Full Circle

    Well, the other day I was pretty upset, so I made a dA... and now my life has come full circle.

    There's a lot of things that upset me that my friends don't understand, like visiting a Sonic fansite, or signing up for a dA account. It has a lot to do with a war I fight every day with my inner demons, and it's a war I feel like I'm losing.

    Because I've told everyone the reason I deleted my old account was because I got sick of bullshit on the site, which was a lie, because I never want to admit anything is my fault, but everything was my fault, I repeatedly fucked up, I repeatedly exercised practices I condemned other people for, on every site I joined, I let people troll me until I cried, I threw myself into hysterical fits of rage, and when I got upset, I made the most incoherent, inflammatory journals. These are things a normal, sensible, mature person would not have done, but I was not any of those, and I feel that I am still not any of those.

    Mostly because I'm doing the same shit again, I feel like I'm never going to be the person I want to be, the cool, aloof person that gets all kinds of recognition for their work but can brush it off like it's meaningless, the air of logic that makes people follow them, I want to be that person.

    But now I think the only thing harder than trying to become the person you want to be is to not be the person you used to be.

    My entire life has become an attempt to distance myself from my past, I threw away my old characters, changed my art style enough to not be recognized, no longer contact and/or avoid people I used to know, avoid sites I used to frequent, and deleted as much as I possibly could, I want to erase it and pretend it never happened, because I'm ashamed of it, and it's just a failed attempt to me, I feel like I wanted something specific to happen but the opposite happened and I don't want to deal with the backlash or the consequences.

    Because I don't want to change, I don't want to stop complaining about the things that I complain about, but I don't want the horrible reactions that I got from it before either, so I have tried to make my complaints more logical, but I don't feel like it works that well. People no longer flame or troll me for them, but people don't agree with me either.

    But mostly, I just don't want people to look at me and see that immature kid that was so oblivious to the real world and so idealistic that they thought they could change an entire community but failed miserably and became bitter over it and everyone's favorite joke, because that's exactly what happened, it happened when I was 16, I'm still bitter about it, it caused me to re-evaluate everything about my life, to let go of my religion and my ideals, and to become what I am now, which is probably a good thing, but there are parts of me that still feel broken, I purged 90% of what I was raised to believe and completely reprogrammed myself over the course of a year, and in that year, I was volatile and unstable.

    And every time I think of it, I think of a screaming 4 year old, which is exactly what I compare myself to, a stupid kid that won't shut the fuck up, that throws a tantrum for decidedly frivolous reasons, that everyone around them wishes would fall in a hole and disappear, and that nobody else understands or cares to understand. Why should they care about what a toddler is screaming about? They have more decidedly adult matters to be bothered with, and that toddler is selfish and conceited and will blow up if the smallest little thing goes wrong.

    I think I will always be that person, and I wonder how long it will take, every day, for someone to recognize me and remind me that I am that person, for someone to ruin my life, the fake life that I redesigned and unsuitably call "self-improvement", the only way I can improve myself is to not be myself, there is no helping me, I am a difficult child that gives everyone a headache, it's been like this since I could utter a sentence, I'm not easygoing like my cousin who everyone loves, I'm the embodiment of annoying petulance.

    And now my life has come full circle, and I will again attempt to be the person I want to be, and fail, possibly by bitching in a journal like I always do and like I'm doing right now, and everyone will realize what a pathetic waste of time I am again and I will be right back at square one.

Skyhigh View (New blog)

    I'll still be using this one, but I started a new one for video-game related things.

http://skyhighviewgames.blogspot.com/

It only has one post right now but I'm planning on making more.

A Great Gift Pie Rant

    So, anyone with a Steam account will probably know about this contest they've had called The Great Gift Pie, where you were supposed to play games to earn virtual coal and then once you had 7 coal, you'd be able to craft it into a coupon, the coupon was completely random, of course, or you could save your coal and have a (very small) chance of winning one of four grand prizes, the first one being every single game on Steam.

    Well, as a ton of pissed-off forum goers have already pointed out, Valve ran out of coupons and now everyone is entirely pissed.

    Well, not everyone... Namely the people this rant is directed at.

    I'm talking about the inevitable obnoxious twats that will show up on any thread where people are complaining about such matters (Or, in my experience, anything, really) and say something along the lines of "You ungrateful ****s are *****ing about getting free stuff?" Typically, this is the kind of person that completely misses the point of why people are angry, and typically is very narrow-minded about the entire situation, believing that "getting free stuff" as they like to call it, justifies a large number of people being disappointed and feeling cheated.

    So this isn't a rant against Valve, because they obviously had a limited budget, even though they could have really managed the entire situation better by making the announcement more widespread than on a forum the majority of their customers don't visit, but rather a rant in general, in part directed at a group of people who I have never liked and find obnoxious in the best of times, unbearable in the wost, and partially against the entire concept of the contest in general, which, even if it went off without a hitch, I'd still be quite antagonistic about the whole concept, but more on that later.

    Let's get the obvious thing out of the way first; Just because someone is being offered a chance at a discount (Which they will still have to pay the difference of out of their own pocket) does not mean they are being offered anything for free, and certainly is not compensation a company's fuck-up. I have seen this same attitude elsewhere, and honestly, I'd just like to give each person that thinks this way a good whack with an aluminum baseball bat. Because if there is one belief I hold to no matter the situation, it's that people have a right to complain, and if they have a reason for complaining, they should go ahead and complain, so shut the fuck up with your pretentious, sanctimonious bullshit that you people insist on shoving down everyone's throats and let them exercise their right to bitch about something they do not like. Because bitching about things we do not like is as much a part of human culture as intelligent debate or gratitude, it infuriates me that some people would be so callous.

    Now that we've gotten that out of the way, the second part about this whole contest thing that I didn't like from the beginning.

    First of all, I am...Well, I'm a unique gamer, I have what my friends generously call "unique" gaming tastes and what everyone else calls "Strange and nonsensical" gaming tastes, and what people who can't stand me, which is a rather large majority, "Terrible and completely ass-backwards" gaming tastes. If you look on my Steam profile, you'll probably find games you've either never heard of, or have no interest in, because nobody likes the kinds of games that I do, and I don't like the kinds of games most people do. I cannot stand Super Meat Boy, I find it boring and unrewarding for my efforts, I don't care for any Valve game that isn't Portal 1 or 2, and I do not like arcade games or shooters in general, so you can probably see where this is going.

    If you can't, I feel like the whole contest alienated me.

    The first day the contest announced what you'd have to do, play games and achieve certain things, I knew exactly what that would entail and I wasn't the least bit thrilled about it; this is one reason I am not nearly as angry as other people have the right to be, because I barely participated in the contest. Why? Because I knew right off the bat that most of the games required would be games I didn't own and didn't have any interest in owning, but that most of the population would probably own, the one game that I did see that I owned was Toki Tori, and if I have to be perfectly honest, I found that one experience of trying to complete some ambiguous achievement about falling snowflakes to be a borefest.

    Because the second thing working against me here, and in most cases with the so-proclaimed "hardcore" gamers is that I am not competitive in the least. I have no shame in looking up walkthroughs if I can't figure something out, I have no problem with cheat codes, Gameshark codes, Action Replay codes, or savestates in emulators. I do not play video games to be challenged, I play them for reasons barely anyone understands and almost nobody cares to, but all you need to understand is that my concern with Steam achievements in general (Not just with the contest) is minimal at best. The very idea of scouring a game for a piece of coal for hours sounds like a tedious waste of time that I could be spending playing a game I actually like, so that's the second reason I didn't even bother.

    So we have a contest I had no hope of actually getting anything out of, and to my way of thinking, putting forth effort for something I might earn is a complete waste of time. Some people, in fact, most people, find this to be such an incredibly thrilling concept, but some people, unlike me, are excessively competitive, wishing to "challenge" themselves and prove their merit. I have no such urgings, I never have, and I can't imagine why I ever will. Maybe because I don't feel like I need to prove anything, to climb the mundane ladder of superiority when I can stand aside and do my own thing and be considered just as valuable for different reasons, or maybe because I just don't give a shit what people think of me or my (lack of) skill in anything video-game related and I'd rather play a video game for afore mentioned ambiguous reasons that I play games for, or maybe because I find trying to win a desired prize against impossible odds to be a waste of energy; I am not ashamed to say that I'm lazy, I will not put myself out there unless reward is guaranteed, which is counter to most contests, which is why I do not compete in them.

    But there is another side to this. I have a friend who managed to obtain 6 coal on his own. I gave him the three that I obtained (Including the one obtained for trading. :V) and then he crafted his coal into a coupon, hoping for a discount on a game he might want, and then once he finds out it's a valve coupon, I almost physically slam my head against the desk, having remembered a fleeting comment someone mentioned about how Valve ran out of 3rd party coupons and fervently apologizing to him about wasting his time and effort. I feel guilty about not recalling this before he wasted his coal, but there are two factors that make me angry about the whole "prize process" in general.

    Number one: The coupons don't stack, and you can't use more than one; this leaves a lot of people with Valve coupons they probably can't even use. I suppose they might be able to gift them to friends, but that poses the problem that they might not even know anyone who could use the coupons or maybe they don't want to give away several hours of blood, sweat, and tears. The last time I checked, the majority of the human race isn't running a charity, and most people aren't feeling very charitable about work and money they just flushed down the toilet. (This would be one of the few groups I feel like I'm in the majority of.)

    Number two: Some people don't like Valve games. OMG, IKNORITE? Someone might actually NOT want a Valve game?! GEE I wonder why that could possibly be! Maybe because said person might not even like the fucking genre the majority of their games fall under? How unbelievable! Well, believe it. As hard as it is for fanboys and various other obnoxious internet parties to believe, some people do not like shooters, do not like zombie games, have no interest in a shoddy sandbox game which I feel has been outmatched by various other sandbox games like Minecraft or Ace of Spades, or maybe they just don't give a shit about Valve's direction and would rather play something else?

    I'm not saying that there aren't people who are thrilled to be able to buy Left 4 Dead 2 or Portal at a discount price, and I'm not implying that the people that don't care for Valve coupons for any reason are in the majority here, because there's a good chance they aren't, what I am implying is that offering 1st party coupons as compensation for running out of 3rd party coupons is not fair compensation by any stretch of the term. The biggest reason that I believe this is because of the type of variety in Valve's 1st party games versus the immense variety in the whole fucking online store. Whereas before you could expect a fun indie title, a point-and-click adventure game, maybe a blockbuster title like Bastion or Trine, maybe even that one obscure game on your wishlist that you have private interest in but aren't sure if you want to pay full price for it, now you are limited to a very few games that are all in the same genre or play similarly and barely differ in art direction from each other (I suppose TF2 would be somewhat of an exception) which, to my way of thinking, does not sound like fair compensation. Oh, it might sound like fair compensation to the aforementioned fanboys, but think about it for a second. Valve typically makes games within the modern shooter genre, the exceptions being both Portal games, as opposed to an entire online service teeming with variety. This new development in the contest only serves to alienate people further. Even someone like me had a chance to earn something they cared about or wanted, now we don't even have that.

    Again, I'm not blaming a company for using up their budget, because that's just how things work, this is directed at the insensitive obnoxious twats that do not understand why people are angry. Well, this is why we're angry. Do you people still think we've been "properly compensated"? I hope not. Want to know how to compensate people? Give them their fucking coal back and let them try again next year. That seems fair to me.

Mistichian Chronicles: Tale of a Misfit

    New story I'm working on. I'd really like to bring some attention to it. You can find it here: http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2971689/1/Mystichean_Chronicles_book_1_Tale_of_a_Misfit Sorry about the weird formatting, I couldn't fix it.

    Anyway, I hope this is enjoyable, it's a generic fantasy story about generic fantasy quests and a war and ancient powers and all that stuff that generic fantasy fans like, so, yeah.

Working on the next chapter as I type this...

Not much else to say, just read the damn story. :V

Aviary Series (Book 1) Should I bother?

    I've been privately working on this little story called Aviary series for quite some time. It's pretty well inspired by authors like Anne McCaffrey and Donita K. Paul, and is a fantasy-sci-fi story about war, intrigue, mystery, and growth involving a shattered world several thousands of years after an apocalyptic event that caused the planet (and its many races and species) to reform and evolve differently, isolating some, corrupting others, and leaving everyone with fragmented history before what is known as "The Darkness", and not much more afterword.

    In their present-day lives, the people of the island-nation of Aerona make their homes on land-masses that float thousands of feet above sea-level, completely oblivious to most of the world below, believing that only a few other island-nations survived the now mythological point in their history. These industrious people have evolved in the hundreds of thousands of years they have been airborne, contriving clever ways to keep their islands aloft while still maintaining their agricultural structure, as well as the power supply that keeps the great propellers that keep the islands from crashing into the sea. Their city operates by catching clouds as it passes by them, absorbing their moisture to use as water for plants and people, the lowest bowels of the islands contain regenerating crystals that can be charged like batteries to make the machinery - including the islands' altitude control - function, and the people of Aerona have bred a special kind of beast to assist and live among them in their daily lives.

    The giant birds of Aerona are a species unique to the island nation. Bred by the first settlers and founders of the islands above the ocean, these birds are partnered with a youth at birth in much the same way a mother imprints her offspring so that a long-lasting and unbreakable bond is formed. These birds have several different subspecies, and depending on feather color, each is specifically designed for a certain job. Thus, in the structure of Aeronian society, certain guild halls have taken control of certain colors of bird. The Swithbreeze Guild, for example, controls delivery and message-sending with their green birds, the fastest breed, while the Blacktalons, a subset of the Aeronian military designed for scouting and infiltration missions, controls the larger but more maneuverable and silent black birds.

    Young men and women can join a guild of their choice - either if they can pay the tuition for apprenticeship or if they are deemed exceptionally worthy of joining said guild. The guilds that deal with the giant birds will allow the youth at a hatching of fledglings once they are of the Blue Rank; each Apprentice starts out at navy, then moves up to blue when they have proven their dedication to the Guild, then comes cyan, and white. After white, they can commission to become a Journeyman and then will be elected Master after showing outstanding work. Our story follows one such boy, coming into his Blue Rank in the Wingstrikers, the official armed forces of Aerona. At the hatching in question, his plans, future, and dreams of being a glorious warrior for the Ambassador and King of his nation now hang in the balance when he realizes there is something terribly different about his newly-hatched fledgling...

    Lack of motivation is why I haven't done much with the story other than write a prologue which I am not satisfied with and should probably redo, along with make up a story bible so I don't have to keep recalling things. Anyway, I'm just wondering if anyone has interest in reading a story like this, especially one that any Anne McCaffrey fan can see that I "borrowed" several ideas from her books. I did have a lot of my own ideas in mind but most wouldn't surface until later. I don't want this to be considered a clone or anything, I just really liked the idea of animal imprinting, mostly, after reading how she did it.

    Anyway, this is meant to be a trilogy of books, all building and explaining the world-building while each focuses on a different part of the changes these simple events from the first book will bring about. I can't make that less ambiguous without giving away spoilers.

    Not sure where to post this, maybe FictionPress? I dunno... I should get at least one chapter done before I think about that. >_>

7 Reasons why Oldfags Ruin Gaming For Everyone Else.

    The title, I  feel, is appropriately insulting, and properly advertises the attitude at which I will be attacking this specific group of obnoxious idiots. If you happen to cream yourself over Megaman 10, still have a working NES you play every day, and think every title in the series after Sonic 3 did everything wrong, turn back now, lest I diminish your faith in the Obnoxious Oldfag Gods.

    Quite frankly, this was sparked by an appalling article I found here:
http://www.cracked.com/article_16196_the-7-commandments-all-video-games-should-obey.html?wa_user1=4&wa_user2=Video+Games&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=recommended

At which someone of which I presume to be an accomplished oldfag bitches and moans about the advances in technology and how they dare to improve our gaming experiences. Shame on them, with their online multiplayer and their ability to hold more content in a disc!

    Why, they'd even presume to improve graphics beyond the pitiful excuse we had for such in the NES era, which basically looked like all the sprites were designed by the LEGO company. And that brings me to my 7th complaint:

1: Oldfags Hate Graphics!

    If you brought your older brother or your grandmother into your room to show them how awesome Fable 3 looks, they'd probably have a heart attack and regale you with tales about how "in their day", they did without all these fancy things like shaders and polygons and got along just fine.

Here's the major flaw in any argument that goes like this: "In my day, we didn't have x / only had y and got along just fine!" That flaw being that nobody, not even these oldfags wants to go back to that. I have the perfect example. My Grammy (who I love despite picking on her here) complains constantly about how teenagers rely too much on cell phones and how it was better when you didn't have instant contact and how Facebook makes it too easy and wah wah wah. So whenever she starts on one of these grating tangents that are the hallmark of old people that just don't like unfamiliarity, I say this. "Well, people in the 50s did just fine without color TV, would you like to go back to black and white TV?" Even if she doesn't agree with me, I know damn well my Grandpappy will. :V

My grandmother also enjoyed the Atari. Yes, my grandmother, and when I tried getting her to play more advanced games, she liked to bitch about how they were too complicated, which brings me to my next point.

2: Oldfags hate complexity!

    In a nutshell, this means that if you aren't doing the same thing throughout the duration of a game, their tiny oldfag intention spans can't handle it. Variety? In MY video games! Thou have sinned brutally, gaming industry! I guess they've never heard the term "Variety is the spice of life."

Do I even need to offer up a counter argument to this? Not everyone plays video games just to have some kind of challenge, some people play them because of the atmosphere they can be immersed in, which is better served when things like story, open-world, and a variety of things to do come into play. Which brings me to the next subject on the list...

3: Oldfags hate immersion!

    Oh sure, why would anyone in their right mind want to be immersed in an enthralling experience? Why, that's just a waste of time they could be spending mindlessly collecting dots and eating ghosts!

    Video games offer a challenge, sure, but they also offer a way to make our shitty lives less shitty, and if you don't think your life is shitty enough to justify a distraction, you're either not human, or an oldfag, which basically means the same thing in my book.

Oldfags think story and immersive worlds are a waste of time they can be spending mashing buttons, Even a game like Minecraft that has no cut-scenes in it whatsoever is too complicated for the textbook oldfag. They'll often say that they want the game to give them an objective and sandbox games aren't games because all you do is build.

    I believe this can be attributed with the fact that your classic oldfag has no creativity, whether lack of creativity is associated with the aging process or an over-exposure to Pac-Man and Asteroids is still unknown to experts. Which goes into the next point...

4: Oldfags hate sandbox games!

    Sandbox games are, in fact, the best thing to happen to the gaming industry in the past decade. Not only is their primary purpose to stimulate creativity, but the immersion factor is made double by the ability to make up whatever you want about the game. Minecraft developer Notch encourages individuality, innovation, and creativity, traits which make him a pioneering genius in an industry that seems fond of going backwards with how many "retro" tributes there seem to be. (Looking at you Sonic Generations.)

The point here is, anything that stimulates and encourages creativity can never be a bad thing, it's probably the best thing for our youth when it comes to gaming. Not to mention I can't think of any legitimate reason anyone wouldn't want such to be the focus of their game.

Unless they're an oldfag, at which case they apparently thrive on realism and are so grounded as to be made boring and insufferable. How dare anyone expect them to actually branch out and be expressive! They should be allowed to be a drone of society for the rest of their robotic lives.Any sign of imagination seems to scare oldfags, the unfamiliarity of it making them feel insecure and ungrounded. It is their mind to shut out all forms of imagination and creativity in favor of not having to change or be the remotest bit understanding in new ways, which is the next point on the list...

5: Oldfags hate innovation!

    How dare these new kids expect me to be appreciative of modern concepts! Why, in my day...

    Any advance in modern technology is toxic to the textbook oldfag, usually linked to their dislike of creativity, any type of modern innovation is seen as further downfall of humankind through oldfag eyes.

I don't need to explain why this is bad for gaming. I view all the retro remakes as poison, while there is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from older titles, there's a lot wrong with dwelling on them, and worse, forcing everyone else to.

Which brings us next to our next point.

6: Oldfags hate online multiplayer!

    If you don't see the resemblance in numbers 5 and 6, online is possible one of the biggest innovations of the past 2 decades.

But oldfags can't stand the idea that they have to play an online game with people who "hide behind fake masks and names", who you apparently can't have any fun with because they aren't in the same room, let alone the same state or country, as you, who apparently "aren't real friends", because you met them on a forum, or on Facebook, or an online game.

Basically, the classic oldfag mentality is that you aren't a true friends with someone if you can't see their face.

Which is bullshit, my best friend lives in Texas, which is half a country away from me. We've known each other for 3 years, we play all kinds of games together, don't tell me we aren't true friends.

Just to clarify, I am not against local multiplayer, I'm against local multiplayer when it overrides online multiplayer. Why can't games have both? Because it makes some NES humpers uncomfortable to play with people that prefer online play?

Which leads us to the last point.

7: Oldfags hate newer players!

...and just about everyone else that enjoys all of the above.

The feeling between oldfags and newer players, I feel, has significantly separated the gaming community and I'm not saying newfags don't do their share of killing video games as much as oldfags but it gets really hard to sympathize with people that have inspired the market to become saturated in retro remakes and "simple" games, to the point where finding a good adventure game has become challenging because apparently oldfags can't stand putting the time into them.

And let's face it, if the gaming industry can find a scapegoat for putting any real time and effort into an epic solid title by making Pop Cap sized games to target the one market that will actually play them instead of the one that, you know, expects anything from them, so I feel the demand for simple games does ruin the market purely for the fact that there is a large enough number of oldfags to influence it.

Don't worry, it isn't just the people that remember gaming in the 80s that I'm going to pick at, the next article will be directed at those sobs that won't even keep a game that's a year old. Also ironically related to Gamestop's exchanging used games for cash policy.

Why I play video games

    A lot of people seem to not understand why I spend so much time and money into video games. I don't care about leaderboards, high scores, achievements of any kind, and I generally ignore many mechanical functions of a game that gamers are apparently supposed to instinctively care about. These things aren't what motivates me and causes me to need games in my life.

    Even explaining to people what I do play games for seems to fall on deaf ears. It's bewildering, and even a little hurtful, that no one else can fathom, or even wants to try to fathom, what it is about video games that makes them so appealing to someone like me.

    I've always felt that people understanding why I play games would be synonymous to understanding why I so adamantly oppose certain genres or types of games. Especially why I would never play them myself.

    I've known, to my disappointment and frustration, for a few years that barely any of the general populace, if any at all, understands or cares about the things that make games important to me, but only recently understood the marginal divide between my view and everyone else.

    For starters, the utter detachment with which people view games with. This is probably what allows them to play a game like Call of Duty and not feel totally appalled that it's basically simulating war and bloodshed. Or maybe they're just heartless monsters that don't value human life, at least that's what the cynical side of me believes. The optimistic portion, no matter how small it might be, likes to think that it can't be a common demonic lust for killing that drives people to play such games. I certainly don't understand the appeal, I find such games depressing, representing the textbook example of what I wish our society could move away from and leave behind. I find the fact that people take joy in games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto to be a violation of moral ethics to the highest degree. And the only way I can make sense of why any stable and functional human being would enjoy such an opposite of the idyllic is because they are so detached from the games they play that they never even think about it.

Which in and of itself is very depressing to me. Why would anyone not want to be attached to a video game in an emotional and mental link for a few hours?

This is why I play games, why I always have. If I could be so blunt, I hate my life. I hate all life. It's miserable and dull, thinking of the scale of human life in general, what we do, what we achieve, what little impact I will have, the reality of how futile existence on one small planet on a universe deemed mortal itself by science is a depressing and crushing weight on my mind, and it has been for several years. Real life makes me feel an honest and sickening amount of dread, knowing I struggle for a better place only for it to have no meaning some 40-50 years from now, to know that my only true purpose as a gender-designated living organism is to reproduce and ensure the next generation which I assure you has always been the last concern on my list even before I started having such broad thoughts, and to know that my chosen career in art is worthless in every sense of the word. I'm an impractical, unnecessary, useless part of society that takes up resources and space and gives nothing of value back beyond the arbitrary value that my species (and only my species, for I do not think one species in a vast universe is enough to justify my resource-draining practice) places on such things as scribbles on expensive paper with equally expensive materials that other humans toil in mines to dig up and transport for no purpose. And I only continue because it's all I know how to do, it's become both my excuse for getting up in the morning as much as it is my only method of maintaining a contented life, for that's all I can think that anyone can work for and feel like it is theirs and not something wasted on unrealistic ideals like religion that seem so much more appealing than the reality or future advancement in technology for "the next generation" when we are all doomed to extinction no matter which planet we inhabit.

    I haven't always thought this way, only once I went through a time in my life where I let go of religion as much as a phase of my growth as a result of considering the chilling concept that there was no god or magic or anything more than what we see. I spent much of my teenage years in contemplation and introspection to find a comforting atheistic alternative to the ultimatum of my life's efforts meaning something on a higher level. I have found none.

    And as a child, I needed to believe in something. As I type this I feel a pang of guilt both at the admittance of weakness and the fact that it sounds like an excuse, or a cry for attention, or even discredits anything I think or say. I was born in respiratory distress and needed immediate surgery to be able to intake enough oxygen to sustain life. In the time I spent half-dead, my brain received permanent damage that would stay with me for the rest of my life. Side effects of such a development varied widely from mild emotional instability (not the least of which being anger issues) to vivid and highly inaccurate interpretations of my environment that lasted until I was 11 and finally placed in proper care.

    The ideal of magic of some kind helped me to explain, and even in some regards, embrace the culminations of my overactive imagination mixed with my slight deficiency in determining if it was indeed said imagination. I will never say that it was a bad experience. There were times when I would become extremely frightened for no reason and freeze or have a hard time breathing, or become angry, but these weren't frequent enough actions for me to say that I did not, as a child, enjoy the incursion of my imagination into the real world.

In fact, in spite of the fact that my disturbing development in train of thought only came about when I was 16, I've never enjoyed plain, bland reality. Possibly because I've always had something to spice it up. I was a reclusive child that viewed all humankind as dangerous, or untrustworthy, which was a trait inherited by my mother, and I invented a plethora of imaginary friends to surround me and make my world colorful and interesting. As well as the average childlike tenancy to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, I could make myself believe some of it, and even made it my goal to explain every detail that made no sense to make it more real, as much to add stability to what I believed as to solidify it in reality. Such as why no one else could see my "friends", or why I was so reclusive and outcasted, which I was, because of my huge glasses and bad temper alike, and thought there just had to be some justice, some explanation for my existence if I did nothing but make my mother miserable, make my teachers frustrated, and be bullied by everyone else.

I suppose my environment at that age wasn't helping my already abnormal mental development...

Then came video games.

    I was an active and energetic kid, I liked going outside and pretending to be on a grand adventure with all of my friends and enemies (most of which were anthro, hinthint) either calling for my draconic sidekick, visiting a hyperintelligent sea monster that did experiments, or taking my chances solving thrilling mysteries of why the shipment of sugarberries didn't come in that morning. This was how I spent my days. I even managed to elaborate a reason for my father's absance in my lif, believing he must have been some great hero or powerful being that had very important business and left me as a safeguard or something. But we lived in a terrible neighborhood and my mother didn't want me outside. I suppose she thought buying me a PlayStation on Christmas (Though of course Santa delivered it with his ability to teleport into apartments with no chimneys because so few houses had them these days and he needed a new sort of magic from extraterrestrial life-forms, strange I still remember telling that to my cousin when we were kids) was the best way to keep a perfectly aged pedophile target in the house and out of trouble with the neighbors. (I will say that I'd probably have been a pedophile's wet dream considering how sexually experimental I was, even going so far as to wonder how famous cartoon characters masturbated or how bizarre or forceful it was or why it felt so amazing to drive the body to a certain limit. Guess what that limit was.)

My first game was Spyro, it's still one of my favorites, and my attraction to it was due to my love of dragons more than anything. To me, controlling a dragon on a TV was just as whimsically idyllic as being one in real life. I loved dragons and obsessed about them constantly, always looking for dragon eggs outside and praying for one at night. Spyro opened a door for me that made dreams come true. The expansive worlds, mixed with my inexhaustible imagination, fueled a fantasy I'd always wished for.

I wasn't completely insane... I should elaborate on the specifics in another blog entry. It's complex and requires reflection to unblur and articulate on expansively. And most of it is beside the point, only used to demonstrate my indifference and cresentment of the life I was given, and the life I had no choice in.

It didn't help, and still is no small damper on my wish to achieve something, that I was born with visual impairment, a trait of both parents and unavoidable. And because of this, I can never be allowed to apply for a pilot's license under federal law. I am thus forbidden to legally fly, which has been my dream since as far back as I could remember. I have always known that I would never be able to have a driver's license, that no one would even let me have significant mobile freedom without relying on someone, never truly being free or of my own volition. Perhaps it is these arbitrary and unjust restrictions put on me that have aided my dislike of modern society and technology as much as a preference for fantasy. I feel so restricted and opposed in modern society, as a kid, I believed that if I lived in a fantasy world full of wonder and adventure, I would be free to do as I pleased.

I found this world in video games. This also fueled my preference; I do not play games in the modern setting, feeling humans are "too limited" to be vehicles for my imagination and voracious desire to explore and roam freely, a need which I believe is analogous to oxygen for me. Thus I have always chosen a preference in animal or anthro characters to play as with a few exceptions (Zelda being the largest with Elder Scrolls in close second), because they had such amazing powers and throughout my life, I have always preferred animals to humans. The whimsicality and mystery surrounding animals for a child, as well as their utter indifference to things I despised, such as "laws" on where they could and couldn't go, and they were indifferent to me, predictable, trusting, honest. They seemed to represent divinity to someone who led a life of having less right to things everyone else was fully capable of, not just in arbitrary laws but in innate abilities. I was always less capable in gym and thus decided to just hate sports and make my spiteful attitude known, and was quickly drawn to instruments which, though I couldn't read music (I couldn't read very well at all at the age we were learning it until my mother requisitioned some large-print books for me), I picked up on quickly because it was something I could do with sound and touch and not my lesser, inferior sight. It is still a preference of mine, from whistling to playing a harmonica or a flute, because it relaxes me and is one of the few things I feel truly confident in and capable of.

    Video games are not something I feel confident in or capable of. My cousin is often pointing to things I do not see. It is clearly just another one of those many things that I will always be inferior in compared to someone else. Therefore, I choose not to seek the challenge. In general, I choose to reject the opportunity for challenge at all, whenever possible, because for me, the chance of failure is much higher due to my limitations and I see it as a waste of my effort and a method to frustrate me as opposed to a constructive use of my time. Time I can spend doing something I enjoy, such as escaping from my dreadful circumstances for a while.

When I was 11 and my mother and I struck the final nerve in each other's bones, we were forced into therapy before the results could be more violent and I was given the proper medication I needed to function.

My clarity improved gradually, as well as my mood, and various other points of my life, such as the relationship between my mother and I. It's difficult to imagine the time before that I spent sober of the effects of modern pharmaceuticals but I do remember how strained our relationship was, and it didn't console me at all to know that it was nobody's fault. It was never my fault, I could never control anything, apparently, I had genuine problems and was put on the standard pacifier for "wayward, petulant brats" as everyone else whose kid had outbursts in class or hit people for fun. I'm not saying that some people don't have an honest problem. I'm very aware of the types of legitimate medical diagnoses that warrant the treatment that I and several other people I've met online and off badly needed but the fact that every parent that couldn't administer a justified spanking and just wanted an easy solution has saturated the worth of such treatment and created such skeptics to the type of solutions that people like me actually need is appalling, because I'm also very aware of the type of kid that had no problems other than an idiotic, irresponsible mother that didn't know how to do her job, because I'm related to such a kid, my youngest cousin and his clueless mother. And by the way, he's 14 and she hasn't learned a damned thing. I think her negligence as a parent combined with him being forcefed powerful antipsychotics since he was 2 has actually done severe damage to him to the point where he actually needs the care now. But that's a bit off-topic...

There was a downside to the treatment, one that should be insignificant but which altered my life significantly. My imagination settled, it was no longer vivid, and thus my world was no longer filled, despite the vain grasps at the much-wanted whimsy of it all that absorbed me for a couple of years to come. Video games changed from a medium to a coping mechanism for me, helping me to adapt to what was apparently a "normal way of thinking and understanding" and giving me the attachment to fantasy that kept my spirits up. As I grew in the next few years, I found reality to be depressing and dark. It seams strange and backwards for me to mourn the inhibitions and distortions of the mind when a lot of people with such problems are probably grateful to be able to function in society and live a normal and contented life but I don't think there has ever been anything of the norm about myself.

    When I was 13 I decided to "do art", though what I thought that meant, I don't know, I just know that I started drawing more seriously than before. I'd always drawn to express my imagination, to show people the characters I invented and my world I valued, but now I was becoming more serious and devout to improvement and refinement. That carried through to highschool, where I drew like a 10 year old, didn't use shading, made haphazard lines with colored pencil everywhere, and was in the absolute barbaric stage of my evolution. At this point, I was resigned to my life, having left aspects of my childhood behind, and very much depressed by many old haunts as much as by the new ones that crept into every aspect of my day. Video games like Sonic had a lot of influence on my art at this point in time and it looked like it. The anatomy was horrible, I could barely draw hands (If you think they're bad now, at least you can tell what they are). the proportions were atrocious, and the drawings were comparable to the usual tripe found on dA. Maybe this has some influence on my rather low opinion of Sonic art in general. My own experience has led me to associate it with immaturity and unexperience, as well as bad taste in character design and unoriginality.

    By my sophmore year, I think I was really discovering my craft of choice. I began an almost recolutionary experimentation with many concepts at once that I'd never grasped before. Partly because I had such an amazing art teacher, my highschool advanced art teacher remains a prominent figure in my esteem, her ghost will forever influence me on proper form and my continued growth as an artist. I should really thank her, she did so much for me despite my limits. She treated me like everyone else, she accepted faults in my art that resulted from my lack of vision capabilities and explained how I could change it, helping me pass barriers instead of accepting them, and pushing me to my absolute end, which was exactly what I needed. I began to understand, and become fascinated with, color, lightsource, how colors effect the mind and the emotions, how the placement of such invokes deep feelings, as well as my constant experiment with hues and what could and couldn't be a shade of another color, such as using purple to shade green on the basis that everything away from the sun has a blue tint here on Earth and everything directly toward it can be white or yellow, and using this basic concept to create worlds filled with vibrant colors. I made my world colorful in a completely new way and I was learning every minute.

I slowed down my 11th and 12th year of school. This was a time when "my entire world expanded all at once", as I like to say. This was the time when I was a frequent internet user and an active person in social areas, and in two short years I learned more about human cruelty than I could have stomached in an entire lifetime. Yet in that time, I also learned many concepts which my small world had never bridged, some of them were actually good. But through it all, it did tell me how few people valued the type of whimsy and wistfulness for a "more colorful" life that I so desired. I'd hoped that the internet, a place full of virtual, simulated space where anything could happen (like a video game) would be filled with people wishing for a common goal which eluded and disinterested "real people" but that was quickly shattered in a very blunt and brutal way with the people I came in contact with.

So by the time I was 17, I feel that much of the magic I retained had drained out of me, perhaps the experience of so many humans and none that could understand or wanted to support my wishes exhausted the last of my zealous ambition to pursue a wonderful world I enjoyed in the form of artificial simulation, or perhaps I was just too cynical at that age to appreciate such things as I used to. This was around the time I felt much discomfort at a half-unwilling but entirely necessary detachment from religion or "unrealistic" concepts, as my mother called them, where I wanted so badly to believe in those things again, to be comforted by their promises of a better place than our reality for me, of a reward for my struggle and misery, but could not bring myself to be convinced, and it hurt, it was probably the most dreadful hurt I've ever experienced, along with the constant apprehension of my death, that I would wither to nothing, be nothing, feel and think nothing, and imagine nothing, such thoughts disturbed me to a point of unimaginable depression. I dealt with it in a few years, striving to control or overcome it. I'm not sure I really did, I do know the certainty that I never have, and never will be the same again, and now, almost 2 years after dealing with the change, I'm not sure I'd want to be any other way.

My need to create declined dramatically after highschool. I spent much of my time sleeping, much of my first year after graduation either trying to get into the workforce with the aide of government-maintained services or taking refresher classes for people seeking college (because I thought there was just nowhere else to go since I had no faith in my art to be sufficient at the time) and much more of my time online, doing nothing but getting into scrapes with others and generally depressing and frustrating myself further over my inability to penetrate through to anyone and have them understand. I'm not entirely sure of that motive, it's just what I remember with the most clarity. A scant two years ago feels like an eternity now, I feel 20 years older than I should at times and seeing the dates at which I posted some of the things I did on different sites and in logs bewilders me now, it's like looking at someone else. I'm barely aware of the logic behind some of my previous actions though I have tried to remember what the motives might have been and failed.

My video gaming habits also declined as I settled into a slower pace of life. At this point a hard reality had hit me; my only goal through highschool was to graduate. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do with my life, which was art, but graduation, and the summer after, felt like the end of the road with nowhere else to go and I wasn't sure how to deal with it at the time. This is partly why I did nothing but sleep. Sleeping, until the past year, has been one of my many coping mechanisms for overwhelming circumstances. And these were very overwhelming. It took me until the beginning of the year to decide on a long-term direction for my life and I'm just now really easing into that direction. My dependance on video games has depleted, probably as a result of, though it saddens me to admit, not needing it anymore, at least not to the extent that I used to.

The  current market isn't helping. I still have interest in video games but the lack of a market interested in colorful fantasy worlds and, though it is strange for me to admit, a need to feel more adult, limits my choices to a few and turns me off to mainstream gaming completely. There just aren't enough games that capture the elements of what I truly need anymore; it's a depressing reality, and one I constantly refute for the sake of not losing one of my only coping mechanisms for life, but I feel that coping mechanism dying every day. It confines me just as my world always has.

    People do not understand the reasons I care for such supposedly "irrelevant" things as art direction, character strengths and weaknesses as well as appearance, freedom of movement, and various other aspects of games which are paramount to me but apparently irrelevant to everyone else.

And when I try to explain this to some of them, their first reaction is always "See, that's what YOU like about games but not what everyone else likes." As if this is supposed to make me think like them. I'm not sure if they intend the kind of hurt a comment like this causes me, and I'm fairly certain most of them don't care. I'm not even sure what their motive could be beyond pouring salt in the old wound of a perpetual outcast but maybe they just feel that my presence threatens their preference in gaming as much as I feel theirs does to mine, though I will argue that my fears are far more legitimate by virtue of the fact that it's happening to me and not them.

I wish writing this out made some of them understand and sympathize instead of being so dismissive of me and what is important to me. I do not need further reminder of my insignificance in the universe, I'm perfectly aware of it, in fact, it's the cause for my resentment. I wonder how many of them truly believe that I believe I'm the majority, or that I believe that everything I say is right. It should be obvious that I don't, that I feel currently as if I am in an impossible situation and neither diplomacy or force has softened anyone to my case. I feel lost in the flow of a river moving against me, never given purchase on a handhold and never allowed an inch, just driven along against my will.

I never get to choose, do I? I can't even choose the types of games I prefer because they are no longer being made. Just as I had little choice with every event in my life. Can I not at least be granted the sentiment of a compassionate audience that doesn't discard or ignore me for a change?