Edge Lord

A real possibility: I fucked myself up by reading Nietzsche. Alternatively equal possibility: I was fucked up, so I read Nietzsche. But Certainly: Well-adjusted adults in their mid-twenties are not fascinated with Nietzsche. I am no longer fascinated  by Nietzsche. I don't think about him regularly, even though I have a portrait of the guy hanging over my desk. He's interesting. He's still relevant albeit overdone. And I worry that he left a mark, for better or worse—or for good or evil or whatever lies beyond (WINK WINK). Thinking about power is...destructive, corrupting. Power flows in ways that are not our ways. And mimicking the  flows of powers  that you may observe won't win you any good prizes, because they cannot be copied from observation. Look, I do not know if that makes sense outside of my head, but I have to put it out there: if you try to merely mimic the flows, you will fail, and you will pay for your failure . Power is more like a dance...

When you're writing a story, you're supposed to know what your protagonist wants. If you don't do that, then you don't have a real character. And that strikes me as a really obvious metaphor for real life: if you don't really know what you want, then you don't have a really well-developed character. If you don't know what you want in a particular situation,  then someone else will want on your behalf,  and you will serve them.  This is a rule with few exceptions. ... It's important to get to a place where you can act according to your subjective experience–your visceral, unedited reactions; that is, your natural reactions. Most people tend to be alienated from their natural reactions, their "true will".  Natural, uncensored, candid, flowing—I have found these to be a suitable goalpost for crafting (nearly all) my reactions to social situations. However, the challenge is that human nature is ape-like, impish, infantile,...