But that's not what I want to talk about in this entry.
Today I want to take a moment to talk about my darling companions, and how they've affected my life in such an astounding way.
If you are unfamiliar with my world and my companions, you should read up on an older blog entry of mine where I've tried explaining a little bit about it - My world
As I've already mentioned, my world and my characters (I prefer to refer to them as my companions) they are everything to me. I wouldn't even be alive if it wasn't for them, cause some of them have literally saved my life when I've been on the verge of ending it - and that has happened more than once. I owe them my life, and more. They've always been there for me. When life got hard, and everything was just horrible, I could turn to them and they'd protect me. They'd help me take my mind off the bad things happening in and around me, and just focus on something good instead. It was my escape - and my salvation.
I love my world. I've always loved it, and I know I'll never stop loving it. But my darling companions are so much more to me than all of those worlds within worlds all put together. Every single one of them has made an impact on me, and has brought something to my life that I either wanted or needed, or both. But a small handful of them have done so much more for me. They've saved my life, as I've alread said, and they brought new ways of thinking, and a new way of seeing things. By seeing things from their point of view, and by listening to them and their stories, I've learned new things about my world, my companions, the actual real world I live in, and myself. Their influence have helped me shape myself, and draw a proper map of who I am. I dare say that I know myself better than most people, purely because they've helped me see myself in ways I never thought was possible.
And then there are those random strangers that stumble into my life and completely change things. A while back I got a new addition to my Crew of Crazies - as I like to call my companions - and at the time I didn't think much of him. I was just playing around on a site called tektek where you can create so-called "dream avatars" for one of the online forums I'm a member of - GaiaOnline - and without really thinking I put together this random tektek of some random guy. And I stared at this tek for a long, long time, wondering what the eff I had just put together, and why, when I realized that he was just a new companion.
At that time, I had just started on a new RP with a good friend of mine (she's also my favourite RP partner), following a plotline we've been working on for about 8 years now, and I figured I'd just throw this newbie into that and see where that took me.
Wow. I had no idea that would leave such a massive impact on me as it did. This new companion - named Noct - really kicked up a storm, in a lot of ways. One thing is that he certainly made an impact on the other people in the RP, but another is how he got to me the way that he did. He challenged me, in a way I've never been challenged before, and it made me step very far outside of my general comfort zones, and it changed me. It changed my view of certain things, which has, in turn, helped me grow immensely.
Noct likes pushing the people around him. He always pushes everyone, and he often goes too far and crosses too many lines. He has gathered quite a lot of enemies of the years because of that. And it's all on purpose. As he says; You'll never grow and evolve as a person if you constantly stay in the same place, hiding within your comfort zones. You have to push yourself to get somewhere, and go beyond your own limits, cause only then you'll reach new heights that can fundamentally change who you are as a person, in a good way. But people rarely push themselves, so he does it for them. It doesn't always go well, of course, but most of the time it does.
He pushed me. He challenged me, my viewpoint, my thoughts and ideas, and he pushed me. I can see him standing there, tall and blue, with that stupid grin on his face and the playful spark in his eyes, daring me to go beyond my own limits, and before I even got as far as to take a leap off that edge, he came and just pushed me.
The biggest impact he made on me, personally, was the way I see my own sexuality. For those who know me, you know that it's been a horrible issue for me my entire life, cause I can never seem to settle down on a proper label that I feel comfortable with. I've gone from straight to bisexual, to lesbian, to bisexual again, to pansexual, to lesbian again, and then panromantic homosexual - or Wabbly, as I called it at one point - and I just keep swinging around without finding a place to settle down.
And then Noct appeared.
His reaction to sexuality caught me off guard, and it made me re-think some things. It was a specific scene that I had imagined (it never got used, or written down, unfortunately) where he was in some tavern, having a drink and chatting with some woman. In the middle of their conversation, an elven man passed by, and Noct turned to look after him, obviously finding the man attractive, and he then turned to the woman and commented on the man's appearence, stating that he, indeed, thought the man was attractive. The woman looked surprised and asked Noct if he was gay, and Noct just looked at her with a confused expression on his face. "What's gay?" To which she said that it was his sexuality, and that it determined whether he liked men or women. or both, and again he just looked at her with that confused expression on his face.
"Why would you put a name to that? How can a word decide whom you feel attracted to? Love is love, and sex is sex, and putting a name on it... Doesn't that create limits? I don't like limits. You should just feel what you feel, and don't get bound by a word that is supposed to decide what you feel, and for whom. Why would you label that?"
Why would you label that? That sentence - or question, rather- got to me, because it's true. He's right. Why does it have to have a name - a label? I'm not straight. I'm not a lesbian. I'm not a bisexual or a pansexual. I'm just me. And I'm wibbly wobbly sexy wexy! In short, I've finally found peace about things. I'm just me, and the me that I am doesn't need a label to decide what and who I like, and when. Depending on my mood, and the person in question, I can swing any way there is, and that'll change from day to day, so, I'll just take it as it comes. Simple as that.
He really challenged my view of myself, and he didn't stop there.
He challenged me art-wise as well, by having me doodle a picture of him with full frontal nudity! I don't do male nudity, cause no matter how you look at it I just can't stand penises. I'm sorry, I just don't. And so I refrain from drawing them. Or, rather, I used to, before Noct came into my life. And he taught me to step outside my boundaries and draw things I normally wouldn't, and I truly feel like that helped me develop a bit as an artist. I used to have limits to what I'd draw, and a very firm line I never wanted to cross, but Noct just erased that line for me, and pushed me headfirst beyond it. Which led me to do a lot of experimental doodles of things I normally wouldn't draw, and that, in turn, helped me grow more confident as an artist. And that feels good.
Of course, the challenge didn't stop there, and he changed a lot of things for me, and my general point of view regarding these things. And, most importantly, he challenged - and changed - the way I see my darling companions, and that change is rather drastic. It helped me realize something about myself, and my companions, that I had never seen before. I realized that I haven't seen my companions for who they truly were. I looked at them, and I didn't see them. I saw a disguise they had on that made them appear human. They all have it, that disguise, for various reasons (some of them have real forms that aren't even close to being humaniod in appearance), but all this time I've more or less forced them to keep that disguise on at all times. Because I've grown up here on earth, where you only have humans, I've been forcing them all to appear human. To have "normal" appearances, so they'd somehow fit into the reality that surrounds me. I don't know if it's because they all just sensed that I wanted to see them as human that made them come to me in their human disguises, or if it's just that I had a veil in front of my eyes that didn't allow me to see them as anything else, but either way I was human-izing them. I drew them with human appearances, and whenever I communicated with them they looked human companions to appear human.And that's wrong.
Noct is blue. Are humans normally blue? Nope! But he is, and it's because he's not a human. When he came into my life, he appeared as himself, and not as a human-ized version of him. And it made me take a step back and look at my companions, and for the first time I suddenly see them for who they TRULY are. After 20 years of working, I can now finally see things the way I was supposed to see them, and it made me want to completely change my approach to my work. Noct opened my eyes, and even though this has created a massive amount of work (there's a lot of things that needs to be changed now), I am so immensely happy about this! It feels as if I've been sitting inside this small box all these years while working, and all of a sudden someone opened that box and allowed me to step outside it. I was playing in a small puddle, thinking that this was all there was, and now I suddenly see that the puddle was connected to a gigantic ocean! It's as if I'm discovering my world for the first time all over again, and I'm stepping into it with the open mind of a child in awe.
The point of this rambling wall of text? I am now in the process of "re-designing" all of my companions. All of them are going through a change, cause now I can finally see who, and what, they truly are, and I'm gonna do my best to make sure everyone else sees it as well. I'm removing that human-ized veil I had thrown over them (or over my own eyes), and having them shed their disguises, allowing them to stand before me and proudly display who they really are. It's a lot of work, but it's exciting work! I'm redisovering my darling companions, and getting to know them all over again, and it's an exciting journey to make. And it's all thanks to this blue freak of mine that showed up out of nowhere and started pushing me.
Thank you, Noct.
And thank you, my darling companions.
It's thanks to all of you, and your influence, that I've gotten so far, and have reached so high, and without you in my life I wouldn't even be at all. I'll treasure that, always, and I'll keep pushing and challenging myself, and I'll fight my way through every dark dungeon that might appear, and I just know that I'll make it to the end, to the final boss, and with you by my side I'll defeat it. You are my strength, my support, and my salvation.
Mo okali, ati amirai.
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