I have this second blog on LJ that I was going to use for so much. In the end I never did do anything with it. That makes me sad in a way.

Actually it is because of my feelings and emotions that I have come here. I find that I cannot talk about what is going on inside my head and heart but I can type about it, letting it escape from inside me without any real throttle or checking. I cna just start typing with my eyes closed and it all comes out.

I am 32, older then my parents were when I was born and I'm still so unsure of everything around me. The only move I know I did right was to marry Jen. Almost everything else in my life I feel like it could have gone differently.

Right now my head is a mess because I can't stop thinking about what I discovered last night. It actually brings me to tears and it is eating me up.

Jen asked me how serious I was about naming my first born male child John as a first name. And out of ten I put it at a nine, but I also told her I wouldn't fight for it to be the case. She then asked me why I was so serious about doing that. After all I have no real attachment to my family. The turth? When I reached into my own head, sitting there at 10:30pm, cut me up.

I have only three sets of happy memories of my childhood before junior high. Moments when I was with my dog. Every young boy needs a dog I think, someone to be with them when they are kicked outside or to eat their veggies and all that.

Moments when I was able to become important because I was John Ross. The phone calls where they would ask to speak to John Ross, I could honestly say 'that's me.' and talk to that poor telemarketer or other people because I was John Ross.

And finally moments when I was able to escape from reality and everything around me. Under my bed with my dog reading a comic book by flashlight. (And when I mean under my bed I mean resting on a hammick strung between the captain's bed drawers and the back of the bed. Off the floor so I couldn't be seen if you looked under the bed and with the drawer pulled back on. It was a space a little bigger then my seven year old self. Enough space for comic books, flash light, treats and a dog. I was so happy away from everything.)

I don't know why I was so unhappy the rest of the time or how come thinking about it now is causing me to tear up. I found myself fighting back the tears till midnight when I finally fell asleep last night, waking up twice for a good fifteen minutes each and still holding it back. This morning after Jen left and before I started this I did open the floodgates. And now, I still have hot tears running down my face.

This must be why shrinks are paid so much money. It is a form of insurance for the patient. If I were to tell someone this for free or over a beer I would understand them talking about it with someone else. But If I'm paying 150$ an hour plus to tell someone that thinking about my childhood brings me to tears I'm going to assume that my money also buys their silence.

Ha. Of course I find my relase by typing it out into the world wide web. Adding it to the thousands of pages of nonsense and garbage that exist out there and trusting that it will be lost in the shuffle. I don't know why I feel better typing it out when I cannot talk about it. I already fear for the day as it is now just past eight and I haven't started on what I should do.

I need to focus, to become focused. I need to fill up the hollow part of my soul and the emptiness I feel inside of me with purpose and direction. I have to stay away from this sadness and just make sure I do not bring this to the next generation.

I can type this and I know I'll rail against myself if I fail to carry it out. I just wish I also knew that I could make it happen.

I don't even read this livejournal account anymore. My stray dark sided blog.

I came up the stairs to it with the plan of dropping all my venom, bile and rage here and allowing my other journal to be nicer. Not that I wouldn't vent and piss on it as well, but this one I was planning to just let go.

Something changed in the last 60 seconds and I think that something is me.

I hate to let go. I really do, for all that I seem to go lose cannon ranting I have at least a track and a goal of my ranting. I know where I want to get the trainwreck to land even if I'm not sure how it's going to get there.

Parties, as I understand them, are things were people allow themselves to let go. That will never be me.

I feel that I can't talk about these dark things inside me because talking gives them access which gives them ways to overcome me and to crush me. I hold onto them instead. I fight them. I Control them.

I misted up over todays Penny-arcade. the one about the cat. I hated that loss of control.

First up, adding a character to the stabe for my webcomic..

Bobbi, the paranormal detective with a cybernetic arm
Harvest, a paranormal creature acts as a eye in the sky for police force other odd jobs
Karl, the troubleshooter who is clueless and innocent
and new (and maybe to stay)
Boris Igotajob, Record keeper for the paranormal team -- The clues for this guy are that he got the job because his grandfather leaned on him to do try for it.
The villians of the piece will venerate anyone who lives through a successful (or unsuccessful) mission as long as their children get to work for the company. Boris will be the grandson of one of the villians, who will be the mole for the villians as the heroes who defeat them keep better notes then the crazy madmen who build/summon whatever it is that the heroes defeat.

Yeah, including him is really for the joke, but I think it gives me a starting point for the character, some more scenes to build the framework of the story around... Bobbi flashback to her first battle against them, Harvest being summoned by them and Boris leaking information and how the three of our main heroes deal with it.

Karl's training/history as a ninja will also add to the story.

Yeah... I think that's a plan.

Other thoughts were what you could do to make the Spyhunter movie actually interesting.

One, calling the tech who built the car 'Quarters' (from quarterman, Al -- the eternal warrior) and offhand refers to 'needing more quarters' or that will take more quarters then I've got... etc.

The hero damaging, abusing and otherwise treating the car like garbage... Having it spin the wheels so fast the car 'hydroplanes' in a humage to the water mission.

The heroine rides in the passenger seat... has to use her hand mirror because some gadget needs the passenger side mirror to work so she has to lean out the window...

Driving up in the hydrocar to an embassy and getting out of the car, telling the heroine not to worry, the valvey will park the car.

I don't think it's enough for a full movie yet, but it might be enough for a handful of webcomics on the theme 'Scenes that you will never see in the cancelled spyhunter movie.'

Which is a good idea as I don't really have an idea for my webcomic in deep context... I want to tell Karl, bobbi and harvest's story... each one a little different, but each one can also be linked together. I'm not quite there yet, but by adding a 'supervillian' that took out scorpion as they were rivals (effecting Karl and later hiring him through the mob), being part of the supernatural threat that Bobbi is working to drive out of her city and being the ones that summoned harvest, because she can, through her mastery of chess, control whole worlds...

I think I can shape all of this into a overall arc, craft scenes and moments that move the whole world... shape and craft and twist and turn into an overall Thurst and story worth reading.

I can almost taste it now... I think that I will need to work out more on the threat that binds them all together, give it as much if not more personally and existance then the heros have... Limit myself to the story that has a resultion. Make sure that all goes from being a cloud of thoughts into one piece of fiction I'm actually proud of.

Yeah.

I can feel it in my mind, the shape of it, the weight on it... I can do this. This is within my reach. I just wish I could spent my days crafting it and shaping it. Spending a couple of days or weeks making sure I knew where the story was going to end up and then crafting the goal and the path.

My weekend will be spent on this... The sunday I think I'll do more practice, more buildup before I launch into my Karl/Bobbi/Harvest (I do have the first six scripted and even laid out, but I've had them scripted for almost six years now)

Having two livejournals is interesting. Only a handful of people know of this journal, and even they don't check it unless I send a message to them I believe. Yet, I'm just as open in both... This one I use sometimes for darker thoughts, I still like to think out loud as it were like this... Organizing my thoughts by having them outside of my head (it gets tooo crowded in there, with mean john, happy john, artist john, manic depressive john, bitter and twisted john, extra bitter 'realist' john)... Outside of my head all of those voices still talk at me, but I can take the information/statement/thought back into the head later and re-attack it afresh...

Other thougths, like the time-travel story below, I had completely forgotten about it. Arthur was saying about how it wasn't going to work to well, and he's right. Not because he said it wouldn't work as the writers have very little to do with the end movie but still... it wouldn't work as well looking back at it because the idea was very shallow indeed... I might even be able to make it punch enough to be six panels. It would take more crafting and shaping them I'm known for, but I want start... Much like my sketching... I'm famous (in my own head) for working fast... I want to start working clean. I want to turn to vector illrustations for the clean lines... Pencil roughs and then clean line outlines. In my head (even more stuff in there) it would work wonderfully... I crave a vector program for inking. I am forcing, and forcing is the word, myself to be restricted to programs I own the rights too. So I can get into the practice of making art and images that I can turn around and sell without legal issues. Thus is my goal, so I will make it be.

But I am also very spoiled. I have three vector programs, Illrustrator, Flash and Manga studio... All of which were nice and fun to use. Only I don't own the rights to the first two and the third isn't getting along with my tablet. I downloaded a free one called inkscape but I haven't tried it with my tablet it. It isn't as good or as clean as the others... but free. So I would own whatever I create it in.

Webcomic idea:
Huh, a quad-core chip is only 210$... And the dual processor motherboard is only 160.

I’m going to have to be nice to my wife for a while.

And only use the free coffee at work for lunches.

Pigeon would taste ok if boiled in the free green, right?

----------------------------

Here we are again. My oldest foe.

The Blank Page

Yuppers, the old nothing.



Blast! You win again you most evil bastard.

Ah, I can never remain mad at you. Come here you.

-------------------------------

It don’t work none.

Did it ever work correctly?
It flash really perdy out of the box.

I can get it to flash randomly if you like, but it will never again be a data store cabinet for your Time Capsule Ap.
That’s all right then.

I just likes to watch the flashing. It done make me feel good.

I have to get this story down before I lose the threads of it...
Already they are slipping away...

Page 1 Frame 1
LJ-entry -- Bold text -- Pissing on my Childhood.
regular text below that -- I swear that if they make one more crappy movie about a franchise from my childhood I'll invent time travel just to stop them from ever making it happen.

Frame 2
Nerd, looking like me, sitting at a computer as ELECTRONIC VOICE offscreen says: Today Hollywood is rocked by a series of bizarre murders.

Frame 3
TV -- inside news anchor with picture of mansion with police tape behind him in corner
Text: Michael Bay was found murdered today in his study. He was found stabbed multiple times with a blue-ray disc of the Matlock animated movie.

Frame 4
Nerd looking worried at his post
Text off screen continues: Other reports are just coming in of writers being mugged off their picket lines, scripts and reviews of movies forcablity inserted into orafaces.

Frame 5
LJ page again
1 comment to entry
-- border sound effect 'click'

Frame 6
Yeah, I agree that it is the only answer.
Anonymous.

----

Shoot lossing too much time...
I have to get the rought out

Next day the murders grow, so that young children are being killed for their oscar votes in 2025 or for starring in movies from 2024
The police appear baffled, -- with the punchline being a detective using google to search for 'bad movie writers deserve to die'

Third day, nerd on the run. Just running away as the death total hits 4000, the baldwin brothers being murdered for taking the same roll in the same movie, as a tribute to their other brother to show they can't be threatened.
Nerd up on a roof..
-- Police: Stop or we'll shoot.

Nerd: you can't stop me, don't you understand? It's already happened. I will find a way to travel in time, to kill all those people. You think I want to?

Do you think i want to Be known as the future killer?

Police: You can change, you can learn to love Pauly Shore.

Nerd: No, I'd rather die now then become one of you.

Police: Join us, surrender and we'll make sure you get the best seats in the house for every adam sandler movie.

Nerd: For that, I'm not sorry.

Leaps to death.


....

dang, it was so tragic in my head. Especially as the nerd would be remembered as a national hero, for shaping up the movie industry and teaching them what they needed to know... And that the young rookie on the force would go on to become the movie killer......

I need to polish that stone into something good... I need to clean it up and frame it out and then see where it goes.

6 panels is too long for most jokes, the beat for a webcomic joke is usually 4 panels... setup, statement, pause, punchline or statement, setup, buildup, punchline. Inquiry, statement, buildup, punchline.... Statement! Inquiry, buildup, punchline..

narbonic, a series I would love to right like tended towards: Setup, statement towards overall plot, Build-up, punchline. Each strip therefore pushed the story arc for the week or month forward at the same time it had it's own punchline. It's what I would like to have as well...

But I don't know if I could clean up this time travel story enough to get it down to 16 panels. Maybe I could get it down to 24... That could be my goal. Only a post-it note or less text for each panel too...

Yeah.
That's what I'll try later today or on the way home as time presents itself.

My otherside of livejournal.

I'm just going to use this post as a sounding board for my thoughts... I think better once I see the words that go with what I'm thinking if you know what I mean. That means this is going to be long, rambling and not overly clear.

To those that stumble upon this, I hope you understand. I think that I only have my other blog listed as a friend so I shouldn't be spaming too many people with it.
--

Fluents and Fluxions. That's what I want to call my webcomic. I want it to stand for the division of time/space. A fluxion is the point at which someone can make a choice that changes things, the fluent is the flow of time between fluxions... Thus, like in Chess, the Fluxion is the status of the board with the pieces still. The pawns, being short sighted, can only move a short way, as far as they can see. Where or even if they move is the mark of a fluxion. The fluent is the space while they are moving to their new static point. The knights, bishops and rooks are people that are blessed with far greater vision, if they could get to a point where they can use it. Most of them start so hemmed in they can't have the freedom to move. It isn't until the order of play, the logic and the flow becomes Chaotic to those watching that the strength of their vision to see through the chaos comes into play.

The metaphor is strong, it is beautiful. It should work. I see the Harvest side of my webcomic being a sports manga parody. Harvest, in her innocent way, fits the model of the average star of those shows. You know the onces, pure as the driven snow, able to succeed because of how they believe in their own abilities and the goodness of the sport. It allows them to conquer those that are corrupt, to spread the enlightenment of their beliefs to others...

Her story, by nature of being a parody, is both very easy to write and hard. I want it to stand on it's own, for those that don't know the material I'm mocking to still be able to enjoy it. (Having the odd character catch on fire to make fun of the 'burning' background is easy, but if it's the only joke it doesn't work as I want it to.) The fluents and Fluxions speach, the one she will get while she is with an ancient chess master in the park, who's final thoughts will be learned on his eventual deathbed... The key moments in that story are almost written. Actually, I want to go on to sketch them out now...

Harvest and Bobbi play a bit of chess. Harvest is winning, but Bobbi runs off because of outside events. A kindly old man takes over Bobbi's place and gives Harvest a tougher and tougher game. he is joined by another gaggle of old men. All of them talking about the style of Harvest's play.

Harvest beats the old man who took over, yet leaves before the crowd is able to gather her information. The birds eye shot of that leaving I see being of a banner declaring the world championship of chess.

It would be implied but never stated that the old man is the world champ of chess. (I think -- spoiler alert if I ever do it-- that he wouldn't be the champ or even anyone seen as 'good' at the sport. More it would be he understands and breathes the spirit of chess.)

Then events come into play, Harvest gets pulled into the seedy underground world of chess, chess with lives on the line.
---
gone

Actually, I've just taken some pain meds and I'm going to blog for 15 minutes to give them time to kick in.
--

Webcomic 1:
Bobbi:Why am I here again?

John:Because I sketched a lot of you for my animation project?

Bobbi:And Karl?
John (off screen):He's a fifteen year old Usiga Yojimbo fan fiction character.

(splash)
Bobbi (off screen):And the steam powered spaceship?
John (half font size):I wanted to be part of Starslip Crisis

Webcomic 2:
Bobbi:So what are we going to do?

John:I'm going to recycle a half dozen storylines and throw you at them.

John:One will stick.
Bobbi:And until then it will be this breaking the fourth wall humour?

John(half font size):Yes.

Webcomic 3:
Bobbi:No really, what will the plot of this comic be?

John:Well, you exist as a character from an action game.

John (voiceover): So you shall have fun adentures
John (vo):See strange sights
John (vo):And fight strange new foes

Bobbi: All while wearing less and less clothing.
John (half font size):Maybe.

Webcomic 4:
Karl:I've noticed that so far all the humour has been making fun of yourself here.

John:Yeah, it is a little harder to do surreal humour.

Karl:But that means that you are just following the sterotype that most webcomics are just boring moments from the creators life.

Karl:Are you enjoying this little dialogue with yourself?
John:I do find it helpful.

Story ideas.

That's what this journal is for, at least for me.

I think best when I'm talking out loud, but then I never remember what I've send. said. Moreover, by the time I move to write it down it's often gone or the points have shifted in my memory to better reflect the outcome I'm going for.

So I write them down. Only my writing is fairly messy and the same gramitical and spelling errors that sneak into this work are worse when I'm not even sure what the letters are to be. So this streaming of my thoughts has become my way of thinking about ideas, about stories about goals.

I need to do a webcomic.

I'm feeling my age in some ways, I've always been a dreamer, but the dreamers that succeed are those that plant themselves in the ground and go.

I haven't gone yet, as it were. I have half finished dozens of projects, sketched and roughed more dreams then some of the dull souls out there will ever have... I have started down a thousand roads, always to get lost in the corner store and the here and now.

Perhaps a team effort. I can dream and I can draw... If I can get someone to write down and plan the direction of the dream and of the drawing then I would be free just to Do it. Just to shape the direction...

many of the more successful people on the net are teams...

oh well, work is done and I must away...

I had a dream, and it was almost a complete story I want to get down the details before tehy go...

Not fully awake yet, the typing is going to suffer and ito make it worse I'm going to be typing with my eyes closed to recapture the images...

Cyberpunk. Nearish future...

Story is of a white collar worker/programer. He will have always wanted to be more then just a worker...
Has a family with a wife (married too young) and a daughter. Child is a little messed up.
Society has turned paranoid and fearful. They now have toys, Feddy Bears, that are able to protect children from thinks with keybwords. So if a parent is worried that another parent is planning to run away on a trip with the child the bear can stop...

High school friend, gets out of jail and causes troubles... Friend was known to be into excesses and trouble with social norms. Main character tells wife about the troubles, which causes misunderstandings later when he's overheard saying he misses some of the things they used to do together. (Truth is old friend is also a programmer, of the virual hacking type. But he didn't have the drive to debug basically)

The two of them work for a wacked out vet of the last gulf war. He's a little gun crazy (as are his friends) and he hunts the other characters once for fun. (with a gun loaded with 4 real bullets and then tasers -- if they can't get out of the way of four bullets they can't be any good at life) They meet sometimes at a vet hall. (also the place were the final battle starts).

Cyberspace is 3d (naturally) and uses constructs to show objects. We have robots being used for lots of things, from tahe Feddy bears to Police and bankers. (which is were the plot comes in, they are trying to hack into the robot database to control the robot guards and bankers to steal...

loosing the dream...

Plot form details...

Main character goes leech program... Limited infected lifespan so they can't be seen and found later...
aborts missing because of young child (feddy bear bot)
hacks feddybot more out of habit then planned, wife misunderstands and assumes he's breaking the incest program, gets mad over his lack of family time and then when he is there he spends all his time in the daughters room... Paranoid fear and feelings of abandonment lead to breakup...

he works with a girl, (who knows he's programming more then he says) who also knows he's unhappy at home. (she thinks that's why he's hacking the bot's too.)

everything falls apart..
Nutty vet chasing him with guns through streets, other vets going wacko based on nuts... running across vet hall with everyone and their dog going armied and returning fire (or joinning in)

spending time in backroom hacking into system, attempting to destroy leech program... fleeing to subway being chased, buying girl Feddy Bear and giving her crack on key for it.

ending up in a toystore.

Main character doesn't make it, he and gun nut eaten under a pack of feddy's, first time that we see what a feddy can do...

Themes... paranoia, fear, mistrust...

I like this rollout at least in my dreamstate...

Well, I had planned on making this my good rants blog, but I haven't been using it as such.

So instead it's going to become a dumpbox for my thoughts on my webcomic.

That I haven't started. Or at least not seriously.

What I'm hoping to do by this is clear out my head of those stray thoughts that I want to weave together into my comic and then work on them out here in the print form.

I could always just throw them into a text file at home, but the ability to use LJ to sort, date and access them from anywhere is going to win.

Grammar, spelling and logic are all going to be victums of this. Dying a horrible and bloody death upon the 'morrow.
--
I see it as three interwoven threads, mostly because each on their own isn't enough for a comic. I could either nib them in the bud for not being strong enough or I could try to strengthen them. Instead, all woven together.

Why? I don't really know. I've been thinking about doing a webcomic for years, and years and years. I did a once a month short story/sermon for the online Church of Thor, long since gone.

Oh 18 minutes until the work I'm waiting for completes, then I'll stop this, so if you have stumbled across my blog brace yourself, I'm going to type for almost all of that time and edit for none.

Thus I'll have Bobbi (last name keeps changing). Visually a long haired (two large bands and a ponytail) with a three clawed cybernetic arm on the right hand. I see her as my noir detective. Being part of a story involving a magical cult that's attempting to overthrow the city and eventually the world.

A loose cannon character, but the one with the most responsability on her plate as well. The mix shall be interesting to balance, I think. I also want her to be able to solve and keep her convictions in a court of law, so no shooting someone and planting a gun on them. Throwing a gun to them while they are still alive, and then tasering them for being armed and dangerous... Yes. The magical story itself isn't strong enough to stand on it's own feet. Bobbi is a character I have fun drawing... Those are the reasons I want to keep them.

Harvest (Harv), a flightly winge space case. But I want her to have a gift and a passion, for playing chess. (mostly because I have in my head a parody of those battle anime and she is the best out of my three characters to partake. I wasn't able to envision a new character to do it... sad but true) This is the screwball character, the one that does zing instead of zig or zag. Visually I see her with wild curly hair, backless outfits and large dove wings.

For a short bit I was drawing a comic (that never got posted) of Bob and Harv, killers for justice. Just the usual battle stuff that I would see and think isn't that cool after watching some asian martial arts. I was at the time also in a video game class and was thinking that a bob and harv video game would be cool...

Bobbi with her cybernetic arm would go tomb raidering (and repelling the 'new' dimension on the puzzle games) while Harv would be the flying over, racing sort of game aspects. Never did anythign beyond some concept work. More then what I've got here, but it wasn't handled in for marks. (I handed in a simpler workup of Bobbi, space ranger instead. -- also 3d puzzle, but with Ratchet and Clank aspects for cartoon voilence, 15 levels concepted with the puzzles and reuse of maps planned)

And Karl, my second oldest character. He's based on the ideas for character design of Usagi Yojimbo, by Stan Saki? (name is most likely wrong, not looking it up). I had been sketching him for a long time, I have some really nice coloured Gel pen work of him if I can find it. The originals are long gone but I scanned in and burnt to CD high res versions. I see him as the straight guy for the comic. The law bound and loyal character. I also have him as a ninja (yojimbo inspired remember?) who has yet to complete a shinobi mission and therefore hasn't finished school (perhaps I am projecting too much of myself into this character ;)

However, he got a job being a troubleshooter for a major corperation. That while he's on the plane for his first day gets raiding by interpol for being a international crime syndiation and shut down. All known members have a boundy put on their head and are being chased down.

(this asepct of his life is also as old as the comics... at least 5 years. I wrote most of his story on a plane back from montreal ages ago. It was a long flight.)

Not knowing this he gets to the airport to find no one waiting for him. He gets smashed on the head by Bobbi (who at the time was just a high energy person not a cop, but the cop makes more sense, if she were to see his ID badge for the evil corp but not find him on the wanted list. She would want to know why and keep him close. Thus making him room mates and being involved in his life.) The smashing on the head was to be the first comic actually. The punch line being 'This isn't a good start for the rest of my life is it?' Or similar...

Anyway, Karl would then go looking for a new job, not having removed the evilcorp position off his resume. He will eventually (based on joke material) find his way to a mob front. Through some clever dialogue and misunderstandings karl will think he's a contract worker who's job it is to terminate people. Thus he will start to clean up the rival crimal groups in the city. Bringing him to the attention of the police and full circle to bobbi. (the magical crimes will be against the Mob, so Karl will be working to help Bobbi, but perhaps not knowing it.)

Which is where I think I might have too many threads...

I don't really know.

It occured to me that I read webcomics not for the art but for the writing. So I want to right out my strips (here) and then look at them later to see if I still like them as much as I did the first time.

I really want to get into the web art community. I Know i'll not be able to quit and go at it full time, so I need to make up for that by being Funny.

Or a really good artist, but I think Funny will be easier for me.

I'm out of time and I should go back to work, so I shall. Later people.