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max1u3 · 1 year ago

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Blizzcon 2023 Omg...

First of all here's the video I watched if you want to go watch it yourself, but I'm just gonna outline what I think are the highlights in this post!

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First of all, Blizzard actually serving this Blizzcon like?? Woah there, slow down, are you sure you actually want to deliver what the fanbase wants... you've never done that before but slay.

And secondly, I'm late to this cos your girl put off working on a brief deadline for her degree until the last few days and had to draw like a mad woman. So excuse my late reactions to everything haha

ANYWAYS

THE COMP CHANGES?? LIKE SLAY OMG

Let's be honest, even Blizzard knew the 5 - 15 bracket was shit, and now they're finally getting rid of it, and replacing it with this ->

Like are we actually getting ranked on what we do in the match or is this some kind of amazing dream?

As a hard stuck gold/plat support main with an average of 20k heals a match, this is like some kind of blessing from God.

Plus not to mention the rank reset?? Last time I rank reset, aka made a smurf account that I never used, it was two ranks above my main. I'm going to cry literal tears of joy.

Plus, we're getting these bad boys back ->

She looks a little different but it's ok, we still accept her as the placement matches we know and love.

(I am very sassy today apologies, I have borderline carpool tunnel in my main hand and a backache to slay all backaches so I'm feeling slightly unhinged.)

Then they're also tidying up the competitive challenges tab? Like actually slay!

Like look how clean and sexy she looks like omg. Can't wait to actually understand all that information now that it's feasible to read haha

I'm not as hype about these but they still deserve mentioning ->

Tree guns! Oh wait, I mean Emerald guns. Mb. I think they're just like... meh. Like me and my duo have had long and detailed discussions on how we would improve gold guns. We eventually settled on them progressing in rarity and price. We suggested a gun started at bronze and worked it's way up the ranks like you do in competitive, and each rank would be a thousand more expensive. So obviously Bronze for Bronze, Silver for Silver, Gold for Gold, Platinum with like a purple sheen for Platinum, Diamond with a white and blue reflection for Diamond, then either Ruby or Sapphire for Masters and Grand Masters.

If you hadn't figured it out by my grumbling already in this post, but I'm a digital art student in uni, literally studying concept art, and by gods would my lecturers turn their noses up at the green they chose for this promotional ss.

Personally, I would saturate the colour more, it's much too dark. Sure, up close you can see the colour well, but realistically you want to be able to see the colour in game as well, and the green here is much too dark. I would saturate the colour more, but not too much. There's a thin line between it being a distraction or a flex. Next thing I would do is give it a darker sheen so when it catches certain lights it has a muted sparkle. I say darker so that it doesn't cross the distraction line again, because a lighter sheen would defiantly distract a player.

ANYWAY those are just my thoughts on it as someone studying this stuff at uni :)

I'm not a professional and will never be cos I'm never touching the art industry after this course again lol

Next I just wanna briefly look at the two heroes other than Mauga we got a look at.

Which are obviously Venture ->

Who's a dps who digs underneath the ground and launches out to deal dmg to the enemies.

Personally, I think it's a really innovative idea, and a really nice idea lore wise, but realistically I don't think this is going to play well, and I'm sure we're going to see lots of changes to him before and after he's released.

Also that concept art is just chefs kiss. It's so beautiful, with such clean lines and such an understandable concept. The facial expression is so cute and clean as well, and I already love them just from what I can see.

Oh, they are a they/them as well, so they're slaying.

Then there's 'Space Ranger', which is only a code name, and all we can call her so far ->

Again the beautiful concept art is literally making my drool, the lines are clean, it's understandable, conveys exactly what the artist wants.

I also love the unique UI of having the two guns above. It's also really thrilling to get more of a design perspective, for me at least. Even if I'm not going into the art industry (I'm taking a course to become a teacher after I gradate next year) it's still really exciting to be able to see the processes of it all. Now I can't help but imagine what the rest of the heroes concept art looked like when drawn onto the ss like the image above.

She's also a support by the way, so we support mains are being FED.

Next on my little list that I have here, is the hero mastery updates. Which are all for next year, so 2024.

The first point was that we'd be getting D.va, Lucio, Genji, Echo and Mei maps to master. I've 5 stared all the Mercy courses cos she's one of my mains, and my other is D.va sooooo can't wait to spend 20 hours on that haha.

They've also realised that it being solo can be a bit of an obstacle for groups, so they're adding a tower defence 3v3 vs bots mode. Every season the heroes on the roster for the mode will cycle out, as will the special rewards for completing the game mode every season. Basically, they're trying to make it as replayable every season as possible. Even with the heroes and reward cycles, I still have a sneaking suspicion this is going to end up slightly monotonous.

Here's a ss of the tower defence ->

It's not very clear and that's mb, I forgot to ss until too late lol.

Finally, the last big thing that they discussed was the new game mode 'Clash', plus the re-work of the Hanamura 2cp map for this game mode.

They basically described clash as 5cp, and even with this image it took me a while to get my head around it. Disclaimer, I am dyslexic though lol, so you'll probably get it faster than me.

Basically, (from what I understood from the dev's explanation) all five points will be lined up in a row on the map. When the game starts, team blue will posses 2 points and so will team red. Only point C will be available to cap, and it's a race to see who can claim the point first. Whoever claims the point will then push the enemy teams spawn room back a point, and the next point to claim will be either one to the right/left from the middle. The game ends when one team holds on the points, or the time runs out and whoever holds the most points win. The co-streamer I was watching alongside it said it resembled a tft game mode, but since I've never played tft I can't vouch for that.

I actually really like this idea, and it actually does remind me of 2cp quite a lot. It has a very nostalgic OW feeling just to the description.

Moving on, we have the Hanamura re-work, which is last, but not least.

They've adjusted the map in a way that supposedly makes it feel organic and not just a re-work of Hanamura itself. Basically, they've expanded off the main map, left some noticeable features and vibes to the map, and dropped the previous map into the background. It's a very smart way to evolve a map in all honesty.

This map has been designed specifically for Clash and will be called Hanaoko (sorry if I'm butchering that, they didn't write it down anywhere and only said the name).

Normally, I won't be too bothered to write so much about a new map, but bro this is Hanamura! I adore Hanumura, so, so, so much! I miss 2cp and all those maps so badly. It's nice to see them evolving the concept to incorporate those nostalgic elements for OW1 players.

What also interested me was that they talked more about the Hanamura lore. Naturally, there's a lot of it. With the Shimada brothers, the Hashimoto Shimada fight for dominance, and Kiriko with her Yokai gang. They specifically mentioned more lore for those three groups which got my very excited. They also mentioned, and I feel stupid for not noticing this cos it's obvious once it's pointed out), but all the dragons and tigers on the map are symbolic. They represent the struggle between the Shimada (dragons) and Hashimoto (tigers) clans when they're fighting. Like in this photo ->

So, it's official, we are being well and truly fed this Blizzcon. I can't wait for ranked to actually feel rewarding again.

Here's a random Tracer play from OW1 to finish of the post :)

#overwatch #ow2 #overwatch 2 #ow #Blizzcon #Youtube

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years ago

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Life Story Part 100!

I just kept scrapping along. I had my new job, and my ear infection was starting to heal after weeks of self remedying with vinegar. I felt sick at the end of the night, in that weird off putting lighting they kept in the dish pit. I could hear the conversations of the hostesses up front – generally gossiping about one another in a negative fashion, or else talking about their boyfriends or their make up routine. And in the back I could hear the kitchen staff talking about going home – generally to their lonely apartments they were staying at if they were single, and their houses if they were married, like Levi. But all of them wanted to drink and play video games. In fact, I thought it was strange how resigned everyone was, like this was the best life would ever be for any of them.

I found it sort of twisted in funny in a sense. Granted, some of these guys had had brutal upbringings I would come to find, emancipation, homelessness, drunken abusive dad's who made my dad look like a father from a fifties sitcom - but I had in all earnest worked so hard to come to a place where I was washing dishes in a full serve restaurant – something seemingly so humble, but something I felt grateful to have everyday, and furthermore, I often saw this as a breeding ground for my personal development and just the beginning of moving up in the world. This was not a dead end for me. I had to reteach myself (though some might argue I never properly understood), the art of communicating with strangers. I had lost fifty pounds. I was somehow still standing after my romantic and personal life had been devastated, my sanity was in question, my dog died, and it was starting to feel like friends and family didn't want me anymore. But even as I would sometimes get very distressed and down, I also could feel this sensation within me that I was strong and I was still standing even if no one understood that but me, and I was going to do big things with my life and live a full exciting life where I didn't deny myself anything.

And these kitchen men, most of them just a few years older then me, they were bored, drunk and empty. They were a generation of seemingly lost individuals. The more I looked around, at the guys in my age bracket in particular there was this hazy lost avoidant aspect to them all. They might avoid themselves and the world by nerding out on games or television, or they might drink excessively – or both, but they all seemed rather directionless, and when you stripped them from the futility of their ego and frustrations, they all seemed very lost and miserable and by the end of the night as we were all closing our shifts, in the undercurrent of laughter and jokes you could feel the sadness radiating and bouncing around the building. They all thought they needed to be dating a supermodel, but didn't need to put in the effort personally (nor did they think about the limited supply of super models). So instead of having girlfriends, most of them were alone, and when they did hook up with someone and it became a thing sort of, it was like they were afraid to be open and actually care about their girlfriend, and so they instead talked trash about them with their workmates. Some of them had kids they wouldn't bother to go and see, and wouldn't pay child support on behalf of until the state forced them. And they would whine about it – like some evil woman had forced them into servitude against their will. Some of these guys were in their fifties and still had notions that some teenage girl was going to ask them out on a date. And regardless of how crummy each of them were, I got the feeling that most of them were loyal to one another in a way they wouldn't be towards women, regardless of how nice they seemed.

It made me feel disappointed about men in general. They were all very nice to me. Sarah alerted me one morning that they were hitting on me. I honestly could not tell. I was so used to being teased from school, and my ego just sucked in any attention mindlessly – and I would smile and be friendly in return – not certain if I was being picked on, being innocently amiably conversed with or something else, it didn't cross my mind that there was any motive behind any of the guys' intent when they joked around with me. I guess I was the only girl back there so there was a primitive drive among them to be my favorite – at least with some of the more desperate fools. I was like the girl Smurf – the only viable and available girl in their general proximity. But clearly, I only liked Levi and only in this very defined outlying way, and since he wasn't an option I wasn't particularly interested in anyone. I felt this need to fall in love again. I think psychologically it needed to happen. I had to cover up the stained carpet of my previous and pathetic attempt of being in love with Zack to be covered up by some kind of new rug to hide my blemished ego – a new person. And honestly, there was no one. So I would go around and feel this strange sensation of falling in love at times, being giddy and sort of euphoric, but it was probably the upside of my mood swings and it was probably because I needed to get whisked away into something new as soon as possible.

I hated to admit it to myself too, but I couldn't really see myself with Levi, even in the alternative universe where he was single and liked me. I already knew that was not a thing. I was complex, and for me, part of love was painting an interesting tapestry of dialogue. Levi didn't do that kind of chit chat. There was something special about Levi, and I think he sensed stuff about his surroundings, but he wasn't very interested in being philosophical or playing mind games as a means of fun, and I knew myself well enough to know that I would challenge him and he wouldn't like it. I would want to change him and it would ruin the good things about him – if it even got that far. He was meant to have a family and a home with someone like Dani. He was meant to be a provider and a caregiver to either a traditional family unit, or else he was made to lead a group of hooligan men and bring out the best of the group towards victory. My path did not converge with his. I would look myself in the mirror, and I was not a homemaker. If anything, people might call me a possible homewrecker given my smitten feelings. I was meant to be alone in a way that a lot of people find difficult. I needed someone who understood me and my complexity and my playfulness enough to take care of me, but also was an equal I could bounce ideas off of and be taken seriously when I needed a colleague. So every time I found myself admiring him, I also felt incredibly silly. It was ill suited, like a flamingo falling for a rabbit or a bear or something.

Allison meanwhile was spending a lot more time with Whitney and Josh. While I was at work she would now go out and visit Josh and Whitney at their parents' house. Allison would tell me about the drama – one part of the evening they would talk about Whitney's setbacks, and then turn on Josh, and then everyone would just dance and it was more or less this silly weird night where all manner of catharsis was reached with tears, and laughter and thought provoking ideas. Generally speaking, I found myself somewhat jealous that I was closing the dish pit while most of these fun nights took place. I was always invited, but my work schedule wasn't working well with their days off so I would just have to feel jealous for a little bit longer.

I rarely went out with Sarah and Zack anymore. Sarah seemed to think I still had feelings for Zack, and to her credit I might have pretended I did. I don't know why. They were too boring. I thought their relationship was depressing. The best it ever got with them was being on the brink of falling asleep. It seemed strange to me that the best part of the relationship was when the two closed their eyes and stopped really connecting to each other. But of course I could have seen this coming had I not painted Zack into some demigod that I had once believed him to be. I do remember one very absurd even though that I still feel extremely uneasy about. Sarah, Zack and I were driving to the store, probably to pick up a few groceries. It was a short trip that I chose to accompany them in. Maybe I was getting picked up from work – who knows. I was looking into the sky, it was later on in the evening when everything takes on an orange glow but it's not dark yet, and the clouds above us began to cluster together in this very distinct way. It was like they were moving together, and before I could even believe my eyes, the clouds had written the word LOVE in the sky. I pointed it out to Sarah as fast as I could so that I didn't feel entirely crazy, and she saw it too. So did Zack, who of course decided it was God's will.

It didn't stay that way very long, but for a moment it was so unmistakably clear and baffling. It hadn't been written by an airplane or anything either. The clouds had temporarily formed the words. I suppose in the history of cloud formations on our planet, words have been spelled – but how often, and how often does it show up that clearly? I won't even venture into the territory of their having been an author. I really don't have words to say about the reason why I saw this happen, only that I did. It didn't last much longer. As we continued driving I turned my back and watched with dismay as the words melted away. I can't say I got much from the statement itself. It gave me this really warm feeling, but the concept of love was relative and I wasn't about to drop my guard and take it as some meaning that I was to lay my life out for Zack and Sarah – like Zack would have me believe. Love is the best thing in the world, and I do live for it, but love comes from, and manifests itself in so many different ways for different people, places, ideas, times and activities. Maybe I was meant to love myself? Or maybe if lets venture into the territory of saying that it was created by the universe with intent, perhaps there was some other happy couple who had seen it, and us three fools in the car had just lucked out and had been at the right place at the right time. It's hard saying.

Eventually I did end up going to some of these parties with Josh and Whitney. I remember showing up before Josh and Whitney did, and meeting Josh's mother Theresa, for the first time – at least one on one. When Theresa was sober, she was very quiet, and was looking relatively young considering the life of drinking and sadness she had undergone. It was just Sarah, Allison and I at the table and at first we politely chatted. Theresa began drinking beer, and soon she was weeping and telling us her life story and about how Josh was her little baby. She began crying on me, and begging me to date her son. She was desperate for him to have grandchildren for her. She said I was beautiful, and only I could make Josh happy. Then she seemed to forget she had said that to me, and she went to Allison (who was mind you, fifteen), and begging her to date Josh, who was going on thirty. Then she went to Sarah. Theresa was a desperate sort. There was no easy way to explain her level of ridiculousness. Because then she started talking about how she was watching the history channel and the show was on alien abductions and she believes aliens abducted her because she was watching the show later that night. Then she put on The Church's 'Under the Milky Way' and slow dancing and crying about mysterious sensitivities she felt within herself. Of course, it goes without saying that absolutely nobody took Theresa seriously. She didn't seem to notice, but if she did she only saw it as a dramatic element to cry about for a moment before moving onto the next thing.

Sarah and I had done some talking. Things had changed for us so much, and at least for myself in particular, I really wanted to get to know people. I didn't like just having casual back and forth with people. I felt like, between Sarah and I we could sort of interview the people we met in life, people at work, people at the party, and we could ask revealing questions and get people to tell us their life story. We called our project, Project Life Story. It didn't end up going to far, but we ended up asking Josh his life story one night as our first person. I don't know where we were going with this exactly. It seemed meaningful and fun, and that was something Sarah and I have going on very much anymore.

Josh seemed a little bit nervous that night. We were sitting around the table talking at the parent's house. Whitney was there but I believe she got bored and sat in her old bedroom. Josh was drinking a beer. It was strange because he could at time be super vulnerable and absurdly outgoing – but then at times he could come off as stuffy, eccentric and socially anxious. He seemed withdrawn and anxious, but he agreed to tell us his life story just the same after drinking a few beers.

Josh had been raised in Kendrick, same as me, only he was about eight or nine years older than me. He had gone to the same school that Sarah and I went to – knew most of the people my sisters hung around to some extent. He was born two months premature., was the eldest of four, and he was the only boy out of four siblings. When Josh was young, his family had owned a lot of farmland, and he had grown up believing for much of it that his destiny was out on a farm as a farmer. He had spent a lot of time alone in the fields in the rural parts of the hills growing up alone, contemplating life and reading more than most kids his age. I think on one hand he liked the secluded life out in the fields. On the other hand he wanted to have a different life that involved traveling the world. He had a friend for awhile who also lived in the hills, but his best friend had drown in an accident when he was seven, and other than that, Josh didn't have a lot of close friends – even as he was generally liked by most of his classmates and teachers.

Josh's mom and his father drank a lot and in the early part of Josh's life, they did a lot of drugs around him. Josh grew up listening to classic country music. His father was a serious, and violent, abusive man with drug issues. He also had this strange way of never working. What his father had figured out how to do, was to continuously trade smaller cheaper objects for more expensive objects. Everywhere Josh's father went, he asked people if they would barter their stuff to him – and this sort of kept him afloat. His uncles were very backwoods. When he misbehaved he would be tied upside down from a tree and shocked with a cattle prod until his father and uncles were satisfied that Josh had been thoroughly punished.

This struck me as cruel and sadistic, and it hurt to even think about such a small boy being abused, and when I told Josh this he shrugged it off nonchalant and humorously, claiming he could be hard to deal with when he was young and it made him tough. He remembered these things without much personal pain by memory association, and I thought that was strange, and sort of intriguing about him. He didn't react to his own abuse the way people typically do. He joked about it. He saw it from painful perspectives. He toyed with the concepts involved with the crimes committed.

Josh jumped out of a moving vehicle when he was four years old – because he was curious and prone to taking dangerous risks with his own life. He had to relearn how to communicate which took about a year. Eventually he picked it back up again and nobody could tell that there had ever been a problem. There is speculation of course, that the head injury might have effected him in some fashion that was permanent, but as to what that was it's hard to say.

His father was particular for meth, and it wouldn't be uncommon for Josh to wake up in the dead of night to his father picking him up by the neck from dead sleep and being thrown in the bathroom with bleach demanding he bleach everything perfectly. As Josh told us this, I imagined a little Josh on his hands and knees scrubbing the floors while his sadistic father screamed at him. My father wasn't/hasn't been perfect to me, but I couldn't really imagine what that must have been like. To a boy no older than seven or eight. Mind you, Josh didn't tell me this part of the story, his mother did.

Not only this, but every pet Josh managed to get – namely cats but some dogs as well, every summer when Josh was sent to do work in his uncle's and grandfather's farm, Josh's father would take his rifle out and kill Josh's pets. It almost seemed like he was targeted by his father really. Like his family was trying to mold him into something. Still, Josh found ways to amuse himself. At a young age he took serious interest in karate. He read a lot of books regarding fighting technique and eastern philosophy at a very young age. By second or third grade he had taught himself to use DOS computer program. His teachers considered him a genius and when he was tested in high school, he had the IQ of 143. Him and his grandfather were very close while his grandfather was alive – so he enjoyed hanging out with him. All in all, I thought Josh sounded like a hyperactive, but thoughtful boy. And while a lot of Josh's early life was tarnished with abuse, Josh wasn't really defined by the abuse he went through – or at least he tried very hard not to let himself be (he rarely told anyone the stuff he told us that night), and I thought it was fascinating.

It was as though he developed some quality that had forced him to catapult over misery itself. Obviously, he hadn't truly escaped his childhood. To a degree nobody does. But all in all, to most people who had abused him, he became an empty husk that they beat on and the joke was on them – mentally Josh floated away into greatness that went unrealized to most people. There was something beautiful about that to me. And in that catapult over the moon he was made more aware of how hazy reality actually was – something I had become privy to in the recent years. Which, has always made me kind of wonder about some things related to childhood trauma and what we become aware of and sensitive to as adults. Clearly some trauma makes development in children shut down or become stunted. There can be no arguing this. But can certain kinds of trauma and anxiety actually open us up in some strange way? Because with Josh, and with myself I saw that to be kind of accurate. We had been sitting at the table for twenty minutes by this time, listening to Josh and asking the occasional question. I felt this really meaningful kinship with Josh. I didn't know what it meant, or how to

When Josh was nine, he was molested by one of his father's friends at gunpoint. Josh eventually admitted this to his parents. His father didn't believe Josh, and punished him for trying to get his buddy in trouble for no reason. His father saw it as Josh's attempt to ruin his marriage with Josh's mom. Josh maintained it was true, and eventually this lead to the final straw between his mother and father's relationship, as Josh's mother did believe Josh's story, though they managed to stay together for a few more years it seemed until it really hit home.

Josh was always a straight A student. Teachers loved him. In junior high he started the wrestling team, the chess team and the debate team. He was very ambitious and had a way of hanging out with a lot of different people, the jocks, the drama kids. He ended up having this weird situation happen which involved him falling in love with a girl who had babysat him growing up. I didn't understand this story the first time Josh' told me, so I asked him to explain it to me a second time, but he was drinking that day and the details were confusing. Essentially, this girl was a few years older than Josh and one of his creepy cousins/relative of some sort took this girl in as their girlfriend when she was a teenager, got her addicted to drugs, and then she ended up dying in a car accident due to this creepy relative. Josh was twelve at the time.

The second girl Josh ever was taken in by was none other than my eldest sister Maria. Maria is two years older than Josh, but the fact that she wouldn't do any of her schoolwork at all, the fact that she would tear up her papers in every class and smoke and sleep with whomever made her intriguing to Josh. So for about a year, he would follow her around. Maria laughed at him and never took him seriously. He was two years younger than her for one, small and geeky. He would tirelessly write her love letters and put them in her locker. He bought her stuff. He offered to go with her places. She went camping with him once, but nothing ever came of it. Eventually she quit school and he moved on. To me, it's strange and funny to think that this was all happening while I was five years old – clueless that any of this would ever be told to me in my early twenties. The fact that we were sitting at the table in this dimly lit house far away from that version of Kendrick we both grew up in, talking about these stories – something felt really odd about Josh in relation to me.

Josh ended up dating a girl named Tara from Roxanne's class, which was two classes lower than his. I knew her t be very preppy. She was also my first grade teacher's daughter. They connected because they were the only two atheists in the school and Josh staged a debate about the existence of god in her class. Josh had grown up being raised as a god fearing republican cowboy, but he had begun to question that pretty early on. He also had secretly been teaching himself to play guitar. His family would have flogged him had they known, but he had hid a very cheap guitar that someone at school had sold to him in an unused barn on his grandfather's property miles away from home. So when he wanted to practice, he walked out there and played secretly in the barn. Nobody ever taught him to tune the guitar, or what heat or cold could do to a guitar, or even how to play chords. So mostly he just tinkered around with it in secret for hours he could escape unnoticed and didn't really learn to play much until he was much older. Still, there was something very beautiful about the idea of that.

Josh's father became sort of sadistically certain that him and Josh were to be at odds. He felt there could only be one 'man' in the house so he made Josh sleep out in a camper. And then when Josh's dad and mom were fighting, Josh's dad ended up hitting Theresa, and Josh attacked his father, which ended up in Josh's dad leaving for good. I didn't get the details, I just know that it's what happened.

Around this time, Josh's uncle came up with this new idea about farming and rotating crops (something that is now used in certain situations, but I know nothing about since I don't really get into farming technique), and in order to make his idea work, he had to borrow money against the land itself with the bank. And that year ended up being one where there was too much rain or heat, I can't remember which, but Josh's uncle's idea didn't pan out and they ended up losing the land. So Josh wasn't going to be a farmer after all. They moved down to Kendrick for a time. Josh and Tara stayed together for two years in high school, and Josh had just graduated. His plans with Tara were for them to both become very educated. She wanted to teach English overseas, and Josh wanted to become a professor of psychology – and they were going to travel the world and lead an exciting life.

At this point in the story, Theresa drunkenly had joined the table to listen. She started chiming in that Tara's family had always looked down on Josh, that he had never been given a fair go. She started screaming and crying about it, as though Tara's family had broken Josh in some permanent way. In any case, Josh shrugged and argued that Tara's family had been very fair to him, and Tara had every reason to leave him when she did.

So Josh was nineteen and he started college. He had waited for Tara so they could both go to college together and pursue their dreams. But it didn't work out. Josh started at the University of Idaho, and while he was there, he didn't feel smart anymore. He felt average at best, and socially anxious. Even as a lower end genius as he was, he felt outclassed and outshined by a lot of the students. He expected a lot from himself – probably that he would be one of the greatest students there. And something in him was starting to break. The things in life that had kept him sane were starting to disappear from him. So he quit college, and then tried again another semester but the psychological issues were only getting worse. This time, in his Psyche 101 class, he wrote his professor a personal letter in with his assignment and asked for advice. I don't know the details of what his professor told him, but it was very insightful to Josh. But it didn't stop Josh's breakdown.

Meanwhile, Tara was doing very well in school. And Josh felt like he was lagging behind and wouldn't be able to meet the goals that they had agreed to in creating a life together. I guess it comes down to a certain sense of yourself in the world. When you are stripped of a self esteem at an early age, left to your own devices you fall apart. Rebuilding something that resembles what a normal person with an okay upbringing has takes years. Tara came from a good home. She was confident and certain about what she wanted in life. Josh was not confident, and was become increasingly more and more uncertain about everything.

After trying for a third time to make college work, Josh randomly left Tara, and didn't contact her for four months. He freely admitted it was a cruel and shitty move on his part. He went back to Kendrick. He found people he had loosely known in Kendrick who did drugs,and he started to do meth with them. Whenever Tara tried to find him, he ducked out. Eventually he came back to her and they tried to make it work. He suddenly became obsessed with trying to get back on track and get back to her. He walked twenty miles in a snow storm to knock on her door to give her a love letter. There was an element of intensity to Josh, and I imagine it was hard for her to turn him away after he had done something that reckless on her behalf. He attempted to go to university one more time. But things weren't the same. He was high all the time, and a bunch of different women who he knew from partying all had interest in him. At a drunken party, Tara dumped him, and he hooked up with this other girl at the same party. Later on, Tara begged his forgiveness, and he got back together with her. He woke up the next morning and he had peed himself and it had gotten all over her. He decided to leave her for good this time. It had gotten too gross and too messed up at that point.

He decided the next week in one fleeting moment to go back to Tara. He explained he was sitting in the grass, looking at world, and suddenly he had this strange sense that everything had altered. His personality had altered. Something wasn't right – and he had to get back to Tara, as she was probably the only stabilizing force in his life. Josh explained it as a paradigm shift. He explained this in much greater detail than I am now. It took him about four or five hours of talking to tell us his story mind you – and what I convey is a very condensed version. I also fail to bring in his wit or sense of humor – something my writing skill isn't all that equipped to do. Josh is devilishly sarcastic. Even people who don't like him have difficulties not being entertained by him. But what really struck me as odd was just how much of what Josh talked about that felt like he was explaining the symptoms of my own life to me. Granted, Josh and I were very different in many ways – I probably wouldn't have started the chess club or started using meth per say. But certain things had started to link up – certain facets, micro elements to his story that felt weirdly like he was reading my mind. That crazy stuff I had been feeling that winter? He knew what that was like. And all the strange connections we had to things and places and ideas. I wondered distantly if I had always been on his trail, and hadn't known it. That maybe in some strange way, I was years behind him but had never been quite as alone as I had thought in my experiences.

So Josh, in this frantic realization ran back to where he and Tara had been staying. He came into the house, and she was with someone else. She had been cheating on Josh with this other guy. Josh ran away from the house and it was officially over between them. Tara went on to marry the guy she had been cheating on Josh with, and together they did end up traveling the world and teaching underprivileged children English and being this major power couple that Josh had failed to live up to.

Josh meanwhile dropped out of college for the final time. He went back to using meth. His personality changed. And he spent years living this way. He lived with his mother when he could, but they didn't get along well. Theresa slept with a lot of Josh's friends during this time, and it became a gross hangout because Theresa was so easy to sleep with. And she was miserable. She talked about killing herself all the time. This was what Melissa in my class was most likely having to deal with all the time. Josh was homeless much of the time. Melissa – who is Josh's youngest sister, idolized him. His other two sisters got married and went on to lead very normal lives, but Melissa and Josh were somewhat alike in personality.

Josh had some extremely odd and disturbing experiences during this time. There is rumors in Kendrick, or at least there were about twenty years ago, that some racist Nazi guy who had killed some black people in a church in Texas during the sixties or seventies and had gotten away was living in the woods around Kendrick, that he had family who had let him survive on their land, and the government suspected he was there but didn't care to catch him for whatever reason. Well, Josh lived in a cabin that was on this same land with one of his drug buddies who was related to the family. They would just stay there and play video games for hours on end. They saw signs that this creepy racist guy was living out there, but they never looked into it.

One night, Josh and his friend were in the cabin, when they heard gunshots. They were high and paranoid, but they decided to go investigate. They listened and they heard and saw what looked like a guy named Cody who went to school with Josh and my sister Maria driving away. And then a few days later it came to light that a boy they went to school with had disappeared. He had been extremely stupid. Josh and his buddy never told anyone what they had seen, and Cody moved to California for a few years before returning. Here is what happened. Cody had been attempting to be a drug pusher for some big guys from Spokane. He had given this dumb kid ten thousand dollars worth of drugs to sell, and this dumb kid had decided to take all the drugs himself. Cody risked being injured or killed if he didn't take action, so he killed this poor fool instead, and then fled to California. A lot of people in Kendrick knew what had happened – word did get out. But there was no direct evidence and a body was never found. Josh and his pal did hunt for the body out in those woods. They could smell it, but they could never find it.

I think it was weird that Josh didn't turn it in. I guess there is a good chance the cops would have botched it anyway. As it was, nobody seemed to care this teenage boy went missing. His family didn't care. The town didn't care. It reminded me of the movie 'River's Edge' sort of, only there wasn't a body. I asked Roxanne about this guy's disappearance years later. She was even friends with this person, but as soon as he went missing and nobody immediately found him, there wasn't any more talk about him. It's like he never existed. And it freaks me out, not only the reminder of how fragile our existences are, but how narrow minded humans can be. There is a strange cruelty to it. And I guess it happened around the same time that Chuck Palahniuk's dad got murdered in the same area, in an entirely unrelated set of circumstances, and what my bus driver in elementary school got in trouble for. There was a lot of murder in the 90's in Kendrick, and people forgot about most of it rather quickly – which, you would think they would be remembering this stuff for years considering how boring it is in Kendrick Idaho but no, they bury the real stuff – it becomes whispered legend and perhaps a few people retain a memory about it, but most people pretend it never happened.

Josh from there ended up moving in with this chemist in a small town called Troy that is in between Kendrick and Moscow. Josh and this other friend of his lied and claimed they knew more about science than they did – though Josh did know enough from his own curious endeavors and reading to trick this guy. The guy let them both live there for free in exchange for them helping him set up a laboratory, which never ended up happening. Josh and his friend did meth all day of course, and this guy more or less just wanted company I think. But after awhile, this man ended up being very creepy. He started revealing more and more to Josh and his friend about his interests. Eventually, it became apparent what this guy was into. On the black market, there are women in impoverished and hopeless situations, younger women generally – and men I assume as well, who end up being either diagnosed with a terminal illness, or their circumstances are so dire and hopeless they don't care if they live or die. And they sell themselves to be tortured to death for snuff films which rich and disturbed individuals buy on the black market, and sometimes they sell up their flesh to be eaten, or their bodies to be used as decorative art photographs. In any case, this guy was into that. He was into the photography, but he spent a wild amount of money to have these nudes taken of dead women who had terminal illnesses and had given their lives up for a little money to give to their family after their death.

Josh suspected this guy was into buying human flesh from these same women as well. He was particular about these steaks that he insisted Josh and his buddy try. They ate with him a few times, not realizing the implications or knowing anything. But eventually they caught on. There were certain key things that were said in conversation that made it all seem real. This guy was sexually gratified by buying nude pictures of these women and then eating parts of them. So Josh and his friend left one night without explanation. I asked Josh why he didn't turn this guy in or say something to authorities. Josh shrugged. He was high. He was definitely bothered, but it was hard to truly care about anything but the next fix. Plus, small town cops wouldn't have believed him.

Josh ended up living in a tent behind his mother's house. And this is where he met Whitney and Zack, through Melissa. And from there, after Whitney pursued him for a year and a half, he finally caved in and started dating her. And Zack was dating Melissa (and of course secretly messing some former preteen version of me's life up by telling her he loved her over one hundred times a day). Whitney cheated on Josh over thirty times in the course of their relationship, and had thirty proper boyfriends in between dating Josh. It was at times ambiguous if they were dating or not, and everyone around them questioned what 'stage' they were in. I think it was even more strange when their mom and dad decided to start dating and marry while their children were together. The whole family was really very strange. In a way, I had to say that they had a strangeness that made certain traits of my own family seem normal. And on top of this, it seemed reckless that Josh would put himself through dating Whitney through all this. Josh was obsessed with Whitney, it was an obsession I was sort of curious about.

As I was told, when Whitney and him had started dating, he had been sleeping in his own bedroom and had been awoken with Whitney, hysterically crying in his doorway. It was alarming. She looked at him, and she said 'JOSH! I AM SICK IN THE HEAD! I WILLDO FUCKED UP HORRIBLE THINGS TO YOU! I WILL DESTROY YOU. BUT YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME EVEN WHEN I DO THESE THINGS!! YOU HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF ME NO MATTER WHAT JOSHUA!! YOU HAVE TO PROMISE YOU WILL BE WITH ME FOREVER!' and Josh agreed to it. I guess it was alarming. Maybe Josh didn't see anything else in his life worth living for. In any case, he did everything in his power to maybe believe that there was a version of Whitney under the layers who was self aware and appreciated his resolution to stay by her side through thick and thin. For Josh I think it was like Eternal Sunshine For the Spotless Mind. But their relationship crippled the both of them – made them both manipulative. It made them dependent on strange and disturbing things that the other person possessed. Neither Josh nor Whitney had normal requirements in a relationship.

I heard more about the details of Josh and Whitney's relationship later on, but that was where the story mostly ended that night. Josh had gotten clean after three more years of on and off meth use. He eventually had nowhere to go – and couldn't hold a job for very long – but had quite a few over the course of a few years. He lost his mind after Whitney cheated on him yet again. He attempted to commit suicide, and was put into a mental institution for a month. All I was told at the time was that he was diagnosed with Bipolar 2. When he was released he hitchhiked to Lewiston. He was staying with Randy and his mom temporarily, trying to get his life on track – who had just gotten married, and he was watching this cable guy climb the poles and work outside. He went out and talked to this cable guy about the job. As it turned out, a cable man had just died in an accident, and there was an opening. Josh would have to pass a bunch of tests and classes, but he stood a good chance of getting the job. It was the kind of thing he could do very well at. So he set himself down and applied himself in a few weeks time and he got the job. He was a cableman. It gave him money, and the incentive to get an apartment, and clean up. He quit using drugs – only drinking on weekends, a family habit – and maybe smoking weed a few times a year if he felt he could get away with it. And all his old friends stopped hanging out with him.

And his relationship with Whitney hadn't been working anymore as it had. There had once been an unhealthy symbiosis in their unhealthy relationship. They splitting up and coming together didn't excite either one of them anymore. Josh was beginning to get to a point where he wanted something more real, and Whitney didn't feel like she possessed Josh like she had. She didn't want to be his girlfriend anymore, but they were both trying to convince themselves they were still playing this game with one another when it was clear that neither one of them even cared anymore. They had broken their own innocence and each other for cheap thrills and now what was left was what Sarah, Allison and I had all stumbled into. All because Zack had fulfilled 'the prophesy' of returning to my old home.

We had to get back. It was late by the time Josh finished his life story. On the way home, my heart hurt like it never had before. I felt understood in a way I hadn't realized I could be understood. I wanted to tell Josh at times that what he was saying linked up with my life in certain ways, but it would have seemed crazy to say anything. I felt like I understood Josh. I wouldn't go so far as to say I felt comfortable calling him a friend just yet, but I had honestly never been so drawn in and felt so personally close to someone so intimately and so immediately before. It's like, there is a loneliness you get when you are very young, five or six. It comes from the realization of mortality and the ending of everything. I think a lot of children get it. You feel your aloneness in your own perceptions, in an indifferent universe. And suddenly, I felt this knowing sense that in some form I had not been quite so alone. I was sitting in the back seat as we drove back to Lewiston that night, and I started crying. And I didn't why.

PART 99 - https://tinyurl.com/y8afyex7

PART 98 - https://tinyurl.com/y7pjvn95

PART 97 - https://tinyurl.com/ybvlfusf

PART 96 - https://tinyurl.com/y8cm6pdy

PART 95 - https://tinyurl.com/ybxq2o5j

PART 94 - https://tinyurl.com/y8k7mwq4

PART 93 - https://tinyurl.com/yc8mae7e

PART 92 - https://tinyurl.com/yb7bwsuw

PART 91 - https://tinyurl.com/yar8e8rp

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-90 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far).

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-90

#text #life story #writing #long text