Character Share: My Imagi-verse

Sorry it's been so long everypony, just been busy and life has been life-y. I was chilling on the Social Medias, and was thinking about sharing stuff I've done.  I scanned through my old scans and pictures, and thought it would be cool to see a collection of the various characters I've created.  So here goes -


Suirlas -

Suirlas is a nature spirit, who looks after the wilds she lives in.  Creating this character was kind of a spontaneous thing, and while I don't have a real story or exact setting for her, I have plenty of an inkling about her as a character.  I've done a few different pics of her, including a holiday picture the last winter










Abeline The Sad Vampire - 

Abeline is a young woman who became a vampire, and it wasn't exactly her favorite thing to have happened.  I created her one afternoon, as a humorous look at some of the downsides of being a vampire













Kelly(The Echoes Saga) - 

Kelly is a young girl with a strong connection to the Spirit World and its energies, who finds herself central to a conflict across the worlds.  The Echoes Saga follows her life as she grows, learning to understand herself and her place.











Bec(The Echoes Saga) - 

Bec is introduced into the story later into the second major arc, when Kelly is still in high school.  Bec is much like Kelly, but draws from more of a fiery personality, opposed to Kelly's cool, fluid nature. I like Bec.








Anaira Valencia("Finding The Sky") - 

Anaira Valencia is an investigative journalist, passionately searching for the truth in the world.  Her strong personality often finds her in trouble, causing her to frequently be pursued and badgered by those she's trying to expose



Laera Resuna(Windfall Setting) - 

Laera is an adventurous woman with sly personality, and a knack for getting into and out of trouble, though often from one into the next.  She can be a bit playful and sarcastic, but in a scrap she is clever and sharp, always keeping her wits about her.









That's about good for now, and leaves me some to share at a future time.  I've spent countless hours of my free-time imagining up characters and stories, and I'm tired of them just sitting in piles of papers and folders on my computer.  It's not that I want to share my art, but that my art wants to be shared.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

More Thoughts On Seeing Myself

So I've brought up how I'm not sure why I look down on myself or think that others do, and I think I found some more of my thoughts tied to that.  When trying to understand my emotions, I try to consider how and why I see things certain ways.

I've struggled with procrastination and I've always been an odd duck.  I have a good family and extended family, but I can't say that I feel like I fit in all that well.  To be honest, I feel there's some legitimate truth to the sentiment that they generally disregard me as a responsible adult and thus as a mature worth-while person.  While I don't spend time dwelling on that, when I recently addressed how I think my relatives see me, I saw a major facet of my life in which the opinion of me was a pretty low one.

As I struggle to feel okay with myself as a person, I have to figure out why the answer seems so elusive to me.  Clearly I am taking some signs that I shouldn't feel good about who I am or maybe just where I'm at.  Then again, isn't being happy in life what we should be working towards?  I'd like to believe life isn't really about money or status, yet they seem like our most common measurements of worth.

Trot On Everypony,

Alturiigo

Seeing Myself... Correctly?

I need to talk about this, because I might be getting closer to understanding my struggles with self-esteem, self-image, and understanding how others see me against how I see myself.  So I'm gonna take a few step backs and we can approach this from what might be something like the beginning of the trend.

I've always just sort of absorbed knowledge and retained it quite well, so most people consider me to be a very intelligent individual.  Growing up, my parents always taught us to treat others with respect, which helped me start understanding etiquette.  What this leads into is that those qualities have kept me feeling like even when I was younger, I was... pretending to be more mature or adult than I was?  The sentiment lies somewhere close to that I think, or perhaps that time my friend told me I was a child playing dress-up as an adult.  I can sense the inferiority tied to that.

I don't know that I really feel like I have anything to prove to anyone, and if I have anything to prove to myself, it's to meet my expectations as a human being.  Yet at the same time... I do kind of feel that.  Again with that feeling of inferiority, it's a feeling that I assume upon myself I think. I'm reaching a point in my life when I need to shed the feeling that the world still sees me as a kid. Getting there though, requires me really evaluating if I really am an adult.  What does that truly mean?

People have asked me what would make me happy, what I would consider being successful. I don't have much of an answer, except staying alive and... well, being happy.  It's not to be grim, it's just that the beauty of life are a lot of things you experience, and that you get to interact with the tapestry of existence.  There is no goal except to never stop growing as a person and never forget to let myself experience the beauty of feeling.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

A Story-Telling Character-Driven Game

I really enjoy pen and paper RPG's, so I'm arguably biased.  That being said, I think more people could enjoy them and potentially would, if it weren't for a few different things.  The aspect I'd like to touch on today is the approachability of the Tabletop RPG's as a story-telling group game.

The systems involved in playing many of these games are very... complex.  The reason the systems are there is to help create a structure for storytelling which actually helps in writing the story that the players and DM/GM/ZM will be writing together.  This doesn't come from them always being poorly developed, but more so because creating such rich and detailed stories with so many potential aspects to manage simply requires so much depth.  The core concepts of these games aren't difficult though.

Here's an attempt to simplify -

When attempting to perform an action or task, the player of the character rolls a dice(or die), representing their chance to succeed or fail at that attempt.  The required result is higher or lower based on the difficulty of the task.  The character has stats and skills which add to the result of the roll, increasing chances of success, where as things which make an attempt more difficult can either be given as penalties or added to the difficulty "check"(that number you need to get to succeed).

Just about EVERYTHING in pen and paper RPG systems is set-up to allow this testing method to "accurately"* model and predict outcomes of events based on skill, talent, and circumstance.  Oh, and the DM's temperament.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

*I put quotes because accuracy is more about working storytelling models than aiming for perfect realism

How We See Ourselves

Life can be a bit of a struggle sometimes, about how we see ourselves against how we see ourselves through others.  I consider this a tempering factor mostly, from the idea that I am inherently biased towards myself.  What I'd like to look at and talk about briefly though is understanding yourself complexly and even non-negative social assignments can be... troubling.

I have always found EVERYTHING to be fascinating.  They way the world is, and expresses itself, it's just... wow.  I have also always enjoyed learning new things, and took to science and other academics quite naturally.  This soon became a dominant facet of how I saw myself, and how I saw myself through others.  I didn't take art classes because I wasn't artsy.  I didn't take choir or try out for a play because I was socially awkward and anxious.  Through out growing up, it seemed a natural assumption that I would grow up to go to college and become a scientist, or a computer engineer, or doctor, or bartender... wait, what?!

Yeah.  It always seemed like my oddball dream, but since I was even 11 or 12, I remember wanting to be a bartender.  Which has always seemed kinda odd, since I've thought for most of my life that I'm not a people person.  When I finally started to look at myself more complexly, sometime shortly after graduating high school, I found many new interests I didn't expect myself to have.  I love fashion design, I draw and doodle a lot, I spend a lot of time singing to myself(whether I'm alone or not), and I'm not actually a total awkward doof.

Don't be afraid to explore yourself, you'll probably be surprised how complex you are.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

A Thought

The thought that I've grown more so than I've changed, and that I still struggle with the lonely little boy who wishes people liked him.  Against the person I am, who wishes I could accept that people like me.

The Ebb And Flow of Emotion

I'd generally agree with someone who quoted the advice that "You shouldn't rely on the opinions and support of others in how you look at yourself".  How you feel about yourself should come from you, though I've always been one to shy away from absolutes in statements and ideas.  I can't help but notice the fact that we can't always see ourselves perfectly, and in fact that's probably where most people actually run into trouble when trying to follow this advice.

What I actually wanted to touch on about this though, is that it can be dangerous to take this idea and run with it, because either A: You ignore cues from your surroundings(other people), and B: You may feel like needing help or support from other people makes you weak, which may in turn cause you to feel even weaker about yourself...

So, yeah.  I don't think a person should be thought of as weak for sometimes needing the support of others, people who want to bring positivity into their life.  It seems as though many people I see on a general basis tend to find me positive and outgoing, and it turns out I'm a bit of a people person(my schoolmates never saw that coming).  I expel a lot of positive energy at those around me, it's kind of just a part of who I am.  Consequently, I spend most of my good feelings on other people, with not the greatest of return on the upliftiness.

To be honest, I don't do what I do to feel better about myself, or to make people like me.  It's just... what I'm supposed to do.  Or maybe more specifically, what I do just naturally.

Positive Energy: Depleted
Reserve Tanks: Empty

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Progression Over Time

Growing up, I've always been a bit of a nerd, and have found myself fascinated with science and learning.  It's amazing to find out new things about the complex and wondrous world we live in.  Since science seemed like my jam, I never really took to art classes too much going through the education system.  So when I started having ideas for characters and stories, I found myself wishing I could draw.

I suppose I didn't let that stop me though, I just drew... not so good of pictures.  I kept going though, starting with giving my stick figures hair, then hands(ish), and feet(again, ish).  When I started to play Dungeons and Dragons, I found myself wanting to draw my characters.  So instead of stick figures, they started to resemble block figures, and in trying to decide what kind of clothes to draw them in, I ended up discovering an interest in fashion design.

Nowadays, people will sometimes look at something I've drawn and comment the likes of "I wish I could draw", as though what I drew was of some merit.  It's getting harder to argue that I'm bad at drawing anymore, because when I look at something I doodled up even a year or two ago, and compare it to something more recent, I can see the drastic difference.  There was no point where suddenly I could draw, and I still don't think I can draw all that well.  I just keep doing it anyways.

Alturiigo

Pony Talk: Luna, Patron Saint of Lost Fillies

Sorry if you don't dig the candy-colored horses, but that's what this post is kind of about so head's up.

This is a thought that recently came stronger into my mind, enough that obviously I'm sharing the thoughts.  So, Luna, Princess of the Moon and the Night, and younger sister to Celestia, Princess of the Sun and the Day, rule Equestria together, which is rad.  There's a WHOLE LOT going on with Luna and her backstory, and with understanding the sibling dynamic between the two of them.  Epic.  Moving on.

I had seen a video some time ago called something like "Children of the Night", it was a pony song, more or less to the tune of "Once Upon A December", which I really enjoy.  The song has Luna looking after many young ponies(fillies) and bringing them to the moon, fillies who are portrayed to not have families or real homes.  In the fan-made short "Snowdrop"(which was a decent sad-fic), Luna especially takes a shining to Snowdrop, though largely because she could entirely sympathize with the filly.  At the end of the Nightmare Night episode, she makes a small fandom out of the fillies she scares, again showing her to shine with Equestria's youth.  And now my most recent and most canon of examples.

In "Sleepless in Ponyville", Princess Luna visits Scootaloo in her dream(nightmare?) and helps guide her to seeing what her real fear was, and encourages her to face her fears, even nudging her right at the end.  We see this happen again, but with a Christmas Carol kind of dream journey, showing Sweetie Belle that she had the wrong impression of her sister in "For Whom The Sweetie Belle Toils" in Season 4.

Sure it's just a head-canon, but it seems that many people get this... impression of Luna, and I find that to be amazing and awesome.  Actually, sometime I should talk about the fan-canon of Ditzy Doo(Derpy), because it's so incredibly complex and... real?  Like srsly... it's crazy.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Living A Life

There a few loose ideas I have a hard time perfectly explaining, but if you can get behind the understanding of false nostalgia, then we'll be off to an excellent start.

I like stories, often epic fantasies but era and setting vary as I've found so many different tales and... experiences?  Reading a book, watching a movie, playing a game, these have become different mediums for our idea of a story-telling experience.  Heck, most of the original stories were kept up in oral tradition.  What I'm getting at is that even ones that tell of human history and are often true to whatever degree make me feel like I was born in some wrong time.  I appreciate all the luxuries and benefits afforded me in this day and age, don't get me wrong.  Today is not a life of luxury for all by any means anyways.  Maybe I should join the Peace Corps for a spell.  Hmm.  Perhaps I'll table that another time.

Every time I want to explore this I don't get terribly far in before it sounds more like I wish there was some great calamity or war or struggle(like I dunno, HUMAN RIGHTS or something), and that's not what it is.  I suppose it's more like day-dreaming wishing I was in another time, a simpler one... one in which I suppose I couldn't share my thoughts like this. Which I suppose is up to you to decide if that's good or bad.  And that's the pinch and the punch of it.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Old Ideas Don't Stop Giving

I'm pretty sure I recently touched on how awesome it was that even what 4 or 5 years later, I still learn more about characters I've created.  I just started with a pose/expression in mind, and I ended up drawing an old character(Bec) with a new detail in design and personal history.

So for whatever rhyme or reason I thought of my Yeti Language for "The Visceroth Cluster" setting(I think it was because I was thinking about how to "explain" words with the advantage of language), and I realized how to structure a lot of the words and concepts.

See it uses a variety of verbs, which can be conjugated into nouns- okay here's an example

Garuten - to write(infinitive)
Garutenur - wrote(past tense)
Garutenrir - writing(-tenrir is to express a gerund)
Garudan - words(-dan is what is accomplished with the verb - build to buildings)
Garudos - letters(-dos is what is used to accomplish the verb - build to... building tools)
Garutar - one who writes(-tar is the accomplisher of the verb - build to builder)

The language also uses a variety of particles to connect nouns and verbs, expressing possession, an indirect object, a direct object, and other relationships between words. Apparently these are a few-

kur - direct object particle(the following word is the direct object of the previous word)
wur - in(to express the first noun being within the second noun)
pur - to(such as "going from here to there", or "from this to that")
sur - possessive particle(the following word is possessed by the previous word)
tur - directive particle(for or "for the purpose of")
ti - ?bridging particle(used to establish a subject noun(which will precede it))

I constructed some sentences to try out the language, so here-

Irunos made structures for Gunkoreth.
Full: Irunos ti nustenur kur reldos tur Gunkoreth.
Common: Irunos nustenur reldos tur Gunkoreth.

Okay so I wrote a bunch more sentences but I didn't write their English translations and I'm not up to translating all that right meow.
TL;DR: I came up with more stuff for a made up language yay

Trot On Everpony,
Alturiigo

Late-Night Thoughts and Reflection

So it's more of a late-night thought-storm on reflection, but it's doubly applicable in that I often reflect as I lie awake at night.  Usually I go over my day it seems, figuring out if I feel right about the actions I took and didn't take, and how I resolved anything that day.  If something doesn't feel right with me, I'll try to determine what bothers me about it, and what I can do about it to change that.  If I did something wrong I decide not only to apologize but how and why.  I also think about where I'm at in my life in a more general sense, and I suppose see how okay with it I am.

Growing up, people often used to tell me I was pretty smart, and since I really enjoyed learning about everything around me, I suppose it made sense.  Even growing up, there was always a part of me that struggled with being identified strongly as intelligent, since I felt like it was all others defined me by.  I did well by all testing standards, and entered college just as I thought I always would.  Here, is where I started to struggle with myself.  Nothing seemed right for a degree, no program really felt like it was my calling, I couldn't choose.  So I did nothing.

Okay well maybe not nothing, but I dropped out, and just focused on working, and... life, I guess.  The idea of going to college and getting a career being a doctor or a scientist or a linguist was something I had always felt was inherent in myself.  It was then, not even a full year through school, that I understood that I would not be going through college(at least not then).  I wanted to just... be a person...?  It's hard to explain, because it's not with any sentiment towards going to college or not, but I knew that there was a lot of life I didn't understand, and that all choices lead to other new ones, and new discoveries.

I chose to discover what it was like to not go to college, to challenge myself to discover who I am outside of who I thought I was.  It's been a long 7 years in the service industry, often making close to minimum wage.  I've been a manager, I've cashiered, cooked, served, and bartended. I still do.  Sometimes, when I think about the close friends I have who graduated with me, the three of them all have gone on to do amazing things, and I am immensely proud of them.  It can be difficult not to want to compare my "achievements" to theirs and not feel down on myself.

I look back on my life, and I truly think about the people I've met, the lives I've been a part of, and the impact of my life and actions, I come to see some important things.

I have become the person I am today by being the person I was yesterday.  My choices and actions have always been my own to make and I have understood the responsibility of that knowledge.  I do my best to be an understanding person, and be respectful and positive towards others.  I think of how others will feel, and try to understand how something might look from their perspective.  Everyday, in the hopes of being a good person, I try to be a better person.  I don't always get it right, but if you know me, you'll know that I'm stubborn, and I'm not want to quit for nigh anything.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Best Worst Idea Ever

I've been away for a while, and I apologize for that.  Now, onto what I need to geek/nerd out for a second... or several.

I recently made a joke, I'm uncertain if it had been to anyone other than myself, about leveling up at my job.  I'm a bartender/server/cook, and more recently I've found I can carry three full glasses in one hand(and not feel like one will fall at any moment).  A few days ago I was thinking about being a bartender, and my brain made a mental comparison to RPG class trait trees.

Seriously though, as nerdy as it is, it's actually kind of fun for me to attempt to translate my job into an RPG system.  So for example I'm multi-classed as a Bartender/Server/BOH(okay to be honest there's maybe a level at least of Manager, and several of Cashier).

What gets more interesting for me is that a lot of the aspects of work can be categorized under skills or abilities, and I can almost imagine class subtypes and archetypes. A simple example is for the Bartender class, whose three trait trees might be Drinkslinging, Mixology, and Tending(guest relations).  Maybe the character takes a Knowledge Skill in a specific type liquor or beer, or a Craft Drink skill.

As ridiculous as I feel making this comparison and diving into it a little, it's also a fun challenge for me to try to craft a system that houses these mechanics.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo