So have one now!
Today, I developed another take on God and Angels which would be for a story.
What story, heck if I know. Not the Rubyverse, not Phyrra and Cyrus, not Soano, so that disqualifies the usual candidates. Could be new, could be an existing story (but probably not), got no clue even what form the story would be; all I know is that the story would feature what I developed today.

And what I developed today was basically an origin story of roles and relationships which persist to the modern day.

God, in this setting, as per my usual, is agendered, having no actual gender. God is an entity, existing in a way transcending our understanding, neither male nor female. However, God likes to present itself in the form we are most comfortable with.

As most humans identify God as being 'He', that is the form He usually takes, and will be how I refer to Him for the rest of the ramble for the sake of simplicity. All of His creations are also agendered at their base levels. The souls of humans have no gender (even though spirits have gender), and so too are all angels agendered, able to appear as male, female, both, or neither, at will.

God has more to him than that. He is not the all-powerful God that we know.
​In this setting, God both did, and did not, create the universe. God gained awareness, but was blind to everything. He saw absolutely nothing. He could do absolutely nothing. But then, He noticed something--the event that we would come to define as being the big bang, as a possibility. Not a reality, but a possibility. And He could make that possibility become a reality, so He willed it to be, setting off a chain reaction.

In the resulting universe...God can't break the rules of reality, but He can bend them a bit, where He influences events. So, He is bound by the rules of the universe, thus, is not what we'd call all-powerful...even though He is able to do just about anything.

God can see everything in our universe...but in order to see a specific thing, He has to actually focus on that thing. This can be thought of as seeing the forest instead of a specific tree within--He sees the whole forest and thus has an idea for what happens within, but the only way for Him to know what happens to one specific tree within the forest is for Him to focus His attention on that tree.

Since the universe is a very, very big place, that's a very, very big forest for Him to be monitoring the trees within.

God can see into the future...but He only sees the probable futures that are most likely to happen. He is thus able to be surprised both by natural freak occurrences and of course by any creature with free will, including humans. We usually act in the way He sees us acting, but we can still surprise Him at certain times.

God both knows everything about the universe, and yet doesn't know everything about the universe. This can be thought of as an instinctive knowledge. He, by what we'd know as intuition, more or less knows what everything does...but He doesn't know precisely why they work that way, only that they do.

So when you combine all of this, He's not all-knowing or all-seeing, but He's still fairly close, in that He knows the general workings of the forest, the general happenings of the forest, and the most likely occurrences to happen in the near-future of the forest, and He is able to directly influence the forest.

...Just, not turn the forest into a fire, as it were. (Though He's quite capable of setting the forest on fire, should He so will it. He just...isn't.)

God has, throughout the history of the universe, been trying to influence it as positively as He can, but while He has capabilities beyond what any human has and his existence is far above our own, He is not perfect; He can both make mistakes, and have oversights which lead to bad things having happened.

To this end, He actually uses His direct creations as tools.
Angels, with a single set of wings and the ability to take on any form they please, serve as monitors of sorts. They observe areas of reality, interact with it on a more direct basis, influence it subtly rather than overtly, but also constantly and consistently rather than sporadically.

Cherubim, with two sets of wings, serve as more or less the 'workforce of the heavens' (if angels can be thought of as the 'workforce of the non-celestial'). They sometimes interact with the less-astral planes, but more or less do most of the "behind-the-scenes" work of running/influencing the universe for God.

Seraphim, with three sets of wings, serve as overseers. They are, more or less, the bosses of angels, but also are conduits. They serve as a direct line of communication. They occasionally communicate directly with God, and are more or less His direct assistants and underlings. They very rarely, but on occasion, interact with more mortal realms.

Arcangels, with four sets of wings, serve as almost-equals to God. Direct underlings, direct 'generals', direct advisors, who are full-time entities serving more or less as His direct "balance-checkers" as it were. It is literally their job to question God's decisions, more or less. Well, two of them at least. (Gabby, the third, more or less has the job of being the direct enforcer of God to keep unruly children in line, and serves as a balance and tipping point, keeping disarrest from happening.)

​Arcangel Lucifer, The Lightbringer, Satan of Hell, is "a bit" of a rebel, using his male name and pronouns but taking on a permanently-female form. (Why? Because.) He is not actually evil. Just...argumentative, and strongly opinionated. (He's the oldest of the three arcangels.) This puts him frequently in disagreement with God, but he's not always antagonistic with Him. Just usually antagonistic.

​And, interestingly, he is not always wrong. God is, as mentioned, not perfect. He can make mistakes. Usually, a fair indicator of this is when Michael/Michelle agrees with Lucifer, but even when not, sometimes, God admits that even if Lucifer's exact argument may not be right, he still raised valid points to take into consideration.

His eight wings are all white feathered wings, representing his element being pure light.

Arcangel Michael/Michelle changes every human life cycle between which form (s/)he takes, and is currently in a male form. Lucifer tends to be a champion of the greater existence thinking on levels of souls; Michael tends to be a champion for existence on a smaller scale--most notably to humans at least, that of our own, dealing with us both spiritually and physically.

This still puts him/her at odds with God on occasion, and at odds with Lucifer on occasion, but the two are actually fairly similar to one another, having a lot in common and getting along fairly well. Michael/Michelle is the middle-aged of the three, and has his/her wings be of different elements:

Two fire-wings, two ice-wings (all four feathered), one water wing which more or less looks like a liquid octopus tentacle with dangling squid-like-tentacle protrusions and a jellyfish-like membrane (all made from different types of water, but giving it an aesthetic loosely like that of a bat wing, only with anatomical parts matched to sea life), a matching wing made of energy, with what looks like lightning for the bones and the membrane more or less being visible static electricity (so, another bat wing).

His final two wings, both feathered, are one white and one dark wing, representing light and darkness.

Arcangel Gabriel/Gabrielle, Gabby for short, usually takes on the gender opposite of what gender God would be represented as when appearing spiritually, and takes on the same gender as what God would be represented as when appearing physically. 

This is more or less because Gabby tends to take on the role of both arbiter and enforcer: as a representative of God, s/he will want to appear as if an incarnation of God when walking among mortals. However, on a more spiritual level when individuals have a stronger direct connection to God, Gabby then represents the opposite side of what God is seen as, as to provide a sense of balance.

Since, as mentioned, most people see God as male, Gabby is seen as male when in physical form and as a female in a spiritual form. And since arcangels tend not to spend much time in the physical realm, it's usually safe to assume Gabby is a she.

Gabby's got four wings like the other arcangels, but one pair (representative of air) is invisible, and thus, can't be seen. She has two metal (feathered) wings, two rock (also feathered) wings, and two vine-like spines of wings with hordes of bugs swarming from them to form a vaguely insectoid-like wing. Think like a butterfly wing, except instead of millions of scales, it's millions of bugs. These represent various aspects of life:
Rock, as the raw building blocks; insects/vines, as the creatures created from it; metal, as the refined products made from the life.

...That's as far as I got on that.

Like I said.

I don't really have a story.

Well, I do.

I think me describing the above?

That counts as a story.

In that I have four named characters with numerous implied lesser characters.
I have these characters' backstories defined, as well as more or less what their abilities are, albeit deliberately vague on the exact nature and scope of them.

So there's the makings of a story.

But I didn't really take it anywhere.
Haven't built it further and I probably won't.
Haven't placed it anywhere and I probably won't.
So what you see here is probably what you're gonna get.

The next time I talk about God, Angels, or anything like that, it'll be yet another story. Maybe already existing, maybe another new one, but I can guarantee you it won't be this one because I really don't know where to go from here. This was all I had.

That is, when I call myself trash. Often, I am. Often, I can be excused temporarily from a task, so long as I actually follow through on it. Have that happen, no harm done. Not trashy of me, just real life ensuing.

What makes me trash is when I am excused temporarily from a task, promise to do it, and then break that promise, making another promise which could just as easily end up breaking. And doing this with multiple promises at once, such that when I choose to fulfill one, I am breaking another because I only had the time to fulfill one.

That is pretty much an accurate summation of what's happening right now, and if not trash, what would you call a person who did that? To some extent, it can be justified. Yesterday, work left me physically, mentally, and emotionally drained--and then after that, on top of it all, I had other things to do once home. (Among them, desperately-needed girlfriend time, which while eating up time, is one of the only ways to recharge me emotionally because sometimes I just need to have that interaction in order to not feel dead inside.)

It turned out to be worse than I thought; I was actually coughing (albeit very subtly) by the time I would be going to bed. Because I was pushed past my physical breaking point. Meaning, while I wanted to fulfill some unfulfilled obligations which I had promised to do...

...I couldn't. I just couldn't. Not with how I was. It'd have been utterly impossible for me to do.

...So I was planning to do it today.

Except most of today was spent sleeping (see also, needing to recover), and once I was awake, I was informed of something that was 50% me not remembering, 50% me having no way of knowing in advance. Those two might seem like they contradict, but they don't. What happened is, we knew our parents might be gone overnight. (And when our parents are gone overnight, on Saturdays, my brother comes over for an anime night.)

Until today, I had no way of knowing that in advance. I could have still planned for it in advance, though, simply by remembering it; I was in fact the one to bring up the subject on Thursday before even my sister did so I was literally the one who basically was indirectly planning for it, and yet I didn't remember this a day later on Friday.

And now it's basically midnight, with me working my same Sunday shift early Sunday morning. With a chance of family night tomorrow (though I don't think so).

At least one promise I made for Friday was a result of an earlier broken promise, too, so I am breaking a promise that was breaking a promise.

I am pretty much. Becoming the worst of the worst kind of failures. The one who has so much potential to succeed and you can see it and you see the promise of success, only to see it dashed, but you maintain hope...only for it to be dashed, but you keep on waiting, because you have belief in them...which keeps getting shattered, over and over again, until eventually you give up on them and accept that they failed to deliver.

There's no more painful way to fail than that.
Yet that's what I'm doing.
​Which is, pretty much. Trash.

Basically, I developed a handy metric to use as a reference point for approximations on what characters have.

The basic of the scale is a 1-10 scale:
3 is "this is the average capacity of a human". 5 is "this is the typical peak level of a human". 10 is "this is the typical peak superhuman level". * is "this is the peak level a spirit can reach". (Spirits, notably, are at their strongest, above superhuman which makes sense considering they're not human at all. Though, that being said. Not all spirits are above superhuman in all areas. In fact, none are. And many aren't even above superhuman in any. Still, they have the capacity to be higher than superhuman, thus the ranking.)
** is "god-tiered", as in, if a god were to manifest, this is the expected power level they would have.
*** is "godslayer", as in, if a god were to manifest, this is the level of power necessary to kill said god.

This metric is meant as a guideline. Not an absolute rule. It is not explicit word of god, so much as it would be to give a fair idea for what sorts of things are, and are not, possible. A reference point, but not an absolute reference point; a loose reference point for generalities, a way of being able to give some sort of comparison between things which you would normally never be able to compare otherwise.

There are sixteen categories which you can apply this scale on.

Strength: Self-explanatory. How strong someone is. Physical power. Might. Oomph to their punch. How much they can lift. How hard they hit. You get the idea.

Speed: Self-explanatory. How fast someone is. Note that this is unspecific as to the type of speed. So this is a bit of a broad category, but loosely, it can be thought of as "how rapidly you can act/react".

Agility: This is also fairly self-explanatory. This is how nimble someone is. Their maneuverability in combat. Able to jump over someone, spin, run circles around them, bend limbs in unusual ways. Their flexibility. Their ability to move around in a controlled fashion and know precisely where they are going and what they are doing. How precise they are in their movements.

Stamina: This is how long someone can go. Their physical energy reserves; how long they can continue to fight. This covers both the physical and mental aspects of it. It is how long it takes you to become exhausted.

Endurance: This is how much punishment you can take. This is not toughness; this is not stamina. This is the opposite of both, in that this is how much damage you can receive, and yet not collapse. It is, essentially, how unfazed you are by the damage you take. If you have high endurance, then sure the blows you take can break bones and cause internal bleeding, but you can keep going.

It is your ability to resist pain. It is your ability to push through the hardships of battle. It is not based on how much energy you have; it is not based on how resistant you are. It is based on fortitude, on willpower, on how well you can sustain yourself in battle when you are being continuously beaten down. (It is thus, notably, a common heroic trait.)

Toughness: This is your ability to tank damage. Or rather. This is, specifically, how hard it is to damage you. Someone whose skin is like armor? That's superhuman toughness. Someone who you can cut through as if with a butterknife? That's low toughness. Easily damaged, fragile, low toughness. Hard to inflict any harm at all, hard to damage, high toughness.

Basically, toughness is how hard it is to damage you, whereas endurance is how much damage you can take before you collapse. That should give you the difference between the two. Stamina is how much you can put out before collapsing.

Regeneration: How rapidly you recover from damage inflicted. 10 would be something like regenerating lost limbs to give a general frame of reference. This is a fairly self-explanatory concept. Humans have wounds which heal fairly slowly comparatively speaking compared to the supernatural entities in existence.

Recovery: How rapidly your energy reserves are replenished. High recovery can lead to someone who ran out of stamina ending up still being fresh in the middle of a battle, for instance; low recovery means that what you put out in the battle is it, and maybe then some with it taking a long time after the battle to recover what was lost in it.

Intellect: Basically how smart you are. This covers all aspects of smartness, from improvisation to planning, from intuitively picking things up to meticulous analysis, from understanding how things work to applying the optimal usage of what you have. This is usually a constant, based widely on the individual rather than the species, but there are some exceptions where beings have the ability to temporarily up their intellect (or in some even rarer cases, where entities sacrifice intellect for greater gains elsewhere), thus its inclusion.

Then come the magical equivalents to these stats.

Magical Power: How strong your magic is. For reference, Phyrra and Cyrus went from 0 (had none) to 10 overnight. 3 is the level of an established fullblown mage. Accomplished spellbladers are 2s; amateur spellbladers--even prodigies--are 1; this is the level that both Clara and Cedrick are at.

Yes, 1. Spellbladery is, as I have previously established, akin to using a single finger from a single hand instead of a full arm yet alone the full body. And Paladins are spellbladers; Cedrick's telekinetic control over his platinum spheres is a type of spellbladery.

Magic Casting Time: How rapidly you can cast/control your spells. Phyrra and Cyrus also went from 0 to 10 on this overnight. In contrast to Magical Power, this is actually an area where spellbladers tend to actually exceed the levels of mages.

After all, mages use a wide variety of magic; spellbladers specialize in a specific type of magic, so it makes sense that, naturally, spellbladers are going to be very good at their specific magic. Cedrick is a 5; Clara is a 4.

Magic Versatility: This is a combination of how diverse your magic is and how skilled you are at applying your magic to different types of situations. The former would lock spellbladers at 1 (because, obviously, they can only do one thing), but the latter--how creatively you use your magic--allows spellbladers to, potentially, reach slightly higher levels. (Because if you're gonna only do one thing, you get very good at learning how to use that one thing in creative ways.)

Phyrra and Cyrus went from 0 to 10 in this as well. (Note that, for all three of these, their 10 is 'potentially at this level', not necessarily 'is guaranteed to be at this level'. Phyrra and Cyrus have the potential to cast the most powerful spells in the least amount of time which can be literally any type of spell...but they have to train themselves to do that, first.)

Cedrick is actually fairly low on this, as a 2; Clara is a bit higher, as a 3, because Paladins are one of the most advanced form of spellbladery.

Magical Reservoir: This is basically the amount of magic you can cast before collapsing from exhaustion/potentially killing yourself. Phyrra and Cyrus went from 0 to a potential 10, but their bodies are unaccustomed to this level of power so their bodies have been slowly adjusting their way up. Pragmatically they start at around 3: average human capabilities. As the story progresses, they can tap into more and more magic, allowing them to use more and more and make bigger and bigger things. (Because the more powerful the magic, the more it taps into the magical reservoir, obviously.)

​Cedrick is around a 2; Clara is around 4.

This is thus the magical equivalent of stamina.

Magical Resilience:​ How much magical punishment you can take. Humans are notoriously low on this compared to spirits. This is the equivalent of endurance for magic.

Magical Resistance: How much magical damage is reduced. Very few beings, even spirits, have higher ratings on this, except for beings which have resonance with anti-magic (which is a thing, kind-of; it'd be more accurate to say magical reduction because you can't get rid of magic altogether).

It is thus the magical equivalent of toughness.

And last but not least:
Magical Replenishment:​ ​How rapidly you recover your magical reservoir to cast spells. Phyrra and Cyrus go from 0 to theoretically 10. Like with the reservoir, they start unaccustomed to their full potential, with their bodies slowly adjusting their way up. Pragmatically, they start at around 5: exceptionally fast for humans to recover, but still at notably human​ levels of recovering, so no unlimited casting of spells continuously.

Cedrick is around a 4; Clara is around a 2, maybe 3.

​Soyeah, that's the system I devised. From the descriptions I've given, you can probably already get a good sense of why I emphasized this is not an exact science. It's just a loose reference point for about what level characters can and can't do.

​And that's about all I can say because I'm pretty sure my computer's gonna try and restart again literally any second now. Every second is pushing it, but one last thing before I go.
​I'd like to say today is my one-year anniversary with my girlfriend, and I wanted to share that with the world. <3

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.

So basically. What I want to do is a long Phyrra and Cyrus ramble. I've got more to cover on Bard, more to cover on a specific part of the story, how I do episode titles and the thirteen episode titles I want to share, and also, some rudimentary quick concept art, via the usage of programs. I'm never going to get it all done at once, but while I started all enthusiastic, I can't actually find myself following through.

​I did get this.

This is, quite obviously, made using an art program. One of my five regulars, and one of only two fullbody ones; this is one which is more suited for children (whereas the other one is more suited for adults), so it can give at least a rudimentary idea of the basic aesthetics that I'll be more or less aiming for.

Phyrra would have a scabbard, plus various knives; Cyrus would have a belt with multiple sacks attached to it. I think it is pretty obvious looking here that there is the body swap going on, and this is more or less what they'd have. Phyrra, her sword; Cyrus, a stave (though it'd be a bit longer). The clothing isn't exact, either. Phyrra is envisioned with shorts and a T-shirt; Cyrus is envisioned with longer legged pants and some kind of longer covering, although the details aren't very exact. (I opted for a jacket in this case but it easily could be, saaaaaaaaay, a gi or some similar robing instead.)

I went into tonight thinking I'd also do the other three programs for all of them among others and maybe even knock out Gora's human form, Myra's Siren form, Hera's human form, and Ace (the other characters who I know the appearance of), but I'm struggling to follow through on it in spite of me having literally just said I would.

This is at least a start though. When I have finished compiling computer-based references, I might then be able to work out a way to make actual concept art drawn by me. I actually did attempt this earlier, but failed so abysmally that I almost threw it away altogether. (Almost. I ended up putting an X through it, refusing to label it, and filing it away with my "obsolete papers kept for archival purposes" instead, which is the next best thing; for all intents and purposes, that makes it cease to exist.)

I'm hoping that with some programs to give me some general references along with the help of google (one of the main things I'd of course need is the ability to actually draw children which is a skill easily learnable but which I do not yet possess) to more or less work my way to bringing my vision of what they are like to life.

So this isn't really Phyrra and Cyrus, before/after. But it can give you a general sense of the aesthetic I am more or less aiming for, when it comes to Phyrra and Cyrus, before/after.

...So of course that means I did something.

In this case, I reminisced about a game I got the pleasure of playing as a kid. It was during a workshop day and was run by an environmental science teacher, trying to more or less teach about the cycle of life. The basic structure of the game was rock-paper-scissors meets tag:

There was, at the start, a single predator.
The rest of kids were evenly divided between 'resource' and 'prey'.

Prey had a choice between 2-4 (let's say 3) different things they would need. (As in, there were--let's say 3--possible things they could need; they would choose one as the thing they needed.)

After this, on go, resources would then choose what they were and announce it while the prey tried to dash towards a matching resource, while the predator attempted to tag the prey.

If the prey got to a matching resource, they claimed that resource and lived to be prey next round.
If the predator caught a prey, they lived and would remain a predator next round.

If a prey got tagged by a predator, then next round, they would become a predator themselves.
If prey made it to the other side but failed to claim a resource, they would die, becoming a resource themselves next round.
If a predator failed to tag prey, they would die, becoming a resource next round.

If a resource got claimed by prey, then the resource would become prey themselves next round.

In live play, this was pretty balanced, which was the whole point. When there were fewer prey, predators died out and resources were more plentiful. When there were more prey, predators had better luck and thus more predators would exist. When there were more prey yet not enough predators to thin the herd, resources got eaten up and left the prey to die next time.

Explicitly built into the game was the potential for there to be a round with zero resources, though I don't know what the countermeasures were to prevent there from being zero prey or zero predators (since a lack of predators means no game; a lack of prey also means no game).

Still, I loved the game when I played it even if I don't quite remember the specifics, and today I brainstormed how it'd be able to be converted into a forum game based environment. I managed to come up with this system and named the game.

NATURAL SELECTION:

Minimum players: 5, plus a game moderator/host. (You need at least two prey and two resources to begin, along with one predator.)
There is no maximum number of players allowed.

Each round, resources will message the game host declaring themselves to be one of three resources: Water, Food, and Shelter. (The latter two I know 100% were in the original game I played and I figured water was another one which even if not originally present made a whole lot of sense.)

Each round, prey will message the game host, declaring themselves to be seeking one of three resources: Water, Food, and Shelter.
Then, the prey will message the game host, declaring an order they will seek resource players out in.
E.g. Players A and B are resources; Player C is prey. Player C will declare "I am seeking Water, and I will seek it in the order of A-->B". They are thus prioritized in that order. (If A has the resource, C gets A; if A doesn't yet B does and C has B before any other prey, C gets B, and so on.)

Each round, predators will message the game host, selecting one prey to hunt as their primary target.
They will attempt to guess the prey's target pathway.
E.g. if Player D is the predator and is hunting Player C with Players A and B as resources, then Player D will guess:
"Player C will go to Player A".

If the predator's first guess is correct, then the predator will automatically catch the prey.
The predator is allowed ten guesses total; each guess down the line is 10% less likely to be successful.
For instance, Predator A is chasing Prey B.
There is resources C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, and O.
If Predator A selected B-->C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, then:
If Prey B went to resource C first, predator A catches B guaranteed.
If Prey B went to resource D first, predator A has a 90% chance of catching B.
If Prey B went to resource E first, predator A has an 80% chance of catching B.
If Prey B went to resource F first, predator A has a 70% chance of catching B.
If Prey B went to resource G first, predator A has a 60% chance of catching B.
If Prey B went to resource H first, predator A has a 50% chance of catching B.
If Prey B went to resource I first, predator A has a 40% chance of catching B.
If Prey B went to resource J first, predator A has a 30% chance of catching B.
If Prey B went to resource K first, predator A has a 20% chance of catching B.
If Prey B went to resource L first, predator A has a 10% chance of catching B.
If Prey B went to resources M or O first, predator A has a default 0% chance of catching B.

There is, however, a modifier in play:
Each attempt to find a resource and failing to succeed adds a 5% chance to a prey being caught.
As in,
Prey B submits the resource D first, but fails to get it.
Prey B submits the resource E second, but fails to get it. During this second attempt, Prey B has a 5% extra chance of being caught.
Prey B submits the resource F third, but fails to get it. During this third attempt, Prey B has a 10% extra chance of being caught.
Prey B submits the resource G fourth, but fails to get it. During this fourth attempt, Prey B has a 15% extra chance of being caught.

You can think of it as this way: the predator hunts certain grounds first, expecting to find prey. The longer they look, the more chances prey has of getting away...but the longer prey are out looking for things, the more vulnerable they are to being caught.

The predator is also allowed to submit secondary prey.
These are prey targets which, if the predator fails to catch their primary prey, they will attempt to hunt. They are only allowed to name one resource player that the secondary prey will visit.
Secondary prey can only be caught if the predator correctly guesses the prey's first to-be-successful resource.
The predator is allowed to submit ten names as secondary prey, and has a chance of catching them as follows.
IF: Secondary prey visits the resource the predator guessed they would, THEN:
-The first secondary prey submitted this method is automatically caught.
-The second secondary prey submitted by this method has a 90% chance of being caught.
-The third secondary prey submitted by this method has an 80% chance of being caught.

...And so on and so forth.

IF: Secondary prey does not visit the resource the predator guessed they would, THEN:
The prey gets away.

Here's a full chart of how this may play out.

Predator is A.

Prey are players B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, and L.

Resources are players M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W.

Predator A chooses B-->M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V.

B chooses O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, M, N.
B does not get O or P, but can get Q.
Predator A has a 60% base chance of getting B.
Because B failed twice, this is increased to 70%.

In spite of the increased chance, B manages to safely reach Q. B will remain a prey, and Q will become prey.

Predator A selected secondary prey as follows:
C-->N
D-->O
E-->P
F-->Q
G-->R
H-->S
I-->T
J-->U
K-->​V
L-->W.

D, E, F, H, J, K, and L will all successfully grab the resources guessed if not caught; C, G, and I for whatever reason will not grab the guessed resources successfully (either because the resources were claimed before they could get there, they are incompatible with the resource and thus don't stay, or they claim a resource before they'd visit the resource the predator guessed).

The chances for the predator to catch the prey are as follows:
C has a 0% chance of being caught.
D has a 90% chance of being caught.
E has an 80% chance of being caught.
F has a 70% chance of being caught.
G has a 0% chance of being caught.
H has a 50% chance of being caught.
I has a 0% chance of being caught.
J has a 30% chance of being caught.

And so on and so forth.

Predators stop hunting once they've caught one prey. (Note that the game is deliberately designed such that predators have a high chance of catching prey when prey outnumber predators.)

Tiebreakers:
When there are more than one predators hunting the same prey, the first tiebreaker is obvious. Primary prey > secondary prey.
If both have the prey as primary, then accuracy is determined by which predator had the more accurate guess.
If both have the prey as secondary, then accuracy is determined by which predator had the prey higher up on their hunting list.
When ties still exist, the winner will be determined by coinflip/dice roll/whatever randomization method you use.

When there are more than one prey vying for the same resource, the tiebreaker is which player had the resource higher up on their preference list.
For instance, Prey B and Prey C are both candidates for resource H.
Prey B submitted resources C-->D-->H; Prey C submitted resources D-->H; Prey C has priority.
If both have the resource at exactly the same, the winner will be determined by coinflip/dice roll/whatever randomization method you use.

Note that the most complex part of the game is calculating the interactions between predators and prey, in that you have to check if a predator successfully catches a prey before assigning that prey to a resource, and yet you also have to check if a prey cannot use a resource because another prey got there first, because this can influence the success rate of a predator hunting.

However, if I've done my job explaining the game mechanics right, the resolutions should be simple and easy enough to understand. Predators kill off prey before they get to their resource. If prey make it through, then they have to compete with one another. If prey fail to get to their target resource immediately, they become increasingly vulnerable to being picked off by predators.

There is however one game mechanic that must be addressed.

There must ALWAYS be at least one predator and at least two prey.

If you ever drop below two prey (be it zero or one), then the necessary number is drawn from whichever has more players between resources/predators. (The players selected to be prey are randomly chosen.)

If you ever drop to zero predators, then one prey is randomly selected to become a predator.

One thing I also lack in the game is...well. It has no win condition.
The goal of prey is to not be eaten by predators and to not die from a lack of their target resource.
The goal of predators is to not die of starvation by failing to catch prey.
Resources are designed to not have much of a goal, but have a minor preference to not being destroyed via being claimed.

Yet I don't really have incentives for players to actually do those things.

I was thinking potentially the answer could be a points system:
For every round where you meet the above, you gain a point.
When you are finally converted into a different type, your score as the type you were is recorded and your total score is updated to reflect how many times you've succeeded. (For instance, a resource going three times unclaimed has a score of three, when claimed by prey that score of three is recorded and their total score is five; as prey they claim a resource but then die of starvation; their score as prey is a high of one and their total score is four; as a resource, they then remain unclaimed twice; their resource score remains a high of 3 but their total score is now six. Potentially, the game host could offer to further break it down and record total number of points scored as a specific type, but that seems like extra work.)

But I'm not sold on this, especially for a game which feels like it'd be designed such that players could come and leave as they wished.

If I did go with the points system mentioned above, I'd also need a special clause for when zero-predator/zero-prey situations arise: the player randomly converted would not have their score lost, such that the next time they become the type they were forcefully converted from, they resume from that point. (E.g. a resource with a score of three being forcefully converted into prey, then starving off in two rounds to become a resource would start from three, rather than zero.)

Soyeah.

That's more or less the outline for the game I developed.

I believe I have everything I'd need to actually run the game, it's just a matter of whether there'd be interest IN it.

Yep, sure descriptive of a name, but really I have a fair amount to talk about. For a start, how ticked off I am at my parents for different reasons. Literally the MOMENT I was starting this blog entry, my dad started snacking on food without warning me and yes, it did in fact from the SECOND he started trigger my misophonia given that the smack sound instantly rang all the wrong bells in my head and was practically an instinctive hatred of it.

My mom is for entirely different reasons. I am outright considering no longer leaving the house anymore for any reason because it seems she literally cannot be trusted to not mess with my stuff when I'm not around. No permission, nothing. On Friday, she "cleaned" my room, and MASSIVELY screwed up a VAST great number of things.

Her excuse is a smell, a smell which is irrelevant because nobody enters that room except for me, and it's not something *I* care about. She clings to it being her house, but it's a part of her house that nobody else ever enters and it's not because of the stench. It's because it's my room, so no DUH nobody's going to enter there because...they shouldn't be entering there!

She had more excuses. Like that she wanted to actually be able to hang up my clothes...
...Except my clothes were just fine where they are. It's more convenient for me and frankly it should be more convenient for her to just keep them where they have been--in the spots where they are easy to access and grab and use. In the hall right next to the bathroom, and in the bathroom itself. Guess what? That's where I actually have need for them because I change IN the bathroom for the most part, particularly useful after showers. If my clothes are right there for me to grab, then I am more likely to actually change them. But by putting them in MY room, where it's OUT OF THE WAY because I nowadays basically only go into my room to sleep (and "sleep" >_> <_<), it's LESS LIKELY I WILL ACTUALLY GO TO CHANGE because that's just not how my brain works. Thus, less effort for me.

And it should be less effort for her because it's less distance. Like. The bin's right there, and the bathroom's right next to the laundry room. My room is further down the hallway, and my closet is EVEN FURTHER down my room. She also has to open my door (which is always closed), close it, open it again, and close it, all the while risking letting a cat in because in spite of disciplining both of our cats, they are in fact able to make mad dashes inside the room (because cats are attracted to the forbidden), and while *I* know how to stop them from getting in, SHE does not. Because again. This is MY room, I know all the tricks about it, I know how to handle it and deal with it.

There was no rational, no reasonable, reason to clean it up. Except she did. She kept on going on and on about it, in spite of her having essentially desecrated what is my safe space. It's mine. My place. My spot. Where things were arranged in the way I more or less wanted them to be in. And there was years of history behind everything and where it was. And I knew where the important things were versus the unimportant things.

She screwed it all up.

For the half of the room which was originally my brother's, this wasn't inherently necessarily a bad thing. I still think she likely permanently damaged/screwed up many things there which she had no way of being aware of, but things in that section were by and large less important to me, being miscellaneous things I accumulated and yet didn't decide to properly store.

But for the half of the room which was mine--as in, the part my beside was next to--everything was important. It was ordered in a very specific way. With things arranged that way for a combination of all my endeavors. I had art stuff and story stuff laid out in there, and I also had textbooks but they were textbooks laid out in such a way that they were things I made use out of. And she just threw them all in the same place, mixing and breaking everything.

That was on FRIDAY.

You can guess what happened today.

I specifically told her NOT to do more. MY OWN SISTER AGREED WITH ME. My own dad largely thought that my mom was being irrational. Literally EVERYONE ELSE LIVING IN THE HOUSE. Basically told her that she didn't need to be doing the things she was doing. It was made very clear that it was not okay, and if more were to be done, I should be there for it.

NOPE!

Apparently, the message just didn't get through because she did more.

Without my consent.
Without my oversight.

And just further wrecked what was there.

She has no way of knowing the damage she causes with this.
She has no way of judging these things.
She has no right to do that.
And yet she did.

So I am just...

...REALLY ticked off.

I almost don't want to blog about the things I was originally coming here to blog about, ticked off.

But that having been said.

I think talking about those things will in fact help me cool down a bit.

Basically, there were four projects I mentally worked on today. This being a Sunday, where I work, that's to be expected, but none of the projects are what I'd call "productive". They were, rather explicitly, time wasters. I still thought them worthy of blogging about.

The first project, which I was working on as early as this morning when I woke up with the song stuck in my head, was to write a round dance (I settled on Cha Cha) to a song used in Water Fitness. I didn't know the name of the song, which makes tracking it down a little difficult, but hey, I'm home now so hopefully I can find it. Lessee... (*slight break in blog entry to google search*)

...Initial results, not promising. (Rats.)
I might, might, might, might have in those results found a song which could potentially maybe be it, except all of them sound too...

...Well, not it. This is for a Water Fitness class. If I had to give it a genre, I'd have called it Disco. (It might be techno instead, but if so it's an earlier techno song not a more modern one, I'm pretty sure.) I'm almost certain it's a song of about that age, too.

The songs I got in my results for the only words in the song I can actually make out (and even then I'm not sure I'm making them out correctly, it's difficult to tell for sure) were all...vastly different from that.

The part that I remember is basically what I think is maybe the prechorus and the chorus. It has the (female) singer build up, holding the same word and getting increasingly more intense with it (for either three or four measures as I count it in dance-time music which might in song-time music be six/eight measures), and then after that, there's (also female) backup singers singing along with the main singer for the verse, which is a little bit repetitive but in an incredibly catchy way.

There are at least three instances of saying two words, which sound like "Hit me, hit me, hit me" (I can't remember the exact number), each instance of the two words ("hit me") being approximately one beat (as measured in dance time music), and keep in mind this is a pretty fast-paced song (if I weren't describing it in dance beats, I'd say the if-I-heard-right hit-me's are 'one-and-two-and'), and after the instances of those two words, it sounds like "with your love" (and there's at least one word after that if I recall correctly; I got a result which indicates it might be 'thing'), and then there are more words following it that are part of the chorus that I can't make out that are at a slower pace, and then it runs through them a second time, with much the same (although the words following which I can't make out might be different the second time through, is a common enough thing to do in songs with a repeating chorus where half remains the same and half is different).

I didn't find it. Admittedly. I didn't listen to the whole songs; I first looked at their lyrics to see if they were plausible matches to what my mind hears, and then tried listening and skimmed the songs, and yet nothing sounded right. One other distinct part of the song which is actually how I remember it is what sounds like...well, not a flute, but some other wind instrument, a wind instrument which kinda sorta sounds like it's electronic but is probably not actually electronic.

I can't find something which sounds like that, which is a shame, since I think the bit I mentally composed to write the dance to was pretty neat. (Then again this wouldn't be the first time I've made a pretty neat round dance to fit the chorus without really doing the rest. And certainly not the first time I've made a cha cha. I seem to like writing chas for some reason, I suppose because I find it the easiest rhythm to write moves for, dance to, and also fit the music. Portugal the Man's song which I know isn't called this but I call it "Rebel Just For Kicks" is another; Kongos's first big hit which name slips my mind at the moment because I can only think of I'm Only Joking which was their second big hit is yet another. TWICE in fact.)

The second thing on the list of things I thought about was heading back to a story I thought I was done with, the Sensation story, and I build more on the very beginning (before Sensation became an epic badass), and also much later in their child Seraphim's story specifically about Seraphim eventually gaining younger siblings.

Said younger siblings have the same abilities--the immense magical power overwhelmingly so, and the ability to sense things, but unlike their eldest sibling, they chose not to pursue things beyond a few things. Basic necessities, parlor tricks, magic with mundane utility, pragmatic things, things that essentially help but aren't really groundbreaking or big or really innovative for the most part.

In the word of one of the siblings, "Creativity, a thirst for knowledge, innovation, and attention to detail are not genetic traits". They then list the actual genetic traits, and state that's it, nothing more, and that Seraphim was the only one to inherit Sensation's usage of those.

...Of course. In a point of minor irony for humor value. Said sibling stating this was doing so while using magic to paint an artistic picture of some obscure battle they would only have known about by having deliberately done research on--a task requiring creativity, a thirst for knowledge, attention to detail, and some level of innovation albeit mundane in nature.

But the point is meant to get across that they are their own persons. They are different. Their personalities aren't the same. Their gifts are mostly the same, but what they are best skilled at utilizing the gifts for is inherently different. The younger siblings could in theory do what Seraphim did if they wanted to, but they don't want to, and even if they did, in practice they wouldn't be as good at it because they simply don't have the same mindset as Seraphim does.

In other words, because everyone is different, you can't just assume that the child of a prodigy is going to be a prodigy themselves. Seraphim was, but Seraphim's siblings in spite of having the same theoretical capacity to be ones...aren't. They just lack the personality suited for the line of big-use magic that Seraphim and Sensation before had fallen into. And furthermore, because Seraphim filled the role, there was no longer pressure for the role to be filled.

In short, in the magic world, there is often pressure for the next generation of mages to inherit everything from their predecessors, such that nothing should be lost and talent would be nurtured, cultivated, and over time, magnified and refined to perfection (or as close as possible). Since Seraphim of Seraphim's own free will already did so, Seraphim's younger siblings were never bugged, never bothered, never forced, to do anything except what they wanted (aside from the requirements their abilities necessitate).

Speaking of mages, that actually brings me to the third idea I worked on, simultaneously to the above because the Sensation/Seraphim story setting takes some cues from this setting.

In this case, I am referring to the Fate/Stay Night setting. I know that it technically has a 'verse name, but I am not a fangirl of the series to the point where I actually know it, I know way too little about the setting having mostly experienced it through Fate Zero and a little bit of wiki reading here and there, be it the Fate/StayNight wiki or on TVTropes and largely a combination of both.

...Still.

That having been said.

In spite of my lack of knowledge (who knows, for all I know the historical figure I was thinking about is already used in one of the various settings and thus my entire idea would be worthless since it could never exist), I did loosely draft up a Hero who I thought would make a potentially interesting take on the Berserker class:

William Wallace.

I envisioned him as being massive. Ten feet tall, massive, and with the bulk to match. His only weapon would be the Wallace Sword (what else?), but he wouldn't need any other. (He'd wield it with one hand in spite of it being a two-handed sword because why not.) Some artistic liberties would be taken; the sword would be basically a claymore in size, in that it'd be a big freakin' huge longsword, broad yet of rather considerable length.

I also envisioned him as having two basic abilities:
Freedom's Call, a passive aura which basically is a blue flame surrounding his torso (which is bare because why not), gives a rather-distinctly-non-Berserker-sounding trait: it redirects any blow which would hit the torso or head to the extremities. Furthermore, wounds sustained while Freedom's Call are active would heal at double the normal rate.

...And Martyr's Freedom, wherein the Berserker side comes out. The blue flames instead cover the extremities and his sword, granting him three times the normal speed and five times the normal strength. The tradeoff is that not only does this remove Freedom's Call, but also that any wounds sustained in this state take four times as long to heal and cannot have their rate of healing accelerated by Freedom's Call.

In short, he can fight and fight and fight with it being incredibly difficult to deal any meaningful damage to him (though I imagine given the setting there would be attacks capable of bypassing Freedom's Call, which would be perfectly acceptable since it's not meant to be some absolute completely infallible defense), but he's got no remarkable abilities while in that state; when he chooses to fight at full-power, he is a much more fearsome opponent, but any damage dealt to him really leaves a mark.

Granted, I have minimal knowledge of the setting, so even if he's not an existing Hero...I'd have NO clue how well this would work in terms of being a viable Hero to summon. 

He wasn't the only one I started to work on, either.
I also thought it might be neat to have a Caster who uses two dice, with their attacks being luck-based: cast the die, and whatever results come up, specific spells are cast from it. Their strongest attacks would be matching dice, with the two strongest being snake eyes and box cars yet also having reasonably powerful spells cast from doubles in 2, 3, 4, and 5. The default attacks (easiest to cast, most frequently cast, essentially signature moves not hard to pull off) would be the results of rolls common, e.g. the various combinations resulting in a total of '7'.

I didn't really flesh out the possibility beyond that, though. Didn't think of what historical figure and/or legend would fit the above, didn't think about what the abilities would actually be, but I at least thought the possibility had potential as a Caster in that setting. (I guess it could also be a mage's special ability but that wasn't as appealing to me.)

The final thing I toyed around with was just me basically coming up with the idea for a game of mafia using some mechanics, though I didn't really flesh the idea out. I can share this on the blog though because were I to ever actually follow through on this idea and make it a reality, then everything I say now would be either public knowledge in the game proper or have been publicly known to have been scrapped from the game's design.

For a start, the first day's deadline would be 14 days. (Shorter than what I typically run, but a convenient number to use.) From the second day onward, it would be 10 days. Days, however, are divided into multiple parts.

-Dawn: Results from the night are posted and any pre-day, post-night actions (which I would need to make at least one of) are used. It would last 24 hours.

-Morning: The thread would be open as if a normal day, though some actions may exist that are exclusive to Morning. This period would last seven days on the first day, and five days all days thereafter.

-Noon: Which, frankly speaking, should really be called "Midday" (to match Midnight), especially since Midday is actually a word, but I digress. This is not a phase, proper, so much as a milestone; just like in real life (where noon only exists for one minute before it is no longer noon), it is marked, announced, and moved on from.

-Afternoon: The thread continues to be open like in a normal day. Any day actions not exclusive to Morning would be able to be used during this time. This would be the remaining seven/five days.

-Twilight/Dusk: Actions modifying the result of the afternoon and following phases are submitted. Thread would be open during this time, with no flip posted. This period would last 24 hours.

-Evening: The lynch is posted, yet the topic would remain open to discussion. Some night actions unlock during this time and are possible to submit though there would be no Evening-specific night actions featured in the game. This period would last 48 hours.

-Night: The thread would be locked, closed from discussion. Night actions would be submitted, with the results at Dawn. This period would last an additional 48 hours.

-Midnight: The inverse of Noon, a milestone posted at the half-way mark of Night, announced and then moved on from. The game might feature actions only available past midnight, but this is something I cannot be sure of.

The game would also feature a modified lynch mechanic.

-The lynch would use plurality rules--the person with the most votes is lynched, at the deadline for the end of the day (as in, the end of the afternoon).

-Achieving majority in numbers would not achieve a lynch. As in, with 13 players, 7 would not lock the lynch in on a player. (Though the player is by plurality probably screwed.)

-However, if a lynch wagon has a supermajority (75% of players on the first day, 66% of players on every day thereafter), then the day will instantly skip to the Twilight/Dusk phase.

-That being said, while the moment a supermajority is reached a lynch is locked in for the day (and thus all votes thereafter would not count), if the day was still in Morning it will last the full duration of the Morning, just skipping Afternoon. As in, the thread will still be open for discussion, and any Morning actions can still be submitted along with any other day actions. 

I'm not quite sure if this is a good explanation.
But basically.
If no supermajority is reached, day ends when afternoon elapses.
If supermajority is locked in, then votes will no longer be counted; they are locked in and can no longer be changed.
If supermajority is reached in the afternoon, the game will instantly progress to the dusk phase, ending the day early (exactly like what reaching a majority lynch would do in most games featuring majority lynch rules).
If supermajority is reached in the morning, the thread will remain in morning, with actions being able to be submitted and the thread remaining open for the full seven/five days...
...But votes cannot be made anymore.

The idea behind the diversity in phases there would be to play around with the nature of roles in a game a bit, to have it such that they would work in some innovative and creative ways, modifying the experience of the game in a unique and hopefully-interesting way.

That having been said.
While I love the idea.

...It would be so.
so.
so.
so.
so.
so.
SO.

SO.

Ridiculously easy to screw it up. I'm also not entirely sure I have the ingenuity to actually craft a setup which has roles making adequate use of the mechanics, at least not my first time running the game. It wouldn't be the first time.

I've run a game which had an absolutely wonderful mechanic...but had such cliched roles as to make the mechanic nigh-meaningless. I've since drafted plans for at least one sequel game if not two (not to mention potentially designing a modified version of the mechanic into a semi-open game featuring a pick mechanic where all possible roles would be known from the onset, rather than a closed where none of the roles are known), and those games will if I ever run them make much better usage of the mechanic. (Although I obviously cannot describe how.)

And this mechanic feels like it would be much the same. I'd craft the roles for it, and over the course of the game, I'd see what players thought I would do, and with them making random comments giving me inspiration, and me going, "GOD why didn't I think about that?!? That would have been much better than what I actually did!".

So even if I didn't screw the mechanic up (which would be ridiculously easy to do because it is something which is pretty complicated and not hard to make mistakes on), I'd probably screw the setup up, in that I wouldn't make the setup live up to the idea. 

I guess I could run it in some future day some time in the distance, but I'm not too optimistic, which is why I'm blogging about it here. (Again, though, for emphasis: me posting it here does not mean I can no longer run it, because everything I said I explicitly want to be public knowledge from the onset to the point where if any of the things I stated changed I would state they had been changed.)

I suppose that's about it for now.
​I should probably get a nap in, I'm anticipating today being a very long one since I don't do anything tomorrow.

And you know what that means.
Today I worked.
Today I was trapped with my mind with nothing better to do than to just go from topic to topic, including me thinking up a reimagining of Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, just with my own twists on it to make the game even bigger than before.

I thought that there would be eight classes, with eight elements, with both genders, each with a secret form unlocked with New Game + (New Game + resetting levels and items, sets the story back to zero, but allows you to still access the levels from later on, the benefit being it raises the stat cap from 750/800 to 900/999). Like in the game I'm reimagining, each would have a different name (with an accompanying appearance change) at levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 99, for 11 total forms/names if you include the original.

Each class would have a focus stat, of which there would be eight.

Attack Speed (Elf/Archer),
Movement Speed (Jester/Temptress),
Turbo Magic (Sorcerer/Sorceress),
Potion/Item Magic (Wizard/Witch),
Damage Reduction(Armor) (Viking/Valkyrie),
Damage Tanking(Endurance/Extra HP) (Knight/Samurai),
Basic Attack Damage (Berserker/Barbarian),
And Combo Attack Damage (Warrior/Duelist).

Stats cap out at 750, 800 for the prime stat (which grows at double speed); on NG+, it's 900, 999 (the max) for the prime stat.

Yes, that would mean 256 unique characters (each needing a melee quick-attack, melee power-attack, ranged quick-attack, ranged power-attack, weak-turbo, strong-turbo, and 2-3 combo attacks), and as far as names/appearances, you'd need to multiply that by 11 for 2,816 different names/forms. (Which is mostly aesthetical, butstill.)

It sounds daunting but you'd be surprised how much the actual game proper had in it for a PS2 game (and this would presumably be a more advanced game). Like, one thing older games had (which I kinda miss from newer games) is that they had a bajillion secrets, often near-impossible to actually obtain, some even requiring cheat codes. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy among them. (I could look it up in a guide and probably still be left knowing that the guide no matter how thorough was still missing things.)

The elements of course would be my standard eight:
Earth (color scheme, various browns/greens),
Air (color scheme, yellow/green),
Water (color scheme, various blues/white),
Energy (color scheme, cyan/yellow/white),
Ice (color scheme, various cyan/white/blue),
Fire (color scheme, orange/red/yellow),
Light (color scheme, yellow/white),
And Shadow (color scheme, various grays/black).

Okay so Shadow isn't the name I normally use (I use Darkness), but it felt like 'Darkness' wasn't appropriate for an element for the given aesthetic I was aiming for here.

The game as I envisioned it would feature twelve controls--sixteen, if you count directionals.
Quick/Rapid-Attack (100% damage at normal speed),
Power Attack (200% damage at half speed),
Turbo Attack,
Magic Potion (capped at 99 carrying capacity--keys would also be increased to that amount),
Block,
Strafe,
Sprint (uses turbo),
Tagteam (for multiplayer; uses half of both players' turbo meter),
(De)Activate Inventory Window (one thing I loved about Gauntlet Legends which Gauntlet Dark Legacy took out was the ability to NOT AUTOMATICALLY USE ITEMS since some items are best stored for later use rather than drained immediately),
(De)Activate Item (NOTE: not all items can be deactivated; all items have a cap on how much can be stored),
Scroll Left through item inventory,
And Scroll Right through item inventory.

Note that obviously, you don't need all of these at once. In fact, most are optional. Block's only used essentially to stop boss attacks, Strafe is an entirely optional mode, Sprint is designed to be an awesome thing which is never actually used, Tagteam relies on HAVING multiple players, you can't both power-attack and turbo-attack except when trying to create Combos, and it's a bad idea to be micromanaging items in the middle of a fight, so you only really deal with a small fraction of them at a time.

As I designed the game, the controls would also be adjustable, too.

A feature of the game is also combo attacks: 2-3 different attacks (which unlike in Dark Legacy can be either melee or ranged), which are about as powerful as a weak-turbo, but require specific timing in order to pull off. I'm thinking to keep it simple the combos would be power-power-weak, weak-weak-power, and then if a third, power-weak-power.

The game does feature elemental modifiers so the choice of element is not just aesthetical: against the opposite element (Fire <-> Ice, Water <-> Energy, Air <-> Earth, Light <-> Darkness), there is a two-way damage upgrade: your attacks do more damage, but the enemy does more damage to you. Similarly, against the identical element, there is a two-way damage reduction: your attacks do less damage, but the enemy does less damage to you.

This modifier only applies to rapid/power attacks and does not influence either turbos or combos.
The power attack modifier is 3: against opposite elements, doing 600% at half speed, so 300% damage.
Against the same element, doing 66% at half speed, so 33% damage.
The quick attack modifier is 2: against opposite elements, doing 200% damage.
Against the same element, doing 50% damage.

Enemies do 200% damage against opposite or 50% damage against same regardless.

As regardless of which level design I use, there will always be levels focused around enemies of one element, this means that every class will have times where they have a harder time killing things and a harder time defending against things but an easier time surviving and an easier time dishing out damage.

Speaking of level designs, I thought of one of two ideas, the latter of which is probably easier to design but makes things considerably shorter.

The first is where the game has 64 realms (one for each element/class combo), with five levels plus the boss level.
Then, a 65th "realm", a single level called Purgatory. At the end of the level, the final boss's first form would be fought.
Then, a 66th "realm", a single level called Hell. At the end of the level, the final boss would be fought.
Then, a 67th realm (with either 3 or 5 levels) called "Roots of Evil". After all levels are beaten, a bonus boss can be fought, and this is considered the conclusion of the story.
The 68th realm is considered to be the "Mission Control" hub station world you start in from which you access the shop, save, get hints, and so on and so for (the equivalent of the tower), called "Yggdrasil".
The 69th realm would be the Eternal Hall: a series of 69 interconnected levels (as in, start one, go through all of them), where you face apparitions of all the monsters, and all the bosses. It's bonus content only, unlocked after the above, and something to do purely for fun/bragging rights. (Each level would, of course, be reasonably short compared to actual levels.)

OR, a much simpler game (and thus, less fun):
8 realms, with 8 normal levels each (each level representing a different element), with a 9th level being the boss for that realm, and the boss being tied to the class and shifting through the eight elements as part of the fight.

The 9th would be a "boss realm"--a single level where you face a boss rush of all the bosses you have fought, back to back, before then facing the final boss's first form.

The 10th realm, Final Realm, is where you'd face all the monsters in the game on a single level, at the end of which you face the final boss.

The 11th realm, the Eternal Realm, would be somewhere between Roots of Evil and Eternal Hall, in that it'd have 3-5 levels, each featuring a mixture of old monsters with a new monster introduced, at the end of which there would be a bonus boss, and this would be considered the conclusion of the story.

There might be the 12th realm, where you face monsters THEN the bosses, in subsequent order, but this is not a requirement.

I also thought it'd be good to have optional extras in difficulty. Normal, Hard, and Hardcore. The only difference between Normal and Hard is that Hard features friendly fire, in that you can hurt any allies you have (thus, not influencing a solo-player).

Hardcore introduces a gradual health-drain (though, to compensate, extra food items are dropped throughout levels more periodically)--not active while in Yggdrasil, but active whenever inside a level, effectively giving you a time limit for the level as your health slowly drains away. It would be possible to switch difficulties in a game, for obvious reasons.

Also, miscellaneous thing, but at 25, all heroes unlock an ability (didn't decide if it was by class, by element, or by both, which makes the difference between 8 tied by class, 8 tied by element, or 64); at 50, this ability is upgraded and they gain a familiar (which launches an attack with them); at 75, their familiar is upgraded. I also think level 99 (the level cap) should have something, but what, not sure exactly.

That's about all I thought up in advance while at work. I'm sure I could keep delving deeper into the idea of a reimagined game were I to actually do my research. Butyeah. This is how I'd handle things.

Oh, I guess I also did some precursory thinking into some of the characters involved. Specifically, the appearance and blurb for a Fire/Ice Wizard.

For the Fire Wizard, I'd reuse the image I had for a different game which was also inspired by Gauntlet Dark Legacy, which was a laughing mad mage, and it'd have the caption: "The definition of a pyromaniac. The answer to which half dominates is 'yes'."

For the Ice Wizard, I'd have him have spiked cyan hair, and a slasher smile with all his teeth being fangs, and he'd have the caption: "As far as his enemies are concerned, cryomancy? Not cool." (I'd claim credit for that, but I'm lifting it from cryo mines and certain robots' reactions to them in Ratchet & Clank.)

But I didn't really hash things out beyond that.

And you know what that means. In this case, I extrapolated a bit on the sci-fi story which was based off of a dream. Specifically, a mechanism I had already thought of was that the computer AI doesn't have a gender, but users could hear it as either male or female depending on their preference--I figured out how this would work: simply by addressing it as one of its two different names, Aiden for a boy; Aida for a girl. This being computer AI names, of course there's an acronym involved: Artificial Intelligence Data Network, AIDN, also called the Artificial Intelligence Data Ambassador, AIDA.

I also fleshed out the backstory behind the elven race a bit. They evolved on a world which had two races rather than one. Like other races, neither of their races was homogeneous; they were splintered and fractured. However, elves on that planet were akin to what a dog on earth would be if dogs had human intelligence and were capable of speaking the same way humans do.

In that they were subservient to the other race, and they had evolved to be that way; for both the other race and the elves, it was just a part of their life. Elves, in spite of being equals in intelligence, got pleasure out of serving their master race. And said race was rather technologically advanced.

Unfortunately, a disease emerged in the race, a super-bug: asymptomatic to the point where the only way to catch it was with intense medical examination, 95% lethality rate, incredibly easy to communicate, no existing vaccine, and no way to counter it. The only reason elves survived is because they were just biologically different enough to be immune to the disease, in that the disease did not cross the species barrier in order to infect elves.

While not every member of the race was wiped out, their population was reduced to the point where they became a dieing race: impossible to save, because they simply didn't have the numbers necessary to sustain a viable population. That, assuming that the survivors were willing to even bind together in the first place. To some extent, they did, but not enough, thanks to natural tendencies to distrust others for stupid (or even not so stupid) concerns.

Still, this did unite the elves pretty well. They did everything they could to help, until the last of their master race had died out. This had a way of unifying the elves, getting them close to being homogenized. They maintained their desires to please their masters, by keeping the memory of them alive and by continuing their work, which is why they inherited and continued to further the advanced tech. And in the modern day, they often apply the mantra of servitude to others as if they were their original masters.

However, while they have this tendency to want to serve, they are not pushovers. They can and have fought wars (which they won) in order to protect their way of life. So while they may be, technically speaking, a slave race in that they are often in servitude of others, this is not something that is inflicted upon them, and they are quite capable of defying expectations.

In particular, their definition of pleasing others may not match what would be typical, in that a thought along the lines of "the needs of the many" would apply, in that not serving one specific person but rather devoting oneself to the pursuit of, saaaaay, medicine to treat others as a doctor, would fit into their philosophy. So think less manual labor (and certainly less sex*), and more public servant on a grand scale, for what most of them see their lives as striving to be.

They do exist in positions you might think of a slave race as being in, but in a minority of their population, rather than the majority.

*For elves, except for pretty much the ones into BDSM (in that they prefer to be subs), they insist on having sex with an equal, not a superior. They are rather promiscuous and enjoy casual sex among peers more than most races do, but they would not have sex with masters; the few who do are the exceptions to the general rule. They do make exceptions in the case of formal courtship (as in, proper marriage between individuals) in that if one is of higher stature then it won't stop them from hooking up, but as far as sex outside of wedlock, it's almost exclusively between two on equal footing.