Samuel_Tow

Some custom powers don't remember their colours when I change them. So far, I've been able to confirm that no matter what I do to Eagle's Claw set to the Bright Face Smasher theme, it will come out white afterwards. And when I return to the editor and check the power, it will display grey/grey, but revert to red/red when I click on it, completely forgetting the yellow/white choice I made. I should note that Bright Face Smasher uses a palette that is DIFFERENT from all other powers I have set to the Bright palette. The one Bright Face Smasher uses looks like the regular palette that applies to costume pieces, rather than the one which applies to Bright powers.

Additionally, certain powers to the "FX in PVP only" theme will not remember colours, either, and none of them will respect the colours I picked in their display in the editor. Powers I can confirm this happening to are Temporary Invulnerability, Invincibility and Unstoppable, but NOT Unyielding. It's interesting to note that Temporary Invulnerability, Invincibility and Unstoppable, when set to FX in PvP only, use a different palette than what Unyielding does. Unyielding set to FX in PvP only shows the Dark themes palette, which I guess is why its colours are remembered. Temporary Invulnerability, Invincibility and Unstoppable, however, use what looks like the costume pieces palette when set to FX in PvP Only.

Also, the "Minimal FX" options seems to be outright gone, replaced by "FX in PvP Only" altogether. However, the old Minimal FX option did not allow us to pick a colour for powers set to Minimal FX, whereas FX in PvP only allows us to choose colours, only our choices don't seem to have any effect.

This is all happening on a Female model using Martial Arts and Invulnerability.

*edit*
In fact, just to make a comparison, I captured a powerset file of the changes after I make them and compared it to a powerset file of what I get after I pay the shop and leave. Here's what I got:

For Eagle's Claw, with the changes I want it looks like this:

First contact

You know, I’ve never been a spiritual type person. I never really had much time to think about meanings and higher beings back home, and, frankly, I haven’t see a point to spending time thinking about it since. No sense worrying about something you can’t control. So, I didn’t really worry about finding myself in this strange, idyllic new world. Yes, I kind of missed my tribe, and seeing them all die did bug me, but it is what it is. I suppose I could delve into some long explanation about how we didn’t really have very close bonds back home, but, really, what does it matter? I got over it. Some people live, some people die, but the main thing is to survive. Your philosophies don’t really matter if you’re dead, now do they?

And, honestly, it really wasn’t as bad to be on my own as I had initially feared it would be. Back home, a human alone was dead in minutes, so the strength in numbers of my tribe was vital. Here, though, on this passive Earth, life was easy. Is easy, in fact. Few things can even harm me, let alone kill me, and most of the dangerous things are easy to plain old avoid. Here, I don’t really need anyone’s help, so I don’t really have much reason to miss my tribe when I don’t actually need them. It’s kind of like strangers dying in one of your wars somewhere far away. Do you really miss them? Maybe if you buy into some kind of rhetoric about how life is sacred and every death is a tragedy or some such nonsense, but where I come from, life is cheap. You either survive or you die, and everything just keeps on going.

I will admit, though, that I got spoiled on the ease of this world. Where back home I would have to fight for everything and anything like my life depended on it – which it did – here I could lay about and slack off and still I would never be in danger and never be short of food. It’s strangely... Alluring, this kind of life style, especially for someone like me who is naturally always ready for a fight. I’m not a spiritual type person, but I have to admit that this experience really changed me. I discovered the serenity of being alone and the calm focus of being at peace with all things. Those aren’t my own words, actually, but they describe the situation closely enough.

Here’s the odd thing – I was brought up to believe that constant readiness, training and aggressive action were the only way to survive, that strength and rage were the only tools. The truth is, though, that a calm, focused mind can accomplish these things and more, and with a lot less strain and trouble. When I stopped to think about what I was actually doing, I realised how wrongly I had been doing a lot of things. I had time to practice my knots, sharpen my blade, train my technique and even just generally improve on my own abilities, something I could never even imagine doing in the constant action of my home. Heh. I guess Malcolm had at least some point in trying to protect the weak.

Speaking of Malcolm, it’s around that time that I first met him. I spotted this tiny little man while I was out exploring the forest, and I got curious, so I followed him for a few days. I hadn’t seen any people since I’d come to this world, and, to be honest, I hadn’t even thought about looking for them. Back home, other people were actually one of the most dangerous things you could come across. All people were powerful, able warriors, and there was no such thing as honour or morality. An aggressive tribe, for instance, wouldn’t think twice about killing and eating another tribe they came across. I always found that disgusting, myself, and I believed there was plenty of room for everybody, so when I led my own tribe, we just avoided everybody else. There was really nothing to be gained from fighting other people, and these fights were usually some of the most dangerous we could have.

At first I thought I’d just back up and keep away from this little man, but he was so tiny and skinny he didn’t look like he could pose a credible threat to me. Plus, he was alone, which was quite unusual, specifically from my standpoint. Did he get lost, too? Look, I’m not a curious person. Back home, curious people were dead people, because everything was trying to kill us. Here, though, in the safety of this world, I... Well, I guess I just couldn’t resist. There was something strangely interesting about this little man.

Oh, while we’re on the subject, let me explain about why I keep saying “little man.” If I remember right, I’m 7’1’’ tall, which back home made me rather short compared to the taller members of my tribe. Here, though, I’m one of the tallest people around, towering over supposedly big, strong men. I have to say, it’s really amusing to watch tough guys react to me with a little bit of anger and a little bit of fear. I do so enjoy crushing their macho dreams. I really hate people like that – they talk big and make themselves out to be so tough and strong, but when it comes down to it, they’re actually pathetically weak. Seriously, most of these “tough guys” wouldn’t last a second back home. They’re so used to having everything delivered right into their hands – food, shelter, security.

Ugh! And to think how these men treat women! Where does this belief that women should be frail and weak come from? Back home, women would break your jaw for so much as trying to suggest that. We were all survivors and warriors. No-one was weak, because the weak got eaten by predators. And I’m not sure if I should blame men for perpetuating this notion here, or women for allowing it! Then again, their lives are so easy I don’t think any man or woman could claim to be “tough.”

Anyway, back to Malcolm’s story. I spotted him in the forest and I trailed him. I’m... Not sure why. Boredom, I guess. That was a novel concept for me. Back home, I never had a minute of spare time and a million things to do, so I didn’t even know I could BE bored, but here I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and few ways to keep busy with. Trying to learn about the first man I’d seen in this world was a pretty interesting one.

He walked through the forest for a couple of days, until he came upon a camp of some kind of strange men, full of weird things I’d never seen. They had these things called machines with them... Vehicles, maybe? I don’t remember, I don’t understand this world’s sciences much. The man I was following snuck up to the edge of the camp and looked like he was just standing there and watching. I later found out he had been making... No. Getting... Taking... Taking! Taking pictures of it for... Reasons I never quite understood. Later, he would say they were important, and that’s all I really cared about. Well, he hid in a bush for a while, but the men spotted him and chased him through the forest. I wanted to just back away and leave them alone, but something tugged on me to stay. I’m not sure why, but I found this little man running through the forest absolutely fascinating. The men in the camp, them I could understand. Like one of the tribes back home, they worked together to hunt their pray. But why was this man alone, and what did he want out of them? I got honestly curious.

The men from the camp chased the running man for I think a couple of miles and eventually managed to surround him. They shouted things at him that I couldn’t understand at the time, and eventually began brutally beating him. Now, look... I don’t meddle in other people’s business. As I said, back home I made it a point to avoid people at all times, and I would never stick my neck out and specifically attack another tribe. But this man... Well, I guess he reminded me of myself when I was fighting the lizards. He was alone, facing insurmountable foes and desperately fighting for his life. I knew what that felt like, and though I’ll be the first to say it’s natural... It’s a horrible thing. That feeling of helplessness, of doom, knowing that you’re going to die and there is nothing you can do about it... I don’t ever want to go through that ever again and, for some reason I can’t explain, I didn’t want to let him go through that, either.

So, I did about the only thing I knew how to do – I jumped into the fray and swung my trusty axe around. My enemies were small and physically weak, but their weapons were much more sinister than anything I could have expected. They had these metal, err... Firehands? Firearms? Something like that. The things shot out bullets, I think, almost as fast as a carnivorous spitting vine, and even though they didn’t seem to be armoured, their clothes were harder than the bark of the turtle tree. They also seemed to be organised pretty well, as they talked to each other a lot – something we never thought to do back home. But, and I have to brag, I’ve faced off against two dozen spitting vines before when my tribe fell into a very nasty trap, so I was prepared. In fact, this is specifically why I chose to use a shield as an offhand weapon when most other tribesmen preferred either two-handed or dual weapons. I have to say, hunting down a predatory ironwood giant to make this shield has proved its worth many, many times in the past.

The fight was as fierce as I’d ever seen it, and I got a few solid wounds along the way, but I wasn’t scared. Quite on the contrary, it woke me up from my lethargy and reminded me what I was made to do. I led my tribe because I lived to fight, and I was very good at it. Better than any man or woman I’ve known. That is why I survived when others didn’t, and that is what earned me a bloody victory in this fight. Well, OK, not a COMPLETE victory, because my enemies were too many and their weapons were too strong, but killing them all was never the objective. I survived and I managed to pull the man I was trailing away alive, as well, plus I did manage to cut down quite a significant number of them. I’m... Not really sure why I decided to do that, however, and when it was done, I had no idea what to do next. I mean, I saved this man, but what was I going to do with him? I couldn’t eat him, I couldn’t use him, and I certainly couldn’t talk to him.

Or... So I thought. See, we never had language back home. We sort of got about on grunts and body language, but these people had a fully developed, complex speech that I simply couldn’t make heads or tails out of. Except, he seemed to understand me, and when he spoke, I understood him. The reason why is... Complicated. If I understand things correctly, he was what they call a “telepath,” which basically gives him the ability to know what I’m thinking and make it so I know what he’s thinking. I still have no idea how that even works, beyond knowing that I can hear his voice in my head, though I guess meeting him was lucky. And, really, as long as it works, what does it matter how?

The man introduced himself as Oliver Malcolm, which was... Odd. Names? What’s that? At the time, I had no idea you could even name stuff. And, yes, I know I’ve called several things from my home by name already, but these are names I’ve made up over the years in this language so I can explain what I’m talking about. Back home, we didn’t have language and didn’t really talk to each other, so we had no use for naming anything. Apparently, Malcolm was a... Either a journalist or a photographer, I always mix these up. Either way, he had found out about these men who were doing, err... Something very bad, I don’t remember what. I couldn’t quite follow his story. Anyway, the men had come out into the forest to do something bad, and he had gone out there to get proof so other, stronger people could send soldiers to stop it. Wow... I didn’t think I actually remembered that...

Anyway, I didn’t really care about Malcolm’s story, but I realised he had been wounded pretty badly. I had taken more than a few shots, myself, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. He had taken only one to the gut, but apparently he was so frail even that was enough to put his life in danger. I pulled out the bullet he had been shot with and bandaged the wound as best I could, and MY GOODNESS he would not stop crying like a little child! I swear, I have had a few moments when I really wanted to kill this man, but never as much as during that time. You’re a grown man! Deal with the pain! Seriously, how do people in this world even survive if they’re so fragile and whiny?

I stabilised Malcolm’s condition... Just about, and we started on the trek “back to civilization,” as he called it. I wasn’t too keen on meeting new people, what with the only ones I had met having shot at me, but Malcolm was too weak to walk on his own and he would have died if I had left him. You know, it feels like everything I’ve done since coming to this world is drag people around, saving their sorry lives. Am I the only person who can take care of herself? Seriously! Hell, I even ended up carrying him on my back for I think 50 miles when he lost the strength to stand up. And he had been shot once. ONCE! I was running around with a dozen bullet wounds AND a man on my back doing all the leg work, and he, the man with a single bullet wound was dying. It would be funny, if it weren’t sad!

But I think meeting Malcolm was a good thing. Without him, I would probably have remained hidden out there in the forest, living like an animal and not really knowing what to do with my life. He introduced me to the rest of the worlds and showed me all the wonders Earth’s humanity had to offer. And while I’ve never really taken to technology much, I think meeting more people has helped me developed into the woman I am today. And I am proud of who I am.

There are a few problems with the new Martial Arts animation for Eagle's Claw, now that I've played with them some more. To elaborate:

Character model: Female

Character powers: Martial Arts/Invulnerability Scrapper

Relevant powers: Eagle's Claw, alternate animation, bright version

Descriptions: The animation for Eagle's Claw ends VERY abruptly. Just as the punch connects, the animation cuts and the character steps back into combat stance. It is not fluid at all, and feels like the last bit of the animation where the hit connects and delivers the force of the impact just doesn't play.

The power also feels like it's faster than the old Eagle's Claw in general, though I haven't been able to think of a good way to actually time it. It seems to me that part of the animation is just getting truncated.

See, I keep seeing a few concepts repeated that kind of bug me, and have been reasons on their face for me to quit games.

First and foremost is the tradeoff between more powers or stronger powers. I HATE that. The fact of the matter is I want powers. As many as I can get. About the arsenal of proactive powers a Blaster has at level 50 is where things become sufficiently comfortable for me - I have enough powers to cover a variety of situations and rarely fall into a set-piece attack chain that never alters, yet not so many that they end up being redundant and unneeded. However, when a game gives me the opportunity to pick more powers or stronger powers, it just always, always favours LESS power made stronger. Even in City of Heroes, people look for ways to take fewer powers and just have them hit harder and recharge quicker. There is just no "right" solution, because if I want to be effective, I have to take fewer powers than I'd like, which in turn ruins the game entirely.

Secondly, the more fiddly customizability a game has, the lower the effectiveness of each action are and the harder they are to notice. In City of Heroes, I can take a status protection power or big hitter and I WILL see a difference even without investing anything into them, and just one level later, this difference will be amazing. Much more so than getting 5 more strength. It changes something, I guess, by maybe a percent point here and there, but eh... Who notices that sort of thing? It's only when the specific build starts to mature and investments begin to pay off do you begin to notice differences, and even then mostly if you're looking for them.

Unnoticeable, smooth progress may be more realistic, but it is VERY unspectacular, and above all, it is VERY hard to work with. When my build choices don't give me any direct feedback I can feel, then I don't know if what I'm doing is right or wrong. I'm told strength is what I need the most and maybe constitution to some extent, so I keep investing in those, but I can't tell if it's doing anything at all, and I've no idea what I am NOT getting in doing so. It's like driving blind (which isn't impossible, as the Mythbusters proved, just very impractical).

World of Weakness, World of Strength

Savage Earth

I don’t get this place. How can a world filled with such small, weak, helpless people even exist? How can it support itself? All they’ve ever known is safety, peace and easy living, and every time anything goes wrong, they throw their hands in the air, give up and cry for help. “Oh, help! Come, save me! I am completely worthless and pathetic! Oh, please, help!” It makes me sick! And don’t even get me started on the women here! How in the blue hell did they start being viewed as weak, pathetic creatures who can’t and shouldn’t show strength and should, instead, always wait for men to save them and take care of them? The men I’ve seen are certainly noting amazing. Hell, they need someone to look after THEM! And I have to save these people, over and over again! Honestly, sometimes I wish I could just tell them all to go to hell and take care of themselves for a change.

*sigh*

But I can’t. I made a promise. To protect the weak of this word, to save them from danger and save them from those who want to do them harm. It was always his idea – a perfect world without danger, without pain and without hardship. A world where no-one needs to struggle for survival, and where no-one needs to fear for his life. His perfect world... I never understood it, myself, but he believed in it so passionately, so... Strongly. Malcolm... He was such an enigma. A small, skinny, unassuming man, at first glance so weak and frail, and yet he was probably the bravest, strongest man I have ever seen. To this day I still don’t know how he managed it. He inspired people. He gave them courage, gave them confidence, and such amazing strength. I have seen this man turn weaklings into true heroes just through his own example.

I don’t get this place. How can a world filled with such embarrassing weakness hold such amazing, unbelievable strength? How can these frail, pathetic creatures transform into such powerful heroes? I’ve wondered this for a long time, and I don’t know if I’ll ever have a good answer. I never understood things, but I guess I got used to relying on Malcolm for this. I... Suppose I expected him to know the answers, to find the strength, to... To help me. But now... Now I just don’t know.

They call me Brutticus. I come from much simpler, much more basic world. There, I had no name, for we had no language. “Brutticus” is what they called me here. Why I don’t know. I didn’t ask them, and no-one asked me. They sort of simply did. Ten years ago, I came here. How that happened I have never been able to understand, the sciences of this place really don’t interest me. To the extent I understand it, I came from some alternate dimension thing they called “Savage Earth.” Another world, to put it simpler. They say my home is a lot like this one, but I can’t find any similarities, myself.

Back home, I was queen of my own tribe, so to speak. We didn’t really have ranks or titles. My people stuck together and followed anyone who was strong enough to lead. My father led our tribe before he died. Afterwards, I stepped up to take over. We needed a strong leader, and none of my brethren could even hope to live up to my father. Nor would I let them try, weak as they were. It would have led us into disaster. You see, unlike this cosy, comfy world, my home was a rather more uncomfortable place. Here, people are at the very top of the food chain, and they firmly control the world. Back home, we were little more than food for the numerous beasts that roamed the land.

I come from a world of constant danger. Where hulking monsters are not trying to kill us, poisonous, carnivorous plants stalk us in the jungle and all manner of little critters wait to infect our bodies and eat us from the inside out. And even if we survive all our enemies, the elements will still try to kill us at every step. Cutting winds, lightning, snow and fire, floods and even the ground itself. Everything is our enemy. There is no safety, no security... No home. As a tribe, we were constantly on the move, slaying the monsters in a cave or a clearing to carve ourselves shelter for the night and gather some meat, then we moved on with the sunrise. Travel by night was unthinkable, for the spirits of the night would carry people off into the darkness and rend them limb from limb. Such was my world that it would reduce the strongest of this world’s men to whimpering heaps of flesh, but to us, such was life.

Panic is one thing about this world I still have yet to understand. How can people here be so deathly afraid of something that they lose the ability to think and act? In my home, such a reaction would get you killed in an instant. We lived in mortal danger as an everyday occurrence. Of course we feared it – fear is what warns us of danger. But when I am afraid, my mind clears, my senses sharpen and I yearn to stare death in the face. Only through the courage to face danger and the strength to overcome it could we ever hope to survive against the hostile Earth, which seemed to want nothing more than to kill us all the time. We had no use for weaklings, no use for baggage to take care of. Those who could not fend for themselves and contribute to the tribe were left behind. You may feel this is cruel, but in my eyes it was justified. This made us stronger, harder to kill and more able to survive when every man, woman and child was strong and able.

We may have lived in a world of horrible danger, but we were tough, all of us. I have seen men wrestle wild beasts ten times their own size into submission, I have seen women move boulders the size of mountains, and I have seen little children of maybe five or six catching and killing their own food. Here, people are amazed at me when I say this, but back home, this was completely natural, and indeed expected. We had to fight for our survival, and only the fittest survived. And I was the strongest and fittest of my tribe. I’m told I shouldn’t brag about this, but I see no reason not to. Why would I try to make all the weaklings feel better about themselves by playing down my own strength? Let them see and hear it, let them envy. Maybe then they will train and become stronger, themselves. This is how we lived and this is what we believed in. We held faith not in gods or spirits or any of that religious nonsense. We held faith for strength and power. They who were stronger were they who we prayed to, for only they could deliver.

We lived a good life. We had few dead, we managed to avoid the larger monsters and keep away from the swamps, our women were fertile and our numbers strong. Beast encounters were frequent and sometimes deadly, but not too special. They kept us in shape without providing too much danger. I’d even started looking for a successor, as I was seeing more close calls than usual and feared I could be killed at some time soon. A young girl was showing good promise at the time. But that was not to be. I don’t know how, but we unwittingly walked into a nest of giant lizards. Before we knew it, the invincible critters had cut our escape route and were swarming on us like giant ants. We were barely a hundred, but we managed to kill thousands of the things as we held our position. But, inevitably, we were slowly being killed off, one by one. Strong as we may have been, we were simply not strong enough.

In the end, I alone was left fighting for my life. I was covered in fang and claw cuts, but I was lucky enough to avoid any vital organ damage, and I still had strength enough in me to fight on. But the tide of giant lizards would never end. There must have been millions of them in there, it was a huge nest. Larger than I’d ever seen in my life. I knew that I would eventually be overwhelmed and killed like all the rest, but I didn’t care. We live, we die. That’s just how things go. But I would be damned if I would let the bastards take me down without a fight. I would go down, but I would take as many of them down with me as I could. I’ve always taken pride in my own strength, and it seemed like I would get to use all of it back then.

I didn’t die, however. I still don’t know how or why it happened, but a powerful, bright light suddenly appeared behind me just as a giant lizard knocked me back into it. Turns out this was a dimensional rupture or something like that, I never quite understood that. Essentially, this light took me from my world into this one. I’m told that, at one point, the... What was it called? Walls or barriers or some such between dimensions had weakened and these wormholes... Or was it rifts? Whatever. These “holes” were opening up between dimensions everywhere, and one just happened to open up behind me. Everyone seems to be amazed at how unlikely this is, but eh. Who cares about likelihood? It saved my life, and that’s about as long as I’m going to spend thinking about it.

I got knocked back through the by the lizard, and I ended up in this world, in a forest somewhere, I don’t remember. The lizard that had pushed me came through, as well, though the others didn’t follow. Given how powerful the light was, they were probably scared. The lizard, dumb as they are, was still after me, but dispatching a single one was beyond easy. These things are almost completely invulnerable, but they’re easy to cut if you aim just right, or, really, if you just swing hard enough. Not a lot of people are strong enough to kill them as easily, but I just happen to be one of them.

And after that... Nothing. The fight left me bleeding and broken all over, and if this had been back home, I’d have been dead in minutes. The beasts I knew could sense your weakness. They knew when you were vulnerable, and they would wrestle each other to devour you. I limped my way away from the scene, expecting something to attack me at any moment, but nothing did. That really surprised me, that feeling of... Well, you’d probably call it “calm,” but for me it was foreboding. I’d never known what it was like to be safe, never known what it was like to not live in constant fear for your life, so I felt uneasy, like there was danger that I just couldn’t see. I didn’t sleep for I think two days, constantly looking out for the deadly beasts I thought were lurking around, very much until the last ounce of strength simply left my body.

Now, I’ve told this story to a lot of people. Apparently, it’s just that interesting, hell if I know why. One thing they always remark is how I can talk about a near-death experience so nonchalantly. In fact, I’ve been told it sounds like an everyday event, the way I describe it. The truth, though, is... Well, it was. People live, people die, and we struggle for survival in-between. If I sat down to cry about it every time a tribesman got killed or tremble in fear every time I got out of a fight with broken bones and bleeding gashes I’d never get anything done. That’s a daily affair. You fight, you heal up, then you go up to fight some more. It’s how things are. If anything, I don’t get people here and how upset they become at any hint of trouble. It’s like they expect everything to always go their way and no-one to ever have to get hurt or strain a muscle.

And, honestly, the environment here is a paradise. I always have to laugh when people talk about “hostile conditions.” Bah! The weather here is mild, at best, no animals are truly dangerous, and the materials are easy to work with. Heck, I was surprised how soft the wood was here. I spent I think six months just living off that forest, and not for a single moment did I feel threatened in the slightest. What was there to threaten me? The biggest animals I saw were bears, and they were both incredibly skittish and not really all that hardy. I’d fought animals bigger and stronger than them by the dozens every day back home. Here... Here I could just lay about all the time and nothing would ever happen to me.

I have to admit, though, there is something just... Indescribably alluring about the safety I felt alone in that forest. A certain kind of... Calm. It was a novel, strange sensation, something I had never felt back home. This feeling of security, of strange serenity. The feeling that I could just relax, let go and go to sleep, and everything would be fine with the world. I slept a lot during that time, and I dreamt a lot. I never dreamt back home, we almost never got much of any sleep, but here I could relax and almost lose myself in the magic of this place. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid. For the first time in my life, I could relax. Relax, and think.

Back home, I had never had time to just stop and think. It’s difficult to explain how little time there was to do anything in such a way that people here would understand me. Imagine living a life running a marathon all day, every day, and never being able to stop for more than half an hour, and you’ll have some idea of how hard we had to struggle to survive back home. Here, though... Here I could just live, I could look at the world and take it all in, and feel... Happy. I admit, I slacked off a lot during that time. I began to slow down, to settle and let my guard down, because every time I stopped, I was awash in this odd sensation I could simply not understand. Happiness was simply not something I was aware even existed, but it with each passing day, it became something I craved more and more.

The calm and serenity of Earth was starting to wake up something inside of me, something I’ve been chasing ever since that day I arrived here. I... I’m not sure what that something is. “Happiness” is too simple an answer, but “purpose,” maybe? I don’t know. I just know that suddenly I realised I was no longer satisfied living like a mindless beast, just scraping by a meagre existence. I wanted to think, I wanted to feel, I wanted... Something more. Something more than just the simple act of staying alive. But that is an elusive thing. I think Malcolm understood. Of all the people I’ve met, he was the only one who seemed to just know what I was saying. I think he was searching for something, too. Something more out of life, something better. He... He was a good man. He always seemed to know what to do and what to say. I don’t know if I ever fully understood him, but I... I wish he were here now.

I honestly don’t remember exactly what I did back then, and I’m not sure I remember what happened to me. My past feels almost like a dream sometimes, like the memories of a different person. I don’t know what changed in me. I just know that, like a child meeting a new experience for the first time, I grabbed onto this happiness I couldn’t understand I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to feel it, to... I guess, just to feel. I spent a lot of time living in that forest, searching for something I couldn’t understand and just waking up from the single-minded instinct I had been a slave to for thirty years.

But my serenity would not last long. My world may be populated by bloodthirsty, ugly monsters, but your world would soon show me evil uglier and more revolting than anything I had seen before.

I've been trapped in writer's block since some time in 2007, and the few crappy, incomplete stories I've posted since then have been ample proof of that. This one is a new story I'm writing, with which I have finally been able to more or less MUSCLE my way through the block on little more than a decent idea and sheer grit. As such, please keep this in mind as you read the story - I don't think it's some of my greatest work, and it's based only loosely on an idea that I'm forming up as I go along. I know it may not be good, but it's primary purpose is to save my ability to write ANYTHING by helping me rediscover my writing under a radically different mentality.

Like before, this story is told by a woman, so please ignore the male screen name next to the stories. Consider me just a publisher, with the character telling them being completely separate. Also, as this is written as I go along, it may not be very good in the beginning, but it gets (ever so slightly) better as I plan farther and farther ahead. I already have a few chapters written, but I won't dump them all at the same time because then I KNOW no-one will ever read it

As always, I would really, really, REALLY like to hear your feedback. However you feel about it, if you read it, please leave me a comment. This is relatively new ground for me, and I really want to hear what other people think of it so I know if I'm going in the right direction.

Thank you for your time.