Nilore Vagan

So, I’m thinking of the future… and normally, I don’t really deep contemplate such things because things happen that I would rather avoid, in my head, things that happen, in my head.

These things, run round and round, rarely making sense, but bringing all kinds of interesting thoughts that make me think, think, that make me want to sit and think about what’s happening, what’s going to happen, what’s going on around.

Now today, I was thinking, what would happen if I were to go on with my projected career? I’d have little time to spend with friends. My dear friends online, around on the networks. The people who I look forward to seeing every day, the people who I rely on for company. I’m not really a hermit. I like having friends, but I like having -these- friends. They’re the people I know. I don’t want to meet new people, new people are so odd; I’d rather stay with the people I know. But if I go on, if I move on, if I continue; I’ll be forced to spend less and less time around these people that I so much desire to be around. And I don’t want to leave them behind… I still want to be with them. But I cannot have both. It makes me sad, to think of this.

And at the same time, what of my parents? They’re getting old… their bodies are beginning to do weird old-people things. Who takes care of me when they die? I need to be able to take care of myself. Because when they get old, they’ll need someone to take care of them. We can’t take care of each other, it’s one way or the other; so I need to be able to take care of them, and I need to be able to take care of myself. Which means I need to go on with my career; which means I need to spend less time with my friends.

I wonder how my parents do it. Spending no time out with friends. Dad has work-mates, but Mom only has us kids and Dad- how do they do it? I hate to be alone… I hate to be by myself. Being alone scares me- it frightens me. Being alone is something I’d like to do without. I’d like to spend my time with friends and family, but I cannot do this all the time.

It makes me sad, thinking of moving on… thinking of going on, of drifting on through life, without my beloved friends. Without my beloved parents. it makes me sad to think of leaving them behind. I don’t want to. I don’t want to meet new people. It’s kind of a crutch for me, because I can’t stand to be without them. I need that emotional support – that mental backup – for myself. I need it… when I’m alone, I drive myself crazy.

I don’t leave the house alone.

Can I just stay like this? I want to stay like this forever… I want to be ‘me’ forever. But I’m forced to change with everybody else.

I don’t want to change.

I wish everything would stay the same. I wish I could securely know that I would wake up every morning to spend the day with my friends and family. I want that happy feeling of being with people I know to last forever.

But I know it won’t. That makes me sad…

Sad, sad, sad…

And yet, why do I smile? Who do I grin and chuckle?

I confuse myself…

As in Blueberries. Not as in “This smoothie is blue,” because it’s actually kinda purple. Go figure.

Mom and Dad bought me some berries to put in my smoothies. Blueberry makes a good smoothie. A little thick, though. I had to add a lot of milk to get the blender to cooperate with it. For lunch, I’ll be trying strawberries.

I was making a smoothie for lunch, since I still can’t really eat solid foods, and Andy, my brother, suggested that I put Dream Whip mix into the smoothie. We both figured that it’d produce a chocolate-flavored whipped cream type of drink, or maybe a really fluffy smoothie.

What I got was a really thick liquid that tastes of chocolate marshmallow cream. It’s really rich. Tastes good, but is almost impossible to drink from a straw. Maybe if I added more milk to it…

I’ve never been much of a social person. Partially because I never really wanted to be, partially because of a social disorder.

So I tend to stay home a lot. Even people I know locally don’t talk to me much. Every few months, they’ll say ‘hey, we haven’t gotten together in a long time’ and we’ll meet and chat for a couple hours, but then I don’t hear from them again for another few months.

I like to have just… one or two people around that I can talk to. That I can rely on.

Even online, I’m not really with the ‘in’ crowd…

I tend to be kind of a prude. I guess that puts a lot of people off. I’ll try to get people’s attention, but I’m generally just shrugged off. I wouldn’t feel so bad if people just said “No thank you” when I ask them to Roleplay, but 90% of the time, they don’t even bother with that. I’m not even new in this chat room, either; I’ve been around for years. I try to be nice to the newer people, but they just waltz in like they own the place… Everyone wants to be the top notch guy. Everyone wants to be the hero. Consequentially, there are now no fewer than three (fictional) companies exclusively providing electricity to the (also fictional) city of Heights. There are no fewer than three or four “most powerful corporations in the world.”

But because I have little interest in RPs with lots of relationship drama, people tend to have no interest in playing with me. Relationships are fine, but “I got you the most expensive thing I could find, it was only five million dollars, I’m so rich, la la la,” irks me a bit.

Also irks me when people can’t seem to conjure the imagination to use characters not directly ripped out of a popular video game or anime. Want science-fiction? Let’s rip off Shadow-Run. Want fantasy? Let’s rip off World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings. Want ninjas? Let’s all rip off bloody Naruto. It’s even worse when they use Canon characters. I can’t help but imagine school yard kids during recess screaming at each other over who gets to play Naruto and who gets to play Genericanimevillainnumber23458576. I wouldn’t mind characters from a given setting if they were actually played in the setting they were meant for (Blood Elves in an Azeroth setting, Deckers in a Shadow-Run setting) but when they’re introduced in a world nothing like their own, and that Decker from another dimension is suddenly able to interact with the modern Earth-era Internet like it were VR, it’s like “HOOOOOLD ON, buddy!”

Actually, maybe it’s that reason that these people don’t like to play with me. I’m not gonna say something stupid like “They don’t have imagination” as the reason; no, I’m pretty sure it’s because I tend to be unable to keep these thoughts to myself. When the Decker decides that just because she seems able to do everything in VR, that my AI characters are the same way, and I inform her that my characters don’t use VR, since it’s a shameless waste of resources and just straight code-based commands get things done faster. And when I introduce magic-baring characters that are able to withstand a full cybernetic onslaught. I think it’s these foreign things that cause these people to not like to play with me… Because it messes up the scenario they’ve set up for themselves.

Personally, this kind of thing should be a given in a roleplay chat labeled as “generic fantasy/sci-fi/whatever-the-hell-you-want.” I’m willing to put up with a Decker-style character, but the player using said Decker seems to get annoyed when more specialized cybernetics and AIs are introduced (she’s constantly proclaiming that the tech on her characters is far more advanced than anything else on this world. It’s not). And also seems to completely ignore the help a magical character is offering; usually by just solving whatever conflict came up in the story with one of her own characters for whatever insane reason, but at one time she OOC’ly attacked me for it (saying something like “You can’t always have the upper hand, you know” when she seems to get upset when she doesn’t get said upper hand).

So.. why do I put up with these people?

Because there’s a few in this room that aren’t there to give themselves an ego stroke. Actually, the number of ‘decent’ people outweighs the number of ‘people I can’t seriously see myself playing with.’ My annoyance level just seems more noticeable, I suppose. And so, I keep a window open with this room in the background while I do other things. Some days, I have a good day and I can play the settings and characters I feel like. Some days are equally good, even though it didn’t go quite according to plan, but was still fun. Sometimes, it’s a good day, but the night is horrid (like today). And some days, I’m practically left alone all day. I might not like being with loads of people, but I definitely don’t like being alone.

Why is it that the only person I’d ever met who could be online with me all day, turned out to not really seem to like me all that much? I have a feeling it’s something I did wrong, but I could never seem to get a straight answer about that. I have a bunch of theories, some less pleasant than others, but I wish I knew what exactly it was…

Well, Andy and I sat down and worked on some of the programming end of our first game. Which isn’t Maia, btw; since the ESRB decided that it costs 2500 dollars to rate a game, we’re going to do some quick little game to sell indy style through our website first. And actually, if we can get away with it, we’re going to try to avoid rating our games through the ESRB completely, but that’s for another time.

We got a couple of breakthroughs, making it so that clicking on things.. do things. We got stuck shortly after, though.

When we ordered pizza, I decided to give it a shot, despite the bad sensation in my teeth I got last time I tried to eat solid foods. That turned out okay, actually. I had to be careful, but I managed to get a few slices down.

When Mom and Dad went to Costco today, I asked if they could bring me home a berry parfait. Dad messed up my order and bought a berry slushy, but thankfully Mom caught this and got a parfait.

You know, part of my problem with these things is that I’m always afraid of being honest. Last time I was honest, my father came barging into my room and demanding to know why I was spreading falsities about him, and being all angry with me about telling my friends how he treats me. All at the same time proving my point, but unpleasant nonetheless.

After that happened, I considered that I shouldn’t post anything that I wouldn’t want people to read and take offense from. Which inevitably lead to not posting anything.

Well, yeah.

So, I’m gonna go ahead and post whatever I feel like on here. If someone reads it and is offended or upset or whatever, then I’m sorry; but the truth is the truth. If you don’t like that truth about yourself, you can look inside of you for some way to fix that error. Don’t worry, I’m not Mr. Perfect, either; I won’t hesitate to post what’s wrong with myself.

Well, a few days ago, I went to the dentist. He wanted to get six teeth crowned, because those teeth just went to hell no matter how many times a day I brushed. The rest are fine, ironically… just those six. It so happens that when he was putting in the temporaries, he put them in wrong. I can’t close my mouth all the way. Now, I didn’t expect to be able to do much with the fake plastic teeth there, but I had expected to at least be able to use my molars. I can’t. So, my meals for the past few days have been either multiflavored smoothies, or daring attempts at swallowing things whole after gumming them for a while. The former is getting rather bland, and the latter has proven … unpleasant.

I don’t mind the $1,800 bill ($1,400, since my insurance decided to be a bit nicer this time around), and I honestly can deal with the pain and discomfort. It’s just the fact that I can’t close my mouth all the way. There’s something really frustrating about that. And the fact that I can feel the plastic teeth wiggling around in there. Makes me look forward to getting the nice ceramic ones put in.

Those nice ceramic teeth will be really… well… nice. My original teeth were pretty ugly, all stained. Dunno why, I take decent care of them. But when the dentist got past that first layer, he was astonished at how white my teeth were. Naturally, I mean. He said he’d do me a favor and use a color on the new teeth that matched that. I think it’ll look really nice. I just have to wait until the 4th of March, when he expects they’ll come in.

Until then, I just have to put up with this. The pain’s not as bad today as it was yesterday or the day before. I don’t think I’m popping as many painkillers as I was.