Why?
The omen.
That's why.

Which omen?
The omen.

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

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

And here's the thing.

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

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

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

Welp.

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

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

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

...And no. My class isn't over yet. I've had lunch, because someone in my class brought smoked salmon and today was an impromptu potluck. (No, the building we're in is not supposed to have food in it. Yes, we brought food in anyway. Certain privilege I suppose of taking a class by the program director; they let things slide.)

It's a natural consequence. It seems a disproportionate number of CAD students are avid fishermen. (Or in one or two cases, fisherwomen, since this class actually has a couple of girls in a rarity for the program.) But they don't fish for sport--they fish to eat what they catch. Or sell to others to eat. But they don't fish just for fun. They do have a passion and genuine enjoyment of it, but they fish for other reasons, namely, they really enjoy eating fish and are to some extent fish connoisseurs in that they think store fish is often too expensive and too cheap in quality so they like it fresh.

Like, no joke. If my instructor asked students to raise hands in regards to fishing...80-90% of them would raise their hands. Quite possibly I could be the only one not doing so. (Fishing just never really appealed to me. I'm just of the wrong generation/mindset. If you're going to fish you're going to spend a lot of time doing nothing. If you're cheating by using modern equipment, then you might as well not be fishing in the first place; if you're not cheating, then you're just doing nothing. It's just lose-lose either way for me.)

So it's really not that surprising, and I suppose in that sense, it's a good thing. Apparently fishing is a great way for people to get into business with one another, too, since a person aiming to patent a product met my instructor fishing, talked about their idea, said "now I'm looking for someone to 3-D print it" and my instructor had a glean in his eyes because in his words, "That's what I teach at the college!". This is, apparently, not an unusual occurrence, either.

I suppose the point of fishing is for stuff like that in the first place, but again, just not something I really hold interest in. I will, however, be all too happy and glad to benefit from the byproduct of this. Yum. (I mean for me fish quite literally tastes like chicken both in flavor and texture, but I mean that in a good way.)

Which I mean is technically true; I said I'd blog later and I am in fact blogging later. Of course, not about the subject I promised a ramble on. That'd take too long; the earliest I could give that is Thursday but probably not even then. Maybe Friday, but most likely Saturday. Just too much stuff to do prior to then. (Namely, school tomorrow; dance tomorrow; work on Friday; family night on Friday.)

I mostly came to point out how much I love my significant other and how I'm basically addicted to them at this point. I find myself often thinking about them, even at times I shouldn't. All my thoughts at least partially revolve around them now. At all times, good/bad/neutral, I have them in my mind. Love truly does do funny things to the brain. I so wish I could see them and spend more time with them. <3

But anyway. Life stuff aside from me gushing from a schoolgirl would probably be appreciated by everyone. For school, I don't actually have anything actually required to be done which I didn't already do, at least I'm pretty sure. I do have some things to turn in of course. But I did them already.

One of the more nasty things required is a hand-writing assignment. One reason we use CAD is specifically so that we don't need to do things by hand...and for good reason. I have incredibly shaky hands, especially when nutritionally deprived and/or when I am calling upon them for fine dexterity. Quite literally, the more precise the task, the less precise my hands are.

I can move my hands around just fine to, say, type. I can make more broad pencil strokes just fine. But fine motor control? The type to make mechanically-defined preset standards be met? I just don't have the ability to do that and yet it's asked of me anyway.

Also, ow. Typing hurts my hands right now. They're shaking more than normal but also more exhausted than normal. Because of the hand-writing assignment, I suspect. This is the curse I've always had and mentioned on the blog before in fact. As an artist, as a writer, I need my hands, and yet, they have problems. In the wrists. In the tendons. In the joints. Whatever, wherever.

It is to some extent genetic. I know my mother has shaky hands. I believe one or both of my grandmothers had it as well. I also know these problems (carpal tunnel and/or tendonitis) are things members of my family have in fact struggled with; my older sister was so badly injured that the only thing which can fix her hands fully would be surgery since literally everything short thereof failed to heal her.

The thing about our family is that it's often obvious we have some immense talents. We have some gifts that people would absolutely love to have. Strong athleticism (even out of shape, we can keep pace with people who have been training for years when we've done nothing of the sort), strong innate ability in certain subjects, we have lots of various forms of artists, we tend to ace tests easily, we usually did well in school with a deep understanding of the material we studied, lots of things like that.

...And yet. We're not superhuman. For every upside, for every talent, for every gift, there's a downside, a curse, a limitation. Obviously, not all members of the family inherit all of the quirks. But of us six, usually at least half have any given trait. Either good, or bad. The ones who have the trait differ, varying from trait to trait. For instance, my brother has the same resistance to diseases I have yet lacks the "once infected stays sick forever" part I have, whereas my dad has vulnerability to diseases and has the staying-sick-forever issue.

I don't quite know where I was going with this ramble. I feel like there was more I wanted to talk about. But I should get back to school, and do whatever awaits me.

Right now I think I need sleep for a nap before tae kwon do.
But before then, quick update.

Schoolwork was...
...Well pretty unproductive. Deer in headlights kinda sorta? I just. Was like. "Uhg, I want this to be over."
And was thinking a lot about my significant other and thinking I'd rather be with them, spending time with them, doing whatever. And I was tired and exhausted.

I did manage to get through it though. And get Subway. Same as usual, with me adding Subway Vinaigrette (huh that might actually be its real spelling, did not expect spellcheck to have that) to the sub.
Good news!

I love the taste.

Bad news!
Between it, the three others I add, and guacamole...my sub is increasingly becoming an icky gooey mess. It's a delicious mess, mind you. But it's more sticky. More drippy. More slimy. None of those things are bad, just something you have to live with.

...All the same. I think that a change of tact is in order and that next time, I'll be putting those on first, and then the Parmesan with one other thing (pepper, extra salt, whatever) to maybe hopefully suck out some of that excess liquid. Speaking of liquid, I deliberately had a different drink theoretically with more to help me wake up...except I messed up by partially spilling it, ruining the balance and equilibrium I was attempting to establish (not to mention maybe making the cup sticky), so I had to lap up a moist, wet drink of flavored water essentially.

Ah well.

​And with me teasing my S.O. with the number of possible innuendos above, I should go on to sleep.

AAAAAUUHGH.

I SHOULD BE WORKING.
I SHOULD BE DOING SCHOOLWORK.
WHY IS MY BRAIN NOT WORKING.
I'M NOT FUNCTIONING.

THE ABILITY TO WORK.
IS ABSOLUTELY GONE.
GONE GONE.
LIKE, GONE.

ABSOLUTELY. COMPLETELY. ENTIRELY. GONE.
MY MIND. SHUT DOWN ON WORK.
I CAN THINK STORIES.
I CAN THINK CREATIVITY.
BUT CAD, SCHOOL STUFF, IS NOT THERE.

AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO OTHER THAN VENT BECAUSE MY MIND IS JUST NOT FUNCTIONING AND I'M WASTING LIKE THE ENTIRE DAY BECAUSE I SHOULD BE WORKING BUT I'M REALLY NOT BECAUSE MY FOCUS IS UTTERLY ABSENT AND MY MIND WANDERS AND THIS MUST BE HOW MY SIGNIFICANT OTHER FEELS BECAUSE I AM SCATTERBRAINED AND CONSTANTLY THINKING OF EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE THING I AM SUPPOSED TO THINK ABOUT AND I FEEL LIKE I'M A DIFFERENT PERSON THAN I NORMALLY AM WHEN SCHOOLWORKING OR IF I AM THE SAME PERSON I'M IN THE BIPOLAR EPISODE OF THE YEAR BECAUSE HOT DAMN DOES THIS NOT LOOK LIKE THE NORMAL ME, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

On a different subject, which I will get to when I'm not at school like I am right now. (Probably between school and tae kwon do, but that depends, because the ramble will be a long one.) So what am I doing right now? Well I'm supposed to be doing schoolwork.

What am I actually doing?
Writing this blog entry, of course.
Which is...

...A full ramble anyway!
In spite of that being the thing I shouldn't do until after class!

Oh well.

Anyway. More specifically. Something I've been on-again/off-again working on is actually followthrough on something which I posted on this blog. I created a song a while back, Villain Song. And I wanted to create a Disneyesque (classical cartoon animation rather than the new 3D style--may or may not be hand-drawn, works either way) musical which would feature that song as essentially its second song.

I had the general idea of a narrator establishing the base world, how the heroes had started off already winning, leading into their opening song, with the main villain being grumpy in the background, switching to being the perspective character, delving into his life, and when he got fed up enough, launching into the tirade which inspires the villainous uprising, coincidentally making him the main villain.

This? Nothing new.
Also not new? The general idea I had for the protagonist. I always wanted to play around with the idea of a trans protagonist. I wasn't sure what kind of trans protagonist I wanted: agender, bigender, transwoman, transman, various others I'm not as familiar with (but probably should be), but trans all the same. I wavered on whether the protagonist would be genuine nobility or not, as both would have their upsides and their downsides.

Upside of no nobility: not as cliched. More relatable, even believable. An average person coming to the conclusion the system wasn't right, and with a drive to change it not out of birthright, not out of devotion, but out of a genuine interest in doing the right thing.

Downside of no nobility: I was aiming in this setting to subvert cliches, sure enough, to create an actually realistic world, yeah...but I still wanted to maintain some aspects of the fantastical worlds we've come to know and love, and a royal blood connection is an easy way. It also gives a direct motive to the villain and ties him to the hero--with the hero having a claim, that's an actual threat to the villain.

Ultimately, I compromised on nobility, and had the child be a distant cousin of the royal family, an infant, but whose legitimacy is questionable. Furthermore, this link would remain unknown to the protagonist, only suspected as a possibility from the genre-savvy antagonist. That seemed like a fair way to get the best of both worlds: not a direct link, with the actual link being only vaguely relevant, and neither the protagonist nor the antagonist really caring about it, with both motivated by other factors regardless.

As for the question on trans, I ultimately decided for the sake of other interactions that I created today that, yes, even though it may be a bit on the overdone side for me at this point, I'd make the protagonist a transwoman (and a lesbian). We'd get a montage of her growth at various points, with her surrogate parents doing the best they could to help her, along with her slowly coming into her identity: not in the sense of royal blood identity, but just identity as a person, basically the antithesis of that.

In short, she actually has reason to not accept, to not acknowledge, her birthright, because it's a source of conflict to her identity. She only begins to consider it in the story for the sake of convenience, a means to an end, and not one she's satisfied with. She already knows she might not even be that person anyway, so she doesn't want to pretend to be that person, and yet, thanks to the setting, people are desperate and want that last descendant of the royal line to exist out there, and that can get her supporters, get her followers.

Most of this existed already. Some of the new aspects I created today were other characters. For instance, a succubus assassin, hired by the antagonist to kill the hero. Now, the antagonist has access to the family records. He knows that they are ambiguous at best, but is genre savvy enough to suspect that there was inevitably a survivor who would turn hero. He knows the birth gender of the child as well. So he made sure that the assassin in question wouldn't fall for the victim, yet could still get close to them and kill them.

He essentially had tryouts then until he found a lesbian assassin. How did he test this? By making himself a target. He anonymously hired the assassin in question with himself as the target. She's of course surprised--even knowing of the assassination, he shouldn't be able to have stopped it. He has a full harem, after all.

The villain at this point points out that in spite of having a full harem, he has no heir. She thought that was to prevent the heir from usurping him. While he points out that is accurate, he also explains he just lacks interest. She questions why nobody's tried incubi; he says they have, but the result's the same: he can and has partaken in that particular vice, but he derives no pleasure from it. (In short, he's asexual.)

I basically wanted to give depth to all the characters in question, start to finish. Another character I created was essentially a religious guy struggling with his faith, as he had trouble with the idea of the world being meant to be what it is, having a crisis in his belief and yet still trying to preach.

I also went into some depth about the world, both pre-uprising and post-uprising. Basically, the pre-uprising world was stereotypical high fantasy. King ruling, adventurers adventuring, merchants traveling, monsters defeated by the heroes, crushed in a decisive battle that the opening was celebrating.

The post-uprising world was one where the villain knew he couldn't rule indefinitely unless he changed things, so he made a "the strong will rule the weak" ruling: not discriminating off of race/status/etc., albeit discriminating off of ability. The strongest get to be eligible for tests of loyalty to serve the villain. He incentivizes the merchants to have him as their ruler, convincing them that their profits are higher with him ruling than anyone else. And with people/monsters constantly fighting each other, nobody can really challenge him.

I really like it as it's a brilliant idea, but it's never to be since it'd require me to essentially have my own studio: animators, voice actors, the whole works. Ah well. It's a nice thought.

I have a slight confession.
I've really been up since like 10 AM.

Even though as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it was almost 1 PM when I got up.

Why the dissonance?

Because I woke up to the sounds of my family talking.
And quite a bit of their talking was...

...About me.

I heard lots of things which they think I can't hear not only because I was supposedly asleep but also because of my room being isolated.

And to be fair.
Both apply.

I only picked up fragments of the conversations.

But across the times.

I heard references to various things which were unambiguously referring to me.
And in...contexts which concerned me.

"Maybe they're not doing well at school" was one of the lighter ones, but a far more concerning one was my mom at one point I believe going to the effect of, "they're young and it might just be a form of expression", and things like "at least it's not as bad as when they were on that mafia" and the like.

Like I said.

I couldn't hear much.

But I got scared.
I wanted to stay in bed because I was afraid of coming out and facing a confrontation.

I worked up the courage to try at 12:45.
And by then whatever it was they were discussing about me had apparently blown over.

But I wasn't dreaming.
I know what I heard was real.

They were talking about me in ways which are incredibly worrying because it almost sounded like things they'd be talking about if they were prying into my life--

...And it'd be absolutely, utterly, ridiculously easy for my secret to be found out if so.

Because I make basically zero effort at hiding anything.
Heck.

Even if I were to try to--that'd probably make things worse because if you're audacious enough to appear as if you have no secret then it makes people think you have none whereas if you start being secretive then suddenly they become suspicious. So if I started, it'd be too little, too late.

And I do mean.
There's basically zero way I could hide it if anyone looked.

Literally everything I have is so openly exposed at this point.
I don't log out of my blog.
I don't log out of my gmail.
I don't log out of my yahoo.
I don't log out of Disqus.
I don't make any efforts to hide pieces of papers which contain words which would give me away.

There's literally an open book to be read on me, were anyone to make that invasion of privacy.

The only thing protecting it is that unspoken word, that unwritten rule, that contract of "my life, my business". And while in some ways the whole thing being blown over by the time I did "get up" is good (that means whatever it was, it wasn't so bad as to get me disowned/kicked out of the house), what it does mean is that if someone other than my mom scratched the surface...

...That they started latching onto something. If swept under the rug, that's good. But if it's not, then...well, not.

The worst part is not knowing.

I literally have no clue what it is they saw, what it is they did. It could be something absolutely and completely and entirely harmless: I could be fretting, I could be paranoid, over literally nothing. It could be they caught something I can very easily justify and explain, and thus, put their fears to rest, put the issue to bed. It could also be something I'd have to tell a bold-faced lie about, for instance, them seeing something which is unambiguously from me and yet unambiguously female and me going "It's part of an online roleplay". (I mean from a certain point of view, that could technically speaking be true. But that's not an idea I really like especially since it'd reinforce a bad stereotype.)

It could be any range of those. From absolutely completely totally entirely not a big deal to something which my mom desperately had to save face for me in my stead. And I don't know which, and I have literally no way of knowing. And it's something which...

Well is honestly scary.

I literally just made a promise that I wouldn't lose someone because of my family.
I literally just made that promise yesterday.

Yet I honestly don't know what that was.

And to some extent, all I can really do is...nothing at all.
If I change my behavior, it'll incur suspicion.
If it was harmless, then I've got nothing to worry about.
If it wasn't harmless, then I've got nothing I can do within my power to change that.

​So all I can really do know is hope and pray that everything is still okay.

Well, as much as someone like me can GET bored, anyway. Whole, "overreactive imagination" thing, and all that, where every little thing gives me entertainment. There's never really a dull moment; I enjoy every bit of life, and I love doing things which to others would seem monotonous and boring because for me they're anything but.

Still. All the same. When I have a combination of depression and a lull in things to do. I get, for lack of a better term, "bored": all the things my mind first jumps to as possible activities are for whatever reason not things which I have an inkling of either desire or ability to do.

For instance, I can't talk to my significant other because if I'm doing my timezone math correctly, they're asleep-or-if-not-asleep-SHOULD-be-asleep. I can't do schoolwork today because accountability sheets are due every Friday and I turned mine in yesterday for bonus points that were offered--so if I did any work today, it would be "free" work, not counting towards my total. (Also, I don't wanna.)

I don't even have family night as an excuse to chill out and do nothing and to limit my time, because family night is...going to be weird. Holiday weekend and all that. I don't know what the plan is, but I know what the plan is not. And the plan is not tonight, so. No family night tonight, meaning I've got as much time as I want all to myself.

I don't have any immediate mafia game obligations at the moment anyway.
So I've basically got four options I can think of:
-Play Civ 3 again. I don't want to start that, because while I have the time right now, I know I won't have it later and doing so feels like a mistake. Also, my only options are to save scum or to abandon a war to the point where I question whether it would be worth it. Probably not this one.

-Get back into the modding groove of things by knocking out some mod design stuff I procrastinated on. This is actually viable and something I need to do sooner rather than later (I do after all actually want to run these games while there's actual interest in them, not literally half a year later), however, I just feel like it's not something which I need to do right now and my desire isn't that high. It's something I can do, that I thought of, but not really something which I want to do.

-Get caught up in webcomics. This one won't take me that long, and I do want it done, but...I actually have a bit of a higher calling right now. And that is...

-Art. Now, I still don't want to try a proper revival of my webcomic, since I know I don't have the time/ability to do Red Hood Rider right now. Okay, so I want to, I just know how stupid it would be to try. However, there are other art things I do want to do. For instance, remember my entry about outdoing myself? I want to color that image.

Really, really badly want to try coloring that image.

And I have the time to do so, even.
And I think I have the ability; I've learned new tricks which could help me make it better. (In theory, at least.)

And there's other things I could do. For instance, clearing off the scanner so I can use it and uploading in an art dump all my sketches that I've done. (And there's been quite a number which I have done!) I don't quite know what I'll manage to get done.

But I want to spend today on art at least partially if not entirely, so.

​Wish me luck.

Okay so they're actually kinda cheap, butstill. My instructor is an awesome guy. He brought them and decided to share with my entire class today, so I've gotten an excellent opportunity to pig out a little bit. They're cheap so not the greatest, but still delicious. And hey. Free food is free food; I can never turn it down. (Plus it's not exactly like I'm at risk of gaining weight, given that'd be a GOOD thing for me.)

I'm also at the point where my instructor has said I really, really, really need to go out in the world and share my knowledge--I'm apparently acing the class and doing everything essentially perfectly. Almost no mistakes (except those from me misunderstanding, e.g. submitting an assignment early which we later go over in class, meaning I blindly stumbled through something he literally would have given me the answers to), and staying (relatively) on top of all the assignments.

He thinks I should go share my knowledge with the world since I'm doing that well. And told me to reconnect with our college person since she can and will help me there in getting a job and I feel more confident in my abilities after taking these classes so I might do better this time around.

Anyway.
I've got no assigned CAD work, with the only thing to do there being my pet project.
Mostly? I'm going for the non-CAD stuff.
So back to class I go!

And already I've had some experiences. Last night I maintained some memory of my dreams. I know I had a bunch of epic ones, and I enjoyed them very much, though all I could remember is that the last one vaguely had to do with pirates. And oddly enough: simultaneously, last night was incredibly restful, and yet not enough.

As in, I slept like a baby, buuuuuuuuuuuuut, I also had my body complain like one. As in, blissful during sleep, and very much complaining when disturbed from sleep. So I'm feeling tired. I probably got like five or so hours of actual sleep even though I went to bed early enough to get six.

My nap helped a little, but not as much as it normally would, so right now I'm in the "uhg, so tired, coffee y u no wake me?" kind of mood. At school, we've got new seating arrangements (again), so I had to take some time establishing my norms. I've got a fair amount of work to do, but the good news? Almost none of it requires the program so in theory can be done at any time. Better news? No school this Monday so that means more time to finish this stuff.

Of course, knowing me, that means I'll slack off and procrastinate until the last minute, buthey. I'll try not to. As long as I'm in school (aside from making this blog entry and maybe paying a visit to my significant other online), I'll do schoolwork. And out of school, my priority might look something like "sleep > everything else", buuuuuut, if/when I finish sleeping, the "everything else" will amount to me catching up on life-things:
Games, webcomics, the like. I can only waste so much time, especially since my significant other does like to remind me to stop slacking off (which does help a lot, though I hesitate to mention this since me mentioning it will mean that they'll try to do it more often and force it when I don't want them to do anything beyond what's natural for them), so I think I might actually end up ahead?

It won't happen literally this second, but it'll happen soonish.