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BasileusIoannis

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01012024 - may we all have a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. here's to those who aren't with us any more: my dad (28 years ago), my dog (17 years ago), my mom (2 months ago), thank you every one.

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06092023 - so, looking at my Gallery, and seeing the oldest deviation was Limousine - A Short Story from March 31st, 2013, I realized that holy smokes, this is my 10th anniversary. As a matter of fact, March 31st has become a bit of a sore anniversary for me, as that was the date five years ago that I moved out of my home of 19 years and ended up in a hotel with my mom. Yeah, I take care of my elderly mom. Anyway, this means I started posting in dA five years before I became effectively homeless. Ironically, when I began posting in dA ten years ago, I was in a hotel in Las Vegas on vacation, and I started marathon-writing chapters for Bad Blood Runs Black starting the 1st of April 2013. Yeah, they were rough drafts, but I cranked out a chapter a day for about a week or so. Gradually it slowed down, until now, I posted chapter 54 back in October 2022, so it's been eleven months since I last posted to my story. I started writing the story in a hotel room, and now I'm still writing it in a hotel room.


I'm still working on Bad Blood Runs Black, but it's been slow thanks to RL bullcrap. I hate RL, it has a way of sucking the very life out of you, including your muse. I have no excuse, I have a functioning computer, and a flatbed scanner at work, so I could draw if I wanted to. It's just that I don't want to. Did I mention that I'm taking care of my elderly mom, who has a plethora of things wrong with her head? I could deal with simple senility. She used to display signs of Parkinson's disease before, making false accusations, imaginary enemies doing physically impossible things, all of that. Thankfully that's quieted down, but now she's full on senile, and it's a lot of work, and the emotional toll of having to change her diaper, cleaning up after her, all that just makes me sick to my soul. I remember how she used to be just three years ago, but she was full on Parkinsons back then, spouting BS about the neighbors she knew 20 years ago living in the rafters of the hotel (we're on the top floor, so there is no floor above us). I don't miss that at all. But I miss how mom was a cleanliness freak, kept the house immaculate even when we had a messy dog. Now she doesn't care at all about cleanliness, hygiene, smell. She watches TV, but doesn't understand a word that's being said, in English or Japanese. She can't tell time by looking at a clock. She can't tell dates because she can't read a calendar. She's a shadow of her former self, on her terminal period.


Back when I was in my late 20s, I had to help my mom take care of my elderly dad, who got a stroke before he retired, then got better, then a couple years later he had surgery to remove colorectal cancer and install a colostomy. He was still functional, but two more strokes left him a paraplegic dependent on an air-inflation mattress to avoid getting painful bedsores. It wasn't successful, he still got bedsores. He was a teacher with a Ph.D., and the last stroke left him unable to speak. Then mom had to change his colostomy bag every night, filling our house with the smell of feces. He finally died when I was 28, and I had to take care of our family's finances. I was working part time, going to college to finish my bachelors. There was never enough money, and two years later I had to sell the house to avoid foreclosure (they didn't have protection for borrowers like they have today). today, when I have to change my mom's diapers every day, I am reminded of my dad's colostomy.


It may be unfair to say, but neither my dad nor mom took care of their parents when they got old. Our family was overseas when my paternal grandparents died, so my dad didn't get to go to their funerals. We were in Okinawa when my maternal grandfather died in mainland Japan, so my mom got to attend his funeral. By the time my maternal grandmother died, we were in California, so she couldn't attend her funeral. But neither dad nor mom had to take care of their parents in their last years, or ever. Dad hadn't lived at home since he got his bachelor's and became a teacher, whereby he was sent overseas to become a DODDS teacher for military kids. He met my mom, and they got married in Tokyo, and she didn't go back home to Yamaguchi prefecture to live after that.


Dad being a government employee and an "overseas hire", that meant our family never got to live near my paternal or maternal grandparents. As a matter of fact, until I left home to attend college after graduating from high school, I never lived in the United States of America. And I'm an American. Fancy that. Some might say I had a charmed childhood, my parents never divorced, I never went without anything I needed, had plenty of toys, food, everything, thanks to dad. But that's glossing over the surface. I had a hard time with getting along with American kids. They were mostly military brats, and especially during my seven years in West Germany, that was an infantry base fifty klicks from the East German border and the kids were tough and mean. I learned what racism was the hard way, but it was not just white kids but black kids as well who attacked me, blamed me personally for the Pearl Harbor attack (which really hurt, because I was born an American citizen, and dad fought in that war against the Japanese) and mocked me about getting nuked. They were the lowest of the low, thieves who stole my lunch, my school supplies, once even my wallet (but I got that back when the teacher locked us in and said we couldn't leave until the wallet was returned, it magically reappeared in an unoccupied desk, fancy that).


So long story short, neither my dad nor my mom had to take care of their parents when they got old. I've had to spend the last thirty years of my life taking care of one elderly dying parent after another. I'm tired. I never got married, because either I was busy taking care of my dad, or there was never enough money, now I'm taking care of my mom. I'm tired. I want to go back to doing what I was doing, writing stories, playing computer games, making plastic models, painting metal miniatures, reading books, going to see movies, eating out. I haven't been able to do any of that for years. I'm tired. When I was born, I had not only my mom and dad, but my aunt also lived with us, so there were three adults taking care of me, and I had no siblings. Sure, I had a charmed life, if you looked only within the home. Now I have to take care of my mom, soiling her diaper like a five-foot tall, hundred-pound baby, have to make meals for her (she can't even use a microwave, and she's forgotten how to open a refrigerator even), change her dirty diaper, change her clothes, and I have no help. No spouse, no sibling. I'm tired.


But I'm not going to give up, I'm not going to allow RL to kill my art. Maybe that's why I haven't been able to keep up with Bad Blood Runs Black, because I don't want RL to screw with my story, to mess it up by making it depressing repetition that my RL has degenerated to. I won't allow that to happen. So it's taking me longer to write, but I don't write to biatch, I write to entertain. Well, except here on the journal. So if you're still reading this, bless you, but stop. That's all


- John "Basileus Ioannis"

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07012023 - Happy belated New Year! I've been posting every picture I have on my computer over the past couple weeks or so. some are gifts from other artists, and are so credited. most are my own mouse-drawn-using-MS-Paint poo. I wish I had more, the older stuff hand drawn on paper, but most have been lost over the years, or are currently in storage and I can't get at them yet :grump:


now, I think I can get back to writing my story, what is it now, chapter 55? it'll be a new story arc, so good time to introduce the reader to characters, both heroes and villains, new and old. I won't giveitaway now, but I've done a pretty good job of tying up loose ends so far, so there aren't too many left, huh? or is there a whole continent to the south that we haven't explored yet? and what about the ocean to the east of the High Porte, or west of Albi Aula? endless possibilities, so please bear with me, and thanks for viewing :wave:

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28112022 - all 54 chapters combined, proofed/edited, added table of contents, and pages numbered (637 pages, plus placeholder page 638 for pending chapter 55). removed all exclamation marks and half the ellipses (dang there were a lot of ellipses...I mean...). had to do some editing to correct mistakes or clarify things, but I tried to keep changes to a bare minimum. it was fun, going through all the chapters again :squee:


the other day, I saw a movie on TV called Life-Size 2 with Tyra Banks as a living doll named Eve, and her in the initial pink outfit reminded me of Slikkepind the Ghaele Eladrin. really, the way she talks to people to cheer them up, and doesn't seem to care what everyone else thinks is so her. Slikki was not influenced by Eve, as this was the first time I saw the movie, but it doesn't surprise me that there would be some similarities (of course, instead of a Barbie-sized doll growing to Tyra's substantial height, we have a 6 foot+/2 meter tall Ghaele Eladrin who grows to 18 feet+/6 meters to fight the frost giants). oh, and apparently somebody retconned frost giants, and now they're 21 feet tall? fine, then Slikki is also 21 feet tall, so there :finger: also, according to the same source, Eladrin don't increase in height when they have higher hit dice, but that's my "house rules" (or would it qualify as "homebrew"? :confused:).


oh, and almost every instance of quoted exposition is associated with "said", and not any of the plethora of verbiage I used before, like "exclaimed", "shouted", "yelled", etc. somewhere, some grammarian said in literature, any time someone says anything, no matter how loud or with whatever emotion, the action word needs to be "said". this is tied to the no-exclamation mark rule, as it is supposed to be left to the reader to know if someone is shouting or whatever. I don't like it, but I'll abide by it. if in the future, someone changes grammar rules and says "oh, now you can use different verbs for said", I'm gonna be mad :stare: but for the time being, I hope this constitutes a completed revision. I hope you enjoy reading it :wave:


John "Basileus Ioannis"

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07112022 - an idea came up. BBRB 'chapters' might seem short, in retrospect. howzabout this: I renumber the chapters by one decimal point. thus, chapters 1-9 will become the new chapters 0.1-0.9, and chapters 10-54 will thus become chapters 1.0-5.4. nawp, that's a dumb idea, nevermind :lonely: chapter 0.1, sheeesh...even if I bumped them forward by a factor of 10, so chapters 1-9 become 1.1-1.9, and 10-54 become 2.0-6.4...for the love of...that's even worse! :faint:


01112022 - well, well, welly well well. apparently Githyanki spelljammers (and astral ships) are a thing. gods how I hate that. I thought I had made a perfectly unique thing, the Gith pirate ship :ahoy:and lo and behold, not only do Giths have them, raiding is their thang. wtf :stare: here's what I think: whoever came up widdat must have a time machine, came forward a few years, read my chapter 54, said "now THAT's a jolly good idea" and went back in time and 'invented' it. now I have to dust off MY time machine and out-go-back their a$$es. ha, eat dem chrono-farts Gith spelljammer idea stealers :shakefist: (in all seriousness, I didn't know about this until just tonight, honest. I'm not much of a Githyanki fan, so I didn't know much about them to begin with)


I'm not sure when I'm going to have chapter 55 in the works, as right now I've decided on another project that should keep me busy for at least a month or two: I've combined all the pages of BBRB into one volume (of six books, 54 chapters including the revisions of up to chapter 30) and am editing using what I've learned about grammar rules. I'm trying not to change anything dramatic, so if you do get to reading it, it should be an easier read without any surprises. if I have time, I might even add illustrations, as I've had to delete all the italics indicators <I> and </I> and just use Word and italicize things. that's how dA text processor seems to work nowadays, as I learned when I uploaded chapter 54. so I'll keep you posted


p.s. with title page, a three page table of contents, and page breaks at the end of each book only (six books, so five page breaks), there's a total of 634 pages :happybounce: so far :squee:because as you know, BBRB is a living story, still being written :work:


17102022 - chapter 54 of Bad Blood Runs Black is up. Sorry for the multi-year delay. I've had a change in my life that's distracted me from writing. Truly, my muse had left me for that long. But something got me to thinking about where I left off in my story, and I realized I couldn't leave it mid-stream. Most folks who used to read BBRB might have left, or are no longer interested, and I don't blame them. But I felt it was my duty to tie up those loose ends at least. Now, if I get hit by a bus or something, the 54 chapters can stand alone. If I survive said bus, there might be a chapter 55, but I get the feeling there's going to be a new direction. I mean, when you've got an extinction level event hitting the Drow, the leader of the most powerful empire a disguised Arch-Devil, and a freakin' deity in the story, yas we need a new approach. Oh, and in case you don't know, a Spelljammer is a magical space-faring sailing ship. Or dimensional-faring, if you will. I decided to change up the Githyanki a little, as they first appeared in a TSR book called Fiend Folio, which was published by TSR UK, hence the quasi-Brit accent (appropriate for sailors too, I thought). And black powder weapons did appear in D&D, so I wasn't that far off the handle. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story, and I promise to work on my art in the future. Thanks -- John "Basileus Ioannis"

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