Endless Similarities And Other Nonsense

I can't get it out of my head that no matter how much I say it, or regardless of the different things I've done, that it seems like I'm repeating someone else's sins. For similar reasons, in similar time frames. It's eerie and I can't stand it.

I mean, look at it. The meetings; "I like you but I also like someone else."

To about a month later some serious shit hitting the fan. Then some come and go. The "second pick" thing, up until a breaking point... Wherein we (the sharer of sins) didn't go with the right person because they were the right person; we did it because the other option pissed us off. It sounds shitty but that's what it is. I feel bad about it, but I won't try to dress it up as something it isn't. I'll address the truth of my situation, because we all know that's what it is.

I try to tell myself that I'm doing things differently; I've never argued to bring her back or done anything to lead her on, I've always told the truth, never done anything to intentionally piss her off, I've always been upfront and answer whatever questions I can. I've downright refused to take anything from her since I have nothing to offer in return. I've not slept with her because I think that'd be extremely terrible of me to do since her emotions are already so strong. I've tried to do as good as I possibly can within the boundaries of my numbness.

But in the end, am I just as horrible? (Hey, that's the name of the song I'm listening to right now.) I don't want to give up. I have your picture open on my computer, the browser window scooted over to the side so I can look at it as I write. For inspiration and such. I'd kill to have you here beside me right now. I just don't know what to do though. How can any of this be made right? (...And "Don't Stop Believin'" now plays. Seriously, is iTunes... self-aware...?)

Everything is still such a jumble for me. I range from loathing to another "L" word and so many things in between when it comes to someone from a dead past. And even aside from that clusterfuck I can't 100% overcome, my life's stuck in a huge rut. (And now "Hero" by Regina Spektor....really.... really. Motherfuck.)

I care about you so much. I love the way you'll rub your lip ring on my lip after a kiss or how you'll brush it on my skin when you're close to me. I love the sound of your whisper as we talk or how even though your bed is huge we still lay there close together like it's the small one I have at home. I love the sound of your snore, lol. I love your eyes, they're more full of life than I've ever seen in anyone else, even when you're depressed and down. I love how when I read, you push yourself up into my lap and read the pages with me. I love your joy, how easily you can show that you're happy, and how contagious you make it I love how you pick up on the little things I do that betray how I really feel in a lot of situations. I love how you can joke around but you know exactly when I need you to be serious (and now a rickroll. derp). I love your attention to detail.

I love all of these little details ABOUT you.

So why I can't love YOU?

I mean, looking at your picture now, I can say that there's something. Sometimes. Only, it isn't there nearly as much as I feel it SHOULD be. I don't know if it's just getting swallowed up and overshadowed by the maelstrom of other shit churning through my mind or not, I only know that it's hit and miss. And you deserve better than that.

I don't know. I don't know what to do. I'm trying to get my life back in some sort of earlier. I'm waking up earlier, I'm eating "healthier," I'm trying to be more active and all of that. I'm trying to find a job but even when that happens, I still feel like my life is going to be in this rut.

I don't know if I'll finish up my degrees. I don't know that I'll be able to, or if they'd even be worth it. I feel more and more like that time of my life is past; it's an opportunity I had and wasted. I feel like my life is now moving into and will always be caught in the period I will refer to as the "could have been." I could've been something. But that opportunity has passed as well. And now I just have to deal with that.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. Some sort of uneasy acceptance, I suppose. What else can I do? I'll be paying off debt for a long time. This isn't how I ever wanted things to be, but life rarely if never works out the way we plan or want it to.

("Disappear" by MCS just started to play. I'll take that as my cue.)

That never-ending cycle in the picture above? I know what she was and what I've now become. I'm trying to break it, trying to change it. Please don't let me fuck you over. I'm sorry I'm another propagator in the cycle.

The problem I have with the soul contraption

Swallowed up slowly like a bad reaction

All around what you do and say while the symptom falls further away

You live in silence but you can't describe it

So what's the point of talking at all?

The store bought injury... the family cane

Just another boy bad at the game

This is when you need a friend to keep you moving around

'cause all your thinking has made you slow

You might be stopping out.. you know

Frustrated fireworks inside your head

There's a wet fuse smoking.. you caught instead

What you're dealing.. but it's just a start

Was a time since your problem was a poison dart

And you act like a cowboy.. putting arrows in my hat

I'm a hardboiled hero and I'm not so bad

but I didn't know when to run from this...

A proud fan is gonna see you shatter

I know that there really isn't anything the matter

Nothing is gonna be crying words... they only want their voice to be heard

They use it sometimes to show that they're around

Or they build you up a theory like the walls of a town

A tired and ancient ruler right now... the neighborhood slaves are hardly skilled

Open your parachute and drop your weight

Float on down to the center and investigate

I did my self requirement... better cop out hard

Or i'll leave right now

'cause this feeling of loving.. I felt it in my chest

Like the nighttime footsteps of an unknown guest

I know it wasn't me, I wasn't moving...

I felt thunder.. the rain was pouring

I know it must be something wrong all this is restoring

You don't have to live in a life's mistake

Stay in the center and wait

Stay in the center and wait

Stay in the center and wait

The Changes A Month Or So Can Bring....

So I guess the past month or so has been mostly either a jumble of impersonal writings, vagueness, or hints at various things, with perhaps a few exceptions. I'll take a few minutes to catch everyone up on everything, I suppose. I've got a few different things on my mind that I may as well write away on.

I'll write in no particular order, unless otherwise designated.

It's been a FULL month since I've had my last drink. It's been a little over a month since I told someone to stay out of my life. Correlation? Heh, a fairly good chance of that.

A lot of people have reacted to this surprisingly, and I don't know how to take that. I mean, a fair amount of the same people that have been surprised were those wasting away every weekend right beside me. Others though... eh. It's just strange, because it's like no one believed I COULD do it, that I didn't have the strength to. Thanks for support, assholes. Lol.

Support has been one of those frail things. I mean, I have a handful of people I can talk to about this stuff. One I usually don't, because I don't want to take a chance of my own troubles making them relapse. I have one or two people that are there for me, but don't really understand the situation. So really the bulk of success lies in the fact that someone very close to me decided to give up smoking a couple of weeks into my sobriety, and we've been talking to each other a lot and helping each other through it. She's even up nearly as often as I am, so if it's 5 in the morning and it hits me hard, I can just talk to her.

I'm not even quite sure why I'm staying sober. I have no real driving force behind it. I guess just to prove to someone, anyone, or maybe just myself... that I can actually do it. That's what stings about the disbelief, I think, because I goddamn well know that if I want to do something, I'm usually successful (and this will be talked about on other subjects later on in the post if I remember).

Sometimes it's been easy, but others it hasn't. A lot of people just don't seem to get it. Maybe some of my success has to do with the fact that I'm just not at Franklin anymore. I talked to one friend up there not too long ago, and she asked when I was going to visit. I said maybe in late June or early July. We got to talking and I stated that I'd been sober for a while by choice. She asked how it was, and I answered honestly that it sucked. She said, "well, when you visit we'll change that" and talked about what we'd do when we drank. Uhh. Excuse me... did you not understand anything I just said? Other instances have come up too.

Two people I spent time with a few weeks ago (I won't call them friends, because they aren't, and I have no real desire to hang out with either of them anymore since they stopped being a part of my life [the only reason I spent time with them in the first place is because I can tolerate ONE of them when he's not with the other, and my one friend I was with more or less duped me into seeing them both]) were talking about how we all needed to hang out. Then they brought up the issue of drinking, and I politely told them that I was trying to stay sober and I wanted no part of their plans. They kept talking for a little while but I did my best to brush it off.

Not even a week later they were bringing up the idea to my other friends, and trying to get them in on it and persuade me. Seriously? I mean... really now? Fucktarded assholes can go suck my flaccid cock. *sigh* I politely told my friends that were talking about it that I wasn't interested and to not bring it up again. One didn't quite understand (it was legitimate questioning on his part, not further trying to get me to drink) and so I tried to sum it up to him. I said that whenever people invite me to drink, it makes me want to. Or when people talk about it, it does give that urge to. And I told him to please stop because I still have shit at home in a bookbag.

And that's that. Those instances give me the urge to drink, but on the whole, when I get into my certain "really depressed and need to cope with ANY method" mood, I've realized that it isn't necessarily the urge to drink; it's the urge to do SOMETHING to pass out or get my mind off whatever puts me into that mood, but unfortunately for me, I haven't discovered too many things that work so I want to turn to that.

And that leads to a better transition into the next topic. The things that put me into that mood in the first place.

Surprisingly, it may not be what you at first think it is. It isn't what I thought at first either, but it's a relief to me. The first thing everyone is going to say, if I asked "what do you think is the #1 thing getting me down?" most everyone would answer with something about HER.

Only, it isn't the right answer anymore. This sure as fuck isn't to say I'm over her and happy and life is amazing now. I'm not and it isn't. Everything about HER still gets me down, make no mistake about that.

I've had about a month of no contact with her, though. So for the first time in...ever... I actually have the chance to MOVE ON and start trying to get over my feelings for her since she isn't there every week like a bad sitcom that I just can't change the channel on, sucking me back in and making me feel...miserable. On the note of bad TV, I fucking love wife swap. We get bored and watch that all the time.

But yeah. So I've started to move on. And this is what I've needed since January...probably since August if not even sooner than that. It still gets to me. Everything we went through, all of that bag. It still hurts, it still makes me depressed, it still makes me feel worthless and pissed off, etc. etc. But it's different from what it was, because she isn't there in my life to really grind it in.

It's just weird to look back at it all. Sometimes it doesn't feel like the end anymore. Urrgh. I'm not going to be the one to backpedal though, I'd do a lot before that every happened.

So it has that feeling of a shitty ending. Yeah, I wish something else could've been done, but this isn't a story or a movie. Life doesn't wrap up all the plot strings and make a nice happy ending. That's just the way things work, like it or not, and I can't do anything to change that. I still look back, I still obviously read old IM's or reminisce, but its bitter if nothing else. The last IM I have is a single line and my autoreply; It's probably in the top 3 things she's said to me that pissed me off most. It probably ranks in my top 10 of all time from any source. Regardless.... I miss her. I won't lie about that or hide it, there's no reason to. But I'm much better off as is, and even though I'm still really depressed and not happy, I'm less depressed than I was before. I don't want to open that door again. There might've been a time in the past. Honestly, I do believe that if in January, if that night had been an actual goodbye, even after all the ridiculous shit that happened leading up to then... I do honest to God think I would've taken a lot of time to myself, made sure I was over her, and would've eventually started talking to her and would've tried to be friends again.

That wasn't the end though, and the shit that followed after was downright sadistic and gives me no desire to ever have a friend like that. I cannot wait until the day I can say "I love you" to Haley. I really hope that day comes and I hope she finds out so it hurts like a motherfucker so that cunt knows the feeling. It won't be the same, not even remotely, but ohhh. I still dream about her and that...upsets me.... to say the least. But it's just weird, really, genuinely weird... looking back, because I'm forgetting some of the little things. Like, I'll be browsing old IM's to find a particular line or something, and then I'll come across a photo in the IM, because it saves those, then my night automatically gets a spike of anger to it. The sound of the voice is the one that hits me upside the head the most though. (Of fucking course that song would play now). It's anger and pain and just... I don't know if I even properly care to describe that emotion that wells up inside me. L....? I can't recall the voice unless I REALLY try to, and that is rarely intentional. Other times, in dreams for instance, it'll come. Still others, if I'm reading something (anything, it doesn't have to be anything even pertaining to her) and it reminds me of her, then I hear it being read in that voice. I even still check my mails daily. Fuck me.

I know all of that makes it out to sound like I'm psychotically depressed; after all, if after all of that, something still makes me MORE depressed... while the above things are always on my mind, it's a generally fading thing. It comes and goes.

What really gets at me now is the monetary issue. Last time I checked, I'm down to my last 1,000$. I've got some paperwork coming in to get an extension on the grace period of the single loan that's up (on a sidenote, I can't for the life of me understand how this one loan is up, yet my others are good until December/January). It isn't so much that I'm in debt that gets me. It's that I don't have money to do anything. 1k is like DEEP into the redline for me and it makes me really nervous and worried about the future. I've managed to get by though, but that's rapidly coming to an end.

I desperately need to find a job. I feel like after getting laid off up until at the very earliest April, I probably couldn't have kept any job I would've gotten hired at because of how depressed and out of it I was. From April up until the May tell-off would've been questionable. Now I'm fairly confident that if I got something I'd be able to put my full effort into it again. The problem being now, finding someplace. I keep pursuing though.

Obviously as I mentioned, up til April all the shit going on in life would've kept me down, but now I feel like the main source of my depression is in fact having no money or just being home all day. It fucks with me trying to rebuild my self-worth and my usefulness.

Whoever said that money can't buy happiness was a liar. Well, not exactly. It's a misleading statement. Money may not exactly buy happiness, but think about all the things you do that you consider fun. For me, it's usually just spending time with friends, either watching movies, playing a game or nerd cards. But examine it further; what bought the movies, the video game, or the cards? Or the gas for driving around? Or the food you eat when you go out with someone? Ehh? Ehh??? Yeah. It's rare for me to be able to do any of that because of the lack of money.

Haley and Katy managed to peer pressure me into getting Seasons 1,2 &3 of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," but it was a great purchase despite being in the redline. (Shh, don't argue it... when I'm taken by the arms and walked up to the counter to purchase it as I'm contemplating said purchase...yeah, peer pressure =P)

I really wish I had just a LITTLE more cash, though. One of my Franklin friends went to housewatch in Florida for the summer, so he's got the place all to himself. He's got a job with Disney. He said that if I could make it down there, he'd take care of food, he'd have a place for me to stay, he could get us into Disney. He'd literally have EVERYTHING taken care of. The problem of course, being that I need the money to get there.

And you know what really, REALLY FUCKING SUCKS ABOUT THAT? Plane tickets would 219$ round trip. You've all no doubt probably heard me bitch about how many different opportunities have passed me by because I don't have that amount. Seriously, there's been so many things I COULD'VE done with 200$. There's going to be so many other opportunities in the future I'm missing out on too.

That's what I get for being a nice person. Yeah, I'd dip 19$ more into the redline to go to Florida for a week or so and have a fucking awesome time *anger* I'm never lending out money again, and I never want to borrow more than 20$ from a person, because I don't wanna fuck anyone over.

But I'm definitely trying to get a job now more than ever, and maybe it's not for the "right" reasons (start paying off student loans, etc), but I'm doing it for MY reasons, and to me, that's infinitely more important. I've got a whole list of shit I wanna do when I get a job, such as:

Replace my phone.

Fallout: New Vegas. Fallout 3 was orgasmic. I cannot wait for this when it launches this fall.

Halo: Reach. Nerd in me. Shush.

Xbox Live. I can't play at home obviously, but I could out at Scott or Kris' place, plus maybe I can fully corrupt Haley, lol.

Watch Cops with Tom. This is definitely an inside joke. And it will be one of the most awesome things I'll be able to do this summer.

Definitely go out somewhere nice, plan a whole fucking awesome crazy night for Haley.

Take Kris, Scott, and Katy out and pay for everything, in hopes of partially repaying their generosity towards me in my time of need.

Put a full tank of gas in my car and then find the creepiest roads possible with Dustin.

Towers of Midnight -- the next WoT book.

and note that at least 3 of the things on this list I can't get until early fall or so.

And then of course hit up loans and debt and shit. I mean really, none of that shit is crazy or off the wall, I just wanna be able to do actual things with the people I care about again. I hate this rut.

What else...? Oh yeah, I'm totally not finished yet. I have no idea how long this post is, but I've got a lil more left.

I guess this kinda ties in with Father's Day and the money thing. Dad and I aren't close in the least bit; he probably talked to Scott more than me since they work at the same place (this really isn't an exaggeration, out of three days our only conversation was "I'm going to take a bath." "Wait til your mother gets home.").

But the other day we were all hanging out as usual, cracking jokes and whatnot, and Scott says something about how my dad (paraphrased) said "if it wasn't for his mom i'd kick him out." He insisted that this was a joke, but really... I can easily see dad saying that.

And I don't think I care TOO much. If he did, it'd give me more motivation to do something. And it's not like I don't have places to go to. Whiteland, obviously, is the easy choice, but I don't wanna feel like I'm even more of a burden. The Pennsylvania offer has been bumped up; I could move there NOW if I wanted and take care of things there.

I also have the opportunity to move to New York. I haven't really talked about that to anyone, but I could move up there with Tammy. I was offered a room to stay for free until I get on my feet, and all the usual stuff. So I could easily move to either NY or PA. They seem like nice options.

What else in life...? Ehh. I haven't really been listening to too much music lately. I'm not on Lappy too much anymore, and when I am it's usually for a couple of minutes to check on shit and then I'm off again. Here lately I only listen to things when I'm driving somewhere. To be fair, I've been driving A LOT more, but I usually only listen to either Coheed's "Year of the Black Rainbow" or Motion City Soundtrack's "My Dinosaur Life." I've been told I'm not allowed to listen to Elliott Smith when I drive, which is probably good advice.

I haven't really been writing much, but it's summer, so I'm able to sit outside and read in the sun... I missed that so much when it was cold, it's one of my favorite things to do. It was a toss-up between some of Sebold's works ("The Lovely Bones") or Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series. After a little self-debate and a lot of issues with the library, I settled on King. The first book is really crappy, to say the least, but everyone, the author included, says to stick with it because everything really takes off in the second book. And everyone is right. It's a good series so far. Not GREAT, nothing even close to Jordan's "Wheel of Time," but it's definitely one of the better series' that I've read in the past few years. It trumps Goodkind's "Sword of Truth," at the very least, but then I never thought too highly of it.

After finishing this series (I'm on book 3 of 7) I'm not sure if I should finish out the Dune series or the Sword of Shannara series. Dune has over 15 books, and after the author died, his son co-authored a bunch of prequel/sequel books with an author that I absolutely fucking loathe (Kevin J. Anderson. In the EU, they seriously had to ask him to stop writing novels). Shannara, meanwhile, has upwards of 20 something. And the more I read about the reviews on it, they're supposedly kinda "bleh" but I already bought 3 books in the series a looooong time ago when they were cheap. Either way I don't know; I have several books in each series. But they're all on my to read list. I figure I can save Sebold for a rainy day, since they're supposed to be short, easy reads.

What else? Uhhh. I don't know. I've been thinking about ambien again. If I ever get some money I might (ugh) go back to the doctor and hope to get some more. Not even to trip, just to get some legitimate sleep. It's 11 til 6 right now and I'm just starting to feel tired. It doesn't matter how much or little I sleep; I CANNOT fall asleep worth shit. I've had several days in a row where I get 3 or 4 hours, and I'm exhausted all day, but can't sleep a wink. Too much shit on my mind, or what? I don't know.

I guess a lot of this sounds minor or insignificant. And really, it is, and that's good. Aside from the money issues though, I have other things bothering me.

Love, obviously. The more I think about this, the more I don't know if such a thing really exists anymore. Maybe I'm just struggling to convince myself that I never loved her / it doesn't exist as much as SHE fought to convince herself that she did in fact love me. If such a thing exists, I've never seen it two sided. I really think maybe it's just some fake romantic notion that isn't ever really there. We all want there to be something like it, but... I don't know. I don't see it. I've never felt it. Maybe I've never felt it for anyone either. Don't argue this, Haley.

Aside from the love stuff. There's the whole self worth issue and that's hugely weighing in on my mind. Even up to last year my train of thought had been: "I can do things with my life and I WILL go far if I keep trying."

Now my thoughts are usually, "I COULD'VE done great things." Could've, as in the past. As in, not gonna happen now or anymore. And I don't know if this is so far fetched anymore. The lynchpin of my destruction was really back in November. The original plan was finish those classes that semester, work January, take the last classes I need in Feb-May, then graduate. None of the loans would've been coming in til December, so I could've taken time to myself, done SOMETHING other than sit around.

But failing that semester, dropping out, then losing my job kinda screwed up all those plans. And now? Now, I'm too far in debt to take classes in the fall, then by the time spring semester rolls around, I have to start paying off student loans, and I WON'T have the money to take classes in the spring. So that final semester I need to get my degrees, that final semester I need to better myself and my future.... it's all on hold indefinitely unless some miracle comes along, and we all know God doesn't like me enough for that to happen. So I'm boned. And all of this resulted from "love." So maybe, even if it does exist... I don't wanna have anything to do with it anymore, because look where that's always ever gotten me; bad grades, a shitty liver, debt... yeaaahhh. Awesome.

I was going to write a little more about alcohol; namely, the headgame I give myself over it, but I'm tired. Maybe I'll post it in a part 2. Anyways, all of that above is the general stuff that's been on my mind for a while.

The things that used to mean so much to me...
have gone the way of dinosaurs, hopes and dreams, and everything.
All I want for you to be is happy or something...

I'm Going To Hell For Laughing At This (And It's So Worth It)

That's Big Butter Jesus in Ohio burning to the ground. See my facebook picture of me in front of it. Awesome.

The statue got struck by lightning a couple nights ago.... Does this mean it'll be rebuilt three days later?

/dies

Lmao

From May 28, 2009:

"1:01:59 AM Seriously ---, and I'm being so serious here, if you ruin Journey for me, you will not be a part of my life.... I can forgive a lot...but ruining Journey......No. Stop it. Stop it....."

Well, I guess that wasn't a joke after all. To be fair, I did say "I'm being so serious here."

There Could Be Nothing After This

I'm starting to think of that as both a wonderful comfort and an extremely terrifying idea. I can argue in favor of God the Creator. Not a Christian God or religious God of any sort. Just a creator. And I keep thinking about what comes next, only... I can't come up with a logical reasoning for it. God the Savior? Why? Only because we as people WANT there to be something. I'm not saying lack of proof is an argument against such a thing's existence, but I can't come up with any sound logical conclusion other than "we want it to exist for our own comfort, so we hope it does."

And if that's the case, what if there really is nothing? Why does anything now matter if it isn't going to change? What's the struggle for if I can't find any end goal?

I figured out the alcohol thing. Lately it hasn't been so much an urge to drink as it has to simply do SOMETHING about whatever emotion I feel. I'm not sure what one to label it as. Something that makes me want to pass out as quickly as it hits me because it strikes me that horribly. I don't think I'm exactly scared of caving into binging so much as I am about just doing it because it's the easy way to deal with things since I don't know anything else that works. That could easily just be me arguing with myself and trying to convince myself its ok. I'm not sure.

But... It's been almost a month now (the 21st will mark a full month) and the only times I've really had those urges have been when I want to escape that feeling. I just don't know if that feeling is the urge to drink or the buildup of meaninglessness.

If I did though, what would it matter? If there's nothing after this... nothing isn't so bad. It's peace. Why not do what makes me stable or otherwise "better" off? I don't know, I don't know.... uggh. And if there is something else afterwards? I'm living my life and trying to do what is right because it's right, not for some motivation of reward.

Isn't the moral atheist a better person than the moral Christian? The atheist does the right thing because it is right, while the Christian does it out of motivation to gain something. If there is a God the Savior, some just or righteous judge, then... you get what I'm saying?

A post coming up sometime about two separate but important things on my mind. I need to finish or at least start three other writings, however... because they're all inter-related.

What do we do when the world falls apart at our feet?

Every time you
Talk about it, talk about it
At least it makes you feel something
Inside

Who have I become?
Who have I become?
Oh God, everything, everything
All around me is crumbling at my feet.
Everything, everything
All around me is crumbling at my feet.

I stare, so delicate and ashamed
At the shell I've shed myself from
I stare, so delicate and ashamed

13 Things I Like (And Don't Like) About Final Fantasy 13

Spoilers abound, but I believe the only person that cares about the game that reads my blog is the one that I beat it with, so...

Likes

1.) Vanille. Just. OMG Vanille. Most of this probably has to do with the fact that she's a redhead. She's not my favorite character ever, but she's definitely my favorite in the game (everyone just lost). Me and some friends talked about going to Gen-Con later in the summer; they talked about cosplaying and got me thinking of what I'd do. I'm desperately trying to convince Haley to cosplay as Vanille. My nerd boner would have a power level of OVER 9000!!!!! ....seriously, it'd be damn sexy. =D

2.) Characters in general. FF 13 does an amazing job of ESTABLISHING its characters. Within a couple hours of the game you feel like they're well crafted and very interesting.

3.) Character interaction. The way it makes all of the characters interact with each other is nothing short of awesome and something none of the other games in the series (maybe 6, but I'm not too sure) do. This has given me A LOT of ideas about what to do in my fantasy series to make my characters have some interesting little moments.

4.) ATB system. It speeds up combat by making you do stuff, none of that take as long as you want turn based stuff.

5.) Crystarium. It's much simpler than FFX's sphere grid, where everything was just huge and laid out before you. This divides it up amongst the six different classes and makes it much easier to understand and develop your character as you want to.

6.) The easy pace in the first 20 -25 hours of the game; I never had to grind (stay in an area to fight creatures so I could level up)once in order to keep moving in those hours of the game.

7.) Creature encounters; I absolutely love that they're not random any more. In most RPG's, they're just random encounters. You're walking around, then BAM, music plays and suddenly you're in a battle. In 13, you see every creature in the world. Don't want to fight it? Try to run by it.

8.) Voice acting. A lot of the character portrayal comes through in their voices; how they react with surprise to information, or their coldness, or their cheery happiness in the face of death. It goes a loooooong way.

9.) Cut Scene Animations; they don't have too many of the insanely high quality scenes, most often to just use the character models (maybe slightly better quality than that...) to do the talking and whatnot, but the ones where they go all out for the key scenes...they're better than the animations in Advent Children, I think. And that was a full length CGI movie.

10.) The balance between "light" and "dark" in the game; what I mean here is that is has some extremely dark moments in the game. Sazh learns how and why his son was turned into a l'Cie; for a few seconds he hangs on the verge of shooting Vanille, before finally talking himself out of it; as the scene starts fading to black however, the gun goes to his head; complete black; gunshot. I was REALLY surprised by this scene. Not because dark things shock me, but because the game built up to it quickly but believably. And while it has incredibly dark scenes like that, it also has these little things that make me smile too, whether it be a quip from Snow, something Vanille says, or Sazh's chocobo chick.

11.) The Eidolons; I was skeptical about these at first. They're a lot like the aeons from FF10, but that isn't the issue; every FF game has something like these. What first made it seem weird or over the top is that you have these magical creatures that you summon....and some of them turn into vehicles. Snow's Shiva sisters turn into a motorcycle; Lightning's turns into a horse. It was a little weird at first to get used to, but it makes sense in context with the rest of the game. And whereas in 10(X), they were absolute game changers and winners, while they're powerful here, they aren't onscreen that often and don't make things nearly as easy as in X.

12.) Item Usage; in X, I collected all of these items from post battles as victory spoils, but they were all pretty useless, and I didn't sell them because they weren't worth taking the time to sort through since gil (currency) was easy to come by. Here, however, you can get equipment and accessories off of fallen enemies, and the other crap you can use to upgrade weapons. And since gil is harder to come by, they're always welcome to be sold as well.

13.) Have I mentioned Vanille? Seriously, Vanille. Plllllllleeeeeeeeaaaaaasssssseeeeee cosplay as Vanille.

Dislikes:

1.) We'll get this one out of the way early: I say that the game establishes its characters extremely well. After that though.... it doesn't DEVELOP them. There's no real character development. Hope changes a little, but all in all, they stay the same throughout the entire game.

2.) Character names. Most of them are fucking stupid. I thought X had lame spots when their main enemy was named "Sin" (turns out this was just a translation error, but still....), though here....uggh. Hope. Snow. Lightning. Fang. They should've just named the antagonist "Mr. Bad," except....

3.) There isn't ever really a defined main villain. You have Barthandelus...sort of. But he isn't really the final boss, and he's flimsy besides. In X, you knew what your goal was and you had a very clear distinct threat to face. This game, you're just on the run, then "oh hey, kill this, the end."

4.) The soundtrack. Uematsu composed all of the FF music up until X; he did most of it for that game, and after that he drifted away from the series. He wrote the main theme for XII, but that was it. In XIII, he's nowhere to be found. And the soundtrack sucks balls because of that. X and VII have two of the greatest soundtracks I've ever heard. They weren't just "video game" music; it was something that can be socially accepted as "actual" music. Here though....it's lame...really lame.

5.) The plot. 13 is a mix-up between X and XII, everyone told me, before I started playing. And I can see every bit of X in it, and that makes me sad. Whereas X drew me in, had me caring about what was going to happen, had such a bittersweet ending that I still cry whenever I watch it... here, it takes a few of the bigger elements (become "the final aeon," or a recurring character that just won't fucking die, or, sadly, Vanille, who is like Rikku but made better as a character, so on and so forth....) but despite that everything just fell apart once the party reached....

6.) Gran Pulse. Ohh, fuck you, Gran Pulse. Once you get to Gran Pulse, you spend most of your time fighting and leveling up. I went from having no issues in battle to suddenly "every battle lasts 10 minutes or a creature will 1 hit KO me." It's great to demonstrate that suddenly you're in this savage land full of powerful creatures. It's horrible execution in gaming when you have to fight the same shit for hours on end just to be able to continue on to the next event gamin the story. Speaking of which. The story pretty much ended here....

7.) Really, once you hit Gran Pulse at about 20-25 hours of gameplay, the story is finished. You flee from Cocoon, then the whole of plot on Pulse is this; Hope gets pissy, fights his Eidolon. Fang and Vanille; hey, we remember our past, we were sent to destroy Cocoon, then hope fights her Eidolon. They think maybe if they go to their hometown they'll figure some shit out, then they fight Barthandelus and jet back to Cocoon, where it goes to game over. So you have MAYBE 30 hours of plot in the entire game. The other 40 are spent taking missions just so you can grind/level up so you can be strong enough to beat the fucking game. X had a good 50 -60 hours of plot.

8.) Fang. Her character, combat wise, was amazing. As far as the story goes, however, she seemed more tacked on than anything else. The little bit of plot that did go to her could've been given to some other character or she could've been written out entirely.

9.) The ending. Oh God, the ending. What. The. Fuck. Defeat Barthandelus, then suddenly Fang is like "back the fuck up bitches, I'm gonna complete our focus so Vanille doesn't have to become Ragnarok." Then everyone else becomes a Cieth, only...they magically turn back a couple of minutes later. The end was a big clusterfuck of, "well, lets destroy the city and just hope for the best." Then Fang and Vanille save it and turn to crystal. Serah and Dajh awaken from their own crystal states, everyone's happy to see them, and it's like Fang and Vanille are completely forgotten about. Wait, what?

10.) Every MAIN # FF game I've ever played always has a little nugget of "WTF" after the credits; usually a 30 second clip that reveals something important that suddenly gives an open ending. VII had RedXIII and his pups running up a cliff to suddenly see a moss covered Midgar, X had Tidus uncurling from a fetal position underwater as he swam up, and as he was about to break the surface, cut to title screen... This was just like "The end, fuck you." It could've shown Fang and Vanille awakening from their crystal states, meaning their focus wasn't complete, or JUST SOMETHING.....but nope.

11.) I know this is a nitpick, and apparently was done away with in XII, but they got rid of the victory fanfare after a battle is over. Though it was changed up from game to game, it always had the same distinctive sound to it (for those of you that can remember, whenever I got a text message my phone would play the Final Fantasy X victory fanfare). After battles now it's just like "oh, you're done. *deadpan silence*"

12.) Map system; instead of always pointing north, the map will twist and change to align itself with the way you're looking. It can be very disorienting.

13.) The new party system; this never really became a big gripe for me right up until the last few hours of the game. It goes like this; you control the party leader, while the AI controls your other two party members. I don't like this in certain circumstances; namely when you need to heal; instead of switching characters in and out of combat, you have to shift paradigms; you switch your character roles (going from a combatant to a magic user, or a magic user to a healer, all of that). It sucks because if you're in the red and your healer targets himself first, and you die...it's game over. If the party leader gets KO'd, the game ends. This is frustrating as hell when you're fighting, you take a bunch of damage, switch to a healer, he heals himself, and then you die. In the last few hours of the game I was about ready to choke something.

So there you have it. On the whole, it's a good game. It starts off great, but you just have to be ready to accept the grinding and complete lack of plot in the second half. In other news, Haley told me that Advent Children: Complete has about half an hour of new scenes added into it, and they reworked a lot of scenes... so I really want to watch that now. Since it's on Blu-ray though, I'm stuck with my old DVD copy. Go go gadget internet...

I'm also nostalgia'ing pretty hardcore for Final Fantasy X now. I beat that one (and X-2) with Maryiah.... I need to introduce Haley to this one since she thought XIII was pretty good. X. Favorite game ever. Time to find an emulator.... And for now at least, I'm off to watch that amazingly bittersweet and sad ending, since it's saved on lappy. God I love it.

Storm.

In the middle of a storm. Lightning illuminates the deep night sky; it betrays my silhouette on the horizon. This is where she finds me. This is where I find myself. Rain slicks my hair back, makes my... my boxers cling to my body. I wear no other clothes.

Her hand touches my shoulder; I snap back into existence. I see her lips moving, mouthing my name. I can’t hear her over the strength of wind and thunder... and my own voice. I stop screaming at once. I realize I’ve been doing it since before she found me.

I’ve been screaming the name of the one I’ve lost and will never regain. I think I remember that much. It weighs heavily on my heart and I can’t shake it.

She takes her arm around me and leads me back to the house underneath an umbrella. Once inside, she leaves me standing in the living room as she goes to get towels. Instead of handing it to me, she begins to dry me off. I feel the care in her movements, the cautious dabbing and drying of my torso and limbs as I struggle to make sense of the past few... however long I was outside.

“Drunk?” She asks softly as she runs her fingers through my hair and part it.

“...No,” I whisper without removing my stare from dead and empty dreaming. She sniffs my breath but there’s no alcohol on it.

“What were you doing out there?”

“I....” I pause. I have no recollection of waking up or walking out. “I don’t know.”

She gives me a quick kiss, then hugs me despite my body still being damp. Without pulling away she says, “I know you’re going through a lot right now... it’s getting to you and I see that... but you can’t keep doing things like this. It scares me.”

“I don’t mean to....” I really don’t. I just wish I was aware when these things started happening, but I find myself all too often in the middle of some bizarre activity with no recollection of how I got there or why I started doing it in the first place.

What’s wrong with me? Is this my future, to go on aimlessly without any pretense or realization of the world around me?

Have all the issues from my past caught up and overtaken me? Am I finally losing it?

The Future Of My Writing?

This is all hypotheticals and just me mulling over some thoughts, so I don't know if I'd take anything I say here too seriously.

I have that itch to write, but here's my main issue. Anything I really write set in the modern era (essentially the ides of Reality's Dream, Rosewater, and Waltz), are too closely tied to events I'm not keen on thinking about. You all know what I'm referring to, so there's no need to address it.

The problem with writing in Reality's Dream is that I want to focus on the beginning stuff; and that's the stuff I can't write because it's too much of a reminder. I'll try to make this sound as sane as possible, but face it, I'm fucked up in the head.

The start of Reality's Dream focuses a lot on the good that occurs between Alan and Hayley; as I write that stuff, I'll have to look back at everything that inspired it. Since I'll be looking back over all that stuff, it'll evoke some form of nostalgia for the past. And I'm ok with looking back fondly at those memories. The problem with it is that 1.) I'll recall it fondly and then remember that all of that is in the past; it's dead and gone and never coming back. 2.) Thinking fondly about things, I (like pretty much everybody else) tend to forget the bad that happened, or brush it aside, or think that it wasn't as bad as it really was. This in turn will make me question my decision, and on top of everything else I'm going through with Haley, the questioning of purpose and self-worth, and the extremely difficult to fight urges to drink (sidenote, I've been good for two or three weeks now), I do not need that.

The alternative to writing in Reality's Dream would be focusing more on events that happen with Bree and Maryiah. Or, if that doesn't hold my attention, I might focus on the later events in RD when Hayley and Alan have their "falling out," to put it nicely. But there's a problem with this too, because I feel like if I read and write all of that out, it's going to piss me off. And that's fine too, buuuuuuuuuut..... I feel like once that part is done, I'll have that all on my mind, and it'd be probably a couple of years (I know this from past experience) before I can fondly recall everything that inspires the beginning of Reality's Dream. So if I write the end, I won't be able to touch the beginning for a long time. But if I write the beginning, it's going to increase the chances of me fucking up and wrecking what little bit of stability I've found myself perched on.

I do have another option, however, and it's one that's currently interesting me a lot. The fantasy novel that I have "completed." I put completed in quotes for a few different reasons. It is, in fact, a completely finished novel. You could pick it up, and read it from start to finish as a complete and cohesive work of fiction, sitting at 801 pages. I even have 456 pages of the second book in the series complete, and it too starts from beginning and goes to about the mid-way point of the novel.

The issue I have with this is that's written out exactly as a 15 year old would write. And that in itself can't be blamed. It WAS written by a 15 year old. The project started about 9 years ago.

I like the ideas I have in it. I like the characters and the plot and the buildup into what will be an extremely deep, complex world. But it's written very simplistically and it's... a mishmash of a fuckton of things that inspired me at the time. Greek mythology, Lord of the Rings, the Wheel of Time series, Golden Sun (the first one... the second one sucked, but Goddammit, I've waited 7 years for the third one and I just might buy a DS for it...), Zelda, Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, even Magic: The Gathering.

Derp. A lot of it can be taken out or retooled to be made better. Instead of taking someone else's ideas I can make them my ideas, if you get what I'm saying.

The main idea I have, if I were to touch this story again, would be to greatly alter the story and do a complete rewrite. I think this is better because it starts off too slow, it's far too simple in the beginning and there aren't many characters at all, then suddenly in the second half you're getting new IMPORTANT characters into the last 100 pages or so. Umm. The balance there is really off. Doing a rewrite lets me add in other characters in the beginning right off the bat; namely Inari and then Aloran a few dozen pages later, I think. It lets me fix a lot of the plot things that have been nagging me, namely cliches.

Seriously, think about how much you know about fantasy beginnings. Hometown/village/city attacked or a natural disaster happens? Parents die? Main character is forced to escape and then hunts down the murderer, but along the way gets tossed into unforseen events? That's how a lot of fantasy starts out. A LOT. Even series' that I love, like Wheel of Time which is one of the most original and amazing set of books that I've ever read, falls victim to the hometown attacked and parents (at least injured). It later fixes this by making Tam (Rand's father) important.

Also, the cliche that the character's parents are really their parents. That's a big one, and that's gotta go too.

I plan on eliminating those, I think that'll make things a lot better. I'm also going to get rid of three or four characters from this novel. One of them will definitely re-enter later in the series. The others are probably cut for good.

The other problem I have with this story; while the rest of the books have plot shooting out the ass and plenty of character development to boot, this first book is definitely more character driven than anything else. One of the things that's recently been making me think about revising this novel is Final Fantasy XIII. I'm going to do a post on the game when I finish it, but I'll focus on what got me to thinking.

The plot forces different characters to interact with each other. You don't see that too often. Everyone's either one coherent group, or off in their cliques, but this one makes pretty much every character interact with the others. They have their own struggles, vendettas, likes and dislikes about everyone else. The characters are really what interests me in it. I don't want to emulate the characters or the plot, but the how they interact with each other. I don't want to have a copy of the events they do, just that general statement; if my book is character driven, I think it goes to show very unique sides of a character when they're forced to interact with someone they normally wouldn't. And since the story has (now) eight central characters, that's a good idea for me that i want to capture in my own way, I think.

I know I'm going to do something big with this fantasy series, but I feel like Reality's Dream and it's successors will be the most important things I ever write. Regardless, when I let people read the first book it was met with mostly favorable opinion, even with the ending. But the series just gets darker from there....

So what do I do? Let's dodge the obvious comment of "Do what you think is best" (I think Dustin's going to comment that just to do it, now, lol) because if I knew what was best, I wouldn't be asking for advice. Thoughts? Opinions?

More Of A Pun Than I Ever Thought

The title of the story is beyond a mind boggling metafictional thing now, I think. The story is the mimicry of life, the dream of the way things could've been for the most part, but what happens when life mimics the reality?

I think I'm the only "character" that's fully aware of how closely life is now following the story. The original draft it was all like this. Then I changed it up because of the inspirations, then I changed it back to the way things were after last year; after looking at the old notes, it's somewhat frightening how coincidental it all is. So when Haley appeared, everyone had a little chuckle at the coincidence between her name and the name of the character Hayley. I compare people to characters, at times, and as I got to know her more and more... she was a lot like Bree.

And what's happening now is so close to that original draft. The other part of what makes this so weird is the comparison in events not to the story, but to last year. There's only a few similarities, but they're striking. Most notably in the events that happen and the time elapsed between those events. I fought every step of the way and swore to myself that I'd never end up becoming HER. I wonder how much longer the coincidences between story/life and current events/past events will continue. I won't let myself become an instrument of loathing. I have to break this cycle.