Simple things I forget.

Start with learning everything about Reality.
From there you can Bend reality.
Then finally you Break reality.

That is how you Create.

"Styles allow you to break reality."




I just remembered something in high school... I thought art was a silly profession.

In high school, I wrote stories and doodled as a way to pass the time. I would have fun with my friends and drew them as superheroes and we would laugh together, but I never realized I was the only one drawing even with all the praise and how my doodled were passed around the classroom.

I remember my biggest achievement in elementary school was when we had to draw flowers and apparently I drew the best rose in the school and it was on the top of the wall in the cafeteria for the remaining 3 years I was there. I actually do remember in art class we were doing a little project and the art teacher said something in the lines of, "You are very talented!" and I did respond, "Your class is boring." Looking back I think I wanted to say that her class was easy... or give me something better to do, but detention said otherwise.

It was around the end of middle school that I was influenced by anime. I have been in the Pokemon craze in elementary school, but I never drew characters or thought much of it, it was another cartoon for me. My cousins moved from Japan and they brought DVDs and a manga, my first I would read.

My first anime was Rurouni Kenshin. There I found a story and art style that I found so wacky at the time. I never really cared for samurai since then but the way this anime portrayed it was very thrilling for me. What really gave me a sense of motivation were the bad guys. They were well fleshed out and it was then I figured that bad guys are "bad" for a reason, and not just for the sake of being bad. For me in a way it started it hit home for me... but that's a story on its own. My first manga was Clamp's Chobits. I was weirded out this one for awhile, but after finishing it I realized I just really liked how creative it was. These two mediums were the first things that influenced me into making interesting stories.

Starting in high school, I started to get addicted to a game called Ragnarok Online. From there I made characters and would write them of their stories of what they did in-game and draw them. Kamesuki was the greatest treasure hunter of all time, and she would find the rarest items that others could only dream of having, but they could have it if the price is right! I played alongside my cousins, one who was adept at drawing already. Time and time again he would draw designs from RO and I thought they were pretty good. I would attempt to also draw manga, and of course I knew they fell short. I would always be disappointed when doodling in school, but my friends would say something like, "pretty good!".

I do remember being very friendly with all my art teachers and English teachers throughout my K-12 schooling... I distinctly remember that because we would have a lot of conversations regarding my work. I remember I was always praised by these teachers.

"Your writing is done very well." "Your drawings are well done." Things like that.
I always thought that they were just being nice because we were kids, they had to praise us for doing our work. I actually hated art class for this... I took 2 art classes in high school... because they were easy credits. I slept in them, because I finished my work early... but the teacher said. "Keep working."

"Keep working? There's nothing left to do."
"There's always something to do!"
"..."
I didn't understand.

It bothered me because even though I seemingly didn't care for the work in art class, I did try my best in the beginning, I worked very hard. I did notice that, my work was in fact better than most students in the class, I just figured they really didn't give a shit. To me it was easy work and concepts but from the look of things, the way other students drew their faces looked like something from an alien sci-fi movie... or more like demented faces serial killers would draw. Because of that, the teacher praised me every time she walked by and the other students would give smirks and whispers.

"It's not that hard, just look at the thing and draw it. Look at your hand and draw it, your drawing looks ugly because you think your thumb is the same size as your pointer figure, just shade the shadows darker and look where the light is, its 100% common sense." I wanted to say... but I decided not to and just worked less in the attempt to dodge anymore spotlight from the teacher.

Weirdly enough, I worked harder in my English class. In English we wrote journals everyday before we started class and we were able to write whatever we wanted during the first 20 minutes. At first I just wanted to get the work done, so everyday I wrote the lyrics of whatever song I heard in the morning on the way to school. Then I found out that a guy in my class I really hated was writing an on-going epic in his journal, and every morning the teacher would say something like. "Can't wait for the next chapter for your epic, its getting really interested."

Now this English teacher and I were pretty tight in my opinion... I hang out with him away from other kids in his room and we would talk about life... and I would rant about some of my teenager problems... so I decided I wanted to write him stories so that he'd praise me, because what did some random guy in class know about writing good stories? I'd show him.

So onwards I started writing my own short stories in my journal. At the time I was influenced by a manga called Kaiji and Akagi, which were about gambling. So I based my stories around gambling, Sherlocke Holmes, and the deep meaning of life. I thought they were pretty good, stories about wits and outsmarting each other and especially, the bad guy giving a speech with the protagonist being unable to retort against a "sound argument". But... my English teacher never said anything about my journals. They never came up in conversation. He never hinted about any aspect about them. Then one day in my final year I questioned it one day.

"So do you even read everybody's journals when you grade them?"

"Yeah! Of course! I read every single word of everyone's journals! That's the joy of being a teacher!"

"Oh, so... what did you think of mine..?"

"Hm? Oh, they're okay. You're doing okay."

Garbage.

I thought.

This teacher is complete garbage. He can't even see the value of my work. What complete garbage. This teacher didn't enjoy my stories because the good guys don't win in them. Well guess what? The good guys don't always win. Sometimes the bad guys are right. You're too used to your bullshit literature about heroism and shit! The only time tragedy is okay is if the good guy is mourned or something but when the bad guy gets everything he wants then it's not okay?? So bullshit.

So what is this? Is literature this weak? It's so limiting? I'm so confused... whatever...

It was until one project I was finally praised by said English teacher. We had to take one Greek/Roman God/Goddess and draw a picture of them that represents them accurately; a fun project.
After all the joke questions about whether the students were allowed to draw Zeus fucking a million people, I decided to draw Athena, Goddess of war, fighting in the middle of a battlefield, shield in hand with her symbol. I guess I was the only person that knew human beings had joints in their arms and toes of their feet, because I got praise from the teacher and from most of the classroom. They thought it was very cool to see a Goddess deflecting an arrow and stabbing someone Spartan style. So my picture got the top of the wall over all the stick-figure naked Zeus's.

The second fun project we did in English class was to take any scene from any book we read for the semester, and draw out that scene, same way we did the God/dess project. For this one I chose to do a scene from The Princess Bride, my favorite book at the time. (Movie was okay, book is 100x better, go read it.) In The Princess Bride, the main female lead was Princess Buttercup, who was probably the first tsundere princess I would come across, but also an interesting character. Throughout the book she is the damsel in distress, but done so in a comically way to me that it was interesting. To me personally she felt like a strong character even though she couldn't do anything, thanks to her personality. Then finally in the end of the book, she becomes free and exercises her power as the queen. To escape, she stands on horseback and she yells out, "[because] I AM THE QUEEN!" to which the soldiers have no choice but to let her pass due to her authority.

So I took that scene because I thought it was literally the most badass scene I could think of. At the time I was influenced by the newest anime at the time, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. In my project, I had Buttercup point up towards the heavens like Kamina, and have her yell out the words. "I AM THE QUEEN!!" Once again I was showered with praise and everyone kept telling me, "That's a good imagination, I never thought of that scene like that, but now it's badass." Since then I started to get more insight and understanding how a picture could mean a thousand words.

That was me back in high school. In college, I just kept doodling and thought really nothing much of it besides it being pen and paper... The praise faded away like a dream because in college, there were Art majors. Everyone that knew how to draw was in college now aiming to become a professional, so I found my "art" to be pretty shit. I didn't consider having Art as a major throughout my own time there... because since I was a kid I was told it wasn't something that I should go to school for. Today, I don't have the feeling of wanting to go to school for it, but right now I'm getting a very broad understanding why people do it.

As I'm drawing, it has been the most peaceful I've felt in a long time. There's a little passion in it to, and the goal... well... right now there are no goals, just to keep drawing and creating right now.

Anyway back to college. I just doodled and thought nothing of it... but then I started playing Dungeons and Dragons. At the time, I have played so many video games. So writing was something I did a long time ago, and stories were just ride I rode in. With my first Dungeons and Dragons game, I was pretty bored to death. It was a game, but something was missing. The combat was slow... story was pretty mediocre... it's just another rogue-like so why are we doing it?  I remember time and time again each session that...
Shit if I wanted to play a game, I'd just go play an actual game.
My character didn't really do much in this session in the beginning. She was a young cleric that was there for pretty straight forward reasons. I was bored and decided, what would she look like? So I drew a quick sketch and decided she would look pretty normal. That was pretty the funnest session I literally had. It woke me up; I liked designing characters. It gave me some sort of reason to want to follow what was going on in the game. Then I realized it was less like playing a game, and it was more like writing a story with 8 other people. So I decided that my character was pretty normal because I was treating her like a developed character in a regular video game, but then I decided that maybe she should have a personality and interact with the world somehow. This helped the game become a bit more enjoyable and revived the creative side in me.

Dungeons and Dragons... helped me in a weird way. Today I realized I care not for the game really... but I decided that it helped me understand myself, what I wanted. What I wanted was to make characters and write stories, just like what I used to do way back when. If that was something that made even Dungeons and Dragons interesting, then that must be the right thing!

So around a recent time... I found my journal I used to write back in English class... I read my stories.

........They were pretty atrocious. Atorable. They were terrible, horrible, but adorable to the point where someone would say, "Awwwwww.... at least they tried!"

They were not too cringey... but they lacked something... lacked a lot of things... I'd rather not say.

It was then I realized that... my stories really did not impress my English teacher... he probably thought I was a psycho at the time actually. I mean, to my own credit, I can still sympathize with the bad guys in my stories in a way. But I think the main reason why the endings to my stories were not impressive was because they were not really endings. The bad guys did not win. I never really ended my stories. The bad guys speeches... while they did make sense, there existed rebuttals. The me now and the me before contradicted. The bad guys who were "right" have now lost...and that is what my English teacher saw. The teacher saw the protagonists eventually winning... that garbage bastard.
I was first a little confused when I saw this. A lot changed in me and my way of thinking across all these years. I was actually pretty happy that my work reflected a part of me. I always knew I was an easy read but from this something just made me really happy to know that I changed.

So today I realized a lot has changed in my perspective. I realized that I love drawing because it allows me to create something that has more than what is actually there, a full story, a fleshed out personality and wonder. "I am Creating life itself." Is the sort of feeling I get. 

I remember that, there's always a bit of the Creator in everything they Create; writing, drawing, stories, characters, everything. Today, the characters I think about are all positive in some sort of way, with their own little quirkiness and love-ability... Of course, I still have to make bad guys!