Yeah, you read that right—this is some high-level language stuff.

In any case, first off I’d like to give out the good news that the dent in my car (provided you all remember that) is gone. I didn’t pull the dent out, didn’t go through the insurance, didn’t do anything—it just up and disappeared. Now normally I don’t believe in luck (I prefer karma), but this is pretty hard to ignore. Maybe I did something really, really good recently and I didn’t know it. All the same, I’m just glad the thing is gone.

Second, I finished Chapter 17—the cleanup and falling action chapter as we move into the second arc of this story, which is thankfully seeming to gain steam. But that’s probably not the case, and I’m probably just deluding myself.

Third, I’m handing in an application to Subway tomorrow to try and get a job now that they’re understaffed. I’m putting myself down as a full-time employee in anticipation of what comes as the

Fourth piece of news. I don’t think I’m going back to college next semester. Now that I’ve broken the news to my dad and discussed it with others—as well as doing research online and reading articles—I’ve sort of decided that it’s probably just not right for me. Too much stuff in the classroom, too much of the same crap that made me shy heavily away in high school. I was only ever happy doing work hands-on rather than classroom learning. I’ve explained my other motivations elsewhere.

And fifth, I re-started my workout routine today, and it went quite well, I’m pleased to say. Not well enough to take edge off the events currently surrounding me, but it was enough to help me out for the rest of the night.

So I suppose that’s it. Short, and with none of the reflection and emotion that you’re used to, but hey, whatever.

Later.

Well, the experiment has long since run its course at this point, and I’m excited to bring the results to you.

Well, it seems like pessimism was dealt a pretty nasty blow this day. I found myself with more energy, more drive to work on and finish things—I even finished a chapter of Strange Bedfellows I’d been working on for quite some time—and generally a more positive attitude about things.

Unfortunately, at the same time, it’s been pretty hard to keep up a positive outlook on things with the events that have been occurring around me. First off, I’ve started to wonder whether the things I’m truly good at—writing, acting and playing video games—are really worth spending upwards of 24,000 dollars on just to enrich my understanding. I have a sister who could pretty much teach me everything about English seeing as that’s what she got her degree in, and if I really want to know more about acting, I’ll practice on my own and move to California.

As for playing video games, there’s never going to be a degree in that, even if it is my dream. Bottom line is, for now, I don’t think college is right for me. Most likely, college was never right for me in the first place—without student loans and the ability to live on campus, the drain on my gas, my physical and emotional well-being, and my wallet, it just isn’t worth it. All I’ve gotten out of it is lost money and lost self-esteem.

So what’s my plan? Well, to be honest, I don’t really know. Without school I guess I’ll be able to work full-time at my next job, and from there I’ll just go on living my life. I’m tired of everyone expecting so much of me and then being disappointed when I can’t deliver like they wanted. And I know everyone says that college is absolutely necessary to being successful in life, but that’s from a monetary perspective. That’s from the perspective of people who want you to get a degree in Com Sci or Nursing or Biology or Electrical Engineering, all of which are things I can’t stand and that I wouldn’t be happy doing.

I’ll probably continue practicing on League of Legends to try and boost myself into the pro gaming community, while continuing to produce content for you guys on the side, probably do some looking for VA roles or something of the sort. I don’t know. I kinda just want to live for a while and continue trying to enjoy life while I’m young, rather than slapping on all this pressure. I don’t wanna wait til I’m old to enjoy life the way I want to.

Now, what brought this on has been covered previously—what cemented it is still coming.

See, when I got home from my friend’s house yesterday, my dad was out for a run. I had somewhat planned to take my car to Subway to apply for a job there, being desperate like I am. I took a shower and, right as I was getting out, my dad asked me to come outside because I had explaining to do. He showed me a dent in the passenger side of my car that looked like someone had slammed their door into it—oddly, there was only a tiny scratch, which made it seem like the metal had just randomly folded in on itself to get me in hot water.

So I tried to explain that I hadn’t seen the dent when I’d gotten in the car at any point or when I’d washed it, but that it had most likely occurred while I was at school. Didn’t matter, the whole thing was “my fault” “my responsibility” and I have to do the legwork with the insurance company as well as pay the deductible to get the dent fixed. At least pay for a dent-puller, some of kind of huge suction cup that can yank the metal back into place. Also he apologized for overreacting.

Now, this isn’t really news—this type of thing happens to me almost constantly. Just when things start to look up, at least somewhat, something terrible happens to either drain my money further, damage my relationship with my dad, hurt my self-esteem, or all three, in this case. And I’m pretty used to getting bullied and screwed over, too, which isn’t to say I haven’t ever bullied or screwed someone over, but whatever.

Now, I have the money to cover the deductible cover the deductible or at least the puller. but paying it will leave me in the hundreds of dollars with no job. This is the other reason I’m not going back to college.

When I started college, my parents I agreed to go halfsies—half from my account, half from theirs. Didn’t happen—all the money was pulled from my account under the pretense that it was “fair and even”, even when the money they’d socked away for me was exhausted. I’ve done the math—if we’d legit gone halfsies, paying this deductible would only leave me a little ticked. Instead, it’s going to pretty much kill me.

So there you go—situation explained. I’m far, far in the hole with this dropped class and now this deductible dent issue, so I don’t really know what I’m going to do about it. But I’ll survive, and I’ll keep outputting chapters for you guys. Life hasn’t managed to break me yet, so there’s no sense in letting it happen now. And I apologize if a lot of this sounds whiny—I’m appreciative of my lot in life. Lots of people can’t even get on Tumblr because of their situation. I’m just trying to make sure you guys know the current state of things for me.

So once again, thank you so much for reading, and I apologize if the whole “tell your friends” thing is getting on anybody’s nerves—I’ll stop if that’s the case. But for now, uh…tell your friends!

Later.

I’ve begun to think that, in the middle of all this, there’s maybe something out there that I can appreciate, something that allows me to keep going on, nevermind the muss, fuss and heartache. A hope spot in the traditional sense, to be sure, considering how I tend to think things are getting better only to find myself incorrect.

But for now I’m going to forge on and take to heart the 500 view jump I received on Strange Bedfellows, along with all the favorites and comments. I must be doing something right.

Our subject today, consequently, is the idea that one can be influential and happy only with views or subscribers or whatever. Some part of me still thinks this is true—after all, I wouldn’t be advertising so much and trying to disseminate my blog/stories if I didn’t really believe that popularity would make me happy. Of course, part of it comes from need for commission money, the kind that doesn’t make me feel skeezy. Because while I continue to look for a job, I also find that I grow more depressed—facing the realities of the world is something no one ever said would be easy, but it’s like finding out Santa isn’t real. Or in this case, like finding out dreams really -don’t- come true.

Anyway, on the subject of needing/not needing popularity for a sense of fulfillment, I’m going to confess outright that a lot of the reason that I do things is because I have extremely low self-esteem, and I feel like I need the approval of others, the opinion of others, whatever, in order to quantify the quality of my work—or something like that. So I can tell you first off that I’m in the “you need fans to make it count” camp as far as my own work goes.

But I’m not here to tell you that’s how you should think—certainly not! In fact, my way of thinking isn’t just wrong—it’s badwrong. It’s bdong. In all seriousness, it’s wrong, and it’s detrimental to your mental state—instead of going “wow, I got five comments! That’s so cool!” or “Wow, I have five followers, awesome!” You start going “Only five comments? I should be getting ten.” Or “Only five followers? My content must be awful, not even worth the web-space it’s coded on.” 

It’s not a good way to be, trust me. I kind of got a dose of realization the other day when I spoke to a friend of mine who listened to me concerns about my lack of followers and how my stories weren’t matching up the way I wanted them to to things like On a Cross and Arrow, or Silent Ponyville, or Past Sins, or whatever. He told me I was being silly, that thousands of views and hundreds of comments shouldn’t have me thinking that way—and I know he’s right, but it’s not easy changing one’s mode of thought. You stop appreciating the things you do and start embittering yourself, closing up into a shell, in a sense, and shutting out everyone else.

I didn’t stop following Pregnant Scootlaoo, but I can tell you that, when I found out the blog’s author also authored Silent Ponyville, I wanted to immediately unfollow him. I wanted to put that blog totally behind me so that I didn’t have to think about the fact that he could draw -and- write, and that (in my own mind) I could do neither as well as he could. Or at least with as much steam or popularity. I actually ended up donating to the guy.

So you have to be proud of the things that you do—even if it doesn’t seem like much, or you’re totally eclipsed, washed away in the shadow of another, you have to keep fighting on, continue appreciating your work because -you- did it. Keep saying to yourself “What I do is good because -I- did it.” Listen to constructive crit, yes, and try to improve yourself, but don’t go constantly hunting for blood like me.

To be honest, I’m low on inspiration and motivation. I write for the sake of maintaining viewcounts and for trying to increase my popularity. You don’t want to do that—consider it a cautionary tale. I’ve forgotten the reason I even started writing, but the reasons I continue aren’t what they should be by any stretch. I’m not proud of or happy with what I have—I have to always have more. Don’t do that—just be happy with what you have. I know plenty of people who are. I suppose if any of you have had the same problem and recaptured your spirit, I’d like to hear the story, get some advice. And even though I always thirst for more, every comment and piece of praise does help—don’t think your voice doesn’t matter.

And as always, if you have commission work that you’d like to have me do, anything else like that, or if you like the blog/my work, or whatever, please tell your friends or come to me. I offer low rates, dissemination of information is always helpful, and you’re all good to me, even if I’m not so much to you.

If you want an end-of-post shocker, here it is: I’ve never read Past Sins, or Cross and Arrow, or Silent Ponyville, or My Little Dashie. 

I could never bring myself to.

Later. 

Well, here we are again—I’ve gone for quite some time without updating, and for that I apologize. I do have a good reason, however.

I have spent the last two weeks or so working on dropping a class—specifically, my Computer Science and the attached lab. It hasn’t been an easy process (lots of heartache at home over the lost money, having to gather all the opinions of my professors and friends, etc, having to do a lot of thinking about what I was doing and where I was going), but I came to the decision that it’s time to change my major—Computer Science was joyless.

But now, here I am, low on money, low on motivation, and I haven’t updated Strange Bedfellows in two weeks or so, even a little more than that. I haven’t been able to pull down commissions, and the pressure to find a job is on and it’s hotter than ever, to say the least. But I’m trying to push it through, trying to make sure that I can work and trying to keep playing LoL in my spare time.

Strange Bedfellows, Chapter 15 is being worked on—it’s about 3500 words at this point, and I’m not finished yet, so know that I’m bringing you something that is quality and that is going to be of such a length that it will be more satisfying than the others. But hey, it might not—we’ll see.

So thanks for sticking with me, readers, and all that jazz—I’m trying. I don’t like to make excuses for being late with my posts and with my work, but I just wanted to let you all know what’s going on. Realistically, I may have to put the story on hold once more—I really don’t want to, but things are extremely hectic right now, and it’s tough to continue finding the motivation to write something hot-blooded and passionate and optimistic when I feel so down.

But I’m working to change things for the better, and knowing that you’re all there is what I’m going to draw strength from—that and knowing that I really can live up to my dreams. After all, there’s no time to be sad and depressed and whatever when you have to deliver, like I do—when you have to keep putting out and trying to do better. Put simply, I don’t really feel that being sad at this point is worth it—there’s too much for me to do.

So if there’s anything you want commissioned from me, anything you need from me, please feel free to let me know—my rates are pretty low, and I can work things out with you. If you’re a fan (I don’t really like to say ‘fans’, but whatever) you know what I can do/have done, and if you’re not, I have plenty of material. It would really help me out.

And hey, if you like my work or you follow this blog or just happen to find this post and end up liking it, please tell your friends, reblog etc. Dissemination of information is the fastest and best was to grow and gain more of a base, and there’s nothing I’d like more. Thanks.

Later.

It’s something I do far, far too often, considering the fact that I’m a 19-year-old in pretty good health. I should be out partying, hooking up, and drinking before it’s even legal for me to—that’s what normal teenagers do, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, I’m about the furthest from normal that one could be, as far as teenagers go.

No, instead of going out to clubs where I “like, totally know the bouncer”, I sit around in my well-lit room, surrounded by pony paraphernalia (which isn’t a bad thing, for the record), and I wonder about the past constantly, despite the fact that I’ve lived around a ninth of my potential life. I think about all the relationships I’ve had, romantic or otherwise, the people I’ve helped and the people I’ve hurt, and whether I’m, at heart, an egoist or an altruist. What a way to be a teenager, huh?

Meanwhile, in the background, my dreams of professional gaming, of being a competitor on the world stage and doing what I’ve always loved to do as a living, continue to convert from a metaphysical representation of my desires into so much metaphysical sand rolling through my fingers. 

My life has had a dreamlike quality these last few weeks, something I’ve not experienced since I began to realize, in high school, that it was really all over and that my introduction to the real world, something I’d dreaded since I was just a kid, was here. Maybe that means I’m losing another part of my childish desires, slowly having what makes me “me” torn away and replaced like emotional, like mental circuitry. Like a robot.

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t the I am. Did you know that? Plenty of times I’ve wished that I could be simpler, and I don’t mean stupider, though that would help, I’m sure. I wish I thought of things in more shades of black and white than grey, that I could go two seconds without questioning how we got here and without questioning the complex and intimate relationships between colorful cartoon ponies. Did you know that? Lots of people wish that they could be more complex, less boring, whatever you want to call me.

Me, I just wish sometimes that I could be like other people and not give a shit when the alcohol distributes itself into my bloodstream (I don’t even drink), not care when the pounding lights overhead give me a headache and make me want to leave “da club”. Lots of times I wish that being a professional gamer wasn’t my ultimate, all-consuming aspiration in life. And most of all I wish I could write in a form that people without English-major sisters could understand. Then again, maybe I don’t give people enough credit. Maybe I need to stop waxing philosophical so much, too.

Anyway, aside from my rambling, anxiety, my fear and dread, my need to espouse all of my emotions here in purple prose, I finished the new Chapter 14. I’m starting edit cycle one tomorrow.

Later.

Hey guys, remember when I said that chapter 14 was all written and that chapter fifteen was on the way?

Yeah, that’s not happening. Sorry.

Basically, here’s what happened—desperate to stay on a tight release schedule and with school pressuring me alongside the need to deliver in a timely manner, I sat down and, utterly drained of both energy and desire, banged out 2,704 of absolute shit. Well, not shit, because shit consists of things like “so Rainboiw DEashe flyed out the windw”, but it wasn’t something I was even close to comfortable with putting out to the viewing public. It was didactic, bland, and generally completely unneeded, aside from one or two sections, which I’ll be carrying over to Chapter 15.

To further elaborate, it was basically AJ, Rarity, and Blink sitting around talking about things I could show rather than telling, and very easily at that. 6 pages of talking, and talking, and talking, plus a small follow-up on the spells that Glow Star promised to teach to Rarity. Didn’t need any of it, that chapter’s going to be deleted, etc.

Yeah, I’m pissed that I did all that work, and that I’m going to have nothing to show for it aside from two or three paragraphs, but I’d rather scrap several pages of bad work and make you all wait longer for something that will hopefully turn out to be better than the drivel. I know you’re all, unfortunately, accustomed to waiting for me to put something out, but I assure you, it’s for quality’s sake and because of other responsibilities cropping up in my life. I’m doing the best I can for you.

No subject for discussion today.

Later.

I’ve been thinking about this subject for quite some time now, seeing the disparity between myself and those around me, when it comes to ways of thinking, and I decided it’d make a pretty interesting topic, plus I get to tell a story.

So the past few days, I’ve been trawling around, looking for internet tests to determine psychopathy. Haven’t found anything that seems to legit, but it’s been thrown around in circles at my counseling sessions. But hey, from what I’ve seen/heard, if I am at all, it’s mild enough to not cause problems.

In particular, I’m egotistical and arrogant, have an extreme tendency to deny responsibility or wrongness on my part even down to a spelling error, and show little emotion or empathy towards other people when I’m not around them (that trait has been on prominent display since I was little). I tend to be possessive and obsessed with conquest and domination, which drives me to be callous or contemptuous towards other people, as I see them as being below me (and I can tell you that’s true). I’m also a compulsive liar—I usually lie anytime I see profit in it, and often manipulate people for my own ends if I see profit in it. Don’t take that to mean I’m a horrible human being or that I’m just spouting BS because I want you all to think I’m edgy. I listen to Owl City and cry sometimes just like the rest of us.

My friends is completely at the other end of the spectrum—empathic to a fault, heavily invested in other people despite being shy, sensitive and affected by many things.

So how does mindset develop? Are we born with it? Do we develop it after years of world exposure? Is my constant posturing, competitiveness, lack of acceptance of my own faults, and contempt for other people just the way I’m wired? Some people (a lot of people) would say yes, I imagine. But maybe it just developed—maybe getting picked on gave me a superiority complex. Not likely, but there you go. I always am hungry, I am constantly seeking out attention and recognition, constantly asking ‘why isn’t that me?’ Constantly saying ‘if I cared, I’d be better than that person. But I don’t.’ It’s like seeing the world as a series of people that do great things, but if I gave a care, I’d do better. It’s often called envy by people around me, but I don’t buy that. I call it drive to succeed.

It’s when Ican’tdo better that I start to come apart at the seams a little. I get worried, thrown off-balance, no matter if the better person is sixteen or thirty-five. If they best me at something, I get almost rabid, but remain aloof. I still do things as I like, still go about business as usual, but in the back of my head there’s always a gnawing, something telling me Ihaveto do better than they did. Make a bigger mark than they did. Be the more famous and recognized one.

Most times I fail, but failure only makes the hunger grow more. Only makes me want it more.

Often I wonder why I became like that—so “petty”, so “selfish”, so “unappreciative.” Why, I wonder, what shaped my brain to think this way? Is it just the wiring upstairs?

Personally, I believe in a combination of both. Personality, mindset, and mentality are all values, manipulable values I might add, that are aggregated over the course of a lifetime. They say ‘don’t bullshit a bullshitter’, but don’t you believe it—I’ve pulled it off before. The aggregate of a person’s personality doesn’t make them so much a person to me as a data set. Sounds cold, but that’s how I’ve always seen things. I remain a good and loyal friend in spite of that, so it’s not all bad, certainly.

Anyway, that’s the discussion for today. Strange Bedfellows, Chapter 13 is in editing, and Soup is off the ground.

Later.

But that’s not all we’re going to discuss today, friends—there’s much more than just that to talk about, especially as I spent all of last night getting existential.

Now, first, I’m going to say that I’ve been running into writer’s block in the extreme since my last entry. Yes, it’s only been two days, but considering the blazing pace I’d been setting, it’s more distressing for me to suddenly find myself unable to like what I’m writing than you would expect. Honestly, I mean…I have all these ambitious idea, but I’m worried once more that when I bring them to fruition, they’ll suck, or be hated. But whatever. I suppose I’ll just have to do what I’ve always done. Stick with it.

Anyways. I’ve been busy as heck since last Friday, too, so maybe that has something to do with it. Either way, I’m worried about it. Been going to friends houses all the time lately—I’m starting to think that that might be a mistake. It takes time away from my writing and my practice, so…I hate to say it, but it may turn out to be a better idea to just stay home. Especially once school starts. But I guess we’ll see.

Now, the real topic of today’s discussion. Why do I like being the center of attention? The answer isn’t really that simple, to be honest. A lot of people think ‘attention whores’ are people who just hate sharing the spotlight and being selfish, because nobody else deserves to be in the spotlight besides them. Now, being an Aries, I’m naturally inclined towards that kind of behavior. But I’ll expand on all this.

I like to be recognized. Practically worshipped, even. It’s easy to say that I’m an asshole straight off of that sentiment. After all, what kind of person goes through life thinking that being second is never good enough? Me, that’s who. Now, it doesn’t apply to everything—if I don’t like the thing in question, I’m inclined to believe that second-best is fine enough, school being a perfect example of that. Games being a perfect example of the latter.

Maybe I have my ambitions screwed up. But in the end, school to me has never been a competition. The only people who see it that way, in my eyes, were try-hards unable to find joy in anything besides letters and numbers. Ironic, in retrospect, and pointless. Mostly I thought that way because they were better than me.

And that is my curse. I am an ambitious person. I want it all. Hell, I want more than ‘all’. Always have, probably always will. Even without putting any effort into something, I shot for first and expected it like it was my birthright. Not getting first in literally everything, no matter how much I’d practiced (or not) was devastating to me. And everyone above me was obviously just a try-hard without a life besides that particular event. Bad attitude? You betcha. How I was, couldn’t exactly change it? Yep. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that there’s always someone out there who is better. Always someone with more time, more commitment, a better understanding of characters, more fluid writing, faster thumbs, a sharper brain…anything. I never could accept it as reality.

And that is why my philosophy developed into something sort of twisted, but something I accept. When I see other people being praised for their abilities, whether it’s writing (professionally or otherwise), and especially if I’m close to or within-reach of that person, I gun for them. I don’t feel good for them—I don’t say “Awesome work, dude.” I stay silent and think to myself “I want that praise. I want that constructive criticism.” When people have nothing more to say to me, when I’ve plateaued, I get scared. I worry I’ll -never- get better than I am. I push myself harder, faster, and to do more. I bust ass until I can receive new praise. New criticism. Being perfect has never been my quest—it’s always been attention.

But why? Why do I crave it so much? Because my own self-assessments are completely biased, not subjective. I cannot trust myself to know how I am. Because I love constructive crit as much as praise. Nothing makes me happier than knowing that people want me to improve, and that they are willing to help me. Nothing makes me happier than people saying I am good. The best, even if I know it’s not true. Having eyes on me is what I love most.

I’ll give a few examples. When I was acting in high school, we’d get some advice, some critiques, etc, at the end of each practice session. I would eagerly await my turn, but usually receive little beyond “project more”. That was upsetting. And then, when my other actors would receive heaping praise -and- heaping criticism, I grew jealous. I doubled my work, tried to make every little thing about my performances perfect, sweating and straining onstage and burning out my brain memorizing both my lines and everyone else’s. I had to be the best. The one with the most praise, the one with all the eyes on them. Even when the others would get pissed at me for making them look silly by memorizing their lines, I was happy, because they knew that I knew them. Every inch of me was devoted to beating them, and when I didn’t, it was time to do even better than the best. And at One-Act, that didn’t end up mattering, because I wasn’t the one who got rewarded. And when we lost, we were all hit hard, but I spiraled.

Another example is Guitar Hero/Rock Band. I played that set of games into the ground, until they got shitty around RB3. When my sister was the first person to move up to Medium on GH2, I followed suit, even if I clearly wasn’t ready. Then I perfected that and moved to Hard, to much praise. But when the praise dried up, I continued on to Expert—I got a strained finger at one point because of that. When that praise finally dried up, I wanted more, and started playing the drums. Did the same thing there, ended up better at the drums than guitar. When that stopped being impressive, I sang. Never made it to Expert there, but you get the point. When outdoing myself in one aspect wasn’t good enough anymore, I moved on. I always stayed hungry.

And to this day, I’m hungry. But trying to be the best at everything I do is catching up with me, emotionally for the most part. I try to improve Strange Bedfellows, go super-ambitious with it, and it doesn’t turn out like I expected. I go online in Street Fighter, and I don’t do as well as I expected. Same with LoL. Without immediate perfection, the hunger only grows until I’m consumed by it, and I feel like I’m reaching a nexus point with it. It’s these points I wonder if doing well is worth the internal stress, but it’s not easy to change. I’ve always been ambitious, and I likely will be until I die. When I do well in something once, I want every single time after that to do be perfect. There’s a joke among me and my friends that I can’t hit a stationary target because, through playing shooters so much, I have a tendency to automatically compensate for movement, even if it’s not there.

This, of course, leads to nastiness. Like yelling at my friends when they beat me, even if it’s because I’m playing a garbage character or someone I’m not good with—I’m supposed to be the “good” one, and losing at all gets so deep under my skin it may as well run through my blood. But it also breeds optimism, and a burning drive to succeed. Calling myself hot-blooded seems wrong, but it’s right. I burn with forward-thinking desire, and will do anything (aside from cheating) to reach that point. Even if I’m notorious for abandoning projects that don’t yield immediate results.

And just so you don’t end this article thinking I’m an asshole, I’m also very loyal, the ‘problem-solver’ of the group, and generally an energetic and fun person to be around, not to mention challenging. There are plenty of positives about me! I would hate for anyone to get the wrong impression.

So there you have it! A deep exploration of my desire to win, my desire to be the best, something which is a core aspect of my personality, much to the chagrin of my less-competitive and praise-hungry friends. I have tried all my life to find someone like myself, but to no avail. No one else seems to think like I do or understand the why of my personality.

So, in a nutshell, since this was really long and I’m sure some of you will TL;DR your way through it, the point of this article was: I don’t care what you think, as long as it’s about me. Sort of. I want you to think I’m nice XD.

Later.

Perhaps that title will turn out to be a misnomer as I get deeper into the discussion of my problem this time, but who knows?

Now, I’d like to start by saying that I am probably going to be a little more sporadic on updates to Strange Bedfellows in the future as I do more planning for Soup and, of course, do more planning as we move into the truly crazy set-pieces and plot of the story. I have to do a lot of planning, believe it or not, to make this next section not terrible. I’m working with a lot of drastically different things, especially compared to my other written work, and a lot of it is probably going to require lots of setup to make it believable. But I think I can do it, in all honesty. I’m making a lot of large leaps, here, and it’s possible I may overstep my bounds, moving into the next chapters, where Gilda is introduced, but I think I have this.

And a lot of people, both on EqD and a guy on FimFiction, seem to really hate the way that AJ and Rarity handled Trixie in Chapter 5 of Strange Bedfellows. Now, normally I’m inclined to agree with my audience, because I’ve only seen season 1 and season 2 thrice and twice, respectively, and I usually figure that they know more than I do. Recently, I’ve started to realize that, as the writer of the story, it’s me who gets to make the decision about where the story goes, exactly. I’ve started to embrace the idea that, while it’s not my IP, it -is- my story, written about these characters. I have my opinions on their behavior, how they would react in certain situations, and how they would treat certain characters.

And Trixie, in my eyes, is -not- a good pony. She’s arrogant, and I know firsthand how troublesome that can be. She’s cold and mean, and none too personable, pardon the expression. She’s more than earned harsh treatment. Until such time as she comes back in the show and has some kind of turnaround, she’s going to remain as a figure of badness in my mind. She’s also extremely ambitious, even lying to make ponies think that she is more great than she really is. Like Twilight, her special talent is magic, though her study is obviously less potent. Strange Bedfellows isn’t just about vilifying Trixie, even if she is, well, a villain. It’s about exploration of these characters. It’s about seeing how AJ and Rarity react in this situation. It’s about seeing what happens when Trixie’s ambition gets out of hand and, combined with her more concerted study, creates a terrible situation…and a villain.

And about Gilda. I see her much like I see Trixie, except with a possessiveness complex. Less cold and more fiery, less mean and leaning much more towards outright cruelty—the perfect Red Oni to Trixie’s Blue Oni, in my eyes. And no, I don’t just feel this way because she made Fluttershy cry—that sort of thing, in my eyes, is more like the glue bringing together her assholishness, rather than the absolute source. She cares about nobody but herself and the people she’s ‘close’ to. Now, we don’t know what’s happened, with the passing of time and with Trixie taking over as Derby’s mayor. But I always saw Trixie and Gilda as having a sort of hate-hate relationship, built from mutual distaste for the Mane 6, and forged more deeply by their need for recognition and ambitious nature. They do not just ‘come together’—it takes time. It’s just that, in this story, I’m planning—planning being the operative word—to skip over that expanse of time.

Gilda is undoubtedly the brute between the two.

Second, I think I’m starting to realize the real test of a friendship isn’t how much fun people can have together—it’s the challenges they can face together and overcome. And also, I’m realizing, once again, that there are people out there looking to take advantage of you. Now, that has nothing do to with any of my real-life friends, but rather an online friend of mine. Constantly asking me to roleplay with them (now, I like roleplay and all, and I do it on a consistent basis, with lots of repeat business, but doing it constantly, I mean constantly, is just draining). I do it out of a sense of not only obligation, but because, honestly, it’s a decent time-sink when I can care about it. Though the shade of RP I do is, well…different, to say the least.

With my real friends, we’ve been having a little turmoil lately. Nothing too severe, but it’s made me reflect on exactly why we -are- friends, and why we can stay friends despite our very different personalities. I fight with a friend of mine -constantly-, mostly because we literally can’t agree on anything. Another friend of mine has problems with that same friend, but somehow we work through all of our issues, whether it’s because we set aside our differences or decide that it’s not worth fighting over. Really, sometimes I think it’s weird that we all -can- be friends at all. Some of us are meek, some of us are brash. Me, I’m arrogant and a little self-centered. But at the end of the day we all have our faults and our boons. And we make it work. I guess, in the end, that’s what real friendship is all about—setting aside our differences for the pursuit of a real and lasting relationship. And the price? More often than not, it’s your own silly pride, which must be looked past.

Later for now.

Well, I’m going to start off with good news, today, and plenty of it—there’s really only a little bit of bad news to be spoken of. So, as I’ve quoted shamelessly fromThe Fault in Our Stars—out now and has been for a while, buy now because I really recommend it!—I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up.

First off, I had my interview at GameStop today, and it happened to have gone very well! I can’t go into too much detail—questions were asked, etc—but I can tell you that I was told I’m ‘very likely’ coming back for a second interview. Now call me crazy (or if you’re the type of person who likes to shit all over other people’s elation, call me a dumbass), but I’m pretty sure this is a great sign.

Second, Strange Bedfellows is coming along terrifically! EqD is so busy wrapping up from Bronycon andall the crazy crap that went on there that the submitted chapter 9 hasn’t gone out yet, but it’s only been a day and I’m sure you guys can wait. I’ll let you all know that I finally got to do in that chapter the idea that initially inspired the story, which was in turn inspired by Gurren Lagann. I’m still going to try and mix hot-blooded action and the dramatic storytelling like usual, and I think it’s going to turn out really well.

A lot of the current breed of storytelling and inspiration comes directly from not Okami proper, but rather its soundtrack. I’ve been using the music from the game as my conduit for creativity lately, and for background music when I play other games—I finally managed to beat Very Hard on UMvC3 with The Sun Rises playing, though that may be more attributable to my focus increasing then the music—but where’s the fun in saying that?

Now the minor bad news. My mom’s going to be gone for a week, so I’m going to have to do all of my following jobby stuff—possibly including my first day—without her around. Not to say my dad and my sister can’t pick up the slack of course—they’re both very supportive—it’s just that losing any of my family at this time is like losing a pillar of strength. Hopefully my friends, awesome people that they are, can take up that slack. And I understand my mom’s need to touch base with the fam back home.

So anyway, there you go! I’m not going to do my usual ranting today, just wanted to make sure you all knew I wasn’t dead and that things were going well for me.

Later.

I feel it’s a pretty appropriate topic for today’s discussion, seeing as a graduating classmate of mine was murdered via a gunshot to the head recently. Not sure why it happened, but there you have it. Whatever. We’re discussing the proper use of tragedy in a story or a fanfiction I guess.

Normally, I try to avoid personal tragedy if it’s a thing of the past—after all, people are more apt to recover from tragedy than to constantly whine about it or tell everyone they meet the horrible, terrible thing that happened to them. That, to me, either makes the character a Mary Sue or so depressing and stuck that not I, nor anyone else, would want to even think about relating to them. Tragedy, especially if it’s in the past, well…in my eyes, that sort of thing should be handled as though the character has either gotten over it, or it wasn’t a huge deal to them in the first place.

Think about a character like Twilight. If Twilight’s mother was a hag who constantly sniped at her daughter, or if her father was some kind of mega-perfectionist who was never happy with his daughter, would that change her character by any significant degree? I don’t think so. It might explain a few things, but those are types of things that characters learn to deal with, else they spiral out of control. Sometimes they bury them—these types of conflicts, especially when the characters are juxtaposed with other characters who think the tragedy is a huge deal and want to help with it, makes for nice conflict.

A good example of past tragedy is Katawa Shoujo. Emi Ibarazaki and Hanako Ikezawa both had terrible, life-altering events inflicted on them in the blink of an eye, and our lens of the character can only have so much scope—it’s impossible to gather the kind of effect those events had on them without their perspective, so we as the audience are forced to make our own call as to what happened to them and how it affected them. It’s not until our dopey protagonist, Hisao, talks their problems out of them do we truly see the full extent of the issues. There’s also a dichotomy between the two characters. Hanako’s accident and the resulting issues caused her to be quiet and withdrawn. Emi’s caused her to become even more headstrong and energetic than before. And yet, in both cases, they suffered a horrible stroke of fate, and they’re both compelling characters.

As for present tragedy, a death isn’t going to cut it without consequence. Visible consequence, for that matter. Having a character named Ted crop up in the story and killing him off in three pages won’t do it. Hell, having a character named Ted crop up and taking a hundred-and-fifty pages to kill him off isn’t going to be effective either unless there’s weight behind it, unless Ted was a person. Unless we know everything about Ted—his motivations, his dreams, the people he loves and the people who love him, etc—his death doesn’t mean anything to the audience.

Now, the way I did things in Cold Hand is maybe an example of how one can do it without too much backstory by linking everything not to the emotions of the dying character, but to the emotions of our protagonist. By being subtle. A character can think a death is shocking, but it still can’t be glossed over—we have to see the effects on them, we have to be able to feel their hurt beyond a single emotion or a sullen expression. We have to know that/how it changes them.

Think about (spoilers) Dom’s death in Gears of War 3. It was laughable, no matter what anybody says. If you haven’t seen the scene, I recommend you watch it on Youtube as a perfect example of how not to handle character death. Dom was a chump—a poorly fleshed-out character whose only motivations seemed to be ‘killing those goddamn grubs’ for murdering his wife. That doesn’t tell us what Dom did in his off-time, what his wife was like…it doesn’t tell us anything, and yet we’re expected to care. Or hell, maybe we aren’t—it’s a shooter story after all, and those are notorious for not giving a shit in that regard.

So there you go. Tragedy. Handle it well, and it’s a terribly effective device. Handle it poorly, and you’ll have the audience laughing.

Later.

Normally I’d follow proper naming conventions for the title (not using ‘And’ at the start of the title, not capitalizing ‘the’, etc) but I feel it’s at least semi-appropriate here, sort of like a faux-pretentious title that doesn’t really mean anything.

Let me start off by saying that I woke up this morning to find that my left eye seemed to have gotten salt poured into it when I was asleep because the goddamn thing is lit up bright red like a garish Christmas light. I could see the signs of it turning bloodshot last night (my eyelid stung a little, the eye felt slightly dried out, and when I looked in the mirror right before bed, alongside my very red and very irritated acne scars pitting my face I could see red veins encroaching on my iris), but as I never really get bloodshot eyes, I had no reason to believe I was going to wake up with a ruby embedded in my skull.

Speaking of rubies embedded in my skull, I also have a pretty nasty headache—must be the fact that I was up until1 in the morning last night. Thanks, friends, for managing to royally screw my face, chest, back, shoulders, eye and head in one fell swoop of irresistible fun—something I’m probably going to have to start avoiding like a recovering smack addict if I want my at-risk body to recover and look healthy and ‘sexy’ and whatnot. As it stands I look like Two-Face except with one side of my face only slightly less ruined.

But hey, there’s good news to go along with all of my incessant whining, too. I finished up Chapter 8 of Strange Bedfellows, did a little more commission work, and I’m lined up for an interview with GameStop in the neighboring town next week. Now, of course, a job isn’t inherently a good thing, but at least this one is at a game store, where I have a deep and varied knowledge base right off the bat to honey my interview with, unlike Murphy USA where I plunked into everything and taken off register detail because my sausage fingers couldn’t keep up.

I’ve also been noticing that, regarding the latest patch that Riot is issuing to the North American League of Legends servers, it’s apparently made of concentrated evil or something. They’ve tried to patch this shit twice and both times it’s caused a complete and total crash of the North American servers. I won’t blame Riot for this entirely of course—they probably are just as upset as we, the players, are, but I will admit that I’m beginning to lose my patience with the whole ordeal.

At least I have Street Fighter, which I’m slowly getting better at, and Skyrim, which I’m hoping I’ll learn to appreciate, to distract me.

Later.