So remember how I said yesterday that I had bought a female bathing suit? Well today, I got to wear it. And my GOD it is amazing. It fit me perfectly. I honestly don't know why more guys don't wear something similar--there is an existing male one-piece full-body bathing suit, a really really old style no less. Or really new. Or both. You can find things similar to what I was wearing for men and plenty of men do buy them, but most men who swim...choose things which don't go above their waist.

I honestly don't know why they wouldn't tho, because I wouldn't need to be a girl to have known the experience of the swimsuit was amazing. But my god was it exactly that. It was incredibly comfortable, and it made me feel more like me. It also made me feel a little bit sexy. The whole day, I was just...exuding an aura of something I rarely display, of just an energy that I only display in my most euphoric moments. The moments where not a touch of gender dysphoria hits me, where I feel like I look like a girl.

Mind you.

While I loved it.
It was not without its downsides.
1: It was a bit warm. This is pretty unavoidable. The only things I was wearing on my torso (the area which was warm) were the bathing suit and my lifeguard shirt. I obviously can't get rid of my guarding shirt, so...not much I can do to be cooler when wearing the bathing suit underneath. Not much of an issue, given that I am skin and bones so rarely overheat anyway.

2: Some parts were initially a little itchy. I imagine that this is a byproduct of it being a new swimsuit though, because I'm pretty sure that every swimsuit I've ever worn has had that problem when they were brand new.

3: Some parts felt a little tight at times and some areas didn't quite stay in place properly. I believe the two are related, in that the tightness likely came from areas of the suit slipping out of their proper position. This is not something which is very fixable because it's an issue you deal with, with any given article of clothing. No piece of clothing is perfectly tailored to your exact measurements (unless of course...they are, but those are like...$200 business suits), and swimsuits are no exception to this. This is something which happens for all of my clothes, so isn't an issue specific to the bathing suit.

4: The straps at times seemed to be pushing in, in a way akin to having worn a heavy loaded backpack for too long. Especially the left shoulder which was bothering me about 50% of the time. Half of this can be attributed to the above--the suit slightly shifted out of the proper position, I didn't really notice this in the area it slipped, but felt the slippage in the form of the shoulder straps.

But mostly? This wasn't creating a problem; this was alerting me to an existing problem. Even without the bathing suit's straps, my left shoulder was suffering from a condition which I'd call some combination of "tight, sore, tender, stiff, fatigued". This is not a new issue. It's a known problem I frequently suffer from. From the base of my neck to my deltoid muscle, my left shoulder flares up on occasion to have that issue.

The only fix I have to it is trying to stretch the muscles, massage them a little, roll the shoulder, hyperextend it, basically try every trick in the book to loosen them up, to remove tension from them, to basically make them...not bother me. So, again. Not a problem related to the suit.

Noticing a trend? Yeah, basically, none of the problems were due to the suit and all of them are things which can be managed and were minor nuisances, not real problems. Things which are annoying, but which aren't detrimental and won't consistently plague me especially not now that I know of them (and even if they do, given time to break the suit in, they'll go away).

There is one problem which is due to the suit tho.
One which will, presumably, go away after a while, but which is still a little inconvenient.

5: So sometimes, I can randomly be aroused by thoughts which aren't sexual at all. These arousing things strike randomly, where I basically go, "what the hell, body? There wasn't so much as a single sexy thought in there, not even a kinky thought, not anything which is a fetish, so why are you being aroused by that?"

When I was initially putting the suit on, this hit me hard. (Haha. Sadly.) If I had to guess, my guess is basically that I suffered from Distracted By My Own Sexy, in that I literally said to myself, "Okay, yeah, I get it. I'm sexy like this. Now shut up. We've got work to do." And at the end of my shift when changing out, while I was wearing nothing but the swim suit, I ended up going for a while, "Okay, fine. I'll take some time to appreciate that, yes. I am sexy in this. I have the time to spare. But you need to get used to it, body, because this is going to be the new me."

Because, yeah. I feel incredibly sexy in it. It fits me, it looks good on me (well, as far as I can tell, anyway; I have no mirror so hard to say for sure), and I feel a lot more like my femininity is more on display while wearing it (even though it's not actually visible). I feel like I am more openly displaying "hey I'm a girl" while wearing it and that feels so good. Everything about it is amazing and it is incredibly comfortable.

I do think that eventually, my body will adjust to that and it'll stop happening. (It's honestly annoying and I feel a little annoyed/guilty that the arousal happens when putting it on/taking it off. So hopefully it's a temporary thing related to it being a new change that the arousal is just extreme excitement about.)

So overall.

It's perfect.

​So glad I took the plunge and made that buy.

Splyce came so close to being first in their group.
You may recall that after they went 1-2 I was among the doubters.
I said "The Splyce we've seen doesn't deserve to move on; if they want to move on, they need to prove it by showing us the Splyce that went even with the likes of Fnatic and G2", more or less. That they needed to step up their game or go home. That the Splyce we had seen wasn't worthy of worlds, even though the Splyce we'd previously seen prior to the tournament was.

That in order for them to earn their spot they needed to be in top form.

And while I missed half of the matches today, I caught Splyce's first match against FPX and their match against GAM--and I can say that Splyce did precisely what they needed to. They did precisely what I said they needed to do in order to deserve moving on, in order to prove themselves worthy of worlds. They stepped up their game and showed up in if not top form close to it. They were a force to be reckoned with, and this was the Splyce who made me place them as the favorites to win first in their group.

And while they lost the tiebreaker to FPX and thus didn't--that it came down to a tiebreaker proves to me that my original faith in them was not wasted. Yeah, their losses showed their weaknesses. Yeah, even in their wins they had elements which weren't clean. But the Splyce I saw today was the Splyce I was rooting for since the beginning of the tournament, a Splyce who was good whereas when I said "Splyce in this form doesn't deserve to move on", they were...not good.

They did it. I am so glad they did.

Yeah it sucks that my predictions for positions ended up both wrong for the group, with Splyce 2nd GAM 4th when I had them as 1st/3rd, but OH WELL. I am still happy.

Am terribly behind in the vogs tho.

In non-gaming news: today I went shopping for some swimwear. It was ludicrously expensive, at $130ish in price to get what I got. Some of it was necessary costs. Others were there more or less to mask my true purpose for the visit. Yeah, I got gear that I desperately needed, but while I could use a new jammer swimsuit and I've needed new goggles for months the rest of what I got aside from one item was luxuries meant to help give a mask for what I really was there to buy.

Fun fact: I thought that the trope I Have This Friend was, in real life, so transparently obvious as to not be worth trying. That it would be ridiculously transparent, cliched, obvious, and give away my true meaning easily. But apparently it works well enough! I said that I needed help shopping for a gift for a girl, about my height, and wanted to get them a swimsuit, more or less. I got the help I needed; while I have no clue if it'll fit, I will at least try it on tomorrow and hoh boy is it exciting for me. I imagine that it will not be very comfortable, but it'll be worth it I feel in the end.

And I know that typing this out is cutting into my already-technically-below-six hours of sleep.
And I know that this'll force me to type out an entry tomorrow before midnight, because this is an entry for the 22nd past midnight when my prior entry was before midnight so if I changed the date of the blog it wouldn't archive correctly forcing me to leave it as the 23rd even though for all intents and purposes this is a second entry for the 22nd.

And I know that I am sick and should be asleep.
And I know that this'll mean the last thing I see before sleeping will be the unhealthy light of the computer (when before this whim hit me I HAD done a bit of a pre-bed digital detox which prevents that).

But dangit.

This is not a blog I'll remember by the time that I would blog tomorrow. I wouldn't blog tomorrow morning even IF I remembered this, and I wouldn't remember it by the time I got home from work most definitively.

Basically.

I had this brilliant idea before falling asleep--in fact, it was the idea I was going to use to fall​ asleep. 

Like most of my best ideas, this idea originated from the darker side of my brain. No, seriously. A fair share of my best ideas originated from the dark recess of the inner monster my mind is capable of producing. In this case, it's barely scratching the surface; light perversion is healthy enough and not really that dark so not really monstrous although that's only because of the direction it ended up turning.

I was expecting the idea to probably lead my mind down the road of things like rape, torture, the like--which is, yes, dark. But my mind surprised me...because it didn't. Instead? Well it still started off with the potential to go down that road, but didn't actually take it.

The basic idea that popped into my head was, (pardon the incoming language but this is verbatim the thought driving the idea and is something meant to come directly from the mind of a teenager who would use such language) "What if an average teenaged guy made a wish, that was actually granted, to 'have a female me that I can fuck'?"

You can probably understand why I was expecting that to take a darker turn--it's not like that's the sort of thing which doesn't already exist in hentai. Similar premises are actually staples thereof. (Yes I read hentai back in my teenage years. No, I don't anymore, but not because I don't want to; my reasons for not doing so now are purely because teenage me didn't care about infecting my computer with viruses whereas adult me is paranoid and that quite literally is the only reason I DON'T still do it...and I admit even then I take peeks using google image search in incognito mode, just making sure to not actually VISIT any site. Which I imagine isn't entirely risk-free still, but is probably significantly LESS risky than going to the sites. MY POINT BEING. I know from experience that similar stuff appears in hentai because I've actually read hentai with similar.)

The thing is...it snowballed out into an entirely different direction. This being the average teenaged guy, he was someone who I imagined as, while stupid enough to have made that wish and not realizing the consequences of it enough to not make it, after having faced it realized what went wrong and not take advantage of it, having more of a "my god what have I done?" moment upon realizing that someone with all his memories, thoughts, and feelings, was now standing in front of him, as a girl.

And as he's heterosexual, he realized very quickly that outside the influence of magic, she wouldn't be attracted to him; outside the influence of magic, she would potentially not even be a 'she'.

And the story I imagined would mostly follow her, albeit having him as a prominent character, as s/he would go about life after having been created.

...It was a brilliant idea.
I really really really liked it.
...But it was about this time that I realized.
"...Wait.
...Isn't that basically Ellen from EGS?"

And I let out a great big siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhh.

I DO think the idea didn't come from EGS at all. Had absolutely zero influence on its creation or evolution at all.
I think I came up with the idea separately, and had I not read EGS, I'd have had proof that any resemblances were purely 100% entirely coincidental.

...But since I HAVE read EGS, and keep up to date on it no less...there's the lingering doubt of maybe I did subconsciously get biased by it and end up making an almost clone of her, just as a different take.

OH WELL.

Was worth a blog entry at least.

And now if you don't mind I'm only getting five hours of sleep now so need as much of them as is possible to be actual sleep.

Aside from how I have work tomorrow and need to get up at 6 am (so there's pragmatic reasons for it as well), I simply am feeling really really tired. I can't drink coffee, I can't nap without screwing up my sleep, and words are having that blend-together effect, soooooooo.

I'll need to hold on for an hour yet.

Wait, me making an entry before midnight?

Why yes. Yes, I am indeed making an entry before midnight, to help facilitate the process of going to bed at midnight. Usually when I say "bed at midnight", by the time I run all my errands (blogging, pills, and petting the kitteh), it's usually 10-30 minutes past midnight.

Soyeah, earlier blog today.

Today was obviously mother's day and doubled as our birthday celebration for my younger sister. There were plenty of good times to be had (ha I typo'd that as 'bed' nice subconscious telling me what I already know I want), and we watched Spaceballs.

I always wish that I had a way of sharing the events of a typical family night with those that I'd want to share them with, especially on days where the family doesn't end up discussing stuff like politics. (Which is usually done really late at night when my older sister and I are both out of the conversation and usually when my younger sister isn't in attendance, i.e., mostly done between my brother and my dad.) Especially the full family nights with all six members rather than partial ones with four or five of them.

They are just...special family moments, hilarious, fun, unique, irreplaceable. It's something that if you have it in your life, you just know it, you just get what I am referring to, but if it's something you haven't had, it's literally impossible to get, to experience, to understand it even if given vivid descriptions.

Families have in-jokes and those in-jokes aren't understood by outsiders, but even without in-jokes involved, even on a night to night basis, you just have to be there to appreciate it all, and even when I sleep, even when I park myself on the computer (a place where I am usually seen--not entirely unjustifiably so--as "out of it"), I legitimately do.

Also it helps that tonight during family night I felt particularly sexy. In a feminine way. I don't know why, I'm pretty sure I looked anything but, but I felt that way and feeling that way while with family is a rarity to be treasured, given how it normally doesn't--can't--exist.

Speaking of femininity, I felt fairly feminine today at work, too. It's kinda weird. When I first started wearing my underarmor shirt and pants, I felt incredibly feminine when doing so. However, today was the first time I was without, and I felt more feminine without than I was with, in spite of me being quite positive that I got a boost to my femininity when I initially started wearing the look.

Similarly, I am quite positive that when I initially started wearing my V-neck + sweatshirt combo at work for warmth, I felt more feminine...but when I stopped using that look, when I went back to the t-shirt, there was that very same boost in femininity.

It's weird. Rationally, logically, it's probably that the change from the norm feels different and that difference feels empowering, feels feminine to me. But I personally like to hold the theory--however implausible it may be--that each and every time is a permanent increase in femininity. That I was feminine when I began, and slightly more feminine when I wore the sweatshirt, then became more feminine when I removed the sweatshirt, and became more feminine when I started wearing the underarmor, and became even more feminine today when removing it and going back to just the t-shirt as I was before.

It's a nice thought to be having, anyway.

Apparently, when I'm tired like this, my mind wanders more easily. While that isn't very productive for making a coherent blog and leaves each subject in less detail than I intended, I believe a fortunate side-effect of it is an overall longer blog from multiple thoughts I'd otherwise have not blogged about; I thought this blog would be a paragraph or two and just look at what it is now.

Butyeah. That's my blog for today. Will probably also have my pills a bit early, so I can instantly plop down to sleep the second midnight rolls around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But to go into things a little bit...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I can't make myself want it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just don't.

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

That's no excuse to not write.

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

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

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

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

Almost did it.

...But didn't.

Not because I forgot.

Because I lost interest.

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

It was a choice not to.

Because right now?

The writer within me is dead.

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

But as of right now.

I don't want to write.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, I'd like to reiterate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because I think in mafia games.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One comic a week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mostly have memorized.

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

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

What makes this all be scary?

Well do the math, here.

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

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

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

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

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

Butstill.

The scary thought?

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

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

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

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

And yet.

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

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

And yet.

Instead of that.

I get a comic that never started.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heck.

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

And using that basic map.

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

I could make it be amazing.

Absolutely stunning.

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

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

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

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

​And you know what else this applies to?

The thing inspiring me to make this ramble?

Thaaaaaat's right!

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

So everything I just said about The Descended?

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

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

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

Lots of that stuff, I forgot.

The majority of it, I remember.

And just like The Descended?

Critically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...Except...

...She evolved.

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

AND FURTHERMORE.

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

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

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

So much about the series I've lost.

But in spite of her being largely out of focus.

Crucial details like that?

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

A draw and discard.

Mostly memorized, some lost, but lots gained.

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

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

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

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

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

And yet.
Now.

I want to.

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

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

And I want to do it.

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

Yet if I don't start it now.

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

But in spite of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It takes money that I don't have.

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

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

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

But I want​ to do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And another form teaching can take?

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

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

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

Was so that I could teach those children.

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

Ultimately.

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

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

Supporting them, loving them.

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

Ultimately, though...everything I just said?

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

I want to transition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it's so persistent, I might as well link it to you!

To be a little more specific, it's the area just after the one-minute mark that I'm looping through, because there's a nice little not-actually-repeating-but-close-enough-to-trick-my-brain bit. (Not sure how to explain that better. Basically, different words are used and you can tell they're different words, but they're sung using the same notes--and especially when it's not English and especially without the lyrics showing on the opener, that's enough to trick the brain into looping that segment over and over again.)

So while we're here.

Might as well talk about it some more.

One--that song is drop-dead amazing. It is a stunning thing on its own.
But two--the animation accompanying it is perfect.

It is one of the, if not the, best openers for an anime I've ever seen. It is just. that. good.

So it figures if my praises are that high for the opener, they are equally sung for the show proper.

And that rings true.
As my girlfriend put it, I gave the show my highest possible form of praise:
"The premise is really, really similar to the book I was working on". (Specifically the book before Heroes of Gistou.)
That book featured characters who, as early as their childhood years, plotted to escape a complex ruled by non-human entities. The characters had to show incredible intelligence and wisdom beyond their years in order to orchestrate the escape. (Granted, this happened in the prologue...and all but one of them was killed because while the escape succeeded, afterwards, in the chase, they died. So the similarities pretty much end there, butstill.)

Given how much I pride myself in my writing.

That's about as high a praise as is possible, in fact.

And there's another thing I would like to point out, from a different story of mine--one not intended to be a book.

Emma (and for that matter Ray and whatshisname), The Promised Neverland's protagonist. Is 11 years old...
...The same age as Phyrra and Cyrus.

...Why is that significant?

...Because this show is more or less a validation of "I'm on target" for displaying smart, intelligent, wise, mature 11-year-olds in terms of content. Yes, they are occasionally still kids, but the show displays them actually being smart. Not fake-smart. Genuinely clever and intuitive, prodigies who are geniuses, with ingenuity and quite capable of coming up with amazing strategies.

Which is what Phyrra and Cyrus are supposed to be.

It gets better.

Emma and Phyrra are pretty similar personality-wise. Cheerful, fairly friendly and somewhat polite while being somewhat blunt. (Admittedly, bluntness is more Ray's trait and politeness more whatshisname's trait.) A bit of a doofus compared to the other kid(s) her age, but in spite of needing things explained to her sometimes, by no means actually an idiot, capable of extreme cleverness of her own...while having a charming smile, warm heart, charismatic attitude and surprising level of insight.

Which is more or less what I'm aiming for with Phyrra.

And Cyrus is similarly like whatshisname with a side of Ray, being level-headed, calm, cool, collected, a planner, pragmatic, efficient, cold, yet still understanding and not all-knowing. Someone who prefers thinking rather than athletic flairs, and is lethally calculating in maneuvers.

...But it gets even better.

When Phyrra's body-swapped into Cyrus, and vice-versa. (The state that they stay in most of the series, aside from the twice-a-month times they are in their own bodies past the prologue.)
Because Cyrus's real body looks a lot like Emma, and Phyrra's real body looks somewhat like a cross between Ray and whatshisname.

When body-swapped.

Phyrra actually looks a lot like Emma.
And Cyrus actually looks a lot like a cross between Ray and whatshisname.

(My girlfriend's probably gonna be ticked when reading this blog and realizing I already forgot his name. Or more specifically, I'm not positive of it. I kinda have 'Nolan' in my head as being it but I'm not sure that was it?)

If you took Ray's hairstyle/length and the expressions/eyes/hair color/etc. of whatshisname, then it'd look pretty darn close to what Phyrra's real body is like, the body Cyrus is trapped in most of the time.

And Cyrus's real body, which Phyrra is trapped in most of the time, being a body that I deliberately modeled to be a stereotypical shonen anime protagonist body.
...Is pretty darn similar to Emma's, because she is a bit of a stereotypical shonen anime protagonist even in her body.

Obviously, they're not basically-identical, but the resemblance is fairly self-evident.
I haven't really drawn Phyrra and Cyrus yet (I should, I know, but I haven't), but I've made reference images of them using various programs, some of which are on this blog. As a refresher, here's a dump of them all.

Keep in mind, none of these are their official look. Keep in mind, all of these were made in various programs. The first faces were made in an iteration of a program called FaceMaker (specifically this one, which the maker themselves note is not too original as there are others like it, but that's the one I used for the images shown), the most-of-body, in-profile ones are from this anime character maker, the next set which are probably some of the closest-to-vision versions are from the continuously-expanding-with-new-content rinmaru games anime character creator, the next set of generic faces is from anime face maker 2, and the full-body picture is from a can-optionally-become-NSFW, tread-carefully, you-have-been-warned, K-ON dressup 2.

I can't stress enough how none of these are official.
None of these fully capture the aesthetic.
These are mostly done as brainstorming. Proof-of-concept work. Throwing ideas around for exact iterations of what their outfits look like. I have, in previous blog entries, described their exact look, and these give you a fairly good idea of what sort of look that is, but none of them are exact. You can't even average them all out to get it, either, because some are truer to the vision than others.

These are all just loose references, unofficial things that I use as a shorthand, lazy reference, things I use because I lack any other way currently to give a visualization of the two--until I actually draw Phyrra and Cyrus myself, I don't have any non-text picture of them. I can describe them, but without using these program screencaps, I can't actually show them to you yet because they haven't been drawn yet.

Butstill.
From this, you can probably get where I am coming from with what I am saying. Take a look at this in comparison since while not the best picture of the characters it's enough.

Cyrus's hair is more red than orange and his eyes are matched to the hair pretty much (not exactly, his eyes are more like the color of Emma's hair whereas his hair is redder than Emma's hair), and when Phyrra inhabits his body as she does for most of the show, she has the general aesthetic shown here by Emma. This shot shows a lot about Emma's personality and it is one perfect for Phyrra as well, showing expressions, showing thoughts, and so on and so forth.

Phyrra's hair is styled almost like Ray's, except removing the emo-covers-one-eye part of it. Pull that hair back so both eyes are visible, and suddenly you have her hair there, albeit hanging back down to the shoulders in the back. Blue instead of black, but you can get the idea.

Her eyes are almost exactly the color of whats-his-name's eyes over there.

And Cyrus, when inhabiting her body as he does for most of the show. Has an expression which is dead-inbetween Ray's and whats-his-name's. Not quite as cynical/serious as Ray, but also not quite as "open" as whats-his-name's. Deadpan, somewhat-serious, but not looking aggressive/dark as much as Ray does here.

So in a sense.

This is me paying the highest of high compliments to the show.

Comparing it to a novel I love and hold dear is high enough praise in of itself.

Egotistical to the extreme, sure, albeit not entirely unjustifiably so. (The novel I can trace its exact origins down to the short story which is still posted online. If I recall correctly, to about 2009ish, give or take a year. Turning it into a novel, I can also track down the exact year of, which I believe but am not sure was 2011. I am pretty sure that whenever the manga this anime is adapting was made, didn't start until after that, so my work comes first, even if it ends up published later. Which I realize doesn't change much, but is why I say not entirely unjustified...just mostly unjustified.)

But hey, I am egotistical so when an extreme narcissist like me says, "this work is like one of my own!", it is as high a praise as is possible because given how high I hold my work to be, the esteem in it, saying it's as good as that is saying it is really good.

...Yet I'm not just comparing it to the novel I love and hold dear.

I am comparing it to my pet project that I hold the highest of high ambitions for.

To the point where I even mentioned it in passing to my mom today, which is a way of kinda sorta solidifying it as "real".

When I mention something online, it can stay online forever and never have a form of "legitimacy" to it.
That doesn't mean that things online for me are illegitimate. But what it does mean is that things online are harder to have be legitimate.

And to say words in real life holds power.
Hearing Bree online is nice; hearing it in person is something which is life-changing.
That's the effect I am talking about, and I think this is something anyone online can understand what I'm getting at here. How what's done and said in real life means magnitudes more, and why it is a goal so much to strive for--because it is so worth it when it is actually done. It feels like the difference between saying and doing (real life), the difference between living it (real life) and not-really-not-living-it-but-not-really-fully-living-it.

I think you get what I mean.

Saying, even as a hint.
That Phyrra and Cyrus as a project exists.

Just had a way of solidifying it.
As.
Not just "this is something I want to do, but...".
But.
As.
"Yeah I'm doing this".

Phyrra and Cyrus, that project of mine that I hold the highest of high ambitions for, the thing where I solidified it as being real.

I am comparing to the show.

That show does basically everything I'd want to do in Phyrra and Cyrus.

So when I say "The Promised Neverland is the quality to which I strive to make Phyrra and Cyrus be".
There really can't be any higher praise than that.
​It's higher than the highest of the high praises.

I'm writing this at work, so knowing me, I'll inevitably end up not posting any of it, but who knows, maybe I do air this out anyway.
When I say I'm depressed, it's usually not too bad--a little down, demotivated, the like. Something which is discouraging and a little detrimental, but not outright crippling. So there's this expectation of people; when I say I'm depressed, it's usually not a big deal, because being bipolar, I'm almost always at least a little depressed.

...But it is a big deal, because this? This isn't that. Thiiiis is a downward spiral where I'm an emotional wreck. Here in the real world, I'm having trouble smiling--and when I do, it's often because I feel I "should". The only times I really smile are when I retreat from reality into my fantasy realm.

The fantasy that I'm a genuinely good person. In that world, I have breasts, a vagina, a warm smile and demeanor, am highly empathetic, soft-spoken in a pleasant way, and yet a bit of a deadpan snarker. Lighthearted, yet caring about others and showing them the compassion they need and deserve, understanding them.

...But that world doesn't exist. Elements of it could, EVENTUALLY, exist; I can eventually fully transition, for instance, and do fully plan to. I certainly want to. But here in the now, even if they could...they DON'T. I don't have any of those traits; the closest I come is being able to have a phantom projection of breasts and such, of the appropriate anatomy feeling like it's already there. But aside from that, they're nonexistent.

...Yet dysphoria isn't my issue right now. It adds fuel to the existing flame. I've been having it bad, sure, yeah, but it's only worsening the already-existing problem; the illusion that I'm in any way shape or form an okay person is shattering into a million pieces no thanks to the depression.

I am not a good person.
I am a toxic leech. I suck people dry, until they just accept that this is the way I am. I beat them into submission, to following my will, just so that I can live my self-centered self-destructive lifestyle with a semblance of being carefree. I sap from people and give them nothing in return.

At every stage, I manipulate people. Every turn, I control them. I get them to do what I want, and get them to not cause me to do anything I don't want to do. I'm hostile, volatile, uncaring, unsympathetic, and unapologetic about all these traits to boot. And more. I'm not a liar, not deliberately anyway (I fully admit that I lie to myself all the time, of which I only realize about half are lies, and pretend I didn't because it's easier to think I told the truth), but there's often the feeling of being intellectually dishonest, misleading people deliberately.

I objectively know that it's not all bad. That I have genuinely done some good on occasion. That I have, legitimately, helped to enrich some peoples' lives--but it's incredibly difficult in my depression to not see it through the self-inflicted lens of absolute selfishness. All those times that I helped others, all those times that I did good?

They weren't from altruism, they weren't out of the goodness of my heart, because it was the right thing to do. I wanted to get something out of it, and almost always did. I've improved some peoples' lives, sure, but even when doing so...
...Usually the method I used was highly, highly manipulative.

Maybe not consciously, which is arguably even worse. I manipulated people into having better lives by manipulation, and the thought that it was so easy and so subconscious is worse, because it speaks to my character that I was able to pull off the manipulation flawlessly without even thinking about manipulating them.

So all in all.

Right now I feel like I'm just...a toxic person.

I've always known that I'm a toxic person.
But I'm feeling it now.

I'm just.
Just...full of that self-loathing, and the thought of me disappearing making no negative difference in the world right now.

Don't get worried about me being suicidal, this is a distinctly different thought process than that.

But given how much I take.
And how little I give back.
​It's hard not to venture down that road.

I want to create.
Except.
My mind is racing.
All it is saying is.
I want to create I want to create I want to create I want to create IwanttocreateIwanttocreateIwanttocreate

And so on and so forth. On repeat. I know what I want to create. I have a very, very strong passion for Phyrra and Cyrus right now. I've thrown around ideas for other things, but they were thrown out because of the overwhelming urge of, "No. Phyrra and Cyrus. I want to create I want to create I want to create".

The problem is.

With my mind racing like that.

I can't focus in on what to do.
I can't hone in on what I would create.
I can't slow it down to think rationally.
I'm just being flooded with the same thoughts over and over again, and each time I have a spark of an idea on what to do, I think, "That might be good, but what do--" and then the flood gates overwhelm with I want to create I want to create I want to create.

I don't know what to do.
I want to create, but I am 100% manic right now.
No other word can describe this.

​I want to create.

So a prior obstacle I was facing was coming up for a name of the planet Phyrra and Cyrus is set on. Today, I did that.

It has more to it than that of course.
To understand this ALL, you'd need me to give you a ramble on the birth of the colliniverse, but I don't feel like doing all of that (it was intended to be a full ramble on its own) just as a prelude for my real ramble.

The cliffnotes that are pertinent are, the colliniverse (the name of the setting for Phyrra and Cyrus) is thusly named because of the collision (thus, colliniverse) between INFINITY and Nothingness (thus, why INFINIverse/INFIverse were working titles and preferred titles for the setting until unfortunately I learned they were taken, alas).

There are four realms making up the colliniverse: the spirit realm, demon realm, mortal realm, and afterlife.

The first entities began to form simultaneously in two of these realms: the demon realm and spirit realm. These proto-demons and proto-spirits began to take on some properties of their realm (demons got the short end of the stick, but due to this fact, were the innovators of several breakthroughs).

While it took a long time for them to gain both shape and form, once they had begun to do so, they began to interact with their environment. Spirits learned that unless suffering cessation of existence, they could never truly perish. This meant that while they could visit the afterlife, they could never permanently reside within.

Demons meanwhile learned that to go to the afterlife, they had to suffer irreparable damage to their form, usually the utter destruction of said form altogether--a one way trip. They could of course suffer cessation of existence like a spirit, but they also had a permanent destruction. Thus, demons basically invented the concept of death.

Spirits and demons alike found that they could procreate, creating more spirits and demons; spirits and demons found that on some occasions, new spirits/demons could form without procreation (more common for spirits than demons tho).

Later on, some demons found out that in spite of reaching adulthood and maturing, they would continue to go through the process of time development--and since at adulthood they were at a prime, they would go past their prime and wither, even die. Thus, demons invented the concept of aging as well, something foreign to spirits aside from in the context of birth-to-maturity (which spirits understood).

Spirits also found they could do something demons couldn't. In ONE specific area of the mortal realm, they found that they were able to influence it. They were vaguely aware of the vast expanse of the mortal realm beyond said area, but slowly shaped this world's properties, within the confines of what they were able to manipulate with their limited influence.

This world is the world on which Phyrra and Cyrus takes place. Spirits were struggling with creating anything with a soul in the mortal realm, in spite of now being able to (briefly) visit said realm. (Demons, too, learned that they could visit this realm.)

They had the right building blocks, but something was missing. The spark of life just wasn't there...
...Until a demon named Lilith deliberately, willingly, underwent cessation of existence to impart pieces of her soul to all of the potential proto-life.

This process was what the planet needed to jumpstart evolution. (Mind you, evolution of life was possible without her--it's just that she made it advance leaps and bounds. She also did this at least partially out of spite, to leave her mark on the world as a "screw you" to spirits.)

And thus, the world would forever bear her name: Lilim.

Incidentally, two more demons also contributed.

Once Lilith provided her mark, demons soon learned it was possible to imbue life with their soul, albeit suffering cessation of existence when doing so. Life, mind you. Didn't require demon souls in order to thrive. There's not a finite, limited, supply of souls. New souls for life are born all the time. It's just that it's possible for a demon to make one particular lifeform have their soul.

Incarnos figured out how to import himself to the mortal realm, permanently, WITHOUT suffering the cessation of existence demons previously had suffered. He even kept his identity and personality, albeit losing his original shape and all his prior experience. The trick was that it needed to be done from the afterlife, and to imbue the new life with its soul at the exact moment the life would gain a soul.

So Incarnos invented the process of...reincarnating.

And finally, perfecting both the work of Incarnos and Lilith, we have Huuma, who reincarnated himself into a proto-human, yet also managed to pass on a small piece of his soul (not enough to destroy him, but enough where all of his progeny would bear at least some of his gifts) to all of his offspring. The whole was retained, but still passed on.

And it was from him that humans eventually formed. (It was not instantaneous, mind you.)

Eventually, spirits and demons alike perfected their forms, their lives, their abilities, their aspects, and so on and so forth and how to enter into the mortal realm. But this is some of the backstory for the process, which I could elaborate on further if I gave you the original ramble on how this state came to be in the first place.

Butyeah. The world has a name now: Lilim.

Now I just need to unbury my drawing of a rough map of Lilim, and figure out how to create more precise geography and from that geography map out intuitive kingdoms from which I can then create the nations that will be named and visited.

And from there, it's naming cities. If I can name all major cities, then I'll have basically done the last bit of worldbuilding I need, since I already did worldbuilding on things like magical leylines, miasmic veins, and the like, with the distinction between beasts, demons, monsters, and whatnot. (Just because I neglected to share them doesn't mean I didn't do them!)

​I'm getting to where scriptwriting will be ridiculously easy.
So.

​Progress!

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's not what I mean.

What I mean by that is.

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

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

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

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

You are under no obligations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A failure is a failure.

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

And it was this that made me understand why.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why don't I do it more often?

Why do I lack the investment to try?

Why do I not make the effort?

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

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

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

So as I said.

Failure is fun.

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

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

But it is not without its perks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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