I deliberately wrote it to be as generic as it could be, such that it could apply to as many people as possible, while still conveying a viewpoint I am intimately familiar with.
I called it "Stuck In-between".
It goes like this:

Is it not okay?
To have my doubts.
Is it not okay?
To not be loud.
Is it not okay?
To take my time.
Is it not okay?
To not know why.

Is it not okay?
For me to be.
Is it not okay?
To have my needs.
Is it not okay?
To possess silent voice.
Is it not okay?
To not make a choice?


I'm stuck in-between
Must be 'This' or 'That'
Why must they label me?
Why must I wear a "hat"?

Why don't they understand?
I do what I'm able.
I am who I am.
Why do I need a label?


Is it not okay?
I want to be free.
Is it not okay?
I wanna be seen as me.
Is it not okay?
For me to stand out.
Is it not okay?
To blend into a crowd.

Is it not okay?
To take both sides.
Is it not okay?
To not be fine.
Is it not okay?
To live and breathe.
Is it not okay?
Life contradicting.

I'm stuck in-between
Must be 'This' or 'That'
Why must they label me?
Why must I wear a "hat"?

Why don't they understand?
I do what I'm able.
I am who I am.
Why do I need a label?


Don't know who I am
Don't wanna wear a mask
​Don't know who I am
Don't wanna wear a mask
​
Don't wanna take a stand
Not up to the task
You can hold my hand
You just need to ask.

I'm stuck in-between
Must be 'This' or 'That'
Why must they label me?
Why must I wear a "hat"?

Why don't they understand?
I do what I'm able.
I am who I am.
Why do I need a label?

I'm stuck in-between
​But that's just me.



I think it works well!

I've not been blogging about it, but I've had some pretty revolutionary insights into things lately, and I mean that in absolute sincerity; if I were actually able to properly unpack the thoughts I had, they would be pretty darn insightful and actually make you pause and think. And if nothing else, give good insight into my mind.

Now I ultimately decided. I didn't want to spend the time/effort making those blogs. I had other things I wanted to blog about which were unrelated, took less time to talk about, and so on and so forth. Things which I could unpack quickly, easily, flawlessly.

So on Wednesday, I didn't give an expansion on my reflections about fear.

Yesterday, I didn't give a narration about the nature of time (and by extent, reality--short version, time in the narration given both exists and doesn't exist, everywhere and nowhere, is an objective constant that can be measured yet subjective illusion subject to the whims of the subconscious, without this being paradoxical because there's a logic to how it works; there's more to it than that and that's a poor explanation of the thoughts but like I said I didn't want to bother with the full version and still don't).

But today, I had a thought about failure, and this one I did want to share.

Failure is fun.
Now, I realize the Dwarf Fortress meme of "Losing is Fun!" exists, along the lines of "There's no winning, only losing, so make the loss as spectacular as is possible", more or less.

That's not what I mean.

What I mean by that is.

Failure is seen as a bad thing, but in it, there comes a blessing.
When you succeed, it is seen as a good thing, but with success comes a curse.
Failure helps you learn, whereas success can cause bad habits to form, but even this is not what I am referring to.

I'm more referring to what the effects of failure and success are, long-term.

Continuously failing can be a test of character, causing someone to either break and give up or push themselves with a drive until they succeed, but this is not what I am talking about, either.

What I more mean. Is that with failure, comes an expectation--or rather. A lack thereof. With failure, there is freedom. Failure gives you the luxury of choice, at every step. Do I continue, do I give up, as a start, but. I'm more talking about. When you fail.

You are under no obligations.

The results are right there, failure, in front of you. So if you've failed at everything. Then there's no obligation to do anything. What you do with that failure is up to you, allowing you the opportunity to do what you want--even if what you want to do is continue to fail.

That might seem like something nobody would want. Who'd deliberately want to continue to fail at a task which it's possible to succeed in? But therein lies the realization. Sometimes, continuing the task and failing it is the fun part, because it is the task itself which is fun--and succeeding at the task would make it no longer be the same level of fun.

This is one reason why I think so many people are perfectionists. They find flaws in what was done, to give themselves an excuse to call it a failure--so that they can do it again, but better.

Because the flip side of failure is success.
With success comes obligations.

If you succeed once, you are continuously haunted by that success: "I did it before, so why can't I do it again?" plagues all too many people. More than that, by having succeeded, it is expected that you will succeed again. People hold you to the level of quality you have shown you can do. If you do good, then you are under pressure to always do that good.

Once you have succeeded.
Once you have made your name.
Suddenly, everything is viewed in the lens of that success, compared to it.
"This is better than that".
"This is worse than that".

But when you have nothing but failures, there's a level of equality to it. A failure is still a failure, and while some failures are more spectacular (and I mean that in both senses it can be used in, in that they are massive failures or look-better-but-still-are-failures) than others, they still have more or less the same treatment.

A failure is a failure.

But when you succeed.
Suddenly, everything must be a success, viewed in terms of "less successful than previous" or "more successful than previous". And while some of these metrics are objective, plenty are subjective. Artists, creators, writers, and so on and so forth in particular are what I am getting at here; when they have gained renown for their work, their future projects are compared to these past projects, and inevitably, some will shower praise while others, criticism.

And it was this that made me understand why.

Why I am okay with living my life as a failure--and even seek failure out.

​There's a trope for this: Victory Is Boring. But it's a trope for good reason; it's true to life. There is less excitement in success, because with success comes obligation, comes expectation, comes pressure, comes the chains of the weight of the world bearing down on you. When you succeed, you are burdened by it.

But with failure, when you fail. You can forever continue to fail. You never need to succeed as a failure, because you can continue to fail over and over again and nothing changes. Nobody expects differently. There's no pressure to succeed, because you have failed. There's only the minimal burdens of the world coming from the bare necessities of survival. (You need to eat, you need to hydrate, you need to have shelter, and these things in the modern world come from some form of success in some endeavor for the most part.)

And I realized that this is why I am acting the way I do.

I have, for the longest time, lacked the drive to succeed.
I have, for the longest time, been dreaming up ideas and then not following through with making them reality.
I've been figuring this as being my bipolar disorder for as long as I've had that diagnosis: manic episodes for creativity, depression for how the idea dies out.

But there's a constant throughout this, and it's not just in my creative works. In mafia games, in all aspects of my life.

I have proven, time and time again, that when I put my mind to it and really try, there is almost no challenge I can't overcome. (I am human so I have limitations, but these are much fewer than most, especially myself, would assume.)

I have proven, time and time again, that I can do this, I can do that.

I have proven it as a proof of concept. Yes, it's viable. Yes, I can do it.

So why don't I do it more often?

Why do I lack the investment to try?

Why do I not make the effort?

Because if I made the effort, I might actually succeed--and that's something I don't actually want.

Well. Obviously. There are some things that I'd rather succeed on. (Namely, transitioning; living with my girlfriend.) But by and large. "It's the journey which matters, not the destination" is a saying for good reason, and it is specifically this that I am getting at.

The destination of success isn't actually worth anything to me (except on the few things it is; see above).
The journey is what I have fun with.
But the only way to ensure I keep on the journey.
Is if I don't reach success--and thus, fail.

So as I said.

Failure is fun.

And that's why I will forever be one.
I'll probably, realistically speaking, never succeed. Not even on the projects I most want to, like Phyrra and Cyrus. And because I'll keep inventing new ideas and never put in the time/effort to find out solutions for the technical difficulties in my modding, I'll never succeed in perfecting my mod.

But I'm at peace with that, because I am okay with living my life that way.
It comes with its own hardships. It comes with its own trials. It comes with the difficulties, the pains of knowing that my vision will never reach others. It comes with financial difficulty and making the few things I still want to actively pursue succeeding at, harder to get. (It's easier to succeed in transitioning and living with your girlfriend if you have succeeded at getting a steady, well-paying income, for instance, so it's harder on me that I can't get that easily.)

But it is not without its perks.

And honestly I actually think this is a contributing factor to why most people don't "succeed" in life.
Not everyone is famous.
Nobody achieves most of their dreams.
Everyone has a little creativity in them, and the vast majority of the human population has an overabundance of it; almost every single person in existence has some sort of creative thing they'd love to make. Music. Songs. Poems. Stories. Games. And so on and so forth. Yet only some of them so much as start, and of those that start, only the smallest of fractions of them succeed.

Most people are unknowns.
Most people are failures.
Most people never make it.

But I think the reason why.
Is because even if they never consciously make this connection.
On some subconscious level.
They know it, and are happy with who they end up being, even if it's a nobody.

For most of my life I've always struggled with the dilemma of feeling like I am half-nobody, half-extraordinary. That I am stuck in the middle of being ordinary and being special, that I am not normal enough to really fit in with more normal individuals and yet not special enough to make it big as a star, not talented enough to become the famous person I've always dreamed about being.

Yet I think that with this realization, I can be more at peace with myself.

I still won't ever fully "normalize", because with my brain wiring that's not possible.
I still won't ever succeed.

But now I feel a sense of serenity about it, that this is not a bad thing. That this is an alright place to be in.

You might think that this would mean, thanks to this realization, I'd give up on some things.
Oh no.
Furthest thing from it.
I'm doubling down on doing them.
Even knowing that I'm going to fail, I'm going to do them--specifically because I know I'm going to fail!
(The mythbusters quote about "Failure is always an option"? More like 'failure is always the ultimate option'.)

Honestly if I actually succeeded at this point I wouldn't know what to do with it.
But I'll still try. Over and over and over again.
My lot in life likely won't ever change, especially given my lack of drive to do so since I'm mostly content (aside from hating my dad) to live as I am.
But I'll still try.
Because the failure from trying is the most fun I can have.

Admittedly, I wrote this one plagiarizing from this:

...But imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

It's not an exact duplicate, but if you listen to that and then read what I wrote, you'll see the parallels fairly easily and understand why it is unambiguously stealing from them.

I decided to call it "I'm not better off dead".

It goes like so.

When I was born,
I didn't ask for this
Yet I have no less right to exist.

I've been torn
Stuck in-between
What I feel and my upbringing.

I'm in pain
Taught what I am isn't right
Yet there's nothing wrong with my mind

I know the hate
It's deeply affected me
But I'm still a human being


I'm sick of this
I have a wish
Let me share my view
I've got a rant for you


It's not an act!
It's not a choice!
Why can't you hear my voice?

Not for attention!
Not to be seen!
Why must you twist everything?

It's not a joke!
It's not pretend!
I'm not better off dead.

(Whoa-oh, hey-ay)

I'm not better off dead!


When I seek comfort
I can't turn to my family
They'd reject me as a fiend

I am hurt
I want to live my life
So why do I suffer this strife

I've been down
I struggle not to be
I shouldn't live with the bigotry.

I'm not loud
I can't express myself
So I've been living in a hell.


I'm sick of this
I have a wish
Let me share my view
I've got a rant for you


It's not an act!
It's not a choice!
Why can't you hear my voice?

Not for attention!
Not to be seen!
Why must you twist everything?

It's not a joke!
It's not pretend!
I'm not better off dead.

(Whoa-oh, hey-ay)

I'm not better off dead!

(The bridge would be an instrumental.)

It's not an act!
It's not a choice!
Why can't you hear my voice?

Not for attention!
Not to be seen!
Why must you twist everything?

It's not a joke!
It's not pretend!
I'm not better off dead.

(Whoa-oh, hey-ay)

I'm not better off dead!

(Whoa-oh, hey-ay)

I'm not better off dead!


This isn't necessarily a song written about me, but my living situation was obviously the main inspiration behind the lyrics, with a touch of making it more generic so that it'd be something anyone !cishet (take your choice in terminology) could identify with, but also touch on deeper subjects like feeling suicidal, being disowned, and so on, for things out of their ability to control, and the ignorance to come with it, and so on and so forth.

Well one of the two days of it anyway, but seeing as how I have work tomorrow the birthday present gift was for the one-day pass only so I won't be going; I'll be working.

It was quite fun and pretty much what I expected it to be.

I did notice something about myself, though.

I'm having an increasingly large urge to use more and more of my left hand/arm. I don't know why, but for everything except for a few things (especially fine motor control), my left hand seems to be the one I'm finding more appealing. 

I actually have a bit of a theory. My right arm functions faster and with more dexterity, but I feel it might be less powerful. This would be backed by my preferred practice stance, and also the stance I seem to favor in sparring a good amount of the time: my right leg is forward.

As any fighter can tell you, front-side attacks are faster, with more precision, but far less speed than back-side attacks. But it's also a position which can be thought of as fighting southpaw, because when you fight, your primary hand isn't usually the blocking/jabbing hand; your primary hand is usually the one you throw crosses with, and I favor my left hand.

​It may be something to explore in the future, but we'll have to see.

Am I back to blogging content?

...Ehhh, debatable.

But with luck, I'm on my way there!

The real breakthrough there is...well. I'm back! In a way that I have been longing for.

My desire to make art has been slowly rising. And while the creator within me has been alive and well for a while, the actual writer within me has been fairly dormant.

But today...both explosively grew out until they were bursting out the seams.

I want to make art.
I want to make it badly.
I want to make things.

And more than that.

Something finally happened.

For the first time.

I actually began writing the script for an episode of Phyrra and Cyrus.

Now granted.

I took some shortcuts with descriptions; there are plenty of details which should be there that are absent.
And I only got what I estimate is around 7.5 minutes (with another 30 seconds or so that I didn't have time to write but got worked out) of somewhere around 22 or so minutes. (Every episode, I estimate, will have around 20 minutes of content, with an opener that's around 2 minutes give or take 30 seconds, and a closer that is also 2 minutes give or take 30 seconds placing total episode time at 23-25 minutes; the first episode of the series, however, will have no opener at the beginning, and its closer will be the opener for the first season, as is a sort of tradition for anime.)

So it's not like I suddenly have everything.

But the point is.

I DID IT!

Only part of it, but I did it.

I am taking the first step towards committing to making Phyrra and Cyrus a thing, a thing not living just in my head.

Now granted.
There's still miles to go in conceptual art.

Something I'm considering also doing is storyboarding of sorts, where I'll use pieces of paper to demonstrate thumbnail-style (that being, stick figures if that, making heavy use of text and generally just giving a rough idea) "frames", demonstrating key areas of the episodes.

...I'm probably making trained animators cry with my (absolute lack of) terminology, buthey. I am not a trained animator; I'm not even a trained artist.

I know there's a lot of work to be done.
Concept art.
Storyboarding.
Scriptwriting.

All of these aren't done, and need to be done.
Worldbuilding is mostly done, but I still need to fill in some details like the name of the world, the names of the continents, oceans, countries, and cities visited.

I need to come up with names for background characters, and design them.
I need to finish designing the 13 main characters, 4 main villains, and the 10 underling-villains (1's more solo, 1's a direct underling of the first, 2 are direct underlings of Gunther, and the remaining six are the sins under the final).

For that matter, even the designs for Phyrra and Cyrus could use touching up.

Still.
I have a good idea of what I can, realistically, do, and not do.
I can probably get concept art in tandem with the script and storyboarding good enough where an animator can animate something to match my vision.
I can write a script good enough where a voice actor can speak the lines necessary.

I can probably teach myself how to be an editor. I have absolutely zero skills in this area, and I know it's a skill difficult to master, and will be immensely time-consuming to do, and once I am at the editing stage I'll also be running into "okay, I have everything individually I need to make it reality...now how DO I make it reality with the pieces put together", if that makes sense.

But this is okay, because that's so far in the future that by the time I am anywhere even remotely close to prepared, I'll have the time/effort necessary where I'll be able to put the needed work in and find out exactly what I need, and what I need to do, and so on and so forth. (And if we get to the editing stage, I'll presumably have plenty of people I can call upon for advice, because editing is like...one of the very last steps; if I get to the point where I'll need editing, everything else will be in place which means lots of help having gotten there already. See also, what I can't do.)

I can probably teach myself how to code if I get a site of my own. Multiple people are willing to teach me, too. (Plus, if I have leftover funds from whatever money I'd use to MAKE Phyrra and Cyrus, I can always just pay someone for this.)

There are, however, limits to what I can do.

Realistically speaking, I'm not going to be able to animate Phyrra and Cyrus. I may be able to teach myself how to make animations, but to match my vision requires a level of skill that I simply don't have nor ever will. No school can teach me what I'd need to know. I just know it. This is something you may wonder, but I just have a head for it, in knowing that I won't be able to make Phyrra and Cyrus in a way I am satisfied with if I were to attempt to animate it.

So I need to have an animator. Animators won't work for free, so I need to pay them.

I can finish writing the eight songs that I'll need (four openers, and four closers), but I'll need someone to actually sing them. Some of these I can probably go cheap. Heck, my sisters may be able to sing one or two of them and if I become an editor then I'd be able to edit it into something amazing. But not all of them will be; I will need to hire some people to actually sing.

I probably cannot compose the songs to an extent where I am happy with them. I can do what amounts to a storyboard of a song: give the lyrics, give my horrible singing of the lyrics, give some loose idea in the form of descriptors and maybe some sound for what I'm going for, but that's about all I can do. To get openers and closers to the level I would be satisfied with them, I would need to hire a composer.

Granted, that's actually not too terribly expensive from my understanding, but it IS money I have to have and invest.

And most of all.
I have 13 main characters.
Let's say your average episode needs 5 extra voices.
That's not a perfect estimate, obviously. Some episodes won't need any extra voices. Others may need more than 5. Many will need less than 5. Heck, the main characters aren't all appearing from the first episode (as they're introduced along the way), so it's not like it's 13 voice actors from the onset plus the extras.

But for the sake of a high estimate. Let's say I need 18 characters, every episode.

For a fact, I know that any voice actor that can offer the level of professional voice acting I'm after, needs to be paid. And this, I believe. Isn't that cheap.

​Let's see if I can pull some quick estimates.

​For composers, according to this old article, the two ways I'm most likely to get are % of budget (depends on how much money I raise, then), or a rate per minute. Off of 2011 values, $~425/minute (since I don't know if it'd be 1-5 instruments or 6-11) * 2.5 minutes * 8 = $8,500. And that's from 2011. According to this site, that's ~$9,522.17 now. So a general roundabout figure is probably $10,000.

For just the composer. If I am lucky.

Due to google misinterpreting my search to be for hiring a singer to perform (rather than to compose for you), it's a little difficult to find what the cost of singing is. Presumably, quite high.

For voice actors, I've found a site which I'm presuming is up to date, the question being how relevant it is. I believe it's pertinent though, so according to these numbers, if we assume a worst-case scenario of it being considered a Large Market (when it comes to money I have to spend on Phyrra and Cyrus being a reality...well obviously I want to show it off to as many people as I can, but the more I show it off to, the more it costs to make in the first place, so more people = worse, from a budgeting perspective)...
...Well, that's $118 * 18 * 48 = $101,952 to make.

That's not impossible for me to get. I mean, with an actual job proper rather than minimum-wage lifeguard, I could probably save that amount within 1-3 years. (Of course, if I had 100,000 to spare, my first desire would be to spend it on transitioning because if memory from when I looked at it serves me, $100,000 is just about the cost to fully cover a complete transition start to finish when you add the bills up between psychiatry, pills, doctor appointments, hair removal, and surgery. Those are the bare minimum, but they alone are expensive.)

However, costs for an animator...*shudder*
Hoh boy, if this is to go by, that's gonna suck. I'm presuming it'd be flash animation, butstill. $15 * 60 * 5 * 8 (for the openers), then
$15 * 60 * 20 * 48
= $36,000 + $864,000.

...And that's 2011. Rough estimate of current cost, $967,900.17 + $40,329.17 = $1,008,229.34. Would be over a million dollars to animate.

I can't earn that much.

I'm not sure I can even raise that much.
But that rate was by my understanding an incredibly cheap rate. A cheap rate, in 2011. And I'd need basically a million dollars to pull off 48 episodes.

Frick I'm a whole lot less certain about being able to pull that off.

Animation, up there with voice acting, is the skill I most cannot make Phyrra and Cyrus without outside help on.
And yet, they are singlehandedly the two most expensive parts I'd have in making Phyrra and Cyrus.

But dammit.

I want to make Phyrra and Cyrus real.

Somehow.

I don't know how I can make that much money.
How would I?

Maybe I could find people willing to work for below the market rate.
Maybe.

If I offer them exposure, proper credits and whatnot. Maybe figure out a way where Phyrra and Cyrus would make a profit and offer them a percentage of it. (God I don't want that because honestly I'm not looking to make money from Phyrra and Cyrus and it's quite the opposite I don't really want to make any money from it; I want it to be there for everyone, easily.)

Maybe. Maybe, I could figure out a way of somehow negotiating prices down.

But there has to be a limit to how much I could reduce the prices. I can see. If the animator(s) worked at half market value, potentially. At a stretch. I can maybe, maybe, maybe, MAYBE cover the costs of Phyrra and Cyrus with $500,000.

Which is a range that is maybe, maybe, MAYBE JUST EVER SO MAYBE. Doable with fundraising. 

I don't know how I'm going to make this a reality.
But I'm not going to let this discourage me. It's daunting. It's disheartening in a "this is gonna SUCK" kind of way. But it is not discouraging. I'm still going to make it a reality. I'm still going to figure out how to make Phyrra and Cyrus a real thing. And a real thing, available for free online, with people able to comment on episodes. (For instance, on Youtube. Not necessarily there, but that's an option.)

And yeah I know.

With inflation.

It's only going to get more expensive the longer I wait.

The longer I procrastinate on getting to the part of needing to hire these people.
The more expensive it'll get to actually hire these people.

Yeah, I know.

There's a lot of work to be done before I am anywhere even remotely close to ready.

The things I have yet to do may sound simple when I say them, but as soon as I face them, they become immensely daunting.

Designing about 30 major characters, along with designing numerous extras, plus background characters that may only appear for one split second for one scene as part of a crowd. Names, appearances, what they sound like, what they wear.

Naming every city, every region, every country, every location, visited.

Creating every monster/creature/beast/etc. fought in adventures, designing areas, landscapes, terrain.

Figuring out, second to second, every piece of dialog, every facial expression, every single tone used, to convey the meaning I am intending. Figuring out how every single bit is framed, such that I have a second-by-second playout of how every episode goes, and writing the script allowing this to be shown.

I need to do it all.

I know I can do it.

I am working towards it.

I'm not at the stage, I'd say. Where I need to start trying to get into contact with people to help me get to the places and people who can help me out. Basically. I'm not at the stage where I think I need to begin reaching out to everyone on how to make it a reality, how to get the things I need, and so on and so forth.

There is just oh so much work that I need to have FINISHED before then.

And it is all writing and art, pretty much.

It is all the two things within me that were dormant and have now exploded outward.

I can do this.

If it takes me years, so be it.

But I know I can do this.
If it takes me a ton of help, so be it.
If I have to make some personal sacrifices, so be it.

But I can do this.

I know I can do it.

I know that it may sound strange to have that confidence. I don't know where it's coming from.
I just have it.

I. can. do. this.
So somehow​, I am going to get it done!

One of the things which turns me from manic to depressed so often now in spite of medications meant to help with that.

Forgive the phrasing as it's something I'd normally not say unless in tongue-in-cheek because saying it seriously is a hallmark of arrogance, but I can't think of a better phrase to describe the issue:
"It's not every day you have a stroke of genius."

I don't want to call myself a genius because of how presumptuous that'd be. BUT. I think you can at least understand my sentiment here, what I'm going for.

It is not every day that you come up with a great idea.

It is not every day that you come up with an idea which is amazing.

And like.

I know I am a very creative person, who builds grand worlds. The World of Soano (The Descended's setting) is one of my favorite places. The Rubyverse is a conglomeration of my work across the years and takes the best of everything put into one place.

Heroes of Gistou takes what is perhaps the greatest achievement I've ever had as a writer and is a conglomeration of all my years of work as a writer; in the original mafia game I wrote the flavor for it was ambitious enough but as a novel which took things even further, it has literally every skill I've ever used in any of my stories ever in one place, while adding elements I've never used before including diversity in gender/sexual orientation (okay so that's touched on very lightly in one other story but only barely), racism, and hair/eye/skin color and whatnot.

It is basically my crowning achievement as a writer because the characters are humans I know (okay so to be fair, this was a bit of a cheat because when writing their characters some influence from the players who were assigned those roles leaked in), the setting is one of the most intricate ones I've built, the plot is one of my favorite stories, and the quality of the writing is the highest I've ever done; there's nothing to top it.

Though, coming close would be the other novel I was working on when my flashdrive failed and caused me to lose literally years' worth of work. (Still bitter about that, but if you're wondering, probably wouldn't work on my novel if I had the information, anyway. I'd back the information up, but my mood to work on the novel was utterly killed and having the flashdrive back and functioning wouldn't magically revitalize it.)

It is, in many ways, similar to Gistou in that it is the other story which touches on sexual orientation (albeit not gender orientation), and in some ways it actually is more of a statement. Some things which we might think are very unprogressive are shown even from the main characters...but this is more or less commented on in the book and you can tell that it is a deliberate narrative choice. (At least if I competently write that is.)

Racial divide, philosophy, the nature of war, the nature of fate/destiny, discrimination, eugenics of a sort (something I don't think I ever actually wrote down was a minor revision to dialog at one point where the protagonist notes that while there are 10,000 humans left alive, only about 4,000 of them are pureblooded humans with no genes from the other species which is closely enough related to humanity that they can have fertile hybrid children and said hybrid children's descendants account for the other 6,000 and the protagonist believes that in order to survive humanity needs that genetic diversity since humanity's gene pool is dangerously small; even his ancestors had a first cousin marriage).

It just touches on a lot of things, with some of the most powerful writing I've ever done, a full cast of characters who are actual CHARACTERS. They don't just have quirks. They have flaws. Most of my characters, well, they might have flaws but they don't get displayed in my writing. It's a bit of a weak spot in my writing; when I write characters, they don't tend to fail, they don't tend to have shortcomings, they don't tend to be in the wrong, and so on and so forth.

This story has all of that. And the question, of course, of "am I really in the right?", with ambiguous answers, rather than clear-cut ones. People. More than any other story, maybe even more than Gistou, people. Yet the world has a beautiful history to it and the plot progresses in this altogether philosophical way, where action is happening and yet you still get these little moments to know everyone.

The Perfect RPG for me is a setting I might have slightly tabled in favor of other projects, but I am still passionate about it because I really like what I made there.

I still want to make the Disneyesque Villain Song setting. I've toyed with various expansions, from extra characters (the protagonist, the seer, the love interest, the best friend of the protagonist, a cool old guy, and of course the villain among many others), how the beginning of the story unfolds, how the protagonist meets the love interest, how the story ends, and little things here and there including that the villain would be almost by-the-book following the evil overlord list (with some liberties taken here and there).

It is a wondrous, beautiful thing, envisioned as a film but also suitable for a miniseries. Probably not a full series, but could be done I suppose with tweaking.

And then there's the two most recent.

Phyrra and Cyrus.

And Dawn of Order.

I am passionate about them all.
Yet those ones really speak to me as, so to speak, "genius among the genius". Or rather. "This is the perfect balance of something which can actually be done (and is thus, pragmatic to do), and yet is something which is still grand enough to be ambitious, reach the masses, and inspire greatness", more or less.

Phyrra and Cyrus, and Dawn of Order, are both outside of my general comfort zone. I am a writer first and foremost. I am secondarily an artist. While those are used in animation and games, they are not at the forefront of them. Both have incredible ambition behind them, both have incredible ideas which make them truly unique and original, and yet because of what they are, are something which can be spread to the masses fairly easily and readily once made.

And more than that. I feel that they can actually be done. Not by me, alone, yes. But they can be DONE.
One of the reasons The Descended may never get off its feet is because it feels like a project which needs to be done entirely by me, but yet the scale of the project is such that while it's incredibly ambitious I'm probably never going to be able to complete it in my lifetime just as me alone.

Aside from how I've lost the art and scripts I've had multiple times, aside from how the site is (pardon the language) a clusterfuck and yet I have a strong desire to not nuke it and start from scratch. Aside from that. To tell the story I want to tell, I need to produce high-quality, almost professional art. Yet there's a ton of content for the story. I've forgotten a fair amount and with no usable notes that content is lost forever but even with it removed (or magically recovered).

The story isn't short. Compared to Red Hood Rider, yeah, it's short. But it's still something which if I were updating daily would take years of my life to complete and updating at a rate slower than daily would take...well. Longer than a human lifespan, honestly. 

Speaking of Red Hood Rider. What I just said about The Descended applies to it, too. Red Hood Rider, being a project which is mine. Just feels like something which should be done by me. I have also lost many notes of mine on the subject and what I have is chaotic, jumbled, scattered. Yet new content keeps being added even to this day, and content gets revised. And it's estimated to be about 80-100 episodes worth of content.

Each episode with 20-40 pages.

If that were daily updates that'd be potentially 4,000 pages. You know how many years that is? Ten. If I were releasing daily pages it would take ten years to complete Red Hood Rider. Now imagine less than daily. And knowing that the quality of art demanded for the project is even higher than that of The Descended, because Red Hood Rider is meant to be something which could be adapted into an animation (which is why chapters are called episodes).

My novels are, obviously. Personal projects. Can't outsource writing. Well, you could I suppose but heck no that's not something I'd do. So it'd have to be me doing them, by myself, alone.

All of them, I can reach out to others of course. Get a novel published, I can communicate to my readers. Start updating a webcomic, I can have dialog with my readers actively on a daily basis. But there's something in that which feels missing, actually.

And that is something not missing when I think of Phyrra and Cyrus especially, although also recently Dawn of Order.

Because on those. I would be creating my visions, but I'd be working with others, collaborating with them to bring what I envisioned to life. It would be my project, it would be personal, but it would have the touch of others on it as well and that would be a good thing. For The Descended, Red Hood Rider, and my novels, the thought of the touch of others on it feels WRONG.

But because it is literally a requirement for Phyrra and Cyrus (given voice acting) and Dawn of Order, it feels right. It feels good. The thought that I'd have it.

I'm not sure I'm presenting a very coherent thought here on what I am getting at.

What I am getting at is that many of my projects, I feel are personal projects.
Yet when it comes to a project like Phyrra and Cyrus.

What makes them strokes of genius.
Is that they are something which aren't personal projects. Yet in spite of not being personal projects. They feel like they are realistically achievable. I don't think anything I've envisioned in them is impossible, unreasonable, or really that hard to achieve if I really set my mind to it.

And I just.
Really, really like thinking about them.

And that's where the depression comes in--when I can't think of them, as it were.
Or rather. "I have thought of this great idea. Why am I not thinking of something just as good, or doing something just as good?"

By that, I mean.

Anything I do, I feel like it's less than what I could be doing.

I pretty much stopped playing Final Fantasy VII once I started envisioning the perfect RPG.
And now there's something similar for Majesty, Zeus/Poseidon, and the like.

Where I have envisioned a really cool game, Dawn of Order. Which I want to be playing, or at least designing. Rather than playing those games.

And any other game just feels...lesser than those, because those are some of my favorite games after all.

And there's something similar for Phyrra and Cyrus.

I've pretty much stopped rehashing most of my ideas (aside from the villain song one which is alive and well) since starting it. And when I think about them. I just. Want the moments I envision to be real.

I've even mapped out exactly how I could do it, too. The things I ask for, most I know explicitly can already be done because I have seen them done. And if I've seen them done, then it is possible for them to be done on my project. (For reference, this is also true of Dawn of Order. I don't think anything I describe is impossible, not even when putting it all together, because every element I describe exists in one of the games I was inspired by, and while I know code isn't exactly directly transferable, it'd be possible to more or less manage it if you were a competent coder familiar with the inspiration and knowing the intended result.)

​If I could, for instance. I'm like 97% sure that Phyrra and Cyrus could be hosted on ComicFury. Yes, it's a comic site, yes, Phyrra and Cyrus is an animation, but I am almost absolutely positive (thus the 97%) that a "comic" can be a video.

Specifically. A video which doesn't autoplay, which you hit play in order to play, and which has both animation and audio. There is a file format which allows that. Well, multiple file formats. But I am positive one of said file formats, ComicFury supports for comics, and thus, it would be potentially possible to upload an entire episode. (Might run afoul of the size limitation to uploads but I'm sure there'd be a workaround for that.)

If that were possible, then from there it'd be easy.
Each comic (except fillers in the form of character art or worldbuilding concepts) would be an episode.

The most iffy thing I'd want would be the ability to make a video fullscreen; I'm less than positive that'd be possible.

But I'd want a home page with disqus comments that'd display the latest episode and latest blog (easily done), the ability to leave disqus comments on every blog post (easily done), maybe disqus comments on some extra pages (easily done), and then for the comments on every comic...
Disqus comments displaying on top and ComicFury comments also displaying below Disqus as the default (seen it done so it can be done),
With the option to alternatively have ComicFury comments on top and Disqus comments below,
And the option to hide ComicFury comments (seen it done so it can be done),
And the option to hide Disqus comments (seen it done so it can be done),
And the option to hide both comments,
And the ability to save preference for comment display (the above options) between both pages page to page and visits  visit to visit (meaning not needing to manually click the preferred option each time; pretty sure this can be done),
And Disqus comments linked to every site I host Phyrra and Cyrus on with Disqus (seen it done so it can be done).

Optionally, with a domain purchased and used.
Premade layouts have a quick-navigation (dropdown menu) so I'd have that, and premade layouts also have the "save my place" function for saving the comic/episode location you were watching so you can "load my place" later, and optionally, I could maybe have non-intrusive advertising built into the site.

So that might seem like a fair amount. But given what I know ComicFury can already do. In that I've seen almost all of this already done. I'm pretty sure it'd be possible to do. And it'd be awesome.

This is what I mean. I mapped that out over a week ago. It's doable. Most likely, at least. 

It feels like something I can actually have made real.

It feels like something where I could have a blast.
Just interacting with viewers, with fans, with friends, and coworkers, to make a project, pouring pure love into it every step of the way. A project which is mine...but also more than mine. Something greater, built by a team, a community. Something to share with the world, and be remembered for.

Something unique, quirky, original, and ambitious. Yet not so ambitious as to be impossible. To be manageable. To be something that can be made.

That's what I want to make on a daily basis.

But it's not every day I make a Phyrra and Cyrus.
It's not every day I make a Dawn of Order.
It's not every day that I get to have those moments of genius for lack of a better term.
It's not every day where I can snatch that greatness and feel it.

But on those days where I don't have the greatness.

I still remember the feeling of it.
The sensation remains.

On days I am not making the next Phyrra and Cyrus. Or for that matter, making Phyrra and Cyrus. I am remembering the sensation of Phyrra and Cyrus. And that is where the depression comes in...because I feel empty, because it's just so real and something just so close to something I can see tangible...yet not actually existing. The ideas will die with me.

I intend to live a very long life, of course. But the ideas if I don't make them...well. Nobody else would. Nobody else could. They could make something which has all the elements my notes describe, of course. But it wouldn't be how I had tried to make it because my notes aren't nearly as extensive as they should be, and there are little things here and there that the only way I'd be able to bring up is if someone first was trying to do them wrong and I'd be able to tell them, "No, not that. This." to fix it.

And that's the frustrating feeling.

Knowing that I have these ideas. Ideas that are. No matter how much I try to be humble. No matter how much I try to avoid arrogance. No matter how much I try to be a realist, a pessimist, a cynic. Ideas which are just...good. Ideas which are genius. I have them. And they demand to be made real.

I feel them as real. I actually live with them as real. I don't just see episodes of Phyrra and Cyrus. I also see me interacting with viewers who watch the latest episode of Phyrra and Cyrus. Me commenting on their comments, engaging them in dialogs which are currently nonexistent. Talking to them, revealing miscellaneous facts, sometimes being a bit of a trolling creator, other times revealing tiny snippets which couldn't make it into the show, small Word of God things like that, you probably can get a sense of what I mean.

When I think of them. I am actively doing that. Not just laying out the episode itself. But also the reactions to the episode, which I know would exist because. Well. I am confident in myself. Not arrogance. I know that, 100%. If Phyrra and Cyrus was made into a series. There would be fans. There would be people commenting. There would be a lot of them because in order for Phyrra and Cyrus to publish so much as a single episode. It'd need to get the publicity to get off the ground in the first place.

In other words. I know that if Phyrra and Cyrus existed. There would be people talking about it. It would demand to be watched. Demand to be seen. It would be popular, spread like wildfire. I know this because I know what I can make it be. If it existed, then it would exist at a high enough quality where those things would be impossible to not have.

And the depression more or less comes from.

"...So why isn't it so?!?"

So why don't Phyrra and Cyrus already exist.
So why doesn't Dawn of Order already exist.
So why doesn't this idea. Which is magical. Have its reality.
And why can't I have something like it, right now, in front of me.
Why can't I have something like it, or it itself, in my mind if nowhere else.

And that's what cuts deep. Not having it in front of me. Not having it in my head. And not having something similar to it in my head. Living in a world where it doesn't exist tangibly. Living in our world. A world close to the one they exist in. But they don't. Because I haven't made them exist yet, in spite of being their creator.

I think that describes my depression pretty well. And people might be able to relate to it now that I've described it in those terms. But I never know. Sometimes, it might just be I'm crazy.

For a start, I created a new minor villain, yet unnamed, who would be one of the lieutenants (but a human one) of the second big bad (that being, Gunther). I know what he's like, but I haven't given him anything other than his function as an opponent to challenge Phyrra briefly during the struggle.

The main thing I did today for the setting, though, was work on a song, which I believe I will make the opener of the first season: "Reach to the Sky". I only got half a chorus there, but it got me thinking. A previous opener I was working on can be made to fit the theme of rock (and I had it as second opener); this opener is obviously air and is the first, so.

Four seasons. Two existing (albeit both half-finished) openers being elemental.

So I figured, I might as well continue it and have the third be fire and the fourth be water.

Don't exactly have them written out tho.

Still!

It's progressing.

Closers will be more reflective of content for the show, I feel. At least the third certainly is, so if it's more reflective of the content why not the others.

I just need to finish them now.

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.

My top priority is to record a song I wrote, called, "My Dearest Friend".

(NOTE: 'OOO-OOO rhymes with 'who', 'do', 'to', 'you', etc., and is drawn out;
Underlined sections were designed to be sung with backup singers.)

OOO-OOO
I'm filled with cheer
OOO-OOO
Whenever you're near
OOO-OOO
There's nothing to fear
OOO-OOO
I'll always be here

OOO-OOO
I've never seen it more clear
OOO-OOO
I want you my dear
OOO-OOO
Don't care if saintly or a sin
OOO-OOO
I love you beit her or him

I wanna run my hand
Across your skin
To tenderly caress with
My fingertips
I wanna gently give you
A sweet kiss
To have your taste
On my lips

I tell you now this is
My greatest wish
We don't even need the
Hip-to-hip
My love for you's the
Best it's ever been
So come with me now,
My dearest friend.

OOO-OOO
I know that it's weird
OOO-OOO
What I love to hear
OOO-OOO
Your voice in gear
OOO-OOO
Is music to my ears

OOO-OOO
You are my peer
OOO-OOO
​Let's be proudly queer (debated on this line, and played around with trying leer in a positive manner but oh well)
OOO-OOO
No need for tears
OOO-OOO
If you can't I'll steer

OOO-OOO
I've never seen it more clear
OOO-OOO
I want you my dear
OOO-OOO
Don't care if saintly or a sin
OOO-OOO
I love you beit her or him

I wanna run my hand
Across your skin
To tenderly caress with
My fingertips
I wanna gently give you
A sweet kiss
To have your taste
On my lips

I tell you now this is
My greatest wish
We don't even need the
Hip-to-hip
My love for you's the
Best it's ever been
So come with me now,
My dearest friend.

I wanna run my hand
Across your skin
To tenderly caress with
My fingertips
I wanna gently give you
A sweet kiss
To have your taste
On my lips

I tell you now this is
My greatest wish
We don't even need the
Hip-to-hip
My love for you's the
Best it's ever been
So come with me now,
My dearest friend.

I wanna run my hand
Across your skin
To tenderly caress with
My fingertips
I wanna gently give you
A sweet kiss
To have your taste
On my lips

I tell you now this is
My greatest wish
We don't even need the
Hip-to-hip
My love for you's the
Best it's ever been
So come with me now,
My dearest friend.

OOO-OOO
Across your skin
OOO-OOO
Fingertips
OOO-OOO
A sweet kiss
OOO-OOO
On my lips

OOO-OOO
Greatest wish
OOO-OOO
Hip-to-hip
OOO-OOO
Best it's ever been
OOO-OOO
Dearest friend.

The meaning I hope is obvious enough.

​<3

...Since my creative whims are being interrupted by having listened to music in order to drown my dad out. However, that having been said, I still have three very valid things to ramble on. Let's start with the most recent. A couple of days ago, on Thursday, I had a series of dreams, one after another, which were all amazing and awesome dreams filled with adventure. Mostly after I'd waken up, as part of my powernapping.

There was one which stood out above the rest.

It didn't take me very long to dub the story idea...
Phyrra and Cyrus.

Phyrra and Cyrus Thaumason (yes, that is Thompson, and yes it is just about as common a surname for the setting--it's not exactly 'Smith', and while it's not a top-ten surname, it IS a top-15 surname; incredibly common and unremarkable) are prodigal twin siblings. They are considered to be incredibly talented for their age--at 11 years old, both are already accomplished adventurers.

Phyrra is a bit of a Genki girl--she is energetic, enthusiastic, radiates an aura of brightness and happiness, is sweet, naive, and innocent. Additionally, she is incredibly polite, and fairly formal. However, she is also reckless, hotheaded, and a blood knight who loves the thrill of combat. Her specialty is bladed weapons, especially swords. She has blue hair, which is let down. She is also bisexual. (Well, at her age, more like biromantic, butstill.)

Cyrus is everything Phyrra isn't. He is calm, cool, and collected: a thinker, cautious by nature, who prefers to avoid combat when at all possible. He'll use any method to avoid conflict, be it running away or preferably negotiation. However, if a fight is inevitable, his fighting method is to be decisive--whereas Phyrra likes to have fun fighting and thus doesn't think much about winning, Cyrus when he plans a fight plans how to end it as swiftly and effortlessly as possible. He is blunt, unapologetic, rude, cynical, and a bit of a jerk, but he really knows how to use anything.

This is why his preferred weaponry is environmental weaponry. For instance, if surrounded by rocks, using a sling would be a good option; when in a forest, wooden weapons such as a spear would be ideal. When he has to default to a weapon, his choice is the universal staff, a tool versatile, yet pragmatic, and easily carried. He has protagonist-styled spiked red hair. He is demisexual. (Well, at his age, more like demiromantic, butstill.)

The duo sought after the usual things. Fame, fortune, but mostly...respect. A secondary caveat to this was them wanting to be treated as any other person would be, not discriminated against as being children. A tertiary aspect of this was them being self-aware enough that they aren't yet adults, and being frustrated that, yes, their minds still do operate as those of children, albeit incredibly gifted, mature, prodigal children. Though they have the experience and talent of adults, they know all too well their thoughts and critically emotions are those of kids, still.

In the adventure which kicks off the story, the Thaumason Siblings set out after a legendary book, the Book of Endlessness, said to be able to grant the reader(s) limitless abilities, among them age manipulation. Their idea: find the book, and use it to wish to be adults, such that they could so to speak "skip ahead". They were, of course, aware of the risks in doing so, but deemed it worth it because what would be lost from that wouldn't be something they'd miss, as far as they were concerned.

They didn't even think the book was real or if it was what it'd be able to do, but they found a fairly reliable rumor of where it would be if it were, and decided they'd try. 

By the way, this was envisioned as an anime. Western Animation would work, but it'd have to be one of those two. It doesn't really work as any other media. Not live action, not even manga that well (though it'd maybe be possible? I just think the magic would be lost without it as an animation).

So keep that in mind.

The first episode opens up with them entering the dungeon and more or less showing off their base abilities and natural personalities as they progress, filled with the special siblings banter only siblings can manage. (Seriously, I don't know how to explain sibling banter to someone who has none. It's just...something people with siblings kinda get and know and understand. They see sibling banter in fiction and they can often tell if the writer has siblings, sort of thing, in that if you know it you know what's real and what's forced.)

Eventually, they find the book, and begin to read it.

So the full effect of the book is that it unlocks the full magical potential of the reader, who takes on possession of the book as being its "owner". Magic exists in this setting, and it's the type that anyone can learn...but learning it takes years of study, such that the youngest magic users are in their 30s if they started when they were children. It is a dedicated, life-long study, akin to getting a doctorate in a field. You spend basically half your life to learn the beginnings of it, and you still even after learning it are no master.

Understandably, this makes magic users uncommon. And this isn't something where you can be a prodigy and learn it at a disproportional rate. There are magical prodigies who can use it in their 20s, but that's the prodigal level. It is the level of a genius, who not only is a genius, but also has essentially a "sixth sense" for muscle memory to learn the magic, or even eidic muscle memory for the process.

...By which. I mean. Magic is something that the entire body uses. It is something which is physically exerting, because it is using "muscles" of sorts which you have to be trained in how to use. I can say it is effectively equivalent to having a person who has used nothing but their hands their entire life, trying to learn how to use legs they've never used. They might see people walk and get the theory, they might know how it is done, but if they try to stand up, they're going to fall.

This is why even prodigies take into their 20s to get it, and most magic users are in their 30s, and magic is a bit of a rarity. Because it is not something you learn to use overnight...and even if you did. That's just for using the magic at all. You still need to, once you have learned HOW to use magic...learn individual spells. Magic isn't a do-anything power. Now, granted. Spells are near-infinite in number and have many different variants. But knowing how to use magic doesn't mean you can use magic because you also need to learn how to use specific spells.

Learning spells? That you can be a prodigy at, by studying hard and grasping them quickly and rapidly. But to learn a spell, first you must learn magic. It's impossible for people to learn a spell without first learning how to use magic, because without knowing how to use magic, the spell is just words on a page with pictures; they have no frame of reference for what it feels like, basically.

Now, granted. There are workarounds. Some people are magic-users-lite, who have unlocked partial magic casting, which they use for a very limited select set of spells applicable for the bits of magic they are using. This still takes years of training, doable in your teenaged years if a prodigy or in your 20s if you're more average. You can think of this as instead of using two arms, of using one hand (fraction of one arm which is half of two). 

However, even including those, magic's still not too terribly common. It's a thing, which exists, but which people still don't make wide usage of. The rules governing it are seen as an extension of physics--in a world which has always had magic, after all, the rules governing the universe are such that from a scientific point of view people don't differentiate between magic and not-magic. So it is considered a science, well-documented, well-recorded. People understand what it can, and can't, do.

So back to the book. The book? Basically, it instantly allows the owner to become a mage, regardless of how little they had trained their magic before. It does not grant them the knowledge on how to use said magic...but within the pages of the book are the recordings of basically every possible spell that the unlocked magic can use. (And this being limitless potential...that's basically every spell.) With the caveat...it will only show pages the owner is actually in the now capable of casting. 

...Sounds awesome, right?

...Well, the problem is...the book has a self-defense mechanism, and it's not just an easily-bypassed dungeon. In fact, it has more than one, but all of them work on the same principle. The book of endlessness has a defense mechanism which works as a double-reversal, on the principle of "being finite". Normally, when reading the book, the owner will start to find themselves aging rapidly, their time disappearing from being endless to being finite.

If that fails, the walls enclosing the space rapidly progress inward--the endless space becoming finite.

...However. The book's reversal mechanism doesn't quite take into account if two people simultaneously read it to both become the owner. Or rather...it does...and it does the only thing it can: use the reversal in...a very, very different method.

...And it is by this method that the entire rest of the story is set up, because that reversal? A reversal of spirit between the owners. Or in other words. A body swap. Phyrra gets stuck in Cyrus's body; Cyrus gets stuck in Phyrra's body. And it gets worse; they are, for the entire duration of this, now stuck permanently at eleven, never aging. (The opposite, reverse, of what they wanted.)

Yes the series would have plenty of shenanigans where Phyrra (in Cyrus's body) would need to try to pretend to be Cyrus, and vice-versa. And at times, awkwardly enough, the reverse (the two are actually in their correct bodies...but with people who only know Phyrra in Cyrus's body as Phyrra and vice-versa, them needing to try and pretend ANYWAY). You know the like. (So gender stuff would be featured a fair amount.)

...Oh, and the walls start to close in on them anyway.

Fortunately, the book is intricately linked to four other books: the book of wind, the book of earth, the book of fire, and the book of water.

Phyrra, in Cyrus's body, rushes over to the book of wind, activating it. Each book has a defense mechanism of summoning a Guardian. The Guardian's duty is to kill the owner of the book, or failing that, to serve them until such a time as the owner no longer owns the book.

Gora, a rock monster (his design is from a combination of sources, among them being that one rock monster that Kurama faced early on in YuYuHakusho), the Wind Guardian, comes forward...and gets introduced to Phyrra. Guardians, as creatures belonging to the spirit realm, can see beings in their true spiritual form, so has a unique form of double-vision where he can see the body of Cyrus but he can also see that it is actually Phyrra. Phyrra wins him over with her sheepish grin and polite manners.

...It also helps that he is not immune to being crushed in spite of being made of rock, so he starts to panic when he noticed and swiftly teaches Phyrra the 'wings of levitation' spell, which "shuts off traps", and the enclosing walls qualify, thus saving their lives.

Gora notes that they're just children, and can't find himself to do anything other than help them.

...And thus, the story begins, concluding the first episode.

This trio lasts for quite a large amount of time before other members of the Thaukama (Thaumpson + Nakama, it's the best I could come up with for their group name) join. In APPROXIMATE order:

Kaze, the Earth Guardian, is summoned when Gora is badly injured in a way the kids need the aid of the earth book in order to fix, a task that Cyrus (in Phyrra's body) undertakes. Kaze is a homicidal maniac. (His design is directly lifted from Kazekirimaru in Bleach's Zanpaktou Rebellion filler arc.) He is a killing machine who excels at slicing opponents to shreds, and unlike Gora, he is not so easily dissuaded from murdering his book's owner because of him being a child.

Phyrra does combat with him using her wind magic augmenting her blades, a fight which she does respectably well in and Kaze acknowledges her talent, yet notes that no matter her potential and no matter how prodigal she may be she is still inexperienced in the ways of the wind which he has had eons to master, so she is at a disadvantage.

After healing Gora and watching the fight for long enough, Cyrus challenges Kaze, noting that he is to be Kaze's owner, not Phyrra, and that if he is to be worthy of that, then he should be the one who earns Kaze's respect. In spite of using the element which has a disadvantage (the reason Guardians are the opposite element to the book they are guarding is twofold--to kill any would-be expert of the element, and to provide coverage to the expert of the element should they decide to subjugate themselves), Cyrus does in fact manage to prove himself.

Ace, age 16, the first non-Guardian member of the Thaukama, is an expert marksman. Give him any ranged weapon, and he can hit almost any target. He specializes in pistols, but using muskets is still viable. He is a highly competent archer even though he doesn't like to use bows, and he can make do with a crossbow even though he thinks them cumbersome. He can hit with a sling, and can throw darts and the like fairly well.

However, perhaps his most valuable asset is not his combat skills, but rather, the fact that unlike Phyrra and Cyrus, he is trained to survive out in the wild for long durations of time. He knows advanced first aid techniques, such that he is an expert medic, and is a survival expert, knowing what's edible, what's not, what's poisonous, what's not, how to prepare foods which would normally be toxic such that they are edible, where to find things, how to prepare against environmental hazards, and the like.

I haven't given him a last name yet, though he does have a loose appearance. Brown hair, fairly shaggy, wears a cowboy hat, has a trenchcoat, combat pants, and for shoes maybe combat boots. I want an aesthetic which is, overall, something that would say 'pragmatic in most environments'. (I mean obviously he'd need a different getup in a colder environment, but I want something which works reasonably well in the forest, jungle, desert, sea, and the like, while still offering high combat readiness.)

There would be other human members of the Thaukama join before this, but I haven't fleshed them out in much detail.

Myra, Fire Guardian, a Siren (with a Mermaid form and Sea Serpent form), is summoned by Cyrus (in Phyrra's body) when the siblings are entering into an area they anticipate fire magic being useful for. She is equally as lethal as Kaze, loving to eat or drown to death anyone. (None of the Guardians are pleasant individuals; the siblings having 'tamed' them is noted as being an incredibly unusual occurrence because the Guardians are explicitly MONSTERS.)

However, because she is a Siren, immensely beautiful and alluring, Cyrus is basically smitten, addressing her as...
...Mom.

Myra is taken aback, and briefly insulted by the term of endearment, because it'd imply she is seen as an older individual whereas she loves the thought of being seen for her beauty and charm.

Phyrra explains to her, also addressing her formally as Lady Myra, that while she might be looking upon children, her charms are not lost on the children. Cyrus's reaction is as it is because he sees her as absolutely gorgeous, and everything he imagined his mother would look like. Phyrra puts on her own charm so to speak and says that Myra is basically everything she'd hope to be when older, and explains that if they ended up aging in spite of Cyrus being in that body, that Cyrus wouldn't complain too terribly much about turning out that way, either, more or less.

This flattery and sweetness and all-around awe at her flusters Myra quite a bit, and while she is quite adamant she is not their mother, inevitably, she does end up being the Team Mom anyway.

At some later point, the Thaukama get stranded on an island--to get off, they need to make use of the wind and water books in tandem, so Phyrra ends up summoning...
Hera, the Water Guardian, a Phoenix/Dragon who has many of the typical traits of the latter. She loves to hoard money, she loves to eat people, she loves burning things to ashes, and demanding tribute in the form of pretty maidens (that she explicitly-as-can-be-while-still-having-it-as-implied has sex with, so yes she is a lesbian but yes she is also a rapist), but in spite of all these unpleasantries (I repeat. The Guardians are not nice people. They are MONSTERS. They enjoy killing things among other atrocities), she does have a rule--
She will give her blessing to anything which survives the fire. "Reborn through fire" is in fact still part of her design, coming from the phoenix half, and through the ashes of her flame, she will give prosperity to the individuals whom she deems worthy of continued life.

Phyrra willingly undergoes this trial, passing, and earning the fourth and final guardian as a companion.

There would be at least one more human member of the Thaukama to join after this point, a girl about the same age as the Thaumason siblings, but I haven't named her or put much design into her character. (Her presence is more plot-related.)

This took me more or less...like.
Ten minutes to think up.
Literally all that happened in the course of a powernap.

I'm not sure how many episodes there'd be. Quite a number, though. At least 24/26 (depending on whether a season would be 12 or 13), possibly double that (if you count 12/13 as the half-season and 24/26 as a complete season). I don't think it'd run longer than that, though. (In fact, 48 already seems like it might be pushing things.)

The setting is such that I could write an endless amount of material for it, and the series epilogue (I know exactly how things go from the confrontation with the final Big Bad onwards) leaves things rather open-ended both after, during, and before said epilogue in that there is the possibility of writing FAR more material than documented.

But I know what kind of material I have, what kind of material I want, what kind of story I want to tell, and about how long that story would be, and that's not as long as you'd think it'd be. I wish I could make it, but this is miles beyond my league. I don't have the ability to start to finish map out the story, yet alone, line for line the dialog happening such that every single moment is mapped out.

Even if I did have that scriptwriting skill, I don't have the art skills necessary to draw the scenes I know I'd need to.
Even if I did, I don't have the animation skills necessary to make said scenes come to life.
Even if I did, I don't have the audio editing skills (there's names for that but I'm too lazy to bother looking them up) to basically work with the sound.
Even if I did, I would need voice actors for these roles, able to consistently deliver the wide array of things I'd need them to (there is one point which requires an incredibly professional level of performance in order to nail the moment I have in mind and it WOULD be screwed up with sub-par voice acting)...and this is something I can't exactly do myself.

So I would need those voice actors, something I can't get around no matter my ability to get around those other limitations.
And they would need to be high-quality.
And they would need to be able to deliver on a schedule more or less.
...I mean.

...Those services exist.

...But they sure don't exist for free.

You quite literally get what you paid for.
So if you pay nothing, then you find almost no voice actors. The few who bite are likely low-quality, and are going to be working under their own time constraints rather than yours because they are effectively volunteering.

So EVEN IF ALL OTHER FACTORS WERE ACCOUNTED FOR.
I couldn't do this on my own.
...And all other factors aren't accounted for.
I do need the audio editing skills; this is not something I have the software for, nor the training, and I have little in the ability to learn these things and if I did I wouldn't learn them well enough to make use of them to the level they'd need to be at. The only way I get what I want is with someone who's an expert, which means again hiring someone. More money aside from the voice actors.

I do need the animation skills; this is not something I can do. Yadda yadda, more rambling, end result: hiring someone. More money. Oh and as an aside...said person would need the ability to not only closely work with me, but also the audio guy. (Who would need to work well with both the animation guy and the voice actors since the audio guy would know what was needed there.)

Just animating isn't good enough; to animate something, first I need to show what needs to be animated. This is done through a combination of scripts and art. I need help on both because I cannot master both.

I can write the overall narrative.
I can flesh out moments.
But I can't on my own make the script. I'd need writers to help me. I'd outline some things, they'd outline others, collaborating until I got a narrative and product that I was satisfied with. All the while working with artists who'd draw these images to give character reference art and scene reference art.

More money.
More collaboration, even.

...You can see where this is headed.

It's not possible for me to make, because for me to make it I'd require a fully staffed animation studio. Proper hardware, proper software, proper staffing, properly paid.

It's literally one of the best ideas I've ever had, up there with the villain song setting (which I envisioned more as a film or maybe miniseries) in how good it'd be...and yet.

It'll never come to be.

​Ah well.

I'm gonna take a break; when I return, I might ramble about the other things I need to, the perfect RPG stuff and the webcomic idea (which I actually could make because I have the skills necessary, I just never will because 98% of my ideas are never going to see the light of reality thanks to how much time/effort the 2% which do take).