The Evenstar

I've never liked this world much. 

Ever since I was a little kid, I always dreamed of going somewhere else. I created this alternate version of Earth that had everything and everyone that I loved, but with all these improvements to it. Magic was real. So were dragons. Dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct. Technology allowed people to fly. A network of glass corridors provided transport between this world and mine, snaking through streams of stars, galaxies, and lightyears of blackness. 

And more than anything, I wasn't alone. I don't remember why I spent so much time alone as a kid. I really wish I did. All I know is that when I was in my world, I always had someone by my side. 

The feeling of being out of place here was overwhelming. It still is. That sense of not belonging, of longing for somewhere else, it has never gone away. 

When I was in middle school, being bullied daily, I escaped to that world. The boys who tripped me and spit on me disappeared, replaced by tropical waterfalls and a pack of intelligent, speaking jaguars on the hunt. When I was a freshman in college, I mentally transformed my biology classroom into a cave filled with bats, and the concrete ground and walkways on campus became a network of pools and rivers that shimmered underneath the winter starlight. Wherever I went, I was followed by wolves, mad scientists, magicians, ghosts, creatures of both light and of darkness. They talked to me, and I talked to them, and through them I found solace. 

"Evenstar" is simply an antiquated way of saying "evening star" and it represents a core memory of mine, which I wrote about in my college admissions essays: standing on the steps at church that overlooked the city and the ocean, looking up at the stars. I imagined stomping my foot into the ground and shooting myself up towards those stars, away forever to other worlds that were surely far better than this one. 

This world is, for many of us, one massive sphere of disappointment. We are promised these wonderful things as children -- true and undying love, romance, friendship, wishes, myths, magic -- and as we grow older, we are told that they were lies all along. "That's just life" becomes the slogan. But why is it just life? Why do we have to just lie down and accept it? Why do we have to settle for less than what we've yearned for? 

Is this seriously all life is? Working yourself into the ground for some random CEO's dream to avoid losing everything? Slipping on the ice on some freezing January night? Getting tailgated on the I-15? Praying every day that your cat will live a little longer and won't die of cancer yet? Grinding through day after monotonous day? The hell is up with that? Why do we have to take this lying down? 

This world takes beautiful things and it covers them in filth; it takes perfection and ruins it. Here, all magic dies, and everything wonderful gets destroyed in the end. We are all, ultimately and indubitably, slaves to entropy and decay and loss. 

The Evenstar is a multimedia project spanning fiction novels, poetry, webcomics, visual novels, fanfiction, digital illustration, animation, video games, engineering, code, hacking, fitness, daydreams and lucid dreams, virtual reality, theme parks, and music. It was started, though I didn't have a name for it yet or fully understand its scope, as that little kid wandering alone on the playground, too lost in his own fantasies and daydreams to engage with the world. It will end with an expression of everything I wish this world could be, and a lament of everything this world is, assuming I am around long enough to complete it. If not, this post is what will have to take its place instead. 

I want to write and draw and code and design about everything in this world that we fear. Sickness. Losing those we love. Poverty. Insanity. Paralysis. Aging. Decay. Death. Running out of time. The end of dreams. I want to sing of clear skies and songbirds, of quiet neighborhoods and daffodils waving in green hills, of the scents of honeysuckle and juniper and pine. And then I want to destroy it, to replace heavenly choirs with faceless demonic shrieks, to choke out the sun with rot and bloody meat and screeching tires and the stench of death. 

To destroy beautiful things, just like this world does. 

And then I want to replace it with the light again. I want to write of rose-scented gardens and perfume and seaside dinners by pale candlelight. I want to write of magic, of heaven, of happiness and hope, of love that never dies. I want to fly on rocket ships that leave this world forever, bound for sunlit forests filled with dragons and geyser fields with iridescent droplets that dance in the midsummer sunlight. With my work, I want to scream: This is what the world has taken from us. This is what we could have had. Why is this withheld from us? Why?

The Evenstar is for others like me. People who don't like this world, who hate this place, and who want out. People who reach for happiness like November trees clawing desperately at the cloud-choked sky, unable to permeate it. People who have tried for so long to fill the void and have been unable to. People who see this world for what it really is -- a hellscape, a living nightmare that we can't wake up from. People who refuse to give up and accept defeat no matter how many times they are told no, people who know what they love and yearn for and will spend the rest of their lives fighting for it. If you long for something more, if you don't like this place and don't understand why you have to be here, if you feel alone and defeated, my work is for you. 

One day, within the next 3 to 5 years if possible, I will work full-time on this project. For now, I will focus on part-time, but my eventual goal is to be fully independent (even if it takes longer than the goal -- but I will do everything I can). I love coding, and will continue to do it daily. But I am tired of being told that I have to work evenings and weekends -- times when I could be exploring this world, times when I could be resting and recovering, times when I could be immersing myself fully in my passions. I don't want to do it anymore. I've checked out. I'm done. Or at least I will be, once this project is in full swing. I will either do it or I will die trying. There are no other options. Do or die. 

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Every single thing that I do, every project that I make, every certification that I earn, it is all tied together. Even FITNESS ties in -- I want to make myself beautiful and strong to fight against entropy. To, as they say, rage against the dying of the light. Sometimes I wish I could live in my imagination forever, allowing my body to rot away. But inasmuch as I am stuck here, I will not allow that to happen. I will care for the vessel that I'm stuck in. 

The NOVELS, COMICS, and STORIES illustrate the war between gods and demons. That war mirrors our own war with the planet we're stuck on. This world tries to destroy everything that is beautiful -- can we destroy it, to save everything that we love? 

The POETRY expresses emotions of that war. 

The ILLUSTRATION and ANIMATION depict visuals of that war, and the MUSIC is the sound of it. 

Through DREAMS, whether they be daydreams, lucid dreams, astral projections, or full-blown reality shifts, we will believe the impossible -- that we can break free forever from the constraints of this world. And through believing in the impossible, we will make it real. 

The THEME PARK RIDES bring a sense of tangibility to that war, bringing it directly into this reality and helping us to dream of what's beyond. The GAMES show willing participants their place in it, allowing them to fight. The MATH, ENGINEERING, CODE, and PHYSICS show us everything that we're up against: a perfect representation of the reality that ruins everything. Through HACKING we will understand how to break into that which was thought to be impermeable. We have to understand the real plane before we can understand the imaginary. We have to understand gravity to fly. 

We have to fully understand this broken world in order to tear it down at its core, and make it something better. 

And we will make something better. We have to. There is no other choice.