I'm not very fond of doing two journals so close together but this week has already started off rocky but has a potential silver-lining to it. All things considered, things have gone pretty well this week and may get even better if I'm lucky but I had to make a slight change of plans.

On Monday, my computer died. It didn't just die, it shat it itself. No, not literally of course but it did happen very suddenly. I was just loading up Mozilla Firefox to go on Memebase for some lulz when it suddenly just froze. My computer doesn't freeze that often so that was a little concerning but it's just a little freeze, right? So I restart it and find that my desktop background (bet you can't guess what it is) is disabled and shows a weird error screen as the background. Professor Awesome said he hasn't seen that screen since Windows Millennium Edition and was a little surprised to see that on Windows XP. Trying to fix it by clicking on the button gave me a script error so I just said "screw it" and started Firefox up again to get back to my much needed lulz. And that's when I got a blue screen of death. I tried starting it up again and this time the monitor stayed black while the computer tower started beeping at me. I tried restarting again and then I was left with a black screen with a little grey line on top but no beeps.

My heart really sunk, my computer just went from bad to worse, from dead to deader to deadest. I was just getting ready to work on some art too and after I would be done with Memebase I'd turn on some YouTube music. It's a good thing my computer died after I broght it to Professor Awesome's house though, I had no idea what just went wrong.

So for the past two days, Professor Awesome has been trying to fix my computer. There is no way I can afford to buy a new computer unless I sell my kidney or win the lottery. After a bunch of tests, my friend Professor Awesome found out that the problem seemed to be coming from a file that controls how the hard drive and RAM work together being corrupted when it originally froze based on what the blue screen of death said. The grey line on a black screen meant that the computer was looking for a bootable device, like a hard drive, and was not finding one. So Professor Awesome started cracking open his computers, taking a cord from one, and plugging in my hard drive into the other and used his hard drive to repair mine. I think this makes the fourth time he has resuscitated a hard drive back to life but something was still wrong. Now I was getting the beeps from the computer again instead of the silent black screen with a grey line. Professor Awesome told me the beeps are actually codes used by the motherboard to tell the user that there is something really wrong with the computer. He couldn't figure out the make and model of the motherboard and couldn't translate the beep code unfortunately but judging from the blue screen he was able to determine that despite the hard drive being revived, the RAM may have suddenly died.

Now a year or so ago, I got two sticks of new 1Gb DDR2 RAM in my computer to increase it's performance but I didn't have enough money to max out my computer with four sticks so I still had two old sticks of 256Mb DDR RAM in there. After Professor Awesome took the old crappy RAM out, My computer started up again and has been running fine all day today. I'm not too happy about losing some shitty RAM but that's much better than the whole computer! That whole ordeal kicked the artistic mojo out of me and replaced it with worriment over my computer for the past two days but I'm so glad that it is working again.

In other good news, I met a friend from back in highschool recently who said he could help me get a job. Apparently, the company where he works is in need of workers and he is a senior employee there or something like that. They give you a month's worth of training before you actually go to work there but that's a good thing in my book. I need a job and I need one now. I'm hoping my friend can put in a good word for me and get me employed. I haven't had a job since April 2010 and it sure has been tough living here at home and dealing with all the crap that I tend to highlight every week so. I've already applied and I got my fingers crossed. The only problem is that I need to be at home monitoring the phone. Everyone back at my house have gotten into a horrible habit of not answering the phone even when it is ringing right beside them. We even have caller ID too on the phone but I can't trust my family to even tell me if anyone has called on regards of my application while I'm gone for a few days.

So I'm heading back to my house to make sure I'm there if the business does call and needs a new worker. Me and Professor Awesome finalized the script for DD66 and I'm ready to work on it though I'm going to be attempting to work on it here at my house. I did manage to complete two sketches but that goes into the pile of art that I hopefully will eventually get around to coloring.

That's all I wanted to say. A little change of plans, some bad news but some good news and some potentially great news. Sorry again for the delay on art/comic work to anybody looking forward to it. If things go well, I may at least get DD66 penciled here at my house over the next few days, maybe faster, depending on who is here and how much trouble the page gives me.

Man, I'm really getting tired of dealing with stupid crap here at my house and this week was yet another mentally exhausting week. I'm going to try to get out of here soon, maybe Monday if I can but that might be a little difficult. I found out yesterday that my fuel line for my car is leaking again. I just had that replaced last year or so and it's now leaking pretty bad, about a drop or two every second. Right when I was planning on leaving, my car decides to fall apart on me. So I'll be looking into that more so in the next coming days.

I also found out that while me and my dad go into town in his car to do grocery shopping, my eldest brother has been taking my car, essentially stealing it, behind my back. He doesn't even have a license (he used to but he still owes fines from several years ago). He's also been snooping around my stuff like my coin collection and I've been catching him stealing other stuff of mine like my Nintendo DS. I've had this problem with him in the past, well, I've almost always had this problem. He thinks everything is his and doesn't understand when you tell him otherwise and thinks it's okay to steal my stuff to hock so he can buy drugs and booze. I REALLY, don't need him being here. I can't even feel confident in keeping my belongings or even my car at my house. Looks like I'm going to have to start putting things into storage again. If I had the money, I'd be half-tempted to get a safe deposit box at a bank.

I got some minor chemical burns on my hands a few days ago. Since no one wanted to help out painting some of the parts to my mom's chicken coop (herself included), it was up to me to paint it. Not very fun painting lots of wood in 90+ degree weather but I'm used to doing manual labor and have the callouses to prove it. After getting some of the paint on my hands, I noticed weird little blisters started to form like I had been burned. I put it in the back of my head as I still had more painting to do and when I was close to done, I accidentally got more paint on my heads and more little blisters formed. So when I told my eldest brother and my mom about it and showed them what happened to my hands on contact with the paint, they just gave me a blank hollow look and said "okay". That's it. Luckily, the blisters are healing up and aren't causing me problems.

Had a little exciting incident today with my brother's dog that he's had here. He still doesn't take care of his dog but his dog has been handy at keeping away raccoons and possums. I heard the dog barking nonstop earlier today and eventually I came outside and I saw a 3 foot long black snake coiled around my brother's dog's leash getting ready to strike. I managed to get the snake away from my brother's dog but I have never seen a black snake that huge around here.

In other news, me and Professor Awesome have been working more on Demordicai Diamonds story and stuff as usual but I just can't work on the actual comic here at my house. If I can manage to get to Professor Awesome's house soon, I should be able to get some more artwork and maybe even a new comic page done. I've been really wanting to get some more artwork done as of late and it's been frustrating the crap out of me not being able to work on anything here.

Me and Professor Awesome have been having some trouble recently trying to come up with names for certain things, characters, species, places, and whatnot for Demordicai Diamonds. I've thought about doing some concept art, posting it, and asking for some advice with names though like most of my art projects, I can't say for certain whether or not I'll actually get to it. One thing that needs naming is an avian-style sentient species that we've been working on for a while. On the upside, we finally came up with an official name for Dalken's home country and the mountain range that it dominates. We even have a little more story ideas laid out but we just aren't very good at naming things well.

It's really hot out today and I'm feeling really sluggish. If I can get out of here soon, expect to see some more art out of me this coming week but if I can't leave here tomorrow, well, then it will probably be another week before I get a chance to get out of here. While I probably have more I can ramble on about, this heat is making me tired. So that's pretty much it for this journal. I hope everyone is dealing with the summer heat well and not melting!

I've had a lot going on just in the past few days in my life. My 90 year-old grandmother is going to be staying at my house for the rest of this month. I haven't seen her in years but she's definitely a lot more frail than what I remembered her as. Normally she's under the care of one of my aunts down in North Carolina but they brought her up here to visit for a month and I wouldn't be surprised if this may be the last visit.

She was originally going to stay at another one of my aunts who lives a little more close to home but she chooses to live in filth and squalor and just one day of my grandma living there caused her some health concerns. I don't know the whole details since I wasn't there and wasn't involved but my grandma doesn't want to go back there again.

So on top of my grandma living at my house, my eldest brother moved back in again. He supposedly "broke up" with his messed up girlfriend for which I commend him and hope he has the sense to stay away as she has screwed up his life BAD. This time, they broke up on religious conflictation. To sum it up short, my brother is a Roman Catholic and his girlfriend is Wiccan and my brother is fed up with her believing she is a witch and can cast spells on people. It goes a lot deeper than that but that's just putting the religious differences mildly.

My brother hasn't caused any trouble living here yet but he did bring a problem back with him: his dog. Those of you who actually read my journals may recall a long while ago a time where I often highlighted the problems my eldest brother's dog caused while he was living here. The same dog he was supposed to put into the bulletin board because he won't take care of it and the dog is extremely energetic, causing way too much trouble. So now my mom is bitchin' at ME about the problems being caused by my brother's dog like it's somehow my responsibility even though my brother was just in another room. Last time I tried to take care of the problem by offering the dog free to a good home in the local Bulletin Board classified ads (which are HUGE compared to the local newspaper), I caught hell for taking care of a problem my brother said he was going to do and put it off day after day, week after week, month after month.

As long as I'm stuck living here, I'd much prefer not to see the house devolve again back into the shitty mess it once was back when my siblings lived here and trashed the place more than what it already was. I've worked too hard to get this house cleaned up to the level it is now (and it's still an embarrassing, filthy mess) to have it trashed again. So I'm laying down some rules along with my dad's help that my brother better abide by. First things first, that dog has got to go. If he's not going to even attempt to care for the dog, then he shouldn't have one, especially one that gets into everything and causes too much trouble. It ain't my responsibility and I'm sick and tired of doing everyone else's work for them.

Time for a short but funny story. The other day, me and my eldest brother went into town and we were walking a long a bike path. We probably walked about four miles or so total but along the way we ran into something unexpected. In the middle of the path was a rooster, just strutting around. Alongside was a cute little cat that was rolling around a lot and had the look on its face like it had just heard a funny joke. The rooster just came as a weird surprise finding one on the bike path. I figure it was owned by someone so I let him be.

Professor Awesome finally managed to get himself an X-box 360. I visited him yesterday and brought over a TV and we tried out system linking our X-boxes together and it was luckily successful. We're still in the process of preparing an epic (sorta) Borderlands 2 gaming event but we both have X-boxes now so that's one item crossed off the list. Next up is getting a second hard drive. In the end we'll probably get X-box live gold if we have enough money left and we could use an extra player or two on-line if anyone would be interested. Of course, that's not until September when Borderlands 2 releases.

I haven't gotten any new art done recently, just working with Professor Awesome on story ideas and the like for Demordicai Diamonds. I did make a real wooden shield out of some spare wood, back pack straps, and screws. It's pretty cool looking though it isn't decorated. I might go and ask my middle brother if he'd be interested in decorating it.

So that's pretty much it for this journal. Things have certainly been eventful these past few days. I can't really give a good estimate on when I'll have some new artwork to show but I may go back to Professor Awesome's house for a weekly stay sometime soon. Don't know though, I might go on a camping trip sometime soon as well.

Normally with my journals I tend to almost always have some complaint regarding something usually family-oriented going on with my life. Sometimes it's my parents, other times it's my siblings, or something else that probably ties in with either of the two in one way or another. So I'm doing something a little different with this journal. Instead of venting about my problems (which aren't too many this week and what there is isn't very major), I'm going to turn it around. So how is life going for you, journal reader? Are things going good for you or a little sour? Anything cool happening with you? Whether we've talked a little, a lot, or none at all, I'd like to hear about how life is going for any of you who take the time to read my journals.

I hope everyone is doing alright and enjoying the nice May weather! I certainly am for the most part, especially with the great weather. I've spent more time outside than doing any artwork but I'm thinking I should have some new stuff next week.

I've been meaning to do a new journal for a while again and it's about time I report the newest song to be unfortunately lodged within my cranium. Professor Awesome found it a while ago and insisted that I listen to it and I've regretted it ever since. IT WON'T STOP PLAYING IN MY HEAD. Well, okay, it did leave earlier today for a little bit only to be replaced by "Take On Me" (not really an improvement) while I was doing some penciling. You can watch the song down below if you're into putting yourself at risk for having strange songs stuck in your head. Needless to say, I will never look at He-man the same way again.

The song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ggg.....eature=related

I've been busy again this past week at my house . I've been run into town almost everyday this week and man does that get really tiring. Getting little sleep due to my sister dropping off her kid here early in the morning doesn't help much either. I did manage to somehow get DD65 mostly penciled up at my house but it's still ridiculous enough here with how much I'm pestered about things to prevent me from really sitting down and working. Not a surprise around here of course. My sister has been bugging me incessantly to drive over and visit her. I understand she's bored and all but it's downright rude when I'm trying to talk on the phone and she starts talking to me and twice she pesters me about dropping everything I'm doing so I can go to her house and twice I have to tell her I'M TRYING TO TALK ON THE TELEPHONE! The weird thing is that each time I told her, it was like nothing at all registered with her as if I said nothing at all. I get the same non-reaction when I say I'm busy trying to finish up some artwork as well. Heck, I get it whenever I'm busy with anything that pertains to me and NOT someone else. Anyway, getting even a little bit of artwork done at my house has proven to be a miniature miracle.

So I left to go to Professor Awesome's house for a few days to at the very least finish DD65. I got it inked now and it should probably be colored and uploaded sometime Friday. I'm miraculously even managing to stick to a schedule this week with the page. Besides the new Demordicai Diamonds comic page, I still have the three other sketches I mentioned last journal to finish. I haven't had a lot of time for any other art this week unfortunately.

On one of the trips into town this week, my mom picked up my eldest brother. So there we wear driving with the windows down and I start to hear my brother ramble on about something. The wind was blowing loudly past my ears but it sounded something like:

"Couldn' t find the waterfall...good thing I used my strength...can't find my fishing poles either...?????..."

So I was having a WTF expression at the time not understanding what he was talking about. When he started rambling on about badges and gyms it eventually dawned on me that he was talking about Pokemon.

This isn't the first time my brother has done this. A while back ago I was watching Deadliest Catch (I love that show) and he walks into the living room and randomly says:

"So anyways I finally defeated Frankenstein. It took me forever. I had to jump ledge to ledge."

He rambled on for a while longer and I was able to figure out he was talking about Castlevania. I think my eldest brother has a weird thing where sometimes he knows what he wants to say but starts off at the middle of what he was thinking about saying. I'm just worried that someday he'll have something important to say and he'll just randomly ramble on starting in the middle of whatever it is he is trying to talk about. Makes me laugh though thinking back on it.

Can't say I have a lot to say for this journal, it's a short one. I'm currently dealing with a sinus infection that's bugging the crap out of me and I don't feel like typing a whole lot more. I do intend in the future to try once again to stick to a weekly update schedule if I can help it for Demordicai Diamonds but that might be a little too much wishful thinking. Oh, and I have been fairly successful cutting back on my coffee intake! I don't think I'm as addicted to caffeine as I used to be, I still have myself some Coca Cola now and then but nowhere near as much coffee. I might go more into that next journal.

I hope everyone else is doing well. Try not to come down sick with sinus infections or bad allergies for that matter!

I'm happy to say I'm finally working on Demordicai Diamonds again this week. I've been away from the comic for far too long and I feared I had, like the previous times, gotten rusty at comic work. I started working on DD64 yesterday and was rusty to an extent, enough to cause me to goof up my usual drawing process with comic work. Much to my surprise, my goof up turned out to be a much more efficient and less frustration-prone way to draw comic pages. Sure, it's still a decent amount of work but this time the page didn't frustrate me at all and came together smoothly without any problems. I'm hoping that this isn't just a one-time thing and if it isn't, I may finally be able to make new pages on a more consistent basis. I do kinda feel a little bad for Professor Awesome though. I've had a really easy time with DD64 but I know Professor Awesome is going to be at work digitally editing the text and cleaning up the page for about three to five hours considering the amount of text there is with this page. I have a few things I need to take care of at home for the weekend but I expect to have DD64 done this coming Monday. As of typing this journal, the page is completely inked and partially colored.

Depending on how much free time I have this weekend, I may have some other art to show on Monday as well in addition to a new Demordicai Diamonds page. I have four other drawings that are penciled at the moment waiting to be worked on further. I haven't started inking any of them and I may still add some more pencil work to them but the main content of each one is pretty much done. Two of them are Demordicai Diamonds character concepts of some more of the ikeeri residents, more specifically two more town guards, of Aspen Village. The other two drawings are a little different. I'm going to leave them as a bit of a surprise but one involves pirates and the other involves physical fitness.

Besides what I currently have mentioned about what I'm planning art-wise for the near future, I don't really have anything else planned. DD65 might be coming up fairly soon once I get DD64 done but if you know me and my track record then you there is a good chance that "soon" might not be a good word to use.

I got off to a late start this week due to the incessant attempts of my sister trying to get me to go to a college that I can't afford at all. I don't have any employment and thus I am very limited in the realm of my personal finances and taking out massive loans goes against my conservative financial values. She's already gone and filled out a FAFSA form in my stead to try to get me financial aid though of course the bulk of it is federal loans. Recently, she's been coming to my house and snooping around asking for the mail when she doesn't even live here anymore. Won't say why she's interested but it's got me suspicious that she might try some crap on intercepting college forms in the mail that she has arranged for without me knowing. Of course, turns out she still owes the college several thousand dollars herself from loans she took out that might be coming due soon. I don't know if they have a referral program that if you refer a family member and get them enrolled that you get financial credit that can be applied to loans, fees, or class costs but whatever is going on, this whole thing smells fishy. Her non-stop insistence that I go, and go to college NOW while she takes care of the paperwork, and coming out to my house to snoop about mail that doesn't belong to her is making me very edgy about her intentions. Family should be the one thing you can trust but I know my family too well and all too often it's dog-eat-dog around here. Especially when it comes to some of my siblings.

Now sometime in the future I would like to go to college. I don't know exactly what I want to take and that's something I want to have figured out before I start shelling over my hard-earned cash from a job I will be most grateful to have (and that hopefully my family doesn't force me to drop it). When I do go, I will pay up front, in cash, in full. I won't take out a loan for an already over-priced education and certainly not to go into massive debt. Maybe some art classes would be nice but I don't intend on trying to make a full-time putting-food-on-the-table job out of art. I like the work of some "pro" artists but I hate the arrogant entitlement attitude that often unfortunately accompanies their artistic prowess.

In other news, me and Professor Awesome are putting together a plan to be completed by sometime in September if all goes well. Borderlands 2 will be coming out and we both loved the first one. So we are going to go and pre-order it at Gamestop but this time Professor Awesome will be pre-ordering a copy as well. He doesn't have an X-box 360 though.Normally we play on my X-box but we are going to try to get a second X-box and a second TV so we can system link and play multi-player without having to share the same TV and maybe also have Professor Awesome's sister play with us on one of the consoles and maybe a random fourth person. The second TV is probably going to be the harder thing to get a hold of. Most games nowadays are designed for higher resolution flat-screen TVs and text is often undersized and difficult to read on a regular TV due to those resolution standards the games are built around nowadays. Professor Awesome's TV is fairly old and works decent enough but regardless we need a second TV. All in all, we need to acquire:

1) Two copies of Borderlands 2 (preferably pre-ordered for extra content)
2) Another X-box 360. (preferably new to ensure no X-box live console ban)
3) At least two more X-box controllers and an X-box hard drive.
4) New TV (preferably portable flatscreen with good resolution)

Hopefully we will both find jobs before September or otherwise this grandiose plan (well, grandiose on our financial scale) will probably fizzle out.

So that's it for this journal. Expect more art from me next week!

I'm happy to say I'm finally able to get back to doing some artwork (at least for this week). I've gotten a decent amount of housework done though it's come to a point now to where what's left to be done probably won't get done anytime soon due to my dad putting things off over and over again and I'm expected to sit around the house all day and stay put doing next to nothing. So I'm back at Professor Awesome's house for this week to hopefully get in some new artwork done and maybe even a new DD page if I'm not too rusty with comic work. I still have a finalized script done for the next two pages so at least I don't have to spend any time on story conversion.

Against my wishes, my mom went and spent $60 on getting chickens. I don't know how she's going to take care of them because I'm not wasting another year of my life on chickens that were supposed to be a family responsibility that only ends up as my job and a way for my mom to discourage me from leaving the house. It's only Day 1 as of this journal but I'm expecting a phone call sometime this week from someone back home complaining about the chickens and that I should spend my precious gasoline to run over and feed them because they supposedly don't know how to stick their hand in a feed bag and put food out (it's a task that a 5 year old can do really) like last year. While I do find chickens cute in their own quirky way, I got better things to do. One of the chickens I've named Derpy due to the way she's been running around with her head constantly cocked to the side for the past week. Its become more properly aligned though now but it was funny in a way. Normally "defective" chicks are often eaten alive by the others but Derpy seemed to be more of a ringleader to them.

I managed to get some more mousetraps last week to help combat the mice problem at my house. It was good for a while working with six mouse traps instead of one but now I'm back down to two of them. I don't know where the other four went but I suspect my mom probably threw them out because they were getting a little messy (though cleaning them up would have been much easier). As you can imagine, I'm not very happy about this since it won't take long for the mouse infestation population at my house to recoup their losses and with less traps to deal with just means more mice.

Like usual, me and Professor Awesome have been working on the story of Demordicai Diamonds despite my artistic absence. Professor Awesome is working on his newest iteration of the magic system and it's still sticking together. I'm getting more confidant that this may be the final iteration of it. We've been recently discussing religion in the world of Demordicai Diamonds and realized just how complex and difficult of an aspect of world-building it can be. It's something we've not quite put off but have struggled with years ago so we took a more minimalist approach at first while diverting our attention to other aspects. Over the course of the past month, we've finally finished the preliminary planning for the story-arc we were working on and now moving into a new one, one that neither of us are sure just what's going to happen at the moment. If only comic work were as easy and fun as story work (though converting a story into a comic format can be difficult, especially at the beginning).

I don't really have a lot else to mention for this journal but expect some new art from me this week. It's good to be back and hopefully it will stay that way for a good, long while. I apologize for my lack of activity for the past month and a half but that will be changing very soon!

Woke up the day before yesterday and found my car had a flat tire. That wasn't a nice surprise but it's a lot better to have a flat in your driveway than on a bridge over a river deep enough to wash away you and your car. That's what happened to me the last time I had a flat tire, blew out right on a bridge. Thanks to help from my dad, I managed to get that fixed yesterday morning. All of my siblings have been bugging the crap out of me to be their damn personal taxi and pay for the gas myself to haul them around recently, of which I have denied all of their requests. It's fun being a jerk sometimes but my wallet is bare enough as it is.

Been getting some more house work done but so have the mice. The mice infestation has gotten worse and there isn't much I've been able to do about it personally. I tried making a Gacy Bucket style trap but that didn't work well. So at my disposal I have one, only one, mouse trap and my air rifle. My cat Zuko isn't much help, he doesn't really care much for the taste of mice apparently and just watches them go by. That single mouse trap has made quick and effective work of the mice though sometimes the little things are clever enough not to activate it. I've gone a step forward sitting around the house and instantly killing them with my air rifle if no one is home and assuming I don't miss (my accuracy has been particularly bad today). Yeah, it's messy but it works but I catch hell from my drunk of a mother for trying to take care of the problem.

So when she went to town today, I asked if she could pick up some more mouse traps. The mice are starting to chew on the plastic containers we put our food in and are bad about getting into the cat and dog food. It won't be long before they make it through the plastic and into the food, as if it isn't already bad that they piss and crap on everything here. They are even ballsy enough to just stare at you with no fear, I've had one run straight up to me and try to run up my pant leg. Earlier today, I found two on the washing machine looking like they were having a conversation of all things and they stopped and stared at me when I approached as if I had interrupted them. Anyway, so I asked my mom to pick up some mouse traps. She said she didn't have the money even though I saw her slip my drunken idiot of an elder brother some the other day. So she comes back with my eldest brother from his girlfriend's house and what do you know, a whole twelve-pack of beer bottles. And here I thought she said she didn't have the money to pick up a few cheap mouse traps but she had enough for beer.

And this has been happening almost everyday. If she doesn't work, she picks up my eldest brother, brings him plus $10-$30 worth in beer, he gets drunk and I have to deal with him here, then my mom complains about having to take his drunk ass back where he lives and tries to pass the task on me, I refuse and let her finish what she started, she comes back later that night, and the cycle begins again the next day. It's gotten to the point where she spends more money on beer than on food and is as bad of an alcoholic as my eldest brother is. Hell, she enables him and buys his beer and gives him money for whatever else he wants. It really sucks not having much to eat here and what food that is here is starting to become not very appealing in my eyes due to the mice and the potential disease they are spreading. At least on the weekend me and my dad go grocery shopping with his money and we stock up on food but even then it doesn't last long, especially having my eldest brother come over, get drunk, and eat it all and then I have to clean up after him. I'm thankful for my dad having a good amount of sense about him but he's an old dog with little backbone anymore to raise a finger against all this. He's become very passive in his old age, nowhere near like the Nintendo-busting dad of the past that smashed whatever my older siblings were squalling over. It did solve the problem though.

I went over to my sister and her boyfriend's house a few days ago. She's been wanting me to show up though I am leery of her attempts to dupe me into babysitting for her. She's really been wanting someone to play Mario Party 9 with her so I eventually broke down and decided to head on over for a visit to stop the constant phone calls. I couldn't care less about Mario Party 9 really but stopping the phone ringing so much would be nice. Didn't end up playing Mario Party though, I talked to her boyfriend and instead he let me play "flaming piece of crap not worth my money" or what I thought was Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. And it was. So I played that for a while to see how good it really was. Played some World of Tanks there too (currently trying to play a Lee and if you know what that is you can probably relate to the anguish it is causing me) while I had access to good internet and not the crap I have out at my house. Anywho, I remember a while back hearing all sorts of people rave about Skyward Sword much like Twilight Princess but I don't have money like I used to so I don't go and take game risks very often. After a few hours. son, I was disappoint. Here I thought I would never be as disappointed in a Zelda game as much as Twilight Princess but this was even worse. I don't give a shit about fancy graphics or gimmick motion controls that just pissed me off. It's like Power Glove all over again (or the Maximum Glove). I found the story to be yet another rehash of a rehash of a rehash of a rehash and once again Japanese culture excessively pervading it as if it was a cultural brochure. I suppose that's a given coming from Japan but maybe I just miss the days back when games were original and unique and not half-asses, especially story-wise. To me, Zelda is as dead as Fable and Halo and nothing more than crap selling because of it's brand name and not because of it's merits.

Man, I used to like video games but I'm almost ashamed to say it because of getting thrown into the "gamer" group. I got into an interesting debate, well, more like brain aneurism causing debate, with my middle brother and his friends that ended up causing some hurt feelings among some of them. They all went on about how story gets in the way of gameplay and how graphics were more important. At first I thought I was hearing a line out of Arby n' The Chief but it was real. We were playing Halo multiplayer at the time and they went on and stated their case. Since we were playing Halo, I asked them what Halo was all about, what the story was all about. It's something that they have played ridiculous amounts of so being complete Halo-tards they should know what it is about, right?

They didn't know. Aliens attacking humans and stuff was about all I got.

So I asked how they could have played it so long that they didn't know. They said all they do is follow the objective waypoint like you're supposed to and do what the objective says and shoot the Covenant aliens along the way. At this point, I was dumbstruck. I still had a few more questions to ask them to make my case fully.

Since they thought that graphics were such a big part of gameplay and story was not and only got in the way, I asked them about an old game that was a favorite of us all back when we were much younger: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. If you've ever played it on N64, you know what the graphics are and if you grew up in the 90's, you probably had no complaints whatsoever about them and thought they were some of the best at the time. I asked if they still liked Ocarina of Time and they said they did. But what about the graphics? Of course we agreed that the graphics without a doubt suck compared to everything now. But when I asked them about why they liked it, since graphics is off the table, they fell into my debate checkmate. So much for story getting in the way of gameplay, they went hand-in-hand and made a marvelous game and when the admitted it I just turned my x-box controller
side ways, dropped it for dramatic effect, and quit playing. And boy did that piss the two guys off, they left in one hell of a huffy attitude. I'm normally not that good of a debater but that ended up being a masterstroke that I almost always bungle.

Needless to say, I learned a few things myself. Like for example, my extreme dislike of modern idiot gamers who can't play a game worth shit if they don't have their precious players' guide to baby them through it. When I was over with my middle brother, most of them there can't play Skyrim (I do like Skyrim myself) without their massive players' guide. They are utterly lost without it and can't think for themselves. Part of the reason is because they skip through EVERY dialogue and rely, like in Halo, on the quest objectives menu. Me and my brother were joking about how it's funny because even the players' guide for Skyrim leaves out some details that make his friends act like dumb toddlers. I also realized that why a lot of games suck so bad nowadays is that the previous generation of developers that I grew up with is gone and is replaced with replicas of the two "gamers" I got into an argument with. I'm sure this has been known by others for a long time but that realization hit me head on like a ton of bricks or like Old Spice Guy and it kinda depressed me a little.

Back to the topic of Skyward Sword. I read some reviews and it was weird. They were either putting it on an Obama-style holy pedestal while ranting and raving about how good it is without really giving any good reasons but giving it a 10/10 or the reviews were much more critical and averaged around 5/10. As much as I dislike this new Zelda, I asked my sister's boyfriend if I could borrow it. He almost seemed happy to let it go. And I almost forgot but I remembered I needed the Wii Motion Plus crap too. Why would I borrow a game I don't like? Because I'm evil, that's why.

How so?

You see, Professor Awesome is someone I like to call a "video game masochist". He hates being called that but it's true. If you put a game in front of him, pester him enough, he'll play it and he'll go all perfectionist on it and attempt to beat it completely while hating every minute of it assuming it is a game that he doesn't like and that he doesn't get distracted with another game. We have similar tastes in games though he leans even more so for good story out of it. So next time I go over to his house, I'm going to leave him Skyward Sword. I know he'll find it and he'll start to play it. He did it with Kingdom Hearts. I think I jab at him maybe a little too much for playing and beating Kingdom Hearts (in his defense, it is his sister's game and I know that to be true) but it's Kingdom Hearts after all and I ain't afraid to say that I hate it and I think it sucks though I could use much more coarse and harsher words that while accurately describing it would also make nuns' heads explode with rainbows in the process.

Apart from my longer-than-expected mini-rant on games, I didn't get hired back at Wal-mart again with my most recent application I mentioned last journal. Like every application I've put in for the last year, I got turned down on all of my last batch. I was the most optimistic with Wal-mart seeing how I worked there before but they turned me down yet again. I ran into my old co-worker, Gerald, a few days ago when I was there and turns out he quit. They've been apparently doing some sort of administrative overhaul and now have folks breathing down your back all the time. It's not a big surprise that a lot of Wal-mart employees aren't very diligent in their duty and it came to no surprise to me when I was told that there have been a lot of problems at the two closest Wal-marts with stockers being too lazy to do their jobs or even show up. Most people who apply for Wal-mart from what Gerald told me are drug addicts who know they can't pass a piss test but apply anyway and waste the management's time and constantly restart the hiring process for them. While I'm bummed out that I was turned down yet again, Professor Awesome called me up today with news that he managed to get some applications for jobs at an Office Depot about 30 miles away. Sure, it's an hour drive but even with high gas prices, I need to eat. He's pretty confident with this one based on what the guys he spoke with there said (apparently a customer service associate and a general manager) but here's the shit kicker, they're not hiring until May. It's better to have an application than none but I could sure use that job now ASAP.

Art-wise, I've been too busy dealing with mice, some house work (most of which is now done except for the toilet project I mentioned last journal), and my drunkard mother and eldest brother to get much art work done. It's really messing with me, I realized just how much it helps me relax and forget about the crap I deal with here. So yeah, besides some distant future story plans for Demordicai Diamonds, I don't have much to show for at the moment. I'm thinking about heading back over to Professor Awesome's house sometime but I'm not sure when exactly or for how long. It probably won't be until April by the time I can get to some more art work but the sooner I can get some time for it the better. Professor Awesome has been working on his third (or is it fourth or fifth now?) iteration of the magic system for Demordicai Diamonds. I think this is the best version so far now and I don't think there is much more fat and tangled or excessively complicated/prone to cause explanation confliction within itself. If all goes well, I think we might FINALLY have a winner. I think Professor Awesome is still writing it on paper though, taking it slow and only writing a page at a time. I'll have to personally go over it whenever I get over to his house. That, and I hear he has a few crescent rolls left in the refrigerator. Those are great!

That's about it for this journal, I got some mice to shoot.

I've been really busy for the past two weeks again. It's been kinda nice being busy being able to be productive for once at my own house (though not so much art-wise unfortunately). Me and my dad have been doing a lot of preparatory work for a vegetable garden we are going to plant a little later in the spring. It's going to be around 40ft by 40ft square plot and I've even got out some graph paper to make a little blueprint of it and what is going to be planted where. My dad still hasn't fixed his truck yet, which we will definitely need and soon, but I've finally convinced him to take it to a local mechanic to have it fixed. I think the final nail in the coffin for that was when my dad finally attempted to fix the truck himself and lo and behold, he couldn't just like I knew he wouldn't be able to.

I think I got my sister's kid hooked on My Little Pony now. I was watching him for a few hours a couple of days ago and he's getting to that age where they have boundless energy and getting into trouble left and right. I sat him down and turned on the TV. Normally, my sister ends up having Noggin playing on all day and it got to the point when she was living here that I could predict exactly what commercial or 30 second mini-show would be appearing next. Ugh, too much Yo Gabba Gabba too. Anyway, I have satellite TV out here at my house and I have a DVR that I have just about every My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode recorded. So when my nephew started acting up I sat him down and turned on some ponies. For the next several hours, he sat still and was completely enthralled by the ponies, especially the antics of Pinkie Pie. When my sister came back, she couldn't believe that my nephew behaved himself for so long because of My Little Ponies. Yeah, I think I turned my little nephew into a brony.

Sometime this spring, it's definitely looking like me and my dad are going to go and fix the bathroom floor. We got another hole in it since last time I mentioned it journal-wise. It's not quite to the point of being dangerous to use the toilet but it won't be long now that someone's foot will end up going through the floor into the basement (hopefully not their whole self). This project will probably be a lot of work on top of everything else but there isn't much of a choice of taking it on or not.

I managed to get back my dad's riding lawnmower from my 2nd eldest brother a few days ago. He borrowed it around last August and busted it. Him and his friends said they would fix it but with me and my dad really needing it now we had to have it back so we could fix it. We spent a day fixing it and spent about $100 in buying new parts for it. We found that they had replaced an engine belt with a car belt but that the riding mower needed new pins and desperately needed a new blade. The blade was bent at a near 90 degree angle when it should be a flat 180. I don't know how they busted it that bad and I don't think I really want to know (maybe running over a giant boulder?) but it's good to have it up and running again.

Everyday it's been something new that I've been able to take care of. For the first time in all my life living here, everyday has been productive in one way or another. Sure, it's been a lot of work but me and my dad have been making excellent progress taking care of business. With all my siblings moved out, and none of them seem to have any intention of moving back, it's been peaceful here and nobody or their drama or antics is really getting in the way much of work.

I even managed to find a few job openings and get a few applications sent out this week. I haven't heard back on any of them yet but it's only been a day or two.

I have managed to get a little bit of art done but not much. I've been so busy with more manual labor style work that I haven't had the time nor energy for much art. I did get two character concepts drawn up for two Aspen Village town guards, Tubbs and Adonis, penciled up a few days ago. I also found an old sketch I did some years ago while cleaning up the house but that's about it art wise.

I've talked with Professor Awesome a few times over the phone and we've done a little bit of Demordicai Diamonds story work and work on the magic system mainly focusing on auras and more simple arcane phenomena and processes. I still haven't managed to get in any Demordicai Diamonds comic work done unfortunately.

I don't know when I'll be able to get in some more artwork on a consistent basis. I'm probably going to be busy for at least a few more days, possibly another week or so, with all the projects my dad has planned. Maybe if I can catch a break sometime I might be able to get in some more artwork and head to Professor Awesome's house for scanning and uploading.

That's about it for this journal. It's been a while and I haven't been very active at all on-line so I thought it was about time I take a moment out of my day and type something up.

Been busy again this week with all sorts of things. This week was a little different than the past several few weeks but in a good way. Me and Professor Awesome got bored/motivated enough to make a Let's Play youtube video for the heck of it and boy was it a lot more work than I thought it was going to be...well, not so much for me but more for Professor Awesome. We had to figure out how to use about four or five programs and did so (at least to a workable extent) in just the past three days. The original plan was to record it on my computer but we had to record from Professor Awesome's computer due to my extremely crappy sound card in my computer causing some issues with audio recordings. If we continue making probably very boring videos, I may just go and switch computers with him at least until I can get a better sound card. So if you're bored and what to hear what me and Professor Awesome sound like, the link to the video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5unsXa-PObE (You'll hear Professor Awesome first and then I eventually chime in). I doubt anyone will get the "Danger D" joke as it's more of an inside joke but kudos to you if you somehow do.

In other news, my mom somehow made arrangements for a free chicken coop. Apparently a friend of hers had a chicken coop they didn't want so they intended on giving it away. I got hounded to pick it up but I knew it was a fool's errand for me at this time becuase, like I predicted, a chicken coop won't fit in a station wagon. And after all these months, my dad STILL does not have his pickup truck fixed (I believe I mentioned this in a previous journal sometime in the past) which would have been really nice to have running. He doesn't want to take it to a mechanic so he can save money by doing the repairs himself, that is if he ever decides to fix it in this lifetime. I wouldn't be surprised that even if he did get to it, the repairs might be out of his league to adequately do. So before I go pick up a chicken coop, I got to get to work at convincing my dad to take his truck to a real mechanic.

Honestly, I don't want any involvement whatsoever this year in another chicken project after last year's chicken disaster. I wasted so much time trying to get that project to work but I simply didn't have the money to invest into it and everyone else who pledged their aid and support so we could have our own eggs were much more of a hindrance than a help. My mom is really wanting to do chickens again this year but I'm not touching them or getting involved in the least if I can help it. I got better things to do with my time than waste another year stuck here tending to birds that all get eaten in by the owls and coyotes. Sure this new chicken coop might fix that problem but I've had enough of chickens for a while, at least until I own land of my own.

I haven't had a whole lot of time for art this week. I still need to root out more of my sister's belongings from the house that she refuses to retrieve even though she has moved out. If she won't pick them up herself, I guess I'll just have to spend the gas money myself and taking all her junk to her personally.

I am glad though that I managed to get a new page of Demordicai Diamonds done this week. I've been so behind last month due to housework and other stuff that it's been hard for me to find the time and energy to get to comic work. At least it's one more page closer to the end of Chapter 2 and I still have DD64 and DD65 scripted out and ready to go. Me and Professor Awesome have spent a lot of time talking about and working out a new story-arc to Demordicai Diamonds and we are almost done with the writing of it. About two to four more days of dedicated story writing and we'll have what I believe will probably be the 10th story-arc completely planned out. It may end up being the 11th or 12th arc depending on how the comic goes by the time the comic finally catches up with the story we currently have planned but that will probably be forever and a day at my current rate. If only comic work were as easy and fun as the story creation process, I'd probably have oodles of it to show by now. If I can, I do intend to at least get DD64 done next week if nothing else but I can't predict just what sort of stuff might come up that demands my attention.

I heard in the news today that Andrew Breitbart died. Man, that came as a sudden disheartening surprise, I really liked him. He was a good man, the type of guy America needs more of and not less. From what I hear, his death was very sudden and unexpected but natural though no mention on the exact cause.

So that's about all I got for this journal. I'm probably going to be busy for a few more days but I'll try to sneak in some extra art here and there if I can but I'll have to be at Professor Awesome's house to scan and upload.

Its been a few months since the last time I did my last ramble-fest "My Thoughts on _______" journals so it's time for a new one. I've been meaning to get into the vast topic of world building for a while and get some of my thoughts on it out of my head but real life stuff has gotten in the way of it for a while. I choose to start of the World Building series with Terrain and Physics since so much depend on them. Yes, they may be the most boring but with so much dependent upon them I figure that would be the best place to start.

Previous "My Thoughts on ________" journals


My Thoughts on Characters [1]
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2798756/

My Thoughts on Heroes and Villains [2]
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2998090/



If you're reading this, you probably have some characters, maybe a few, maybe a giant gaggle of them. You might already have a world imagined that they live in or maybe you're wanting to do that but haven't quite started. The first thing that think of first when imagining a world is both terrain and physics. With me, both me and my friend "Professor Awesome" collaborate with our main world building project and we each work differently and have different things that we tend to focus on. I tend to focus on what is seen on the surface, the clock face if you will, and Professor Awesome goes into the inner workings of things, the hidden gears of the clock. We both go into different levels of detail with our specialties and some things I'll mention to think about with world building you may or may not really want to get too deep into. For example, you imagine up a new tree species unique to your world but you really don't want to go through the effort and put it under an imaginative scanning electron microscope and figure out EXACTLY how the tree works down to the atomic level. Do what feels best for you and remember to have at least some fun. World building doesn't have to give you headaches but it will if you let it.

Now characters can always use a world to live in, even if they are just characters whose designs you like to draw. In first creating the world, there are two main ways to "generate" their world. These are stated with the idea that one will probably have some story attached to their characters.

1) Create the world around the characters as they explore.
This is one of the easiest ways to world build but it does have its share of potential problems. You make the world as your characters explore it much like how the game Minecraft creates its own virtual world. For example, in my comic Demordicai Diamonds, I don't really need to know for sure what is past the town of Bromic Port. I don't need to design what is beyond the town until a character the camera is following decides to venture out. I only need to sculpt the terrain as the main characters explore (though personally I do have most of the basic terrain already pre-planned).

Pros:
Light and easily manageable world-building work load.
You only create what you need.

Cons:
Lack of planning can cause holes to pop up in plot and other sense-making things
You might get bored if your characters stick around in the same area for a while
Options for story and events and unique areas may seem limited.

2) Create the WHOLE world first
This is probably the hardest one to do but by no means impossible. With this method, you create the whole world and only drop your characters into it when it is finished. Think of it like zoning out a whole city in Sim City while the game is paused and turning it on when you are finished or building an amusement park the best you can with your starting money in Roller Coaster Tycoon before opening the park for the first time.

Pros:
You have a whole world to work with if you finish.
Plenty of room for unique places whether characters will ever visit or know of them.

Cons:
Lots of work is required before the world is "active".
Much of the world may not be used depending on the characters' stories.

There is a third way that I believe most people, myself included, end up using and that is a blend of both of the main ways. For me, I spend more time going into more miniscule details with the world around the characters than the world beyond where the characters are or have previously been. I still do lots of planning with the world outside of the characters since they may go to those places eventually or things from outside may come to affect the small slice of the world around the characters.

So, depending on how intensive you want to start of world building, you can create large amounts of terrain or small amounts of terrain at first. No matter what you decide to do, characters still need terrain of some sort.

At this point, you may have an idea of whether you want to world build immediately around your characters or world build without regard for the characters locations. This is where both terrain and physics first intersect, you got to decide now just what kind of world do you want to build. Do your characters belong in a world similar to real life Earth, maybe something a little different like a post-apocalyptic Earth. You can go farther from the norm and perhaps create a completely different planet with a very different terrain, say a desert planet like Arrakis for example (kudos to you if you know what world that is from). But who says you need a planet? You can always do something different like something more akin to a flat plane or come up with some more wild and crazy. You could create a spirit world or a dream world where much more is possible than on old-fashioned planet Earth. The possibilities are endless but it's up to you to figure out what fits best for your existing characters OR for your soon-to-be existing characters. It will be important to make sure your characters can "live" within their world well enough later on. You wouldn't have a fish character who lives in water and needs it to breath living in a waterless desert world (unless certain accommodations are made). I'll get into that in a later My Thoughts journal.

No matter what style of world you decide to make, there needs to be something to fill the void around the characters and there must be a way it "works". For the world me and Professor Awesome have been creating for Demordicai Diamonds for the past four or so (I worked on the story long before ever starting the comic) years, we decided to go with a world similar in many respects to our own planet Earth. There is dirt, rocks, lots of water and oceans, pretty much everything you could expect out of an Earth-type planet. There are stars beyond the planet and maybe even a moon or two. For physics, there is a roughly standard gravity so characters and terrain don't go floating away into the abyss of space, there are four seasons of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter but they may affect certain areas of the world differently. There is a water cycle much like Earth's and there is weather from rain, snow, wind, and other occurrences. Sometimes it is hot outside and sometimes it is cold depending on the season and weather. All that may sound pretty boring but it is something we take for granted in our real life existence. Imagine your life if you Earth had no winter and snow and ice never naturally formed or if metals like iron didn't exist. Things would be a lot different for us and history would have been radically different. That is why these things are important and what I feel are a good base to start off with.

You don't have to go too far deep into the physics of the world if you don't want to. You don't need to know the exact weather patterns of the whole world, how the jet stream works (if there is one), but then again maybe you would like to. Perhaps you might feel certain events that affect your characters' lives might require a little more careful planning as to how it really happened. The same can apply with how your world will work. You don't have to have weather but perhaps you want to delve a little deeper and explain why your world doesn't have weather. Maybe even because some characters in the world might have decided to study it like we as real life people have.

But here is the thing. Say you are planning on making a comic or writing your story. You don't need to and probably shouldn't explain every SINGLE THING in great detail in the spotlight of the story. Reading through pages of explanation when I want to read a story can get quickly boring but sometimes it is more relevant if it is a character learning something and not a non-existent narrator lecturing. Keep in mind, just because you don't need to explain it upfront in a story doesn't mean it shouldn't work smoothly behind the scenes. For example, you don't need or really care about seeing all the gears on a clock but you do care about the end result and that is the time shown on the clockface. Without those gears working smoothly and correctly hidden behind the clockface, the clock won't tell accurate time.

So say in your world you want to have floating islands (something me and Professor Awesome have disused quite a bit). You put them into your story but then maybe someone, maybe yourself or even a character, asks why that chunk of rock floats in the sky while another chunk of rock does not even should it be thrown upwards. How do you answer that? This is where the physics of your world come in. Something is obviously different. The three big questions that come up are "What?", "How?", and "Why?". Continuing with the floating island example, me and Professor Awesome discussed those very things. For the "What?" part, one idea we had was that an island that floated above the land had a high concentration of a unique ore. For the "How?" part, Professor Awesome got to work to figure that out as this starts to get into the nitty-gritty details. A theory for "How?" that he came up with was that the ore had special wind/air elemental aligned properties that when active, most likely caused by exposure to one of various special "energy"-related phenomena, behaved like a magnet but instead of repelling against charges it repelled against certain gravitational-type forces to an extent causing it to float to a degree based on the amount of ore and how much "energy" it is charged with. I normally don't go into that level of detail but it can be very important that it works and works well or otherwise you can wind up with situations that might not make sense (it-works-here-but-not-there-and-it-doesn't-make-sense situations). Now going deeper into the floating island example comes the answer to the "Why?" question. This question can be a bit tricky and it may be different to answer depending on the subject. So far we have an idea on what makes a floating island different and how that difference makes it do what it does. For this, "Why?" may apply to why are there floating islands in the first place which leads into another "How?", more specifically in how the floating island geologically formed and why there isn't pure special-floaty-ore floating all over the place and why is it instead surrounded by rocks and dirt and other junk and may even have its own ecosystem. To be honest, neither one of us has a good answer for the first "Why?" at the moment but you can probably see how one "Why?" can spiral into smaller and smaller and smaller questions infinitely. Depending on how you want to world build and how powerful of a microscope you want to examine your world with, you may want to go further into detail or just leave it alone and let your characters have fun with the new floating islands in there world.

Now if you do have floating islands in a world, regardless of how much into detail you go into as to how they float and all that, it is a very important and unique geological terrain element that can vastly affect how you make the characters that populate your world, how they live, and how the world changes because of those characters. For example, if there was floating islands in the world portrayed in Demordicai Diamonds, they would be most likely be inhabited by a majority of flying creatures (this is going into a what I have planned for the next one of these My Thoughts journals). As for sentient species, ones that can fly would be the most likely candidates to make their homes on them. That would be a good location to find either winged drakune civilization or maybe something else. One thing me and Professor Awesome talked about a little last month was designing an avian-style species that would almost make their homes exclusively on floating islands (drakunes prefer mountains if at all possible) and have a very isolationist mentality with their nation islands having contact with the world below regulated almost however they would wish. A regular land-based army would have a ridiculously tough time attacking a floating nation and such a nation could easily evolve completely isolated though certain resource issues could arise (like the need for fresh water for example) that may punctuate the need for trade. Of course with a flying species, there comes the questions as for how can they fly in relation to their weight, especially in the case of a drakune.

But as you can see above, something as simple as a new terrain element and the physics that apply to it can have massive effects on further world building as I did above. That is why terrain and physics can be very, very important for how your world building changes and evolves. Terrain and physics go hand-in-hand and serve as the very base for everything to be built upon and like an earthquake, if you change the base then a lot of change will be bound to happen on top.

We as living people in the real world make use of the terrain around us every day. Everything we do can be traced back to it. The first tools made by man thousands and thousands of years ago were made from rocks that were part of the terrain. The wood we use even today comes from trees that make use of the terrain and the physics of how our world works to grow. Even over-looked forces like gravity and magnetism have big effects on our life whether we realize it or not. And just like with us, the terrain and physics of the world you give their characters will have a massive effect on every aspect about them.

Now there is another topic that fits in with this topic of terrain and physics that I feel I should at least touch up upon in this journal and is a personal favorite of Professor Awesome: Magic Systems. How magic works is essentially a physics-type question that is obviously very important to any world that does have magic. Just like gravity has a certain way it works, both me and Professor Awesome (especially him) believe that there should be a certain way it works. This doesn't mean that the characters have to know it exactly or it be explained for any reader up front but it should still work a certain way. This can be the most difficult and brain-busting physics you may ever work on with world building. This is really Professor Awesome's territory and not mine and the complexity of this subject is why I generally let him handle all the gears inside the clock of magic systems. Once again, you can delve into the details this as deep or as shallow as you like but going into great detail for the sake of your world can really help your characters and the story they make. If you have ever read a <u>bad</u> Tolkien-style fantasy book and came to a part where suddenly a magical deus ex machina saves the day and you're left sponging up the blood coming from your eyes as if you had just been hit with a curse of the fire penguin wondering maybe something along the lines of "That didn't make any sense?", "How did that happen?", "Why didn't the character just use that spell earlier?" or something like. All too often, I see material, and it isn't always Tolkien-style fantasy, with magic in it where the magic is used as a convenient get-out-off-jail-free card/plot device and doesn't have to make any sense even in-world as long as it gets the writer out of a corner ( to me it's like going out of the frying pan and into the fire). Magic seems to be used for fancy and cool effects like baysplosions but rarely do I find that there is any backbone to how it works. Some worlds can be a lot more allowing of this, like a dream world for example, where the laws of physics that are inherently lax and permit all sorts of crazy things in the essence a strange type of controlled chaos. Maybe it's me, more so Professor Awesome, being nit picky but it seems like most folks who world build don't do any thing with how magic works but just give it to characters who spam it simply in an attempt to make them "cool" without even having a decent explanation even behind the magic or even abilities. This almost always leads to story conflicts, plot holes, and just sense-making conflict galore. Don't believe me? Look up a history of how characters such as Super Man or X-men's Cyclops and how their abilities were attempted to be explained and then retconed (retroactive changes in continuity) that seriously messed up the story if you try to put it together. If the term "Punches from the Punch Dimension" means anything to you, you probably already know what I'm talking about or are scathing your head either in confusion or complete bewilderment because you just learned something you probably didn't know.

So by having things like terrain and physics made to work like a well oil-ed machine, you can also prevent major problems in story and sense-making, especially with special stuff like magic or unique abilities. I'll probably go deeper into magic systems in a later journal just due to how complex it can be since at it's highest difficulty you are essentially adding new world systems that may have absolutely no precedent in real-world physics but that's getting into super nitty-gritty details that's definitely more Professor Awesome's specialty and not mine.

I'm tired of typing and I got other stuff to do so I'm going to end my thoughts on terrain and physics there for now. If there is anything more specific into it that you'd like me to go into more with this one or if you have any suggestions for other world building topics you'd like me to incoherently ramble on about, please let me know. Congratulations if you read through all of this, more so if any of this made any sense considering how much I probably rambled on and forgot other stuff I was going to say. I'm thinking the next topic I'll go into with world building is creating sentient species to make characters out of and to populate your world. That should be a fun one to go into but it is very dependent on what I covered (or what I think I covered) here.

I've been at my house for the past several days and I'm going to be here for probably the rest of the week. It's been better than usual here but the drama still continues. I've been helping my dad bring in some lumber with my station wagon that we were supposed to do last week but the supplier didn't get contact us back until a few days ago. We got the oak lumber he was wanting for some more house repair projects (though I have my doubts on whether he will finish or even start them) but now we need to get the lumber planed and ready to work with. I don't know when exactly we are going to get all the lumber we got planed but we will probably be doing that sometime soon. Luckily, my dad knows just the place to get that done.

My sister is still in the process of moving out (again) to her new boyfriend's house but she's recently been stalling a lot and just loafing around the house instead of making an effort with moving the rest of her stuff out. She was supposed to be moved out by now but dealing with her attitude, poor parenting with my nephew, and the drama she causes has been stressful. Hell, I offered to let her use my car to transport bigger things like furniture that she kept complaining that she couldn't do but she hasn't made any attempt or shown any interest of accepting my help to aid in her moving out and I'm getting tired of waiting and putting up with the rest of her crap.

One thing that's been getting on my nerves with her is constantly being interrupted and hassled with watching her kid for her. All the time, she tries to dump her responsibility on me and expects me to drop what ever I'm working on for her sake. The thing that pops up the most is that she (and her boyfriend if he is around) need to go smoke a cigarette and that I need to watch her child for her while she steps out and smokes. Once isn't so much of a big deal but when I get asked this over and over and over again in just a single day it really gets on my nerves and throws off my concentration on what I'm working on. She says she doesn't want her child breathing in the cigarette smoke but if she and her boyfriend are going to be living at his house with no one to watch the kid but themselves, how does she expect to keep taking a smoke outside and still watch him? I've confronted her about it multiple times but she doesn't seem to see the logic in it or even the logic of her and her boyfriend, if they must taking smoking breaks, alternate like in shifts instead of both smoking at the same time. Maybe I'm just making too much sense because it doesn't seem to register with her and I just get told I'm being a dick and expected to feel bad about it and to take her care of her responsibilities. I hope she realizes soon that she has certain responsibilities as a parent and that she is not a teenager and hasn't been one for a long time.

So in putting up with my sister, some more drama has happened though this concerning my brothers and my dad while I was gone at Professor Awesome's house last week. My dad, who has been working his butt off for years trying to support the family, recently bought some expensive top-shelf Wild Turkey bourbon whiskey to enjoy a little everyday after a hard day's work. My brothers (both of whom are heavy drinkers), were at the house and one of them stole it before my dad even had a chance to drink a drop of it. It took me a while to figure out about this and get him to talk about why he was so mad and didn't want to my brothers to show their faces at the house again. It was just a couple of nights ago when I was talking to him while we were burning trash (Sixteen bags of it! Only four of them were ours, the others twelve were from my eldest and laziest brother) that he told told me what happened. I think my dad finally is starting to have an understanding as to why I often have to hide my stuff over at Professor Awesome's house and why I get so mad at my siblings for stealing my stuff. I'm glad he's finally coming to realize why I am driven away from the house a lot but it's a shame that it took one of my brothers stealing from him for him to wake up and realize what has been happening for years. So until one of them fesses up to the crime, my dad wants neither one of them to come back to the house. I hope my dad keeps to his word and doesn't just baby the situation and ease up on his verdict after just a few days. It's that kind of attitude that has caused a lot of these problems in the first place and perpetuates it. Just like with raising children, you got to carry on through with punishments for bad behavior and not just be a lot of talk and ease up when the time comes to administer them or otherwise the kid learns pretty quickly that they can do whatever they want because their parents don't have enough backbone to stop them. Unfortunately with the case of my family, the "kids" are my siblings, all of whom are getting to be in their late 20s.

Me and my dad were inspecting the house yesterday and talking more on just what else needs to be fixed. We've worked on the walls and all they could use is some finishing work. It didn't take us long to figure out what should be fixed next: the bathroom floor. Our hardwood bathroom floor is probably somewhere in between 50-100 years old and is starting to fall apart and cave in into the basement. It won't be long now until there is a hole in the bathroom where there should be a floor. As you can imagine, this would make using the toilet a lot more difficult and with serious risk of injury. I don't know if my dad intends on using all the lumber we got to eventually fix the bathroom floor but if we do make an attempt to fix it then it will probably be in the spring time when it is warmer.

I've done some more cleaning and fixing up around the house and I've made some good progress at setting up a make-shirt art studio for myself. I've always wanted one but all the drama and crap from my siblings has made it hard to do anything in this house. I love drawing at my home and love being out in the country but I really could do without them and all the trouble they bring. At least now it is quieter with less of them here but the sooner my sister moves out like she says she will the better. My studio is now workable and I'm going to spend the rest of this week attempting to get some new art done while I'm here. I still have the finalized script for DD63 and I intend on getting that finished along with two commissions I owe. I don't really have a specific Weekly 5 List for this week but those three items are my main art priorities. I still have a few more Demordicai Diamonds characters that I plan to make some concept art of but I will probably do that in a later week when I'm back at Professor Awesome's house and not needed as much around here. Whatever art I do get done here I won't be able to upload until around next week. I don't have a working scanner at my house and I normally use Professor Awesome's scanner.

I'm thinking maybe next week I'll type up another one of those "My thoughts on _______" I promised a while back ago. I'll be heading into the wide topic world building with the next one.

Well, that's about it for this journal. I haven't done one in a while and this one certainly was lengthy.

I'm deciding to hold a special commission sale for a while to raise some money I need. Going on so long without a job has been particularly taxing on me and what little finances I scrape up has been even lower than usual recently so I decided I'll do a little sale and I'm cutting my prices for a while. I still accept paypal as my main method of payment. My new prices during this sale are:

$2 for a quick sketch
$3 for a refined sketch
$4 for a refined sketch inked and colored.

Due to the amount of time and work it takes me for comic pages, I'm not going to lower prices with them at the moment. They still run $10 for a penciled page and $15 for a colored page.

I've had little choice but to delay DD62 this week. My dad called me up a few days ago and asked for some help with a wood working project for the house. Since he doesn't have his truck fixed (it's been broke down for quite a while now) it's been up to me to go back and forth into town with my station wagon and load up lumber and drop it off back at the house. That's not even getting into the actual wood working. I'll probably be here at my house for a few more days helping my dad out.

The good news is that since everyone besides my parents has pretty much cleared out so I get to be able to finally clean up around here without someone stopping me or trashing it again shortly thereafter. The better news is that I now have my art desk set back up in my own house and that I should be able to work on Demordicai Diamonds a little from my house in between the time I'll be spending helping my dad. Me and Professor Awesome already have both the DD62 and DD63 scripts finalized so if all goes well I'll have two pages to post next week to make up for the lack of an update this week.

I haven't been able to get that security guard job I've mentioned in previous journals but not for the usual reasons. I've been getting the run around from my sister and she kept giving me new false information about who to talk to and how to contact them every time I asked her about it. She kept giving me the run around even on showing me on where it was. It seemed a little strange to me at the time since this was a job that she was already working and claimed that they were in desperate need of workers. Then I discovered why she has been giving me the run around. She's been lying this whole time about her employment there. Turns out, she got fired around a day or two after she first told me about it and that's when she started dodging and misleading me. This shouldn't come as any surprise considering her record. This isn't the first time she's done something like this. The last job she worked she claimed she quit but it was a week or two after we learned she was fired. When things went sour with her now ex-boyfriend she moved back here out of their apartment. Though she did in fact break up with him, turns out the two of them were evicted. It's annoying how she keeps telling these half-truths and leaving out important details and I don't appreciate her wasting my time and getting my hopes up. So I'm back out scouting around for work again.

So that's about all the main news I got for this week. Sorry for the Demordicai Diamonds delay but if all goes well I'll be able to work on both pages from my house. I might have some other extra stuff too depending on how much spare time I get and how fast I can get DD62 and DD63 done. I'll update my Weekly 5 List when I get back to Professor Awesome's house. I'm thinking it may be around Monday or Tuesday but I can't say for sure just yet.

Well, I'm off to a slow start this week. Ugh, I've been dealing with a lot of crap coming from my sister, her ex-boyfriend, and running back and forth into town to her former apartment again and again. It's a long story but to sum it up short, me and my car were "desperately" needed to transfer junk out of her old apartment that her ex-boyfriend was supposed to deal with but bailed out on. I've lost some art time for this week so I'm going to have to buckle down if I hope to finish my list by the the end of Saturday.

My Weekly 5 List for this week is:

1) Demordicai Diamonds Page 61
2) Trevor Character Concept
3) Greta Character Concept
4) Valerie Character Concept
5) Logan Character Concept

I'm unsure whether I can get this all done or not in time. I have yet to fail a list this year and I'd rather not fail on week #3. The good news is that as of this journal I have Trevor's character concept drawn and ready to color. Logan and Valerie are both drakune characters and I've been trying to refine the way I draw drakunes but I've had some trouble with that today. I ended up working myself into frustration trying to get the legs to a point where I'm satisfied with how they look. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have better luck. I'm still on track to having DD61 done Friday night as long as the page doesn't give me any unexpected trouble.

I typed up a resume for a security job I'm looking into earlier today. I haven't had to type on of them for a job before. Normally it's always an application with everything that I find. I can't help but feel my resume is really bare, I don't have much to brag about when it comes to education beyond a high school diploma and when it comes to employment. I doubt being employed for two weeks is that influential at all but from what I hear about the job I'm looking into, they REALLY need some security guards who don't fall asleep and stick to the job.

In other news, I've now gotten into an on-line game called World of Tanks. I'm still a noob at it and I've been playing it with Professor Awesome after I got frustrated with trying to refine drakunes. It's a good game to unwind a little but it can easily pull you in and next thing you know you've played a bunch of matches and time has flown by.

That's about it for this journal. I really don't have a whole lot else to report so far for this week. It's getting late and I plan on watching Redeye tonight and then getting some sleep. With some luck, I should have something to post tomorrow.

What a great way to start off the new year! I've had a great week this week, I was at Professor Awesome's house all week and wasn't harassed or pestered by my family back home about dumb crap or coming home to clean up after them. I decided to start up my Weekly 5 lists again and it turned out marvelous (better than what I can say for last year). I managed to complete everything I was aiming for on time and on schedule and I feel great about it! It feels a little weird making a journal where I really don't have anything really negative happening in my life for this week. I've even managed to not drink any coffee this week.

Professor Awesome found a few drug store jobs this week to apply to but we haven't heard anything back yet on that. Just finding some job openings is great news but having employment would be even better. Who knows, might get lucky this coming week.

I think I should probably get a new CD/DVD drive for my computer. I used to have two of them but one my middle brother busted by playing a cracked CD in and it shattered inside of it. I don't know what he was thinking, he probably wasn't. The other one is finicky and doesn't like opening or closing when you press the button and when it does play a CD, it makes strange noises and the CD is hot when you take it out. Now it still plays them but it makes me worry. The only spare CD/DVD drive Professor Awesome has is wonky as well and opens and closes by its own will. Don't know where I would get one of them around here though but it isn't that big of a deal.

I really don't have much else to say for this week, I've just mainly been doing art everyday and playing a little bit of Minecraft. For next week, I plan on doing more character concept. I'm re-doing almost all of my previous character concept and getting to drawing some that I never got to in the past two years. I'm thinking next week I'll draw Joseph, Vixey, and Lord Valcor. After that, I haven't decided yet. I'm satisfied with my previous concept of Juna and Rune and Dalken already are in the comic so I don't need to do any concepts of them (also gets me out of typing some of Rune and Dalken's back story so I can let that be eventually shown in the comic). I may do some character concept of certain characters that don't appear until the second book/saga of Demordicai Diamonds that I've been working on.

For this year, I'm going to be making a big push on keeping to a weekly update schedule for Demordicai Diamonds. So far so good with this week and I plan on keeping it like that. If I can stick to it, I should be able to wrap up Chapter 2 and head into Chapter 3 sometime in the next few months. If I can sneak in a double update here and there then maybe sooner but my main focus is going to be reliably getting a new DD page done every week and posting it on Friday. I may also this year do a few 2 or 3 page mini comic sneak peaks of what is to come in future chapters of Demordicai Diamonds.

My dad is off work this weekend and needs some help back home FINALLY patching up the kitchen wall he tore up back in September. I guess the cold coming in through the cracks is finally convincing enough to put it back together and put some new insulation in there. So I'm heading off home for the weekend to help him out. I plan on being back at Professor Awesome's house either Sunday night or Monday morning to start next week's Weekly 5 list and get some more art done. I won't let 2012 turn into what last year turn out to be.

I hope everyone is having a great 2012 so far!

It's 2012 now so it's time for me to update my policies on requests, art trades, and commissions. Lots of things to update but I figure I'd start with this. If you have any questions on anything that I did or did not cover, just ask and I should be able to clarify.

REQUESTS

I happily welcome all suggestions and requests though I offer no guarantee that I will draw them. You are free to request/suggest any thing you'd like to see me draw as often as you want. I keep track of every request/suggestion that I get and every once in a while I may choose one and draw it up. Sometimes I may choose randomly and other times I may choose something that particularly catches my interest. If you have a request/suggestion, feel free to let me know!

ART TRADES

I don't do art trades very often and I generally will not go around asking for them. If I do art trades, it's usually because somebody made the offer to me. Depending on how much spare time I have on my hooves, what you want me to draw, and how long and well I know you, I may accept or decline the offer. If you are interested, feel free to ask.

COMMISSIONS

I am normally open for commissions if you'd like me to draw you something. If you're wondering about what content I will or won't draw, just ask me about what you had in mind.

Prices
Pencil Sketch: $5.00 Penciled Comic Page: $10.00 per page
Full Color: $10.00 Colored Comic Page: $15.00 per page

If you do commission me, I prefer to receive payments by mail but I do have a paypal account that I use rarely. If you do commission something that is of a more mature nature and I don't know you very well, I may ask you to prove that you are older than 18 years old. Most likely though since you are here reading this you probably are 18 or older. This mainly applies if I am shipping the original.

If you'd like, I can ship the original to you for an extra $5.00 for shipping charges if you live in the continental US. If you don't, expect that cost to be a lot higher to accommodate for international shipping.

An alternate title for this journal is "Home for the holidays".

Well, they are all dead and I'm kinda happy that they are weirdly enough. I just regret wasting so much time trying to get it to work. If I could go back in time a year and meet my former self, I'd slap him silly until the very idea of raising chickens flies out of my ears. Apparently, the chicken that escaped out of the basement where we had been keeping it didn't last long outside, as soon as it escaped a hawk got it and I got to see the hawk ripping it up and eating it. So much for that ridiculously failed project, probably one of the worst decisions of my life but I learned some lessons from it so it isn't a complete failure.

It's Christmas time once again and I'm stuck at my house. Actually, I've been stuck here for about a week already and I'll probably be here another week until New Years. I'll catch hell for not being around like I got for even mentioning to my family that I had other work that I needed to do around Thanksgiving that my family themselves were preventing me from doing at home. So I'm kinda obligated to be stuck around here during the holidays and put up with all the usual crap of my family, especially my siblings.

I come home to find that my eldest brother has been stealing some of the few belongings I have at my house and was wanting to pawn them off for money for Christmas gifts (which knowing him probably means buying pot so he can get high). It doesn't look like he's managed to pawn anything yet but it's a good thing I came home when I did otherwise I'm tired of putting up with this crap enough to go down into town and file a police report. But then something funny happened, pissed me off more but I laughed. My eldest brother was borrowing some games from a friend of his that my middle brother then stole off him. I lol'd, a thief throwing a temper tantrum over stuff he borrowed getting stolen. Sure, that only made me angrier because that showed he didn't have any qualms about stealing other peoples' belonging but then raises such a fuss about property in his possession getting stolen. And yet my family still wonders and even takes offense to why I keep most of belongings, especially the valuable ones, at Professor Awesome's house.

Regardless of all that crap, I had to go home anyway. I needed to get a little book I've been keeping at my house of all the references I've accumulated for using on job applications. I left it at home last time I went out to Professor Awesomes when I was in a rush to get out of the house while I had an opportunity to get out while no one was around to argue with me. I also needed to get a hexagon wrench from the house as well that I was keeping at Professor Awesome's house that accidentally I took back home after doing some maintenance on the art desk I have at his house.

I stayed a little longer at Professor Awesome's house than I should have last week but he needed some help taking his cats to the vet so they could give them all worm medicine. He's had the medicine for a while now but giving it to the cats is not something we are very good at all. It's not fun whatsoever so we made a few trips into town taking the cats down. He needed someone to hold a cat for each trip to save him some time and gas since he only has one small cat carrier so I went a long and held some of the cats. I dealt with the most lovable and easy-going ones, one of which has a strange fascination with me and follows me everywhere when I am at Professor Awesome's house and talks to me occasionally. Unfortunately, I can't understand cat.

I was almost able to finish getting DD59 done at his house but I had to return home yet again. I'm pretty much done penciling the backgrounds and I just need to pencil in the characters and then off to ink and coloring. I doubt I'll be able to get it done at my house but I figured that if an opportunity did arise, I couldn't take advantage of it without the page in my possession. If I do get it done here then great but otherwise it probably won't be until early January that I can get it done. If I do manage to follow through with some of the changes that I'm planning for my life next year, I should be able to make a lot more pages with the time I have and I don't think I'll be going back to my house much at all.

Besides working on current story material for Demordicai Diamonds in my head (countries and politics is fun!), there isn't a whole lot else going on. Winter has been fairly decent this year with barely any snow and the temperature has been warmer than usual but I worry about the coming months. Professor Awesome has gotten into a game called World of Tanks that I may give it a go once I return to his house. Who knows, maybe I'll get a chance to escape again earlier after Christmas but before New Years and get out of here early.

But for now, it looks like I'm stuck here another week so don't expect much out of me until 2012 finally rolls around.

Have a merry Christmas everyone! (or whatever you celebrate).

Now that I'm back at Professor Awesome's house, I thought this would be a good way to kick off my current stay there. This is a continuation of the "My Thoughts On ______" journal series and an expansion to My Thoughts on Characters.

I've taken a liking to doing these journals, it's like a mental exercise to clear out the clutter and organize my mind on certain topics related to characters, world-building, and other stuff relevant to that. Maybe you'll find it interesting, maybe boring, maybe stupid, or just meh. You might even become offended and/or confused somehow, much like with the last one.

The topic of Heroes and Villains can be particularly vague and ambiguous because it depends so much on one's own perspective BUT it is still a very important element of world-building and a sub-expansion on characters. This journal will probably be equally vague and ambiguous and prone to aimless rambling. Here we go!

So, where to begin? Most stories and tales have heroes and villains and they can come in many different shapes and sizes, personalities, and can be minor or major in how far they exemplify the good or the bad. They are rarely ever pure white or black, they often have all sorts of shades of grey about them with put under the microscope. To make things more frustrating in trying to classify who's who, they may even change their colors, sometimes by a lot or sometimes by a little. Perspective is most important with this topic.

Before I go down the two paths of morality, I should mention that heroes and villains when lined up right will often mirror each other, each being the same as the other just turned opposite.

I think I will start with the good, the noble, the heroes.

Heroes, almost every story has them. I will use the term "heroes" as more of morally righteous individuals than just as main character of a story (that distinction is important). Normally when the topic of heroes is brought up, images of nights in shining armor rescuing damsels in some form of distress or masked and/or caped tight-wearing folks with amazing powers pop up. There is no real rules as to how a hero should look, what matters most is what qualities they have on the inside AND the actions that they carry out based on those internal personality qualities.

If an old lady is getting mugged, a good guy may think to himself "that is wrong and I hope the police help her". While that can be considered "good", is it enough to really be labeled a hero? Probably not. Why? He didn't act. Heroes usually aren't people who are onlookers. In fact, one could consider them evil if they don't do anything at all to help. Say if instead of the old lady getting mugged, she got stabbed and lay bleeding on the ground and no one helps. That kind of indifference can easily be considered an act of villainous neutrality (lol, contradiction).

Having powers, abilities, and technology can help create a hero because it can reduce risk and increase reward. If you were bulletproof, would you be more willing to charge in to a criminal gang hideout and stop whatever nefarious plans they have than if you were not bulletproof? That bounty on the criminals would be a lot more within your reach as well if you bulletproof so there is even more incentive to do heroic deeds. But that same incentive, the same new opportunists that open up, can also lead to the creation of villains.

Most importantly, a character doesn't need powers to be a hero. Sure, that's what all superheroes say and it's true. People without the powers/abilities/technology often don't become considered as "career heroes" since the act that defined them as a hero is often a one time thing or something noble but not extremely dangerous. They usually have their own lives they lead, like being a shopkeeper of a farmer for example. In times of war, depending on perspective, soldiers are considered either heroes or villains depending on one's political beliefs because of the danger that they face daily but also of their deeds as well. But if you read a mainstream superhero comic book, most soldiers are the equivalent of redshirts/mooks whose sole purpose is mainly to die and show how badass and powerful a hero or villain is but that's going into a different topic.

Just like with heroes, villains don't need any special powers/abilities/technology to become a villain though it will often increase their potential to become an influential person of some sort, villain or hero.

Villains are pretty much heroes just turned upside down. They are usually considered bad people who do bad things (this is where that perspective stuff can come into play again, just like with heroes). Like heroes they can come in all sorts of forms and personalities.

One of the things that I see a lot of people have difficulty with when it comes to heroes and villains is simply crafting them and understanding them. In my previous My Thoughts On Characters journal, I discussed/rambled on about how the best characters are characters that are allowed to live their own lives and that heroes (villains included) often live ordinary lives as well and do a lot of ordinary things. With heroes, people often forget that heroes, even ones with powers and all the bells and whistles, still can and more likely will lead fairly ordinary lives that happen to include their heroic deeds. They pile on powers and ridiculously large amounts of heroic deeds that took little or no effort for the character to accomplish or even contemplate doing in the first place in what may be an attempt to have the hero more recognizable as such.

So sometimes that problem is band-aided with the more accurate and more probable scenario of "zero-to-hero" but then is hit with the problem, mainly in Japanese anime/manga, of ridiculously motivated heroes that only really exist to fight the bad guy out of an internal motivation to fight for their friends BUT even against the most powerful of foes, they show little to no fear or hesitation and seem to have very little in the line of emotion of any kind (though maybe some anger and a thirst for vengeance) or are a tad on the mentally defunct side of the spectrum as even ninjas can be susceptible to brain damage and color blindness.

Heroes don't need to be profound, they don't need a giant label for people to realize they are heroes. Someone once said heroes aren't born, they are made. A good quote but a better one that another person said was that heroes aren't made by crisis, they are revealed in a time of crisis and they are make themselves, their decisions that they consciously make from birth to the time of crisis constantly shape and change who they are and it is the crisis that causes them to act, revealing just who they are deep down inside, and in the right circumstances, a hero is revealed!

The exact same can be said of villains.

The problem that I see most with villains is similar to the one I stated with heroes but it stems from a different source. Villains are often portrayed, a guy who only has one desire and it may be something like to destroy all life. An unrelenting villain is a villain who can't change or even second guess them self but is really hard to pull off as a character. Yes, they make a great challenge that heroes must overcome but at the same time are often created because people don't understand villains very well and because they are easy to make and don't require much thought. This is a little trickier problem to explain and solve but goes back to letting the character do what they want and not what you want.

The first thing to keep in mind with creating a villain (like any character) is that it doesn't matter what you think, only what the character thinks. My dad is a prison guard and converses and watches over murderers, thieves, rapists, and often gets stuck in the "hole" watching over those in solitary confinement. A lot of those people can be very ordinary in a lot of respects but the thing is the can be very different in others. A lot of times, if you try to understand a murderer for example, it may be difficult to understand why they kill from your perspective because that's not who YOU are. The square peg has a tough time fitting into a round hole and it's a lot easier to say "because they are evil" and leave it at that. When you break it down, people are different in a lot of ways and some of those ways can lead to particularly bad deeds. Combine that with motivations, ambition, and what falls within their interests or not can make things like murder or theft mentally possible and acceptable without a second thought in their minds. We as people, the same goes for characters of people, have our own likes and dislikes that affect what we do. What makes sense to one may not make sense to another.

Another example, is fandoms. You probably know where this is going just by reading "fandoms" and the fact that if you are reading this, you are probably on the internet and have seen some things on the internet. A Sonic fan may REALLY, REALLY like Sonic stuff but think anime/manga is stupid. A furry might REALLY, REALLY, like furry characters but hates bronies and anything associated with My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic. And then there is that Twilight book with the werewolves and vampires...Anyway, just like with those examples, different people have different likes and dislikes, different tendencies. It doesn't matter whether you like it or not or even whether you understand it or not, you're not everyone and you're probably not the characters you are creating.

People of all sorts exist but often times the villains are treated as near-emotionless or completely consumed by a single desire and will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. People tend to make them villains and do the evil deeds they do almost purely for the sake of being evil and then center that villain-to-be's whole existence on nothing but them just being evil.

I hate to say it but villains nowadays tend to be less of a character when they are on and more of a conflict generator plot device.

What really separates heroes and villains is ambition, motivation, and restraint. Say you have two characters, each has the ambition of becoming a successful leader of a company (a neutral ambition). One has the motivation of using the money they make to start a charity fund that will help the sick (a good motivation) but the other wants the money to fund their drug additions (a bad motivation). So who is the good character and who is the bad? I don't say heroes or villains yet because they haven't acted yet.

What if say the charity-oriented character shows no restraint in how their business is run and treats their workers like slaves, perhaps they are slaves (bad restraint). But then the drug addict, though their motivations are selfish, treats their workers with dignity, respect, and pays them an honest wage (good restraint). Who is the good and the bad character now?

There is no inherent wrong answer, it all depends on perspective and what YOU believe is right or wrong. You determine your own right or wrong answers to the question. So who is the hero and who is the villain? In a story, you can't have one without the other. They don't always take the form of a character and they are connected by conflict.

Like good characters, heroes and villains will probably be able to think, to feel, to experience, and to change to various extents. Very, very few people are truly pure good or pure evil, no matter what your perspective is and what you think is good and evil. The only time this ever happens is either with the divine (think religion-wise like Jesus) or Mary sue characters. Ultimately, any character can become a hero or a villain or change sides. Most people and characters (if you treat them like people) will be in that tumultuous ocean of shades of grey, some shifting to different greys, some getting more closer to white while others to black, some even turning around going back and forth.

It's the actions of a character that makes them a hero or a villain which is influenced by a variety of things, qualities, that are built over time and can change. But then there is the perception of whether they are truly a hero or not, or a villain or not, or even pure neutral but in the grand scheme of things, few things are rarely ever naturally pure one thing or another.

Heroes and their more villainous counterparts aren't always big, they aren't always powerful, they aren't always who you'd expect, they can be anyone. Sometimes a hero to one is a villain to another, sometimes heroes don't get along with each other and the same can be said with villains not getting along well with other villains. The actions of one, whether hero or villain, may be considered good to one person but yet evil to another and cause all sorts of friendships and feuds, making and breaking them.

I've been told that when it comes to writing, there are two different types of people. One type writes more profusely with heroes and nice, good things and the other writes more profusely with villains and dark, grim things. If I was asked what I prefer to deal with, I'd answer more with villains than heroes though for the most part with Demordicai Diamonds you might think the opposite of me. Then again, the point of view of DD generally follows the "good" characters if you'd call them that.

Since both me and Professor Awesome work together with the writing, one of the weird things that just sort of happened, like oil separating from water, was that I dealt more with things from the villainous side and Professor Awesome dealt more with things from the more heroic side. I throw problems and he throws solutions in a way.

Often times with Demordicai Diamonds I encounter all sorts of usually small villainy. Most may be on a personal level, like say a love triangle that fuels jealously and anger (and more importantly story-wise: conflict) between those involved or a someone stole from someone else or insulted someone else. But when circumstances line up just right, a lot worse things can happen and like a pendulum, equally good things can happen but that doesn't mean they will and the pendulum may swing too far, bust, and won't swing back. But when it does swing back, it may start swinging with more and more force with each pass or perhaps dwindling force instead. Needless to say, little evils can be fun to work with sometimes but big evils can present some really interesting challenges to work with and even more so when you get into the rare, exotic big evils.

Normally I would share my thoughts on some things straight from Demordicai Diamonds but I find it hard to do so without completely spoiling what the future holds for anyone that reads it. When you start getting a good feel for both villainy and heroics, they both "click" together and balance each other out like dual gyros (if that makes any sense) and work in chaotic tandem with each other, not doing always what I expect it to do but what the characters intend for it to do but things rarely ever go as planned for them as well, they aren't prescient and they certainly aren't omnipotent.

My favorite types of heroes to work with are the "Reluctant Hero" and the "Lone Ranger Hero" types. I think an element of selflessness makes for some the best heroes but that is hard to achieve and even harder to truly want since it often goes against the natural grain of characters. Those that attempt to put themselves before others, especially on a large scale, can often become crushed by the weight of responsibility while suffering the lashings of whatever perils and dangers they may face. I love it when being a hero, whether you know you really are one or not, becomes a lot tougher than it looks and the strain really gets to the characters. The Reluctant Hero may end up taking up too much responsibility that may not even be theirs and struggles but the Lone Ranger leaves after his job is done and moves on so that responsibility and emotional attachments don't weigh so heavily upon his shoulders that he is rendered immobile by it and eventually crushed.

My favorite types of villains to work with are the "Meticulous Schemer Villain" and the "Chaotic Villain" types. I think with villains, like I've been saying how they are just like heroes in except mirrored, an element of selfishness makes for some of the best villains. That element isn't always on the surface of their ambitions and motivations but sometimes several layers deep, a sort of subtle strength that lends more to survival (and not just physical survival). I really like working with the Schemer villains that can anticipate things 5 steps ahead of their foes, it's a quality that I wish I had and could use effectively and reliably where physical force is often used as a secondary tool than a primary. The best, and worst, part with them is pitting up a Schemer Villain with a Schemer Hero and sitting back and watching the mental frustration sparks fly, like watching two Deep Blues play chess against each other but they are people and will eventually falter but not after going through plots within plots within plots within plots within a floating fat man high on cinnamon. The Chaotic Villains are just fun all around and are always full of surprises, sometimes the surprise is that they choose not to always be what they are and do things that don't always make logical sense causing brain aneurisms

In the end, heroes and villains are really up to your perspective and up the perspective of those who encounter them. They can come in all shapes and sizes and types and aren't always pure good or pure evil and may change in their shade of grey to a different grey, sometimes subtly and sometimes significantly. They are characters (my previous Thoughts journal sums that up best) first and foremost, heroes or villains second. Good people don't always do good for the sake of being good and evil people don't always do evil for the sake of being evil (but they still can if the character decides to make that choice).

So by now, you've done either one of two things. You've either read all of this or scrolled down to the bottom. If you did the first, hopefully you don't have any brain aneurisms at the moment. Sorry if I rambled on so long and got vague and aimless with things. So those are my thoughts on heroes and villains and I think I gave myself a brain aneurism. I don't think I did as good of a job with this journal than last one but it's a small and vague sub-topic that can be difficult to address as a whole accurately and not have elements of vagueness due to numerous possible perspectives. Lol, I made myself an example, being pure neutral is hard.

If you got any questions or any topics you'd like me to make a "My Thoughts On _____" journal about, feel free to let me know.

It's been a close to a month since I last updated my journal, I've been so bogged down with stuff (a little bit of Skyrim in there too but I let Professor Awesome borrow it since it isn't safe at my house) that I haven't had a lot of time for the internet or to make it back to Professor Awesome's house long enough for some art..

It was deer hunting season here in my part of Ohio last week. Me and one of my brothers went out hunting in hopes of killing a deer and making some deer jerky. I REALLY love deer jerky and it's hard to get a hold of and those who have it aren't always that willing to spare some. So on our first trip, we were outside only a few minutes just down by the old barn behind my house when suddenly a massive 6-point buck and several does come right out of the tree line on the edge of the field. We opened fire and I unloaded my rifle on them, surprised that they came out so close. And I missed every single shot. They ran, my brother didn't kill any of them either. Even if I did hit one, it jumped the fence into the neighbors property and ran off.

We went on another trip a few days later, this time going with some of the friends of a friend of my brother. I didn't know them very well but we loaded up in a truck and off we went into the woods, what they said was their property but I had a sneaking suspicion that probably wasn't the case. Me and my brother were sent a ways off into a huge ditch, having to belly crawl under bramble and thorns in the wee cold hours of the morning, toward a spot where the deer had taken a liking to. Our job was to drive the deer out toward the rest of the group. Sure enough, when we eventually got there we saw all the hallmarks of deer activity. Shortly after, the deer popped up and ran from us right in the direction of the rest of the group. I raised my rifle to take a shot at a particularly close one and BANG! Just as I was about to pull the trigger, one of the other hunters killed it. So once again, neither me nor my brother killed any deer and didn't have any meat to make some jerky out of. Kinda sucks though my brother says he'll try getting some extra jerky off the other hunters but I'm starting to be a little doubtful of that.

A large drama bomb went off at my house recently. My sister and her boyfriend has broken up and are now squabbling over custody for my nephew. She's officially moved back in and it's been nonstop dealing with her and her antics and she's trying to get me involved in it. It's nothing I want a part of and I don't like being asked to spy on her ex-boyfriend to see where he's at for her. It's one disgusting mess, he's supposedly addicted to pain pills and she found her kid getting into the pills with him passed out, she claims he's being manipulative and jealous of her going to college (at the expense of my dad), and that it's all his fault yada yada yada. On the same token, I know her to be extremely manipulative as well and getting everyone to do her work for her so she can shirk her responsibilities. She expects me and everyone else to drop whatever it is they are doing to fill in for her being a parent while she runs off. Turns out she had another guy she's been "friends" with waiting on the side and as soon as she breaks up with one, she hooks up with the new guy just a few days later and is already using him for gifts (a new camera for instance).

It's all one big shitstorm vortex dealing with her and her relationship problems. She's one of those folk who are 21+ and still think and act like they are a teenager without a care in the world and think everyone should take care of them. Have an accident baby? Let the grandparents take care of it. And then hearing her bitch and rant that her ex-boyfriend changed his Facebook status to single and then claiming "not that I care or anything" but still raising hell about it pissed me off something fierce on how immature and childish she is.

Every time I come home, it's always more stupid shit.

And then there is the mice infestation (which was caused by my sister and her former boyfriend when they lived here and now that she and my eldest brother are back, it's gotten worse). They all wonder why all the mice are in the house and getting into the food and cookware and such but don't realize it's their own damn fault. How? They live like they are two-year-old pigs who can't even pick up there own plates of food and scrape out what they don't eat into a trash can. They let it sit and rot and by now you can probably guess who plays house maid at the house when he isn't looking for a "real" job, doing artwork, or some sort of odd job that usually involves house repair. I come home and I find food that's been sitting out for over a week, my dad has such a defeatist attitude sometimes that he just shuts down and won't say a bad thing about it and my mom complains about it but won't say a negative thing to her man-baby drinking buddy of a son that is one of my brothers. Hell, he's just a few steps away from pissing himself because he's too lazy to get up and go to the bathroom. My sister's ex-boyfriend almost does that, he'd piss in bottles because he didn't want to get up. It's disgusting all this filth born out of sheer laziness.

So I suggested we get some mouse traps to help stem the mice problem. Not leaving food out is just too much work for some people though. My suggestion gets shot down because it's too much work as well and might be too messy even though I know for a fact that the stores in town sell traps that you don't even have to touch the dead mouse. I then propose that I get my air rifle and I start blastin' the shit out of them since everyone is complaining about them but doesn't want to do anything about it or have me do anything about it. Of course, no one likes that idea either so we'll just keep on feeding our "pet" mice. At least my my cat Zuko will kill a few when he feels like it. He doesn't eat them, just tortures them for fun and eventually kills them.

I'll probably be at my house for the rest of the week, helping my dad out with some of the house repairs. The kitchen wall is STILL torn out and it's December and it's getting cold. I've had to take drastic measures to convince my dad to finish what he started and buy whatever materials he still needs so we can get to work on it. I'm going to have to tear out another one of the walls in my bedroom (oh wait, my siblings that moved back in think that it belongs to one of them and have been squabbling over it all week still) to jump start this project so we don't freeze to death.

And with everything going on, my family still wonders why I leave for days on end and begs me to stay in this filth and incompetence. Once I do get some good employment that I can live off of, I doubt they'll be seeing me much at all after that. Maybe during the holidays but that's about it.

And that's what I've been dealing with this past week or so.

Time for some better news! I've managed to talk to Professor Awesome a few times and we worked over the phone on a few more things for Demordicai Diamonds, mainly focusing on the religion topic. We even came up with a few names here and there, some even geographical names. Considering that naming things is a huge weak spot for both us, we find it as a nice little accomplishment getting some good names to stick (I hate using "working title" names). We worked some more on where we are currently at with the story which is now even more ridiculously planned out ahead of the comic and discussed a little bit with how exactly we want the next few pages of the comic to go. We'll do the final scripting for DD59 in person next time I'm over at his house.

I did manage to do a few sketches at my house, a feat I haven't done in over a year. It isn't much though. I'm hoping I'll be back over at Professor Awesome's house next week, maybe even earlier if this new wall repair project doesn't take as long. Sorry if I've been relatively inactive for a little while, that should change next time I get back to Professor Awesome's house.

Like the title of this journal says, I need some advice. I've been hearing a lot about Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It looks like it's a good game but I've thought that about a lot of games but then they end up letting me down (Fable 2, 3, Halo Reach...) and I'm left feeling like I wasted a good amount of money. Money is tight with me and hard to come by but me and Professor Awesome have been talking about getting Skyrim and we figured we might split the costs for it since we're both in the same financial predicament for the time being.

But my question is, is Skyrim worth the $60 for it?

I'd greatly appreciate any honest reviews and opinions of those who have played it. Though $60 may not be a lot to some, it's a big decision for me even if me and Professor Awesome will split the cost. I don't want to go and buy another over-hyped game that's all graphics and no gameplay. So is Skyrim worth it?

In other news, I got called back to the house yesterday because my sister needed a babysitter (a lot of drama going on with her and her boyfriend and all that) and it's up to me to once again drop everything that I'm doing and come at their beck and call. So I did but on the condition that I be financially compensated, which as of this journal has not happened yet. It just so happened that I was in the middle of coloring Demordicai Diamonds Page 57. I'm still a bit pissed because now I'm at my house. I intended to leave after getting the page done but I was needed "immediately" so it's probably going to be Monday or Tuesday before I can get back to Professor Awesome's house, finish coloring it, and then hand it off to Professor Awesome to clean up and get it ready for posting.

But I'm not all mad about being called away from DD57, I'm happy that it is all penciled at least. That part is the hardest and I spent all day Thursday penciling it. The last two panels were hell but it turns out that we're going to be about 2 panels ahead of schedule for the basic script of the current scene. That's a good thing that rarely happens, DD58 and DD59 should be easier for me to draw because of that. Due to my little set back with DD57 and its current incomplete state, I may be able to do a double update this coming week.

I've also been contemplating the thought of whether or not it would be a good idea if I just drew a bunch of Demordicai Diamonds Pages in black and white, say from now until the end of Chapter 2 for example, and then color the bunch of them once I'm done penciling them all. Right now, I color them as soon as possible right after I get the black and white done and I move on to the next page once the previous page is completely done and posted.

In other news, tomorrow there is going to be an early Thanksgiving meal at my house. Since everyone is going to be busy on regular Thanksgiving, we're having it early. I was out all day today doing grocery shopping and it looks like tomorrow will be even more grocery shopping. My mom wants a bigger turkey than the 14lb one we currently have so we'll probably give Professor Awesome's family our extra turkey.

That's about it for this journal update, it's just a short one.

I'm back at Professor Awesome's house again.

So I did my American duty and went down and voted last Tuesday. A good amount of people showed up but only about half of the county who could vote actually did. My brothers didn't bother voting which kinda irks me a little.

One of the cats that frequent my house, a cute and talkative one we call Icarus, got killed. He was claimed by the road, much like just about every other animal (besides chickens) out here. I'm really going to miss him. It already sucked back a few months ago when my cat Toki got killed on the road. Now it's just Zuko left. I also found another decapitated chicken killed by what was probably an owl.

I may have found somewhat of a job but it was mainly a flop. I know a guy (he's the dad of one of my brother's friends) who runs a small business taking in scrap aluminum, melting it into ingots, and then selling it to companies who was in need of some more help. I talked to him about working for him but with aluminum prices in the toilet and food prices going up right now he couldn't really hire me even though he could use an extra hand every once in a while. He didn't exactly say no but said he would have a lot of difficulty trying to afford to actually hire me for a significant amount of time, even part-time every other day was simply too much for him to afford. It was a good lead at least but I'm back to the employment drawing board again.

I'm really tired right now, I got talked into playing Magic: The Gathering with my brother and some friends for pretty much all night yesterday and I've had barely any sleep since (they are a little too into it). I'm trying to hold out several more hours longer without sleep, otherwise my sleep track is going to get seriously messed up.

I don't play Magic: The Gathering anywhere near as much as I used to like back when I was in high school, especially when the story behind the sets starting getting retarded and losing a lot of it's flavor, but after playing so long last night and seeing how much my brother and his friends are into it, it's kinda inspired me a little to get back into it...but not with the new stuff. I'm going to make an attempt to collect all the old Odyssey set cards from about 10 years ago. They're all into all the new stuff really bad and it leaves them completely flummoxed and pissed when they lose against my old cards. I don't know if I'll ever actually succeed in my little goal but it's good for at least some motivation.

When I was at my house, I brought my X-box home. I've been stashing all my stuff at Professor Awesome's house since everyone has a bad tendency of running off with my property. In the past, I've had my things stolen and then pawned off but yet I still get hounded on why I'm being so stingy with MY stuff. I was really worried the past few days when I noticed that some of my favorite games were missing and that I forgot to bring them to Professor Awesome's house. I scoured the house and started to fear that they got taken much like some of my older games but the just yesterday I managed to find them strangely hidden in a closet under loads of crap. That was the good surprise.

Then there was the x-box surprise. I turned my x-box on in hopes of playing it. No, I didn't get a red ring of death, it played. It definitely played alright. It went and auto-played what was in the disc drive which wasn't a game like I thought was going to be in it like usual. Instead, I got HARDCORE PORN. No warning, no foreplay build up, no cheesy dialogue. As soon as it started, I'm seeing a middle-aged woman, a younger girl, and some guy who seemed more like the lackey friend of they younger girl just going at it like tomorrow is the end of the world. Just so happens that the TV's volume was set very loud too.

So I got the crap startled out of me and knowing that there are other folks in the house, I quickly try to turn it off. Too bad for me that the TV at my house is broke and wonky and instead of turning the volume down (I panicked and didn't think of the power button yet) it turned it up to EAR RAPE VOLUME. At this point, I'm freaking out trying to shut the blaring TV off and I eventually manage to turn it off by just pulling the electric cord out of the socket. After regaining my composure, I head on down stairs to find out who left a porn DVD in my x-box but on my way down the stairs, I decide maybe I shouldn't make a big deal out of it and just let a certain someone of my family keep their little secret...sorta. I understand now why I'm always being heckled over not bringing my x-box home. They don't want to play games, they want to watch porn. I'm still laughing about this but I'm bringing the x-box back with me to Professor Awesome's house.

I'm glad I was able to get the commissioned I owed done before I went home and went voting. I was hoping to get DD57 done before I went home but I over estimated myself and I didn't get around to even starting it. I'm going to be working on it sometime this week, I may do one or two more drawings to warm up a little before going into DD57. I seriously doubt that I'll be able to finish Chapter 2 before the end of the year like I was hoping unless I become a living avatar of coffee. It's just so time consuming and draining doing a page, it takes everything I got to complete one but it's a great feeling of accomplishment to finish a new page and add it with the rest knowing that I'm one page closer to finishing the chapter.

Me and Professor Awesome have made some good advances recently with FINALLY coming up with some official names for certain important places in the world of Demordicai Diamonds that we've been needing for a long time now. We both aren't very good at naming things so it's a big deal for us to finally give a few places a good name rather than their working titles. It's amazing how much easier it is to develop something once it has a real name. Like the some old sayings go: once you know the name of something, you have power over it. Of course our to-do list for coming up with final names for things is still long but most of the stuff that needs a good name doesn't come up in the comic until much, much later.

Unless some more stuff goes on back at my house and I get called back for whatever reason, expect some more art from me in the near future.

I had a job interview at Wal-mart last Monday. I was at Professor Awesome's house at the time sleeping in late after staying up really late to finish DD56 when I got a call from my dad early in the morning saying Wal-mart called at my house and that I needed to be there by 3:00pm for an interview. Needless to say, I was thrilled to finally have another job interview but I was groggy as hell with only a few hours of sleep and a broke down car to boot. I was able to get there with some help and the interview went pretty good.

So I've been at my house all week with a broken car and waiting to hear back from Wal-mart.

Thanks to some awesome advice from Griswaldterrastone over on deviantART, I was able to fix my car instead of waiting even longer for some help from my dad on his days off. Even if I did wait, my dad gets so easily distracted and what he thought was the problem wasn't broke at all. I would have just end up wasting more time and taking out a bunch of car parts for nothing. It's great having my wheels back again! I was really worried that if I did get hired again, I'd have to rely on Professor Awesome taking me to work until I got my car fixed.

Getting my car fixed and a job interview were some really awesome perks this week but then, like always, things turn a little sour. When I called Wal-Mart yesterday to see if I got the job, I was told that I didn't get it. I'm happy that I got an interview but the same thing happened to Professor Awesome a few months back. I'm hoping that whoever they chose to hire fails the drug test (from what I learned from my co-workers when I worked there, about half of the people that get hired can't pass the first drug test and are quickly dropped) and I get a call back. Or heck, maybe they might quit after they learn just how much shit they have to clean up. If worst comes to worst, I'm just going to keep applying until I either get hired or I find a different job somewhere and get hired.

In other news, my eldest brother has now moved back in permanently. I have suspicions that my sister may try to move back in as well. The house is going to be getting even messier soon and no amount of cleaning is going to hold back that tide. The kitchen wall is still torn out and now our furnace doesn't work this year. It's already getting really cold here in Ohio but we haven't seen any snow yet unlike a few states over northeast.

Tonight there is a Halloween Costume Contest at some bar in town and my mom and my eldest brother are going. They've each made their own costumes and are hoping to win the $500 prize. My mom dressed up as a witch and my brother as a grouchketeer from Sesame Street. I didn't learn of the contest until just a few days ago so I didn't have enough time to put together a good costume. I'm not going to go regardless because I know what's going to happen, I'd end up being stuck there until the wee hours of the morning being the designated driver and the two of them would get completely plastered. I really don't want to deal with that.

I've been talking to Professor Awesome a lot over the phone these past several days and we've FINALLY hammered out the first half of the magic system that will be in Demordicai Diamonds. That part is now done and we can move on beyond the basic elements and how they work. On to blood diamonds! We already got a good structure on how that works luckily and that topic shouldn't be anywhere near as tough or have any huge hurdles like we hit previously (fire is complicated).

My second eldest brother has a hold of one of my old Magic: The Gathering decks from back when I used to play a lot in high school. I'm having a little problem because like with other things of mine, once he gets a hold of it he tends to think it is his even when he's been explicitly told he's borrowing. I got a drunken call (yes, drunken) from him a few days ago saying how he traded some of my old cards for some better ones. I should probably mention that even when he's sober he's really retarded when it comes to Magic: The Gathering and what is and isn't a good trade. Where he's living at, there is a bunch of guys that live there as well that take Magic: The Gathering WAYY too seriously and will do anything they can to scam you out of your cards, especially if your a noob. I may not play that much anymore but I built up a good collection in my day and I don't like seeing even a part of it go to waste like that. As crappy as the deck my brother is borrowing, I've offered to sell it to him so he'll stop bugging me about it and I'll just go down to the card shop with the money and re-buy most of the cards for cheap. I offered to do that originally with my brother but he is really attached to the specific cards he's already borrowing. At least I'll make some extra money off of it.

Tomorrow, I'm taking one of my nephews trick-or-treating. I don't know when I'll be back at Professor Awesome's house, probably sometime soon though. Maybe late tomorrow night, maybe the next day. I still have a commission I need to finish (would have finished it if I didn't have a job interview) and of course there is DD47 and several other projects. I had some ideas for some Halloween themed art but I'm doubting I won't be able to get to it until after Halloween. Wouldn't be much point in it then but who knows, I still might do something for the lulz.

That's it for this weekly update journal. I gotta go kill the damn mouse that keeps running across my feet while I've been typing this.

I've been meaning to do one of these journals for a while and gather my thoughts together in a more coherent form. No news (though I got a little bit of good news for later), just an organization of my thoughts. Maybe you'll find it interesting, maybe boring, maybe stupid, or just meh. You might even become offended and/or confused...somehow. I've had so many thoughts going on in my head on a variety of story/character-related subjects that it's about time I finally jot them down in one form or another. I need to get these thoughts out of my head an organized so here I go. For this week, I'm going to focus primarily on Characters and Character Development.

Characters are wonderful things, I bet most people have come up with at least one at some point in there lives. Maybe it was more of someone that reflected who they desired to be, their opposite, someone unique and interesting, or a close friend they had a lot in common like an imaginary friend. I've had a bunch of different characters throughout my life and that number just keeps growing as I get older. I've lost track of how many characters I've come up with but that number is well over a hundred. Whether you have one or a hundred, they can be fun to create and even more fun to expand on, from back stories to likes and dislikes to even pairing them up romantically.

After I spent some time on the internet, I became aware that there was a special classification of characters, a term called a "Mary Sue" (or Gary Stu sometimes). A Mary Sue is a term for a character that is simply unrealistically perfect in everyday, can do no wrong and rarely fails or has difficulty with anything. It really doesn't matter how your own personal characters are as long as you like them in the end but when you start going public with them, especially in stories, comics, and even artwork in general. As a kid, I created a fair handful of them though there was one I always favored more, put above the rest (kudos if you know who). I thought they were really cool and badass because of how powerful they were and had a lot of stories in my mind about them, some of them stories I worked with Professor Awesome with.

An example of a Mary Sue is say...a 24,000 year old werewolf with super strength, agility, endurance, and physical resilience. He also regenerates easily so he doesn't have to worry about getting hurt much. Due to his increased stamina, he can run for 600 miles without getting tired, has an super sense of smell and has super tracking skills. In addition, he knows a whole bunch of ninjitsu arts and styles, has a bunch of different shuriken weapons, and not to mention a sacred sword that has a dragon spirit in it. He can also use fire and shadows ninja/magic stuff because he was possessed by a demon. He is cool and calculating but can go raging and reckless too. His name is also taken exactly, first and last, from a Magic: The Gathering character to which the creator does admit when called out on it. And he also fights for his friends.

(the example above is a REAL example of a character I saw on deviantART one day, more kudos if you actually know this one)

Eventually, as I grew up, so did my thoughts on what makes a good character.

Now me and Professor Awesome have been working together and making up stories with plenty of characters since we were 9 and 10 years old and still do now that we are 21 and 22. Looking back on what we can remember, we had A LOT of Mary Sue characters. When you're young, you just don't notice, the things that fascinate you about a character are usually much different and a much shorter list when you're a kid compared to an adult. As we grew up, so did our preferences on just what makes a good character.

The first thing that most people do, myself included in the past, to "fix" a Mary Sue is to give them flaws to balance out their strengths. A super strong character may have their intelligence dropped to balance it out, games do this all the time. Instead of just super one character type, there are suddenly more each with their own pros and cons. This isn't limited just to physical attributes that often separate classes in Dungeons & Dragons and other games, even Halo Reach, but to personality traits as well.

An example would be a kind-hearted, priest that stands strong against destructive unholy forces BUT is distracted and easily tempted by women and isn't physically strong. He has his strengths but also has his weaknesses making him more realistic as a character. He isn't perfect.

I'm afraid that this is where most people stop with developing their characters. I used to do the same thing but I proceeded past this step years ago. What most characters tend to lack, and a lot of mine in the past suffered from this as well, is that unlike real people, they never change. They are always frozen in time. Having a character play a roll in a story makes them animate, makes them alive but not to the extent most may think (I'll get into that later). Real people change over time, events in their lives change them, gives them different memories which affects their future selves.

Using the priest example from above and throwing him in a story, say the priest is clearing out cobwebs in his church and finds a hornet nest and smacks recklessly at it with a broom. When the hornets come out and horribly sting him, he gets a painful memory of that event. It changes him and his future self. The next time he encounters a hornets nest, he doesn't just smack it with a broom. He also develops a great dislike for winged insects, possibly to the point of fear. His personality changed, his fearlessness (a pro) against insects turned into cowardice (a con).

When I started to grasp this, the events in a character's life having effects on them both physically and mentally, long and short term, my characters evolved again. I understood the basics of what made a good character and I was satisfied once again. My characters caught up with me and new ones were made to my new standards. But that didn't last long.

I grew up some more and became unsatisfied with my characters again. While they had strengths and weaknesses, they even changed due to events in their life, they still felt...flat. There was something I felt I must be doing wrong, I did what the "experts" said to do but it still didn't seem enough. The answer had been in front of me all along, it's in the <i>how</i> you let the characters live their lives in their stories. Most people end up with not characters at this point but puppets.

The literary term for this I believe is called "Writer On Board".

Though one may have balanced characters at this point that change, they are puppeteered by the creator in the character's story for the sake the story must happen a particular way. This is the point where story starts to coalesce and become bigger than a single character, it connects characters and connects their stories, weaving into something more grandiose. This is also the point where it gets more difficult to explain.

I figure most people wouldn't like the idea that their characters are puppets and not characters but I think in the end there is a difference and it is <i>how</i> you let the characters live their lives in their stories. More specifically, who makes the decisions in a character's life? The creator, or the character? If the creator, the character is a puppet. If character, then the character is a character.

I've used the technique of letting characters have free will for a while now and it is a lot different than simply determine what the character does and does not do. It involves putting yourself in the character's position to a much more extreme point than simply knowing them. You start to develop compartmentalized personalities that you can and <i>must</i> be able to call out at will for characters to have free will. You must become their doppelganger for a while and make decisions as best as they would make, not as YOU would make.

A great movie director will be able to act out EVERY role in the movie. He probably isn't a good "fit" for every role but he has intimate knowledge on the characters and can shift himself into the mindsets of the characters.

If you're reading this, you probably know a few of my characters. One of them is Dalken. We share quite a few things in common but differ widely on others, especially how we may handle situations. I can really relate to him but there are times when I find him absolutely retarded, making huge mistakes in events where a little common sense was all that was needed. Through his ordeals he becomes wiser and will carry the scars of his mistakes as a constant reminder of what not to do. He is one character who's personality I can call out easily.

It's even more difficult when calling out character personalities at different stages of their lives. The Dalken you who are reading this might be familiar with is the one portrayed in the comic Demordicai Diamonds. The one who I'm most familiar with is the Dalken about two years older, has been through a lot of tough times, made friends, lost friends, lived, laughed, loved, and even killed. He's the same character but he's very different but I must know both and all the Dalkens in between since the comic and the full story are at vastly different levels of development.

Another character of mine, Juna, can be more challenging to bring forth (though I can do it easy as cake now and at light speed). Calling up Juna's personality is a lot different from Dalken's and, a heck of a lot different than my own but I must be able to call her personality up regardless if I want her to make her own decisions. Her changes are even more dramatic than Dalken's and affect her much more deeply, especially on the emotional level. I mention Juna not only for the sheer difference between her, Dalken, and myself, but also because of the impact <i>her</i> choices have had on her life, the lives of others, and completely changed how the story Demordicai Diamonds could have gone.

While I don't think I should go into the exact details (for spoiler's sake) on just what choices she made, they were actually choices that I, as her creator, was not expecting but they still fit into something that she would do (they definitely weren't something I'd do or maybe even have the courage for if I was her). They really threw a curve ball into the story of Demordicai Diamonds but I kept her decisions as part of the tale and the story was better for it.

In making the story, events, and the world that the characters of Demordicai Diamonds (and previous tales), I often play the role of the "bad guy", throwing challenges, and problems of all sorts at the characters. It's a lot like being a DM (Dungeon Master) in a game of Dungeon's & Dragons. A rule of thumb that I have is that I can't <i>directly</i> kill a character, their actions must be cause of their own deaths. I can't just have a character hear a disembodied voice that says "Watch out, here comes Tom!" and the character is killed by a sudden boulder that fell from the sky.

Letting characters have ultimately a pseudo "free will" though emulating their personality is essentially role playing if you boil it down but at a much more serious, full, and deep level. You know you're on the right track when you start to feel the same emotions as your characters feel, even when you normally would not feel that way. This can become a little dangerous when giving certain characters free will and their lives take a much more grim, depressing, traumatic, lost, or otherwise seriously "negative" turn. This applies doubly so for very emotional characters. You HAVE to feel and act how they would and when you have their personality copied into your head, their pain and woes are essentially yours too. It must be done if you want to let them be characters and lead their own lives instead of making all their decisions for them.

In using this technique, my characters suddenly burst out, like from going from 2D to 3D. They were at their pinnacle and I became really pleased with what I had going. I didn't really notice this state of evolution until the previous story me and Professor Awesome worked on before Demordicai Diamonds (even more kudos if you know any characters from the previous story).

But as good as I thought things were going I ran into another road block of sorts. I found myself running at ideas, situations, events, and other things to throw at the characters and let them sort things out and right what they thought was wrong. Eventually the previous story ended after a full year of working on it, the longest me and Professor Awesome had worked on a tale at the time. We did a miniature sequel that lasted a few more months but it puttered out after a few months. We left it off saying we would return to it but we never did, well, not directly anyway but that's a tale for another time.

I suppose that despite my personal triumphs in characters, I was facing the dreaded writer's block that not I nor my top-tier characters at the time could break. It crushed them in the end (though not as completely as I originally thought at the time).

The answer to my problems didn't come from something I figured out on my own, didn't come from something I read on the internet, it came from three special characters in the next tale me and Professor Awesome worked on: Dalken, Rune, and Juna.

Demordicai Diamonds was originally supposed to be a tale where the protagonists were actually villains. Dalken was supposed to end up as the bandit warlord and Rune, well, ummm, she was supposed to be as intimidating as she could possibly be. Obviously, that didn't work out. In fact, the characters thought it was stupid so they did their own thing. They lived their lives as best as they could and as best as they thought how.

They taught me that heroes don't have to be heroic, that heroes are often ordinary people who do extraordinary things (even if they are a little unique). They taught me most importantly that heroes, characters, can be VERY ordinary and live ordinary lives despite how much of a "hero" they might be. Even the most heroic of characters can have a very ordinary life. Even heroes have to sit on the toilet and take a dump from time to time.

At first I was perplexed and a very unsure. Instead of attempting to save a land from all sorts of undead-related problems like the characters in the previous tale, Rune and Dalken were doing...nothing. They lived fairly ordinary lives for a while, their problems were fairly trivial compared to the saving-the-world type problems. In their lives it was important, get money, buy food, live another day but not so important in the history of the world. When Juna takes them in in return for labor they live fairly average for the time with new problems important to them but not to many others. Someone started poking their nose in something they probably shouldn't have and next thing they know is a chain of extremely important and life changing events is set into motion that may affect a lot more than this them. But even so, as fantastic (and not necessarily in the good happy fantasy sort of way) a turn as their lives take, they are still very ordinary and do a lot of things ordinary people do with a little dash of some extraordinary things.

When this whole idea of ordinary heroes fused with the idea of characters having free will, I got the final lesson in balancing a character (giving them strengths and weaknesses) and through the first.

I found out that the balancing of characters, giving them strengths and weaknesses, wasn't as clear cut as I had believed in earlier years. What I learned next about it is something I still go by today. I learned, thanks to my characters getting themselves into all sorts of situations, that a strength isn't always a strength and a weakness isn't always a weakness. It all depends on the situation they are in. It was weird, it was like an undoing of what most people I believe come to learn about how to avoid Mary Sue characters but at the same time a much better way than just slapping on weaknesses to balance strengths. It changed my perception on just what was a strength and what was a weakness. Every individual aspect of a character could turn out to be "good" or "bad" or even varying degrees of "neutral" depending on the situation. It wasn't as simple as I originally thought but at the same time it was still simple, it just required a bit of a different perspective. Perspective can change a lot of things. After all, I doubt everyone has the exact same opinions on just what is good and bad and on top of that, opinions can change.

After putting everything I've covered so far together, I got something strange, magical, and still very normal (in a weird way). I found my characters living lives as if they were alive, they could make their own decisions in a story and were not limited to a list of likes and dislikes. They changed and remembered the events in their lives and the decisions that they made to get to where they are today. They live their lives as best they can, they eat and sleep, laugh and love, quarrel and fight, they may kill and go to great lengths to protect others from being killed, they may have affairs, get married, have children (some even as accidents), they have goals and ambitions or are trying to figure out just what they want out of life, they cry, they can competently do just what makes something alive.

I think that is the pinnacle of characters and their development, when they behave as if they are alive. In the end, they are just in your head. Maybe on paper, in a computer file, but depicting them is a whole other topic in itself. In a weird way, in learning to understanding characters I think I've learned to understand myself and other people better. You get a little more appreciation for life, your troubles feel lighter and more bearable. You learn to enjoy things just as some characters do even when the fate of their lives is hanging by a thread. Things might not be that bad for yourself but like characters, you learn to enjoy the little things in life and suddenly the ordinary becomes extraordinary like how things are in the eyes of a child. Everyday is an adventure and life can be fun if you let it.

And those are my thoughts on characters and character development. Looks like it turned out as more of a telling of my experiences and learnings of it over the past ten or so years. I really needed to get this all out of my head, I've been thinking and reminiscing on things like this and I've just been needing to compile my thoughts and experiences together so I can move on further up the mountain so to speak.

If you actually read through all this, you must got a lot of time and patience on your hands. Hopefully it wasn't too confusing or mind-boggling. I'll probably being doing more of these in the future mainly for my own benefit but if you enjoy them for some reason and want be to go into a certain topic, feel free to suggest something. I feel better already after taking the time to organize my thoughts on this.

And before I forget, kudos might mean Mace Points.

Been doing a lot of housework last week. When I was going to go home last week, I found that my car battery had died and needed a jump start. Professor Awesome didn't have a jumper cable so I had to call my dad and have him bring one over. Luckily, he was heading toward me anyway. We managed to jump start my car (have to remove part of the engine frame to even get to the battery) but I fear this winter is going to kill it for good and I'm going to be stranded permanently until I can get a new car battery.

When I got home, I found that my dad had tore out the walls to the point of bare studs. Including the walls of my room. Knowing my dad's habit of starting projects and not finishing them gave me a big scare, especially considering that winter is coming.

So I went and helped him out with that though a lot of the time it feels like I'm babysitting him. For some reason, if I'm not there my dad will not even attempt to finish a project and come up with excuses after excuses. The house is already in poor enough condition and finding it tore up like he did pissed me off something fierce, especially the fact that I had no where to sleep. We completely refurbished the walls, rewired some of the electrical system (which was so shoddy I'm surprised the house hadn't caught fire), and added new insulation. This took most of last week.

Because some of the walls that my dad tore out led into our attic (it's strangely postioned), we started to clean up the attic and all the junk in it. Most of the junk belonged to my sister who refused to take it with her when she moved out. We were going to get rid of it by either burning, trashing, or donating since she has been told multiple times in the past several months to pick up her stuff. Suddenly, she shows up (I suspect someone must have tipped her off) and starts throwing a bitch fit at me for cleaning up the house. I already went through that last week with my dad so I was in no mood to take her crap. Vulgar insults were hurled, she threatened to burn my stuff (It's all at Professor Awesome's house) and said I didn't live at the house so I don't have a say in anything. I'd be really happy if I didn't live there. If only that was actually true. I ended up pissing her off something fierce and she stormed out as quickly as she stormed in and me and my dad were able to continue our work but she cost us several hours and some good daylight.

On the last day, my eldest brother came by and we were able to recruit him and we finished the drywall sooner than expected. My dad was wanting to paint them and with my brother around, he said he'd help with the painted so I went over to Professor Awesome's house.

Like usual, I end up getting a call whining about how I'm not home. Apparently my brother got drunk the night I left and then got a hangover and bitched out and ditched my dad and ran back to his girlfriend's house. Of course, my eldest brother doesn't have a car and has no job. It's my mom who brings him over all the time, who takes him home, who buys him case after case of beer, and babies him so damn much. He's almost 30, has two kids with different mothers and does nothing to take care of them, has puppy he got and ditched at the house (responsible for events in my previous journal), and is always wanting to borrow my Nintendo DS, my X-box, or my computer. Yet another reason I stash my stuff at Professor Awesome's house. My brother has hocked my stuff before for drug money and I don't want to take that risk, especially with my coin collection. That could sell for a sizable amount.

Then today, I find that my brother is back and is supposedly helping (can't say I'm too inclined to believe that) and my dad is insinuating that he wants me back. There's been so many occasions where I leave Professor Awesome's house to help my dad out with another project to find that HE WON'T DO ANYTHING AT ALL and I get stuck there for a week unable to do shit and I catch hell if I leave again, not even to do more job hunting (I applied AGAIN for Wal-mart today). My time is very precious to me and I don't like it when it gets wasted, especially by being lied to about doing house projects that my dad then decided to postpone as soon as I walk on the door.

His new project is to rip apart the bathroom. I really hope he doesn't do that, it's already getting cold out and these projects with him can take up to a week to finish and I don't want to be crapping in bushes in the cold. Professor Awesome's house has two toilets, mine only has one and ONLY ONE. This project should have been done in the Summer but that just makes too much sense.

I'll probably end up going back, get stuck at home doing nothing, and be kicking myself I went back to help with a project that my dad conveniently changes his mind on. Maybe this time I'll get hired back at Wal-mart. I can't seem to get a job anywhere else. If my divine intervention I do get hired again, I think I'll be living more at Professor Awesome's house until I save up enough money to get an apartment of my own or a small house to rent. A regular source of income is my only hope for getting out of this cesspool of crap. Call me crazy but with everything that's been going on these past few years with both of my parents, it almost seems like they are trying to keep me at the house. They cost me my first and so far only job and don't like me going anywhere at all on my own unless I'm with them despite the fact that I'm 22 years old.

Oh, and one of my hens got eaten while I was gone. I'm down to 1 rooster and 3 hens now.

Last weekend was a X-box live free gold weekend so me and Professor Awesome used that to our advantage. We don't have the money to waste on a gold membership so it was a little treat to play on-line. Needless to say, we are now sick and tired of Halo Reach and wish it would die of spontaneous combustion. It gets really repetitive and when you boil it down, it's scary what it really is.

1) Play Halo, earn credits
2) Beat Halo, play more to earn more credits
3) Credit earnings get nerfed, forced to play online to get more credits
4) Play enough online and credit earnings gets nerfed again
5) More credits=higher rank
6) Rank=more armor pieces to buy
7) Spend credits on armor
8) The armor DOES NOTHING, unlike real armor which offers protection benefits
9) The armor is purely cosmetic
10) HALO REACH IS A DRESS UP GAME FOR MEN!!

Art-wise, I suddenly came up with an idea for a new project when reading one of  koron's journals on dA. I've seen a lot of those "Ask -insert name of character here-" accounts being made and I thought what if I do a comic project (not making any new accounts) and have the Demordicai Diamonds cast answer questions people send in. Every once in a while, I'd pick a question sent to me, hopefully via note, and draw up a little mini-comic of the characters answering it. Whoever sent in the picked question, unless they would prefer to remain anonymous, would receive somewhere around 50 Mace Points. I think I will go ahead with this project for the sake of entertainment and amusement (and that I haven't done any Mace Point projects in a long while). If you'd like to send in some questions or even want some advice from the DD cast, feel free to ask via note. You might see your question answered in a mini-comic and get some Mace Points to spend on requests and the like if you save up enough. I know I haven't done a lot of stuff with Mace Points here on FA in the past but maybe it's time I changed that.

I don't know if I will be able to get to finishing DD56 this week, especially if I go back home. If I do, I'll have little choice but to delay that until I get back to Professor Awesome's house.

That's it for this journal. If I have the time, I may be posting an extra journal detailing my thoughts on certain topics. I think for this week I might delve into the realm of character development.