Turning off my brain, also can't sleep.

Since my body just woke me up at four in the morning and never let me go back I guess I'll post something that's really been bothering me. I have far too much restraint on me because of how I've been thinking for the past couple years. Its a rather odd restraint considering it has to do with over thinking

I started over thinking any and everything never taking anything at base value and assuming that there's also something more when  about 90% of the time (made up statistic) there really isn't.

It leads to small things like counting money to take forever from me or something big like math problems or something that would often require one solution I ALWAYS though there would be more than one no matter what. This often gave me problems as you'd imagine with my speed because I'm constantly re-doing things over and over to make sure that everything is right. And I feel like personally exploring MY reasons for doing this and and why I want to officially shut down and restart

Ok so back when I was a teenager which wasn't too long ago but I'm talking early teens I was always the C and D student and such and such and I would always get shit from my mother about everything I did because being from the military it was customary for things to be done one and only one way, and that was the way of the one who's in charge which is clearly my mother. Anyway from things like cleaning to homework if things weren't done HER WAY then I'd have to re-do them over and over until I get it "right" as defined by her standards. So this naturally led to me literally ALWAYS second guessing everything I did because holy shit was that annoying having to do the same thing over and over no matter how hard you tried it just wasn't "right" even though it was fine by you. So this would always plague me in my speed department because now I'm used to getting ONE RESULT as defined by a standard and if I don't get that I have a conditioned response to re-do the task over and over until it's considered done by a set standard (ex. cleaning something at work) because I just want it done right and I don't want to be talked down on, by anyone. And that's where it came from psychologically. So now I do things over and over if it's not meeting a standard.

So this leads to over thinking everything from the inability to ever be satisfied with my work anywhere. This lead to problems for instance something at work just isn't "clean" enough I will literally keep blowing my head up at the fact that I haven't "cleaned" it and what will the manager say? Will I get fired? Holy hell I'm doing it now as I type. Anyway this is really frustrating as one may imagine because I really just want to be normal... as defined by America (AHHH!!) but if I never learn to just calm the fuck down and simplify things then this is going to ruin me.

Anyways I'm tired of it so I'm just going to turn my brain off and say piss off to every solution but the correct solution and I'll do it as expedient as need be without overdoing it, because I never knew that there was something wrong with always trying to get the best solution until it slowed everything I did to a crawl

Oh and I can't sleep.

Can a depressing character be likeable?

My current protagonist, Nicholas Blade is a milestone for me in terms of storytelling. He's the first protagonist character who I've written about that seems to have no value in his or many others lives. I've had many other characters like him but none have been in the main character position before.

I drew influence from one of my favorite Final Fantasy characters ever Squall Lionheart, because he too was pessimistic and bleak. While he wasn't on the level of Nick he still hated social interaction and people from the start, but as the story goes on you witness him break out of his shell and learn to accept others.

That's sort of my goal with Nicholas, throughout the series I want to make him value himself and others as his life gets jerked around in several crazy and even supernatural ways. I want to paint the painful voyage of self growth and realization that would fascinate the reader into wanting to stick with him.

But my problem comes from a relevant point in a review from the webseries Zero Punctuation where Yahtzee criticizes the main character from the game Darksiders because "he doesn't give a toss about anything he does" and added "so why should I?" Because from the earlier stages of the plot line Nick can't be considered likeable he's often portrayed as actually quite messed up

Example:

 I gave a quick sigh and rolled my eyes. Chris is always insisting I patch things back up with Veronica, my ex-girlfriend and mother of my small daughter, Anna. I’m not sure why he keeps prying at it, he doesn’t seem to grasp why we separated, come to think of it I don’t even know anymore. She was perfectly fine with being with a dangerous vigilante for two years, but it was in the third year when we were expecting Anna she started changing heart. She became more and more involved with the church and their strange ways of fasting, prayer, what have you. She tried to convert me over to all of it, but I knew better than surrendering myself to that brainwashing, that's why I left the church a long time ago. I guess that’s where it all started to fall apart for us, I remember she gave me the ultimatum not soon after Anna was born: either I give up this life or I give her up.

The choice was much easier than I thought. Its much easier to not grit my teeth at every prayer she did for my soul, its much easier to not have to hear her cry over whether I’ll die the next day because I am what I am, its much easier to not look at every phony priest, do-gooder, and “tortured soul” she began to hang out with, its much easier to just walk away isn’t it? I made my choice and I won’t look back even for a second. In my opinion it’s much better to live and die alone in this world anyway. That way there’s nobody who’ll miss you, nobody to cry at your wake and speak about you in past tense, nobody to pay for your shortcomings in life, you don’t leave anyone else with your burden, you just disappear. And that's perfectly fine with me, its weird that no one else sees it that way.

I intended on Nick being a cold bastard from minute one and progress him into a better person as he forced to interact with others in a meaningful way, but my question is could his callous actions possibly turn the reader away? Is there a point where the reader gets fed up with a character not progressing enough?

Drawings 2/24/13

As I sharpen up my drawing skills day by day I'm always trying to improve on it, because I have extremely minimal training in drawing (I took ONE class at a rec center over 13 years ago and learned how to draw 3 pokemon)

Anyway I'm teaching myself now so bare with me as I learn new techniques and stuff and comment plz on anything I can improve on

  African Princess A'Sharia

  Former Mayor of New Jersey Randolph Gray



  



 Ex-Mercenary extraordinaire Christopher Hughes

These pictures are of Kindra, the Queen of the Reavers








Most of my drawing I try and improve on facial drawing every time because I feel its my weak point but anyways tell me what you think!