There are always things that linger in our minds longer than they should, little things that you’d never notice unless they fit together in certain patterns that you may have seen before. Things you only notice because they’re in the right place at the right time, not because you were looking for them, but because your mind recognizes a pattern that isn’t really there, a pattern it thinks should be there.

Just lingering ideas, lingering thoughts, forming patterns that don’t make any sense, that don’t really belong, that fit in a puzzle that isn’t actually there, but may have been if things were different.

We don’t always know where the future will find us, except that it’ll somehow fit into that bigger picture. No matter how out of place things seem to be, if they didn’t belong, they wouldn’t be. Even if the only place they are is in your own mind.

Think about what happens every day, and you’ll find there are more patterns than you’d expect. Some good, some bad, some you can change, some you can’t. Look for the ones you can change for the better. But take care not to be changed by the ones you can’t change, simply because you noticed them.

Patterns exist everywhere, but they don’t always mean anything. It’s up to you to decide what’s out there.

Take care.

A subtle mix of runes and technology, with just a hint of my own madness to put it all together. That’s the source of my particular brand of magic, and I found it to be superior to any other kind out there. So far, at least. A lot could be done with a bit of creativity, after all. I’d proven that much in my time.

The masters of the arcane arts are more painters than scientists, but they’re equally effective in their own way. Myself, I’m just an engineer, a builder of machines covered in large amounts of quirky scribbling as my trademark. Scribbling that would change the very nature of my toys as well as my more volatile contraptions.

The way I went about using and abusing Magic was a careful mix of artistry, science and simple entrepreneurship. My glyphs and runes are always, always hand-drawn onto whatever object in need of just that extra bit of power to do whatever it is that needs to be done. Be it killing hundreds of vicious creatures, or just plain amusing a child for a minute or two. This world doesn’t deserve anything less than the best, good or bad, because it really is one of the worst out there.

Sure, there’s plenty of good to be found if you know just where to look, but you’d have to look long and hard to find anything at all worth smiling about, except perhaps in grim satisfaction at a job well done. And I did my job damn well indeed.

I’m still alive, aren’t I?

Sanity, sweet sanity… They say not to gape into your maw, because infinity might stare back. Perhaps this is isn’t even true, but you’re a precious gift like a white horse for a valiant knight of truth.

We often ask ourselves why the world is as it is, but then we recall the things that never made any sense, that shouldn’t be nor could even be if the universe made sense. So we ignore its flaws and return to sanity’s gleaming eyes, ignoring the maw just below, so inviting, so threatening.

Because, as it were, we’re fickle creatures destined to never fear or worry that the lies we tell ourselves are lies at all. The sincerity of a thought doesn’t make it truth itself, not until proven right time and time again.

Every test is one of sanity against insanity, and we’ll always tell ourselves sanity conquers all, but we need only think of love to know this shall never be true, as emotion is by definition a lack of sanity, rationality.

Staring into the maw of the monster we call reality will cost us our sanity. But what sanity is there in a universe where sanity is by nature self-deception?

~ Filix Garnesworth, My Memories of Living

Venturing into the unknown, better known as ‘the future’, is something we do every day, no matter how brave we think ourselves to be. We face an ever-changing world, which can throw all sorts of crap at us, but we’re facing it with the full knowledge that tomorrow will be another day, another chance for success or for failure, but another day all the same.

There are many things that can go so terribly wrong every day, and even thinking about it can be an incredibly terrifying experience, but it’s something we tend to ignore because we can do nothing else. We can’t stop, we can’t avoid the future that’s heading towards us at the insane speed of sixty minutes an hour.

Sometimes, we all wish the future came by a little slower. Or even a little faster, depending on just how interesting our lives are at any given moment. “May you live in interesting times” can indeed be a curse. But living a life where nothing ever happened, good or bad, wouldn’t be worth living.

A perfect life is one of ups and downs, but above all it is one of experience and learning. This world was not designed for perfection, nor intended as such. It’s a place in which we exist to learn and grow, to become better equipped to handle our future, even if that future, ultimately, is death.

There are no real goals in life, except the ones you set yourself. The ones you set yourself completely unaware of what the future may bring you. They may be easier than expected, or even impossible to accomplish. But in the end, the journey is everything, because achieving a goal just means you need to find a new one. After all, you can’t ever really stop.

You can’t even give up, because even that is a goal you’d need to accomplish. Every moment is a decision, a decision that can’t always be considered good or bad. We are limited in our perspective. We can’t see everything that’s in the past, nor even in the present. We certainly can’t predict the future. But we try to do so with every moment that passes, even when we’re not aware of it.

A simple gesture, enough to change the world. An outstretched hand; one of friendship and peace, held out in offering, not in threat of violence. Not turning the other cheek, not retaliating with equal force, but to forgive without forgetting. Never forgetting.

That one crucial change of the norm could change the way one sees the world. The active and the passive weren’t mutually exclusive. We’ve all been told not to judge, but we can never quite stop ourselves. We’ve all been told an eye for an eye is a cruel form of justice, if justice at all.

But what if we stopped looking at the world as being black and white? What if the world was a place of vivid colours as well as dull hues, not the static checker board of merely Good and Evil.

To judge everything but to not judge harshly — to forgive but not to forget. The past forgiven but remembered as a warning, not as a certainty. Nothing is certain after all, except perhaps that all things are by nature uncertain. Not even the past as we know it is set in stone — history is written by the victors, not by the truth.

Be not Judge, Jury and Executioner. Be both cautious Judge and optimistic Jury, and leave the cynical Execution to Necessity.

There wasn’t enough time to stop him. His arch enemy’s Grand Evil Plot Device was about to be triggered and there was nothing he could have done… Which is exactly why he was standing in the lab of his best friend, Vance Sockstein, Good Genius, about to enter a time machine in order to defeat his nemesis before he could complete the building of his Device.

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She wasn’t really sure why the dreams bothered her so much. They weren’t nightmares, not at all. But somehow… They didn’t make sense. They weren’t right. As if they weren’t her dreams. Dreams belonging to someone else came to her at night, leaving her confused and wondering about her own mind and even her sanity.

Why were her dreams not her own, whose dreams were they?

Were none of her dreams her own? The one about the kittens seemed to be something she’d dream of… But was it?  It was strange, she didn’t feel scared or threatened, but the dreams did bother her. Whoever dreamt them needed help, somehow. She didn’t know how she knew, but she could tell. Something wasn’t quite as it should be in those dreams.

Perhaps the colour of the sky sounded wrong, or the hallways were a little too high, but it was something she couldn’t define, couldn’t quite put her finger on. She needed to find out what was wrong and find out who dreamt such strange dreams. Perhaps she could fix them, make them as they should be.

But she had no idea where to start.

The world had changed since he last looked upon it. Night had turned into day. As it had every time he slept. But today, today was different. It wasn’t really anything significant; at least, not in the grand scheme of things. But something was missing. Something special, something that should have been.

It was hard to say what it was, but it felt like ‘family’, something which had always been an alien concept to him. Something he’d never really had before. The one thing he’d always longed to have. Maybe that had been what he had dreamed about this particular night, perhaps. The reason the world looked different, sadder, lonelier.

But the sun shone as bright as it did the day before, the grass as green as ever, birds chirping and singing happily. Nothing was different except his perspective. So he shook his head, got out of his small bed, and did what he always did. Continue on, hoping for the best, hoping for his dreams to become a reality. Settling for less had never been his style, after all.

Waking up is no reason to stop dreaming.

Y’know. Everyone wants to be happy.

Everyone. Including you.

Once you figure this out, there’s a lot more you can learn. Like why some people act like they don’t care about anything. Why people will face their problems head on, or why they’ll run away as fast as they can to avoid them.

We’re simple creatures, ultimately, all with similar goals, similar needs, and similar desires. We just express it differently sometimes. Even the people who seem to hate everything, really want nothing more than to be happy.

Some think money will make them happy. Others think it’s fame, or popularity, or some other meaningless goal. Some find what they’re looking for, some don’t. But we never stop looking, because we know things  can always be better than they are. We can always be better.

Some don’t think they can find their happiness, and they’ll give up searching. Some even give up on life, hoping for peaceful nothingness instead. Sometimes, we can’t see how anything at all could make us happy any more. When all seems lost. But when you think you can’t sink any lower, remember this: You have solid ground beneath your feet. You can only go up from here, unless you stay there, wallowing and alone.

People want to be happy. If you help them, chances are, they’ll help you.

I’ve often wondered what life would be like if we lived our dreams and dreamt our reality. But why stop there? Why be restrained by reality and not simply make that the dream instead? Living dreams and dreaming reality isn’t impossible, isn’t wrong.

Who cares how we’re supposed to live our lives? Right-side up, upside-down, our perspective is all that changes. Not what is and isn’t. So why worry what the right way of seiing things is, when every perspective is different anyway? Live the perspective which grants you happiness, not the perspective you think you’re supposed to have because ‘they’ tell you you should. Never stop dreaming.