As some as you may know it, a honorable man from our community has left us. Whether he's gone for good or really just a lich, Gary Gygax's legacy will play on, literally. As a co-founder of the culture I take part in, Dungeons and Dragons, I suggest you take a moment of silence....





Moving on! Imma pissssed about this. After using my high sense motive and intimidation ranks, I found out my D&D group planned an entire campaign and excluded me from it. Why? I do not know. (perhaps they're jealous of my great Bard-playing skills) Anyways, my plan was to fly to Lake Geneva and play with the Great Gygax. But then I found out he died.

Great.

So to tie dA into this schpeal, my deviantart days are over, just like my D&D playing days are. All thanks to that critical fail Gary rolled against that damned aneurysm.

Alas, we now will salute Gary Gygax with a 21 magic missile.



KAFUCKINGBOOM

Well I'm jumping on the sagecoach with Fievel and leaving this town of Deviantart. Sage, that's all that is left on my measely outdated page.

Only this time, my gangway is a Napkin. Yes, a napkin. Napkin number six to be precise.

That's right, I'm playing a napkin in the play version of Beauty and the Beast. I'll be doing the Can-Can on stage while people here are fretting about trolls and beating dead horses in the forums.

John Gay says people only part to meet again. Well I think it's gay to make assumptions. But who knows? My sagecoach might roll by here once again.

It felt like a Crusade, a pre-planned righteous Crusade we’ve been planning and preparing for for years. And in a way, we have. My sister’s been in school getting an education to lead up to this point. Not even the immense blanket of fog, heavy rain or purple lightning would stop or hinder us in this Crusade. We were sneaking off in the lingering night when morning was due to arrive and we were heroic for doing such a thing.

And as most Crusades go, living conditions weren’t too spick and the Crusade surely didn’t end once the car was parked. The dorms looked like a ship’s cells in the slums of her under-belly and the rooms not much better, comparing to the cramped shipmate bunks that were built for quantity and not quality. And instead of wood, these cells were built of cold, merciless white brick. The black mold on them almost seemed like a deliberate addition, giving the illusion of a wallpaper-bordering.

Now that my sister is gone, she insists on staying in contact while she continues out the Crusade on her own. She bought me a webcam and a new microphone and what follows next I felt was necessary:[link]

Otherwise, I have a room to myself and much more alone time on my hands. Perhaps I'll start creating art once again and stop typing (nearly) point-less journal entries.

Or I might join my sister in her Crusade and help her fight off the scallywags and lounge lizards on her ship. I've always wanted to do that, perhaps people would then stop calling me a land lubber and recognize me as the sailor I am; Captain Tilly-Wabble!

Okay, maybe not.

No one needs to learn courtesy. Not a single child needs to learn how to be obedient or how to share. Discipline, Fidelity? None of these values mean anything. You may pride yourself in thinking you're a moral and righteous person, but you're no better than Vlad The Impaler! If you don't have the value that is Empathy, you literally have nothing.

Empathy is a tricky thing, too. A person can learn the fundamentals of how to show empathy and whatnot. But it's a bit more, and the value gets over-looked. To truly be able to empathize with any sort of person, and to feel things you haven't experienced first-hand, is really something significant, and that is the glory of Empathy. If you have Empathy down, the rest will follow naturally.

And it's not to be mistaken with sympathy. Sympathy is a make-shift version of it. Some people say they can empathize with someone, but really it's a lack of it. Sympathy is for the people who don't want to get their hands dirty, or their feet wet.


I suppose I'm going over all this because the one person in my life that knows Empathy better than anyone else I know, is moving away. My sister keeps me from being alienated in my own home. And because she has this ultimate value, she's literally the only reason I haven't been thrown out by my mother.

So when she moves to college, I'm going to be screwed. I don't know what's going to happen, or what to expect.

I'll be living (alone) with a woman who knows I despise her and can only act like an immature child about it too. I'll be stuck acting as her entertainment and keeping her company because she's incapable of doing it herself.

Which reminds me, never be codependent. If you are, you need a major kick in the ass. And unfortunately, at this time, I can't do that helping favor for my dear old mother.


_{(On a last note, this entry is part preaching and part ranting, my apologies. [Hybrid journal entries are always fun though])}

It seems to me I have been overcomed by an irrational change of intellectual standpoint. Not in such a drastic way that I've become a conservative (which would be quite the lust-free day in an establishment of Satyrs and Nymphs when that happens) but in way I've been retorting in the utmost of weirdest ways and doing so without thinking for the space of a heartbeat!

Perhaps I've read too much of the latest installment of Harry Potter. Or perhaps I shouldn't have had that overnight committed relationship with that bowl of yogurt-covered fruit loops.

Either way, and no matter the reasoning behind it, I apologize for any amount of asinine in any of my community input (or perhaps a lack of it, which would be even more deleterious)

In closing, I hope (in due time) I return back to my mundane self. Then again, after typing that, I'm having second thoughts. Perhaps I'll be able to finally produce some art with concept behind it. Or perhaps something new will emerge. We'll (I'll) have to wait to find out.

Oh, the imminent and bumpy uncertainty that plays it's role all too well in all artists' lives!