Huh. So...it occurred to me this is March. What's so special about March? Well...last March marked the birth of Red Hood Rider, and the ensuing Rubyverse which has since grown from it. Now...as I write this, I'm at work: no way for me to check dates. So I'm not sure what day is the exact anniversary.
Heck, even if I could check, what day would even mark the anniversary? An unspecified date where I thought, "Draw myself as a magical girl"? (That one took influence from both an old Witchsona drawing and from a CF friend who drew me as a magical girl before I even knew I was trans.) The first date I actually blogged about said idea? The day "Draw myself as a vampire, both male and female" happened?
The day I combined all three into the prototype for Ruby as a character? Or the first time I decided to build a story around the concept sketch I never actually made due to life? (It's funny. I probably owe my inability to make the image for why Red Hood Rider took off. If I had made the sketches, then I probably would have left it there, but because I didn't make them, I kept on wishing I had, and that desire for more let me build them up.)
All have equal claim to it, and all were some time in March. I AM pretty sure MOST of these materialized at work, which makes Sunday (my universal, constant work day) a fairly good bet for the anniversary, but which Sunday? First, second, third, or fourth? I believe that a year ago, staff meetings were still on Sunday, rendering the second unlikely, but I also square danced last year, which'd have kept me busy EVERY Sunday.
I think the first Sunday was too early, and the fourth feels too late, so what I'm saying is...now's as good a date as any other to celebrate. It makes sense why all of a sudden, my urge to work on Red Hood Rider has skyrocketed. Speaking of which......
Today, I worked on Marcus the Murderer, one of Ruby's rogues and a counterpart to Herald. He is, effectively, the ultimate serial killer, but is completely, entirely, 100% human. He started out humbly enough, murdering random people for fun and leaving absolutely no trace: no calling card, no consistent method, no evidence even linking him to the murders, and no motive. He's not a paid assassin; he does it purely for fun.
But eventually, he got bored. Most serial killers when they get bored either stop killing, or leave some sort of sign to intentionally make a game of their killing. Marcus isn't most serial killers; he started turning his murders into a hunt, a la Predator. When single targets weren't enough, he became the ultimate slash fic villain, targeting groups of people at once, offing them one at a time...but unlike the films where the final person (usually a girl) survives, he still killed them.
That still wasn't enough for him. One time, he got surprised by a victim and learned they were a vampire, introducing him to the supernatural world. So, he started picking fights in the supernatural world, and at multiple points has been targeted for assassination. In one case, ten powerful vampires were sent, simultaneously, to kill him. Ten vampires, at one time. So, not just fighting a single enemy, but a whole squad of them. He killed them all.
He frequently also hides behind self-defense, so good at disposing of evidence that the few times he's been compromised it has looked so much like self-defense that he was acquitted of the charges the few times they even tried to bother pressing them in the first place.
Another time, a full team of trained assassins (20 humans in full combat gear) targeted him. He killed them all, and while in this case it was self-defense, he wasn't stupid enough to let that charge come up. He had guessed whoever sent the assassins would hold enough sway in courts that he would be convicted if caught...so was able to dispose of the evidence before the police arrived, and the police responded almost immediately.
But by far his greatest feat was murdering a god.
Now...to understand this. First, you have to understand that in the Rubyverse, there are many different levels of 'gods'. The lowest-level is God-tiered superheroes: these are superheroes who have incredible powers, but are still of this world, loosely speaking. (Think Superman at his more broken levels of power: not strictly speaking human, but not literally a god, either.)
Then, there are personified gods: think like Jesus, but in a general scale. These are people, fully human (for the most part, anyway), yet are incarnations of ethereal beings given a flesh-and-blood form. They're usually actually weaker than God-tiered superheroes, but their connection to the ethereal is stronger, thus, more (strictly speaking) godlike. (In general, the closer something is to the ethereal, the closer it is to existing as a god.)
Next comes avatars: these are literally the ethereal entity, just by a human proxy. Notable avatars are the eight elemental avatars (there are more, but the prime 8 are most known) and grim reapers for Death. Then, you get ethereal beings which live in the ethereal but don't have specific purposes. Some call themselves gods, some don't, they just exist purely in the ethereal without being linked to somewhere else such as a particular afterlife.
These beings are often the source of mythologies, and many often claim to be the origin of famous myths. For instance, a good ten or twenty of these beings can claim to be the inspiration for, say, Zeus, and none of them would strictly speaking be lying. (Except the ethereal beings prone to lying in the first place, of course.) Maybe there's one entity above all others that would be Zeus, maybe not, but all have at least some legitimate claim to having been a part of the myth.
This tier is tied for another hypothetical tier as well, one which would be like Marvel-Thor-type entities: beings that are literally gods, who interact in the mortal realm, yet do not necessarily originate from the ethereal. However, while such beings could exist, I have not created any in the Rubyverse. I have no plans to, but they can exist if people think they should.
The highest tier of god, though, is beings in the ethereal that hold power over concepts. Some are weak because their concepts are ridiculously specific, e.g. traffic gods, but others in this tier include the entity which most closely can be identified as being what people understand to be the Abrahamic religions' God, capital G.
Marcus managed to murder one of these beings, albeit a weaker one. Only about one in five billion humans gets to hold the title of 'Godslayer', and Marcus is among them. That's why he's so dangerous an opponent; while it's said that only Eldritch Abominations can slay Ruby, it's thought that if any human were capable of the feat, it would be Marcus.
Heck, even if I could check, what day would even mark the anniversary? An unspecified date where I thought, "Draw myself as a magical girl"? (That one took influence from both an old Witchsona drawing and from a CF friend who drew me as a magical girl before I even knew I was trans.) The first date I actually blogged about said idea? The day "Draw myself as a vampire, both male and female" happened?
The day I combined all three into the prototype for Ruby as a character? Or the first time I decided to build a story around the concept sketch I never actually made due to life? (It's funny. I probably owe my inability to make the image for why Red Hood Rider took off. If I had made the sketches, then I probably would have left it there, but because I didn't make them, I kept on wishing I had, and that desire for more let me build them up.)
All have equal claim to it, and all were some time in March. I AM pretty sure MOST of these materialized at work, which makes Sunday (my universal, constant work day) a fairly good bet for the anniversary, but which Sunday? First, second, third, or fourth? I believe that a year ago, staff meetings were still on Sunday, rendering the second unlikely, but I also square danced last year, which'd have kept me busy EVERY Sunday.
I think the first Sunday was too early, and the fourth feels too late, so what I'm saying is...now's as good a date as any other to celebrate. It makes sense why all of a sudden, my urge to work on Red Hood Rider has skyrocketed. Speaking of which......
Today, I worked on Marcus the Murderer, one of Ruby's rogues and a counterpart to Herald. He is, effectively, the ultimate serial killer, but is completely, entirely, 100% human. He started out humbly enough, murdering random people for fun and leaving absolutely no trace: no calling card, no consistent method, no evidence even linking him to the murders, and no motive. He's not a paid assassin; he does it purely for fun.
But eventually, he got bored. Most serial killers when they get bored either stop killing, or leave some sort of sign to intentionally make a game of their killing. Marcus isn't most serial killers; he started turning his murders into a hunt, a la Predator. When single targets weren't enough, he became the ultimate slash fic villain, targeting groups of people at once, offing them one at a time...but unlike the films where the final person (usually a girl) survives, he still killed them.
That still wasn't enough for him. One time, he got surprised by a victim and learned they were a vampire, introducing him to the supernatural world. So, he started picking fights in the supernatural world, and at multiple points has been targeted for assassination. In one case, ten powerful vampires were sent, simultaneously, to kill him. Ten vampires, at one time. So, not just fighting a single enemy, but a whole squad of them. He killed them all.
He frequently also hides behind self-defense, so good at disposing of evidence that the few times he's been compromised it has looked so much like self-defense that he was acquitted of the charges the few times they even tried to bother pressing them in the first place.
Another time, a full team of trained assassins (20 humans in full combat gear) targeted him. He killed them all, and while in this case it was self-defense, he wasn't stupid enough to let that charge come up. He had guessed whoever sent the assassins would hold enough sway in courts that he would be convicted if caught...so was able to dispose of the evidence before the police arrived, and the police responded almost immediately.
But by far his greatest feat was murdering a god.
Now...to understand this. First, you have to understand that in the Rubyverse, there are many different levels of 'gods'. The lowest-level is God-tiered superheroes: these are superheroes who have incredible powers, but are still of this world, loosely speaking. (Think Superman at his more broken levels of power: not strictly speaking human, but not literally a god, either.)
Then, there are personified gods: think like Jesus, but in a general scale. These are people, fully human (for the most part, anyway), yet are incarnations of ethereal beings given a flesh-and-blood form. They're usually actually weaker than God-tiered superheroes, but their connection to the ethereal is stronger, thus, more (strictly speaking) godlike. (In general, the closer something is to the ethereal, the closer it is to existing as a god.)
Next comes avatars: these are literally the ethereal entity, just by a human proxy. Notable avatars are the eight elemental avatars (there are more, but the prime 8 are most known) and grim reapers for Death. Then, you get ethereal beings which live in the ethereal but don't have specific purposes. Some call themselves gods, some don't, they just exist purely in the ethereal without being linked to somewhere else such as a particular afterlife.
These beings are often the source of mythologies, and many often claim to be the origin of famous myths. For instance, a good ten or twenty of these beings can claim to be the inspiration for, say, Zeus, and none of them would strictly speaking be lying. (Except the ethereal beings prone to lying in the first place, of course.) Maybe there's one entity above all others that would be Zeus, maybe not, but all have at least some legitimate claim to having been a part of the myth.
This tier is tied for another hypothetical tier as well, one which would be like Marvel-Thor-type entities: beings that are literally gods, who interact in the mortal realm, yet do not necessarily originate from the ethereal. However, while such beings could exist, I have not created any in the Rubyverse. I have no plans to, but they can exist if people think they should.
The highest tier of god, though, is beings in the ethereal that hold power over concepts. Some are weak because their concepts are ridiculously specific, e.g. traffic gods, but others in this tier include the entity which most closely can be identified as being what people understand to be the Abrahamic religions' God, capital G.
Marcus managed to murder one of these beings, albeit a weaker one. Only about one in five billion humans gets to hold the title of 'Godslayer', and Marcus is among them. That's why he's so dangerous an opponent; while it's said that only Eldritch Abominations can slay Ruby, it's thought that if any human were capable of the feat, it would be Marcus.
Second Entry
In news completely unrelated to Red Hood Rider, today I developed a theory about my daily sneezing. You know, the genetic problem I have which my dad, my brother, and maybe my sisters all have? I blogged about it in January, I'm pretty sure, which I know was a while back, but you can still see the entry with some binging.
Well, anyway, I think it might actually be tied to how rarely I get sick. (The rarity of when I get sick also serves as an explanation for the severity of when I do, no mystery there, just common sense: because I don't get sick often, my body's not used to being sick, so when I DO get sick, I get sick bad, both in strength and duration.)
Basically, I think the daily sneezes (and resulting nose run) are my body's way of saying, every day, "Yo, this stuff MIGHT make you sick, so I'mma gonna get rid of it just in case!" I mean...that's the intended purpose when sick; people sneeze, get runny noses, and cough because the body's fighting the disease already in them, with you not feeling the symptoms until WELL after you're already contaminated. (A sore throat being your body killing infected cells, I think it was? Something like that.)
...But my theory is, my body's extra paranoid/vigilante and does this every day to ANY possible contagion rather than activating it only after confirming there is one. So, while inconvenient, annoying, and sending the wrong message (it can and has made people think I was sick when I wasn't), this would explain why it's usually only severe instances which can make me really sick:
My body's defenses lower as stress builds. The sickness finally overcomes the existing defenses, which are usually only activated by sickness in the first place, making me not only sick, but EXTREMELY sick. Best theory I've got, and definitely less alarming than, saaaaaaay, an "I'm always sick slightly, it just sometimes gets worse" theory would be.
Well, anyway, I think it might actually be tied to how rarely I get sick. (The rarity of when I get sick also serves as an explanation for the severity of when I do, no mystery there, just common sense: because I don't get sick often, my body's not used to being sick, so when I DO get sick, I get sick bad, both in strength and duration.)
Basically, I think the daily sneezes (and resulting nose run) are my body's way of saying, every day, "Yo, this stuff MIGHT make you sick, so I'mma gonna get rid of it just in case!" I mean...that's the intended purpose when sick; people sneeze, get runny noses, and cough because the body's fighting the disease already in them, with you not feeling the symptoms until WELL after you're already contaminated. (A sore throat being your body killing infected cells, I think it was? Something like that.)
...But my theory is, my body's extra paranoid/vigilante and does this every day to ANY possible contagion rather than activating it only after confirming there is one. So, while inconvenient, annoying, and sending the wrong message (it can and has made people think I was sick when I wasn't), this would explain why it's usually only severe instances which can make me really sick:
My body's defenses lower as stress builds. The sickness finally overcomes the existing defenses, which are usually only activated by sickness in the first place, making me not only sick, but EXTREMELY sick. Best theory I've got, and definitely less alarming than, saaaaaaay, an "I'm always sick slightly, it just sometimes gets worse" theory would be.
Back at home, third entry:
So final entry for today, most likely. Forgot that we were having family night today, but, well, we are, so not gonna get much done.
Following through on my earlier written entry today, I did some research. When it comes to the sketch, I'm a bit too late: it was March 17th (apparently a Tuesday? Need to do my research to double-check and confirm) where I first envisioned myself as a magical girl.
The idea existed sooner, some unspecified time earlier, but it manifested in the blog as an offhanded drawing idea I had, which I then described the basics of: her basic outfit, with me reasoning that the transformation trinket being on the left hand would mean her weapon would be a bow. I still called it "me" at the time.
If I wanted to go for an exact date, I'm sadly one day too late: March 19th (apparently a Thursday) was the second milestone. This is when things started to take on a life of their own: while not named as such, I created Dark Ruby's form, and by proxy, the whole basic premise of a transgender vampire magical girl.
I gave her an activation phrase for this form, too, meaning the groundwork for a story was being built. It also marked the creation of the male vampire form, not yet named Lord Ventrella, not yet given an activation. But that day, the 19th of March, DOES mark the birth of vampires in the Rubyverse as we know them. I started laying the fundamentals, both of their biology and of their society in that post, before I even knew I was making a story.
Namely, I created vampire claws and also vampire lords. I gave Ruby her basic backstory, but at the time, as above, she was still called "me". Because she still was me. (She still is me, but also, isn't me, being so much more.) I even named the Darkblood coven as such!
The third possible milestone, apparently a Wednesday, I'm actually early for: it was March 25th.
That date (if you read my blog, you'd see it in the archives) marks the official start of Red Hood Rider as a story, because rather than accidentally (as with the 19th), this time I was deliberately making a conscious decision to turn the would-be-drawing into an actual well-and-true, proper story.
It's the day practically all the groundwork for the story was laid out: I named her Red Hood Rider, AKA Ruby.
I also named Dark Ruby as such.
Yet for the first time...suddenly, I created the first fictional characters: Dion Falco, Gary, Sally, Dale, Hannah, and conceptualizing D.D. and Vili, albeit naming none of them.
I give basic backstories for each: the co-lord of the Darkblood coven, her best friend who gains powers later, her rival-turned-ally, her enemy-turned-ally, a bystander-turned-donor-turned-ally, even the knowledge of a traitor, and how that arc would begin.
Plus, I give the birth of Amy.
I may have even had the idea of eight Riders beginning to form in my head, though less sure about that.
Regardless, this is the point where things truly took off.
...However. I just crunched the numbers. If you average out these three key days, all of which could lay claim to being the anniversary date of Red Hood Rider, you get a date of 20. (Well, 20 and 1/3rd, but that rounds down to 20.) So while nothing important happened on the 20th, and it's not even on a relevant day to Red Hood Rider (which was born during three different weekdays), I'm going to cheat and say, sure, yeah, this works as the official anniversary date.
Wouldn't be the first time I've pulled some strings for my convenience!
Following through on my earlier written entry today, I did some research. When it comes to the sketch, I'm a bit too late: it was March 17th (apparently a Tuesday? Need to do my research to double-check and confirm) where I first envisioned myself as a magical girl.
The idea existed sooner, some unspecified time earlier, but it manifested in the blog as an offhanded drawing idea I had, which I then described the basics of: her basic outfit, with me reasoning that the transformation trinket being on the left hand would mean her weapon would be a bow. I still called it "me" at the time.
If I wanted to go for an exact date, I'm sadly one day too late: March 19th (apparently a Thursday) was the second milestone. This is when things started to take on a life of their own: while not named as such, I created Dark Ruby's form, and by proxy, the whole basic premise of a transgender vampire magical girl.
I gave her an activation phrase for this form, too, meaning the groundwork for a story was being built. It also marked the creation of the male vampire form, not yet named Lord Ventrella, not yet given an activation. But that day, the 19th of March, DOES mark the birth of vampires in the Rubyverse as we know them. I started laying the fundamentals, both of their biology and of their society in that post, before I even knew I was making a story.
Namely, I created vampire claws and also vampire lords. I gave Ruby her basic backstory, but at the time, as above, she was still called "me". Because she still was me. (She still is me, but also, isn't me, being so much more.) I even named the Darkblood coven as such!
The third possible milestone, apparently a Wednesday, I'm actually early for: it was March 25th.
That date (if you read my blog, you'd see it in the archives) marks the official start of Red Hood Rider as a story, because rather than accidentally (as with the 19th), this time I was deliberately making a conscious decision to turn the would-be-drawing into an actual well-and-true, proper story.
It's the day practically all the groundwork for the story was laid out: I named her Red Hood Rider, AKA Ruby.
I also named Dark Ruby as such.
Yet for the first time...suddenly, I created the first fictional characters: Dion Falco, Gary, Sally, Dale, Hannah, and conceptualizing D.D. and Vili, albeit naming none of them.
I give basic backstories for each: the co-lord of the Darkblood coven, her best friend who gains powers later, her rival-turned-ally, her enemy-turned-ally, a bystander-turned-donor-turned-ally, even the knowledge of a traitor, and how that arc would begin.
Plus, I give the birth of Amy.
I may have even had the idea of eight Riders beginning to form in my head, though less sure about that.
Regardless, this is the point where things truly took off.
...However. I just crunched the numbers. If you average out these three key days, all of which could lay claim to being the anniversary date of Red Hood Rider, you get a date of 20. (Well, 20 and 1/3rd, but that rounds down to 20.) So while nothing important happened on the 20th, and it's not even on a relevant day to Red Hood Rider (which was born during three different weekdays), I'm going to cheat and say, sure, yeah, this works as the official anniversary date.
Wouldn't be the first time I've pulled some strings for my convenience!
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