Random Jordan's Blog, page 12

Poison and Dark Fairy Tales

I’m gonna be all dark today, despite the fact that its pretty much fairy tale week. But you know what! Fairy tales can be dark too, and we can’t forget that!

Tomorrow I have a special treat for everyone that involves some fairy tales I’m writing right on the spot! And Saturday I will be releasing another book giveaway! So stay tuned. Should be interesting. For now, I’ve got some random poem I wrote up, cause I’ve got to be random sometimes.

———————

I hate this feeling

Of hope and pain

Wishing you’d come home

And hoping you’d stay

 

You give me a look

I know so well

The kind that tells me

I’m a nobody now

 

Your smile is poison

Rotting my heart

And nobody told me

Of the pain it would start

 

I wish I could say

I’m better off now

But even these memories

Are tainted somehow

 

I asked you before

To be sweet to my heart

But you didn’t listen

And left me a scar

 

I try to stand

Try not to cry

But how can I

When you didn’t try

 

I lost more than you

That day gone by

For my rotted heart

Has left me behind

 

And so the bottle

Is where I’ll stay

Until my heart

Rots away

Fairy Tale Giveaway Hop

Hey everyone!

So this is my first year really around the blogosphere (as bloggers apparently call it) and I managed to slip myself into a little book giveaway blog hop that is going on. It is being put on by I am A Reader (You can find the linky to all the other blogs in the blog hop on this site) and led by The Book Rat and A Backwards Story (who are putting on the fairy tale fortnight event too). You’ll be seeing some of my blog posts and pieces over on their sites within the week. But before that I have a giveaway to get involved with!

So, because this is a fairy tale themed book giveaway I will actually be giving away a copy of my book, The Real Folktale Blues. It will be a paperback version which I will be sending as a signed copy. If you’d like to know more about the story you can find entire rough draft chapters written in my Beyond Ever After section of my blog or just read the synopsis on Amazon.

I should warn anyone though, if you don’t particularly care for any LGBTQI or Queer themes then I suggest avoiding this book, there is nothing in it that children could not read though, as it centers around Red Riding Hood and some various adventures of hers. It has some dark tones, and plenty of light ones.

Now for the contest!

Keeping with the fairy tale theme, and because I don’t have some snazzy little forms for my site, you simply have to comment below on this page and in your comment you need to fill in the below blank:

Once upon a time (there was) ______________.

You can only comment once, which means every person can only enter once. And your blank must be different from other people’s, otherwise I will only enter the first comment that filled in the blank with that answer. There is no wrong answer, this is just a fun little exercise and to help distinguish from those who just want to comment for the fey of it.

Please also include in your comment some way to contact you, preferrably email. If you don’t I will not be able to give you your prize if you win.

And that’s it for the contest. It will be open from the moment this page is live until April 3rd, after which I will grab the one (1) winner for sending details and whirl off a fun little fairy tale book to them. (It can be anyone internationally).

Finally, as an added bonus. My book will be free as an eBook on Kindle (Amazon) from March 26th-28th. Pick it up as an eBook while you have the chance to get it completely free! This is a special little promotion for the fairy tale fortnight events.

I look forward to seeing everyone’s answers and stay tuned to my blog cause I just might have another fairy tale book giveaway later in the week

The Epiphany Effect

Have you ever learned a new word and then suddenly you start seeing this word everywhere? Well, there was actually a test done of this, where every person was given a word they didn’t know then they were to record every time they saw that word somewhere else for the next week.

Every last one of those people recorded that word being mentioned or seen at least once within the first twenty-four hours after learning the word.

This is concept I like to call the ‘Epiphany Effect’. It’s not technically an epiphany by linguistic standards, because you aren’t suddenly realizing something to be true. It has to do with the concept of an epiphany though. You see, when you have an epiphany, your world is opened up. The world you knew grew a little bigger to incorporate this new realization that had occurred to you. Some might also call this the Eureka Effect, which means the same really.

You see, when you learn a new word, you have a realization of that word and suddenly you start seeing it everywhere in your world, because you have been made aware of it. But you had never noticed it before, because it wasn’t on your radar; it wasn’t a part of your conceivable world. Then you have your realization of the word, and you see it everywhere.

The epiphany effect doesn’t just occur for words too. They can happen for anything. Love, friendship, happiness, words, phrases, expressions, tones; really an epiphany can occur for anything that isn’t tangible. This is because the process has everything to do with your mind and your perception of your world.

Think of your perceivable world as a bubble drawn on a white board. Then take someone else’s perceivable world and draw their bubble on the white board. Everything that overlaps is what would be known as ‘reality’ to those people. Everything that doesn’t would likely end up as something that causes people to clash in their ideas or views of the world.

Now take the six billion or so people on this planet, give them all their own bubble on that white board and you suddenly have the most complex and insane venn diagram ever conceived. You also suddenly have the bounds of what is reality to the whole world, what is reality to sections of people, and what is completely and utterly devised fiction by a few people.

This is why I say everyone has a little craziness in them. There are no people in this world who have every aspect of their world crossed over another person. To put it bluntly, everyone believes in at least one thing, that no one else believes in. It’s only made worse when the majority of things you believe in don’t overlap with anyone around you. Suddenly your reality is very small, and you don’t understand why everyone else is so crazy.

Now what does the Epiphany effect have to do with this? Simple. The epiphany makes that bubble bigger. Every epiphany you have opens your world up more than it had been before. This is the concept of open-mindedness. It’s all based on how big your world is, how much of the actual world and beliefs you can believe in. And while some people may have incredibly open minds, no one is completely open. There will always be something they can’t grasp or see a part of their reality.

And don’t worry, an epiphany won’t kill you. Though, the new world you see might.

The End

You left me

And I let you go

I thought wallowing in pity

was my only hope

 

I should have known it would happen

It always did before.

I thought you were different

But don’t we all?

 

I don’t know why I gave my heart

It always ends the same

The pieces come back to me

In a broken heart frame

 

You said you loved me

But was it true?

Even the fairy tales

Couldn’t tell me what to do.

 

I should have fought

I should have tried

But maybe I wanted

The broken heart inside

 

So all I ask

Is one simple truth

Why not tell me

Your heart belonged to you?

A Wizard Named Androgyny

Once Upon a time I threw it all away before it could disappear on me.

At least I used to say that, but maybe I had tossed all my friends, family, and my life away before I should have.

Three years ago I took a walk from the home I was living in, and I didn’t come back to it. Instead I grabbed what things I could within two backpacks and I rode (or mostly walked) a bike to the edge of the Idaho and Oregon border. And that was just the beginning of my adventures to discover who I was.

Yeah, that’s right; I literally went on an adventure to find out who I was. It was filled with new and scary places, familiar friends and a world I had never imagined before. It is no wonder that I have such a deep love of fairy tales and folklore, I literally lived an adventure that could be written as a fairy tale. If I did, it would probably be something along the lines of ‘The Boy who became a Girl to become a boy’.

I know, confusing. For most people it is, so just imagine how confusing it was for me to figure it out. Hell, I don’t even have it all figured out, but I got some basics and it was a way better position than I was ever in before. Maybe a better title to my story would be ‘The Wizard Named Androgyny’.

Yeah, that sounds cooler, and not nearly as confusing. So I think my story really starts to begin when I stayed with my born-again Christian Aunt. It was there, in the guise of my free time that I once again experimented with wearing bras and skirts and stockings and make-up. Oh yes, I was a truly terrible person back then, in which I literally used my Aunt’s stuff without her permission.

Anyway, even though I had tried on femme clothes before (Like when I got to wear a Flower girl dress because the person who needed to be fitted for it wasn’t there and I matched her size), this was truly the first experience of me specifically choosing to step out into the light of day with an assortment of the most ridiculous outfit ever, together with sunglasses and a poor application of make-up.

I was the epitome of all that could have gone wrong with a makeover. But I didn’t care, because I was smiling and laughing. Hell, I was laughing at the group of boys passing by me yelling out the window various derogatory phrases that might be expected for someone who mostly looked like a guy in drag.

Laughing. I wasn’t going to cry in a corner because I suddenly got a taste of the world out there and the terrible things it smacks you in the face with (Not Yet anyway). I was laughing because they were yelling things that I didn’t feel were fitting to me. But even more so, because I knew I looked utterly ridiculous. I didn’t know anything about dressing up in femme clothes, other than walking in heels (which I am damn proud to say I can run in three-inch ones), but even so, the simple act of having done it felt so… liberating. I felt almost like a different person. I wasn’t just dressing up and hiding away, I was trying on some clothes that I wanted to wear and then going outside in them, sitting at a coffee-house and writing as I was!

Oh sure, I had more than just those boys give me weird looks, or ask me inappropriate questions or even simply tell me I was an offensive human being or other such terrible phrases. But even despite all that I still found a piece of me, a piece of myself I wasn’t going to let go, because I hadn’t felt it since before I had lost my alto singing voice.

It was while out, dressed like that, I soon discovered a paper that was opened to a section advertising a Women’s Festival in San Diego at their LGBT center. Now, at the time the only thing I knew about LGBT was what the acronym stood for (which has since become LGBTQI). So… I hopped on my bike, left my Aunt behind (while stealing some of her clothes) and made my way another good forty miles south to San Diego City, arriving the morning of the San Diego Women’s Festival.

I was so utterly nervous as I finally found the center that my palms were sweating to such a degree that I couldn’t wipe them off. I mean… what if I was kicked out because they thought I wasn’t a ‘woman’. Or even here people were going to call me by some worse names because I was in essence ‘cross-dressing’? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about this culture, and it scared me. Never once did I say to myself that I shouldn’t have been there though. I was simply afraid everyone else would think I shouldn’t be there. I mean, what if someone said I just wasn’t queer enough or something?!

My fears were getting the best of me, because this women’s festival and LGBT center was quite trans* inclusive as a whole. If there were any place I could have been to have my first inkling of what the LGBTQI culture was, I am glad it was this place. Not only was I greeted by friendly people of all types, consistently, but I also found not a single person saying I didn’t belong there. It was all my own fears hyping things up. I mean hell I walked in there with a bra on and a tight shirt with day old stubble!

The only situation I found myself thrown into among even workshops and interacting with a lot of the people was a single person asking at one point how a male bodied person could identify as a Lesbian. Now me, not knowing what proper language to use or pretty much anything, ended up answering that question so poorly, and looking back on it there were a hundred better answers I could have given, especially now since I often have to when I tell people I’m a boi (male-bodied person transitioning to female-bodied androgyny who practices genderfucking and is a lesbian). I know, I love screwing with my head too.

My new answer? It’s a matter of social values. A Male-bodied person can identify as being a lesbian (or female-bodied person identify as being a gay man) because based on how they have viewed and seen the culture and the way in which lesbians (or gay men) interact with each other is in line with how they view their relationships and lives in a direction of their happiness. Essentially, a male-bodied person might identify as a lesbian because the social constructs they created around what a lesbian is (a girl loving other girls) is the same mentality they believe they personally fall in.

I know, I probably just lost like most the readers with that one, but hey that’s the best answer I got, and that was with soaking up a ridiculous amount of gender-theory at random intervals, and I guarantee not only is that answer not encompassing for everyone but it isn’t really still even complete. But usually it confuses the hell out of the person I’m talking to that I can get away with it.

Anyway, after that little incident that I failed miserably at, one of the people working at the place stopped me to inform me about a transgender meeting that was happening later that same day. I knew what transgender was to a mild degree but luckily the person was able to give me some more information and I agreed to wait till then.

So… my first exposure to a fully trans environment was my first coming out meeting in San Diego and it was filled with people being supportive and informative and some interesting questions that were new to me (my whole life I’ve been gendered both male and female, but being gendered as a trans-guy was entirely new). I walked away from that meeting hardly knowing a damn thing about myself, but I walked away with more information than I had before and more language than I had before, which I could use to try to describe who I was or who I thought I would be happy to be.

And that is where it really comes in.

The language.

Because that is what I was missing. I had no language to explain how I was who I was. I knew nothing about it and I knew no labels or words I could associate to myself. It made me feel lost and left me with only the words of man or boy to latch on to and hope that would be enough. Oh… but no… even now I still learn new phrases and words each day among the LGBTQI community. If my identification of me isn’t enough to show how intricate my gender and sexuality mapping is then clearly I still am lacking words to describe it.  But once I had even a small amount of this new language; these new words, I had a new world to explore. A new life… I had myself. I wasn’t just the closet girl-clothes wearing boy, I was a cross-dressing, gender-fucking lesbian boy (or boi), and no one could tell me otherwise who or what I am, because as Popeye said ‘I y’am what I y’am’.

Who would have thought Popeye was advocating for Trans* all those years ago?

Unfortunately, even though I have now spent around three years discovering who I was before I made any further decisions in my transitions, I have run into the issue of re-obtaining all the friends and family I had thrown away (well most of them), with one distinct advantage: I was out to all of them as being transgendered (at the very least). Including the relationship I have started to build with a straight cis-girl with a little gender-role-fucking.

And that is when being scared shitless came back into my life. Oh, I could walk down the street in a tutu, or work festivals and fundraisers in skirts and crazy make-up, but trying to explain my feelings to someone who identified as being attractive to the piece of me I was shedding and all hell comes crashing down. I was right back in the situation of feeling like I was in the closet again. She knew all this kind of stuff about me, and that I would be going through hormones and what that entailed and she is incredibly supportive of the process. What scares me so insanely is that both of us are unsure whether she will be attracted to me as I start to transition to more of a female androgynous body instead of male.

I’ve never been so frightened in my life. It’s like if I make one wrong step toward my personal goal I’ll lose the most amazing partner I’ve ever met. We both recognize the possibility since she’s never been attracted to girls but that doesn’t just stop it from happening. And so… it scares me, more than anything in the past. I practically have panic attacks thinking about one day just not being sexually fitting anymore for someone who I fit so perfectly with before!

It makes me second guess whether I can go through with the whole process, whether I can just let myself change over or whether I am making a terrible mistake? Will she feel betrayed if I go through the process like so many other partners of trans-women have felt? I’ve been open about the whole process before we even first went out, but people feel what they feel. I knew that better than anyone considering I was going off my feelings to decide how I interact with the world!

Luckily as we both had gone over this, I had settled into the decision that at the very least I could do things one at a time as I had the money for them. Hormones would be first, then clothes (etc), then chondrolaryngoplasty, followed by hair removal and then if that all goes well the big one with the bottom surgery. Each one in steps and each one I could evaluate with my partner how I feel about it and how she does. That way not only am I fulfilling myself to a further point of where I want to be, but I’m taking my partner into consideration.

It seems like a good plan, and it isn’t me just sacrificing myself to be able to fit into everyone else’s plans once more. After all, I had learned over the years of soul-searching that you can’t hide yourself in a relationship and still be happy. Eventually it will kill you inside, long before you will actually die.

So I move forward into my severely gender-skewed life with a lot of experience in the social and mental transition, and hope the physical transition will be a lot easier. Even though I already know it won’t. That will never stop me from hoping though; because who knows, it might actually be a lot easier than dealing with all the emotional baggage.

Pee in Peace

I feel like if I ever started some kind of transgender or genderqueer movement the only thing it could ever be called is ‘Pee in Peace’.

One: because I absolutely love alliteration, it is my favorite literary device ever!

But two: no matter how often I’ve talked with trans* people, or anyone questioning their gender, one of the biggest topics that comes up is the bathroom. I mean, you could practically put ‘I feel uncomfortable in the bathroom’ as one of the requirements for being trans* (Though I don’t recommend ever doing such a thing).

This happens because despite being in a post-racial segregation era (mostly) we still have significant amounts of gender segregation, the most prominent of which is in the bathroom and locker rooms. This means, out of anywhere people go daily, bathrooms are the one that remind us constantly that our gender isn’t what it should be.

So then why the pee in peace name if it is such an issue? That is exactly why it needs to happen! No one should be harassed while in the bathroom, no matter who you are. After all, we all go into the bathroom for one thing: to relieve ourselves. The details of how we relieve ourselves is something that should only be up to ourselves and anyone else we want to tell. Otherwise, everyone just wants to pee in peace!

So what would the movement focus on? Well to start we would replace the signs on the bathrooms with non-gender specific signs. This may not seem like much but legally by doing this we would have ‘vandalized’ public places. Although I wouldn’t consider it actual vandalism, it would still instill a form of chaos. You see the majority of people who have never had to wonder about their gender issues (also known as cisgender) will pass into the ‘right’ bathroom without any thought as to what sign was on the door, because it has become something they just automatically do without thinking.

Those with gender issues present though, tend to always know what bathroom they are going in, even before they do. Oh sure, cisgender individuals might notice they went into the ‘wrong’ bathroom after they walked in. I can’t count numerous times where someone had walked in, still holding the door, and looked at me before looking back at the sign on the door to make sure they walked into the right bathroom.

These days I’ve gotten more used to the bathroom and now I will use whichever one I feel like at the time. Line at the ladies? Pop into the mens. Mens bathroom overcrowded at work? Switch to the ladies. Using the bathroom has become about as fluid as my gender and well… whatever I’d be doing in there.

Going further with the cause (and in a more legal manner) it would be fighting for the tearing down of gender segregation across the board. Which, sure it has been a controversial issue, due to a manner of safety and in some cases with women’s spaces the ability to not have to put up with men for a while. But as Ben Franklin once said, a nation that gives up freedoms for safety deserves neither. The matter of all this gender segregation though is only hurting everyone.

Why do (white) men still have this privilege that hardly anyone else can reach? Sure, women may lose their spaces but in turn men lose them as well. How does this not make everyone more equal? If everyone can use the same bathrooms, do the same things, see the same things, be involved with the same things then how does everyone not become equal? Segregation in any form is only meant to break people apart, separate them into groups of people.

And the only way to fully abolish segregation is through the elimination of gendered bathrooms. With that one little piece, everything else will topple into place (maybe slowly) but it’s still the shattering point for segregation.

And that is exactly what Pee in Peace would be devoted to.

Words, Labels and Linguistic Power

I’ve mentioned labels and their influence before in some of my previous blog posts, including a more poetic version of my expression of it (and by poetic I mean not making any sense at all). But I’ve never actually discussed it, since there’s only so much to say about it on the subject. But thanks to this post I feel like touching on the subject again from my interesting point of view as a linguistics major and various other labels that don’t really matter.

So here it goes.

Words have power, but only so long as you give them that power. You see, words are actually defined by what we choose to make them, and yet interestingly enough, we often then let those same words make us, but only when we let them. And that is the distinction. We have all the power, not the words, but when I say we, I mean everyone. Just because I don’t assign linguistic power to one label doesn’t mean another person won’t do it for me or to me. And unfortunately that is apart of society, the social interaction means you are not only bound by the power you assign words, but the power given to those words by those you interact with.

So I should say, words don’t have power, they have chains. Chains given form by those around us, and even the social conditioning that has been instilled in us. And all of this is caused by the constant constraints that are inherent in the language system. You see, for there to be a true society there must be ways of communicating and understanding one another, for society is by definition social. This means the core foundation of society is language (any form of language not just spoken or written). But because the entirety of society is then built from this linguistic foundation, it automatically comes with inherent flaws that can’t be expressed through language. And instead we are left with the labels that appear. After all, try explaining everything about who you are within just a single sentence.

It literally cannot be done, because people are vast and complicated creatures with inner workings that are changing so fast most of the time the person can’t even keep themselves straight (or gay). So instead, we are left with in the moment labels that are crafted by the people around us (and ourselves) so that we can better explain ourselves to others, ourselves to us, and so others can relate to us. The problem is, no one can fully relate to any other single person, because we all have different experiences and moments in time that have molded us with a life that no other being will ever possess.

And now we come back to the snowflakes. I’ve said before that people aren’t snowflakes, they are more like M&Ms. This is because each snowflake is created differently from the beginning and then all go through the same experiences. But M&M’s have a vast little adventure, where they all are created in a couple different types and then over the course of being packed to being eaten they are molded and mashed and changed from those experiences they encounter. When it comes down to it, every single person could be placed into what is called an ‘archetype’, from there the experiences they then go through will mold them into something beyond just that archetype and even in some cases let them evolve from one archetype to another.

But even so, with all this considered, humans and archetypes are still the same thing. They are labels we use to make the world around us easier to understand. After all, how could you possibly even describe yourself if you could not label yourself in any way? Saying you have brown hair is a label, saying you are Asian is a label, being a girl is a label. Every single thing about you is a label, and become a necessary and crucial element if you plan to actually survive in society for very long. This means no matter who you are, eventually you do have to accept a label of some kind, even if they don’t always describe you. But that is where the label line can be drawn!

The key to labels is not rejecting them all, because you can’t, even if you tried your hardest, you will always eventually label someone else, and in turn you’ll also label yourself. Instead of the rejection though, it is to embrace the labels that closely acknowledge who you are and toss aside the rest! Because, remember, YOU have all the power when it comes to the words that dictate who you are. Oh, sure, someone can call you a name, but only be accepting that name did you give it real power over you.

This is why I laugh at the condescending, misogynistic or down right derogatory phrases that are uttered in my direction. Because they amuse me, they don’t fit me and I know they don’t and so I cast them aside because they are nothing to me and therefore never stick no matter how often I may be called it. Yes, I know, if someone calls you a horse for the third time then you should start shopping for a saddle, but only if you accept the fact that you are a horse!

Because NO ONE can tell you who you are except yourself. No one. Oh sure, maybe some people helped you along the way, thinking you were gay or questioning something but not know where to direct the questions, but the simple act of having questioned such a thing is what made the label so open and inviting. It doesn’t matter if you are a single latin gay transman choosing not to go through surgeries or a straight female teacher of English with two children and a loving wife, unless YOU make it matter. Oh sure, people will throw labels in your face all the time, chances are you’ll definitely be called things you aren’t, but so what? You know what you are, you know who you are (or are still learning) and no matter what anyone says, you have all the control over that.

You are who you choose to be.

No one less, and no one more.

So make the choice a good one.

Links!

I feel like I should be so sick of talking about links considering that it much of what my job consists of and I also do links on the side to promote my books. But recently I’ve come to realize that all the links on my blog for the most part are old ones, using my old domain, which just will not do.

So, over the next few days a few things will be changing. The first of which is all the links anywhere on my site will be linking properly, with anchor text built-in and using this domain rather than WordPress. The second thing is I will be adding my blogroll of links to sites I care about and want to link to somewhere on the site. Either it will be a separate page as a resource at the top or it will be at the bottom of the site on each page. These sites will vary from blogs of people I know to faerie tale or writing resources and so on.

Also, as I gain more posts outside of my domain, I will be linking to them with a new page that will be called my ‘contributor page’ to show a one stop place to find all the articles and posts and reviews I do across the web.

These should all be rolling out over the course of this week, in addition to some mild showings of some of the fictional projects I’ve been working on.

Best of all I will also be including in my contributor section the links to my faerie tale podcasts soon. My first one should be coming up in about two weeks if I can get through post-production in a timely manner. I can’t wait to unveil this project along with a few of my other writing projects!

What’s In a Name?

Names are a plague upon my existence as a writer. They strangle me and hold me down under the waters of all my flourishing work. Not just names for characters, but places and titles for books as well. When it comes to creativity as a whole that is still a largely ungotten fruit that I can’t seem to get past. Oh sure, my characters could have the most brilliant back story, and simply draw you in with their magnetic personality… until you discover they are named Lucy or Gertrude or Jocelyn or Glitch. I’m not sure what it is, but there is just a gene I don’t possess when it comes to naming things, anything at all.

Recently I got around to naming my wireless connection so it wasn’t just linksys1675 or something like that. The best thing I could come up with was ‘Red Riding Hood’ in honor of all my crazy faerie tale stuff. Luckily I didn’t go with the first choice of using my main character’s name rather than Red Riding Hood, because everyone’s first guess was ‘Gnidori’. I feel so predictable, despite supposedly being quite random. And worst of all was that everyone was coming up with so much cooler names for it when they were trying to guess what mine was! I mean how awesome is the ‘impernet’ when you understand that my partner calls me an imp?

That’s probably why I had gone the route of using song title variations as my method for naming each one of my books in my Beyond Ever After series. But still, it was because of trying to figure out names for some titles and characters that I finally decided to look into what made a brilliant name in fiction.

It’s not just a matter of how believable it is, or how it comes off the tongue. It is all a matter of it fitting! A character could have the most bizarrely long and complicated name ever and yet because it fit so well with the character it was perfectly appropriate! Like Radical Ed or as she goes by: ‘Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky the Fourth’. She comes from the Cowboy bebop franchise and has one seriously ridiculous name that only she ever remembers, but I can absolutely see how she is just fitting to that name. It flows into her character so fluidly that it’s just accepted.

At the very least I’m glad I managed to avoid the Mary Sue mentality with my characters by essentially using really exotic and hippie names like Sunflower Tapioca. But still I can’t say my names are perfect, half the time for my series I just use the character’s titles to refer to them rather than their names or nicknames they have been using. Like Gnidori is Red Riding Hood half the time. The only character from my stories I really call by the name is Reynard the fox and that is because it also is his title!

It gets worse when I factor in that I largely take names I’ve used previously and rehash them to use again with new characters or with multiple different versions of the same character. This is because names tend to have a significance to me when I pick them up; like Lucy. I didn’t just pick the most generic protagonist name that means ‘light’. Lucy actually has a deeper meaning for me that goes back to the first girl I ever kissed, when I was six. The name always stuck with me after that to the point that I even use it as an alter-ego at times.

This isn’t always the case though, in fact for the most part, many of my character’s names are completely randomly chosen within the drop of a moment (and then often changed). This is because naming a character has always been a forethought for me. I build the character completely and the last thing I always do is actually name them, whether they are for an RPG campaign or for a novel, the name they earn comes after their personality and history. You would think this would make it easier, and in a way it does, it helps me narrow down a good name that might fit for them, but for the most part, I end up with names that I change frequently because I just can’t feel the name well.

But then what do I do about a series I started when I wanted to change the character’s names?

Three Sixty-Six: Entry 45

Day 45: Three Sixty-Six

The Year of the Snake 1989,

Maybe I’m the first of my kind. I hope so. I hope there will be more. I hope I’m not just what everyone thinks I am. They call me a glitch, a malfunction. Although one of the doctors refers to me as the miracle. She thinks I could be the change needed to save our world.

Our world… now she has me saying it. It was never my world. The most I’ve ever seen of it is the prisons they keep me in. But that’s the life of an experiment. At least that’s what the doc told me. Then again, she tells me a lot of things that I don’t really always understand. I did understand one of the things she said though. She pulled me aside, unhooked my cuffs and stared right into my eyes before saying ‘Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you aren’t free. You are; now its up to you to keep it that way.’

She didn’t have to say another word. I knew what she was doing. So I ran and I glitched.

Glitch… even though it was the name they gave me, it’s all I have and it is all I can do. They called it glitching the first time they saw me do it. They thought I was broken, but I was the only one of their experiments that could do anything. My glitches are jumps though, sifting from one fabric of space and time to another close by. The jumps are never long or very far, but I can be in my cell and then standing outside the bars before someone can even finish blinking.

Some of the other experiments call it my ‘freedom’, others call it my ‘blinking’, but I like glitch. Because its unexpected, its something that isn’t supposed to happen, and yet it does. It exists despite all odds.

That’s why I’m the glitch. That’s why it is what I do. Because I’m the impossible that is now possible. And because of my glitch, I’ll survive.

I glitched right through five walls in a row and just kept running. I dodged some shots as everyone freaked out and dashed around me in circles, trying to fire at me with their darts. They couldn’t catch me though; now they were understanding I was the glitch they could never catch again. Just as I passed the last wall and broke into the daylight… the sun I had never seen… what had been my whole world behind me exploded into a massive flaming pillar. Debris shot past me, some tried to hit me but I was glitching out-of-the-way.

The force of the explosion knocked me forward though and I hurled through the air, tumbling across the ground and glitching a few times, not on purpose.

I don’t know how long I was out after that, but I woke up with someone creating a shadow from the sun’s blaze across the sky. The doc of all people was standing over me, offering her hand. I accepted it with complete awe.

How could she be alive? I didn’t understand. Then she said, ‘Hello, my name is Emmy Manhattan, and I’m glad we finally get to truly meet, Glitch’.

The only thing I could say was ‘How?’

And all she would give me was the biggest smile, the same one I saw the first time she saw me glitch through a wall.

Somehow I knew that day my life was changing, and for the better,

Glitch