "heavenly otherworldly element", and "material otherworldly element"/"earth otherworldly element".

That is: I create one element which is an element that exists outside of the normal plane of existence, on a level associated with divinity. Spirit/Soul/Heavens/Stars/Divinity are the likely candidates for the type of name I would give that element, in that it is something on another realm and that realm is higher.

I also create one element which exists outside the normal plan of existence, which is otherworldly, and yet closely mirrors and is very directly tied to our world. Think like "The Force", or similar: something which is likely to exist in most things (or at least most living things if not). This can be Spirit/Soul/Aether/Ether/Heart/Life/Ethereal/Dream/Body Energy/Ki/Chi/Chakra.

...But often, that won't quite be adequate enough, in that you can have a need to explore something which is neither of those and yet still doesn't have a negative connotation associated with it. Something which is often considered stronger, but isn't necessarily so, in that it is an element that is necessary for the others to exist and yet it is not something superior in of itself. Soul/Heart/Life/Dream/Ethereal are the most likely candidates for this element.

Of course. There is an element that can go as far back as being the ninth element. Ninth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth by this point. This element is one of my most common elements. It is, simply put: Void. Void is my staple element once I expand outside of the elemental-eight. With an eight-element system it gets lumped in as part of Darkness but the moment I free myself of that restriction, Void is in as one of my elements.

Void is an otherworldly element, yet it represents more of "nothingness" than it does "something". If I have just one between all the words I gave above, this is a binary relationship in that void is the opposite of that one. But if I have more than one, it goes something like this.

The more divine/heavenly one can be thought of as "purity of thought", more or less. The more earthly one can be thought of as "pure potential". The third would be more "purity of existence". The void, in essence, is "purity of absence". It is most strongly a counter to the first two in that it is not strictly speaking tied to death (though if death is not an element, it is likely under the realm of Void), but it is tied to the nothingness associated with a purity which stands in contrast to them.

Nothingness is itself a potential element, but it's not one I'm going to include in the list. Instead, making the list in spite of it being tied to body energy/heart/life among others, is Blood. When I expand my element system beyond the eight given, blood is often among my list, because blood serves a purpose and has a great versatility within it.

Fire, Ice, Energy/Lightning, Water, Light, Darkness, Air/Wind, Earth, Nature, Metal, Rock, Void, Blood. And then we get to choose how many of those otherworldly elements we use. At least one, with three being what we want to max out on. Which would give us a nice comfy 16-element system. This could be worked down to 15 by scrapping one. It could be worked down to 13 by two of {scrapping the second and leaving only one, combining blood with one, combining an earth element}, if I did my math right.

But this is where I tend to draw the line. 13-16 elements is about as far as I'll go. You can go further, of course. To pull up a TVTropes list of commonly-used elements (when I say 'just earth', btw, I mean "earth or an element which in an 8-element system would be part of earth"),
​-Storm (I have no clue but it's not really an element)
-Gaia (just earth)
-Machines (really just use Metal)
-Crystal (just earth)
-Death
-Poison (just earth)
-Lava/magma (seriously it's just fire)
-Sun (it's just light)
-Sound (mostly just air though this is a serious contender for its own element)
-Radiation (just earth)
-Magnetism (just energy)
-Smoke/gas/mist (air or earth)
-Explosions (mostly fire with maybe some air butyeah definitely not an element on its own for me)
-Mud (just earth)
-Hellfire (just fire will do nicely thankyouverymuch)
-Illusion (neat power, but not an element)
-Time
-Space
-Gravity (strong power but not in of itself an element--it's something some elements may control though)

Some of these are things that I can probably flesh out more, but basically, most of them are covered already. You might note looking at the list that I left some off, but that's because the ones I left off were ones which had names I didn't use but were describing things I already have used.

I'm content with my little expansion, though I think I should off of an expanded-element system list what each element would actually do. Ah well. Some future blog I suppose.

Hmm...where to begin? My notes are a bit scattered. I suppose I can start by mentioning that as of today, Shutdown Week at my workplace has begun. It is exactly what it sounds like--one week of the entire building being shut down for maintenance, improvements, upgrades, miscellaneous adjustments, and so on and so forth, where things are restructured theoretically for the better and long-lasting problems are fixed.

When it comes to the pool, we're closed for an extra week I believe though I'm not sure if it's a full week or not (which does make a difference because full week means no work for me for two weeks, whereas like five days means I start work after a week break), so that means a little more free time for me since that's no work, no tae kwon do for 1-2 weeks. (Tae kwon do is definitely 2 since my instructor will be gone.)

Part of shutdown week will potentially mess with our lockers though, so we were instructed to clean everything out--in my case, four bags worth of stuff. (I coulda fit it into less, but one thing in my locker got sticky from a mysterious icky gooey brown liquid which dripped into my locker from a higher-level locker and I didn't want to contaminate the others, plus I separated my bags into categories: loosely-work-stuff, loosely-miscellaneous-swag, and outdated-junk.)

I also had (and to some extent, still have) an incredible soreness in a spot I can't really do much about. The Y has some really, really great rollers. These rollers can be used to help alleviate stuff. Usually for the legs by my understanding, but can also be used for most of the back, sides, maybe even some of the arms.

...Not so much for right next to the neck. Or rather. The Vulcan neck pinch spot.

...No literally. That exact spot. I was going to go into a very longwinded ramble where I explained the exact spot. Saying it is just to the back side (not on the forward side of my body, not directly on top of my shoulders, but not entirely on the back of my body either), just above the shoulder muscles, but just below the neck.

​So...Thanks!

Who knew Spaceballs could actually be so useful?

Butyeah. It's in a spot where I can manually used my arms to 'massage' it, but my idea of a self-massage is "nothing nothing nothing maybe something keep going it's stronger ow ow ow ow ow OW OH GOD STOP". It's worse on my left than my right but it's the same spot for both. I have literally no clue how to make that pain go away.

It's too low for neck stretches (yes those are a thing and I know a few albeit mostly from self-experimentation) to reach, and yet no arm stretches engage those muscles, at least none that I've found (and keep in mind I tried on the ground, sitting, standing up, using bars to lean both ways, and so on and so forth). It's like a magical spot of "nothing YOU can do works" in that it's begging for someone else to fix.

I'm not even sure what that muscle is used for. As in, as I was writing this I tried moving my arm and shoulder and whatnot in every way I could think of (admittedly on a rushed notice I coulda missed any number of positions even ones which're common), yet as far as I could tell, none engaged the sore spot's muscle.

And yes when I'm directly applying one hand to an area, I can tell when that muscle is being used. It's actually not that hard to do. I suppose it's also possible my skill there is imperfect, butstill. It's annoying. It's painful and I don't have any solution for it.

Years ago I may have had a similar problem, with raising my shoulders...but I fixed that problem and I know it hasn't really returned as far as I can tell. Like. I can tell when my shoulders are raised more often than I can't because I instilled that awareness into myself and...they're not raising. At least not more than they should, I'm pretty sure. Like. When I'm doing many tasks (including typing right now), I can force my shoulders down some, but doing so actually engages muscles. As in, the muscles to push down. If I were having a problem with my shoulders raising higher than they should, I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be the case.

So health concerns all-around. My feet aren't any worse, but they're still not getting better and yes they are worsening with time. I should talk to my mom about that since she is back as of yesterday, though I should run errands that I didn't get the chance to do yesterday first. (This blog among them.)

At work, I composed a song. This song had a mixture of a Billy Idol and Bon Jovi vibe, with maybe some other Rock bands' influences (be it something more hard or something more alternative), but mostly those two. Unlike many of my songs where stanzas go from one directly into the next, this one actually has pauses between them, and yet also accelerated beats at different times. Some words are drawn out while others are shortened.

In my mind's eye I can sing it but out loud I can't quite nail it past the first half of each verse yet alone the transition into the prechorus. Still, I'd offer to sing it out loud anyway if I were actually the only one home, but since I am not, it'll have to wait until some other time. I wasn't feeling very creative with my titles, so this one just as a generic WIP title of "Freedom".

This visage viewed is not mine
Is it really rude to say it's not fine?
Can I not say that I have rights
Can I not make objections to a lie?

I can't control how you feel
I am laying low but staying real
Why do you insist I'm a cheat
Why have I been hurt constantly

I'm not the threat
I'm not the threat
Nothing should've changed
Nothing but my paaaaaaain.
Heeeeeeeeeeey.

I want the freedom
To live my life as me
I want the freedom
To be who I want to be

Ohhhhhhh!

I want the freedom
To make what I mean
I want the freedom
To face all my fears.

I strongly stand by no retreat
I do not want to die nor to leave
Yet there is no real deceit
Yet there is nothing wrong with me

Don't say sorry you don't know
I am already on the go
This is not just me alone
This has got to be no load

I'm not the threat
I'm not the threat
Nothing should've changed
Nothing but my paaaaaaain.
Heeeeeeeeeeey.

I want the freedom
To live my life as me
I want the freedom
To be who I want to be

Ohhhhhhh!

I want the freedom
To make what I mean
I want the freedom
To face all my fears.

Give me my life
I have my soul
You put me through strife
So heartless and cold.

I want the freedom
To live my life as me
I want the freedom
To be who I want to be

Ohhhhhhh!

I want the freedom
To make what I mean
I want the freedom
To face all my fears.

I want the freedom
To live my life as me
I want the freedom
To be who I want to be

Ohhhhhhh!

I want the freedom
To make what I mean
I want the freedom
To face all my fears.


...It's one of my best compositions ever in my opinion. It's a little bit of a shame I have to classify this song as a "cheat" though, in that I'm not exactly writing it to an original tune. It's a mixture, hodgepodge, of existing tunes. If I sung it out loud, you may be able to hear what I mean. Of course that'd be assuming competency on my part as a singer; you probably wouldn't be able to tell which singers I am channeling when, because that would require me to actually be...well, singing, rather than my..."singing".

Which is exactly as terrible as you'd think. Even when I'm singing to an existing song (songs that I write can have the composition of the tune change midway through unexpectedly because they are things I have in my head and thus, I am prone to slipping up and messing up by midway accidentally changing the tune and losing my groove, which for someone who relies on "scripts" is akin to being derailed and thus obviously I'd suck), my voice is terrible.

It doesn't matter if I've sung the song since childhood. I mess up on my timing, I mess up on the tone of a song (as in, placing emphasis in the wrong spots which can change the feeling/meaning of a song, as I demonstrated with the "I'm just a girl" bit), I mess up on the breathing (it's important to time breaths correctly), I mess up on the lyrics even if I have them sitting before my face, I do any number of wrong things, and even if I didn't, I've been described as tonedeath in that boy am I impressively bad.

It really is a sight to be seen--or rather, sound to be heard. Doesn't stop me from trying anyway though! Which is why I'm sad I can't do so right now in this blog post. Ah well. Will when I can. It's still a good song. I might be borrowing the underlaying tunes I wrote the song to in my mind's eye, but while those songs had those tunes, they did not have my rhyming scheme nor did they have this type of lyric nor did they have this type of transition nor did they really have...well, basically most of what you see.

It's still entirely my own song to have written, it's just that if it were actually sung it'd become clear where I took my cues from. Still, I'm quite proud of the alliteration-to-repetition that I placed in there, with rhymes midway through each verse as well to basically double the flow. That's all me.

I could have gotten even more creative with the patterns but I decided that this was good enough to make a killer song. Albeit one with cues from existing songs. (Thus the "cheat".) I'm just happy that I can continue to write good material and share it with the world.

The lyrics should be obvious enough in their subject. I left it ambiguous enough where it could refer to any number of topics, but tried to make it clear that yes this is indeed the viewpoint of someone oppressed by bigotry, namely, someone who is trans. The song is more or less them coming out, stating desire to take control of their life, and then firmly planting their foot down to take steps to do so, standing by their ground, not backing down, not allowing ignorance and indifference (at best) to stop them from living their true life.

Not a bad goal to have if you ask me. (Did you know that back in the day I used to write songs which weren't related to my life? Nowadays I can barely even remember them because this process of writing songs I relate to is just so instinctive and natural.)

Essentially all of my yesterday was spent on a date with one of my girlfriends after work, as I mentioned yesterday. We watched RWBY, getting through to the penultimate episode of volume 3. (We woulda finished volume 3 with time to spare if not for a certain incident which I could be mean and lay out but will be nice and just leave a generic "I told youuuuuuu" here.)

The whole while, however.
There was a particular thought going through my head.
There's no way to do this without including vulgarity so pardon the language but basically:
"Oh fuck. Fuckidy fuck fuck fuck. I AM NOT STEALING."

...Thiiiiiiiis of course referring to Red Hood Rider. (RWBY's Ruby is even called 'Red' by one of the villains consistently! And in Red Hood Rider, MY Ruby is always called Red Hood Rider by villains at all time, in a difference between friend vs. enemy in that enemies call her Red Hood Rider and friends call her Ruby.)

Of course I had known about the existence of RWBY long before I started Red Hood Rider. I even knew about the main character there being named Ruby. I did not however know one iota beyond "it's RWBY, with a protagonist named Ruby". I didn't know what RWBY's Ruby looked like. I could figure RWBY's Ruby as a protagonist would be a leader because let's face it all protagonists are leaders (except when they aren't), but I had no clue what RWBY's Ruby's personality, backstory, and character interactions would be like.

...And. To my relief. They actually are quite different in terms of personality (well for the most part; there are some similarities), team dynamics, team interactions (RWBY's Ruby-Weiss interaction doesn't quite have the same vibe as Red Hood Rider's Ruby-Sally interaction), and so on and so forth.

But they do have rather similar appearances (especially in outfit) much to my horror--especially notable is MY Ruby's Black Ruby Superpowered Form, where she's a full-vampire, accessed through Forbidden Art #3 Dark Messiah and is more vampire than magical girl but has access to both sets of powers still. The reason for this is that's the only time MY Ruby has both black hair and has her hair at that spiked not-quite-shoulder-length.

Just for the record, by the way. I may actually have stolen her hair aesthetic from somewhere...but not from RWBY. Black Ruby's hair takes cues from Ryuko Matoi, yet invoking the image of her hair constantly having flowy, fiery movement which is slightly lifted up, in anime-almost-DBZ-Supersaiyanesque-fashion. (You know the look.)

This would be more obvious for those who'd remember the full sketch of Black Ruby rather than just the cropped version that I made into one of my prominent avatars (which has just her head). In that, she has a rather revealing outfit, because the aesthetic I was going for with Black Ruby was more or less "almost a stereotypical bad guy villainess with domm overtones", in that she was meant to invoke a feeling of 'evil' yet 'powerful'/'controlling'.

I was particularly mortified to learn there were eight main characters too, considering a fundamental premise of my story is that there are eight elements, and thus, eight elemental riders, forming a power rangersesque superhero magical girl team. (Riders were after all envisioned as blending all three of those genre together.)

...I can only hope that RWBY doesn't have one or two permanent additions to the main cast down the line because in Red Hood Rider, the Ruby Gang (the name of MY Ruby's team, which you can tell is a riff off of 'Scooby Gang') has ten full-time members, thanks to two members not being one of the eight elemental riders.

Also inconvenient would be RWBY featuring HeelFaceTurns because I have at least three in my story that I can count. (Well one of them is more of a HazyTurn, but that's made clear from the get-go and the villain's motives never change, nor does the villain's personality change, it's just that they have good reason to not be fighting the heroes all the time.)

Also also inconvenient would be RWBY featuring an extensive cast of villains rather than a smaller team of like 4 or so because Red Hood Rider has a full-blown rogues gallery of like 20 or so villains (many of which have specific riders they are associated with most heavily), and like. There's a bundleload which is different. My setting, my Rubyverse, is mine. 

​I made it from scratch. With vague knowledge and aesthetics from genres I haven't been immersed in. I made it before watching Madoka in spite of several things (including the very ending) being similar between the two. I made it before watching RWBY in spite of some similarities between the two including both series' protagonists being named Ruby. (It's not that uncommon of a name.)

​​I made it from one drawing that I only made a full two years later. And then building that at-the-time-nonexistent drawing. And then building upon that. And building upon that. And just having things keep going. And then importing concepts from other stories. The eight element system. Much of the mythos behind grander universes. All sorts of things I have been making since my very earliest memories of childhood.

So I hate any resemblance to another work. Especially because I am a copier. I am a cheater. I am someone who will blatantly steal things from others and use my own versions of them. You would not believe the number of stories I started to write which were taken from anime. (Heck I have at least two which stole from Bleach if not more.) I mean I put spins on them, unique twists and turns to really make them have the flavor of being my own in spite of their obvious source of influence.

...But.

My Rubyverse, the world of Red Hood Rider. Is not among them. It is not something I made to be an imitation. It is not something I made to be a copy. It is something I made to be mine. My own work. From start to finish. Red Hood Rider is named as so because it is a combination of Little Red Riding Hood, Robin Hood, and the idea of a Kamen Rider. It's a pun of sorts.

The name Little Red Riding Hood is something which comes from my childhood. I was called that by people in soccer. (At the time they were attempting bullying, but me being me, I had absolutely no clue they were doing so. It didn't affect me at all and was just like "why are they calling me that?" with an inquisitive tone because I genuinely had no clue what they were attempting to do I just kinda was there.) It existed because I had a red and black hoodie I always wore.

That hoodie was my favorite hoodie. I've always wanted a hoodie that had a hood, that had a zipper running down the middle, which had zipped pockets, and had a string to adjust the hood. I liked the aesthetic of red and black. So when I designed Ruby's hoodie, I designed it to combine all of these traits into my dream-hoodie as it were.

The name Ruby came from the association of Ruby-->Red, in that I knew rubies were red. I also knew that Ruby was a name that exists commonly enough. I'm pretty sure that people actually call their kids Ruby. (I mean gemstone names aren't that uncommon a thing.) So it was a natural choice for me to make. Plus it has a similar enough name to Ryan (the name I knew I wanted to be Ruby's birth name) that everything just clicked as right.

Every choice I made, I made for good reason out of it being what felt like I should do, and the inspiration for these things was by and large...nothing except my own experiences. I watch/read/play various media all the time. But I did not deliberately incorporate any of them into my Rubyverse.

And yet now that I've started watching, the accusations can inevitably come. Before I could say with a straight face inspiration was impossible because I'd never seen RWBY--heard of it, but not actually seen it. But now I have to defend the viewpoint that inspiration was impossible because I'd never seen RWBY at the time even though I have since done so but here are the reasons why it wasn't inspired by RWBY as my proof it is mine.

...A lot more convoluted, innit?

Which is why there's the mixed bag.
I do enjoy the show for what it's worth and I don't regret seeing it because anything worth watching is something to never regret having seen. But that won't stop me lamenting this when I get around to keeping Red Hood Rider going.

...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."

...So I decided that, in conjunction with me dancing later tonight, meant it'd be best to skip out on doing my normal Sunday workout. I don't want to agitate this injury, especially if it's a recurring one. Better safe than sorry, and all that. Plus, working out would totally negate my shower from yesterday and I don't want to do that.

...At least. That's my official story, and I'm sticking to it dang it. Unofficially, though...off the record, the real reason is that I got a preview into my future. Namely, me not being able to have the heart to part with the cuddling status quo. (I've come close already!) In the future, this will be because of a person or two (<3), but in this instance I just couldn't find it in me to part ways with an adorably cute kitten, mewling in a way just begging to be there.

She wasn't alone. My dog jumped onto my lap at the earliest opportunity. This isn't unusual. I mean. I still have trouble getting up, but it's more in maneuvering my body so that when I get up, he remains undisturbed, allowing him to sleep peacefully in bliss. (Whereas with a kitten she guilt trips you.) But normally, kitty + doggy + lap = mutually exclusive combo. If kitty first, terrified dog; if dog first, indignant kitty: "How DARE you sit there"; "How DARE you let him steal what's MINE".

...But today she apparently really wanted to cuddle so she didn't mind the dog at all. (And the dog was tired/lonely/content enough that he flat-out didn't notice/care she hopped on literally right beside him.) She was initially grooming, so I thought she'd leave not long after...but then she surprised me by curling up into a ball and staying. When I first began an attempt to leave, my shift in body position triggered her trill, and she rolled to be positioned belly up.

I gave her a belly rub for as long as I thought appropriate, then a chin rub, also as long as I could. I expected her to leave not long after that--she didn't. She stayed, and stretched out, elongating her body and exposing everything all at once. I petted her with broad strokes some more, expecting my affection would eventually drive her away. She simply rolled over onto the other side, as if to say "Now do me on this side too!". And I did, because apparently I am a sucker and couldn't resist.

At this point, I gave up on leaving early and did what I could to enjoy my forced extra nap time, since there was just no way I could justify anything except leaving for work at literally the last possible moment for disrupting this absolutely gorgeous moment with a beautiful little creature. And sadly, I did indeed have to force a parting even against my desires to warmly cuddle, since I did need to leave.

...From my (admittedly only limited) experience, I'm preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty dang sure. That you can basically directly substitute my kitty for a person and the description would otherwise word-for-word be identical, or even maybe worse, with extra descriptors and less time sleeping (and yet, more..."sleeping") involved. I'm borderline laughing (okay I'm outright laughing) at the thought just because of how true it rings. (Admit it you know it is. <3) So I found the experience amusing to say the least. (Also adorable and very much something I didn't regret.)

...Now no-one outside my blog readers (which at this point wouldn't surprise me to learn are comprised entirely of two people--and I'd be absolutely fine with that <3--but I write on here with at least the theory of me having more) must know the truth, that I'm a wimp emotionally instead of physically.

...Okay, so. I'm kinda both admittedly. My cover story isn't exactly a lie. I'm choosing not to roam-guard today as I usually would, as to preserve some semblance of my foot's ability to function. Instead of moving during down-time, I intend to largely slack off.

Now! I'm a chronic worker. Even if I weren't, then I've already pushed boundaries at work to their limit for my "laziness" in doing certain tasks. So between the two, I'll still be standing a lot. It's just that I won't pace or come out of our rest area unless absolutely necessary. That's the plan at least!

Speaking of which, I still owe you a story ramble, but I feel like this is enough of one for now. I leave for dance some time after work. I don't know the exact timing, but my PLAN at the very least is come home, type this blog entry up and post it, change, nap, then leave.

...Then again I have plans which never quite seem to survive contact with the day, so we'll see I suppose.

Well this being a Sunday, with time at work, of course I cook up extra stuff.
For the Villain Song setting, I thought of the words which inspire the villain to pursue the hero:

"The greatest threat you now face
Is not one new to this day
It has grown so steadily
Existing past, future, and presently.

A hopebringer of the kingdom slain,
Your greatest fear, an unbroken chain.
If no counter's found then know:
You'll have met your equal."

This comes from an oracle he consults daily with a request worded as to not create self-fulfilling prophecies.

But upon receiving this one, I get to display perhaps the strongest source of scornful deadpan delivery in the whole script. (And this is basically how the villain talks full-time. Remember, mixture of Scar and Jafar with a dash of Rasputin in him too.) His response?

"How conveniently ambiguous." (An alternative line is "How delightfully convenient", but I think I like the other one more overall.)

To be fair. The oracle is himself no slouch, since in response to that, he goes,
"Why of course. It's how we stay in business, sir. We guarantee a 100% accuracy reading."

Butstill. I think that even in text without me speaking it and without the accompanying facial expressions, you can get a fair idea of the tone I imagine for the villain of that story. 

That wasn't all, either.
I thought of a few things for Hannah/Aeris in Red Hood Rider, as well.
Basically, an opponent faces her believing she's weak, but finds that in spite of having seen her fight before and having counters to literally every move she's ever shown at that stage (which would be quite the list), she still continues to playfully dance around them.

She then sets up a "Three questions" game.

"Did you know about the riders' passive inability to kill?" (Yes.)
"Why is it that the nicest of us was gifted the element of air?" (She then says in a very Hannah-like way, "This is a hard one so I probably shouldn't tell you the answer is because I'm the only rider candidate who can't violate that prime directive with the powers of air.")
(Cue the Oh Crap look on her opponent as the realization begins to sink in, because the implication there is that any person less nice than Hannah would be unable to keep the powers of air in check from killing opponents and thus air must fall to someone of that personality.)
"Why do you think I appear so weak?" (She then gleefully gives the answer away accidentally, via, "Anything you can do, I can do better~".)

And it's at this point Sally watching on the sidelines has this bit of dialog.

"You know, I'm kinda ashamed it's taken me this long to realize what Aegis Shield stands for. Like most, I just assumed it meant shielding others from her opponents' harm. But it's real meaning is shielding her opponents from her own power."

(Related to this, Hannah's initial release phrase--the things that all Riders start out with but gradually fade out with time--is "Blessed be the cursed, All is forgiven. At my hand, none shall perish." The initial assumption is that she'd be blessing those with the misfortune of having suffered at the hands of her opponents, and that there's now nothing to fear because she's there to protect them, a fairly cliched protecting-the-innocent spiel. But the real meaning of that line is that she is granting a blessing on her opponents, and that she is swearing she won't kill them with her power.)

Hannah might be an airhead, but she's also quite deliberately one of the first riders competent villains aim to take out, and for good reason. Aside from genre-savviness of quirky = ability to mess with things through pure chaos, she's actually just one of the strongest of the cast throughout the entire story in spite of her powers not really evolving that much. (Well, they do, just subtly so rather than overtly so.)

The reason for this is simple enough.
All eight elements are loosely equivalent in power. None is inherently stronger than another. Higher-level users of any element are akin to gods and able to use basically powers usually thought of as exclusive to another element. It's just in how creative the users are, combined with what limitations they actually have (or rather, don't have). So it's not like she's inherently better than any of the cast.

What makes her so consistently one of the strongest though is that of the eight elements, by far the easiest to make powerful is Air. So while all the elements are equally strong, equally versatile, and equally able to do things...air is simply more, as it were..."user friendly".

It's easier to make strong because air is the definition of simplicity. It's easy to use, easy to master, has many basic functions and is incredibly easy to expand those basic functions one at a time. And yet, air is also one of the easiest elements to access story-breaker abilities in. Think pinpoint gravity control: making a series of gravity points which are essentially akin to black holes, sucking in all surrounding matter. Now think about being able to make those within a person and the messy results thereof. Air has access not only to that fundamental force of the universe, but at least one other (I'd have to track down my notes on whether it's the Strong Force or the Weak Force), with the potential to maybe even have access to more than that.

Think about an opponent who can bend, manipulate, even break multiple fundamental forces of the universe. And you get into the realm of just the basic easier-accessed-abilities of air. And Hannah, the elemental rider of air, can combine these all with the element of Light for an even extra boost.

So there's good reason for this. She's the nicest because only the nicest can keep air from being too strong. And she appears Strong As She Needs To Be, because it's the only way to hold back. An aspect of air is that they have this kind of access with ease, but also the randomness to not be able to keep it consistent. Essentially, when there is a need for a new rider of air, it will always seek out someone who holds both these quantities:

An innate goodness in them beyond even the normal for a rider, combined with an innate inability to keep consistent constant focus, such that when the power manifests, it focuses only as much as necessary for the task, and will never give too much.

Today I don't really feel really high or really low. I feel somewhat in the middle. A little mellowed out, even. Like. I just kind-of was at a bit of a serene place. I tend to get that when I get to the right mindset at work. I just. Felt like I was in the zone where I wasn't seeing things as the worst, or the best. Just. As they were, accepting it.

That felt good.
What also felt good was that I did a fair amount of Red Hood Rider work today, even if just random trivia. For one of Ruby's birthdays in the story, Sally crafts for her a gift: a Yggdrasil Recurved Longbow. As in, a very large bow, recurved, formed from a piece of the Yggdrasil tree. The arrows' shafts also have that. They have phoenix feather fletching, which essentially means every time an arrow is shot, another one appears in the quiver in its place, giving a limitless supply of arrows, each of which has an arrowhead that is from a different mythological/powerful metal.

At the same time, she receives a quiver that's Hydra leather, and also Nemean leather gloves to replace her own. The bow is stringed from the fabric of life itself. Embedded within both the quiver and the bow are akashic runes: in this case, it allows the bow/quiver to 'remember' positions they are supposed to be in, allowing for a unique sort of pocket dimension, where the weapon is summoned when certain conditions would be fulfilled.

Namely, were Angel Wings ever to actually somehow shut down, automatically the bow would come to Ruby's aid. While not something which really would get used in combat, it is a rather excellent gift (and something incredibly hard even for the rider of earth to make): whereas Angel Wings is basically the ultimate magical bow, Sally crafted this to essentially be the ultimate non-magical bow. (As in, it works off of biology rather than magic. I mean. Supernatural creature biology, between the hydra quiver that regenerates damage, and the phoenix feathers which replace lost arrows. But it's still physical, as in, something which would not be shut down by ANY form of anti-magic because they're explicitly not magical items.)

I also developed a cast bonding activity: the Ruby Gang as a whole at some point starts playing "Final Dungeons: Fantasy Dragons Edition", a tabletop roleplaying game. (Which is, ah. Taking some...rather obvious cues from a couple of totally-nameless sources. But just a couple. Really.)

Ruby creates a Dhamphir Ranger.
Sally settles for a Human Cleric.
Gary, a Human Paladin.
Hannah, an Elf White Mage.
D.D., a (female) Dwarf Black Mage.
Whitney, a Dragonkin (half-dragon) Red Mage.
Vili, a Human Rogue.
Amy, a Dhamphir Martial Artist.
Herald, a Human Fighter.

With Dale as their Dungeon Master.
When they first create their characters, he is not amused. "What's the point if you're just going to be something you already are?!?" (Well Hannah's not an Elf but she has a lot of quirks; D.D. is not a Dwarf but she is the shortest member of the cast; Whitney isn't a dragon, but her super form is a frost dragon, so they're not quite being themselves but are pretty remarkably close.)
The best answer that he can get?

"...Practice?"

And to be fair.
I actually have established there's some in-universe logic to this. The base powers of a rider never change, not even for the elemental riders. But elemental riders in particular can develop new abilities within the constraints of their established powers.

And a roleplaying game would actually be legitimate practice: create a character reasonably close to your real-life powers, and seeing what they face, what they're up against, and what powers they can gain actually serves as...good practice for creating new powers.

I do quite like the idea of having something that basically the whole Ruby Gang would be involved in, rather than just the majority of members, as in the case of their band.

...And speaking of bands, that's actually a rather convenient segue into my next topic! (I swear I didn't plan that.) Specifically, I wrote a full song today. The song isn't quite to the tune of any existing song, but I'll admit it takes some obvious cues and is largely inspired by the Linkin Park song, Somewhere I Belong.

I didn't get the music written, but I did get the lyrics. They go like this:

I started obscure,
With a message pure,
Dreamed of making it,
Of something so big.

It took sacrifice,
Half of my life,
Many times I failed,
Yet I never bailed.

I'm here at last,
With long days past,
I broke the mold,
Got into the fold.

Yet at what cost;
Something was lost.
I sound the same,
My presence will fade.


I'm a one-hit wonder,
With five minutes of fame,
I'm a one-hit wonder,
In the spotlight one day.

Caught everyone's attention,
Got plenty to say,
Lost in presentation,
All my efforts in vain.


The people did flock,
And now they mock.
What did I have,
Why do they laugh?

They call me fool,
Call me a tool,
Everything I make,
Now they call lame.

I had the magic,
Now I lack it,
Where did it go,
How can I know?

What happened to me,
What did they see,
I had some game,
Now I don't play.


I'm a one-hit wonder,
With five minutes of fame,
I'm a one-hit wonder,
In the spotlight one day.

Caught everyone's attention,
Got plenty to say,
Lost in presentation,
All my efforts in vain.

I'm a one-hit wonder,
With five minutes of fame,
I'm a one-hit wonder,
In the spotlight one day.

Caught everyone's attention,
Got plenty to say,
Lost in presentation,
All my efforts in vain.


One note,
I say.

And float
Not okay.


I'm a one-hit wonder,
With five minutes of fame,
I'm a one-hit wonder,
In the spotlight one day.

Caught everyone's attention,
Got plenty to say,
Lost in presentation,
All my efforts in vain.

I'm a one-hit wonder,
With five minutes of fame,
I'm a one-hit wonder,
In the spotlight one day.

Caught everyone's attention,
Got plenty to say,
Lost in presentation,
All my efforts in vain...


...If you couldn't tell. I named the song "One-hit Wonder".
Ironically enough it's a pretty catchy tune in my head.

So I've been pretty busy today. Typical Sunday affair, I suppose.

By which, I mean...horribly long. In this case, I'll start off by talking about something I was going to do earlier: we have a raccoon in our ceiling. Or maybe more than one in a worst-case scenario. It's been there for a while, but we weren't sure if it was actually in the roof or just on top of it. Then we confirmed it was in there. Then we weren't sure what type of critter it was, until we did research, and, yep. The signs and symptoms we have all heard and experienced were the hallmarks of a raccoon.

Now, while this has been a known occurrence for quite a while, what I think really sparked my parents to do something about it is that there's currently a hole in our ceiling, one very very very recently made, which alarmingly shows signs of having been sudden and potentially growing.

To be fair! This is not necessarily the raccoon's doing. Our house has suffered from roof leaks, and there are visible signs of water damage in the approximate area of the beginning-to-collapse-ceiling. It could be entirely unrelated to the raccoon. Or maybe the raccoon isn't directly causing it. Or maybe the raccoon just shifted the already-existing damage in a way which made it visible to us. All the same, regardless of whatever the cause was, the risk of it being the raccoon and the risk of making it worse means my family wants the raccoon gone.

They ordered a raccoon trap, but I read Sandra & Woo. (Well, read as in past tense, in that I am two or three years behind, but I read it for years.) I know a thing or two about raccoons. Not only from the comic, not only from the author (who is a raccoon buff), but also just from my own knowledge about them. They are very smart critters.

My parents' plan is catch-and-release: catch it, drive it to a far away location, and release. I am very skeptical as to the success of this plan, for many reasons. While the trap is a raccoon trap, I put little faith in it actually being able to capture the raccoon. I also am hesitant to say it is simply one raccoon up there; there could be a whole family. Even if it's just the one, even if the trap works, I am skeptical the raccoon will stay in the trap for long. Even if it does, even if the raccoon is driven fifty miles away, I am unsure as to whether it will stay away.

I have not voiced these concerns. Perhaps I should, though there's multiple reasons I haven't. Not being a naysayer unless I have to (it hasn't worked yet but it could), not knowing how to properly tackle the subject of these issues, and also, as bad as it is to admit it I kinda think the whole affair is a little funny?

I know that technically speaking I shouldn't--raccoons could cause a lot of damage up there. To an already very damaged part of the house. But in spite of how the issue should be serious, I can't help but find it a little bit humorous, I guess.

But in other news, for Red Hood Rider, I discovered that I have accidentally color-coded my characters. That seems like something which would be difficult to accomplish, but it's true. Ruby, the elemental rider of the Darkness element, has a primarily black wardrobe. Her name is Ruby (which is obviously red), and her middle name's Scarlet (also red), and her hoodie has red, and her freakin' superhero name is Red Hood Rider, but in spite of that, her hoodie is half-black, she wears black shoes, black socks, and a black mask, and most of her alternative clothing is...also black. Black sweats, black gloves, black shorts, black skirt, black casual clothing...basically, mostly black. And black is a color most frequently associated with Darkness.

Sally, the elemental rider of the Earth element, doesn't have as strong of a color code...but when I gave her clothing, her shirts were a mixture of brown (an earth color) and green (an earth color). Gary, the elemental rider of the Water element, has a white T-shirt and blue jeans, both colors associated with water.

Hannah, the elemental rider of the Air element, has a kimono which is green (an alternative wind color), or alternatively a light shade of yellow (another air color). Whitney, the elemental rider of the Ice element, has all cyan clothing, with cyan being a color closely associated with ice.

That's five right there. Now admittedly. From there it's a little more ambiguous. I have no clothing predisposition towards D.D., elemental rider of Fire. (Aside from one quick "drawing"--really messing around in a program--which has her belt be red with a golden buckle, both of which are fire colors.)

Vili, elemental rider of Energy is purple central, all the way. (Heck, Vili is her nickname from her superhero name, Violet Ranger.) Now, I wasn't sure about this one. Energy has the strongest associations with yellow and blue, with some connotations to white. (The colors of lightning.) However, I looked it up: purple is in fact listed as an alternative color for the element. So that's a firm six. (Okay so the entry for energy said anything, but the entry for lightning said purple was an accepted color for the element, albeit less common.)

Amy (despite her name, Amethyst, being purple) has an association with white--not a strong one, but there. Her skin tone is one of the palest even for vampire standards. Her clothing also tends to be white or with white accents. (Admittedly she also wears black.) Which is kinda sorta Light-element themed, though it doesn't matter that much in the grander scheme of things.

Still. That's pretty coincidental, yet it is exactly that; a coincidence. I did not design them to be color-coded to their elements, at least, outside of uniform. (Obviously in their superhero forms, they have strong ties to their element.) But the thought randomly occurred to me today for some reason that, yeah. They really are color-coded. (So I'm going to make a gag about it in-comic, probably before Amy's introduced as a rider.)

We're not done with my thoughts for today though. I mean, frankly I could have made three entries for my three separate and unrelated thoughts, but I had them all before coming to the computer, and didn't write any of them down, so I figured I might as well tackle them all at once.

Another thing I thought about is an old, old, old, old "story idea" of mine that I used to play around with all the time. I say "story idea" in quotation marks, because there wasn't really much of a coherent story. It was more like a continuously-refreshed/updated 'war game', of sorts.

Elements got added over the years, but the basic setting was me having a bunch of color-coded toys (ones which didn't fit in my bin specifically made for those toys) and throwing them together. The result was a mish-mash of various stuff. The largest and most consistent focus was on the airplanes, albeit having the exact specifications of each plane change a ton. A secondary focus (sometimes in an entirely unrelated setting) was on the foot soldiers.

But, loosely speaking, sometimes I would tie them together, and overall, the picture you would get would look something vaguely akin to this:

There were four sides, locked in an eternal war with one another, largely played out in dogfights where planes would often get shot down but the pilots would survive, be recovered, and given new planes. (So they didn't often lose pilots, they just lost craft, making the main challenge not manpower, but rather production power, to keep the necessary number of craft functional. Incidentally, this mechanic allowed me to develop characters in the form of pilots and have them actually have victories over a side without killing each other off, a huge bonus for convenience.)

They each were vying for control of a central location which all four nations have a border on (White existed to the direction loosely northeast, Red existed loosely northwest, Gray existed loosely southwest, and Blue existed loosely southeast--this, too was always consistent 100% of the time), in this case, basically a super-advanced, high-tech mega-cannon none of them were responsible for creating, with mysterious origins. Not so mysterious was its capacity: highly-pinpoint-accuracy, high-speed rapid bombardment of bombs each capable of leveling a city. It could fire into the air, too, destroying aircraft, or hit the ground, wiping out whole armies. In short, a doomsday superweapon, vastly devastating, which all wanted in order to win the war.

One of the strongest of the four nations was Red: Their main strength as a superpower was their very, very, very strong industry. They could pump out machines faster than basically any nation. In a war where the main problem isn't manpower but rather production power (see above), this basically made them the consistently largest contender for taking it all.

They had six units (units being my generic term for "I have this many representations of them, and these representations are loosely equivalent for each unit type, be it a standalone troop, a squadron, a battalion, or a full army") of a super-advanced type of tank, better than any of the tanks of their rivals, owing to this industry.

They also had one unit of each type of the four plane types. (Plane type stats changed constantly, but the below are loosely the overall guidelines I put in place.)

One, a light aircraft with minimal weaponry/armor, was what I called the scouter/bomber. It could be loaded up with lots of fuel or lots of bombs. Fuel, for advanced scouting of enemy territories. Bombing, self-explanatory. These are the light aircraft that make up the backbone of a good fleet, even though they're weak/vulnerable in a dogfight.

Two, a light aircraft with minimal armor but decent weaponry, was what I've loosely deemed the interceptor. It specialized in quickly coming in to stop scouters/bombers. It was the most maneuverable of the three normal craft, and also the fastest, plus had the highest altitude, just with light armor and only medium weapons.

Three, an aircraft with heavy armor and weaponry, was what I've loosely deemed the fighter. While the slowest of the three standard craft, they were difficult to shoot down and able to shoot down both of the above once they got close enough to enter into a proper fight.

Four, a specialized super-advanced and super-costly and super-rare prototype of a plane, was what I've deemed the raptor. Not one of the standard three craft. While under normal circumstances it had drawbacks, special advances in technology let it be the fastest of any craft (albeit temporarily, with its normal speed being the slowest), with more bombing weaponry than a bomber (albeit not in amount, just in potency), with the heaviest armor, and climb as high as any, with by far the highest maneuverability of them. A sort-of super-plane, especially when factoring in its special missiles, something no other plane has. Basically, a "cheat" of a craft, faster than any, as high as an interceptor, more maneuverable than any, heavier armor than any, heavier weaponry than any, more functions than any.

The reason there aren't so many of them is for a combination of reasons. Namely, it being super-expensive to mass-produce them and also super-difficult to actually pilot the craft. So while these craft are the elite responders in a dogfight/aerial assault, they are also not something everyone has for good reason. If it were easy, everyone would have them, but it's not so they don't. Red, however, has one.

The main weakness Red has is that they have one standard unit of infantry--only one. Tanks can only do so much damage on their own. Same with air superiority. Most of their manpower is spent boosting their industry, so they have very little left to man their assault, which is the main factor in why they don't dominate.

Their main rivals in sheer air superiority level would be White. White held three scout planes/bombing planes, an interceptor unit, and as with Red, a raptor unit. Lacking anything of a special quirk (all of the powers have one, save white), their special quirk is, in a sense, the skill of their pilots. Namely, those three scouts? Capable of fighting toe-to-toe against superior planes in a dogfight. Their interceptor? Able to gun down enemy fighters. Their raptor? Inferior in quality to Red's raptor, yet the pilot of the white raptor wins the majority of engagements with Red's raptor.

The other notable thing about White is that while they lack tanks, they have an overabundance of infantry. Namely, one stealth unit (basically think covert ops, on a massive scale--able to infiltrate and sabotage and subdue among many others), one advanced unit, one advanced assault unit (specializing in taking ground in a blitz attack), one super-advanced unit (basically a prototype able to dwarf almost any standard infantry), a rapid-fire unit (basically a machine gun squad of sorts focused on eliminating targets and/or grouping them together), and an advanced defensive rapid-fire unit (a machine gun squad focused on denying the advancement of an enemy via a nigh-impenetrable defense). While their lack of tanks hurts them very badly, this infantry abundance ensures they have a wide zone coverage, especially given their large air fleet and the superiority of their pilots.

The other two nations were considered secondary, but loosely considered third in power was Gray: their most notable feature, two units of a gigantic missile. This missile could be used both on the defensive to shoot down enemy aircraft and on the offensive to bombard a location and absolutely devastate it. It is one of the two weapons of war prized almost as much as the central cannon itself is for that very reason, and Gray can (and does) mass-produce these.

What keeps this from being a gamebreaker? Because Gray is otherwise relatively weak. They have no tanks. In the aircraft department, all they have is two units of interceptors and two units of fighters. Interceptors do not make good units to go on the offensive for (they are mainly for dogfighting), and fighters are meant largely to protect those going on a bombing run, not to be the ones doing it. As a result, their aircraft tend to be geared towards shutting enemy aircraft down and preventing unit advancement too far. They're largely on the defensive.

Their infantry support this tactic. They hold one advanced defensive unit (basically a better army, but focused on defending an area from attack and denying advancement), one stealth unit (same as white), and one advanced defensive rapid-fire unit. Their basic strategy--hold their territory, and prevent others from gaining new territory.

The faction generally considered weakest was Blue. Though they had once been a dominant power, at some point, a catastrophe happened and that set them back in almost all terms. They do have two advanced tanks (better than standard, but not as good as Red's tanks), plus two units of normal tanks, but their firepower is mostly pathetic. They have one standard unit...and that's it.

...Except...they also have one ultra-unit. This ultra-unit is basically the infantry to kill all other infantry, and even take out tanks or shoot down planes. It is rapid-fire, and can assault from the air. Aside from this, Blue also controls and manufactures the second of the weapons of war prized almost as much as the central cannon: a cannon of their own, able to shoot (less accurately) into the air or capable of (fairly strong) ground bombardment which--while not reaching as far as a missile can--can still reach everyone except White. (Notably, Gray and Blue tend not to shoot at each other so much, because if Gray shoots at Blue, Blue can defend against it entirely without consequence albeit not being able to counterattack; if Blue shoots at Gray, then Gray gets damaged but their counterattack damages Blue. Basically, Gray attacking is pointless as neither side gets damaged; Blue attacking is detrimental to both sides and neither wants that.)

In terms of air power, Blue isn't entirely defenseless, but they are by far the weakest, with only one fighter unit and one scout unit, mere shadows of what they used to command. On the bright side, their craft are second only to Red's in terms of ability, and their pilots are second only to White's in terms of ability, meaning that between their craft, their pilots, and their superweapons, Blue continues to get by, similarly able to deny advancement of others even if they cannot storm by force.


...Of course, there's a twist.
A fifth nation exists: Green. Previously unknown, when they enter the scene it's an absolute nightmare because they put everyone to shame.
They have three advanced tanks, equal to Blue's tanks (though lesser than Red's), and one light tank (which is lesser than a standard tank). However, they also have one ultra-tank: this ultra-tank is literally twice the size of an advanced tank (which is itself larger than a standard tank which is larger than a light tank), and has the armor to match. Worse, it has the firepower to basically one-shot anything, and its bombardment is long-range, and packs enough power to do considerable damage to an entire city. (Not devastating, but considerable damage.) Oh, and these shots? Also capable of sniping aircraft which try to take it out.

They only have one plane...but they only need one plane, because their plane, an ultra plane, puts even raptors to shame: it is full-time as fast as an interceptor, has a boost ability like a raptor that allows it to exceed any craft's speed, can climb higher than the others, is equally armored to a raptor, and carries even heavier firepower than the raptor, and this time it's both in punch and amount. And with the same missiles as the raptor has.

Infantry-wise, they also have an "ultra-lite" unit: not quite as strong as Blue's ultra unit, in that it is slightly weaker, significantly more fragile, but also is more sustainable (able to fight for longer) in more terrain with greater ease.
They also have an advanced assault unit, an air-assault unit (able to attack units in the air and on the ground, albeit much weaker than the ultra unit), an advanced bombardment unit (basically a unit meant specifically to blast to smithereens defense units), and a second ultra infantry unit: an ultra anti-tank unit, specializing in removing enemy tanks from the battlefield altogether, and being quite skilled at also decimating infantry and sieging cities.

They enter and take the world by storm. Their unique quirk is of course all these absurdly powerful units. The drawback, aside from their lack of extensive air units (which are, as noted, the most critical aspect of the war), is that they lack the production of any of the other four nations: they rely on their units not being too badly damaged/destroyed in the first place, because it takes them considerably longer than any other nation to replace damage and even slightly longer than the other nations to so much as repair damage.

I did a few times resolve the plot, but always revived it at a later time. (Until one time I didn't?) Most of the times the conflict went on until I got bored, so I never really did much. Some times, a faction would win. Green winning was considered a downer ending. Red winning, similarly so. White winning I think was the "heroic" ending, though Gray and Blue also could have cases made for them. (Gray was never antagonistic, and I don't think Blue was either. Enemies, yes. Antagonistic, no.)

I think that at least one time, a draw was reached. This might've been the last time I played with the idea, even. A "final resolution", of sorts. I don't remember how it happened. If it was all five factions, or the four original nations in an alliance (most likely led by White) defeating Green which triggered it. All the same, that was more or less the setting I cooked up.

And it's been literally years since I've thought about this. I think the last time I played with the idea had to have been at least seven years ago, if not longer. Yet every once and a while, I would stare down at the bin where they are, and look, and today for some random reason I decided, "hey, let's take inventory" and to officially try to describe the overall setting I had going.

​I find it absolutely fascinating.