Language and Communication

Something I found myself wondering the other night, was about how communication might have began.  The word language and the very idea of it tend to lead us to thoughts about words, grammar, various languages and word origins.  The idea of communication isn't limited to language, and language isn't even limited to the concept of spoken or written communication; think of body language as a concept.

We can easily lead ourselves into thinking about hieroglyphics as a written language, giving a "word value" to an image, especially because it makes it easier to approach the task.  This can be a limiting way of thinking about it though, because structures of written and spoken language are not inherently structures of picto-graphic writing.  As we use spoken and "written" language to convey ideas and concepts complexly, hieroglyphs are their own way of conveying ideas and concepts through structured imagery of sorts.   Our words, characters, glyphs, sounds- all are tools we use to let someone else know what we know, or what we think.  Language is a means to an end, the end being communicating.  This helped me be able to better explain and understand my... let's call it interest, in how the Internet has affected language.

There was a while were I was one of those that "resented to decay of language and social interaction" that the Internet seemed to encourage, with posts of terrible spelling and grammar, memes, posts about what you're doing(except that what you're doing is posting), it goes on.  I didn't stay off the Internet though, and found things that I appreciate about it, like being able to wish a friend across the world a happy birthday, whom you haven't seen in years or have phone access to.  Another thing I've come to appreciate is memes.

Yep. Memes.  Oh and gifs.  As humans have had more time to develop this new "social landscape", as I have previously called it, we've created a lot of new and different ways to communicate not only to each other, but to communicate ideas in whole new ways.  I sometimes get lost watching a gif cycle endlessly, and many can strongly convey a thought or feeling.  Sometimes there are words, and as most should know(this blog is on the Internet), memes are still gifs with words.  That's right, I called a picture a "still gif".  That's legit, right?

Memes and gifs go a long way in communication, which is interesting to me because I resented them at first.  "Oh look, yet another meme about an arrow to the knee."  It got old, then I got used to it, and now memes are kind of a thing that just is, an Internet thing.

For better or worse, the Internet has a global ramifications on human kind(and I'm aware most of the world doesn't have computers), and I feel it would be silly not to complexly think about the role the Internet is playing and will play in human social progression.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

p.s. here are some memes and I Tumblr shot I had lying around

Drawing Progression

So I've been realizing that I am starting to become capable of drawing larger, fuller pictures.  One of the reasons I usually just do a partial character drawing is because I struggle with a variety of drawing tasks, and have(in my opinion) always messed them up.  I took a couple pages of sketches that a friend asked me to work on for him, and I was actually rather impressed with my result, at least compared to what I had done so far.

Just recently I found a picture I had wanted to draw for him still in a rough-ish pencil state.  I went back at it and finished the picture as best I could, and am quite happy with it(the Sylveon gave me a hard time though)-

This made me want to keep going forward, and I decided I should attempt another large picture, to challenge myself to do what I used to think I couldn't.  I chose Suirlas for a character, and here's the picture in progress - 

I enjoy drawing, largely because I am always dreaming up stories and characters, and making worlds for them.  I'm getting much closer to being able to share my Imagi-verse, the multitude of ideas in my head.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Drawing Style... ?

As I take a brief break from a picture I'm working on, I'd like to share a little about how Drawing and I have gotten to know each other.

I never really thought of myself as a "creative type", though I guess I couldn't give a good answer as to why; I suppose I thought I was a nerd and could be nothing more?  Through middle-school(K - 8th grade) Art class wasn't really optional, and after that I took more science and computer classes for my electives.

I ended up playing Dungeons & Dragons(3.5), and began to draw my characters, try to at least.  Before that were some stick figures and eventually "block" figures of both little and great importance I suppose.  As I tried to draw my characters, I had to think about what they would wear, and started to draw a lot of clothing, taking an interest into fashion design.  I lost my pile of drawings over the years :(

I kept drawing, and somehow, things were looking more and more like actual things, even the things I wanted them to look like.  As I started putting pencil to paper more and more, my creative projects began to become real to me. Echoes was really early into this journey, and something that made me explore how I draw.  I picked up a book and worked on some stuff, like the image to the right of Bec.

I suppose in part I feel like I could never draw that well on a mass scale, nor for every aspect.  There's a little more to it though, because I had started to notice that no matter what I drew, it never looked right... well, it didn't look the exact same.  I still liked a lot of my simpler drawings, and I began to open up to myself about how I would draw.  There are three general styles I work with, one of which is pretty much one of my first styles, developed off the "block" characters I would draw.  Another is closer to a chibi style, with a large head and small body by proportions.  The last is one I've used for later Echoes stories, and am still working out.  Here are examples of the three - 

 Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

Awareness and Change

There's a lot of stuff to talk about when it comes to social issues, and it can be hard to discuss them without attacking other people, whether you intend to or not.  That being said, it can be hard sometimes to only listen.

"If it isn't broke, don't fix it."  Silence is not acceptance, and that's also not to say that if you're not fixing something, you don't think that it's broke... but if what we think is normal is broken, shouldn't we try to fix that?

Some time ago, I was frustrated while thinking about Affirmative Action and feminism, thinking on it from "a logical perspective on equality".  In my old argument, giving a favorable treatment is not a demonstration of equality.  An unfortunate side-effect is that many qualified candidates are thought to have gained their employment without merit, which is not the intent or actuality. This issue is that it doesn't address equality very thoroughly.

As a straight white male, equality for myself isn't something I need to examine in my daily life, and I would argue that it makes it difficult for me to think about equality complexly. That doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't try though, and it takes talking about it to help me understand it more.  Talking to people who have experienced it, trying to listen.  There are posts popping up more frequently talking about "anti-white" and "anti-male" sentiments, and while I saved a few because I wanted to call them out, I'm now thinking I'd rather not give them the merit of showing them.  Let me talk about that for a second-

I've had occasion where things were assumed of me because of my gender and race - HERE AND THERE OCCASIONS WHICH HAD NO REAL IMPACT ON THE OVERALL OUTCOME OF MY LIFE AND MY WELL-BEING.  Not many generations have passed since it was generally acceptable to make racist and sexist jokes, and as the Political Correctness movement gained steam, many resented the fact that they couldn't make the same "jokes and observations(gonna call that out because just don't take that road)" and feel as though it starts to infringe upon freedom of speech.

Libel and slander are real concepts, and there are numerous occasions when rhetoric, WORDS, were used to start wars, incite violence, instigate Inquisitions... I hope you get the point without more examples.  While there's some sort of "logic" in an argument that saying something and doing something are different things, it starts to get fuzzy when you shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater or convince a mob to lynch someone.

Let me get to why I wanted to call out the word "observations" for stereotypes - it suggests a "scientific" or "unbiased" context.  While the use of the word may not be entirely incorrect by the word's definition, the social context of the word seems to encourage or at least legitimize that train of thought.

I once called something "retarded" while with a couple friends who worked with people who had special needs.  They immediately snapped at me for using the word, and right before I defended myself I had the clarity to shut my mouth and open my ears.  Accept that I said something I shouldn't have, even if I didn't intend to.  The word still bears its social context against people who have varying disabilities, regardless of the conversation.  It's my decision, but I now do my best not to use that word, and have said it less than a handful of times(so like probably less than 5 over four years).  It doesn't matter if I never used the word to describe person who is disabled or has special needs, that doesn't really make it a better word when I use it.

Okay let's tie some of this together.  The words we use when we talk have a social context, a social value, many of which have had a lot of negative context.  Some words are more obvious than others, and some are a little more tricksy.  A recent example would be the reference to Lebron James's associates as a "posse" - the context of the word creates a dismissive nature to their role.  The word isn't racist or necessarily has a history of being used racially, but is dismissive and belittling in the nature of his friends/business partners.
When your everyday life isn't made more difficult by who you are, it's far easier to say "toughen up" or "get over it".  There aren't that many years separating us from a time when "normal" words and conversations were racist and sexist, but the people who would be offended weren't being heard.

I like to think I'm a good person so when someone has a misgiving with me, my instinct is to defend myself -  instead I don't.  There is a reason they felt offended, try to listen for what that is.  You may not even realize you're doing it, it could have never crossed your mind - that doesn't change it.  While I like to THINK that I am a good person, I believe it is important to ask myself as honestly as possible if that's true.  When push comes to shove, would I do the right thing?  I believe everyone should be treated equally sure, but that doesn't mean that everyone is.

If it's not broke, don't fix it.  OKAY WELL THIS IS OBVIOUSLY BROKE SO CAN WE TALK ABOUT FIXING IT PLEASE?  If we want to come together as a peoples, we need to be people together.  While there have been trends towards improvements in many social rights movements, ACTUAL EQUALITY is something that is far from... actual.

The notion that since we "won" the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement happened that America is not a racist or sexist country is a false equivalence.  No, this is not the same as saying that everyone in America is racist and/or sexist, or that if you call yourself American that you are racist and/or sexist.  It supports the notion that not everyone has the same "American" experience.  The problem arises when only some of us get to be "American", despite being lawful citizens.

People aren't being treated equally, that's not really a matter of opinion, in fact it sometimes is described as "the way it is".  I'm not here to argue that, but to ask if you feel like that makes it okay.  When the fact that people aren't being treated equally doesn't have a major impact on your life, it becomes much easier to leave it as the way the world works.

We have the power to change how the World works, for We are the World.

Character Share: Bec from Echoes

Still putting off that post continuing the Echoes Arcs, in large part because I'm still trying to get a better feel for it.  In the spirit of that, I would like to talk about the character of Bec for a moment -

Bec came about as I was working on a fuller cast for the series, and wanted a foil protagonist for Kelly.  If Kelly is water, Bec is fire, Kelly is cool and collected, Bec is quick-tempered and passionate.

Bec(Rebecca Evelynn Stersh) is an introverted character and somewhat shy(close but still different ideas), in addition to being often stand-off-ish. Some of this nature is likely due to her circumstance upon entering the story.  She has moved to this city after the death of her parents, to live with her aunt and uncle.  Her father was a music producer/lover, and her mother is where she learned her love of dance.  Even before their death, her parents were her closest friends, as she often felt she didn't fit in at her private school.

Bec continues to wear part of her old uniform as she did when she attended the school, it helps her feel a tiny bit like who she was before losing her parents.  She loves to listen to music, and can occasionally be caught dancing, though she hates being watched.

Bec's original character design started as some sort of lycanthrope, which became more of a human/spirit bonded pair, which eventually lost the fuzzy ears and tail.  For a spell I began to consider what it might be like if music was her method, such as drawing is for Kelly.  In the end, I've been going with the idea that she actually has a powerful spirit contained/bound within her spirit, and channels energy that way.  So instead of drawing something, she starts to manifest more of a fiery personality.  Channeling this spirit can be dangerous though, as she loses a bit of her own control as she channels more energy.

This image to the left is an older design for the character, and one that I still really like.  Sometimes I feel a little torn and debate using this design, which is not impossible but rather unlikely; the character of Bec that I have now has become the Bec that I imagine, that I've gotten to know so well.

Part of what I love about Bec is the relationship between her and Kelly.  It begins as an almost unwilling friendship as Kelly just starts acting like her friend much to Bec's chagrin, but slowly Bec comes to appreciate Kelly's aloof and fluid nature.

I did up a page to try and get a feel for the characters and writing a scene and dialogue with a more "everyday" kind of feel, and as lame as it is to admit, I really enjoy it every time I come across the page

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo

A StoneBridge Survivor: Ella Surin

Before I get back to going over Kelly's story, I would like to share a picture of a character designed for my Role-Playing System, the Zombie Apocalypse version -

Ella was a CNA before the apocalypse, and also loved photography and jogging.  She's is of a curious nature, always trying to understand the things around her.  She would jog almost every day, at least around her neighborhood just to get out and about.

She is a determined person with sharp eyes and a quick mind, as well as the skills to help those in need of medical aid.

The little bubble is the character concept phrased like the Cypher System, as seen in Numenera.  I enjoy that take on character design, and I recently came across a couple other instances of presenting a character that way in my notes.




In the "story", Ella photographs the apocalypse and its toll on StoneBridge and its residents, and even does reports when Luke Fields, Cassie Anderton, and the other Residents secure the radio station several months in.  Ella is not "designed" to be a combat-oriented character, her ability to survive is mostly boosted by her Perception and stamina, both mental and physical.



There are a few other characters to the story, I'll add some other ones here for fun -

Kelly's Story Bit 2(Echoes: Teen Angst)

Kelly's story continues past Echoes: Origins, and it picks back up when Kelly is about 14, and is getting ready to enter High School.  It's early into summer break, but we come into the story with Kelly standing in the rain, dressed for her mother's funeral as she stands before her grave.  A traffic accident on a stormy night leaves Kelly without family. Kelly's godparent happened to be a man who was a family friend for years, having known Kelly's grandmother, and he becomes her legal guardian.

This is a pretty rough time for Kelly, who paints and draws to express herself.  One night, while painting through an emotional breakdown, she swears she sees the paint move and almost come alive.  She dismisses it and tells herself to go to sleep.  She dreams about her time with Gus - something which several years of therapy would have her believe was an imaginary coping mechanism from the loss of her father.  She wakes after having a vague flash of a man who helped her and Marçai recover from injuries during that time.

Master Orey, the man who had helped her in the Spirit Plane was her godparent, someone who had known Kelly's grandmother as an Archon - like Kelly.  Kelly begins to realize that the chalk was not the true power behind what happened, more importantly Kelly channeled energy through the chalk as she imagined it to have power.

There are positive and negative energies and spirits, and Kelly begins to be able to see these things more and more.  Kelly's father had been a police officer, and had many long talks with Kelly about helping people, and not being afraid to stand up for what is right.  The importance of this to Kelly causes her to feel a need to do something about the malevolent and harmful spirits and energies she finds.

Kelly goes to school as well and tries to lead a normal life, working hard to make time for training, studying, and removing bad spirits.She makes a couple friends, Claire and Anne, who don't initially know that there is anything different about Kelly.  The pair end up being exposed to Kelly and her happenings though - 

Claire is a bit loud and overbearing at times, but she's a good person at heart and cares about her friends.  Anne is rather quiet and keeps to herself, but she looks out for Claire and tries to keep her out of trouble. While some might think Claire probably bosses Anne around due to their personalities, others can see Anne is just as much a caretaker as a sidekick.  Anne also appreciates that Claire helps her be a little less reserved and timid.

One day there's a new student in Kelly's class, a girl named who goes by Bec and generally wants nothing to do with anyone.  A little about how Bec came about - I was drafting character ideas and had a few concepts before I settled on who she is now(more or less).  I've always felt like water was a good thing to compare Kelly to, adaptable and flowing, yet at times deep and resolute.  Bec is in some ways a foil to Kelly, a fiery character driven by passion, fierce and unyielding.

Here's where I'm trying to figure out if there's a second half to Echoes: Teen Angst with Bec, or if the rest of the story would all be its own arc.  Either way, I'll cap this post here with one more pic

Kelly's Story Bit 1(Echoes: Origins)

Some time ago a friend and I discussed a story about a little girl and a ghost, and the character concepts stuck with me long after we generally forgot about the original idea.  I ended up growing attached to Kelly as a character, imagining her as this young girl who didn't give up, on herself or others.  I had started watching more animated series, and I began to imagine a broader story for the character(s).

Perhaps Kelly had some magical chalk that can create the things it draws(which I'm aware isn't wholly original), and maybe she finds it while hiding out in the attic after her first day of school.

This was probably eight or nine years ago that I began exploring the idea of Echoes, a series about Kelly, and her journey as a character.

The story begins before Kelly's first day at a new school; they've moved into her grandmother's old house after her father died and it's in a city some ways from where they had lived.  Kelly's first day is rough, and upon getting home she retreats to the attic, and stumbles across a chest which contains among other things, a large piece of white chalk.
Kelly takes the piece of chalk and makes a few marks on the floorboards to test it, and catches an oddly shaped shadow, which she decides to trace, imagining it at some new friend for herself.  An ethereal shape rises from the shadow- this is Gus.

A brief bit about Gus- they were not made by Kelly, they are actually a powerful spirit which has also served a seal to help ensure that the planes of existence stay separate(wouldn't actually ever play out well to combine them).  She calls them Gus, which they seem quite pleased with, having no distinct name of their own

Here's where I'm foggy and only have a general story.  Kelly gets bullied at school, but with the help of Gus, she rids herself of his torment, most likely by teaching him not to mess with her(scaring/intimidation).  There's more to Kelly's story than some "magical" chalk, and this bully was one of the first things she'd need to overcome.  Kelly is special, and not just because her mom told her so.  In fact, her mom doesn't really know how special Kelly is.  In the Echoes setting, there is a Spirit Plane adjacent to our own, and souls tend to be the rare travelers between the planes, if only briefly.  Kelly is what some refer to as an Archon(term for this setting, I liked the word so what), someone who has a strong connection to the Spirit Plane, and can draw from and channel its energies, though it is something she must learn to use and control.

Kelly begins to be more adventurous and curious as she is spending less time being sad, perhaps has some small adventures using her magical chalk, before finding an abandoned manor said to be haunted.  Here, Kelly begins to see a more serious world, more dangerous adventure.  There is a malevolent spirit sealed in the manor, and in exploring Kelly finds herself in a struggle to escape the demonhound and the manor, and must use her powers to stay alive.  Unable to escape even after defeating the hound, she draws a door which instead of leading her our, leads her into the Spirit Plane.

Here, is where she meets Edos and Ryelle, two Children of Gaia(nature spirits) who become a loyal friends to Kelly, and Ryelle is much of a big sister to the young heroine.  Kelly learns that a malevolent spirit whom I still need a name for wants to cross planes to feed in the Material Plane("our" plane), and plans to find and destroy the seals, and open a special gate between the Planes.  Kelly also meets Marçai, a wandering spirit of a swordsman with a troubled soul, unfinished business kinda thing.  He remembers being charged to protect someone and failed to do so.  It still haunts him, and some of his motivation to help Kelly comes from seeing her in some ways as his previous charge.


Despite best efforts, it comes down to Gus as the last seal and the villain at the Gate, attempting to break through it in its weakened state(probably blasting it with energy or something).  Gus wraps himself around Kelly one last time and helps her understand before using his energy to reseal the Gate, using the Villain as an additional seal(remember, Gus is a powerful ancient spirit, despite often being little more than an emotive wisp).  Kelly loses Gus, and after the blinding flash and disorientation, Kelly finds herself in a park near her home.  She no longer has the magical chalk and despite wishful checking, Gus is indeed gone.  Kelly starts walking home.

An Open-Letter Comment

I was typing a response comment to a post wondering why people are still trying to stop abortions/control people, and I cut and pasted what I had so far here; I believe it wouldn't have been read... right.
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The question, in a way that it is never worded, is whether it is the responsibility of the government to prohibit abortions - the importance of "Pro-Life"['s] use of the term murder. The government is "supposed to represent the will of its people", so it "should" be up to the citizens if it is something that should be prohibited. I feel as though the nation is honestly divided in its beliefs, which is why there is still a debate about it.
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I can't get very far when I ask myself if I think abortions should be legal, because I think it's a very loaded question. I believe life should be valued, and that's usually the argument on both sides. From there, it becomes a question of whether its the government's responsibility to outlaw abortions, or if this is something that oversteps though bounds of what a government should control.

If it's murder, it seems like something that should be prohibited by law. It's also a matter of a person's body though, and is the government in control of your body? I'm not sure to be honest what the answer would be for this, because I don't know that a question of this nature can be answered so broadly by a law.

Is the government supposed to represent Good and Right, or the will or its peoples? These ideas are not automatically inclusive, and has been one of the biggest questions since people have been vying for power - for better or worse.

Who You Are and What You Do

It's something I think about a lot, especially as I progress in years, not as though I'm terribly aged yet at 28 years-old.  The title, that is, I think about Who I am and how it does and doesn't relate to What I do.  I've touched on this a little from the question of "Where do you see yourself in (x) years?" in a vlog post, but clearly I still find myself pondering it into the hours of the night(it's just after 4am).

What your job is by description and how you work can be two entirely different things, and various types of work or jobs seem to be viewed by some as almost in differing classes(think of blue collar and white collar as existing terms).  There is a lot of work to be done, and it's not like everybody wants the crummy jobs.  Taking pride in yourself and how you work is important to me, not so much as what you do.  Then again, let's also try to remember that it can be a great boon for someone to work in a field that they enjoy and are passionate about.

So it's good to try to do what you love, what you are good at, though at the same time, how you work and who you are can be more important than your station.

I think about it because I want to be able to do the things I love and am passionate about, but I also need to make a living.  It becomes a matter of wanting to do both, and the best route would seem to be to make a living by doing what I love to do.

That made me start asking myself the question of what I love to do, what I am passionate about.  I enjoy a lot of things, and learning has always been something I've enjoyed, which only contributed to making it less obvious of an answer.  I thought about what I do when it's my choice, when I have free time.

I love to design worlds, characters, settings, and story concepts.  The amount of information and work I have created and put into even just the Future d10: Visceroth Cluster pen-and-paper rpg system and setting is pretty massive.  There are characters who exist in doodles, sketches, notes, and my imagination, who will likely never be known by hardly anyone else.  I love these characters, I've spent hours and hours of my life dreaming them up, drawing them, creating tales around them.

I don't know that I would write my stories, so I haven't pursued the path of a writer.  I'd like to make these RPG systems into a thing, so trying to get those to a publishable state would be a great goal, though it seems lofty.  I'd love to try to make a graphic novel for the Echoes story, and dabble in it, but my art is still a WIP.  Even then, how do I go about making a living doing that or while I do that?(rhetorical, that's the conversation)  To thrive at something, it's best to be able to invest as much as you can to help ensure success(assuming what you invest does indeed help).

Mostly, I have thoughts and ideas that I just want to share, and while that doesn't make me a living, I can do it for free.  All I ever think about these days is how much I wish I was doing these things, but I haven't been lately.  I've been doing my job and it's been wearing down on me.  There are a lot of people who worked hard for years in their free time to eventually be able to do what they love, so I can't use that as an excuse.  

So I feel like the best I can do is keep trying to get myself to work on the things that I love like they are my job, so that one day, maybe they can be.

Observers With Agency

I've spent a lot of time thinking over the years, some of which I've shared both through this blog as well as my YouTube channel, and I like to think about things as complexly as I can.  One thought that I've always found fun to explore, is what it means to... be?  Be alive, be human, exist?

Not really a question one ever expects to find an answer to.

One of the things I've thought about related to that, is the question of what then sets humans apart, if anything?  Many things like creativity, puzzle-solving, and social behaviors aren't exclusive to humans.  I think the idea of Purpose is though.  While you could say that all things have a purpose, it's more often used to describe a role.  Does prey know its purpose is to be so?  So what is the purpose that humans have?  There's a lot of big questions on that one, so I'm gonna segue to another facet of life and existence- the soul...?

The cells in our body are continuously replacing themselves, and over seven years, it's been estimated that pretty much ever cell in your body would be entirely new, not a single one the same as from you, just those years before.  Awareness, to some degrees, could be described as electrical impulses, so how can you know the world is as you perceive it?  And that's a really big thing- perceiving.  Our memories, as they're stored by our perceptions, in turn give us context.  A personal level of context, by which we correlate and understand what we know.  What really makes that amazing to me, is that our context has a way of shaping how we perceive things.  So why is that so cool to me?

Humans can appreciate the amazingly intricate setting in which life exists on our planet, and even understand it, more and more each day.  We look for patterns and connections, seeking to learn everything we can from anything we can, even at times pushing towards darker places.  When I think about the "purpose" humans might have, it seems like being able to understand and perceive how and as we do, might be a bit of that.

There's one other cool thing about humans- we can create huge changes, which has been pretty uncool in a lot of other ways too, but can and has done some pretty great things too.  Humans are a part of the world, and shape the direction it heads in.  We are observers with agency.

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