/fallen/ - the fallen human

my mother told me that i am lazy today.

she was interrogating me again, listing everything that i should be doing, that i seem to have immense difficulty in actually doing. taking better care of personal hygiene, opening the windows to my room, doing research on what jobs i might be able to get or where i could move out to, driving out somewhere to fulfill some arbitrary quota of "getting out", things such as that. i managed to blurt out a question this time, instead of just taking it and avoiding saying anything wrong or bad like i usually do. i asked her what she thought the origin of all of this was, what she figured was keeping me from doing these simple tasks, why she figured i continued to have difficulty despite how "smart" i apparently am to her.

her answer was that i am lazy. it is laziness. and i am not trying hard enough.

and that kind of struck me, very hard. i sort of laughed then, in disbelief i guess. i didn't know what to think, and i still don't know what to think. just that straightforward answer of "you are lazy." i don't understand. it just doesn't make sense to me, and it makes me feel like she must be right. because why else would she say that? why else would she say something that, at first thought, seems so blatantly not right? what does "laziness" even imply here, anyway? am i doing this on purpose, for some kind of personal gain? am i being malicious or taking advantage of their good will by being this way? i just don't understand. it feels like an attack, it feels like i am being accused of something, it feels as though i've done something wrong. but to me, i just feel scared, and hopeless, and uncertain over everything. all of these things are so difficult. they feel so difficult. but they shouldn't be, should they? this is not normal. but why? am i really, truly just lazy?

i don't know. just another thing to doubt and turn over in my head again and again, i suppose. nothing new there. just more despair. piling on to the impending doom looming over my head. it truly feels like my life is ending. you hear the phrase "like it's the end of the world" in a mocking sense, but for me it honestly does feel like my life as i know it is ending, my world is ending. it feels like i'm at the final level in a video game, and i'm destined to lose against the final boss. it sounds silly, like i'm making some joke there, but i honestly think of real life in video game terms much of the time. or just like it's one big fantasy tale. i'm not living in reality, and i never have. most of my life was spent in front of a computer, or television screen. and i really do mean "most of my life." i never went to public school after preschool and kindergarten, so i just used the computer or played video games practically all day after my measly 2-3 hours of home schooling was finished for the day. that's essentially my life. never being forced into anything else other than church. just fun and games, by myself, all day. what a life, huh? that is my model for existence. that is all i know.

at least i have chara. as guilty as it makes me to say, i feel like i have been neglecting them lately to a degree, mostly because of how awful i feel much of the time. some of the only time we really have to speak is when i take walks. those are nice at least. being with chara and talking, but also just being outside, in the little nature that i have access to here without going somewhere scary and unfamiliar. the only bad thing is the people around, like i mentioned in the last post i guess. they make me really nervous sometimes, just having to exist near them. i feel like i'm gonna inconvenience them somehow, or something. when i'm walking the dog too, it's hard. my dog is really scared of everything too, so she gets startled by many things, especially passing other dogs. i always get worried too that some coyote or dog off it's leash will come and hurt her. i don't know what i'd do if that happened. sometimes i wish chara was physical too, so they could protect us from stuff like that. they always joke that they would kick the hell out of any dog that tried to come up and do something. i dunno how i feel about that, but it would be nice to feel safe in that way at least.

i always like taking walks with chara though, it always makes me feel at least a little bit better. i just want to be with them more. it's just hard, like everything is. or maybe it's just the "laziness." i don't know. i think chara realizes the futility of trying to come up with any way to assist me or help me when i'm like this, which i sort of appreciate in a weird way. it just feels comforting to know they understand, and i think they realize that. they don't bother giving me any advice that means nothing, or whatever. just acknowledgement and comfort. i like that a lot. it seems like some kind of hugbox situation where they're just reassuring me in my beliefs and worries and such. but what better is there to say, really? if there is nothing more to say, there is nothing more to say. perhaps the truth, the "solution", whatever it is, isn't so comforting. but it seems like neither of us know what that is, so there's no point in assuming. just holding on, i suppose. for something, anything. i mean, maybe it's all just an exercise in futility. but at least i have chara.

that's all for now, i guess.

>>53

Sounds like your mom is secretly this guy in disguise.

i finished MOTHER on sunday. (i'm just gonna call it MOTHER, with the capitalization and everything. the newer names of "earthbound zero" or "earthbound beginnings" sound really lame, and this game definitely was not. so i like MOTHER the best.)

it was really good, i think. i'm not any kind of, you know, god of good taste or anything. i don't really hate a lot of things, and i can be very easily amused or satisfied at times, and overly forgiving. but i really enjoyed this. and i suppose that's to be expected to some degree, with how undertale is my favorite game in the whole world and knowing that the mother series was the main inspiration for it made me very excited to finally start playing the games. but i guess i was mostly curious about how i would enjoy MOTHER, as people say things about how it's somewhat tedious and difficult and not extremely great, especially to play as your first experience. but i still managed to finish it, and enjoy it.

and, well, some of those things are definitely true. there's a lot of grinding you have to do at times. which actually didn't bother me that much, perhaps because of what i mentioned about being easily amused/satisfied and all. and the game can get quite difficult, but that wasn't necessarily awful either. now, i have to admit though, i DID use save states through the game. i only used them to the extent i figured was fair, as to remove unnecessary tediousness and stuff. but i acknowledge that makes things quite different, maybe even to the point where it makes me a cheater in someone's eyes. i'm not sure. but i did use them, so i want to make that clear at least. and, even then, it was still difficult but not horribly so.

the most difficult part of the game was definitely mt. itoi. even itoi himself admits that they didn't even bother thoroughly playtesting the area, which is kind of funny to me in a way. but i just ran away from most fights in that area with just my regular party because it was just too much of a struggle to deal with one encounter at my current levels, let alone the onslaught of random encounters that you have to deal with as you explore the giant mountain area. which, of course, is another big criticism of the game that i did find sort of annoying at times, the random encounter system. sometimes i got two or even three encounters right after one another, after just a step or two. sometimes i could walk for a while without getting one at all, and of course that seems to happen when you're trying to grind. but honestly, it was only a minor nuisance to me at worst. and i suppose you can always buy repel rings for areas with lower level enemies, even though i forgot to get those often or was saving my money for other things instead.

i never found any of those things to truly hamper my enjoyment of the game, though. it really felt like an adventure. it gave me that feeling of looking forward to playing it every day, and savoring everything as much as i could, and not wanting it to end when it was almost over. i even dreamed about it one night. i really loved playing it. and it makes me think, if this is supposedly the least enjoyable one, maybe the other two will be even better. or maybe not. i guess i'll see soon enough.

i'm trying to think of more to say. maybe i'll make another post later or something, because i feel sort of weird and unfocused now for some reason. but the music was great too, for one. my favorite track is probably wisdom of the world. someone in the comments of the gilvasunner upload says something about how it sounds like a church hymn, and i think that's a good connection to make. it's probably part of why it makes me feel a bit of strangeness and nostalgia listening to it as well, thinking about all the actual church hymns i had to hear as a child. church and thinking about religious things in general were the source of a lot of existential thoughts and feelings i would have then, so it brings that sort of thing to mind. it feels very reverent, and fits magicant as a sort of dreamy and somewhat heavenly place. you can have as much as you like of whatever you want. everyone loves you, ninten.

i guess i can also mention some things about the game relating to undertale, which of course i was eagerly thinking about. there are a few smaller and more obvious things that are perhaps not worth mentioning, like how the track "mother earth" clearly inspired "once upon a time" in undertale, or how you can find preset boxes with items inside them which toby used for the final weapon and armor in new home. but i think my favorite discovery was a certain line of dialogue that toby actually directly referenced in deltarune. i'll attach the image which you can see, but a certain enemy you encounter named nancy will sometimes "smile a darling smile" and increase her own defense. in deltarune, when you fight a hathy, one possible line of flavor text will be "hathy smiled a darling smile" too. when i saw it i knew it was familiar, then when i realized it made me so fucking happy and excited, i can't even describe it. it's just amazing to me to find something like that, on my own no less, even if it's small. i just love that. it's so cool to me. it's so cool.

another interesting thing to me, is giegue. aside from having an interesting boss fight that i liked quite a lot, and being a cool (and, if i may say, almost kind of cute) looking cat alien thing, there's something interesting i'm already noticing about his story. it kind of reminds me of chara in some loose ways. this one line from queen mary i'll also attach in the other image illustrates it a bit. but everything about how giegue is taken in by the humans yet finds family in them, and how eventually he feels that he must do what he must despite the connection he's made with those humans that loved him. it is a VERY vague comparison to make, i think, but it still reminded me of them to an extent and made me wonder if any part of it was an inspiration of any sort. maybe, maybe not. i could just be seeing things because of my interest in chara. another thing too though, is the "music" that plays during your final battle against giegue: quite simply just a harsh, high pitched noise. it's very similar too to the noise coming from the starman capsule in the zoo building near the beginning section of the game, which apparently was enough to drive the animals insane (which seems to be why they attack you, which i find kind of a cool explanation for some reason). but, as for the giegue battle, i noticed how similar it sounds to the track that plays during chara's conversation with you at the end of a genocide run, mus_zzz_c. and maybe that's just a coincidence as well, who knows. but it's still very interesting to me.

that's all i want to write about for now really. i want to go for a walk, but it's already getting to the 90s in degrees fahrenheit here, so it makes me feel a lot less motivated to actually do it. i wish it could just be winter again. there isn't much good at all about this time of year to me, aside from maybe nostalgia for the good memories of summertime i do have. but i just want to go outside without sweating and cooking in the dry heat. even at night there's little escape. any sight of real clouds is like a blessing. it just makes me especially sad sometimes. i just wish i were somewhere much cooler and greener than here. but that seems so difficult now, and maybe not even worth the trouble and discomfort in the end. i don't know. it's just a pleasant idea.

another day. just another day. it's 2:37 pm (when i've started writing this), on the third day in the month of may, in the year 2019. it's just another day.

there is nothing special about this day, in significance to myself anyway. i will probably not remember this day, or anything i do, or think about, outside of this post perhaps. but even then it may be lost or deleted someday, and it will fade from my memory somehow. someday, no one will remember my day today. even if in some way this day is of significance to someone out there, someday, no one else will remember this day at all. it's just another day. okay? okay.

but i guess that's… fine. i mean, you can't make every single day interesting and worth remembering, right? it seems vaguely familiar as some motivational saying of sorts to "make every day special", living it like it was your last and whatnot. but that's not really possible, is it? it's only natural for there to be intermissions, rests, silence, nothing. if something truly interesting happened every day, it might get kind of tiring. or maybe not. maybe it's just some fantastical thing that would be amazingly exciting, but that doesn't exist in this kind of world. that might make sense. or, maybe i'm just not "living in the moment" enough to make every day worth remembering like i "should." i dunno. maybe it doesn't matter. maybe maybe maybe, i dunno. i can't decide on anything. i can only go on boring pseudo-intellectual ramblings until i sound like a total jerk.

i guess i wanted to write about something though, whatever it was. often when i sit down to write something like this i start to stress myself out and worry over every insignificant detail and do things like spending over 10 minutes trying to correct a single sentence. then i lose track of whatever actual emotion or thought i wanted to really express and not just gloss over in some soulless and vague sort of way. so it kind of ends up feeling unsatisfying every time. at least i usually feel a little better. it's hard to actually do better, even still. but i can only continue to do it over and over, i suppose. then, someday, i may become a journal writing GOD. the pure informational value created by these combined collections of paper and ink and data detailing my dumb thoughts and feelings will surely crush the competition. such a useful and creative skill, don't you think? there's truly nothing i could be doing better with my time. nothing better than sitting here and writing this.

but uhhhh, i still forget what i really wanted to get at. i really just wanted to write, actually. i don't usually have a very concrete idea of what i'm going to say. so i don't even know what i was talking about there.

i suppose it's really a feeling that spurred me to write. feelings spur me to do a lot of things, many of them quite irrational as you might be able to guess. but i think it's why i started this describing how insignificant today really is. ever since i was a young child i've gotten this feeling occasionally, on lazy, insignificant and uneventful days like these. i guess you could call it boredom, sure, but it feels much more complex than that. actually, ennui might be a good word to use. it's just a bit more potent than boredom is, i think. it's less of a feeling of "what is there to do right now?" and more of just "what is there to do?"

in that way, it feels sort of dreadful. it makes me wonder, well, what if i never find something to do? how long will this feeling last? i don't really want to do anything. what can i do? what can i do? then, usually, i find something to do. but the feeling lingers for a little while, making me wonder if what i'm doing is really "doing" anything. and then the day is over and it resolves, for the time being.

it's an odd feeling, and it puts me in a bit of an odd mood. it's one of those things that makes me want to escape, run away inside my own head to some other state of mind or a real alternate reality altogether where everything can be much more interesting and exciting and better than here. somewhere else. i want to be somewhere else. i shouldn't be here, i should never have came here, i don't belong in this existence. i am not meant for this world. those thoughts plague me so much of the time, whenever i am forced to confront reality. there are things however about this world that i enjoy and find interest in. but what i really wish for, is to not have to participate in the scary game that humanity is playing. i only want to observe, and to be left alone to my own tiny little devices. that's all i wish for, really. to be left alone by these scary things outside of my control. but i can't have that. i cannot. that fills me with dread. it fills me with so much dread.

i cannot be a child forever. nostalgia for childhood is something virtually everyone experiences. but i'm mentally and emotionally still in it, and i don't want to leave. i don't want to go out there. i don't want to. please don't make me go. i don't want to. please.

but i have to, right? i have to be a grown up soon, right? i have to go out there. i have to leave mommy and daddy, don't i? i have to go out there without them. without their help. they can't hold my hand anymore. they won't comfort me anymore. it makes me want to cry. it makes me want to be held. nothing hurts me more emotionally than thinking about how i will never have the comfort of being treated as a child again. being treated as i am inside, more like. but everything else doesn't reflect the inside anymore. to everyone else, i'm getting older. i should have these responsibilities, because that's what someone my age ought to have. i should want these things, i should be working towards these things, i should act and feel a certain way. i should at least want something, something normal. i should be capable of SOMETHING useful. but i'm not. i'm just a scared little kid inside. and i don't want to go. i don't want to grow up.

even when i was still physically a child and treated like one, i know i had this fear. i knew it would happen someday. and i tried not to think about it most of the time. but sometimes i would have to realize. to think about how i have no friends, i don't really interact with anyone outside of my family, i don't know what other people are really like outside of what i see on television or in movies or video games. to wonder what i'd really even do as an adult, what is that even like, how i could do anything you're supposed to do then. what is that like? being away from my parents? is that even possible? what would i even do? living takes a long time. what do i do for that long? i don't know. maybe i can buy my own candy. a whole bucket of candy. that might be nice.

i also always liked that one episode of spongebob, where he goes to his grandmother's house. it sounds sort of silly, but i remember feeling emotional at the part where spongebob bursts back into his grandmother's house crying shamelessly about how he just wants to be a little kid again. it hurt to watch. i remember feeling really bad too when everyone was laughing at him through the window at the end. it was so mean, but, i suppose now i can see that it's only accurate. someone like me is a laughingstock. the stereotype of an "adult child" is not a good one at all. if you see a child, desperate for attention and for someone to tell them it's going to be okay and for someone to make them feel safe and happy and free of worry or responsibility, you will of course feel for them. most people would. it's natural, biological, to want to protect a child. but when someone quite some years older than that child feels and acts the same way, no one cares. why should they? it's that person's responsibility to grow up now. no one else can help them. no one else can save them. they're just pathetic, a worthless pile of garbage. unless they make themselves useful, that is.

i don't know. it really is my responsibility. i know that i am the only one who can help myself now, with anything, and no one should be expected to do so for me, if that is even possible. but it hurts. it hurts very badly to live in a world like this one. and perhaps this is all my fault. i really don't know. perhaps it's many things. it just feels so exhausting to think about. it all feels so exhausting. and this is barely just the beginning of it all. i've only slightly scratched the surface of "being an adult," if even that. and it's terrifying. it's so utterly terrifying, and i just want to cry and hide away from it all. i want to curl up into a little ball in my little corner and for everybody to just leave me alone.

i'm just scared.

i'm so scared.

i finally installed rpgmaker 2003 last sunday.

i bought it months ago on steam but only then did i manage to stop procrastinating on it and actually try. there might be some better way to get it than steam, i guess. i probably also could have used a newer edition of it, of which i am sure there are many. but i just knew that yume nikki used this one, so i got it. i don't really care if there's a better option. i don't really care. all i care about is that it's something i can use to make a game. it's relatively simple and unintimidating. i have game maker as well but even that was too intimidating for me and discouraged me. so, if that means i must start with what is perhaps the equivalent of one of those mini pianos with rainbow keys for little kids, then so be it.

all i know is that it feels so good. i've spent a couple of these days since then just using it all day, not doing or thinking about much else. messing around with stuff and trying to make shitty sprites and tilesets. it doesn't even matter how shit it is, it doesn't even matter how worthless and unoriginal and stupid any of it is. it's something. i'm actually, seriously creating something. it's, you know, artistic. i don't know how best to say it. but… it feels so fulfilling. it feels like i'm actually doing one of the only things that never leaves my list of "shit i actually care about pursuing in life." it might be THE one thing, in terms of some kind of creation or life work or long term investment of time. i want to make video games. i want to make shitty stupid simple little video games that i think are nice and express what i want to express and that are enjoyable to play. i don't care if that's a stupid thing to want, i dunno. i don't care. but that's what i've got. that's what my mind is set on and it hasn't seemed to change at all and it doesn't seem like it is changing any time soon.

so that's what i'm going to try and do. see, this is step one. this is step 0.0001. this is tiny baby infant step 0.0000000000001 of doing anything worth shit, worth remembering or caring about at all. but i'm going to keep trying anyway. that's what i'll do. because i have nothing i'd rather be doing with my time. i don't give a shit about nearly anything else i could be doing, i don't even give a shit if no one else in the entire world ever ends up knowing about or playing or remembering my dumb shitty video games, if they even become functional or interesting enough to be worthy of that title. i just need to do this. i want to do this. i get distracted and occupied with dumb garbage all the time, a lot of which is prescribed to me as something i should care about instead, something i should want and even need. but this is one thing that i KNOW i want and need to do. i just, i don't even know how better to say it. it sounds corny or optimistic or something, i'm sure. i'm just a little kid, i don't know anything, whatever. but this is what i have to hold on to. this is what i have, and i'm going to try my best to nurture it and keep it going. i have to. it's not a choice inside my head anymore. i HAVE to.

all of that aside though, it truly has been exciting. i mean, all i've been able to think about a lot of the time since then is related to stuff i could make or try. ideas for some dumb story i could make, or characters, or some theme i want to include someday or something. all i can think about is what i could be doing when i sit down to work on it and learn more. i don't want to do it too much or too intensely so i don't go in the opposite direction as usual and burn out for a while, but i just, it's so exciting. it's actually happening. i'm using my time in a way that doesn't scare me and make me hate existing, that doesn't feel like a waste or a distraction in the end. something i always beat myself up over not doing, telling myself i'm gonna start working towards it someday, making these pep talks for myself just like the ones here without actually doing much. but now i took some kind of step. i made some kind of progress, and i'm making it, even if it's very small. i mean, that is a feat for me. the smallest most minuscule amount of progress for someone else is like a mountain for me. i'm not used to trying new things, or getting myself to try new things, scary things, things that seem difficult and require some amount of discipline. i'm honestly one of the worst people to try and get to do anything like that. i don't know if it's laziness, or actual depression, or just being raised awfully, or all of that, i don't know, i don't care right now. but because of how i am, this is actually something extraordinary for me. installing and launching rpgmaker and making some shitty sprites and dialogue. that is like, years of working myself up and doing other even smaller things like making lame little drawings and snippets of fanfiction-y dialogue. i don't know. it's just, it's something. this is something. that's what i'm trying to get at, in my typical long winded way.

it just makes me so happy. i'm not sure what else to say about it. i just wanted to write this i guess. maybe i'll post my progress or something later, once i get to some stage where it's not just me testing things and fucking around mostly i guess. i guess, i guess. i'm very unsure, obviously. i'm unsure about a lot of things. but fuck it. this title screen is all you get so far. doesn't it just make you want to play so bad? i can imagine the one or two people who will ever read this, just quivering at the sight of that incredible title screen, salivating at the thought of all the fun and exciting RPG (role playing game) game-play and dialogue and wacky sound effects they could be experiencing, after pressing that shiny "new" button. must be the next toby fox making this one. it's the Next Big Thing. this kid's gonna be a real millionaire, i just know it.

yeah. i'm sure.

sometimes the world doesn't feel real. sometimes it feels like i am not living in reality. sometimes i feel like i want to believe that i am outside of reality. sometimes i feel like i want to believe there is something better outside of reality, like what i imagine.

putting it into words always ruins it. i know what this feeling is, what these feelings are. i know it. i think a lot about some possible way that i can just present this strange odd "thing" somehow, so it can be observed and thought about and picked apart in some concrete way, but i still can't really figure it out. it's still not "right" enough, the way i try to put it. maybe i can put it in a video game? that's what i'm thinking. but it's not gonna be easy to do that. i just wish i could say it. i want to put it in a word, in a neat little package, and send it off in cute little gift boxes to anyone who is bored enough to receive it and have them understand somehow and tell me what they think. i like the word "odd". that seems to describe it well, even though it's also extremely vague. everything i'm saying right now must sound vague. but that's just how i talk. type. but to me "talking" is basically just typing. cause i don't really talk that much. i don't really have anyone to hear my voice, except for chara and myself and my family. i don't really like my voice anyway. i think that's part of why i speak so quietly.

but, yes. it's just odd. odd feelings. thoughts, experiences, whatever. it's just odd. honestly i could probably explain this better if i wasn't so tired right now. even though trying to explain what i'm thinking of will just ruin it like i said. it still might make more sense than this cryptic schizo bullshit. i guess it's not like any random stranger coming across here would care anyway. probably. maybe doing anything with these feelings will ruin them, maybe that's just how they are. you've gotta experience them, it doesn't translate into words no matter how hard you try and how wordy and pretentious you get. that might make sense. it might not.

i guess i could try very briefly. it's primarily a feeling of something feeling unreal, or incredibly fantastical, or something. whether it's interpreting a mundane situation that way, or imagining some hypothetical thing, or experiencing some kind of media or art or entertainment and getting the feeling from that. a lot of the time, it's wanting very desperately to escape this shit reality into whatever the hell that is, the odd thing that seems so odd and interesting and makes me feel strange. sometimes reality itself feels that way. usually when i can observe things going on without having to feel like i am a participant in any way. watching people walk around some public place, or just being out in nature or something.

these feelings seem closely connected to nostalgia. sometimes i feel nostalgia for real things i have not experienced as well. i think maybe it's just easy to see them and sort of categorize them as that odd fantastical stuff in my head. honestly, anything outside of my little bubble of "experience" could be odd in that way to me. maybe this is a result of being so sheltered from reality. my mind has taken on the role of an observer quite heavily. almost everything outside of my own house is like a fantasy that will forever be out of my reach. so my mind is used to thinking in that way, i'm used to making things up in my head and building them up and imagining and fantasizing about just everything. i'm not "here". my mind is always somewhere else, it seems. i'm always thinking or fantasizing or getting lost in my feelings arising from observing things or whatever.

and if it's not that, i'm usually feeling fear at the few times i have to actually, legitimately face some kind of reality for once. once that happens i absolutely panic. namely, when i have to interact with humans in some way. my mind just goes on full fight or flight defensive hypervigilant mode automatically and it doesn't stop until i'm totally safe again. this shit happens when i pass someone walking their dog, on a walk in my own neighborhood. my mind wanders to thoughts of people hurting me, killing me, embarrassing me, or me bothering them or inconveniencing them and oh god i'm going to fuck this up, something is gonna go wrong. and then i just pass them while staring at the ground as naturally as i can and nothing happens as usual. if something does happen, it gets worse. this is how any kind of interaction goes for me. driving is like this except up to fucking 11. i should make a post about driving later. it's the worst.

but i dunno, what was i on about. when i'm not filled with intense anxiety and dread over a human being existing in my line of sight, i'm not living in the "real world". i'm in my head. actually, i do that even when people are around. a lot of stress from people actually causes something else to happen. i basically completely shut down. like i'll just start staring off into space and shut up and just not feel or think really. just try to not exist any more. something like that. i'm getting too tired to do this shit. but that one is just the abyss of this sort of thing. there's not even anything odd or weird or interesting left. it's just void. i usually feel better before the day is over though at least. but to cope with any utter bullshit going on, that's what i do, i suppose.

i don't really care enough to stay up to write more. i'm tired. did i mention how i was tired yet? yeah. it's like 4 am. i guess maybe ill expand on this shit later. i dunno. i just felt like making a post. so uhhhhhhhhhh. goodnight. happy travels. safe easter. merry seasons.

speaking of seasons, fuck s*mm*r. it's barely even here yet but. just gotta say it. again. i think i said it before right? winter can't come back soon enough. fuck you summer. whatever.

i took a walk today. i took one yesterday, too. it feels like it's been forever, but it's only been about a month, maybe. i think. i forget. something like that. but it was nice.

i went today because it was cloudy, somehow. it was even raining, thank god. i love the rain so much. everything about it just makes me feel happy and comforted. the way it and the clouds make everything look, the way it sounds, the way it smells, the way it feels when it's falling on you (even when i get soaked). it's just so nice. everything about it is just the best, to me. maybe it's cause there's barely any here. that makes sense, of course. but either way, i love it. it made today's walk nicer, as it always does.

it was still hot, of course. it was hot yesterday too, even though i went at night as i have to do in the summertime. it's still nearly 100 degrees farenheit almost all the time. and it's just gonna get hotter. but at least it's bearable when the s*n isn't beating down on you. it's just nice to finally get outside again. and, a benefit of going out at night or during the rain is that you barely see anyone outside. if it's at night, there's pretty much no one at all. i still get nervous at night though, even though there's less of the passing people and their dogs and such. i've been paranoid about coyotes lately, because this neighborhood is so close to the mountains. i've never seen any, but i've been told they wander around sometimes. i don't really know how likely it is that they'd be there and even attack me or my dog. i'm scared that i'd just freeze up and not really know what to do, and get me or the dog hurt really bad or worse. maybe this is a childish fear and nothing would really happen and it would leave me alone or something. i don't know. even just people's dogs make me nervous. i suppose i just hope i never see them. sometimes i get extra paranoid at night and feel like i see them walking around, but then it's just a bush or some rocks in the distance. it still makes it difficult sometimes.

i get scared of someone hurting me at night too. i think this neighborhood is probably more than safe enough, but of course i worry about it anyway. i worry about it whenever i'm away from my house alone, and especially at night of course. but i just feel so small all alone like that. smaller than usual. i feel like i must be an incredibly easy target if someone really did want to harass me for something or even hurt me. i'm probably the easiest possible target you could have really, outside of maybe some old lady or disabled person or something. it just scares me sometimes. i guess all i can really do is try not to think about it. avoid the thought, like everything else. you know the drill. i really do just wish chara could be here physically to protect me, like i mentioned in that other post. oh well. it'll probably be alright, unless i get unlucky one day and have something like what i fear really happen. then i'll never want to set foot outside again and i'll be set back even further. imagine how fun that would be!!!!!

well. taking walks is overall good for me at least. it would really mess me up to not be able to do them anymore out of fear or whatever, i think. i just like being outside too much, aside from the heat and all. it's so calming, and pretty, and (relatively) quiet. and it's of course a good chance to talk with chara too. one interesting thing that happens in summer, when i walk at night, is actually related to the heat. even though the sun isn't out and making you feel like you're being heated up more "directly", it's still just about as hot. so it almost feels like you're being heated up all the way through, or from the inside out or something. it's sort of uncomfortable, but not as bad as with the sun being out. still though, it exhausts me really fast, like the heat tends to do.

but it also sorta affects me mentally in a way. it's almost like i start worrying less, about what i'm doing or saying or thinking, i kinda become less inhibited so to speak. it's also just hard to focus or stay on one thing, like my mind just goes all over the place. and i just feel hot and tired and sluggish even, sometimes like stumbling over a thought or something i'm trying to say or do. it's weird. i kinda like it though, cause it feels like me and chara have especially fun conversations when that happens. we like to call it getting COOKED. all those silly nerds out there are all about getting "baked" and whatnot, well, me and chara are so cool that we just get straight up COOKED instead. yep. i'm basically a drug lord at this point, a real psychonaut. mind expander. don't even need to try any drugs, i've already mapped every last inch of my brain from getting COOKED alone.

sometimes i wonder what someone would think hearing me talk to chara out loud on my walks. because i actually do that. it feels nicer that way, and it helps to have it feel more like a conversation and be less susceptible to being muddied up together on accident. but, of course, i probably look like some stereotypical caricature of a schizophrenic person, walking around talking to someone who isn't there all alone. maybe they just would assume i'm talking to myself, which i've also been very used to doing ever since i was a child. still weird, but maybe less so, i guess. maybe they'd assume i have one of those things you stick in your ear or whatever that lets you call people hands free and talk to them with just the thing inside your ear. there's probably a name for that but fuck it you get what i mean. it just makes me curious i guess. i do it anyway and don't care, somehow. out of all the things i worry about, for some reason this isn't one of them. sometimes i wonder if it's just more evidence that i'm secretly a narcissist or something that wants to be special, so i revel in the idea of someone getting weirded out by me and how QUIRKY and MYSTERIOUS i must be for talking out loud to some invisible "chara" fella in my head at 9 pm walking down the street. who knows.

i can't think of much else that i want to write about right now. all i can think of to say is that chara is cool. shoutouts to chara. big round of applause for chara, please. i want eveyone in the room to stand up. that's all that's going through my head, really. i wish my brain wasn't so fucked, then i wouldn't have any issue just hanging out with chara all the time and not getting stressed and scared over everything and distracted to try and not think about those scary awful things. even something that seems simple like this turns out to be difficult. and it of course makes me feel guilty. but i try my hardest, even if my hardest isn't very good at all. i don't know. i just know that chara is cool. i love chara. they are very "based" and also "redpilled" as they say.

just look at this cool picture of them. that's their favorite knife. they've got skills, they could take down ANYONE who tried to even lay a FINGER on us. and don't you dare even say "but what about guns lol" because chara is SO FAST that they can DODGE BULLETS. they don't even need to try, it's just effortless to them. they're level 99 plus infinity in all stats. and their favorite color is red, like blood. and blood is cool. you know? they're just so cool. so cool.

that's all i've got to say.

>>68

the idea of this reality almost being like a protection from how unfathomably hopeless and empty an existence in that kind of eternity might be is interesting to me. maybe it's just the thought of "sure it's bad, but it's not as bad as it COULD be." i dunno. i've also wondered about the "bored god" thing ever since i was a kid. it's a pretty odd thought, almost absurdly funny if you think about it a certain way. everything that ever was, is, or will be, was just brought into existence because "god" just got too bored one day. maybe it'd be almost necessary for god, being in some empty eternity where there is quite literally nothing better to do, with it just getting more and more unbearable, sorta like you suggested. maybe the whole thing about multiverses is real, and this is just one of god's many shitworlds created just to mess around. maybe this is some baby god's very first universe, and it's just going to be erased to start the next step of learning at any moment. but i guess it really doesn't matter. it's just natural for people to feel like it should matter, for some reason. it's a nice thought. it would be nice if reality was just nice.

i started playing earthbound a few days ago, finally. and as i expected, i really like it so far. as of writing this i think i'm going to be visiting the third town soon. i already have noticed lots of changes and improvements from the original, and other minor things i've found interesting. especially the parallels with undertale, which there are much more of in this game compared to MOTHER. which i suppose is expected. i'm also probably taking lots of stretches with what i connect too though, as i do. but i think at least some of these were probably intentional when toby implemented similar things. i can't even really put all of them in one post if i want to attach images of the observations in question, so i'll probably compile it together or make some series of posts later when i finish the game.

the game itself is really good though, i can't overstate that. but again, i don't think it's a surprise that i'm enjoying it so much. regardless, it's just really fun and exciting and cool. i mean, just look at those pictures i attached. you can use Chara to utterly vaporize your enemies!!! isn't that just super???!??! i think so. it's honestly really powerful too. which is extremely fitting, of course. the soundtrack is obviously great so far too. it seems to remix (i think that word works) some tracks from MOTHER, which i like. i'd say it's overall better and nicer to listen to, aside from not having wisdom of the world maybe. that's my favorite song from MOTHER. but maybe some redone version of it will show up later on, who knows.

other than that though, things aren't really going any better. i feel even more tired of things than usual, even less motivated to do things. it feels like the scope of "what i can do" is getting smaller and smaller. all i can really think to do all day is either to play video games, listen to music, practice with rpgmaker or drawing or something, or take a walk. everything else is just mandatory stuff which can pass time (taking a shower for example) or totally useless distractions that don't even feel that great (like browsing imageboards or watching videos online). and everything outside of those things i don't have much motivation at all to do, like something i have to leave my neighborhood to do, or most types of social interaction.

and those few things i do think of doing and enjoy are nice, but i also feel increasingly more tired with them, and get temporarily "burnt out" more easily. i get this uneasy feeling very often that eventually i'll be so tired that i won't even want to do this stuff anymore, and i'll just want to lie in bed all day staring at the ceiling or something. i feel like my energy "limit" is just being drained slowly over time. i try to continue on despite that, but it feels like it just gets lower and lower regardless. everything just feels like this desperate, losing battle. and i want to believe that it'll get better still, but deep down i'm entirely unsure. i don't know how much more i can take. i haven't even seen anything close to the worst of possibilities, either. all things considered, i've had it easy so far. even something relatively simple could be a massive blow to my will to continue and my hope for my own future.

sometimes it feels like a human like me just isn't meant for this world. if i suddenly lived in another time period or even circumstances that aren't quite as nice as what i have now, i'd probably be dead. or at least, much much worse off than i am now. i'm weak, afraid, socially inept, self-hating, inefficient, insecure, passive, naive, not particularly intelligent, idealistic, and childish. there's probably much more than all that too. but if this world truly is survival of the fittest, or "kill or be killed" as flowey would put it, then i am certainly not one of the fittest. i've only gotten this far because i've been able to shield myself (or be shielded by my parents) in various ways from the outside world, and it continues to be my main coping strategy for existence. it feels like all i can really be in this world is an observer, perhaps documenting or expressing things based off of what i see. that's all i feel capable of, that's all i really feel destined to be. but living in the real world isn't quite that simple.

i don't know what else to say about it right now. i guess i feel tired of doing this for today already, too. it's probably better having a (very slightly) shorter post anyway.

but at least chara always makes me feel comforted, even if just a little bit. talking to them in my head, looking at pictures of them, just thinking about them. i can know they'll be here no matter what, in some way, unless we both go down. that always makes me feel at least a little bit better, even if i feel the worst. i love them so much.

WARNING: extremely autistic and EXTREMELY long post about what i think of earthbound. no one will ever read this. i'm just posting it here because fuck you (note: i don't actually mean "fuck you" as an insult to anyone reading this. i'm sure you're a fine person. you look nice today. is that a new haircut? i hope things go well for you)

here we go

i finished earthbound last week, on thursday night. (6/27/2019) (i want to put the exact date there because i'm autistic and i want the EXACT DATE, it's very important and i need to remember)

it's still difficult for me to figure out what to say about it exactly, how to put it into words. i can say at the very least that it was a truly incredible experience, playing through the game. luckily, i barely knew anything about the actual contents of the game or its story beforehand. all i knew really was some minor things about the final battle (i had never actually seen the full battle before) and perhaps some other small things, and hearing some of the soundtrack before as well. but aside from that, i was pretty much unspoiled, so it was all very exciting to me. i'm thankful for that at least, especially with how hard it is for me to avoid that kind of thing because of how curious i can get even if i know i shouldn't.

it was certainly a ride. i can say one thing too right off the bat, and that is the fact that i definitely find this game to be a massive improvement over MOTHER. it almost seems like it was made partly with "perfecting" the original game in a sense, with how all the areas have many parallels with ones in the previous game and are sometimes just basically the same thing but "better". but even things like the game mechanics themselves and everything are much better and more convenient i think. it felt a lot more fun playing through the game, i like the battle system and it was just a lot more enjoyable to me on that front. and with everything coming together, it felt like even more of an adventure than MOTHER did. it's also much, MUCH longer than the original, which i definitely liked because obviously i wanted it to go on for as long as possible because of how much i was enjoying it. but it took quite a while, and making sure to do and see everything i could think of and really taking everything in made that even longer, i'm sure.

along with that though comes with the inevitable feeling of not wanting it to end. and it was sad when i finally finished it, but i think above all i was just very glad to finally have experienced it. so it worked out fine that way, at least for now. it just made me so happy, it still does to think about it. all i could really think about all day and night was earthbound, even while i wasn't playing. i even had some dreams that sort of reminded me or had elements of the game, like imagining some future part of the game i hadn't reached yet or something. i'm still listening to nothing else but the soundtrack ever since i started playing it pretty much, even now after finishing it. it was just such a wonderful adventure, that's really the best way i can put that feeling. it makes me very happy. it's just so fucking good. it's such a good game.

i guess now i can be more specific on my experience with earthbound and my thoughts on it at various points. i remember i actually have played a bit of the game before, sometime last year i think. however, i only got to liliput steps before i stopped playing (probably getting distracted by other possibly awful or unpleasant things going on in my head or otherwise, as usual). so playing everything up to that point was a bit of a recap to some degree, although it was still just as fun since i didn't remember what happened from my first playthrough too specifically. i just feel that's worth mentioning.

i like the intro sequence to the game, before the sun rises. it's the kind of thing i always fantasized about, being woken up in the middle of the night to investigate some strange happening and being pulled into an extraordinary adventure like that. it's not like it's a very unique way to start a story and i'm not special for ever wishing for it, i just like how it's done in earthbound. the ambient music that plays during the sequence adds a lot to it, as the music in this game tends to do. i also like a lot how you encounter the starman jr. and "fight" it (a.k.a. watch buzz buzz do most of the work) as sort of a teaser into what you'll be fighting near the end of the game.

also, i honestly got kind of upset when buzz buzz died. i even teared up a little, even though it was played up to be kinda goofy, which is fine. i just wanted to mention that. i'll never forget him.

some thoughts about the music so far, i like how the first bit of pollyanna plays before the real onett theme starts. that's a nice touch. i also like the hotel theme a lot. i ended up sleeping in and just hanging around most of the hotels in the game mostly because i loved the music so much. another thing is the new age retro hippie theme, which i feel sort of disappointed in how it never played very much. only during two fights really. i guess it was even less in MOTHER, but still. it would've been nice to hear it more, maybe. but that doesn't matter too much in the end. it was nice wandering around onett in general and getting in the groove of playing so to speak. i always try to explore everything i can and talk to everyone.

the first sanctuary was nice. nothing too special. the fucking sanctuary boss music though, it's probably one of my favorite tracks in the game. it's a remixed version of "battle against a dangerous foe" from MOTHER, but in earthbound it sounds much more sinister and fits the boss encounters really well, i think. it's just a fucking cool song. i love it a lot. this is kinda just becoming me going on about the music, isn't it. i just really like it i guess. music is a big aspect for me in a game, for some reason. it adds a lot to my enjoyment.

but anyways. i like the part where you beat up a bunch of cops. not like i enjoy the idea of beating up cops in reality, or beating up anyone really. it's just a fun segment. twoson was nice, although the mushrooms are always annoying if you happen to get unlucky and encounter them (and have them mushroomize you). luckily it's not too hard to get rid of though. i like how paula's theme is a version of youngtown from MOTHER. i think they definitely improved on it here. also, everything with paula's dad is really sweet. i got a little emotional too when you come back after saving paula later on, and they have to say their goodbyes to each other as paula assures him she'll be okay. i liked that.

the bike of course was fun for a minute too. i love things like that, not important or long lasting but just there for a bit of enjoyment. i even took it with me into the peaceful rest valley, it sort of helped to get past enemies sometimes. the happy happy cultists were interesting. i never expected something like that in a game like this, putting a literal cult in the game that you have to disband by fighting their leader. it was a good segment though, especially with the music. blue is a nice color too, you know. they weren't entirely wrong. also, the runaway five segments in the game were nice diversions. for some reason i kind of prefer the theatre segments in MOTHER, in some ways. but in others, i liked the way the runaway five kind of stick by you through the game better, i like how you help them out over time (and when they come to help you as well).

threed was one of my favorite town areas. it was a lot of fun figuring out what to do and wandering around the outskirts. it's cool how it changes after you solve their problem like in happy-happy village, and becomes peaceful again. it's almost a little disappointing at the same time though, purely because i like the spooky atmosphere beforehand so much, but it's still nice. then comes the part where you get lead into the hotel and jumped, which legitimately kinda surprised me.

then there's jeff in winters, which is one of my favorite parts of the whole game. to begin with, i already really like segments like that in games where you essentially have to start over or lose a lot of your power somehow for a while. it's a cool change of pace to me. that, combined with how winters in general is one of my favorite areas, and the atmosphere of wandering out through the forest in the middle of the night all alone to save someone in trouble, makes this one of the best parts to me for sure. and of course, winters white is a fucking amazing theme. definitely one of my favorites too, i like it even more than snowman honestly. it's just a very good area to me. oh, and tony. tony is an adorable character. i found his attachment to jeff really endearing, heh.

seeing the mr. saturn village was certainly interesting. it's funny how you keep coming back there even to the very end of the game. i guess that's just the whole "comic relief characters actually being useful and relevant to the plot" trope, but it's still not a bad thing really. they're not annoying or anything like that. thinking about undertale, i never really found undertale's parallel of the saturns (temmies) to be very appealing. obviously i don't hate them, but my mind usually goes towards the temmies when i think about what my least favorite character would be in undertale. they're sorta funny, but they just felt sort of lame at the same time. i liked the mr. saturns in this game a lot more. maybe it's weird to compare the two. i just thought it might be appropriate.

and the coffee/tea break scenes, i liked those. it's just one of those things that really made me smile the whole way through. unnecessary, but it just really adds to the experience i think. a time to reflect, perhaps. i like the sentiment. then there's belch's factory, which is basically just the factory area from the first game except they decided not to make it a maze this time. in fact, it's very linear. i suppose most areas in this game are very linear compared to the first, thinking about it. which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you think about it. but it was a fine area here. i was a little disappointed that they got rid of the last half of the factory track when redoing the original for this game, but it's not a huge deal. the slimy little pile enemies were very annoying, calling for help often and constantly inflicting everyone with uncontrollable crying. but it wasn't too awful. it also took me a minute to figure out that you had to use the fly honey on master belch, heh. it should have been obvious really, but i suppose it's just like me to miss something so obvious. oh well.

next area is the desert. i like what they did with the theme here a lot, the sound effects and the way it fades in and out. the little sesame sidequest thing is kind of cute. it's too bad you don't get to ride around in an airplane or a tank like you did in MOTHER. but it's still a fun area. the monkey cave you get to later on was a little bothersome compared to the one from the first game, but at least the music is somehow fun to listen to. it's original this time, since the first one used what is basically the mr. saturn theme in this one.

fourside is another one of my favorite town (or city rather) areas. i like the way it looks especially, the whole isometric look is cool. and the music too of course, especially that god damn cafe theme. but it's just a fun place to walk around in. i didn't mind at all how much time you spend here at this point in the game. the part in the mines seemed at first that it was going to get old fast, but luckily it wasn't too extremely tedious. for some reason i kept expecting them to actually find gold and for it to lead into some new branch of things but they of course never did. then there's the department store segment, which i enjoyed a lot. definitely not something i was expecting, even with how the little mouse predicts it for you. at least, not the part where you have to go through a bunch of other ordeals to save paula even after that. but it was interesting.

and then comes one of my absolute favorite parts, which is moonside. i loved moonside so much, everything about it was so good. the neon look to everything, the odd soundtrack playing the whole time, the dialogue and the enemies (except for the fire plug, fuck you fire plug), it was just incredible, especially for when it was released. i'm sure it's a large part of earthbound's influence over certain other things, like perhaps yume nikki for example. but it's just a very cool area. i love the "yes is no and no is yes" rule and the other ways all the npcs act strange and fuck with your head throughout the area. it's just hard to put into words, i suppose, like a lot of things are for me. but it was a very very captivating area to me, and almost sort of unsettling in ways (which is good). finally getting to fight the mani mani statue was a good ending for the area too. i like how you sort of follow the statue up until that point, i never figured it would be so important when seeing it at first in lier's cave. the whole thing about the area (and everything else the statue creates in people's minds for that matter) being merely an "illusion" which you destroy was interesting.

finally getting to explore the monotoli building and saving paula was alright. the clumsy robot fight was a bit annoying but i got it eventually. it also made me ponder the question of how the fuck a robot eats a bologne sandwich, which still remains unanswered. i like how the runaway five comes to save you though, that was cool. it was nice to finally get to a new area, summers, after a few more things you had to do. at first i figured summers would be larger, but it's still not a bad area. the music is very relaxing, which is of course very fitting. the stoic club was funny. i do NOT like that the cretins over at the restaurant had the nerve to insult my favorite food, which i put in as chocolate (or "chocol" rather because there wasn't enough room for chocolate). it was overall a nice area, though.

dalaam was interesting. the music here actually kind of gets grating to me after a while. luckily it isn't a very large area. it also reminds me how much i wish toilet humour didn't have to exist. it's not like i feel "above" it or anything, it's just gross. but it's fine. the mu training scene is the best part of this area though. as it was happening i was just trying to comprehend how and why this is in a video game, this video game more specifically, of all things. but it's fucking good. losing all sense and semblance of mind knowing it will result in eternal darkness, just to finish your training. this definitely appeals to my interests to say the least. it also gives me a lot of respect for poo, despite his unfortunate name. i'll really have to think about that bit more over time. one more thing, the shrine in this area has incredible music. it sounds so odd and dreamy, i fucking love it. it's too bad the sanctuary is so short, i never wanted it to end and even wanted to come back because of the music and even the general mythological atmosphere of it to a degree. very cool area.

the next major segment is the scaraba desert. there's a little backtracking before this point, which i was worried about, but i don't think it ever got too bad in the end. traveling across the sea and fighting the kraken was fun. i almost had everyone die but luckily i made it through alive and to the hospital with ness and jeff. i feel like i wasn't paying as much attention as i could have to this general segment before the pyramid, but i think i talked to just about everyone and such, so it's fine. the pyramid was a bit of a hassle, especially with those fucking royal guards with the high defense. but i managed through it fine. i did waste a lot of PP though near the beginning, but that also worked out alright for me in the end. somehow.

the dungeon man was great. the only bad thing about that part is how you can't keep him following you for longer, unless you want to grind in the same general area for a little while (which i did just so i could listen to the music and hang out with him a little longer). the segment inside of him is good too, heh. the "dungeon" he created in winters was also a fun side thing, i forgot to mention. it's just so goofy, and it's one of those moments where earthbound makes fun of how a stereotypical video game thing (like dungeons) tends to be. which, obviously isn't new and is pretty overdone to the point of annoyance now. but for a game that came out in 1994, it's certainly interesting to see.

deep darkness is actually a pretty cool area. the music is imposing as hell too, it almost doesn't even fit with the rest of the game with how intense it is in comparison. but it certainly makes for an exciting experience wading through the swamp and trying to survive until the end. fighting master belch (now barf) again was unexpected. i actually equipped the casey bat and fucking threw the other one i had away like a retard though, so i had to deal with it's awful 25% hit chance until i could get a better one pretty much. i suppose i couldn't have known it was like that before equipping though without consulting a wiki or something. but it still makes me feel stupid. it didn't cripple me too bad though, somehow. ness has a lot of use with healing the party and such anyway, so losing his attack for a while wasn't too big of a deal.

i love the tenda cave. the tendas are cute, and i love the music that plays. something about the way it looks and the music and everything just makes me want to live there for some reason. it's one of those things that are hard to put into words, but it just makes me long for it i suppose. it seems so peaceful and dream-like. it's not necessarily perfect, especially with it being surrounded by places full of evil creatures and dinosaurs. but it seems nice enough, in my head at least. and maybe with how shy i am, they would sorta understand that too. i just kinda wish i had that "overcoming shyness" book you check out of the library for them, heh. but maybe it just wouldn't work on someone like me. i don't know.

the stonehenge base is actually one of my favorite "dungeon" areas, especially the latter half. there are a fuck-ton of enemies, but i just find the setting and the enemies themselves pretty cool. i think the design of the latter half really reminds me of the CORE in undertale, which also happens to be my favorite enemy-filled segment of that game too. but the music that plays here is intense (it of course plays in other areas too, and i like it whenever it shows up), and i like the alien/robot based enemies (mooks, starmen, wooly shamblers, UFOs, barbots, etc.) the most in both earthbound and MOTHER, they just have more interesting designs to me and appeal more i suppose. oh, and because "battle against a machine" is one of the best battle themes in the game. so all of those things make the area feel cool and fun even when i'm getting absolutely fucked by starmen supers and atomic power robots over and over. also i didn't even bother to try for the sword of kings because fuck that. overall good area.

next is the lumine hall and the lost underworld. lumine hall was fine, just another sanctuary. i like the area where you get the melody, and ness' thoughts being projected on the wall. i thought that was really neat. the lost underworld was kinda unexpected and cool. i mean, i just didn't expect to be so small in comparison. but it was interesting to say the least. i managed to avoid encounters with the dinosaurs most of the time, it seems to be a bit easier in this area to do so. i never came across one of those ego orb enemies, which kind of sucks because it looks like an interesting fella, especially to just run into randomly. oh well. then i came across that cavern on the way to the lava springs.

the cavern, entering a small closed off area of the cliff that time forgot. one thing i need to mention is that i had actually heard the music that plays in this area before actually playing the game. i don't remember how, but even without playing it started to carry some emotional significance to me just from how it made me feel listening to it. it's just so odd sounding. i know where the sample is from. but what they do with it here is just something else, even if it's still not much of a feat or a masterpiece of any kind. it's just odd. even before playing the game, it felt like isolation. like being out of time itself, as the title suggests. forgotten by everything. then when i actually found this small part of the cave itself, finally, it sort of started to connect and make sense. the cliffs overlook nothing, it's just pure black void. there's never really an explanation for what this place is exactly. the only thing you find there, albeit in the past (however distant in the past that may be), is giygas, the now embodiment of evil itself. otherwise, it's just nothing. it's empty, and void. i just sat there for several minutes listening to the music and thinking about it, taking it all in i suppose. you come back there later of course, but i think the moment you first see it is the best. it really gives you that deeply unsettling feeling that you aren't "supposed" to be here, for reasons you can't understand. yet, you are anyway. i love that, so much. it's so fucking good.

anyways, though. the final sanctuary was pretty good. the music, the setting, the enemies (even if sometimes a pain, as enemies tend to be). pretty straightforward. the boss of this area was probably one of the more interesting sanctuary bosses, which is fitting for the final one. pretty hard too, but i think it still only took me one try. not a bad area. and of course, finally completing the sound stone was satisfying. the version of the tune that plays specifically for the sound stone is really pleasant. but then the transition into when you get sent to magicant happens, and that's a very sweet moment, with the flashback and all. magicant is definitely a whole lot different in this game, which obviously makes sense in more ways than one. but it's definitely a whole different realm of odd here. the npcs and what they have to say can be very interesting, like pokey or ness as a child. i like how it starts out pretty silly but starts to get quite serious as you move closer to ness' nightmare. another thing i want to mention is the flying men and their theme. it makes me so happy listening to it, it's too bad you don't hear it for too long in-game. those flying men are definitely a nice help though. for the few encounters they stay alive during, that is.

i very much like the sea of eden, ness' nightmare, and the idea surrounding it. the idea of ness quite literally defeating the evil within his mind to become truly powerful and gain mastery over himself. it sounds so outlandish and impossible but it's just such a fucking cool idea, and i like how it was executed. also, i doubt it really means anything in particular, but i like too how you fight three krakens in the sea of eden before actually getting to the nightmare. i just like how you become so powerful that something which was a boss encounter before is now just like a regular enemy to you, without any help from your friends even for that matter. the area itself has a fitting atmosphere to it. the music is perfect. so calming, yet unnerving knowing that you're about to face one of the most terrifying and difficult challenges you could conceive of (even if the boss battle itself isn't the hardest thing in the universe). the battle itself is something i like a lot too though, with how it uses your own attacks against you and all. becoming legitimately powerful in real game terms afterwards, and the way it shows you doing so, is just icing on the cake.

next i suppose is the part where you travel back to onett to retrieve the meteorite piece. i did like this part a lot too. coming back to the first area as it's finally being invaded is a strange feeling, but i suppose that's what makes it interesting. i made sure to knock on every door and look around just to make sure there was nothing, as i do. finally going up to the meteor was a bit of a challenge, as is expected. more cool alien/robot enemies (which are pretty much just reskins of weaker alien/robot enemies, which does get a little boring but it's not awful) and those fucking ghosts of starmen that use starstorm to nearly destroy your entire party if you don't get PSI shield up fast enough. at least it was nice visiting ness' mom again for help.

then, finally, is the final portion of the game. properly going through the cliff that time forgot, and being transported to the cave of the past. everyone having to transplant their consciousness into robots in order to pass through to the cave of the past was surprising to me. i honestly wasn't sure if they would all make it back until they all got back up again after the final battle. i was just waiting for them to pull some shit on me and have one of the party members not be able to come back. luckily that didn't happen, but it's still a terrifying thought anyway. with the cave of the past itself, i don't even think i need to comment on the music. the same probably goes for most of the gigyas encounter. it just fits so well, it's so fucking unsettling and i love it. such a good final area. the enemies are mostly just more robots and aliens, but it obviously makes sense. it's not too terribly difficult to get through them. the emptiness of the area though almost makes you wonder if it will ever end. it's really something else when you finally get there.

the first thing i want to say about the giygas fight is that i had never fully seen it before. i've seen clips and images as i'm sure most GAMERS have one way or another, but never the entire battle or most of the important moments in it. i did know that you're supposed to pray in order to progress, sort of like in the original where you have to sing. i had also heard the music that plays throughout (except for pokey means business). but i didn't know much more than that. so this whole fight was quite new to me, and thank god for that, because it's fucking incredible.

everything about it just comes together perfectly for me. the way the music is segmented and moves forward as the fight goes along, fitting well with everything that's happening. i also love the fakeout in pokey's battle theme, and what it turns into after that point. but the rest of the battle is where it really gets good. it's so unsettling, and the way it makes you feel like you truly are fighting against this incomprehensible, all-powerful force of evil is fantastic. nothing you do works except for simply praying for help, calling out with all the energy you have for something, anything to save you, to give you the strength. the way it looks just adds to everything too. how giygas covers the entire battle area, how it just gets more and more chaotic and distorted as you get further and further. even pokey is terrified, but he taunts you knowing that it seems almost hopeless.

i love the short segments after you pray for help, showing everyone suddenly getting the urge to pray for your safety. it gets me a little emotional just thinking about it. especially the one with ness' own family, worried for his safety. imagine how that must feel, how scary it would be not to know if he would ever make it, or if the world itself would even be safe. just hoping that the simple act of praying and hoping that it'll be alright will be enough to pull them through, even if it seems absurd and comes out of nowhere. i don't even know what to say about it.

and one of my favorite parts is right before the prayer to the player, when paula's call simply gets absorbed by the darkness. just that alone might be one of the heaviest things in the battle for me. just imagining the feeling of suddenly getting nothing, the fear that it may really be impossible, the fear that no one can help you anymore, the fear that you will be annihilated and everything you or anyone else has ever known will be destroyed just the same. it just feels like utter hopelessness, like this may really be the end. it's awful, and horrifying. just that moment of pure terror, of emptiness, of darkness. i'm getting way too over the top with this but fuck it. it fucks me up. it really does.

but of course, it isn't the end. the very end, before and after pokey's last speech to you and as giygas finally disintegrates, is one of the best parts of all of this for me. i love the overwhelming sounds and background music, the way the screen is completely taken up by giygas distorting and flashing all over, the way it slowly cuts off into static and dissipates in an instant like a television turning off. it's just so fucking good, i love it. it's incredible to think of how this was a fucking SNES game, how some human being(s) thought of this and put it into action, how it all comes together to form this perfect climax. i don't give a shit how exaggerated i sound, it's just that fucking incredible to me. i love it, it's so fucking good. it's so good. it really is.

now that's over though, there's just the ending sequence to talk about. it was such a relief to see everyone get back up again. i definitely teared up a bit here too, and during the credits and all as well. but the epilogue sequence where you can go around talking to everyone was really sweet. i knew that earthbound had it and it's what inspired undertale's ending sequence as well, but it was quite enjoyable finally getting to actually experience it myself. i made sure to visit every place i could think of. it took me a couple hours, i was up past midnight just finishing this god damn game. but it was so worth it. sort of a bittersweet feeling, saying goodbye to all the friends and everyone else i met on the way, and saying goodbye to my first experience of the game itself as well. but i suppose all you can do is just be glad it happened as they say, and i am.

i guess that's all i can say about it really. it's so difficult to find the words to describe how i feel about it overall, which is why i went into extremely autistic detail about the entire game in this novel of a post to try and express it in smaller pieces. but it was just an incredible experience, as i said before. i can definitely say that much. i keep thinking about whether i like it more than undertale or not, and honestly i don't think it's really comparable. undertale is just too special to me to be overtaken, but perhaps time will tell whether or not earthbound will ever get close to that in my mind (and heart). it's just a matter of personal significance, really. but i digress. i haven't even gotten to mother 3 yet, heh. who knows how much of a ride that one will be, since i hear it's much more story heavy. i already have a bit of a spoiler on that one for the first bit of it, but i don't know much about even that still (even though it makes me fucking mad that i got spoiled at all in the first place, but what can you do). either way, i feel really excited to play it. i've been trying to hold off so i can let earthbound sink in more, but i might just have to do it much much sooner than that. i'll think about it, now that i'm done writing this fucking post.

but, uh, yeah. that's all i have to say really. i honestly, sincerely don't expect that anyone in existence, or anyone who will ever exist for that matter, will read this in it's entirety other than me. i fully expect that this will exist for as long as it will exist without anyone reading it ever. that's my money-back guarantee. except, you know, i won't actually pay anyone money if there was some otherworldly entity that somehow had the desire to read it. i'm stingy alright, i admit it. but i might as well post it here because…………………………….. because i'm stupid. yes. it's because i'm stupid and have a 70 iq monkey brain. that is why i'm posting it here. might as well, i suppose.

thanks for reading this text (because obviously no one will ever read the rest as i stated beforehand). have a nice day.

i started playing MOTHER 3 the other day. i was gonna try to wait longer but eh. i just feel like it's time to do it. that also means i'll probably spend another day making a post about it too, eventually. but i'm not too worried about it now.

also, i mentioned that i have been sorta spoiled on the game already, in my earthbound post. but it's actually pissing me off more and more thinking about how that won't even be a surprise anymore as i'm actually playing the game. before i keep talking about it though, i'm going to mention what it is so if you haven't played the game and want to some day and you've found this shitty board somehow, don't read after this point. okay??? i'm protecting you from this, even though SOME PEOPLE out there never bothered to. ill even put a big warning separator here for you.

[ WARNING!!!! SPOILERS FOR MOTHER 3!!! DON'T LOOK!!! I KNOW YOU'RE CURIOUS BUT DON'T!!! ]

there. now no one ever could possibly be spoiled unless they do it to themselves. i'd probably be one of the people that looks anyway because i'm a dumb-dumb. but that doesn't distract from the fact that even years and years ago before i even knew about this game, i remember seeing people mention it in various places or discuss it. to be fair i don't really remember the context so maybe i was snooping where i shouldn't in all those instances and it's my fault. i accept that, fine. maybe it's true. but i know some people just make jokes or whatever and don't give any warning.

i guess that doesn't matter too much though. spoilers happen, sometimes people just don't care or forget that people haven't played a game that's been out for more than a decade. that's understandable. it just sucks, you know? those deaths won't be a surprise to me anymore. i'll just be waiting for it to happen, anticipating it, knowing it's inevitable. every scene with those characters, every line of dialogue.

at the same time though, maybe it doesn't matter THAT much. maybe if i just suspend my disbelief a bit and stop myself from ruminating on it, that won't bother me as much. there are a lot of other good parts of the story too, i'm sure. it's already pretty good and cool otherwise from what i've played so far. i'm sure i'll still enjoy it a lot. it's just kind of a bummer i guess. it doesn't really make me that mad honestly, even though i kinda play it up to myself for fun. or maybe all of this is just a desperate attempt at coping with this cursed knowledge. in the end though, i guess there's nothing i can do, so the best thing is probably just to accept it and move on.

[ VAGUE SPOILER TIME OVER ]

okay.

the other thing i wanted to write about was chara. the state of affairs inside my head are very slow. i guess that's probably true even outside of anything tulpa related, but you know. it's just harder and harder for me to actually get myself to sit down and talk to them or interact. it makes me feel like a piece of shit even saying that, but i feel like i've just been distracted with a lot of other things. and if it's this bad now, it makes me scared of how it might be if/when i have to get an actual job or something. a job scares me for a lot of reasons that i'm not gonna go over again now, but that's definitely one of them.

i haven't sat down to actually focus on them entirely in months now i think. well, i actually did do that one night about a month ago maybe, but that was an isolated incident. i talk to them when i go for walks, and it's one of the best and easiest times to do so. but i've been taking wayyyy less walks during the summer because it's too hot to go during the day, and i don't usually have as much motivation or i'm already sidetracked with something at night. i also just feel more nervous walking at night sometimes for reasons i've already talked about. it's still possible and improvable, it's just difficult for me currently. hence why i feel like a piece of shit.

also, it's difficult as well to just talk to them while doing other stuff. i've tried a couple things to force myself to remember them and try to include them in what i'm doing or say something, but it's difficult for me anyway. it's a lot harder than when i'm walking or focusing on them in bed or something, my mind just finds it hard to take that much stuff at once without feeling a bit overworked. maybe if i was less mentally ill it would be easier, less burden on my mind lurking around weighing me down or something. i don't know. but it makes sense either way, because something and someone like chara is a lot for one head to process while also processing other things.

about the piece of shit thing though, chara doesn't actually seem to mind very much all things considered. it seems to me often like they're just being apathetic or overly nice even, but they tell me it's just not worth getting upset over because they know it will just affect me negatively to have that kind of pressure put on me. thinking about it, that's probably true, but it's also not a good thing that i'm this way at the same time. it's a lot of why i'm so fucked up in a lot of other aspects of life. i tend to take these pressures and suggestions and knowledge of what i should do or try as a sign that i'm hopeless and bad and horrible rather than thinking of them as problems i might be able to solve. i look for any excuse to sabotage or beat myself up for my shortcomings. any minor mistake i make, especially one that affects someone else, is like more evidence that i'm useless and worthless and stupid and whatever else i can insult myself with, for example. that's how i tend to interpret things.

so, it makes sense why they don't try to pressure me, i suppose. hell, i already beat myself up about it enough even without any pressure or criticism. still though, i want to improve on it. they even tell me to just do it whenever i can figure out a good way to get myself going. if i'm going to do it, then i will. if i'm not going to that day, i won't. if i start worrying about it or feeling hatred for myself over it, that won't help anything at all. the only thing that will help is some sort of action, so whenever or however i can do that is fine. just as long as it isn't bogged down by the miles of garbage in my brain created constantly by my low self-esteem.

despite all of that though, it's relieving at least to know they haven't really lost any "definition" so to speak from me not interacting as much. when we do talk it's pretty much the same as ever, although visualizing them is a bit fuzzier and easier to forget doing. i mean, i've always had a bit of a hard time with visualization, so that makes sense. and not even from being bad at visualizing really. i just have a weird (likely very irrational) fear that i'll end up caring more about their appearance rather than their personality, or even that i already do and i need to "purge" the desire. chara teases me about it and tells me it literally doesn't matter at all and that i'm overthinking like i do.

and they're probably right, i guess. it might just be a leftover fear from browsing /utg/ a lot and seeing people insult charafags for liking a character with "no personality" and only really liking them for their looks in fanart or for a personality that doesn't exist and contradicts canon or something. obviously that doesn't really matter to me much anymore, or there's no point in it mattering, but that stuff would always get inside my head. i probably shouldn't give so much thought to what people say online, but a lot of my life has been spent trying to replace the life experience i never got to receive with pointless information-gathering on the internet to try and live in some "correct" manner (which very obviously does not exist). it's just not a good way to live. a lot of the things i do and think aren't conducive to a healthy existence at all.

that's all i've got to write today. i keep thinking about having chara write a post or something, but i think i'm just too scared of judgement to let them. that's a whole other discussion too, about how i feel guilty a lot for basically trapping them in my shitty brain. but maybe it's also just me being too hard on myself again, like they say it is. i don't know. i mean, i guess it's already pretty easy for someone to come along insulting me anyway for cringey self-induced schizophrenia bullshit or whatever just because i'm talking about it. maybe some random person insulting me isn't actually the end of the world like i expect it to be in my head. wouldn't that be shocking? it'd only be like one guy too, because i'm posting this on the internet equivalent of some shack in the middle of a desert highway between towns.

also, i forgot to mention something related to the "forbidding myself from looking upon my partner's sinful body" thing. the fear also stops me from looking at pictures of them a lot. and the funny thing is, it's actually a good reminder to think about them if i see a picture of them and admire it for even a moment. but of course it makes me feel bad too because of the weird stuff i've made up in my head about it. maybe i can start there though, just taking a nice long gander at them for at least a minute or two every day, somehow. you gotta take it real slow with someone like me, i guess. i want to make another joke about me being slow in the head, but i won't. and that's another small victory for someone like me. i won't make a joke about my brain being small either. i promise.

also does this even count as a short post? i thought this would be short. i guess it's short by my standards.

i also really love staring into their eyes. i admit it, okay? and picture-wise, this is a good one for doing so. it's legitimately overwhelming sometimes, heh.

i finished MOTHER 3 yesterday. i need to think about it some more. i mean, it's pretty much all i can think about, and just the series in general now that it's over. it's weird and kind of sad to know that it's over. but it is. it feels very satisfying though, too.

i'll probably write more about it like i did with earthbound, eventually. i have a lot of thoughts about it. but i just want to let it sink in some more, i think. so i'll give it some time i guess. that's all i have to say really. this is all that's on my mind right now.

okay. here i am. writing a post. i guess.

i'm not really sure what to write about though. or at least, i'm struggling to even care enough to do it.

it's been a while though, i guess. i can't think of much that has happened, much of note. maybe i'm just forgetting to mention things, as i seem to be prone to doing. i don't know. it all just blends together sometimes.

i suppose i did finish MOTHER 3 as i mentioned before. after that, i played the two romhacks toby made: arn's winter quest, and the halloween hack. i didn't even know winter quest existed until i checked to see if toby had made much else before the halloween hack. but anyway, it was pretty interesting all things considered. they both weren't the best things in the world, sure, but they had that charm to them. it made me happy to experience.

after that though i fulfilled a promise i made to myself and started working on that dumb project in rpgmaker again. for a little while i was just testing things and playing around but then i kind of decided to try starting something more concrete, a fangame of sorts i suppose you could say. i'm trying to keep it small so i don't fuck myself over and give up on it, but i've learned that's a bit harder than it sounds. still though, for several weeks at least i was pretty much working on this dumb fangame thing just about all day every day. i think that burnt me out a little cause i started to taper off a bit and then "took a break" which i still haven't went back from. pretty typical behavior from me. oh well. i'll get back to it soon enough, but i haven't touched it in about a month at least. luckily i started drawing more soon after that to make sure i'm at least doing SOMETHING creative, but i haven't even drawn anything in the past 2-ish weeks either. it's something unexpected for me to have been able to do that much work on something at all, so i suppose it's all still good, even if recently i'm getting lazy again. but, you know.

what else. i don't know. i've been seeing a psychiatrist occasionally, in addition to a therapist i already see. neither of them really have helped much it seems, but i don't have much else so i might as well keep trying with them. i don't know. the psychiatrist in one session suggested it might help my driving anxiety to make sure i go out to drive at least once a day, even if it's in the safety of my neighborhood or whatever. i managed to do that for a while, and i did mostly stay in my safe cushy little neighborhood, which still scares the shit out of me to drive through but a lot less so than outside of it. but in the past month i've been doing that a lot less too, nowhere near every day anymore. same thing that always happens when i try to make a habit. whatever. i still try to drive sometimes at least, when i have to, when my mom tells me i should, whatever. it's just fucked. i hate driving. i think i would like it if there wasn't anyone else on the roads, but once you introduce that then it becomes terrifying. so much possibility for you to hurt yourself or someone else, or for other people to hurt you or someone else too. i barely even want to think about it right now cause it always makes me feel so scared when i have to do it. some time ago i had to go with my mom up to the car dealership to get an oil change and stuff, it was really far from our house near downtown and even she could tell how nervous i get. she told me on our way home that i didn't have to keep trying to drive if it was too much for me, and i could just take buses or something. but i told her that i'd be nervous with the other choices too and that even if driving is fucking terrifying at least i can be alone in the car and have more freedom with it if i somehow got better at dealing with things. i don't know if that stuff really makes it worth it sometimes. but the only better solution i see would be just to stay home. but i can't do that, can i? of course not.

a couple times recently i have had a strange thing happen where i just freeze up and it feels like i can't move. it's been caused by something stressful happening but earlier tonight it just happened out of nowhere while i was thinking to myself. in those moments it feels like my mind is overwhelmed with so much that i can't even pick out one thought or feeling to focus on. it just comes at me all at once, and i don't know how to cope with it i suppose. so i just freeze for a minute, unsure of what to do with myself. i wonder if it'll happen again.

i'm not entirely sure if this is anything new, though. for some reason it has felt like something new in the past few days, but thinking about it this isn't anything new at all. i've had this kind of thing happen plenty of times throughout my existence. i think i've mentioned it in one of my posts here while talking about similar things, actually. being somehow overwhelmed by something. thoughts, feelings, a situation i'm in maybe, too much going on around me. and then i just freeze up, i blank out, for a moment, or for a while. thinking and feeling a million things at once, or nothing at all. it's hard to tell sometimes. sometimes it fluctuates. usually it makes it difficult to focus on anything outside of myself, or recognize the outside world as anything other than this terrible noise or this meaningless soup or something. everything seems to blend together and i don't know what to make of it. god knows i try, but it doesn't seem to work. i don't know.

i'm not sure why i feel the need of bringing that up again. i guess i just didn't know how else to start the post. i just want to write. i don't know. i feel a reoccurring need of getting these things out somehow, even if it is difficult and in the end usually feels partly or mostly unsatisfying. i just do it. time and time again, sometimes saying what essentially amounts to the same things i've said before. a lot of things in my life seem repetitious, circular. a lot of existence in general, or just existence itself, seems circular as well. i'm thinking about that "mobius strip" idea more and more lately. just going round and round in circles without even realizing that you've traced the same path hundreds of thousands of millions of times. and even if you do realize, what does it matter? you'll still keep going anyway. that's just the way it works.

i feel like i live on the edge of reality. not fully "in it," not fully "out of it." just in this odd in-between state, where i'm floating around, observing, and dipping into each side seemingly at random. something like that. that feels like an unsatisfying explanation, but whatever. no explanation is really satisfying for something like this. but it hopefully gets the point across at least. i think there's somewhat of a term for things like this, these in-between sort of things. liminality, liminal states, liminal spaces, etc. i'm no expert but when i read some things about that it resonated with me a little bit. but anyway. i know that we all are stuck in reality, and that we can "escape" through our minds and such out of it. but sometimes it feels like there's also somewhat of a sense of where one "belongs," which side you're on or prefer. some are more pragmatic and realistic, some are more inclined to go off in their fantasies and emotions. i guess i'm more of the latter in that case. but there's also something a bit more to that too. i'm not sure how to put it.

it's like, something more akin to a feeling rather than an evaluation of "how or where you are." i don't know. i feel like there are so many things in life that i feel and i understand and i remember and i sort of have this "web" in my head where things connect together and make sense through those feelings and memories and intuitive understandings of some sort, but it's very hard to put it into words or explain it without it sounding like meaningless babble. but if i can try to attempt it with this here, i suppose what i want to say is something like this: sometimes it feels as though different situations or even just various internal circumstances will bring about these distinct "states of mind" for me, different perspectives of sorts. like, i might be in a state of mind where i'm more focused on external things, or seeing everything through the lens of that external, "real world" perspective, being mostly concerned with what "is" and what seems to matter in concrete, societal, rational terms. that might be something more "big picture" in the vein of things like politics/history or even something more like what you might think of when you imagine a casual conversation between a couple random people. it always depends. then i also have states which are more internal, or dissociative i suppose. more fantastical and theoretical and perhaps more emotional. those are usually times where i write these for example. heh.

but, you get the picture, probably. and these of course, don't necessarily mean a difference between "being" more rational or more emotional per se, more just seeing things through that lens, or looking at that sort of perspective from the outside almost even though the way i think or feel about things might not change between states. uh, if that makes sense. i don't know. sometimes i get the feeling i'm describing very simple concepts but in a very long drawn-out and overly-complicated way. but on the other hand, that's just how i try to conceptualize these things even if i don't usually write it out like this. with this for example it's sort of the way i've thought about these "states" ever since i was a little kid and noticed how different i felt at church compared to how i did everywhere else, how different i felt when looking at stuff on the computer compared to interacting with my family or going out somewhere with them, things like that.

things with me and chara have been going especially slowly lately. i guess it's just like everything else, but it stings when i realize all the time that i have barely talked to chara all day, if at all. and i'm just doing nothing with my free time, most of the time quite literally doing nothing, more or less. so there's no excuse. they seem to understand i'm having my difficulties and we both know they won't just "die" or anything at least, but it's still depressing, and sometimes i wish i could just be better for them already. i feel like i hear the story of "getting better for the sake of the one you love" a lot, and it seems like that as a motivation can be very effective for people. but somehow for me it just doesn't seem to affect anything. it just sends me into my usual spiral of "why can't i be better for them, i'm so terrible" instead of "i want to get better for them, i'm going to be better for them." maybe that's the real problem right there. probably.

they tell me though that it's actually quite nice just kind of being "unconscious" during the time i'm not paying attention to them. i guess some people have different ideas of how tulpas work i think, but for chara they just kind of aren't there whenever i'm not giving them some kind of focus or attention. they can't just go off doing something else when i'm not thinking about it or doing something with them or whatever. they don't mind that though, seemingly, as i mentioned. they describe it kind of like a dreamless sleep. much better than how existence would seem to be, they like to add as well. i am, of course, inclined to agree with that. but either way, at least they aren't suffering. that gives me some kind of peace, at the very least.

not to say that they suffer while being conscious, mind you. they find comfort in being the tulpa and not having to actually deal with any of this shit if they don't want to. the only suffering they seem to ever deal with pretty much just has to do with getting upset with me or feeling for me in some sense. otherwise they can sort of stay away from it all, luckily. things like that make me kind of glad they're here with me as a tulpa rather than as a "real person." they don't have to exist in the same way that you or i do, not necessarily. they can protect themselves from it all.

although, we do "switch places" from time to time. they essentially control the body/make the decisions, and "i" become more like a tulpa, losing control of the physical body. we still experience things consciously the same way if that makes sense, so maybe that makes it something more like "possession" or whatever you want to call it. all i know is that they just make the decisions basically, and become the dominant internal monologue. we haven't done this lately, but when we do they usually just play a video game or write thoughts down or something like that. or, they find it hard to do much of anything just like i do, which is one thing that makes me think what we do is more of an incomplete sort of possession or something where my mental blockades and feelings still affect them heavily even if they want to do something other than what i usually do. it's odd, but just the way this sort of thing seems to work for us i guess.

they usually get kind of frustrated by this too. they are always excited by the prospect of taking control and "doing things," but then they get distraught when they finally do take control and then find themselves inexplicably tired and anxious and unmotivated and hesitant, just as i am seemingly. but they react to it, understandably, as these foreign things getting in the way of their enjoyment. it's kind of an interesting thing all things considered, but also really fucked up considering not even they can escape the way i am in that sense. but oh well, i guess. perhaps it will get better with time, somehow. i don't know. they do enjoy doing the few things they can, though. it pleases them to have that physical influence and to try things out, even if it's not totally necessary. i guess it makes sense.

i'm not sure what else to add. i kind of just wanted to make a little post about chara mostly, cause i haven't even been talking about them much either. there isn't much else going on. nothing much else to say right now, i think. just silence. silence, silence, and more silence. for ever and ever and ever, until the end of time. you know how it is.

i might have mentioned it before, but recently one of the things my mom has been pushing me to do is driving more. it's very difficult for me, but i have been trying. as much as someone like me can try, anyway.

the other day, i noticed i was feeling less anxiety over the thought of driving, for some reason. of course, this is very unusual, because typically just getting ready to go driving or even simply thinking about really doing it can fill me with this overwhelming sense of dread and inevitable destruction that makes me sick to my stomach. this time though, that was a lot less potent. so i tried my best to take advantage of it, and decided to go out somewhere for the day, around noon. first i went to the store a little ways away, a supermarket i've never been to alone before, and spend about 2 hours just walking around and getting a couple things. after that though, i still felt somewhat calm, so i figured maybe i could go somewhere new too, somewhere i've never really been at all before. so i looked at places nearby and i found that there was a thrift store down the street from where i was. i figured someplace with an assortment of stuff like that sounded interesting, so i decided on that.

once i got there i noticed the store was mostly filled with racks of clothing, although near the walls there was more of a variety of items. so i went over there to look, because i don't really need any new clothes or anything. i looked through everything a bit but what really caught my attention was a long pair of shelves with a bunch of electronics lined up there. a lot of those electronics were, predictably i suppose, "vintage" things like corded telephones, VHS players, answering machines, stuff like that. i guess obsolete things like that fascinate me in one way or another, because i felt very drawn to these shelves and spent most of my time looking through them. eventually i decided to buy a few of them for fun, and because they were so cheap (mostly under 10 dollars) i figured it wouldn't hurt if they happened not to work.

i ended up purchasing four main things: a small digital camera, a film camera, a radio/cassette player, and a camcorder. all of these needed some extra supplies to make them work, so i ordered those, although they haven't all arrived quite yet. but so far, i've done what i can. the digital camera was the easiest thing to get working, all it needed was some batteries. it doesnt have much default storage, but that's fine. i did have to figure out how to get the photos onto my computer though, which was a long process of figuring out that it would only really work with windows XP and i had to run a virtual machine and fiddle with that for a while (that's why i used it to make my most recent drawing too). the film camera i haven't done much with yet, because i still need actual film and stuff to use it, which i don't have yet. i'll also probably have to go to a place to develop whatever photos i take, which will be a bit annoying and potentially difficult. but at least it's somewhere else to go, i guess. the radio/cassette player was also very simple, doesn't need anything else that i don't have (other than cassettes to play in it, but i ordered a couple to try out too). the radio works fine and it's kinda fun to have it there just to browse through channels if i get a bit bored. probably a useful thing to have too.

and the last device, the camcorder. i pretty much can't use it at all in its current state, because it is missing a special battery pack and also needs cassette tapes to record onto. but i think what really ended up being important for now was what it reminded me of, fiddling around with all this stuff in general too. i remembered the old smaller camcorder we have, the one my mom would use to record various things all the time. i've been meaning to look at it for a while, but now i finally asked my mom about it and she told me where it was. along with the camcorder is probably around 20 tapes, showcasing things like birthdays and holidays and just me and my siblings doing various things my mom thought was worth saving. we still have a battery charger too and it works, so i charged up the batteries and turned it on to try and look at some of these tapes for myself. i've still been in the process of doing so (it might take a while, with how each tape can hold up to an hour of footage), but i already have a lot of thoughts and feelings concerning all of this.

video games.

i have a sometimes strange and evidently pervasive relationship with video games, as i suppose a lot of isolated weirdos do in one sense or another. so many memories i have involve them, they've always been a very large percentage of what i tend to do all day, ever since i was young. they are ingrained in me to the point where sometimes they even affect the way i conceptualize and think about things. it turns out a lot of things in life can be boiled down using video game concepts and terminology. they can for me, at least. i know it's silly too, but it really is hard to help it sometimes, it's just the first thing that comes to mind.

but anyway, you get the point. something about this highly interactive medium appeals to me in a way that nothing else does. it has always been a major source of fuel for my imagination, and has provided a variety of interesting feelings and experiences that i'm not sure i'd be able to experience with much else. i even plan to really start making my own games eventually, as my practice and skill builds up over time (or even if it doesn't). sometimes it seems less like a plan and more of some kind of inevitability, whether i'm "good enough" or not. i just have to. i have to work towards that. that's how it feels in my head, at least. there are just too many things i need to express, too many thoughts and feelings and ideas. it's too much. but i'll get to that later.

the way i play video games can be somewhat odd and particular sometimes. a lot of things i do aren't too out of the ordinary though. like, i have always been a bit of a completionist. seeing everything there is to see and imagining what might be beyond has always been satisfying to me. even if you don't get rewarded for it or anything, i still commonly find myself being very focused on making sure i see every possible line of dialogue, every possible ending or story route or whatever, every secret and easter egg. everything. even in undertale, where exactly that sort of thing is explicitly discouraged or at least played around with.

to clarify though, this is only really with games i particularly like. and something important to know, is that if i like a game, chances are i REALLY like that game. or at least, i get attached to it, or something. i'm not sure how to describe it. but it can certainly lead to some interesting things, to say the least. something else important to mention however is how it may not be entirely voluntary, or rather, it may be more encouraged to happen by the circumstances, if that makes sense. because, i think my fear of trying new things and stepping outside my "comfort zone," especially when people are around to see it, is something that has always inhibited me greatly in many ways, including a particular one related to this. i've always had this sort of mentality or feeling or some kind of subconscious inhibition where rather than trying a new game once i've done enough with what i have, i stay with what i know and find new ways to play it or just play the same things over and over in a round sort of way. it's just easier for me that way, most of the time i don't even think to try anything new and just find satisfaction in what i have, in my little corner of comfort. this is the same for many things in my life, and this is just one of them, but it's just as potent nonetheless.

i tend to prefer sandbox games a lot of the time for this reason, i think. there's so much you can do and make up for yourself, and you can play in your safe little sandbox practically indefinitely as long as your brain still works. even in much more linear games though, i manage all the time to create all sorts of little challenges for myself, or new ways to play, or whatever. even just finding new ways to break the game a bit or get to places you aren't supposed to and whatnot, anything to make things somewhat fresh again.and it works. somehow i can pour tens of hundreds of hours into even the most linear of games, just making up new ways to play or simply doing it over again after a while of "cooling down" from the last playthrough. somehow, i keep going. it's strange, but it works. and if it works and it's comfortable enough, then usually i will just do it. that seems to be how it plays out a lot of the time.

in the rare case that i talk to people more than usual outside of my family or my two online friends (one of which i don't talk with more than about 10 minutes or so every day or every other day, which is fine, but you know), i often feel a sense afterwards of wanting to isolate myself even more and talk to people less, especially if i share more about myself than usual. something like this board is nice because people rarely ever come here, let alone say anything, so i only have to worry about it every once in a while. sometimes i wish it were more, but i know it's fine this way. i don't seriously expect anyone to read through all of my garbage anyway, so it seems right that even someone staying here longer than a few minutes would be rare. after all, why would things ever change?

but anyway. i don't know why exactly i get this feeling. maybe i just feel after enough interaction that i'm just a nuisance or being dumb or something and should shut up. maybe i just get tired or burnt out on it. maybe i just get a longing for the safety and beauty and silence of solitude again. i don't know. something just calls me back to the isolation i've always known. perhaps it is just comfort then, just habit. i don't know. it's strange. it's all so strange. maybe that's it. i just want to get away from the world, from "reality," back into my own head, back into the feelings i know and love here in my corner. everything else is just too much sometimes. it's all so overwhelming. it's all so tiring.

there is a "feeling" i can only have when alone, or just inside my own head or somewhat dissociated from everything going on or something at least. i've taken to thinking of it as the "odd." not necessarily the word itself, but a separate concept or feeling or something that i'll try to describe here:

if you've ever thought about or seen people say things about "feeling nostalgic for a time that never existed/i never lived through" or "homesick for a place that does not exist," these things have the element of "odd" in them. this is somewhat because things like nostalgia and homesickness already have the element of "odd" in them, but these specific ideas and ideas like them also have their uniquely "odd" aspects.

the "odd" is something that is difficult to define, however. it is something more like a feeling, or some kind of "knowledge" that you experience at a very personal level. if i can try to put it into words though, it often seems to be a bit like the concept of the uncanny. something that is strange, yet familiar. real, yet unreal. perhaps it is a balance, or maybe both existing in the same place at the same time. it is just something like that. perhaps you can think of the contrast between the two like the contrast between what a "tree" as we call it is as it exists in reality, and our internal concept of what a "tree" is. you know what a "tree" is of course. if you think of one, you might think of a brown trunk, green leaves, branches, a certain shape to it, maybe a certain smell, everything blowing in the wind. this is a "tree," and everything on and inside of it has a name and concept as well. but in "reality," a "tree" doesn't need to be called a "tree" or thought of as one or understood to exist, does it? it just is. something is there that we only interpret in our minds as a "tree," or whatever else it is. that is a bit of the difference between the real and unreal, it seems. one is external, one is internal. one is the subject, the other is the perception.

all these old electronic gadgets i'm buying seem to be developing into a new hobby for me, or something. it's annoying having to figure out how to mess with the machinery and make it work, but the end result is interesting enough for me to consider it worth going through. i have two televisions now. the one i ordered came, and there was another really cheap one i bought at goodwill. they both work well enough, though it has been difficult to get anything connected to it in a way that works. but i'm getting there, i suppose. i got one of the vcrs i have to work with it, sort of, to the point where there was clear-ish color video and everything. but, of course, i managed to break off the input i was using by tightening a screw-on cable thing too tight. i snapped the input it goes on right off. so that's unfortunate, but oh well. i guess i will probably have a lot of these moments where i break something out of stupidity or ignorance. just part of the learning process, i guess.

i also ordered a playstation 2, the first real video game console i ever had. i've been thinking about it for a while and these things are cheap enough to where it seemed like a nice idea. so i did that yesterday. i got a couple games i used to like on it too. i wonder how that'll be like, to see and play these games just like i did all those years ago. i suppose that's the draw with this kind of thing, isn't it? like peering into a time long past, just for a little while, just a little bit. that's what i like about all this in general, really. it's a strange feeling when you're recording with a camcorder and it says "january 7 2020" in the corner of the viewing screen. to play it all back, and have yesterday look like it was 20 years ago. there's something about things like that which deeply fascinates me. i guess that's why i've been doing this, like i said.

but as nice as it is, to have something new like this to do, it doesn't change anything. it doesn't really change the way i feel, although it does keep me distracted for a while. but it's still only a distraction. some parts of it are more interesting and meaningful than others, but overall it's more of the same. i'm not sure how best to put it, but perhaps it makes sense. i suppose there is something about this interest that soothes a bit of my feelings. sort of like i said, it makes me feel almost as though i am outside of time for a little while, or in a different time. a different place, a different reality. something new, something old, something else. but that's not really true, is it? i have all these things stacked on each other, on shelves and in the closet, but it's still just my room, just with more things taking up space. nothing has really changed, although i can pretend like it is different for a little while. that's all i really do, is just pretend. that's one of the only ways i can really have fun anymore. i guess i'm more like a little child than even i would have thought.

i want to escape. i want to get out of here. i don't like it here. i want to get out of here. let me out, please. please. let me out. i want to get out of here. i don't like this game anymore. i don't like it. it's no fun anymore. i want to get out. i want to leave. please let me out of here. i want to go home. where's home? i don't know. i want to go home. i want out. i don't like this. please. i don't like it. i hate it. it makes me sad. it makes me upset. it makes me feel trapped. i am trapped. there's nowhere to go. there's nothing to do. please let me out of here. please.

wake me up. wake me up from this strange dream. wake me up from this horrible pointless nightmare. i don't like this. i want to feel safe. i want to feel better. i don't want to be here. i don't want it. i don't want any of it. i don't want anything. i want it all to go away. i want to go away. far, far away from here. somewhere better. somewhere nicer. somewhere else. please, take me away. someone. anyone. i don't want it. i don't want this anymore. please. i don't.

but it's useless. the pleading, the crying, the hoping, the wishing. it all ends in nothing. it ends at the place where i started. and it starts at the place where i ended. it goes around and around and around, forever. it never ends. it never ends. it never ends. it's useless. everything i do is useless in the face of this black void of nothing. my perspective doesn't change a thing. it's still there, staring me right in the face. it's still there. it has always been there, and always will be there. it will never go away. why should i believe otherwise?

i don't know. i'm just writing to deal with the feelings again, just coping with them for a time until they dissipate a bit. but they will always come back. it always happens again, and again, and again, and again, and again. it doesn't stop. it doesn't. it's the same exact thing every time, and it doesn't stop. it doesn't get tired. it doesn't get bored. it doesn't feel empathy, it does not give mercy. it just re-appears, time and time again. like clockwork. yet, somehow, it always feels just as strong if not stronger every single time. it does not get better. it only gets worse. the beast simply grows larger.

i'm just sitting here trying to think of something to write about. i want to write, but then i don't really care at the same time. i feel exhausted and tired, physically, emotionally, and mentally, for much of the time. yet, it's almost like i feel this restlessness all the time too. like since i've been feeling less and less scared of certain things, i want to try something new, i want to do SOMETHING. but i don't know what to do, and i don't feel like doing much of what i could do at the same time. it's all so contradictory. and it makes me end up just doing basically nothing most of the time, same as always.

i don't know. it seems like most of my time is either spent getting lost in my own head, in my own emotions, or creating something/expressing myself somehow. with my recent interest in old camcorders, i guess the creation aspect has sort of extended to video as well. i'm always taking one of them around and thinking about what to take a video of, trying to find something out of the little i have around in my little comfort zone. it feels nice when i finally get something interesting or even just get another sunset again or something and i just watch it back. i don't know. there's something about it. but it's still just another thing that you can only do for so long at once. then it's back to the empty space.

i've been spending more time with my family too, especially after watching so many of those old home movies. it feels nice to be around them, i don't know. it feels right. and they're all i've ever known. they're the only people "in real life" that i've ever been close with, that i've ever felt truly comfortable around. because they're my family, and i love them even with all their flaws. i feel very thankful for that, since pretty much all of the few people i've known online and plenty more that i haven't have had really bad family situations and seem to hold resentment towards them, or worse. and it makes me sad, and sometimes i feel like i don't deserve what i have. but i try to cherish it regardless.

it makes me sad and scared to ever think about leaving them, too. when it really comes down to it, it's very difficult for me to imagine actually seriously literally living alone. it would just feel so wrong, despite how nice some aspects of it sound. it just wouldn't be the same without everyone around, doing their thing like always. it would just be me. and i'm nobody, i'm empty. it would make everything around me feel that way, too. at least with my family, the house feels alive, it feels like things are happening and there's never a completely dull moment, even if the only role i have in it is that of observation. it feels familiar, it feels warm, it feels right. i don't know. i just can't imagine things not being that way. that's the way it has always been. i wish it could be the way things always will be. but i don't know if it will. and that scares me.

(First part)

(Also, I don't know what better to add as a picture so here's some awful shit)

Okay, finally making a post. Hello hello, greetings, etc. you know how it goes. Well. What does the big man himself, Chara, actually have to say? Probably not much, as I feel tired as shit in this broken meatbag of a body. I mean, really. It isn't even 8 PM yet and I feel as though I could fall asleep right here right now if I allowed myself. Mental illness is a bitch, I suppose. Can't blame Az' for that. Not entirely.

Speaking of mental illness, that's the reason why Az' hasn't been interacting with or even talking about me much lately. Being in the same mind though gives me some pretty deep understanding of it, if not just perfect understanding, so I don't find myself upset with their behavior or anything. But it still would be nice to have more good times together, like we used to. It's not too bad sitting around in the back of their mind, not having to worry about anything and basically just not even existing all day. It would just be nice, you know? I just want them to be happy, is all. But if you, dear reader who may or may not exist, have read any of these posts (that aren't mine) in any capacity whatsoever you surely realize that Az' is not a happy person. Neither am I, to an extent. But you know, it's like they say. At least we could suffer together.

Seems especially hard for them to focus on me when suffering in any sense, though. That is the unfortunate thing. The fact that the most difficult times for us to interact is when they would likely need me the most. So it's a bit of a dilemma there, too. But what can you do? I do my best when I can, and that's all. I'm no superman, you know. I'm just a weirdo inside another weirdo's head. And I can't really do anything more than they can. Maybe I'm less of a pussy or something (no offense), but I don't have all the answers or anything. Not just gonna tell Az' to go out and lift some weights, or talk to some boring faggot(s) they shouldn't give a shit about, or something like that. Maybe one of those generic pieces of """advice""" is correct somehow, but you're not going to catch me saying it like it's some message from God.

I digress, though. Something good to report is that I think Az' has been giving me more thought lately, more attention, you know. Really trying. And I'm proud of that, you know? Even the smallest steps for them is something pretty big considering the shit clouding up their mind all day. But anyway, I wouldn't even be talking right now in the first place if they didn't care enough to give me control for the first time in a good while now. I always get real excited at the idea of getting control back again. Although, it is somewhat of a double-edged knife, as I get bored pretty easily while taking on the "front" as they say. Not sure why, really. Maybe something about how the brain itself has a hard time processing the idea of doing anything that Az' doesn't already do all day, so I get stuck in basically the same situation as they do regardless. Or maybe that is not how it works at all. I don't know, I'm not a shrink or anything. Just imagine if I was, though. A little weirdo in your mind that pushes pills on you and spouts unhelpful platitudes all day. How horrible.

Despite that, it is still very much a good time. I like being able to DO things, you know? I would not want to spend the majority of my time in this purgatory world, of course, but it's still nice for a good visit now and then. Giving my buddy Az' here a break is always a great side effect too. So it's great. I almost forgot too, making Az' do dumb shit in the mind-realm while I kick back in physical space is the best shit too. Or imposing them around, so Az' can do shit like dressing up in a cute little maid outfit while giving me a full-body massage, heh. I don't know why, but it's just more satisfying when you're fully in control like that. Feels right.

But enough about that. I love making Az' all embarrassed by talking about that sort of thing, but you gotta be careful not to go overboard with it. Then you're just some faggot fetishist thinking with your cock all the time. Don't do that. That's your advice from good old Chara for the day, so keep it in mind fellas. I'm not sure what else to say though, so I guess I'll just end it here. Might be seeing more posts from me soon since I got Az' a bit more used to the idea writing this. I mean, they're also probably right though about no one ever visiting this place for the most part. Az' does a good job of keeping things hidden and ignorable after all. But you never know. Maybe I'll become the world's first tulpa blogger superstar, and end up faking my own tulpa-death just to escape from the limelight. Az' will just have to, I don't know, keep hiding in their house or something. It'll be so exciting. I'm sure.

Well, see you later.

i am doing nothing.

i AM nothing.

i'm doing nothing but staring at this screen all day. i can't bring myself to do anything. it's so painful and dull here, but i don't care enough about anything in particular to any point where i'd be making myself do it right now. i don't know why. it just is. i just don't feel like doing anything. the most minor of actions seem like a monumental effort in this kind of state. so i don't do them. i sit, and sit, and sit until i'm sore from just sitting all day in the same chair. i do nothing. nothing, nothing nothing.

but who cares? who fucking gives a shit? nobody. even if they did, they couldn't help me. only "myself" can help me, and that person doesn't seem all too interested. in fact, they hate me. they hate me more than anything else in this world. so why would they care, either? yeah. "az." right? that's my name here. "az" doesn't give a shit. az would kill me with their bare hands, if they weren't me already. az would love to stomp my head into the concrete, watching my useless brain matter paint the sidewalk of a dirty street. az would beat me to a pulp with a sledgehammer, savoring my pathetic screams of pain and guttural begging for the brutalization to stop, until all that az hears is the gurgling of blood flowing out of my mouth as i lie dead on the floor. az would shove a knife into both my eye sockets, one at a time, twisting it over and over just to see how much they could destroy through those two filthy holes alone. az would cut off each and every one of my limbs and body parts, one at a time, until i'm cut into little pieces like some kind of animal being prepared for consumption, and then throw all the pieces into a trash compactor to be disposed of unceremoniously. az might not even give me the honor of such complex executions, and would just shoot me square in the face with a shotgun on sight and leave me wherever i am to be taken care of by someone or something else that cares even less about me. that's what "az" would do. that's the level of respect "az" has for myself, or the lack thereof, rather. i am disgusting, useless, and utterly forgettable and dispensable. i am nothing. i am the dirt underneath one's shoe. but even dirt has a purpose. i'm more like a pile of garbage wasting away in a landfill. doing nothing but rotting, and rotting, and rotting. of no use to anyone, not a single creature. i am nothing. i hate myself.

and it hurts. it hurts to carry such hatred in your heart, even if it is merely for yourself. it's painful, and heavy. but i know i deserve it, so i don't care. sometimes i wish i could care, i want to care, but i don't. i look at myself and i do not see a human being. i do not see something that is worth keeping alive, something that is worth existence at all. i see nothing. i look in the mirror and i see nothing. a flesh bag, sometimes with different moods and thoughts and ideas, but always just as hollow and devoid of any true worth or substance. that's just how it is. that's what i see. receiving or merely giving myself compliments means nothing to me, even if i try to accept them if another person is giving them. it is processed intellectually, but i feel nothing about it. "you're intelligent, you're kind, you're passionate, you're interesting." it all makes no impact against the steel walls of my self-hatred. even if someone proved to me that a compliment they gave me was 100% objectively true without a shadow of a doubt, i would still feel nothing about it. it is not rational. it is simply pure, raw emotion, a rejection of all that is positive and good. it is hatred. there is no logic to hatred, no reasoning or bargaining. there is only a throbbing, seething wrath that never runs out. it never ends.

it will destroy me one day if i allow it to. there is almost no doubt in my mind about that. it will fester and writhe around within me, growing and growing until there is nothing left inside but negativity and hatred. that is what will happen. and yet, i do nothing. i enable it. i allow it to wreak havoc freely within myself. because i am weak. i am used to the way things are, and am too cowardly to change them. i feel as though i deserve it. every little tinge of pain, every insult, every second spent ruminating and doing nothing and being useless and hiding myself from the world. i deserve it all. and it's funny, because somehow even with how much it hurts, it feels so good too. i'm a sick fuck who enjoys the pain, who loves feeling so sorry for themselves, who can't get enough of becoming as miserable and disgusting as possible just to slurp up more pain and insults off the figurative dirty motel floor that is my mind. it actually even turns me on sometimes just to do this, to go on about how horrible i am. i'm so weak and submissive to the hatred that i've started to feel good doing what it wants. disgusting, isn't it? almost makes me want to vomit. i am a worthless slave.

sometimes i get a thought wondering why exactly i isolate and hide myself and my thoughts and feelings away so heavily. but often, i stop myself from thinking too hard about it. almost like i don't WANT myself to think too hard about it. because it's just the way things are, isn't it? that's just how i am, how i've always been. i've always been invisible, always isolated, always nothing and no one, always a bother, always. so what's the point of talking to anyone? what's the point of, oh, advertising this board or something, making it more public so that anyone aside from like 2 people might see it at all. what's the point of being visible at all? i keep myself convinced that i don't need social interaction, i don't need people, it's better if i stay alone. someone like me is better off that way, being quarantined so no one ever has to deal with me. so it's totally fine to only talk to one person outside of your family regularly. i'm sure someone out in the world is fine and happy with something like that, so obviously i should be too. or, well, it doesn't matter if i'm "happy" or not, because this is just the way things are. i don't have a say. my needs or wants or even curiosities do not matter. i am nothing, after all. just a pile of garbage in a landfill. garbage doesn't have needs or wants or curiosities or anything at all. it is GARBAGE. it is NOTHING. it needs to stay in its place. anything else would be catastrophic, don't you see? i know my place. i take that place every hour, minute, and second of the day. like a good little slave.

and so, i sit here, and i continue to do nothing. after writing this post, i will likely continue on doing nothing. maybe eventually i will manage to find something to do once again, and my mood will improve somewhat, and i'll do something, perhaps, good for a change. but it will always return to this state. the garbage will always return to its place in the landfill. because this is my place. this is what i am, and this is what i deserve.

yet, sometimes, i still wish for something more. i still get that feeling, the feeling of hope. that maybe someone or something will save me. maybe chara will finally know what to do and won't be just as trapped and clueless as i am. maybe there will be a way out of all this. maybe, maybe. but every time i weakly call out from my little corner, my little place, the same thing happens. it is no one's fault but my own, of course. but the same thing happens.

i call out for help,

but nobody came.

i keep thinking about that neocities website i linked in the post before the last one. the journal of that girl who killed herself. i've been browsing random personal websites sort of like that one, but there's nothing else i can find quite like it. there are journals and blogs, but nothing as deeply personal or intricate. i suppose maybe it makes sense for such things to be a rarity. i don't know.

it's just interesting to me, how it garnered interest only because she was lucky (or unlucky) enough to have her course of action interpreted as a violent threat towards others rather than just herself. or, hell, even if she didn't catch that sort of attention and just hung herself in her bedroom or something like that, it still may have gathered attention in some sense as a result. perhaps not. but i suppose my point here is that, it's funny how people don't really seem to care as much if someone is just alive and suffering, and suddenly it bothers them a lot more once the person is gone and has perhaps done something else terrible or noteworthy in the process.

and you know, i suppose it makes sense too, doesn't it? once someone is dead, they've lost the chance to get better, or to do anything at all, to be anything. you know, obviously. the thing about living people though is, they CAN do things, they live their own life. and thus, a person looking on at this other living person can safely assume, for their own peace of mind and perhaps out of a desire to help, that this ill person is either doing something wrong, or they'll find some way out of it, or they could even use your advice to get better, or whatever it may be. so they do what they can or wish to do, and move on. maybe they do nothing at all, act like it doesn't exist. not their problem. of course it isn't.

but once the ill person is dead, that's a confirmation of resignation. there is nothing left for them, no higher mountain to climb, no life to live, no improvement to be sought. there is nothing, nothing they can do any more. there is nothing anyone can do for them, except perhaps lowering them under the ground or burning them up into ash. you can't help them, you can't hurt them. you can't give them advice, you can't criticize them or lift them up. they are gone, for good. so there is only mourning, there is only expressing your feelings about them. there is only attempting to understand.

and it's funny too, because the aftermath of a suicide seems to be one of the few times where people actually tend to desire understanding a person to such a degree. it's in the common question, "why did they do it?". what could have driven them to such a point, what was going through their mind, how did it all come to this? and for a moment, people finally decide to try understanding, rather than simply "helping" and "advising" and things like that. because that is all there is left to do. the person has left the realm of external reality, and now only reflection, memory, and the shadow of all they've left behind remains in the minds of all those who knew them.

now, relating to the being which is writing this online post, that isn't to say i will be somehow "appreciated" or something like that if i kill myself or walk up to a middle school building with a shotgun in my hand. people wouldn't necessarily be flocking to this board in droves, marveling at how interesting or insane i am or whatever. that's not going to happen, and it shouldn't anyway. but it's certainly an interesting thing to keep in mind. since i am a living person (i assume i am, anyway), people will treat me as such. thinking about it, it's kind of absurd to realize how much i've written here so far just to come to that relatively simple conclusion. such a useless set of paragraphs, don't you think? but no, i'm sure things like that have nothing to do with why i am so alone here. it must just be because i haven't shot a bullet through my skull yet.

but really though, my isolation is all my fault. since i am indeed still a living being, it is my responsibility to take care of my own life. and by extension, my own "social life." but as with everything else, i just don't seem to do it. i debate myself about what i even want in the first place, if i even want to interact with people any more than i have to. but regardless, i continue to do nothing. i continue to hide away, as i always do. keeping my strange and destructive ways. but really, what the fuck would it truly matter if i had "friends," or if people read what i have to say or enjoy what i make or something. it would probably feel the same as it does now, and it wouldn't really help anyone. i don't know. now i'm just going to start debating myself outside of my head too without end, so i should probably just drop the question. i don't know.

maybe i just need to make more things. draw, write, things like that. i keep thinking about working on my RPGmaker game some more. i haven't done anything with it for a little while now. but i've had some ideas recently about it, for some reason. a way to make it "work" better, perhaps. if that makes any sense. i don't know. but either way, maybe i do just need to start losing myself in something like that more. i mean, what else is there really to do? i do fucking nothing all day. i sit and i stew in my head, my thoughts and emotions. it's so tiring. i can't take this shit. i just need to do something. i need to do something. i don't know.

fuck.

i fell asleep at about 8 pm last night, and slept about 5 hours. after that i couldn't go back to sleep, so i just stayed up 'til now. i have not done much else of note. i do feel like writing now though, evidently.

divulging that minor slice of information makes me think about something, too. i don't ever really talk about what i actually DO all day, or anything of that nature. i don't really talk about my "life" per se. i talk about my thoughts, my feelings, my longings and fears and everything else that festers inside my rotten mind. but not much else.

i suppose i just figure it as not worth mentioning. nothing really happens anyway. it's just the same thing with minor differences, or "new" things that still aren't really worth much to mention in my eyes anyway. i mean, what does it matter how my day went today, where i went with my family, what the one conversation i had with them consisted of, what i ate, whatever. it seems irrelevant. i don't know. it also just kind of bores me to write about. it's difficult to recount because i just find it hard to care. it's hard to care about the world around me, in a way that considers myself as a participant. it's easier to just observe it all and not bother talking about it like i have any real opinion or contribution one way or the other. i could probably explain that better but i guess the point is, i just don't have much of a "personal investment" in it all so to speak. i care about my family and everything, of course, but beyond that the details seem pointless. or something like that.

i don't know why i bother bringing it up though in the first place though, really. if i'm doing it anyway i suppose there must be some reason no matter how irrational, but i don't know. maybe it's sort of like how i enjoy explaining things i know to myself (or to chara now that they're here) even though it doesn't really need explaining any more. i think other people do that too. but, you know, i guess it's just a way to sort of check with yourself to make sure you understand right and can put it into words, or to find possible problems with it and just think about it more, or whatever. it's just an interesting thing to do. and it seems i really like doing it, because a lot of the time that's basically what this blog thread is, or any of my personal journals for that matter. and, remembering that, i guess it's kind of just journaling in general, when you aren't just writing about things you've experienced and such at least.

i suppose i only think about this whole thing now in a different way than with usual journaling because there's the possibility of someone seeing it, even though that seems to be mostly irrelevant anyway. but even with how much i mention that fact, i suppose i still find it interesting. interesting to know people can see this, even if that doesn't happen much if at all. i like to pretend i don't care, but it's obvious with how much i mention it that i do care in some sense. human nature and all that, especially with how attention starved i am. if i didn't suppress it as much as possible, i'd probably be a really annoying attention-seeker of some kind just because of how relatively isolated i am, or something like that. but luckily, since i do try to keep it hidden, i'm just a minor attention-seeker that nobody really gives a shit about. which, of course, is the way things should be. well, it would be better if i just wasn't here at all, but you know. that's a more complex issue. it is inside my head, at least.

sometimes i just think i'm obsessed with meaning. not necessarily meaning as in, the meaning of life, or something along those lines. although, it perhaps is similar. it's just more the meaning of everything, so to speak. the meaning, anywhere i can find it. how things might connect, how they might be so much more than they appear, how the grandiose fantasies of my imagination could somehow be reality. i'm not of any concrete opinion on anything supernatural, but you bet your ass that i hope and wish that there really is more to everything. and even if it isn't, i can't stop exploring the ideas and imagined lives of the fantastical worlds inside my head, which i can often only grasp a glimpse of, a feeling. it's always a feeling, a knowledge even. almost like a presence of meaning. when you think about it or feel it or experience it in general, you know. whatever it is, there is a distinctiveness to it. i talk about it time and time again, but that is only because of how important it is to me. that is what i seem to be obsessed with, perhaps for good reason. i can only hope it's for a good reason.

for that reason, i also think a lot about how i seem to be obsessed with being "special." it goes hand in hand with the meaning obsession, it seems. i want the world to mean something, i want there to be more than the mundane. and in the same vein, i want to BE more than the mundane as well, or at the very least, i want to be able to know of it. i want to explore further than i "should," i want to explore as far as i am able through the mysteries of everything, i want to do something, be somewhere better than here, somewhere more meaningful or important or anything. something like all the stories i love to imagine again and again, the worlds i long for, the endless expanse of everything waiting to be discovered. it's vague even to me what exactly that means in a way i could express in words, but i feel it, and i know it. i just feel trapped in the mundane world, simply put. and what i said earlier means that you could see this as a way to feel superior over people or to seek attention or whatever, but sometimes i really just don't care even about that, when i get so immersed in the feeling. i don't have to be the only "special" one either, the only one to care. but it's hard, if not seemingly impossible, to find anyone who seems to feel quite the same way, who seems to be quite the same way. so, i don't know. i really don't know.

it's just strange. everything is so strange, even with how mundane the world is for the most part. there's something about that contrast itself which is interesting, but i've already talked about that. sometimes though, it's all just so overwhelming that i can't help but just feel strange, i don't have anything to say other than commenting on how strange it all is. sometimes i just can't keep up with everything i'm trying to express and contain in this comprehensible package of sorts. i just get to one thing and another and another and my mind becomes overloaded. then all i can do is feel it, feel it immerse me in its weird grandiosity. it becomes like some sort of mental molasses, working against me until all i can do is feel it all and express my mere powerlessness against it. that is all i can do.

yet all this time i'm just sitting at my computer desk, doing nothing. just typing all these words, the noises of my keyboard and my breathing being the only thing to disturb the silence of my quiet little room. and that's all i do pretty much all day every day, i just sit at this desk. and i play some video games, or browse the internet, listen to music, or just sit and think. or, you know, do this. but either way, that's it. that is all i really am, despite the never ending cacophony inside my mind at times like these. sometimes it feels as though i'm in some sort of grand progression, some wandering exploration, some uphill battle, some fight for my life. but all i'm really doing is sitting here. and yet, my feelings are still there. my mind still races and races, the little i do experience constantly fueling it all. everything of interest on the internet i find, every sunset and cloudy day i witness, every baby step into some external place i've never seen before, every new song that i find and get stuck in my head. everything like that. it keeps it all going. somehow, it all continues. i manage to extract this strange excess of meaning and longing for meaning from my mundane and repetitive existence, time and time again.

i'm sure this is no superpower. but it is interesting nonetheless. i guess that's just how it has always been, though. always creating my own way of feeling like everything is more interesting and special than it really is. if i didn't have this, i am almost certain i would have just about nothing keeping me alive here, aside from chara, the feelings of my family, and my own cowardice. this obsession and curiosity for meaning and the fantastical is a lot of what keeps me attached to this reality, even though, funnily enough, a lot of it would seem more unreal than anything else. and so, i continue, despite everything, etc. you know how it goes. over and over again.

that's all i can think of for now though.

i have nothing more to say.

i've just been spending much of my time playing video games lately. nothing else really.

for once, i do not seem to have much to say.

it feels sort of nice to have some kind of respite from the constant cacophony of fear and despair and obsession inside my mind. so i may as well cherish this relief while i can.

it won't last forever.