Trasee

Easter

Happy Easter to everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful day, no matter what you choose to do today, whether you celebrate or not. I’ll be heading off to visit family later. I’m happy that I only live about an hour away (a bit longer with traffic) from family now. It was hard only seeing family once or twice a year before, because we’ve always been close. This is the first family gathering I’m going to be able to attend since the move, and I’m happy about that.

Now, I could stop there, and wouldn’t blame anyone else if they want to stop at that point. From this point forward, I’m going to be sharing something else I don’t really talk about much. I’m going to share my faith.

I’m a follower of Christ. I’m not a follower of religion, which includes Christianity. You might be asking yourself don’t Christians call themselves ‘followers of Christ?’ Yes, there are many that do. Unfortunately, many of those same people put more focus on following their religion rather than following Christ. Jesus had words for people like that: whitewashed tombs.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”
Matthew 23:27 NIV

What is religion? It is man’s attempt to reach God. It’s trying to do things to earn your place in heaven. It often manifests itself in hatred, bigotry, prejudices, and all sorts of other negative qualities that humanity shares. This evil that is being done on others in the name of religion can clearly be seen in every aspect of our world today. Is it any wonder why Christ and His followers are so easily dismissed in this world?

So, what does that mean for me and my faith? First, and most essential, I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is a God in heaven. There is mountains of proof to his existence, and anyone who earnestly seeks after the Truth can find it. In addition to that, He has made Himself known to me in many ways personally. I’ve personally seen Him move in my life. He’s delivered me from so much, and given me so much more. I could never have gotten to where I am today, or through the trials I’ve gone through in life, without His strength and His goodness carrying me.

Second, I know Jesus of Nazareth was born to a virgin. I know He lived for ~30 years with his family before beginning His public ministry. I know He journeyed throughout Judea performing miracles, raising the dead, teaching people about God, and telling them that He was God. Jesus is the Son of God, and He is God. Jesus was a man, born and lived among us, suffered with us, and could relate to every one of our needs. The reason He was executed was because He professed to be equal to God.

Why is the death of Jesus important? It is important to realize that when we are born, we are born to die. At some point in our future, we will meet our end in this world. When we were born, we were also born dead to God with something called sin. Everyone has it, and everyone knows it. There is no one here that is perfect. It doesn’t matter if it is just a simple “white lie” or the act of murder, we’re all imperfect. Because of that, when we die, we would all go to hell, a place of eternal suffering and torment, which is often referred to as the second death.

Jesus, being fully God and still fully man, lived a life without sin. He was perfect, unlike anyone else. He went to the cross willingly. He was sent to this earth for just that purpose. When He hung on the cross, one of the phrases He said was “It is finished.” What was finished was the separation between God and man. Anyone who believed in Jesus and accepted His finished work on the cross, could gain access to heaven. They would gain eternal life and avoid the second death.

There was still one more act to follow, though. If Jesus did not rise again, then all that would be for nothing. We would all still die in the end, and there would be no hope. Yet, on the third day, Jesus did rise from the dead. This resurrection is what we celebrate on Easter Sunday. His resurrection and ascension into heaven allows us that full access to God, as God’s children.

I’m still human. I still sin. I still do things that God would not approve of. Despite all that, I still believe and trust in Him. I do try to live right according to what He would want. I will never be perfect, but I will always follow Him. I’m not trying to do things to earn my place, because my place was already bought and paid for by Jesus Christ.

God doesn’t send people to hell. That is where everyone is going from the moment they are born. God did make a way of escape, though. There’s only one way to escape, one door in which we can pass through, and that door is very narrow. God offers us that choice, and we’re asked to choose life, so that we might live. Not only live with Him after we die here, but also live much fuller lives here as well, of which I can personally attest.

Those who call themselves Christians need to stop hurling rocks at others. Those who call themselves Christians need to stop forcing those who don’t believe to act like they believe they should act. Jesus only spoke harshly against the religious who did just that. To those who did not believe, He simply showed them His love, His grace, and His mercy. That is the desire of my heart, to love others and show them what I know to be the Truth.

Easter Sunday, of all the Christian holidays, to me is the most important. Yes, on Christmas we celebrate His birth, which is important as well, but His birth only lead to this penultimate moment, where He rose again from the dead, and bridged the gap between God and man. Because of His sacrifice and ultimate resurrection, I, along with all who believe, have become sons and daughters of God.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
John 3:16-17 NIV

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
John 14:6 NIV

Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
John 10:7-10 NIV

The choice is set before everyone. You can enter the door or you can avoid it. I’m just pointing to the door, letting you know it is there. From that point, it is up to you.

Darkwolf Sim Update

On Monday, I mentioned that my homestead in Second Life was almost completely torn down to make room for changes that were already underway. Well, most of the week has been spent in world working on the sim. Except for my store area, everything in the sim is pretty much done. I didn’t really create anything new, a couple simple mesh objects, but most of what I did was reuse what I already had. Even better was the fact that I could do all this without affecting the existing Wonderland Glade that was created by my SL sister, Indy.

First Level: Wonderland Glade and Docks

The Wonderland Glade is a beautiful forested valley in one corner of the sim that was created by Indygo Moonbeam. That area remained untouched by the changes, but the rest of the sim was terraformed so that it was all water. This made a nice large area for sailing or jetskiing. So, to accommodate that, I created a small dock in which the boat and jetski are located. In addition, I decided to put out the 7Seas Fishing game for any who might enjoy using it.

Wonderland Docks

Entrance to Wonderland Glade

Wonderland Glade

Second Level: Darkwolf Boardwalk and Lounge

The Boardwalk and Lounge was moved up to the second level, and turned to face the west. The old club rez area remained intact, so that all the scenes I previously created were still usable in the new area. The lounge backed up toward steep cliffs, that isolated it from the rest of the sim. Since there was the natural barrier there, the other side of the sim was left undecorated.

Darkwolf Lounge and Boardwalk

Darkwolf Lounge and Boardwalk

Third Level: TD Creations Mainstore (Coming Soon)

The third level of the sim is the future home of the TD Creations Mainstore. The store is a single level, having no ceiling, to allow for rezzing of the prefab homes. I still have a lot of work to do on this level, adding more landscaping so it doesn’t look quite as empty, as well as bringing my CasperVend systems over.

TD Creations Mainstore (Under Construction)

Fourth Level: Darkwolf Isle (Our Home)

The home of Lola, Trasee and Kee Darkwolf is isolated from direct teleports. The only access is by being teleported by someone already in the home, or by the teleportation pads on the sim. It is also protected by a security orb so we can enjoy our privacy. The security orb will eject intruders after a warning, but won’t teleport them home, so anyone can still enjoy the sim, without disturbing our privacy.

Darkwolf Isle

Darkwolf Home

Fifth Level: Build Region

The highest level of the sim is the build region. It is where I can build new club scenes, designed to fit at Darkwolf Boardwalk, as well as build things for the store. There is a mirror of the boardwalk so components can be properly aligned as well as a checkered grass area for the store builds. A beach area in between contains a pose stand in the beach that I can use when I’m organizing outfits. As it is strictly a build area, there won’t be much in the way of landscaping on this level, which is why I selected a scene that looked nice enough without the need for the additional trees.

Build Region

All in all, I’m using somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 prims. Hard to have an exact number, as each parcel has a separate group owner. I would guess that I’m not using quite that much. Since I still have the store to do, I will probably end just over that 3000 prim mark. That will still leave me with close to 2000 prims to work with. Looking at what I’ve been able to accomplish, I wonder now, do I really need to upgrade to a full sim in the future? It is still something to think about, but with this redesign, I’ve probably pushed it off until early next year, if at all.

Down the Rabbit Hole

It’s a warm spring day as you recline near the bank of a brook. The sun is high overhead as you lazily listen to the babbling of the brook and hear the sounds of the birds tweeting in the nearby trees. It felt nice to relax here after a busy week at work. Slowly, your eyes begin to close as you drift off to sleep.

Your eyes had barely closed when you are alerted by a rustling in the leaves next to you. You open your eyes and glance off to the right. What you saw was unusual to say the least. It was a white rabbit wearing a leather jacket, looking at a watch on his wrist. As if that weren’t odd enough, the rabbit actually spoke. “Shit! I’m late! She’s gonna have my head!”

You watch in amazement as the rabbit runs off to a rabbit hole a short distance away. This can’t be real, you think as you watch the rabbit disappear into the darkness. Curious, you decide to go to the rabbit hole and look inside. In front of the rabbit hole, you get down on your hands and knees and peer into the darkness. The sun was at an angle to allow you to see a few feet inside. There was nothing much to see, except more dirt and some roots poking through the soil. The rabbit was nowhere to be seen.

A voice from the darkness echoed back out from the hole, clearly the voice of the rabbit. “Where the hell did it go? Ah! Here it is!” No sooner than the words reached your ears, the ground beneath you seemed to give way. You find yourself rolling down a steep incline into the rabbit hole. Only a moment before, it was a slight slope, and a small hole. Now, it was large enough for you to tumble, quite unceremoniously, down a steep hill.

You reach your arms out to try to stop your fall, but your effort was in vain. You reached the end of the slope and now find yourself falling down a very wide hole. Actually, it would be more appropriate to say you were floating down the hole as if you were a feather falling with the breeze.

Images swirled around you as you slowly sank through the air. Chess pieces, playing cards, laptops with video games, and even television screens displaying pornographic scenes. It was a chaotic mix of items from the mundane to the explicit. None of it made any sense at all.

It seemed like you were falling forever. The images continued to change, and slowly began to disappear. When the last television screen vanished, you found yourself in darkness. You couldn’t even see the sun from the rabbit hole somewhere high above you. You wondered if this was going to be the end. No sooner had that thought crossed your mind that you reached the bottom. Landing quite unceremoniously on your derriere, you were thankful for the added padding you had there. It also helped that you landed on something soft. It was a vinyl-like material that seemed to be filled with air. Must be some sort of airbag that was put out to cushion falls. The airbag, though, seemed to have quite an unusual shape to go along with it.

“Well, don’t just sit on my stomach,” came a high-pitched, almost squeaky, voice beneath you. “Either fuck me or move along.” The airbag actually spoke, and was very crude as well. The darkness faded away as a mysterious light began to give the room a soft glow. You look down at the airbag and are shocked to see an inflatable woman, naked one at that. You landed on a cheap sex doll, and one that could speak. “Don’t just sit there looking stupid. You weigh a ton!”

Quickly, you roll off the inflatable sex doll, apologizing to her and wondering what was going on. You turned away to see where the mysterious light was coming from. It was a Coleman lantern some distance ahead, being held by the white rabbit you were following. Now you had no choice but to follow the rabbit, as it might be the only one that knows the way out of this hole.

The rabbit turns a corner, and you rush down the tunnel after it. It only takes you a couple moments to round the same corner, only to wind up in front of a very large and ornate door. The Coleman lantern that the rabbit had been carrying was now hanging on a hook next to the door. Eye level on the door was a lion head door knock, and the door handle was a simple latch. The rabbit must have gone through here, as there were no other ways out that you could see. You reach forward and try the latch, only to find the door securely latched.

“It’s very rude to enter without knocking first, you know,” the lion head door knocker replied, staring at you with an expression of annoyance. You apologize, telling the knocker that you had fallen down the hole and had been trying to follow the rabbit.

“You’re stalking rabbits too? That’s fucked up.” The knocker responded with irritation. Immediately, you became defensive, trying to explain that you weren’t stalking. You thought he might help you get out of the hole.

“Yeah, you’re right, you’re in a hole, and you keep digging yourself deeper into that hole.” Realizing you’re getting nowhere with the talking knocker, you decide to ask if you could pass through instead.

“You do know what’s on the other side, don’t you?” You shake your head. You had no idea where you were, let alone what was on the other side of the door. “Wow. You’re really clueless. It’s Trasee’s Wonderland, but not the one from the stories. It’s from the depths of her imagination. It’s light, it’s dark, it’s completely chaotic. You never know what you’re gonna find in there. You sure you want me to open the door?”

You think about it for a moment, wondering if there was another way to go. You could probably take the lantern and see if there’s another way out. This entry has already been extremely unusual. Still, the rabbit went through the door, so really, was there any other choice? You finally answer the door in the affirmative.

“Well, ok, don’t say you haven’t been warned. You’ll never know what you’ll find in the depths of Trasee’s imagination.” The door opened, and a bright light shone through. Taking a breath and gathering the courage to face the dangers that may lay ahead, you walk through the door, hearing as the door closes and locks behind you. There’s no turning back now.

Welcome to Trasee’s Wonderland.

Darkwolf Sim

Darkwolf Sim, at Camelot dAlliez, has been demolished. The cranes came in and picked up the buildings while the bulldozers leveled everything except one corner of the sim. Needless to say, it’s been a busy weekend.

So, what exactly happened? Well, I’ve still been fighting the depression. I had just started to get past it, when the rug got pulled out from beneath me. I became very busy, and with the struggle to deal with life and the limited time that resulted, my depression sunk me down again. By the end of last week, I was looking for a way to climb back up. So, creativity was what I felt like was needed.

First, I was looking into getting a full sim of my own, instead of renting the homestead from d’Alliez as I am currently. I have two weeks left at my current sim before I have to pay again, which would have given me time to move things to the new sim. I’ve been wanting my own full sim with the maximum 30000 LI and full control for a long time. There is so much I could build and design on a full sim, and never have to worry about prim counts.

I thought things through for a while, looked at monthly costs and setup fees. I know I can afford it, but should I do it? Should I just wait for Sansar later this year? What would I do if it didn’t work out? Could I do anything with my existing homestead and a maximum of 5000 LI? I must have spent two or three hours debating before finally deciding that I couldn’t let my depression dictate my spending habits. I need to wait to get a new sim, if I get one at all.

After that decision was made, the next decision was what to do at my sim. I want to make changes, consolidate everything to my sim. How was I going to do that, though? I had bought the fatpack of all sim surrounds from Landscape Unlimited a few months back (Black Friday, if I recall). I started looking at those, both land and sky, to see what options I had. So, after several more hours of rezzing one after the other, I finally made my decision.

One corner of my sim has the Glade. This was a wooded area that was created by my SL sister, Indy. I wanted to see if I could preserve that. But my caverns (never completed), club, and home could go away. Instead, what I would do is move the club and home to separate levels in the sky, using the sim surrounds to make it appear that it was at ground level, while the actual ground was leveled, except for the Glade.

The first level was set up as a beach backed up against steep island walls. I moved the club builds up to that level, instead of recreating the buildings, and turned this into the new Darkwolf Lounge and Boardwalk.

The second level was a mountainous region with one level of the mountain set aside for the store. I created a very simple ground with four walls, and no ceiling, for the store. I built it in Blender, so it was only 3LI with the physics layer. I added my wrought iron fencing to the top of the walls for decoration. The reason it is open is for rezzing of the homes, as well as giving visibility to the mountains outside.

The third level was just a small beach with islands that wasn’t a full sim surround, but just tucked nicely into one corner of the sim. Just big enough for our small home, which I moved up from the ground as it was.

The fourth level was my build area, just an expanse of water with a copy of part of the club, so that I could design new club scenes if needed. Although that design might be revaluated for another sim surround, and my build area set up in that new surround. That’s something I’ll be looking at later.

Finally, I switched my sim from Adult to Moderate. As I’ll be moving the store to the sim, and nothing in the store is adult in nature, I don’t want to limit the possible visitors (not that I have many now anyways). The club won’t have any adult items, and while there may be nudity in the club, nudity is still allowed in Moderate sims. Flying is disabled on the sim, so the only way between the levels is through the teleport pads.

Hopefully, by the time I finish all this, I’ll be mostly back to normal, whatever normal is.

Transgender Day of Visibility

March 31 is the Transgender Day of Visibility. Today happens to be the first time I heard of this day. I had always heard about the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and am glad I now know about this day as well. Ever since I started my blog, before I wrote my first post, I had been debating whether or not to write about my own struggles. For me, this day is giving me the courage to speak up.

I don’t know exactly where or how I fall. For me, it is a lot of confusion, a confusion that goes away when I’m online. In my mind and in my heart, I am Trasee, fully female. Unfortunately, my biological gender has never aligned with that. Second Life allows me to be fully myself, without the limitations of my biology. It is one of the reasons Second Life means so much to me, and why I’m online as often as I am. Now that my identity is established in my entire online life, I have more than just SL to make up for what I’m missing in reality.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always disliked how I was born. Many times in my youth, I would pretend I was born differently than I was. I never dressed up, and never had any opportunities to. It was all imagination. I felt different, but I didn’t know what I felt.

In my senior year of high school, and for a couple years beyond, I used to spend time with friends playing Dungeons & Dragons. My favorite character during that time was a female weretiger. I didn’t think much more of it at the time, but I remember it felt much more comfortable to play as opposed to any male character I had ever created.

It was the late 90’s that I started hearing more about transgender. I was in my mid to late 20’s and researching the topic online. I spent a lot of time on it, had a lot of questions, but not really a lot of answers. I read about the struggles, the challenges, the discrimination, the violence, and even about the surgeries involved. Weighing my options at the time, I made the decision not to go any further. While others, it may have been necessary, for me, I couldn’t accept the difficulties that went along with it. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but it was one that I felt was necessary in my case.

In the early to mid 2000’s, I was involved in play by post role playing on forums. Basically, a form of collaborative story telling. I always considered myself creative, and even in the 90’s and had written many things, even though I never completed them. This was another way to express my writing creativity. As was usual for me, my favorite characters to write were always female. They always seemed to be the most natural for me.

July 2009 I discovered Second Life. In reality, I had first found it in July 2006, but abandoned it after a couple days, not understanding it. The second time was different, though, as I found myself in Faery Crossing, going through a tutorial and being greeted by friendly people. I thought I had to create a male, so that’s what I did, but there were free outfits for females there as well. It was then that I realized that I could be female if I wanted to. So, the very next day, I created a female avatar and entered through Faery Crossing again.

To say it was weird for me is an understatement. I wondered if I was lying to people. Would I just be seen as the stereotypical guy pretending to be a girl? I knew that wasn’t the case, I was a female, but would I be accepted as one? The thought that I was being deceitful led me to tell people right away about my reality. I had been rejected for that several times, which hurt more than I could express. Why would I be hurt by a perfect stranger rejecting me? It shouldn’t have mattered, but it always did. Like anyone else, I just wanted to be accepted for who I was.

In late 2009, I met Arjurna in world. Like others, I told her about my reality, still thinking it was something I had to do. While I don’t remember the exact words anymore, I remember the gist and the emotion behind it. “You don’t have to tell anyone anything. You’re a woman. That’s all you are. Don’t tell anyone any differently.” It was soon after that when Trasee was “born.”

I’ve went through a lot, made a lot of mistakes along the way. I realized, like Arjurna had said, I was a woman, and I wasn’t lying or deceiving anyone by saying that. It is who I am. I learned I didn’t have to make up things about my life just to fit into that idea, that I just needed to be myself. Yes, I still did come out to a couple of my best friends and my Mistress. I’m sure there are a few others who probably suspected it. For the most part, though, I never really talked about it, mainly because I am a woman, why would I say any differently?

Now, I’m coming out completely. Anyone can read this blog and find out the truth. This is very frightening for me to do still, because I’m afraid that I may have people reject me. If they do, they were never friends anyways. Will it hurt, I’m sure it will, but this is a day to be visible, and I want to be proud of who I am.

Earlier in this post I said I don’t know where I fall. That’s because in reality, I still have my choice of not transitioning. I’m not going to go into the details here, as that would be another, very complex, dialog. I’m living as a male, which is something I feel that I need to do, not necessarily something I want to do. I live under the mask, while Second Life and my online identity allow the real me to be presented. It isn’t easy, but it is the choice that I felt I needed to make. If you ask me, I’ll say I’m transgendered or simply gender dysphoric. Although, what I really want to say, and the way I really want to be seen, is as a woman.

Prioritization

Prioritization is important, but often something I fail to do correctly. There are many things I have to do, and many more things that I want to do. With all these competing interests, and no sense of priority, I jump form one thing to the next, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Just look at this blog, and you can see an example of that. Add depression into the mix, then nothing gets done at all.

So, now I need to figure out my priorities. I need to get some order to the chaos, if that is even possible. What is really important to me, and what isn’t as important. Some things will have to fall by the wayside, as I can only do so much at one time. Then I want to figure out how I want to structure the blog, and keep the momentum up here, without grasping at straws, or wandering aimlessly between topics.

Blender and my store. I’ve been down to one monitor for several months now, waiting to have the money to get two monitors again. The move in the middle has caused me to put that purchase on hold, while I paid for my part of the moving expenses. There are still things I need to pay for related to the move as well, so it will probably be a couple more months before I can get the monitors. Does this mean I can’t do Blender? Not really. It may be easier with two monitors, but it is still possible with one. I’d like to get my store products updated, add them to my store blog, and get some new content in the store.

LSL Scripting. I had intended on doing updates to an open sourced security orb in Second Life, as well as writing my own home integration tool for windows, doors, and the like. I think both of those have fallen away. Certainly would be nice to use my own scripts with my prefab home designs, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

SL photography and pose making. This is something that I used to enjoy doing, and had thought about creating my own poses for photography as well. I haven’t done either in a couple years, and with the number of things I want to do, this is probably something that is going to stay in the background.

Create a game based on several different ideas, that would work on mobile and browsers. It’s been an idea of mine for a while, and I even have a lot of notes for it. I’m a C# programmer, and with Xamarin part of Visual Studio, it is certainly something I could resume. Yet, since my career involves programming, I’m not sure if it is something I really want to spend time working on outside of work. Granted it is a different type of programming, but regardless, it is still thinking, writing, testing, and debugging code.

Creative writing. I’ve been writing things since I was in high school, from poetry, to never completed works of fiction. There are so many different ideas bouncing around in my head that I would love to get out sometime. The problem is getting it written and completed.

Learning to draw. A couple years ago, I worked on a web comic using SL as the way to generate the scenes. It was an interesting and fun experience, but much too time consuming and costly to complete. So, I thought about learning to draw. Bought myself a drawing tablet for my computer and a couple learn to draw books. Did it one or two days, then that was it. I’ve always wanted to get back to that as well.

Purchasing and decorating a full sim in SL. Like the monitors, this is something that I have to wait for, simply due to finances. I’ve been wanting a full sim for years, and have finally moved to my own homestead, but having a full sim, with 30000 prims available to me, would be amazing. Of course, with Sansar on the horizon, maybe I’d forgo the full sim in favor of whatever they have there. Time will tell on that one.

Darkwolf Boardwalk and Lounge, my club and fun area. Right now, I still do one event a week, Saturdays from 2-4PM SLT. I’d like to see that grow more, but it is something that I know I can’t do without more help. I’d like to get other DJs and hosts and really get things promoted. For now, though, I’m going to have to settle with my one day a week, and not let my depression push me away from something I enjoy.

Sorting my SL Outfits. The SL inventory is a black hole in which no one ever emerges. I’ve always had a lofty goal of getting my outfits organized and pictures added to my Wardrobe. Who knows, maybe I’ll find that mythical organized inventory one day.

Continue playing Final Fantasy 15, and a couple other video games that I purchased, but haven’t played yet. This is fun and relaxing, not requiring a lot of thought, which is why I’ve kind of fallen back to that during my depression. Now that I’m trying to get back on track, I’d like to keep those things going.

Writing this all out and trying to think of everything is just as overwhelming as trying to figure out what I want to do. This list doesn’t even include things in reality like work or errands, nor does it include the time I spend with my Mistress, which all take priority over this list. It also doesn’t list this blog, directly, but my blog should be along the lines of my priority. So, if I’m working in Blender, I’d try to blog about tips and tricks in Blender.

So, I guess one of my first priorities on this list is Blender. I need to get my store moving again. If I can get a product a week relisted, that would be great. Some products will take longer than others, so it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. In between Blender, I think I’ll still keep playing Final Fantasy 15, as time permits. I will still have my event at my club on Saturday as well. I don’t want to pick off more than I can chew at the moment, so, for now, I will limit myself to these. After I see where I’m at with this, maybe I’ll look at some of these other ideas.

Final Fantasy 15

Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts are pretty much the only video games I play. I have a PS2, PS3, and PS4 pretty much exclusively because of the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy 15 was the latest release, which I ordered as a pre release, so I had it on the release date. Of course, I started playing it almost right away, but the timing of the release coincided with my upcoming move, so I wasn’t able to play it much.

Before actually moving, I played the game as much as I could, going through all the random side quests and hunts without moving the main story along. I wanted to build up my strength and accomplish as much as I could before moving to the next stage. I think I played around 40 hours, but was only in the third chapter of fifteen before it was time to pack up the games and electronics in preparation for the move.

After moving to the new house, I didn’t get my game systems set up right away, there was still a lot to do. Then, the depression began to hit me harder. This caused even more delays in getting back to the game. Having no real desire to log into Second Life, I would watch some shows or random YouTube videos. After a few days, though, I decided it was time to get back to the game. I was still fighting my depression, but the game was one of the things I wanted to do, so I made sure I continued it.

As time permitted, I continued the game, again working on the various side quests and hunts before moving the story along. All in all, I spent over 100 hours playing the game, and reached level 70 before actually completing the main story. Since I still didn’t really want to do much else, I decided to start what is known as New Game+. This allowed me to restart my game, keeping my stats and equipment as I moved through the story. I wanted to get things that I didn’t get before. The flying car, the fight with adamantoise, along with any special weapons I might have missed along the way.

I’m currently back in Chapter 3, at around 140 hours or so, and level 75. There are some new additions to the game that I haven’t tried yet, which should make things even more interesting, and more is coming later. All this is something I want to do, and also an excuse to stay away from everything else. As of this past weekend, though, I’m starting to shift my focus to some of those other things, such as this blog, in order to continue to work my way out of my depression.

As I’ve had a full play-thru of the game, I thought I’d give my opinion on it as well. There have been a lot of reviews on it, some good, some not so good. Mine is just going to be another voice in the sea, easily forgotten, especially since we’ve long since passed the release when reviews were actually relevant.

First off, the graphics are pretty amazing. Except for some glitches here and there, the graphics were beautiful. The scenery was beautiful, the depth and detail were amazing. You could see a mountain in the distance get larger as you got closer to it. Ripples could be seen in the water when it rained. Clothes became wet in water and rain, and dirty from the travels.

Sound quality was good, but unlike other games in the franchise, there wasn’t music through the entire game. As you’re out in the outdoors or driving between destinations, there was often silence. For those times, you could turn on the car radio, or your portable music player, and listen to select soundtracks from all the other Final Fantasy games, which you could purchase at various stores in the game.

Combat was a big change, and took a bit to get used to. It is much more action based than the active time battle of previous games. I used the Wait Mode a lot, to allow me to scan enemy weaknesses, but there were times that the Wait Mode caused more trouble than it helped. I’m not a huge fan of the action based style, so for me, that was a bit of a drawback. Another drawback was not being able to more directly control the other characters in the party. There were times I wanted to unleash a powerful spell, and had no choice but to get them caught in the middle of it, as I had no way of getting them to fall back to safety. The friendly fire from magic was an interesting addition, but one I wasn’t particularly fond of, due to having no control over where my teammates were.

The hunts and side quests did get tedious after a while. They were entertaining, but having to drive across the continent to complete a quest, drive back to claim your reward, then drive back across the continent for another quest was tiresome. The rewards were often worth it, but waiting five minutes while you drive (unless you pay money to skip the drive) then another couple minutes walking across the wilderness did make things boring at times.

The side dialog while you were roaming tended to get very repetitive after a while too. I’ve heard the same things so many times, I can hear it in my sleep. “Imperials! Above us!” “Magitek engine! And it’s close!” “That’s it! I’ve come up with a new recipe!” It was entertaining at first, but it didn’t take long for it to become a joke. In fact, the latter quote is actually a meme now.

Fishing, Cooking, Survival, and Photography. Survival isn’t bad, letting Gladius find items when defeating foes. Cooking is sometimes helpful for the added temporary stat boost prior to a huge battle. Fishing and Photography, though? What is the real value in either of these skills? You’re only allowed to save so many photos, and after a while, they start looking very similar. It looks like the developers created a series of poses and just chose random poses to include with one of the backgrounds of a location you visited. Overall, though, these four skills were pretty pointless for the overall game.

Chocobo racing was something I didn’t do much of. Couldn’t beat Prompto at first couple of attempts, so I didn’t bother after that. Might try my luck again this time around, but who knows.

That leads to the overall story, and for this I will include the anime and the movie as part of the review. Each stands well enough on its own, but taking all three together gives a much richer view into the world. The anime allows you to see how the characters met and some of the circumstances of their youth, while the movie dealt with the fall of Insomnia, which happens at the end of the first chapter of the game. When taken as a whole, I found the story very interesting. I didn’t expect some of the twists along the way, which, in this case, was a good thing. Even some of the added story points through the side quests helped enhance the story. Other side quest stories, though, didn’t really do much to add to the story. In that case, there was a trade-off.

The characters and the stories are what continue to draw me into the various worlds of Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy 13 is my favorite, with Lightning being my favorite protagonist. The world of Final Fantasy 15 is another of my favorites, and one that so far has a nice bit of replay value. Overall, I would give the game a 9 out of 10.

Purpose

This blog was first set up in February, after I purchased my new domain name. The timing was still in the early days of my depression after the move. At that time, I had planned on doing more with the blog, starting to post various thoughts and share ideas. Among those thoughts and ideas would be things related to Second Life as well as sharing hints and tricks that I’ve learned with Blender, scripting, programming, or whatever else might interest me.

Starting this blog on Saturday, I’ve seen it move in a way I wasn’t completely expecting, but it was something I had been thinking about before. Aside from the depression topic, I have posted my views related to my sexuality and how I viewed submission, both adult related topics that revealed a much deeper look into myself. The topic on sexuality was especially hard to write, and I assume others might be just as hard. For that reason, topics of that nature will be few and far between. Those were just some of the more pressing subjects I had on my mind this weekend.

So what is the purpose? What will be seen in the future? I’m hoping to include topics relating to Blender, GIMP, LSL, C#, Second Life, as well as life in general. Yes, that does mean that there will be more adult topics in the future as well. The purpose is to share my thoughts, my ideas, and my creativity. Who knows, maybe someone would find it useful to them. If no one else reads it, though, that’s ok. Writing here allows me to express myself, and by doing so, helps me push past my depression.

There’s a lot I want to do, but if I try to do it all, nothing will get done, and I’ll slip back into my depression. I’m trying to start small, and find out the right steps to take. For now, that means the blog followed by my Second Life store. We will see where it goes from there.

Sexuality

I have decided to start an adult version of my blog. This blog will contain more adult oriented themes and content. This is where I don’t have to watch what I say, and can be much more direct than I would be on my main blog. To start this blog out, I wanted to delve a little more into my thoughts on my sexuality.

Sexuality has often been a confusing topic for me. How people saw me and my sexuality, as well as how I saw myself, didn’t always align. In Second Life, I went from straight, to lesbian, to bisexual, to pansexual. I was often sexually active, sometimes overly so. I never wanted to be seen that way, though. I don’t know why that is the case because sexuality in the real world means nothing to me. I was never interested in porn or erotica. Seeing men or women never really excited me in any way, even if they were sexualized in one way or the other, such as in porn.

Recently, I started hearing more about asexuality. I saw several YouTube videos as well as some sites on the subject. I realized how close that sounded to me, that a lot of things in my life started to make sense. That still left me with another bit of confusion, though. If I’m asexual in life, then why does my Second Life sexuality seem so different? Is it because it is safer? Has some sort of unknown taboo been moved away? Or is it really sexuality at all, considering everything is text only and maybe some mutual masterbation?

Being asexual doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t have a sex drive. I may not get stimulated sexually by various situations in life, but I know that the release I can achieve from masterbation does feel good, and is relaxing. I can do it, and have done it, many times without thinking of anything sexual. For me the act of masterbation is just performed to get the release, and then I move on.

There are a lot of things I’ve thought about since first starting to hear about asexuality, to try to understand my behavior as best I can. First, I can tell in reality what makes a man handsome or a woman beautiful. Neither might turn me on, but I can see why others would be. I don’t look at the outside, though, I look at the personality. Someone could be beautiful on the outside, but have the personality of a beast. There can also be someone who isn’t beautiful by society’s standards, but their internal beauty far outweighs that. It is that quality that often gets me interested in someone, and wanting to be with them, even though I’m not looking for sex. Instead, I’m looking for love and companionship. Someone I can share time with, be with, and love without condition. The problem is, most people add sex as part of that love, and it is something I never understood, because I’m not wired that way.

How does all this translate into who I am online, and how different is it from what I’m learning about who I am offline? I make deep connections online and love very deeply. I want the companionship and the romantic love. Sex, despite appearances, was never anything I was actively looking for. Yet, because others were looking for it, I was brought into it as well. I don’t say this as a negative thing either, because I do enjoy it. It is the connection with the other person, the shared experience of it, provided the other person knows how to respond. In many cases, though, it is just an RP, a story I’m enjoying to tell with the other person. It doesn’t make it any less special for me, but it doesn’t sexually excite me. There are exceptions to this, though, especially when it comes to those I’m closest to. In those cases, there is the excitement and the masterbation that leads to the release at that time, or soon after.

If sex isn’t import to me in reality, then why is it important to me in Second Life? If I don’t get any excitement or masterbate most of the time, then why do I even bother? This, of course, is a hard question to answer, as many wouldn’t understand. I do enjoy those scenes, the interaction, knowing that I’m giving pleasure through what I write. Since the person is close to me, then it is my love for them that I want to share that with them and give them the pleasure they so desire. I am getting that connection and companionship that I’m longing for at the same time.

Of course, there’s also the negative aspects to it as well. When I’m fighting my depression, I might have sex with a random stranger just to dull my depression. Thinking it is something “fun” to do, even though it really means nothing to me. There’s usually no connection there, on either side. If my depression is really bad, though, I might go seeking out rape style sex, because I feel like I need that done to me. It isn’t a good thing to do, I know, and fortunately I haven’t done that in quite a while. None of these actions come with any sort of masterbation or release, and the latter is just used to act out my internal pain.

A lot has been written here, but what is the end result? How does this all align with my sexuality, both online and away from the computer? Are they really as different as they appear to be? I think my answer to that would be no, they aren’t different. I’m asexual, but not aromantic. I desire love and companionship. Whether it is male or female, it doesn’t matter to me, although my preference usually leans toward women. Sex online is a way to make that connection deeper. I don’t need to masterbate at the time but depending on who I’m with, or how I’m feeling, I might do it. In addition, the scene unlocks my creativity, which is something that always makes me happy.

Depression

The battles with depression are harder some days than others. I probably should see a therapist about it, but that takes time to do. I don’t feel I need medication for it either, as my depression is rarely, if ever, crippling. Any suicidal thoughts I may have are always fleeting, and never anything that I’d carry through with, so I’m certainly no danger to myself.

Ever since my move and new job that depression has been greater. It has been a little more than two months now, and things are going great. I’m back in Southern California, a little further south from where I grew up. Very nice area, not far from the coast, no more than two hours away from practically everything. I can see my family more now, which, in my case, is a wonderful thing, having gone from about a seven hour drive to just over an hour away. The new job is much better than my last job, more responsibility, and always busy there. Even the pay is much higher, which was one of the motivating factors of the move. There’s always something to do, whether it is work or activities out. So much I’d like to do still, both on the computer and away from it. Yet, despite all those good things, there’s still the depression there more than it was before the move.

Going into Second Life for me was a way for me to be myself, nearly complete. Before the move, I spent countless hours online. I had more time to do things since I was working at home. Now, working in an office, my available time has become far more limited. Not to mention, there’s always been so much that I wanted to do, that even when I had more time, I wasn’t able to get everything done that I wanted. So now, instead of doing anything I wanted to do, I just avoided almost everything. The only times I’m in Second Life now is when my Mistress is on or when I’m DJing at my club on Saturday afternoon. The remaining time, I’d watch shows on Amazon Prime or just play Final Fantasy 15. Well, the latter was something from my “to do” list, so I suppose that is something.

This blog is something else from my list of things I want to do. This is an attempt for me to push past that depression and start taking control again. I’m finding it difficult to get the motivation, but I know that I need to go forward with it. This is not because anyone else cares whether or not I write anything here, nor is it done with any sense of vanity that I’m aware of. It’s simply because I think this will help me move forward, and give me an avenue to express myself and get past this current stage of my depression.

Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to depression. Other times, there are specific causes. Some of the causes can be fixed or changed, others have no control, and have to be accepted in one way or another, or it is impossible to move forward. There is so much going on in my life that it is easy to see where some of the areas of depression originate. Yet, at the same time, because there is so much going on, it can often be hard to find the individual trees in the forest of insanity.

As a final note for this particular blog entry, I had adopted the theme of Alice in Wonderland in my life when the Tim Burton remake was released. With how out of control my life seemed, and still does seem at times, it appeared to be a state of madness. This became a way to laugh at my own situation and try to accept everything that was out of control around me. I continue to hold to that thought, among others, as I navigate through the depression and try to make what sense I can out of all the madness.