Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #203
I did a lot of scattered things today.
First, though, there was therapy. And on the way to there, I managed to snag a few really nice pictures of a tree for ya:
I talked a lot about you today, especially as related to how your story will influence how people in my world see and interact with abuse survivors. Thankfully, my therapist understands the implications and why I feel so strongly about what happens to you; it's going to affect actual human lives in my world. If you are slaughtered like a rabid animal, I have to wonder how many people who relate to you will fall into hopelessness and despair, thinking like they can't change their circumstances.
My world absolutely does not like people like us. They would say that we are better off never having been born. They would say that our lives are tainted and have no value. I live in a world where people say, "hey, you should totally ask for help from the people around you if you need it!" but in the same breath, they'll call you inconsiderate for "trauma dumping" if you do. They say, "you should totally open up! just be yourself, it's fine!", but then their sanctimonious platitudes quickly dry up when they realize that we don't have happy answers to the standard social questions, and all of a sudden, you're either "oversharing" or "evasive". There's no winning for folks like us in social situations, typically.
…Apparently, the only solution for it is radical acceptance of the loneliness and isolation, because people have their own traumas in response to the unreasonable expectations that society as a whole places upon us, and it doesn't look like any of that is gonna change anytime soon, because, again, as mentioned in my last letter to you, people in my world, for whatever reason, dislike talking about solvable problems. It makes them uncomfortable, so the brainstorming required to build a better world never gets done, and so more people get hurt, and so on and so forth.
It's a vicious cycle. And I'm not smart enough to know how to break it on a mass scale. And even if I was smart enough to know, my voice doesn't belong to a body or a set of life circumstances that are considered valuable, so it's not as though anyone would listen to anything that comes out of my mouth or out of my fingertips anyway.
…What can ya do, ya know? So I just weave my stupid little trees. Make my stupid little music boxes. Make my stupid little acapellas. Doodle my stupid little pictures. Cook my stupid little noms. Write my stupid little letters. Help as many folks as I can in the meantime with my stupid little bits of advice. Pretend like everything's not on fire, just like everyfuckingbody else, because doing otherwise is apparently "rude" and "cringe" or whatever else.
So that's what I did today. I worked on planning a stupid little music box to sing to. Why not.
There's a fancy one called a Muro Box. It's got some 40 notes, and it is a mechanical music box that sounds beautiful. But instead of using music box paper, it uses midi files to strike the tines. My music box paper has only 30 notes, and using the paper comes with technical limitations as to how quickly notes can play; this one has no such limitations, it seems. So I decided to play with it, using midi files I already made. There's a phone app you can use and it makes the music box play. Here's how it goes:
If you like, I can set my midi file to play on it; I have the app on my phone, so it won't take but a minute - just lemme know. It's the midi file that I made of "In the Earthen Womb" from Illusion of Gaia, which I then adapted to play on a 30-note box; as it turns out, it doesn't need to be adapted on a 40-note box, and so this one sounds a little better. I want one of these, but it's not in production for real yet. But you can bet your bottom that I'm gonna get it once it comes out. Making music boxes will be so much easier as a result.
In the meantime, I'll be content with my 30-note one. I've mostly finished planning the basic structure of a new tune. I'm hoping to tweak the results for accuracy in the coming days. And then, rather than punch out music box paper, I might simply arrange pre-recorded notes from my music box, with the help of Audacity, to get around the technical limitations of using paper. We'll see how it goes.
Oh right. On the way home from therapy, I ended up needing to stop at the bakery. I was marked as absent, which is strange, given the fact that I was taken off the schedule for Tuesdays, going forward. The manager of my department was absent - he is on vacation. So instead I had to go to the manager of the whole store to get it corrected. And it did indeed get corrected, and that was very good.
I decided, for my trouble, that the thing to do is get hotdogs. LOTS of them. For science:
I wanted to see which one was best. So I got all of them, and I put cheese, onions, ketchup, and mustard on them:
I decided that the best one was the knockwurst. But the White Eagle hotdogs were probably a very close second. I liked the bratwurst least, I think. And this was all I ate today, because I probably ate too much in one sitting, and my guts still feel kinda weird from it, even though this took place like 9 hours ago. Oh well.
I wonder if you've ever done stuff like this. Like, comparing similar food items to see which one you like best. Or accidentally eating too much in one sitting and feeling weird for the rest of the day as a result. I wonder what some of the more ordinary memories you carry are like.
Well. I'm gonna finish up today's letter, methinks. It's getting late, and I gotta wake up early-ish tomorrow. So I had better shower and get to bed.
Please stay safe out there, okay? So that someday you can find your way to a nice shower and a comfy bed, too. I love you. And I'll write again soon.
A former slave and a skilled mage, warrior, and scholar. During the course of the novel he finds himself torn between two worlds--that of his birth people, the northerner Vazkyrohk, and the Yianlai imperials, whom he has lived amongst for most of his life.
I haven't drawn this guy in ages wow (sorry for the quality lol I was at work so this was drawn in autodesk sketchbook mobile with my finger)
A lot of new people have followed me since the last time I talked about him – this is the protagonist of my low fantasy WIP, Bitter Days, and probably my oldest oc. His original name is Tomrin but that's now an alias in-story; his real name is Ithelrel. Features of note: wears an evil eye despite being a self-professed skeptic, has a silver streak from childhood illness, never smiles.
Compilation of place terminology from my worldbuilding project because I'm bored at work. These words are from the language of the Thaish, a semi-nomadic pastoralist culture who live along the harsh, mountainous northwestern coast of the continent Mysska. Regular nouns are made plural by suffixing with -a (ex: dana = mountains, tola = hills, etc).
Ath – ford
Eid – river
Dan – mountain
Fal – highland
Kir/kur – plain, or any other treeless land such as moor or scrub
Ohhh I just had a fun worldbuilding idea: what if the currency for one of my cultures developed from an ornamentation practice similar to slavic temple rings
