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gerapitico · 5 years ago

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Make Yourselves Forget That The Plague Is A Bitch: Book Edition

I was tagged for a thing (it doesn’t happen much, and I’m excited about it!!!!) by @rocknghorss

What’s the most recent book that you’ve read and absolutely fell in love with?

Does fanfic count? No? Because I do tend to read, like a ton of fanfic instead of actual books nowadays. But if we are talking actual published stuff, I’m gonna have to go back to Christmas time probably. And give a little background story, because what would my life be if I didn’t make posts extra long.

So, for most of my life, my parents and I have spent the holidays in the mountains at the cabin. Yes, it is a cabin in the woods, no it isn’t creepy. And that cabin, while great for many reasons, has one great shortcoming: no internet. When I was younger, I extra hated this, though it did give me a lot of time to read. So so so much time to read. And though we spend all of the winter there for skiing (both teaching and enjoying), I read the most over the 4 or 5 days over Christmas that we stay.

One year in high school, my dad, after deciding that I seemed to enjoy sci fi content as much as him (maybe after watching Firefly or Red Dwarf, or maybe it was just my whole deal), started sharing the Honor Harrington series of books with me. And every Christmas, I read the new one and maybe my favorites of the previous. This past year, he added 2 new authors on top of the 2 I was already reading with Tanya Huff and Eliabeth Moon (and maybe Glynn Stewart? 2020 has been long y’all).

But let’s get back to fall in love with. I’m going to go with Valor’s Choice by Tanya Huff, because of the world building, and also yet another female protag in scifi lit, with the advantage of being written by a woman. It also is more on the military side of things, which I like more than I ever expected to (though I slogged through David Weber, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised!).

Anyways, if you want a bamf hero in a cool scifi setting, I would totally recommend it!

Do you keep track of how many books you’re reading every month?

No, and I never really have, even when I was little, and I had to for school, I wasn’t about the numbers game of it. Also, because I read so much stuff online, that makes it hard to count things.

What’s your stance on the debate as to whether or not we should dissociate the artist from their art (artist = writer in this case)?

I STRUGGLE with this question, because both sides make sense to me, but there are definitely pieces of media that I used to love that I can’t handle quite as much any more. The one that comes to mind is the Harry Potter series. JK Rowling has done some batshit crazy stuff in the post release of her work that has turned me off of it some, even though it was incredibly important to me when I was little, and I still care about it a lot.

And there are some cases where artists have been part of media I like, but I can’t justify supporting them (y’all the first pirates of the carribean goes hard, but also Johnny Deep). And there are chunks of media where I haven’t been able to figure out where I stand.

This is a really hard question. The only answer I can stand behind is that cancel culture sucks, and people change, so I’m willing to give people a second chance.

What do you do when you can’t focus on a book?

Change media types and then never return. I have in the last 5 years given myself permission to dip on things that don’t keep me engaged. I will occasionally come back to something, but if I don’t come back within about 48 hours, I will honestly forget I ever read the thing, so that happens.

Do you pay attention to the gender/ethnicity/race/sexuality of the authors you’re reading, aka do you actively try to read books written by diverse writers?

No, but I also don’t let author determine things for me with written media. Representation in characters, or in actual product itself is more important to me. Though, I will gladly read something from a new point of view, and support diverse viewpoints.

It’s just not really a thing that I consider that much. Which may be a problem, but I’m not a perfect person, and I’m not a perfect supporter of diverse populations. I can strive to be better in the future.

Paperback or hardcover?

Paperback if I’m reading it for the first time, but hardcover if I’m going to try and keep it at home in collection (though I also have a ton of paperbacks from when I was young, and I haven’t bought a non-textbook in at least 4 years.

Which language would you like to learn just to be able to read its untranslated literature?

So many languages!! Mandarin would be cool, as would basically any asian language, since they are culturally so different than me and I would love to get to read that stuff, and get to see that media in a new form.

Pick up the book that is closest to you. convince me to read it in less than 10 sentences.

I sit right in front of my bookshelf, so like 10 books are the closest ones for me. So I’ll take the one I most recently read, with Squire by Tamora Pierce, the 3rd of 4 in the Protector of the Small series. Here’s my pitch:

If you have ever read fantasy and thought to yourself that this would be much better if the lead was a girl who is coming into her own while still going against some of the hangups of a society that is adjusting to women as warriors. The universe is lush and deep, and connects to multiple series. The characters have faults but are for the most part black and white in their allegiances. Sometimes, it is nice to read something a bit more simple, and a little bit more gentle. Also, the whole multiple cultures plot is super fun too!

Basically, read any Tamora Pierce set in Tortall; there are like 5 different series and they are all great!

I’m tagging anyone who is interested in this! (IDK man, I sort of just float aroudn tumblr, stalking blogs from afar and not interacting, so even my mutuals are not people I would regularly tag in things . . . not because they aren’t amazing, they all are, but because I’m awkward about stuff)

#sam types stuff for a long time about lots of things

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nerobombs · 8 years ago

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Insert Story Here: Ishgard

(Want more? Check out my Writing tag!)

I saw a few posts about Ishgard floating about, and I guess I haven’t actually written that many things on this blog yet, so I’m going to compile some of my writings about a subject I love to hate.

Anyone who knows me or reads my forum posts (a lot of of the content of which will be shamelessly copy-pasted here because what is effort) knows of the disdainful loathing I have for Heavensward’s writing. It’s not inherently bad--at worst it’s merely mediocre, filled to the brim with paper-thin plot vehicles and McGuffins--but the potential for a good story was there.

Indeed, compared to most video game plots and MMO plots especially, the level of coherence it manages to maintain amidst the plague-ridden retcon carcass of World of Warcraft and the slightly suspicious smells being put out by Guild Wars 2 (whose story content used to be totally absurd, but they’ve been getting better) could almost be called admirable.

Almost.

I still don’t like it, though, in the same way that a disapproving father wouldn’t be particularly fond of his rebellious daughter’s boyfriend showing off a condom shaped like the head of a great white shark to his mates at school. It’s not the object itself, but rather the implications.

If you plan on reading further, put some goggles on, because there’s a lot of debris in a train wreck.

There’s also some crude humour and crass analogies ahead too.

First, I’ll preface this by saying that I firmly believe that Heavensward’s writing was restricted by the game design. This forgives certain things. For example, if the design priority is to have the players go to Azys Lla immediately after the Dravanian Hinterlands, then the writing’s job is as simple as coming up with an utterly contrived reason to do so. It’s frustrating, sure, but there’s a reason for it.

That said, I still have several problems.

1). There’s no Ishgard any more!

The things that interested me the most about Ishgard were, well, the things that made it Ishgard. It was unique. Ishgard was a despotic militant theocracy waging a genocidal holy war against a superior force amidst a tumultuous climate of political ambition, religious zealotry, and class warfare. There was something fascinating about the dichotomous nature of Ishgard's politics and culture, being ostensibly built around order and a single-minded goal yet also being unstable without the unifying threat of the dragons and built on the foundations of a lie (or at least, a historical misrepresentation), and all of this was put against a tense backdrop formed by the terrifyingly absolute power of the Church and the Inquisition.

Except, all of that is gone now. Poof.

Ishgard’s not a dictatorship any more. No, Ishgard seamlessly transitioned from a dictatorship to a bicameral republic with absolutely no conflict or resistance in the slightest. Part of the problem with this is that Thordan was absolutely batshit and the story handled Thordan horribly, but more on that later.

Ishgard’s not a theocracy any more. Since Ishgard is now a secular government, the Ishgardian Orthodox Church has been rendered impotent. There’s no war and no enemy, so there’s no Inqusition.

And perhaps most offensively of all, Ishgard’s not militant any more. The Dragonsong War is definitively ended. Yeah, you can try to make some weak justification of “But Nidhogg’s brood”, but if killing Nidhogg didn’t end the war then the stragglers are completely meaningless. The thousand-year genocidal holy war that formed the entirety of Ishgard’s national identity for a millennia is just gone.

That means that there’s no longer any glory gained from slaying dragons. That means the Order of the Dragoon is now completely meaningless. Commoners could become nobles by applying themselves and slaying dragons, but now even that limited and dangerous social mobility no longer exists.

About the only thing that separates Ishgard from the other city states is that they have snow, now. Where it was once an environment ripe for intrigue, it’s now as deflated and as saccharine as any of the other city states.

2). The ending wasn’t earned by anyone

Ishgard becoming a more peaceful state isn’t an inherently bad thing, though. Honestly, that is kind of small potatoes. The problem is how Ishgard got there.

Heavensward’s story had no struggle and no sacrifice. At least, nothing that was meaningful or represented. Literally, Ishgard achieved its peace completely effortlessly.

Why does Ishgard transition so smoothly to a republic? Why is it that when Aymeric says “Hey guys, the dragons said it’s our fault and they’re totally right”, everyone accepts it unanimously? Why does Aymeric manage to take on the politics of the House of Lords and House of Commons so easily and effortlessly? How come Lucia has absolutely no qualms whatsoever about Aymeric’s aide-de-camp being discovered as Garlean? How is it that the Temple Knights and most especially the Dragoons--in which having a doomed hometown that was completely incinerated by dragons and having lost everyone you loved is almost a requirement--accept the peace so readily?

The most that anyone ever suffers is that Aymeric gets stabbed with a fruit knife exactly one time, and some crazy lady in Falcon’s Nest gets shot with an arrow.

And no, Haurchefant and Ysayle most emphatically do not count. Haurchefant was a one-dimensional character whose death was padded to the brim with arbitrary, ham-fisted melodrama, and Ysayle died in a context that was completely and totally irrelevant to her character arc to the point where her death may as well have not happened and literally nothing in the story would have changed.

I'm not exactly advocating for Game of Thrones-esque levels of character death. But even in light-hearted, idealistic stories, there are struggles. There is an ordeal for our heroes to conquer, and the resolution is earned. Can you imagine if, in the Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam really did take the Eagles to Mordor and just dropped the ring into Mount Doom? Pop, just like that?

Estinien's struggle over Nidhogg and subsequently over his own vengeance, then dying in order to keep both of those things from continuing to hurt people he cares about. That's a struggle and sacrifice. That's a price paid to overcome a meaningful conflict, because overcoming all meaningful conflict requires a great deal of effort, sacrifice, or both. But Estinien is just fine too. Turns out, all he had to do to kill his most hated enemy was get possessed by him. Huh! More people should try that.

Aymeric could have been a really good avatar for Ishgard’s conflict as a whole. Here we have a military man and bastard son of the Archbishop suddenly become embroiled in politics and trusted to lead the future of his nation. I keep mocking his getting stabbed with a fruit knife in 3.1, but there was some actual drama there: the nobility accused Aymeric of being a patricidal heretic and saw his removing Thordan as a power grab. And the reason why Aymeric seems mostly flat is because the world doesn't give him any consequences to deal with, and even if they do, we never see him deal with this consequences. Ishgard becomes a seamless democracy with no problem. He doesn't care about the Eyes of Nidhogg at all or the implication that Nidhogg might come back as long as they're still intact. Everyone respects and follows him without question. He faces no genuine conflict that reflects upon his character besides "He's a nice guy and does good stuff". Why is Aymeric never overwhelmed by the politics? Why do we never see his frustration from having to juggle the wants and needs of Lords and commoners? Why does he never think about the ramifications of his actions (fucking EYES OF NIDHOGG, ANYONE)? There is a lot of room for serious depth that goes wasted because ultimately, Aymeric is a side character. And the thing is that Lucia can have real depth too besides being Aymeric's arm candy. She's a defected Garlean. We can never tell if her experience as a soldier in the Empire colours her perception of Eorzea or Ishgard. We never see Aymeric really rely on her except as a patsy or a messenger. If Aymeric is busy running the country as Lord Speaker, shouldn't she be in charge of the Temple Knights? Shouldn't Lucia have some apprehensions on being found out as a Garlean and being put in a position of authority? She's devoted to Aymeric and Ishgard, but we never see her be relevant except when she's doing something in Aymeric's stead. Is she ashamed of being Garlean?

Oh well, I guess it doesn’t matter. Peace for everyone, yay!

3). The focus of the story was Fucked with a capital F

Maybe it’s just me, but I am not on board with the game's fetish for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. I get that they're essentially the "main" characters and the vehicle our characters use to travel all over the place and beat up primals, but the characters are flat and completely uninteresting. I don't care! I want to see Ishgard. I want to delve into a conflicted theocracy undergoing rapid, sudden change. I want to see more Aymeric, more Lucia, more Ysayle and Estinien. Hell, I want to see more of those fucking Fortemps brats more than I want to see the Scions.

This is also where I kind of start to get a little mad.

I get that the main conflict is between the Scions and the Ascians regarding the revival of Zodiark. Fine. I just don't think that the pacing of a far more interesting storyline (the Dragonsong war) should have been completely butchered in order to make room for the Scions and Ascians who really don't even do anything besides show up in the background and remind you that things are going to happen. Not that they are happening, but that eventually there'll be some kind of payoff.

The Scions get a ridiculous amount of screen time considering how little they accomplish and how irrelevant they are to Ishgard, and it is astounding how little effort the game puts in to make us care about them. I don't care about Thancred's missing pants. I don't care about Krile being Minfillia in all but name. I stopped caring about Alphinaud when he had the audacity to tell the Warrior of fucking Light to hand out T-shirts to the Crystal Braves because there’s no Eorzean word for “delegation”.

The Scions are the main characters, fine. This wouldn’t be such a problem if any of them had more personality or dimension than a piece of drift wood. We had the perfect opportunity to explore in-depth this new land of Ishgard and Coerthas, and instead it was wasted on...the Scions.

Here's why I don't like any of the writing for the Scions: they do display a measure of depth, consequence, and respond to consequence, but the thing is that their writing is built on more bad writing. Let's take for example Thancred, who actually has some real weight among the Scions. He felt responsible for Minfillia since he got her dad killed and feels guilt over being unable to save her. He's grieved over Minfilia becoming the voice of Hydaelyn and is much less snarky and less of a womaniser, becoming more stoic as a result. There's some actual development there. Except, the subject of his dramas was a cardboard cutout who was more useless than a DVD rewinder (Minfilia), the whole reason for her death was absurd to the point of raving madness (the entire Ul'dah conflict in 2.5 that started Heavensward...jesus shit), and interactions with Thancred are mostly just exposition. Thancred is always an observer and never a subject. Urianger is about the only Scion I actually like because there is actual emotional depth there that is revealed after the death of Moenbryda and the subject of his affections wasn't totally incompetent. Alisaie got a lot of focus in the last patch, but her character is so transparently a blatant plot device that it's hard to take seriously. She appears and disappears as needed. She had a good arc during Binding Coil where she defrosts but in 3.4 she goes totally Scion-brand flat. And in 3.4, her whole drama was that she wasn't willing to kill a kobold kid who might be tempered. Our teenaged heroine might have a problem with killing children? Stop the presses, Square Enix!

Also, think about this: Moenbryda got introduced in one patch and killed in the next, and she was written way better than most of the Scions, and that was with most of her backstory being delivered via exposition dump. Square Enix can do it, they just choose not to.

4). What is pacing? Can you eat it?

Ugh.

Like I said, I don’t find it especially problematic that Ishgard underwent radical change. I do have an especially HUGE problem with how it happened, though.

If they really had to pull off the "Nidhogg comes back to life" plot device, then Heavensward should have ended with Nidhogg's first death followed immediately by Estinien's possession. 3.1 Aymeric acting in direct opposition to Archbishop Thordan in order to secure peace with Hraesvelgr's brood. 3.2 would deal with Aymeric and Co. working towards securing said peace amidst the chaos about the Dragonsong War, and still end with Vidofnir getting shanked just after a tenuous peace had been agreed upon. 3.3, Nidhogg dies. 3.4 would deal with the conflict of Ishgard's reformation and hint at Thordan’s plans to become a primal, and the expansion ends with 3.5 as Thordan become a Primal in a desperate bid to secure the theocracy's power after peace had been achieved with the dragons.

You can completely write this off as me complaining that the story is bad because I didn’t write it, sure, whatever. But let’s examine what actually happened.

Instead, more than half of the initial expansion story and the subsequent 3.1 and 3.2 patches is spent fucking around with the Scions and watching the Ascians and Warriors of Darkness twirl their bad-guy mustaches going "Guys we are totally still relevant to the story". Then Regula van Hydrus shows up to join the mustache twirling by going "Please don’t forget the Garleans, we put a lot of effort into recycling the Judges from Final Fantasy 12", and seeing Square Enix completely fucking bomb any potential that Ul'dah had to be interesting by not going through with killing off the Sultana.

Side note, what in the flying fuck was the point of the Sultana’s poisoning and the whole Ul’dah thing besides making it so Raubahn now has to put magazines on his lap to turn the pages? If you can legitimately answer this question--and no, getting the WoL to Ishgard does not count because the WoL already had a gazillion reasons to go there that weren’t idiotic--then I’ll buy you a Night Pegasus mount.

I’m going to highlight all of my subsequent issues with addressing the train wreck that is Archbishop Thordan “Wasted Opportunity VII”.

Like I said, I somewhat understand that the writing is constrained by the game design. But that doesn’t really excuse the fact that Thordan’s entire character was completely bonkers.

He locks up Aymeric, runs away from Ishgard, ninja loots the key to Azys Lla, goes to Azys Lla and becomes a primal for about twenty minutes before dying. His entire load blown in the span of a couple of days at best.

And part of this problem is how easily the majority of Ishgard accepts responsibility for starting the Dragonsong War. Thordan's response to Aymeric threatening to reveal the truth shouldn't have been to lock Aymeric up, but to say "Who would believe you?"

The Ishgardians have been the subject of a measured genocidal war that was deliberately transformed into a war of attrition for a thousand years. Are they really such easily manipulated little worms that Aymeric and some foreign wahoo who may or may not have actually killed primals can sway a population from the entirety of their millennia-old tradition and heritage with a couple of speeches?

In addition, the main conflict between Thordan and Aymeric's ideologies in the game is implied to be order versus chaos, except Thordan's idea of "order" is completely batshit and nonsensical.

Thordan's whole deal should have been that Ishgard needs the Dragonsong War, or at least the dragons as enemies, to remain stable and to retain its heritage and national identity. For one thousand years, Ishgard's been throwing themselves at the dragons, and to completely undermine the last thousand years of war would do nothing but sow chaos and breed discontent and destroy the unity that's kept the city together all this time. That is the idea of order that Thordan should have been trying to adhere to: the status quo is god, or ends on favourable terms.

Instead, Thordan for some reason decides that the path to peace is a world of absolute order at the cost of all freedoms and the destruction of anyone who opposes him. He becomes more one dimensional in motivations than Sauron. This is some insane hypocritical thinking since he opens the gates so the Heretics can assault the foundation to fuel the prayers to become King Thordan, and this hypocrisy completely robs him of any legitimacy. There's no escalation. Thordan immediately jumps to fire the nuke that is becoming King Thordan. There's no buildup. And that's most of Heavensward's writing in a nutshell: the pacing is awful, so all these characters either fix things flawlessly in an incredibly short time with no consequences (Aymeric), or immediately become insane (Thordan) to move the plot along.

I don’t trust Stormblood’s content to be compelling at all. Anything that was interesting about Ala Mhigo will be resolved with maybe five lines of dialogue, tops, if Heavensward is any indication. At best, there will be an offscreen resolution that maybe makes sense if you just don’t think about it.

Ala Mhigo has the potential to have a lot of interesting themes and conflict. I just don't trust the writers to actually explore any of that, because who bothers exploring interesting themes and conflict when we can watch Yda be a princess or some shit? Look, Papalymo is hitting someone with Tupsimati! That's interesting, right? Thancred lost his pants again, uh oh! No. The Warriors of Darkness were pretty decent, but the conflict with the Ascians should really be a background thing, a sinister undertone that adds to the gravity of the Warrior of Light going around and saving the world. The instant you shove the mysteries in our face--repeatedly--it stops being a mystery and it takes all the proactivity away from our characters. Here's how we currently handle the Ascians: we sit on our happy asses and wait for them to do something, then react. And maybe we'll save Ishgard on the side if we feel like it. It should be the other way around. We should be proactively going to stop the Dragonsong war as our main motivation. We should be going to liberate Ala Mhigo as our main motivation. I don't think we should be going there with the Scions, waiting for the Ascians, and "Yeah cool the Ascians aren't doing anything, I guess we should liberate Ala Mhigo".

TL;DR i don’t like FFXIV’s story

#ffxiv #rant #heavensward #writing #final fantasy xiv #balmung #ishgard

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erdrickdragonsbane · 7 years ago

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An Autobiographical Post on my Depression

I posted this on another blog, on 2/3/2017, which I am now deleting. I am reposting it here because it feels relevant far too often, and I do not wish to lose my thoughts on the matter.

I need to get this out there. I’m as close to suicidal as I have ever been.

I don’t know if writing about it will help, or if it will make things worse, but I need to do something.

I’ve been to see a psychologist about my depression in the past, and it’s always been my own efforts that keep me going—and my connection with my dog, who is always there for me to hug when I need her. Sometimes I feel like I’m completely over my depression, and sometimes it’s really bad—but this last week has been worse than at any time in the past.

You see, absolutely nothing in my life seems to go right, I have only three friends I do things with, I’m broke and have never been able to find work, I want nothing more with my life than to be able to help people, animals, and the planet on a meaningful scale – and have been utterly unsuccessful at doing so, with absolutely no idea of how I’m supposed to change that given that I have no money, I have no power, I have no connections, and no one has ever been willing to give me a chance to do anything, ever – and I’m zoo exclusive in a world that hates people who are different and people like me more than most—and makes absolutely no effort to try to understand my orientation and the people who have it.

It started when I was a child. I was bottom of my class in reading at the start of first grade, and top of my school in reading at the start of second grade, with the difference being that I was diagnosed with ADHD halfway through first grade and thus was prescribed Ritalin, which absolutely saved me from a life of ignorance, drug addiction, and probably violence and crime. By the end of third grade, I was able to test higher on the Minnesota state tests than anyone in this state’s history ever had, by such a large margin that the people scoring the tests thought mine was a sample test and didn’t believe I took it at first.

You would think, having scored so high on my tests, that I would have been advanced grades and allowed to progress at my own rate, which was many times faster than that of my classmates. That’s not what happened…

Instead, they kept me going through school one grade at a time, with teachers who didn’t understand me and who slowly killed my joy of school and of learning. I was constantly in trouble, because I was constantly bored. I was punished for correcting my teachers on their mistakes, and made to feel like being intelligent was a crime. By the time I got through middle school, which was a nightmare in its own right, I was sullen, depressed, isolated, and completely disenchanted with school, teachers, people, and learning. No one understood me, and no one even tried. And to make matters worse, I had absolutely no idea why I had no interest in the girls, nor even in the boys, who were in school with me. In fact, the only times I can recall being attracted to anyone at all it was when I imagined myself as an animal, like a wolf or a dragon, and even then it was purely a kink sort of situation—I certainly had no real romantic interest in anyone. At the time, I didn’t understand that fantasy, and I didn’t understand why I was attracted to animals but not to humans, and I just assumed that there was something I was missing that I would eventually get.

Then came college. I spent my first two years learning how to control my ADHD without medication, as the medications had all begun failing me in my teenage years as my body went through all of its changes, and as I sank further into depression without really realizing what was happening to me yet. As a result, I ended up sinking to a 1.5 GPA. I missed one semester because of a hernia and the surgery that repaired it, and I missed one semester because of academic suspension. When I finally had my ADHD sorted out, I went into the MLT (medical lab tech) program, which I stayed in for 3 semesters before deciding to finish my time at my first college with a general education degree, due to my sheer boredom with the MLT work and field. By the time I graduated I had close to a 3.4 cumulative GPA.

I went on from there to a local university, where I started working toward a mechanical engineering degree. Unfortunately, I also found this field to be extremely boring, and so my grades suffered for it. I took the first two tests in my Physics course, and then saw that I could skip all the rest of the homework as well as the third test and the final exam and still pass with a C, so that’s what I did. The rest of my courses were likewise too easy and too boring for me, resulting in me cutting as many corners as I could in the hopes of eventually getting to some classes that held more challenge and more interest for me. That never happened.

After my first year at university, I went on a program to spend the summer in Israel volunteering. I remember experiencing more than a bit of depression because it was not at all what I had in mind. I wanted to work with the animals and make a difference in their lives at the nature preserve I volunteered at. Instead, I saw what amounted to animal abuse and neglect in certain cases, it was far too hot for me, and I had three women for roommates, two of whom were smokers. I have nothing against being roommates with women, I just felt like the odd one out when the two smokers joined the group, and I do have quite a bit against being roommates with smokers.

Eventually I got so sick and depressed I had to leave, at which point I was able to find another location within the program to spend the rest of my volunteer time, and that was up in the Golan Heights. It was cooler there, and I liked the people I was roomed with a hell of a lot better—for the most part. There were three women and three guys (including myself), and I’m still Facebook friends with three of them. Unfortunately, one of the women was batshit crazy, was constantly alternating between complaining and going completely nuts, and she even stole some of my stuff when she left without telling anyone one day. And also unfortunately, one of the guys, who wasn’t actually a volunteer, and wasn’t part of the program the rest of us were there through, was extremely hostile.

So, while I had a better time at the second place, the crazy woman and the angry guy eventually made it so negative that I ended up leaving Israel a few weeks early, which definitely left a sour taste in my mouth.

After my second year in the mechanical engineering program, I changed majors to History and immediately found myself thoroughly enjoying school for the first time since third grade. I had found something that interested me, that challenged me, and that couldn’t be worked out intuitively. With history, you can’t just think about a time in history and naturally come to understand what happened—you have to actually read, and research, and dig to find out the basics, and then you have to piece it all together to get a better picture, and it’s all extremely rewarding.

Around the same time, I also started taking some philosophy classes, and found that I appreciated learning about the history of philosophy—it added yet more layer to the people I was learning about in my history classes. So I added philosophy as a minor, and then changed it to a major before my third year was up.

After my third year in university, I took off to learn Attic Greek in Ireland. The plan was to spend four months there, two living with a host so that I could learn about Irish culture better, and two at school. Within two weeks my host had turned into a slave driver, and when he tried to force me to work 8 hours a day with no breaks, just to be able to stay in his shitty guest room and eat two simple meals a day, I told him no, and he kicked me out. I was glad to go, and still marvel at the fact that I didn’t violently assault him. Not only was he taking advantage of foreign travelers for essentially slave labor, he was also neglectful and abusive of his horses, and he was extremely racist.

I then went on to spend the next 5 weeks traveling Ireland, with a few weeks in Dublin – yuck – where I got my visa to go to China, a week or so on the Aran Islands, a few days in Galway, a week or so in Cork, and some miscellaneous time just traveling. It was for the most part a great stretch of time, and I was extremely glad for it, especially when I considered that I could have been stuck working like a slave for an asshole I wanted nothing to do with.

Then I settled down in Cork for my classes in Attic Greek, and it was absolutely brutal. We had four semesters’ worth of language classes stuffed into 8 weeks. At first I was in the dorms with the other students, but there was no internet and I didn’t really feel like I fit with the people in my dorm, so I left and ended up with a good group in a small apartment. I’m still Facebook friends with two of the people from the apartment, and glad I met them.

Eventually, after what felt like an exceptionally grueling period of time, I passed my Attic Greek classes with a perfect 4.0. From there I moved on to China, and met an old friend along the way in Taiwan. He paid way too much for dinner for us, and brought me to see some pretty great sights in Taipei. All in all it was a really good 20 hour layover between flights, although don’t ask me why my flight from Ireland had me fly over the whole of China to land in Taipei before connecting me from Taipei back to Chengdu.

But, in the days right before I left for Chengdu, I got a notification from my home university that they were cutting off my funding. I filled out the paperwork they gave me before leaving on my flight, and didn’t find out until after I was in Chengdu that they had given me one more semester of financial aid. Apparently I was over the credit limit for graduating with a single major, even though I had two majors, and thus had a higher credit limit.

I quickly filled out my paperwork to extend my financial aid coverage by another semester, at the start of that fall semester in China, and thought everything was taken care of. So I set about enjoying my time in China, and found that I really rather liked most of the people in the group I was with. There were really only two or three people in my group I didn’t like all that much, and only one whom I genuinely disliked.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed that semester in China, and I felt like I had made some really good friends. I did a lot of biking, I saw a lot of sights, I ate some fantastic food, and I felt like I had learned quite a bit about the culture over there.

And then I found out that my home university had lost all of my paperwork, and I wasn’t going to get the funding that I needed to stay in China for the full school year, as I had planned—and had coordinated with everyone back at my home university. I was in the middle of finding a job teaching English as a tutor, which would have given me extra spending money but not enough money to stay until May. I was forced to cancel everything, pay for a ticket home, and hope I got my tuition and dorm money back quickly enough to use for what would be my final semester before graduating.

Because of the changed timeline, I wasn’t able to start applying for grad schools in time for that year. I also quickly scrambled to find a way to get a dog, because I knew I would need one for emotional stability and support. I ended up getting Keira, a malamute, and she has literally been a life saver.

I registered for classes, went deep into debt finishing my final semester, and graduated with a double major in History and Philosophy, with a 4.0 in History and a 3.92 in Philosophy. Unfortunately, I had a huge personal loan that was supposed to have been taken care of with my financial aid money, that I had taken out because financial aid wasn’t going to come in time to cover my tuition in Ireland or in China. Making the monthly payments on the personal loan caused me to sink deep into credit card debt, and I couldn’t find a meaningful job if my life depended on it.

Fortunately, I was able to land a job at a local bakery, due entirely to the lack of an interview for it. My Asperger’s and Social Anxiety Disorder make interviewing nearly impossible, so it was a lucky break for me when the manager simply asked me “When can you start?” and hired me on the spot without an interview.

Unfortunately, that was about the limit to my luck. My job was about 20 hours per week at the time, at 8.50/hour. I was barely making enough to cover my bills every month, and was actually sinking a bit further behind every month.

I signed up for classes to get a Teaching English as a Foreign Language certification, so I could try to get back to Asia where I could teach English and get my life sorted. Those classes went well, and I actually had three interviews with people over in China before realizing that I would need $5,000+ to cover the costs of getting over there and getting set up, because there was no way I was going to leave Keira behind. And even if I hadn’t had her to think about, it still would have been expensive because it’s far from cheap to get from Minnesota to China, and then to get an apartment and to cover a first month’s expenses before getting my first paycheck. And I simply didn’t have the money, and no one I knew had the means to help—and they still don’t.

By the time I came to that realization, it was too late again to apply for grad schools, so I went down to Atlanta for that year’s annual American Historical Association meeting, where I hoped to find any sort of lead on employment. I found nothing but deep depression.

I spent much of 2016 severely depressed, but hoping with all of my might that Bernie Sanders would win the Democratic nomination. And then things started going wrong with that, too. The DNC seemed to be rigging the election against Bernie. The media wasn’t covering him. When the voting started, the recorded numbers were far outside the accepted margin of error—in Hillary’s direction. There were reports of voter suppression against the voting blocs most likely to vote for Bernie. Bernie supporters were purged from the voting rolls. One of Hillary’s Super PACs started going around the internet harassing Bernie supporters and feeding false information to Hillary supporters and people who hadn’t made up their minds yet. Almost all of the super delegates were backing Hillary and saying they would back her no matter what the voters had to say about it. And the media made it seem as though Bernie stood zero chance, and Hillary’s being the nominee was a done deal.

And then Bernie had the nomination denied him, Hillary failed to do the right thing and step aside in favor of the candidate the people actually wanted, and Trump managed to win the electoral college by virtue of Hillary managing to do everything wrong.

And now, the country is going to shit faster than anyone thought possible, and all of the peaceful protests in the world won’t change a damn thing, unless the entire government around Trump stops doing what he says—thus rendering him powerless.

So, that’s the basic outline.

Every time I do something right, that should get me ahead, and open up opportunities for me, life finds a way to shit on me even harder.

I want to help the world, but I see the world collapsing around me, and I have no power and no influence with which to do anything about it, and no money with which to forge my own path.

And because I can’t help anyone—not even myself—I feel myself collapsing into the darkness of soul crushing depression.

Now, even something as meaningless as dying in a video game has me struggling not to break things, and not to throw myself out a window. I feel crushed, and defeated, and like there’s nothing I can do right that won’t go wrong in the end.

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