Hardship

The path of Man.

The path of the dreamer.

There is no truth in our word save death. Death, absolute, glorious, to be revered. But Man makes light of death. Even I, who has suffered at death's hands, at the hands of Fate, makes light of the grand occlusion.

Death has made me what I am. It took from me everything. It is now 2011. Much time has passed since the Age of Shadow began, in 2006. I lost everything. I lost my life, I lost my dreams, I lost my will. All that I once was, all that I sought to become, all that I had fought for, crumbled to ruin.

For the next years I would suffer eternally. Although I had always been depressed, 2006 was the apex of destruction. So I have told you before... so I shall not recite. But you also know well that since then I have decayed eternally. That the ruin of my world has remained trapped in time, damned to forever be feasted upon by the carrion whores of my last fragments of sanity.

Yes... to forever suffer until death at long last takes me, as well. A conclusion I have longed for since my creation, for I am a mistake of nature, an error in the code. Yet death would not be so kind to part me from madness. No. And I would not be so strong as to end the cycle myself. Frailty. Frailty and stupidity.

The verdict is in - prescription drugs are wholly and utterly useless. The Canadian Health is wholly and utterly useless. I am, as I've always been, on my own to conquer an impossible demon. I am Gandalf facing off the Balrog, without a magical sword or giant stick to fend off the evil. I stand alone against the horrors of reality.

Reality, who cares not for great men or for beggars, tears into all who dare gaze at its broken husk. Men who are worse off than I will soon die and be forgotten this very hour. No magical fairy from the land of chainmail bikinis descends to save them from the horrors of life, just as nothing will save me. I, too, shall soon die and be forgotten.

These have been years of great hardship. A great sadness looms over us, eclipsing us in the shadow of a dead world, a dead future. At the dawn of 2010 I thought I had the strength to fight on, the strength to complete my life's work. I did not. I still do not.

December of 2010 has been the darkest hour of the darkest year. Yet it is not sadness that swells in my heart this hour, but rage.

Every waking hour, every hour I spend fighting for a future that does not exist, is an hour I'll never get back. An hour I could have spent getting drink or wasted off my ass or sleeping with cheap blondes. It's what everyone else does. Why not me? It's not what I am. But my time, my time is not any better spent. I keep doing equally mundane, stupid things that get me absolutely nothing. I wake up feeling worse than some putz who drank fifteen too many beers the night before... covered in sweat, terrified of the darkness and the shadows, reliving my most horrific hours again and again and again!

No, there is no secret, hidden story of success and triumph to be stolen from between the lines. This is not a story befitting of fantasy and fiction. This is reality. Life fucks you in the ass. It doesn't say hello, it doesn't say good-bye, it walks up when you're not looking and rams a thick juicy cock into your backside. That's life. It's got your number, it's got your keys, and it's got a noose with your name on it. Gender, skin color, sexual preference, line of work, don't matter who you are or what you do, you're not exempt from life.

Life just hates some people more than others.

I am never running in my dreams. I'm the one doing the chasing. I'm the Destroyer. I am the Devil. I am the facet of evil that people, mortals, are trying to conquer, I'm the force of vengeance. But the fight never ends. The hunger, the hatred, the burning adrenaline never dies. I'll go to sleep soon after this post. The fight will begin anew. I won't win. I won't lose. The fight never ends. What am I fighting for? Who knows, really...

Have you ever been angry? Sure you have! Mother broke your xbox, Girlfriend pulled out your modem when you were about to 3-0 for max e-dick juice, Professor called you a dumbshit, stupid white kid cut you off when you were 3/4 hour late to work, co-worker puked on you when you were trying to hit on secretary, ect...

Imagine the greatest moment of rage in your life. Isolate the burning fury in your heart, the moment between losing control and the moment between acknowledging you are extremely angry. That moment where your senses fade to nothing, when you lose yourself, just stop giving a shit. The moment before breaking...

Now imagine this moment. Picture it, breathe it.

Trap yourself in it. It is now your prison. It burns with intensity, but never sets you free. Never sets you free. You cannot pull out. You cannot go further in. Your fat ass is stuck in the doorway. Try as you may, every technique, every trick, nothing gets you free. The anger boils and bubbles, melting away your sanity, but leaving you whole enough to feel yourself being ripped apart by its power.

Yes.

Now, live like this. Day in. Day out. Weeks. Months. Years.

All your waking life.

You think you'll get used to it. But you don't. You can't. That would insinuate you have control. You don't have control. You are pissed off, just fucked right off. You've always been that way. Always will be. What about? Everything. Anything.

You've snapped before. Every barrier breaks. But you weren't set free. You can't set yourself free. You simply find more barriers.

Yes... perhaps now you can picture a tiny facet of my existence. The will to hate. The hate of will. Boundless, forever, for all eternity...

Everyone gets angry. Everyone gets mad. Everyone holds a grudge. Either against that professor, or Jaedong or Flash for knocking out your favorite player, everyone knows the feeling.

The dying worlds cannot truly die. The dead worlds can never rest. The hatred burns so hot... burns forever. I cannot let them rest. I cannot let them go. I will never be able to.

Boundless. Boundless hatred.

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You are not climbing back up the stairs to heaven. You're not scaling an old mountain. You're not even on the same fucking mountain! You are lost... you are so lost that you wouldn't recognize the correct path even if you fell face-first into it.

I have a life lesson for you. Here it is;

You're fucked.

Yep, there you have it! Well, maybe you aren't quite as fucked as me because, as the Fates so have it, you're probably normal. Maybe, maybe not. They call it "normal" for a reason. Greasy nerd with inch-thick glasses? Yep, you're normal. Burly jock with blonds at either bicep? Still normal, bro. Skinny Mexican guy trying to break into an unfamiliar white boy school? Still normal, amigo.

But what makes you normal? It can't be the length of my penis, can it? No. It is your ability to process information correctly. A key, defining attribute of individuals with autism and other related disabilities is a skewed mechanic of the ability to process information.

Here's an extremely bad out of context example.

See, when I see a stack of Mutalisks, I think, "ooh it's time to make Ravens!" instead of Joe who's not even going to make a single Starport unit.

But between Joe and I there are many differences in information processing that are far more sinister, far more potent. For example, I cannot learn. It's nigh-impossible. I can read and perform a tutorial for any given subject and learn absolutely nothing and be completely inable to perform the material elsewhere. Surely you've been watching my Darksiders LP on youtube and see me fuck up horribly on otherwise very standard and easy puzzles. I'm not a puzzles guy, and it shows. I cannot process the information properly. It's always the simple stuff that gets me. Then I get very mad and start screaming. It's why I still have 1260 subscribers despite the fact I regularly make a total idiot of myself.

Utub

1260 subscribers. Okay, most of those are from the sc2 beta era and haven't logged into youtube for half a year. But I've got a gang. A cult. A fangirl squad. It's the only reason why I kept at it. Then, just a few days ago, I realized something.

I've been pumping out 1920x1200 videos non-stop for most of 2010. I am this close to 900 uploads. Not just sc2, but Darksiders, voice acting, that AO video... oh, here, just a glance.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=177004

It's been a lot of work but somehow I've been able to keep up with it. The video views remain fairly tiny, especially in comparison to the subscriber #, but that's just dandy.

The key thing about these casts is they require moodswings. No moodswing, no cast. Without moodswings I am too depressed, too angry, to even consider launching SC2 or anything else. I most often don't even encode or upload anything, because I just don't care. More than thrice I've considered just nuking the utub channel or putting a sledgehammer through my tower. The whole subscriber thing going down and not up bothers me a lot more than it should. I'm anal like that. I guess people were expecting another Husky. Ho ho! Were they wrong!

I could regularly produce content like this 7-8 years ago. Now it requires a one-in-a-million moodswing to do this.

Someone sends me an entertaining replay. I add it to my list. I eventually get to casting it. The quality of the cast depends if it's humorous (like that one), or if my moodswing lasts long enough. Moodswings tend to end very fast. Then I get bored. Because I find sc2 extremely uninteresting, I need unique and entertaining replays to keep the uploads coming. There's an astounding lack of FFA replays that are any good out there.

Dunno. Maybe people want more of the same. Maybe people want something unique. I'll keep going to HotS and then re-evaluate my time with sc2. I'm sure people will want another inane Brutal playthrough of the campaign like I did with the original... maybe this time I'll actually play like my skill level! But probably not.

I said I wouldn't get monetarily involved in this work but I lied. I just ordered another 2tb drive for recording, and bought a 1.5tb external to back up everything from an old 120gb which is the one being replaced. I'm looking at buying a Black Magic Intensity Pro, if I can find a good Canadian retailer, to do LP's of console games.

I don't accept donations. I do what I do because at the time I felt it was a good idea, and because I feel the content is humorous. My casts range from super Day9-like analytical to the above; just random BS because someone sent me a replay he wasn't at all serious about. I figure that most people who watch my casts are smart enough that I don't need to incessantly recite basic stuff (instead for GET RAVENS because making Ravens is an extremely useful talent toi have), even though the games I cast tend to be medium to low level. To be honest, I find most pro games very uninteresting.

Yet casting and stuff is just off-time, during moodswings. I spend the rest of the day doing utterly nothing. I can't write, too depressed. Can't learn anything new, so no point worrying about modding. Can't focus, so I can't model anything I want to model (namely architecture). Too stupid to figure out how to get past it all.

Now yet another year is dawning upon us. I'm 23 years old. I'm still just a kid, but at the same time, I'm ancient. I near the end of my natural life. Soon the madness will be strong enough that I won't even be able to make these depressing blogs anymore. I won't even be able to talk at all, as opposed to just constantly stumbling over my speech and losing myself. Every day I feel myself drifting that much further away. It's fucking terrifying. But there's nothing I can do, so I've learned to just accept it.

During December I've been so unbearably pissed off that I simply don't even know where to direct my energy. I need to do something. I want to write, I want to work on the UDK project, I want to do all these things but I can't do them. That's the story of my life, I guess. This just makes me more and more pissed off, along with so many other things. Then I just get depressed again, because nothing fucking happens ever.

No, believe me, you can't solve it with armchair psychology. And you can't solve it with professional psychiatry, either. If you want to call Canada professional, anyways. I wouldn't. A year and a half of utterly nothing... complete fucking waste of time. Makes me mad, bro. Me mad.

At the dawn of 2010 I swore to finish my fucking novel. Sure got far in that, yeah! Absolutely fucking ridiculous how long that stupid thing has been going nowhere. Should have been finished years ago, bro. Years.

But we know all of this already, don't we? The cycle never ends, you see. Never, ever ends. Always spinning, like the spinners on a pimp mobile. Always spinning. Spinners go 'round and 'round...

BLARGH

If you asked me what the meaning of life was I'd tell you, "it's to suffer."

Life is to suffer. That's life. Then you die. Then, everything you do is forgotten a day later because you're fucking nobody. You achieved nothing in your time here, you're miserable, you're a skilless newbie and a talentless neanderthal.

Yep. That's the meaning of life. Stop soul searching, bro, you gettin' nowhere.

So what the fuck is the point of it all? Well, you see, that's the point - there is no point! So why haven't I fallen on my own sword yet, then? Don't know. I ask myself that question each and every single morning.

I'm sorry, there's no exaggerating to be had, no chuckles to be found. In this hour I know the age of shadow will grow ever stronger. That which sucked is about to suck harder. A man's every dream, neh? Not this, though. This is the kind of sucking that rips off your skin, your flesh, and then your marrow. At first you think, "Oh, it's not so bad", then it actually starts and you realize that life is in fact out to rip out your spine and choke you with it.

The fifth year dawns upon us. The fifth age of darkness and shadow. So cliche it is, so silly to bear, so unimaginable to conceive: an age of everlasting shadow to eclipse an entire lifetime of a man. Yet here we stand, lost in such a darkness... this is no fairytale. This is no nightmare. There are many out there, many worse of than I. Are they granted reprieve? Nay. They suffer, and then they die. No one mourns their loss, no one fights to better their world. Just as none shall mourn our loss, just as none can fight to better our world.

Where did it all go wrong? Where did it all shatter to nothingness? No, this is the wrong way to think.

Never once did I hold the perfect future in my hands only to lose it. I held a potential for a future. But potential is a factor that is not a true factor. It is not calculated by Fate. Potential means nothing unless you possess the capacity to realize that potential. Fuel without an engine, so to say. I never possessed that capacity. Potential there was, but there's potential for deeds in any man outside of his capacity. He will likely never realize them. I was simply given a gift of insight. Insight that could do nothing to curb the destructive spiral into madness. A spiral many men have faced, and many more will face, and be equally damned by. Natural selection, Darwin's law. Nature is in motion, a force boundless and untouchable by our hands.

All that I have ever posted here, all that I have ever spoken of, are but fragments of shattered dreams. Dreams lost to the four winds, dreams that will remain but dreams. Dreams I can scarcely remember. In these days I breathe a boundless sorrow... a sorrow for the days passed, the days lost, the lives lost, the blood and the fear...

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Confiding in our dreams we sought to forge worlds beyond worlds, simply to escape this one. I have always despised the Earth and all it represents... I have always despised myself and what I represent.

No man is free. No man has the right to call himself free. Taboos, social fads, peer pressure, the harmonious addiction of evolutionary copy-cat traits. I see them... they are bright bands in the flow of Motion. Everyone has them. Even I.

The cycle cannot be undone, even though I see it in motion with my very eyes! Brilliant bands of light, cast against a sea of shadow... churning, vibrant, boundless. The impression of Corruption is forever present here. Forever present.

Motion, sound, crashing waves of impression against a sea of rigid, primitive thinking. Unwilling to change, but shaped over time by its struggle no less. I see it... I see in my eyes, feel it in my heart. Change that I had been afraid of for so long... change at least.

The spiral to darkness insinuates that, at one point, I had something to fall from. Yet when I look back, back into the glorious past, I see that there was no such pinnacle. No single moment where I could say I was content. At the time the looming shadow was distant, but it was not without influence. There had always been a shadow. Always a tinge of despair and madness. I've seen it... my documents a decade old speak of foretelling a time of despair and sadness. It is because I know that all things are mortal, even time.

Time is not constant. No. It is modular, phasic. Every moment has its shades, has its character.

The darkness... the darkness is constant. Yes. Because darkness is absolute.

Absolute.

Between breaths there are moments of silence. What if the breaths are each more painful than the last, and the silence is an agonizing roar of incomprehensible nonsense? What if the very pained act of breathing is your struggle to cling to your sanity, and that your hatred for the noise burns so hot you can no longer breathe? What happens when you lose sight of it all, forget to breathe, forget the noise, drift away from cohesion and logic...

Yes... you become like I have become.

You cling to the memories of what you once were... cling to the only part of yourself you have left. You gorge upon these memories, you try to bring back the old world. But, it's futile. The constant has evolved. The Motion has evolved. You... are not what you once were. You are a shadow, boundless in depravity. You have lost your way, and will never find your way back.

A new path must be forged.

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Darkness, empowering, absolute. Without name, reason, or body. Darkness.

Every time I close my eyes entire worlds take shape. This is what I am, this is what I do; I am a dreamer. A creature bound to the will to create. An entity whose every breath brings life to the forge within mind, and with every breath, the desire to bring more life yet. These emotions, these experiences cannot be ignored. They will drive you mad if you try to ignore them. It is simply what I am. I have tried time and time again to change my path, to reshape my world, to bring peace and Silence to the cathedrals of ebon. But, no. Just as I cannot defeat the demons, just as I cannot defeat the corruption, I cannot rewrite what I am.

No.

Every defeat, every failure, every moment I try to step forward and fall flat on my ass, it all hurts. The hurt, the pain, is unimaginable. Time and time again, one would think you'd grow a thicker skin, perhaps a pair of hardened balls, and withstand these defeats, to fight for that one chance... no. You see, there is no chance. The equation does not change over time. The result is always the same. There shall always be failure. 42+42 does not quite equal 69. You can't look at it from a different angle and come up with 69. You have to change the equation, or change the factors.

Change.

Such cannot occur. We are trapped in time. We are boundless. There is no progression, and the only evolution to occur is destructive. I've lost myself... lost my way. So many years have passed, so much has been lost. No forgiveness.

Stop caring.

So we tried. So we fought without purpose. Nothing became of it. Emptiness, sorrow, misery. 2010, a ruin. Nothingness. Meaningless. The hunger burns hotter yet.

I was born hungry. I will die hungry. The hunger for sustenance, like any other. Yet incapable of being sated. Driven mad already, the hunger burns hotter yet! No freedom. No respite. Only hunger. Pain, pain, pain! The mind reels, the hunger burns deeper. Every... moment... lost in time. Lost in meaning.

Nothing means anything anymore. Not words, not sound, not smell not sight... nothing.

A centrifuge of madness! Madness, he says! What use is defining madness with words? None. Yet man cannot communicate in thought... sound is the closest, yet even in sound our experiences are lost in translation! Only in words... boundless! Boundless in frailty! Powerless is more like it, neh?

Winter fucking sucked. Nothing came out of it. No great push forward, no success stories, nothing. There was silence... and in silence we found misery once more. To experience a new world of sadness and despair yet untold! Marvelous, neh? No words to describe the anguish. No words to describe the longing of a new world. To breathe once more...

No man is free because man cannot define freedom. Cannot fight for a future because there is no future to fight for. The moment! Fight for the moment. Fight for peace... fight for substance. Yes. There is no God, no salvation, no glory at the end of the valley of shadow. Only cliffs of madness! MADNESS! AHAHAHAHA!!

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Trace your eyes across the edges and flats, to form blueprints of logic and cohesion, to quantify, to comprehend, yet know your science and your logic are meaningless in the face of corruption...

Corruption. What is Corruption? What does it mean?

Corruption, to become distorted in ways you cannot control. To lose sensation of parts of oneself, to become corrupt by outside influence... to become lost and without reason. Corruption, quantified by actions and thoughts uncontrollable and outside the machinations of the consciousness. Corruption! Unable to focus, unable to concentrate, unable to learn, unable to evolve or fight... unable to dream.

Corruption. The death of oneself.

Death. Death... my old friend. Yes... friend. He who took from me everything. He who I loathe. Death. The end of substance. A substance I never had to begin with. Death, that man trivializes so... that I trivialize so. To withhold the pain. To forget the fears, the blood, the sadness... Death.

I cannot unsee Death. It circulates through the air. A light, a glimmering light, insignificant to the glance but infinite in depth. Maddening. Death, madness, sleeping together! Whores. Whores and faggots.

Is there a point to any of this, you wonder? No, there is no point. That is the point. See?

Reality.

Stop thinking "Bad things don't happen to good people". Detach yourself from the concept that "That can't happen to me". Because then you wake up and look in the mirror and suddenly realized how utterly fucked you are. That you have no shred of humanity left in you, no hope of a better future, and that you're staring death in the face.

Life is precious. You never know what you're losing until you lose it. When you lose fundamental things like the ability to fucking improve, you suddenly realize that you've got nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, and you're stuck with an existence of misery from hereon until you die from a heart attack or get shanked.

Every day you think it's going to get better. That things will improve. That not everything is so bad. But nothing ever gets better. Nothing improves. Yes, it is that bad. When you spend an entire decade seeking a revenue of escape, a tactic to employ, and all roads lead to desolation, you know then that there is no point in trying to fight it any more. If you're going to fight for something, fight for your godsdamned dreams.

You are damned. Of that there is no argument. But the worlds within... they may yet breathe, if for but a moment.

2011 will come, in all its glory and all its horror. I will hate it with all my hearts. It will rip my teeth out of my pancreas and it will fucking suck. But I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't going to fight it.

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FUUUSIONNNNNN HAAAAAAAA

I'm not a smart man; don't envy me.
I'm not a legend; don't revere me.

I'm a fool. I'm a coward. I'm a retard.

I ain't proud of it one bit.

But that's life.

Hardship

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