A Promise

 I hate society.
I hate the way it traps us
In a web of lies,
Waiting for the day
It can feast on our corpses.

I hate our leaders.
They're the ones holding
This tower of pain
And misery up,
Not out of malice
But out of fear.

I can't express my hatred
For a world
Bound by a promise 
That can't be kept. 
A promise of greatness,
So long as you obey the rules.

I can't explain why I feel lost,
That the path I'm following 
Didn't lead to where I was told it would go.
I can't tell anyone why
I don't feel any joy
When I'm with people any more.

Is our world changing
Or am I simply pretending that it is? 

   There's been so much going on for so long, I'm concerned that when things wind down again it'll feel boring. 

A Search for Meaning in a Meaningless world

    Like everyone else, I'm stuck in an endless search for meaning. I'm a writer, I can make a world for myself if the rest of the world crumbles away. When I look around, I see so many who are not so lucky. 

    It will never not bother me that we don't make creative writing mandatory for every student. I will argue until my dying day that people need to learn how to write fiction even more then writing non-fiction, not because they need to use it but because they need to be able to use it. 

    I look around and I see so many people trapped in dying worlds. Earth, society, major religion. All are falling, and nobody knows what to do. 

   The problem is that we've trained each other, and ourselves, to not want power. We've told each other that the best thing a person can be is somewhere in the middle, enough power to change things, not enough to have full responsibility. Then we made a world where no one has "just enough" power. Either you own everything, or you have nothing, there's no in between. That's why all our worlds are dying. In order for a world to survive, it needs to be able to change. So long as we delegate our destinies to those who don't even know our names, we'll never be able to do that. 

     We have to let go of the world we used to know, a world where everyone had a place and who you are was dictated by what you did. Our Universe was built to be a place where everyone could shape it however they pleased, and we've taken that from each other. We have to build a world where everyone can be who they want to be, and expect that most people don't want to be leaders. I don't think most people even want success, they just want to be able live without fear or stress. Why is that a bad thing? 

    We need to break free from society. It's the only way we'll survive. 

The Human Race

     So many humans live in the lands of Estellia. They go about their lives in complete ignorance of what's really going on around them. As a god it's my job to keep it that way, since that way they'll fall for our tricks. So many humans, yet so little power can be spared for lesser Nightmares.

   Most humans, eager and greedy for power, leap at the chance to become a Nightmare. What they don't know is that the amount of power you can have is dependent on how lucid you're able to go. You could, in theory, get better at going lucid with practice. The problem is that in order to become a true Nightmare, you must give up your ability to go lucid, for good. Unless you lose power, you can never go lucid again. While it's true that most humans can go lucid, most of them never learn how. It's much easier to go lucid when you're asleep then when you're awake, and humans are trained, by us, to never sleep at all. 

   There are, of course, those who sleep regardless. Weakness isn't limited to High Nightmare's after all. We're always on the lookout, lest they get so good at going lucid power no longer sticks to them. After that, there's not much we can do. 

   What worried me is that I've heard more and more about a human who's able to take out Nightmares by herself. I didn't put much stock into it at first, since most of these accounts claim she was using a plastic star shaped necklace to do it. Yes, I know there is such a thing as a Rubber Ducky of Doom, but I feel that any human nowadays would just turn a rock into an Artefact. At least then, it would be dignified. 

    Then I ran into her myself, after I made a declaration that I realize now I didn't think through. I don't know how I was supposed to know a human with the capability of fighting off a god just so happened to homeless, but apparently I was, because she took me out instantly. It shouldn't have, I know how to block, but I wasn't expected a human wearing a white shirt and dark pants to end me with a glance. 

   To be fair, I don't know many humans personally. Fairies and Monsters let humans live as themselves in their domains, but Sorcerers and Shadows don't. Ours is a land of laws, and laws only matter if people are able to follow them perfectly. It's impossible to create laws that encapsulate humans, since most of them don't sleep or eat. 

   So much the better. It's hard enough building a Dreamworld for those who matter. If we had to include humans in our Dreamworlds, they would never get made at all. 

    I almost miss the days where I had to write about having nothing to write about. Now I have so much to say that I'm not sure what to talk about anymore. 

Midnight Nightmares

    Trying to be a God while also working to become a princess is, for lack of a better term, trying. I have to work hard, and there's never any rest. Not that I'm complaining, I come from a long line of hard workers and my parents always told me to wear my job with pride. My father always said he was an Arcade manager before he said he was a father, and my mother never mentioned me without also mentioning that I modeled for her magazine (something I hated doing because it got in the way of my homework). What separates us from humanity, they always said, is that we work.

    I genuine love both of my jobs, but my favorite part is getting to meet so many people. Lords and Ladies from all over the realms, dressed in their best, with Nightmare forms that shock and horrify if they're evil and calm and soothe if they aren't. Most of them don't wear their Nightmare forms around me of course, it would be crass and horrible to try and manipulate a lady into giving them power, but if you ask them they'd show it to you instantly. Nightmares, no matter what kind or how strong they are, are proud of our power and prestige.

   Most of us, anyway.

   There are, others, who aren't proud to be Nightmares. Children, from every class, who don't want power. They cry and run if it ever touches them. Among the human born, they even go so far as to call it "miasma" and say it'll kill you if you let it near you too often. Even if they become Nightmares, and despite our best efforts there are always a few who slip through our fingers, they almost never gain Nightmare forms. 

   They're the ones who become Midnight Nightmares, ones with the power to shape the world. 

    Avatars can't shape the world, not directly at least. I've never even gone lucid before, and I don't know anybody who has. But they do. All the time. The Infinite is full of the worlds they've made, and we have to warn everyone not to go outside the approved Dreamworlds without permits and a guide, because most of these rules don't follow our laws. It's against the law to make such a rule, but not even James would think of trying to enforce a law against a Midnight Nightmare. They don't even die, not like the rest of us do. They die of their volition, when they've decided they've done enough. 

   There's a story told about Midnight Nightmares among human kind, a story that goes that once, long ago, all of Estellia was brought to life by a Dreamer. A human. One of immense power. Some say that Dreamer is still alive, and if you find them they will grant you anything your heart desires.

   They also talk about Dreamlings, those who sleep every night to give the Nightmares power.

    I wish they knew they were talking about the same thing. Then the children born to human parents would come to us, asking for power as is tradition, and be bound by our laws. Then we wouldn't have to worry about them destroying the world before they realize they were meant to save it. 

    I've heard it said that even children who aren't potential Midnight Nightmares don't want to become Nightmares. That's just ridiculous. Why would you turn down power just so that you don't have to work? It's pure laziness, nothing else. 

   Look at the Midnight Nightmares. None of them are lazy, but some of them don't know what they are.  

A World Without Limits

    I think it's fair to say that most people think their society is broken, at least in the 2020's. I, being an overachiever, think the very concept of society itself is broken. It should be enabling us to be better then we could be by ourselves, but I think at this point it's only making us worse off, mentally at least. 

    Society isn't just about bringing goods and services to those who need/want them, it's about protecting us from the Infinite. We all know our lives aren't inherently meaningful, and all of us are working as hard as we can to make sure that isn't true, and to that end we built society. It's a large Dreamworld that's built by an enormous number of people, so that makes it easier to believe in than a Dreamworld we build for ourselves. 

   I have some problems with it.

   First, it isn't real. Society isn't bound by physics, rules that are held in place by the wills of atoms and planets. It's bound by our minds, what we decide is right and wrong. Yet people hold society to be just as unchangeable as the laws of motion. 

   The laws of physics are static because the beings that follow them are, mostly, non-living. Whether they're conscious or not is, at the current moment, debatable, but they can't have their existence erased by bad laws. They aren't alive, so they can't die, they just change. Society isn't like that. It's built by humans, creatures who are, at the moment, not immortal. Importantly, most people don't want to be immortal. This means that those living under society are always changing, so the rules they live under have to change to accommodate them.

   Second, society isn't built with limitations in mind. We assume that, since most people can do most things, everyone is capable of being anything in society, so we should push people to be whatever society needs the most of at any given moment. We assume that, since we can make more stuff with earth's resources then we used to, we'll always be able to do more with earth's resources, so we shouldn't plan for the moment things run out. I don't think I should need to explain why this is a bad idea. 

    This is just my opinion, but I think that most of our pain is caused by living in a world without limits. Remember how I said that we're all working to make our lives meaningful? I think that all of us know, somewhere inside us, that our Universe isn't objectively real. It's just a place we build in our minds out of what we see in our minds eye, constructed out of what we see and hear. It's a world based on facts and opinions, but also based on what we believe, even if we know it isn't true or real. 

    The important thing to understand is that the Infinite has no limits. Anything can be created, anything can be destroyed, anything that can happen has already happened and is happening all at once. Lack of limitation is why the Infinite is meaningless, because without limits nothing ever changes. Infinity is always infinity, even if it seems like the numbers should go up. 

    I don't think we should limit each other, but we need to limit how large society gets and how much money a person can have. If society is to survive, it needs to be a place where everyone has a voice, everyone's actions matter, and everyone has the opportunity to shape it as they see fit. The way it's done now, a very small number of people are in charge of everything and the rest of us just have to hold on and hope they make the right choices. Not only is it grossly unfair, it's deeply unsustainable. We the people are used to limitations, some of us have a lot more then others but I truly think removing all of them would just lead to unhappiness. Now we have to make sure our leaders are limited, so they never forget just who lets them keep power and respect. Society can't exist without us, the ones responsible for deciding where the world goes. It's time that we remember that. 

Dissent

 I've spent my whole life
Hiding
The truth from my friends.

I've spent my whole life silent,
Tacitly
Saying I agree with everyone.
The truth is,
I feel differently.

I agree with some people about some things,
But I agree with others about most,
Which group should I pick?

Should I not be fussy?
Should I just go with what makes me happy?
What happens when I hear them agree
With a point of view I don't hold?

What if I suspect their right and I'm wrong
But it doesn’t' change my mind?

Should I feel sympathy for lucifer
For saying his peace 
And being cast out for it?

I don't want everyone to agree with me,
But I don't like the feeling that something's
Wrong with me.

I've spent my whole life
Pretending
I don't care what other people think.

But in the end,
All I want is acceptance. 

Heroes of the world

    I know I'm supposed to resent living in a world based on shallow materialism, but I kind of miss it. When I was old enough to be paying attention, the internet was already a big part of life, so living in a world where most people didn't care about the things I was passionate about wasn't that big a deal. Now it feels like all anyone can focus on is the stuff I've been wondering about for years. 

   I guess I should be happy. I've got a lot to say about all this after all. But when you spend you're whole life feeling like some unloved weirdo, being the most knowledgeable person in the room feels jarring. 

   I hope I'm just being delusional, but I can't seem to shut up the voice that screaming, "Why aren't you being louder? You know people need to hear what you have to say. You know you can see what's going on better then most. Why don't you get up and say that?" 

   I never thought I'd be important, and I don't like the feeling that I suddenly am. 

   Maybe someone will point out how stupid I am. It's not like other's aren't looking at the world to. There are lot's of heroes out in the world right now, we just haven't met most of them yet. 

We Have No Backup Plan

 Note: There are no facts in this post. There is nothing here that's objectively true. This is just me stating something I believe to be true. 

  The Infinite isn't something anyone wants to believe in. No one wants to remember that nothing they do will matter. We've gone to great lengths to find something, anything, to believe in. Temples, towers, technology, all of them were made so that we might leave a legacy, so that someone would want to listen to what we had to say. 

    Most of us aren't meant for greatness, so we join those we think are great, those who stand on the shoulders of giants. We beg for them to notice us, for them to speak our names, for our use to be recognized. 

     But they never will, because they'll never care. 

     Our world, built on the dreams of our ancestors, is dying. Though our leaders deny it, we all know it to be true. We see it happening every time we leave the house, or go online. Our leaders don't care if we think the world's ending, they just want to be spared from the pain and suffering they inflict on us. They may know we aren't happy, but nothing we can do will make them care. 

   Strange though it may seem, that's not what worries me. Our world's collapsed multiple times. No society was meant to last forever. 

   The problem is that we don't have anything to fall back on.

    The entirety of planet earth has been stitched together into a single society. We now depend on countries most of us will never see for almost everything. This isn't just an economic problem, the greater world now lives in an illusion where America is the greatest and always will be the greatest. What happens when they learn that isn't true?

    We never really prepared for societal collapse. We prepared for the moment food would be scarce, people turned wild, and our leaders fled to walled estates. We didn't prepare for the moment the reality we lived in vanished, leaving us with nothing to believe in but The Infinite. We were told we wouldn't need to, that our leaders would come through at the last second. When they didn't we felt lost. 

     So many people claim that things are fine. They can't imagine a world where this won't fix itself, but it won't this time. Our world wasn't meant to be this complex, or this focused on reality. It was built on the idea that our internal and external worlds would be aligned, not on having to prize our external worlds over our internal worlds. Is it any wonder so many are so lonely? 

    I keep hoping I'm wrong, that we'll be okay, that our world will be able to keep us safe. But we need a backup plan, one that's not based in politics. We need a world based on the things that everyone believes in, even if they know they aren't true. Without something to believe in, we have nothing at all.