McFlabbergasty

bkev said:

'93. Am I doin it right guys

Hah! Come back when you have bags around the eyes.


I was born in 1992. No '80s memories to be found here. 

Not sure if I should continue with my treatment of a sequel trilogy...

The film opens with the USCSS Aimayer arriving in the orbit of the lifeless ice planet NC-1401.

The ship, a survey vessel retrofitted with advanced scientific suites for studying anomalous artifacts, betrays industrial origins with its hard, utilitarian design. The profile of the vessel resembles a dumbbell, with a narrow bridge connecting the aft engineering section to the fore operations and habitation compartment. It is in this fore section of the ship that several men and women are brought out of hyper-sleep by the main computer, which has detected the world of NC-1401 with its radar proximity sensors.

The Aimayer carries a crew of seven. They are...

Captain Arnold Calvin - The leader of the mission and highest-ranking officer on the ship. A maverick with connections in all the wrong places who was hired for a Company mission because of his extensive experience in operations beyond the established Network and rapport with Executive Officer Albertson.

Executive Officer Fred Albertson - The captain’s second-in-command and overseer of all shipboard operations. A by-the-book man who sees the directives of the Weyland Company as superseding all other concerns. He is not aware of the Company’s true intentions beyond the parameters set by the expedition itself, but is determined to enforce order to the last. He is at odds with Doctor O’Hare for his idealistic, blue-sky worldview and on friendly terms with Captain Calvin due a history of military collaboration.

Engineer Lindsay Cho - The officer in charge of the ship’s maintenance and the workings of all electrical and mechanical subsystems. She displays little real interest in the stated goal of the mission, primarily motivated by the substantial shares promised to her by the Company in exchange for its successful completion. Some time in the past, she ended a relationship with Doctor Hermann. Cho holds playful derision for the ship's libidinous navigator.

Navigation Tech Don Fazio - The officer in charge of guiding the ship through space and back to the Network upon successful completion of the mission. The most personable member of the crew. Fazio is something of a ladies man when he is not busy directing the ship’s course at his navigator’s console, rarely passing up the opportunity to move in on Cho.

Medical Officer Theo Daly - The ship’s practitioner of medicine and primary caregiver to any casualties that may be incurred in the mission’s timeframe. A cold, distant, but dependable doctor. While very observant and calculating, he has a tendency to treat patients as little more than bags of flesh. Daly is at odds with the more gregarious and outgoing Fazio.

Doctor Jason O’Hare - One of two researchers in charge of the scientific expedition, in his former employment a tenured professor with a long history in academia. Despite a wrinkled and weathered exterior, his dream of understanding the anomalous artifact detected on the ice planet NC-1401 lies in a child-like wonderment of investigating the unknown. Doctor O'Hare looks at Hermann as the daughter he never had.

Doctor Anna Hermann - One of two researchers in charge of the scientific expedition, a fresh graduate of doctoral school who studied under O’Hare and once had a close relationship with Engineer Cho. Though derided as a greenhorn by other candidates for the position of the mission’s secondary researcher, Hermann harbors an inquisitive nature tempered by caution in the face of an anomalous artifact that may be alive, and whose intentions no-one as yet understands.

@DuracellEnergizer: Ha! No such ridiculousness will be found in my draft. I looked to Giger's many paintings and picked out subjects that I thought looked cool to be the creatures that appear in Salient. I am doing my absolute best to avoid overlap with Prometheus. I was just as disappointed with that film as you appear to be.

Couple of notes on the setting: I may be changing the year to something a bit closer to the first film, perhaps even less than a year preceding. Salient is meant to tie directly into Alien, similar to how Alien tied directly into Aliens. Certain loose ends from Alien such as the nature of the distress signal on LV-426, the genesis of the Company's bio-weapons program, and the mystery of the Space Jockeys will be addressed in Salient...but hopefully not in a way that ruins the mystique and coolness of the Xenomorphs. You guys get to be the judge of that.

I am currently in the process of drafting a prequel to the film Alien to replace the film Prometheus. I was thoroughly disappointed with the latter film's attempt at leading into the former film, so I have taken it upon myself to write what I believe to be a worthy predecessor. It is called Salient in order to tie in with the theme of including the word "alien" in the title of each Alien film.

Salient takes place in the year 2112, ten years before Alien, and concerns a deadly incident at a secret Weyland Enterprises experimentation and research station orbiting above the ice world NX-1138.

The threat is not the Xenomorph from the other Alien films, but something else equally vile.

I am going to start a new fan fiction series centered around the early days of the Cybran war. The setting is the archipelagic planet of Remus IV, situated in the frontier zone of Earth Empire space. The year is 2679, several months after the flight of Dr. Brackman and his most loyal followers.

The main character is Commander Roth, an Imperial Symbiont officer sent to Remus IV by Earth High Command to investigate reports of raids by Cybran militants. Roth’s mission is to assess the extent of Cybran infestation and deal with it by any means necessary. The task will prove to be difficult. Though the Cybrans’ ability to counter brute force leaves something to be desired, their guerrilla-like stealth tactics are complemented by their use of cloaking technologies beyond even the Empire’s scientists.

Roth has proven himself time and again capable of executing his directives, even before his recent neural AI implantation. But nothing can prepare him for the truth: that what will happen on Remus IV will make him question his very being, as well as hinge the fate of the galaxy on the outcome of a single battle...

I will include screenshots and do my best to post regular updates. What do you guys think?

I've given up on searching for a job outside our home business. Even dishwashing is apparently too high an aspiration for me. Georgia has a 9.2% unemployment rate at the moment, so I guess it's only partially my fault that I've never held an actual job. 

For a year and a half I've been making cold-calls and trying to approach managers, but it seems to be a Sisyphean task because I am in competition with hordes of other applicants who have an insurmountable edge over me: years of friendships built up in the local community. People who can act as references and point to vacancies as soon as they open up (providing the managers assurance that they are hiring a swell guy/girl). I on the other hand don't know anyone here besides my dad.

I regret not insisting on going to summer camps when I was younger, at least then I could have made friends that might have led to other connections that would have led to getting a job and perhaps even finding girlfriends later on. But my dad insisted that I was getting all the exposure I needed sitting around with him all day while he plugged away on eBay selling things. Every day I would go outside to be tortured in sports.

And yet somehow I think I deserved that misery because I wasn't grateful enough for the first eight years of my life.

Recently I've been looking into web development as a career. I have no prior web dev experience and only a semester-long introduction to coding (C). I've mostly been reading up on HTML and CSS. It is my understanding that those are the two basic building blocks of web development, from which other languages like AJAX and PHP are learned. And if I can pull off freelancing, then I can set my own hours.

As for moving...I see my current college career ending in one of a few ways.

1) I get accepted into Georgia Tech. I take a few semesters there, panic when I realize I cannot pay for it because my financial aid won't be enough, then be forced to drop out. After that I won't be able to find a job in Georgia, which is something I have come to accept, so if I am unable to move out then I will have no choice but to wither away and die here.

2) I don't get accepted into Georgia Tech. I stay in Southern Polytechnic for perhaps a semester, get bored out of my mind and take up self-harm again, then jump in front of a train.

3) I don't get accepted into Georgia Tech. I tell my dad that I am interested in studying web development. By this point I will have a couple of months of studying that under my belt. I proposed the idea of getting out of college to him before but he wouldn't have it because then I would have been "aimless", he said. But that was before I took up studying web development. Now I am hoping to convince him that I can study something that I actually want to study and have that be a replacement for a university.

To be perfectly honest, I am most attracted to #3. I might even be able to move out then. There's a few thousand dollars of loans to pay off but I suppose that is better than the tens of thousands of dollars a lot of other students take out. 

Luke: Leia, do you remember your mother, your real mother?

Leia: Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.

Luke: What do you remember?

Leia: Just images really, feelings.

Luke: Tell me.

Leia: She was, very beautiful, kind, but sad. Why are you asking me this?

Luke: I have no memory of my mother. I never knew her.

It's been something of a challenge making Nellith's exploits stay consistent with the above conversation, but I'm hoping I've pulled it off. You guys can be the judge of that.

More to come!

What do you guys think so far?

Cut back to Imperial Center. Vader and Wreth are riding a repulsorlift transport to a military detention center containing Colonel Dodonna. Vader professes to Wreth that he senses there to be more behind the attack on Palpatine than simple incompetence on the part of the Moff. Wreth recalls that he was trained at the Imperial naval academy by Dodonna in his pre-defection days. The captain is struck by how Dodonna could have fallen so far out of the Emperor’s graces in such a short time.

Then the two arrive at Dodonna’s cell. Wreth plays the “good cop” to Vader’s “bad cop”, talking to Dodonna about his days learning to be an officer at the academy. Then Vader, using his unnatural strength, forcefully extracts out of Dodonna the location of the secret Rebel base: an Outer Rim world called Dantooine.

These prequels are meant to be viewed after the OT.

Cut to the perspective of the escaped Rebel commander, whose name is revealed to be Nellith. She jumps her shuttle out of hyperspace above the planet Dantooine. A large Rebel base sits cradled in a mountain range, with sensor towers and turbo-laser turrets continuously scanning the skies. Nellith sets the craft down on a platform and meets with Mon Mothma in a conference room after she adjourns a meeting with other members of the Rebellion’s top brass. No word has been received from Colonel Dodonna, who led the ground assault on Ord Mantell’s sensor array that gave the Rebels the element of surprise needed to make an attempt on Palpatine’s life.

Nellith tells Mothma of her encounter with Vader and that she knows him to be the man she once loved: Anakin Skywalker. Mothma tells Nellith not to let her personal attachments endanger the mission, that she is one of the Alliance’s most capable agents and desperately needed in this critical hour.

Mothma, believing Colonel Dodonna to be dead, sends Nellith on an assignment to rendezvous with the anonymous informant who as of late has been supplying the Alliance with a generous amount of credits, arms, and other materials. This informant also supplied the Rebels with Palpatine’s location above Ord Mantell. Before departing to meet the informant at Nar Shaddaa, Nellith remarks that she has a very bad feeling about this...

I think it's really important in any written fic to know at least what the main character looks like. Here's a good approximation of Jeni I found on Google Images. It comes courtesy of a cosplay forum. Source below the image...

They even got the lightsaber color right!

http://www.cosplay.com/showthread.php?t=220275

Posted by user "lynnja".

@NeverarGreat: No, it's not connected to the Lucas Prequels. This trilogy is only meant to be canon with the OT and with the sequels that I am writing in a different thread. The events in this universe that transpired in Clone Wars/Republic/pre-Imperial times are implied to be different than what we saw in the Lucas Prequels. But I make it a point to never actually go back that far on screen (with the possible exception of brief flashbacks).

The Rebels are *an* enemy in this trilogy, and so is the traitorous Moff, but there is another threat in these films that eclipses them both. I don't want to give away what it is just yet. 

At this point, Vader appears to me as bald and pale-skinned (almost albino). He has a tall and intimidating build even before donning the black armor seen in the original trilogy. His enhancements consist of a biomechanical arm, numerous synthetic organs that drastically outperform their natural equivalents, and a spine encased in a durable but flexible alloy.

The metal can be seen rising up from the neckline of his black cape and entering the back of his skull, where I imagine it would directly interface with his brain stem. This creates a distinctive look even from behind. 

On the chest strap covering his armor is inscribed a series of runes from an extinct language.

More story summary to come.

EDIT: While I definitely won't be including any Lucas PT characters in this trilogy, keep an eye out for a select few people from the OT popping in for appearances later on. 

Tentative titles...

Episode I: A New Order (11 BBY)

Episode II: The Apprentice Rises Again (9 BBY)

Episode III: Empire of the Machine (9 BBY)

Let's test the waters. Here's the beginning of my outline for Episode I.

The setting is a medical suite in the heart of Imperial Center. Darth Vader climbs out of a surgery pod with a brand new cybernetic right arm, a replacement for an older model. He crushes a battery pack with his enhancement to test its strength, noting a substantial increase in performance from the previous unit. Soon after, he receives a message from an officer: Vader is to defend Palpatine's flagship from a Rebel ambush above Ord Mantell. Answering the call, Vader brings his best wingman, Captain Wreth.

Vader and Wreth jump out of hyperspace right in the middle of a bombardment of Palpatine's destroyer by numerous Rebel cruisers and bombers. The duo prevails against many Rebel interceptors in the ensuing dogfight. Vader then receives an order from Palpatine to execute the Rebel leader, situated on the largest ship of the attacking fleet, before she can jump back into hypersace. The dark lord boards the Rebel flagship and fights his way to the bridge, disposing of many troopers along the way. He stops short of killing the enemy commander, a human female. Her presence causes Vader to sense a tremor in the Force, similar to a feeling of "deja vu". Vader's hesitance allows her to close a blast door between herself and the dark lord. She escapes Ord Mantell's orbit via shuttle. The other Rebel cruisers have been reduced to ruins by a force of Imperial strike frigates.

On Palpatine's flagship following the battle, Vader convenes with Emperor Palpatine and Moff Vellam Nox, the officer in charge of defending the oversector from Rebel incursions. After receiving praise from Palpatine, Vader lies to his master about allowing the Rebel commander to fleet the scene, saying that she overwhelmed him with a mass of repeater gunners. After Palpatine's departure, Vader questions Nox on his incompetence. Despite the Moff's pleas, the dark lord choke Nox into unconsciousness.

He then leaves the room and meets Wreth, telling him to ready his fighter for a new mission. Vader aims to find the Rebel commander by any means necessary, as she may yet prove more useful alive than dead...

I'm going to make another go at a prequel trilogy rewrite, but the time frame and overall atmosphere will be completely different from my previous attempt as well as those of most other re-writers. The reasons for this are that these movies would take place in the heyday of the Imperial era (likely between 10 and 15 BBY) and the main character would be a post-conversion Darth Vader. However, he does not wear the OT armor until the very end of this trilogy, if at all. As far as Vader's enhancements go, I am trying to decide between one of two options...

1) He does not have any augmentations at the start of the trilogy, but by the end he has the "proto-suit".

2) He starts the trilogy with numerous combat-aiding modifications, such an artificial limb, a few synthetic organs, and some dermal plating. By the end he is in the full OT armor due to injuries sustained in the third movie.

Without delving too much into spoilers, a good portion of the trilogy would concern an overly-ambitious Imperial Moff's attempt at a coup to replace Palpatine as Emperor, with Vader's job being to foil the plot. I plan to include a female dark Jedi as another major player in the trilogy's events, possibly spending some time as Vader's love interest, though I suppose this could only be the case if I go ahead with scenario #2 listed above.

So...first impressions?

Edit: Changed "admiral" to "Moff" to reflect the correct Imperial terminology.

My intention is for this scene to highlight the emotional linchpin of the film, Jeni's quest to avenge Han and his comrades, and to place the audience firmly in her mindset. I suspect this scene would tug at the audience's heartstrings much more than the deaths of Owen and Beru in ANH because before this point we've spent a whole trilogy with Han as a major character.

Just to confirm, Han really is dead. There are still surprises to come in this film, but a revelation of Han being alive is not one of them. Same goes for Chewie and the droids.

So what do you guys think? I'm all ears.

Jedi1 said:

 

snip

 

Sounds interesting and thought-out, although it would  be nice to also hear about new character development and motivations instead of just the over-arching political events in the galaxy. The thing about the original trilogy was that even though these momentous events were taking place (the Empire was fighting the Rebels, the Jedi Order was reformed by Luke, etc.), the films themselves generally focused on the characters and their emotions.

 Anyway here's the next part of Revenge of the Jedi...

Jeni recognizes the ruined ship as her father's from holograms she had seen as a child. She thinks of the times she had asked Leia and Luke about why he never came back, and the intricacy of the lies they had been telling her for twelve years...

Somewhere in the distance, a broken-down piece of machinery rolls off a large pile of junk. There is rustling noise in the sandy mist, accompanied by the sounds of labored breathing.

Jeni climbs onto the ship through a hole blasted in the side of the hull. The ship rests at an angle to the ground, causing her to grab objects in the interior for support as she navigates the vessel's passageways. Jeni pulls out a glowrod to illuminate the nearly pitch-black corridors. Somewhere in the bowels of the ship, Jeni passes by a checkered tabletop and a wall-mounted control panel with numerous view screens. She navigates around a hydrospanner, gold-colored droid plating, and severed wires strewn out across the floor as she forcefully pries open the door to the cockpit. 

Golden-red sunlight pours through the shattered canopy. A significant amount of dust and grit is seen clogging up the controls and piloting chairs. She looks around and, before she knows it, finds herself communing with the Force to glean what happened on the ship in the past. 

In a vision, Jeni sees the last stand of the Millenium Falcon against the Talon Striders. There is damage and disarray throughout the vessel. Five or six of the raiders have boarded the Falcon, trading blaster shots with Han and Chewie. The Wookiee defends Han with savage tenacity. He hurls a Talon Strider against an open electrical conduit, frying him to a crisp. Chewbacca then growls in anger, unleashing a torrent of blasts from his bowcaster, but his thick hide is overwhelmed by a flurry of blaster fire. He dies protecting his ship and his captain.

Han retreats to the cockpit in utter desperation. His DL-44 fire pierces a Twi'lek Strider through the torso, but another tosses a thermal detonator at him, flushing him out from cover. Wounded and helpless, Han's final sight is a Human Talon Strider mercenary's blaster muzzle.

Returning from her vision, Jeni lets out a tear.

It is just then that she hears reptilian growls somewhere on the outside of the ship. Then the click-clack of razor sharp claws rhythmically tapping the Falcon's durasteel outer shell. Jeni pulls out her blaster pistol and climbs through the broken canopy.

Out in the open air of Raxus Prime, Jeni turns around to behold a pair of hungry Massiffs. They have been stalking her since she entered the junkyard.

The nearer of the two big predators leaps at her, unleashing a ghastly roar from its spittle-ridden maw.

I was a local meetup for atheists a couple of days ago. It was my first time and I thought I might try to meet some people there because we already had one thing in common. I sat down and there were less than a dozen other people there. Keep in mind that I am 20...everybody else there was at least 15 years older than me, many 30 or 40 years older. I feel like I am always at the wrong age for everything. Either too old or too young to do what I want.

I sat there awkwardly for a couple of minutes before an old granny asked me where I was from. I told her I was from a lot of different places before I came to Atlanta and she joked that I was continuously kicked out from household to household. I laughed awkwardly.

Then I was silent for another couple of seconds before I asked nobody in particular what people do at the meetups. A guy next to me said they just hang out, drink, and talk, nothing scripted. I couldn't think of anything to say in reply so I just nodded, smiled, and said "yeah".

Another couple of minutes pass awkwardly. Most everybody else around me is engaged in conversation. The same guy next to me said something to a woman next to me about some sports team. The guy asked me if I am into sports, I said "No, I don't really follow any." That's a conversation ender if I've ever come up with one.

So as soon as the menus were passed out, I just walked out of there without saying a word. This happened less than ten minutes after I walked in determined to make friends. I was disappointed that there were no attractive single women there would might be into someone like me. That always seems to happen, the disappointment part, not the attractive woman part.

I went to Barnes and Noble later, where I usually hang out alone and read, and Skype-texted with my sister for an hour or so telling her what happened. She told me I am too self-centered, and that was why I had no friends and could never come up with anything to say. I asked her things and we got on a different subject and I forgot about myself for a few minutes. I guess that worked.

But I plan on going to a meetup of "nerdy romantics" this week. I'm new to that, too. The event is supposed to be a social gathering at a place where you can pick your own vegetables and blend them into soup. I asked them on their event wall if the meetups are for nerdy couples only or nerdy singles can go too. 

I doubt that, if they permit nerdy singles, any of the nerdy singles there would be girls. I imagine they would all be sad, desperate, worthless, pathetic, friendless guys like me. An attractive, geeky girl would have been claimed by some guy (or girl) in a heartbeat a long time ago. 

That's how I feel about women. The same way I feel towards employment. I've never had either, and it seems like everything in the world is conspiring to keep it that way.

My sister called me a "pathetic narcissistic shithead" for cutting myself again a few days ago. I felt like I was asking for that one, that I deserved it. I saw it coming and I cut myself anyway because the only thing I can see for myself in the future is more pain and self-hate. I really want to see other things and other people.

I wish I could just get up from this chair right now and start living instead of typing about in a goddamned Star Wars forum on the Internet. But I feel that I don't deserve to.

I was going to make the empress of the clone legions invading the Republic turn out to be Anakin's half-sister. I was trying to make that revelation my prequel trilogy's equivalent of ESB's "I am your father" moment. But then I dropped the idea of re-writing the prequels altogether.

Now these polar ice caps are at record low levels. It *has* to be connected to me. It can't not be. Everything bad in this world comes back to me. I wasn't able to land a job or get a life in college at 20, and the world has to suffer for it. This is a rock-solid connection in my mind. I really do feel personally responsible for these things.

I was up drinking beer and gin straight out of their bottles and went to sleep at 2 AM even though I knew I was going to wake up later then I should and that would was going to make me wake up depressed. Sure enough that's what happened and here I am again.

I am sitting here with my thumb up my ass because I am waiting for a reply to my internship interview. I've sent everyone involved follow-up emails. That's proper job application etiquette, right?

I would really rather know their decision sooner than later, though. That way I can know whether or not I need to look for work as a dishwasher. Who would possibly reject me for dishwashing? Retail work I can understand, because I am not a pretty white girl and I have no references or experience. But even an illiterate chimpanzee can wash dishes...

What is the political and religious makeup of the military like? Is it mostly religious neo-conservatives? Many of the servicemen I have met have been that or something similar. Doesn't seem like my kind of crowd. I'm an apatheist and I do not subscribe to the whole "USA #1" ideology. I try to remember that the world is less black and white than petty nationalism would seem to dictate.

I've always seen recruitment drives based on "pride for your country" and "service to your land" as transparent attempts to convert more serfs into meatshields. Perhaps I think this way because my immediate family is very international in nature. My dad got us out of Pakistan while the going was good and I am the first American-born in the family. My mother is strongly attached to her homeland of Pakistan, but I, my siblings, and my father don't peg ourselves down as being of a particular country, except for the purpose of having something to record on paper. I feel more like "a dude who happens to possess an American passport from birth" than "an American". I've been to many different places around the world in my short life and it feels strange and off-putting to call myself "an American", except as a formality. I try to place myself above nationalism. That's why I've always had trouble picturing myself as a military serviceman. Unless Earth gets invaded by hostile alien lifeforms and all the world's militaries team up to fight them off. I would be on my way to the recruiter's office within five minutes of seeing that on the news.

I've never understood the saying "proud to be an American". Pride is felt when you've earned something by your own labor. I am glad to be an American. Lucky to be an American. But I wouldn't go so far as to say "proud".

Also if I were to give it a go, would they be able to read all of this? Does the military normally accept any suicidally-depressed people who have thoughts of killing every new person they meet?

And one more thing, while I do try to keep fit, I am not an athlete. I've never had any desire or drive to join track teams, sports teams, whatever. Those activities never held much interest for me because I was so horrible at them in middle school that I've been turned off to the very idea. Now I just keep fit so that I can fit inside my H&M clothes and so that my body doesn't atrophy. I also have never had any interest in watching or following any sports. Isn't military culture a lot more sports-oriented?

You see, sports has always been this thing that everyone else in the world seems to be interested in, but in which I have absolutely *no* interest.

I'm not saying the military option is impossible, it just seems rather unlikely at this juncture.

I may be 20 years old but I still have no direct control over much money I can use. I have gotten used to thinking of it like the wind, it comes and goes whenever it does, and there's not much I can do to influence it. So that makes me feel guilty about ever spending any money at all on absolutely anything. I always have to assume that the $8.34 in my wallet is the last $8.34 my entire family will ever have. I take seriously the idea that my purchase of a can of $1.70 Monster Energy Drink at Wal-Mart has been responsible for the country's recession. And the cheapest therapy sessions I have been to have been $45 each. And our family members abroad always need extra money, especially my sick mother in Pakistan. She's recovering from gall bladder removal surgery. And a bunch of other surgeries. She hasn't been a bad mother to me or anything but I honestly wish she would just die already. That way we don't have to send her any more of the money my dad earns online.

On top of all of that I have been searching for some kind of outside job for years. Retail this and retail that. It's only now that I've been turning to restaurants and cafes. But I have to put that on hold for at least another week to hear back from an engineering company where I went to an interview because I was referred there by my friend's dad who is a VP of one of the departments there. It's a little hard to maintain the positive, initiative-taking, go-getter attitude when you've been searching for three years, you are brown-skinned, you have no real experience, references, or social skills, and you are a male with an acne problem. The closest thing I have ever had to a job so far has been four days of volunteer work at a cafe. That sent the message loud and clear: "No-one is willing to pay you. Ever." How fucking encouraging. I already thought that I was worth nothing on a moral and experiential level, now I can add that I am worth nothing on the economic level. Great. 

I've been helping out with my dad's home business for years now, 5 to 10 hours a week. I'm basically a warehouse monkey, but my title is Research and Development Officer. What the fuck is that? Just for once I want a job where I don't have to lie and make myself sound like some kind of bigshot, even if that job title is "Host" or "Dishwasher".

I have a constant, unending guilt trip for everything I do playing on repeat inside my head, at the absolute loudest volume possible, especially in matters relating to money. But the thing is, I can't see things ever being any different. My mind can no longer generate the thought of me being responsible for anything good. At least not in a way I can take seriously or see as being feasible.

And my dad does not believe in therapy, medication, or counseling. He hasn't disallowed me from doing those things, but he has guilt tripped me about them like he always does about everything else. He insists that if I listen to enough Anthony Robbins and Brian Tracy, I can just flip a light switch in my head and everything will be perfect by the next day.

So I am afraid of going to therapy because I don't have a stable supply of money that I can call my own and because my dad does not believe in that sort of thing working. I don't either, probably because I have only been able to go to two goddamned sessions before I left this summer for a 90-day trip abroad that I thought was going to change everything. Instead I am now back to square zero like I always am after I am done doing something that I think will "change everything".

I fucking hate the city of Atlanta, Georgia. I have been in this miserable shithole for nine pointless years and I am convinced that I might die here. I only ever have real fun when I temporarily leave this place to see my siblings in Canada and Europe. While I am abroad I always try to formulate plans to break out of the depression I am in in Atlanta. I always have help from my siblings when I do this. I think that I am a different person when I'm outside Atlanta, and thus will be able to devise some kind of solution to my depression. Look for jobs in this way, at this time of the week, at this time of day, look for these social groups on Meetup.com, go talk to these people at the university. But all of that shit crumbles and burns into nothingness when I get back here.

There is something about this place that sucks all the hope and joy out of me. If it were entirely up to me, I would live in the city of Toronto. Assuming I can find a job there. I don't know much about that, I've only ever looked for a job here in Atlanta. But I've been there on visits a total of four times, and I get a nice, almost European vibe. Very open and tolerant, diverse and beautiful people they have there. I've heard that it is more expensive to live there than it is here, but if I were there at least I wouldn't be surrounded by people I want to mow down with an Uzi.

I have almost nothing but bad memories about this town. And the worst part is is that there are never any major natural disasters here. I want a goddamned hurricane to sweep through the place, followed by an 8.5 earthquake, and topped off with a shower of meteorites. That's how much I love the cunting ATL. It wouldn't affect me if the CDC were broken into and every single hell-spawn of a virus contained in there were released into the local populace, because I wouldn't have any friends in the resulting mass of dead and dying people anyway. I would probably die too. But who cares about that, right?

Fuck Atlanta, fuck Georgia, and fuck the "New South". I never belonged in this ass-backwards, segregated, Bible-thumping trash can of a state anyway. I'm just here because my dad plopped us down here when I was eleven because an apartment was cheap and we don't get any hurricanes, blizzards, or earthquakes here. I don't want to stay here for even a single day longer than I absolutely have to. In fact I am hesitant to use the term "we" in regards to this city because that very word associates me with this place, this boring useless time-wasting shithole where no progress has ever been made towards me getting a life.

I remember the days when I would come here to write about Star Wars. 

So I just walk up to them in the middle of the game, conversation, whatever they were deeply involved in and just ask them about Magic? I don't know...I feel like if I do that then they will think there is something wrong with me in my head.

I'm scared they might write me off right then and there. If I had something ready to say to them, I wouldn't be sitting here after two years and still not know any of their names. I always feel unwanted, hated, and guilty. I am the kind of person whose first reaction to hearing about anything bad happening anywhere in the world is to think of all the ways in which I could be responsible. As nuts as this might sound, I do not entirely discount the notion that I was somehow responsible for what happened to the Twin Towers. And Hurricane Katrina. And earthquakes. And wars. These are the things that run in my head and make me think "Who would ever want to be friends with someone like me? Or invite me to anything?"

And I have posted these kinds of topics in other forums across the Internet and ranted at relatives, close friends from high school, psychiatric counselors, and psycho-therapists endlessly for the past three or four years. Not much has changed so far. Except that I no longer engage in self-harm with a razor, as I did all throughout January. Now sometimes I hit myself with blunt objects. 

I went to a local meetup of Firefly fans today and I still felt mostly like a wallflower. I don't know if I should even bother going back to that group. They didn't hate me or anything, I don't give people reasons to hate me. But I just couldn't justify opening my mouth for most of the occasion because I sincerely believed that I was incapable of offering anything of value. Especially when people there started talking about jobs and romantic relationships. I haven't had any actual experience in other of those two things. I truly felt like an alien from another world. Like I was divorced from humanity because I had no ability to connect with others in those ways.

There was only really one person there to whom I felt any kind of friendliness. Luckily I happened to be sitting next to him the whole time. That's generally the way it works with me. I tend to find 1-3 "partners in crime" and just ignore everybody else at the event.

But then people said things to each other that were not as witty or well-timed as what I had planned out in my head, and that kept infuriating me. I try to make poignant and well-placed comments, absolutely avoiding as many cliches as possible. But these other people were getting away with ignoring those standards. And that made me want to take a broken beer bottle to someone's jugular.

I guess what I'm trying to say with all my bitching and moaning on the Internet is that I want to become a real adult. Not a twenty-year-old child with a driver's license. A real grown-up, with a job and who regularly has sex (the genuine kind, not the financial transaction kind).

Another thing that I have heard is that I have to stop thinking about myself all the time and I have to stop hating myself. I agree with the first part but I cannot see the sense behind the second part. I honestly feel like I deserve to be hated and tortured. 

I vaguely remember feeling differently, feeling better than I do now. It was in all the years before my high school graduation. I remember the moment I started to feel dead inside. It was a few weeks into May of 2010. I woke up one morning and I felt this awful stillness in me. I felt chemically different from the way I had felt all my life previously. I looked up at the ceiling and just kept blankly staring at it, content to rot away forever on my mattress. Before I would have been too restless and full of energy. But from then on a little voice has been gnawing away at my mind saying "What is the fucking point? There's a train station near your apartment. Go jump in front of the southbound train and get this 'living' shit overwith!" I now realize that that was the first time I tasted depression. But now I want it all to change for the sake of my own sanity. 

There's always a group of gamers and geeks near the entrance of my university's student center; they are usually playing Magic on the table or something on their laptops. I don't know for sure because I have been too afraid to say hello or even look at them directly. There's always like 15 or 20 of them and one of me. What am I going to say? I haven't gotten into Magic mainly because I haven't had anybody around to get into it *with*. What's the point of getting cards if you have nobody to play with? I've started up a Warhammer 40,000 model hobby (slowly but surely, that stuff is expensive) lately because at least one can paint the models in any color scheme and get a distinctive and cool look.

This has been going on for the whole two years that I have been attending classes there. I am never sure of what to say to them, or who to start with. I don't know any of their names, have not spoken to them, and to the best of my knowledge I do not and have not ever had classes with any of them. Which infuriates me to no end because they seem like the kind of people I could have been friends with by now. But I transferring to another university next semester (for unrelated reasons), so I think it might be too late for me already. I feel that way towards pretty much everything now.