Work Post?

6:04am - Well I'm down at the McDonalds with my laptop again, and lowered expectations, so we'll see how that goes.

It's been a pretty dark time for me, and I still don't really understand why or how. I don't feel so bad really, I'm just not doing anything and I don't want to do anything most of the time. I guess I'm feeling better since I decided to come out to the McDonalds and try doing something?

But I mostly came for the food. I had a much bigger meal than I usually would here at McDonalds, because I find that food is a good bandage for sorrows.

I made a decision before I left home that I would accept it if I wasn't able to do any work while I'm here, or anything else for that matter. The point is to try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But I don't want to end up curled up in a heap in public again either, at least as long as I can put it off.

6:17am - I'm mostly listening to music so far, since I finished my meal. But I'm also thinking about what to do. The most obvious thing I think is to try what I was doing before and work on World of Thardomhainn. Heck I've even got it open already just in case I want to work on it.

I've also got Steam open in case I want to play a game, like Oxygen Not Included for example. They did a recent update and it might be fun to play with the new systems. I dunno though. As I reminded myself before I left home, playing Oxygen Not Included is almost like work, which is the same for most of my favorite games.


7:03am - I spent some time looking at the code for WoT and not really doing anything with it, and some time trying to relax and read some twitter. I don't know why I do that, it's not a very relaxing thing to do. I keep wondering if I should prune my twitter watch list, but at the same time I don't want to build an echo chamber, you know? And it's not like the people bugging me are really saying stuff I don't agree with, they're just kind of going overboard with it.

I'm also a bit frustrated with a Discord group I'm a part of. It's been kind of taken over by people with alternative spiritualities and odd ideas on psychology. The otherkin and headmates crowd. I guess I was a lot more tolerant of people like that in the past. I don't like the idea of becoming less tolerant? But I also don't feel comfortable with the idea of spirituality anymore, and that Discord is a group I joined largely for materialist discussions. So I've been considering making my own alternative materialist discord in the same vein, but I'm not sure anybody wants that, or that I should be the leader of such a group.

My closest friends are a bunch of smart cookies but they feel overwhelmed by the sorts of things I'm looking for. Except maybe Alfador, but he's not shown a lot of interest in high minded discussions of future culture.

Talking about this here in my journal is making me feel better than work did, so I guess I'll keep doing it.

I don't have a direct problem with the otherkin and headmates crowd, they're not bad people. I don't agree with their spirituality and I worry about the impact their psychological habits will have on them, but they're not actively hurting people. I guess I'm just frustrated that I think they're wrong and they disagree and I've got no way to prove them wrong, and even if I could I'd be seen as the villan for breaking up their good time.

I suppose I went through the same things. I went through a period of experimenting with alternative spirituality, and I went through a trans phase, and I even portrayed myself as four different sides of the same person for a little bit back in the late 90s. And these people are mostly younger than me. I know because a lot of them put their ages and experiences on the introductions page. I've been around the online furry community for around 20 years now and most of them have only been around for 10. I can't say for certain they're all going to 'grow out of it' like I did but it feels that way to look at them. On the other hand I didn't get a lot of support for my alternative views back when I had them, and these folks are supporting eachother strongly. Maybe they'll turn out different?

I wonder if keeping quiet is the best though. Like, am I depriving them by not sharing my experiences and history for them to learn from? Would they even care about my history and experiences? I don't know.

I suppose the big question "What's the harm?" they're only really hurting themselves, and we all have to scrape our knees sometimes. And maybe they're not hurting themselves? I guess there's also a worry that they'll encourage the wrong person to do the wrong thing and they'll end up killing themself, but I don't know if anyone other than the individual can REALLY take responsibility for suicide. :/

This is getting kind of negative. I'm making myself look like a bad guy again. It's not like I'm going to out these people to their parents or try to hurt them or hold them back in society or something. I'm just frustrated that spirituality managed to beat off materialism in a group dedicated to futurism and imagination.

7:29am - That brings me to another thing I've been thinking recently. I've been wanting to write another story in the vein of Relee and the Beegirls, but a few shades darker. But I feel wary about glorifying villanhood now. Like people are going to judge me for my fap rags. I'm still tender over one person I already didn't like deciding to accuse me of being a white supremacist. I think they felt they 'won' when I stopped replying to their offensive comments, but I was too busy being shocked, appalled and crying. I don't know how someone I dislike and distrust can have so much power over my emotions, but I don't like it.

Normally I think that a person should be responsible for their own emotions, but I'm not so sure anymore. It's like, did I hurt myself or did this person hurt me? That old saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names shall never hurt me" comes to mind. So who or what hurt me? I don't know.

I don't know what to do with myself, but I had an idea. I thought, if I want to write but I don't want people to judge me poorly for the dark content of my writing, I should write something more positive and hopeful. I've struggled with that since I came up with it though.

Instead of making a dark fap story about the wizard Relee getting corrupted by evil, I could write a hopeful story about the future and my reworked Adorabillians. I've been trying to write a new Adorabillian story for years now though and it hasn't worked out yet.

7:38am - The Adorabillians, in their modern incarnation, are missing something. The way I wrote about them most recently they were just cute for the sake of cute, with no reasoning for their goals or postlifestyle.

So I'm thinking one thing I could do while I'm on this subject is try to come up with a reason for the Adorabillians to be the way that they are as I imagine them.

The Adorabillians are advanced post-life furry people, adorable by design and similar in form, most of them. So why do they choose to be similar and adorable?

I struggled with a question the other night and I'll return to it here. If I somehow survive the age of mortals and my friends with me, would I form the Adorabillians? Wouldn't I rather stay with my friends? And my friends, wouldn't they all want to be other fantastic beings than just another part of the Adorabillian ecology?

So if I wouldn't be a part of the Adorabillian ecosystem myself, who would form this community, and why?

I wish I could take my friends with me, because I'd like to try it if it became possible in real life.

Anyways that's a big stumbling block for trying to work with the Adorabillians or any other unified form and culture in the posthuman era.

The main thing I've considered is that it would be likely that most people would have similar forms, probably andromorphs or a few other shapes, within a single habitat or cluster. The Adorabillians would be more compact, partly because it's cuter but also because as a tool-using being, and a tool-interfacing being, they don't need to be big anymore. If they're threatened they're either doomed or are doom. If they want to work on something bigger they can use exosuits and robots and other types of tools. So it makes sense to have your main form as compact as possible. Your body is really just an interface for your persona to the world around it.

So I figure there will be human-sized anthropoids and squat anthropoids like the Adorabillians, but there will probably be other forms as well. Like purely mechanical bodies that could be shaped like anything that would contain a persona core/brain analogue. Dr. Who has some good examples like the Daleks and the Toclafane. There might be giants too, but probably not except as art-bodies. Especially in space you want to be light, because having a bigger body costs more to move around. Penalty weight they call it.

One friend proposed the idea of an amoebalike body for zero g, since it's possible to end up stuck in the middle of a room in zero g with a rigid body, but if you're a big jello mould you can extend your whole body into a pole and reach something to grab onto. It's great that people think about this sort of thing!

So I think that squat cute neotenous bodies like the Adorabillians will actually be relatively common in space in the future.

The trouble is their culture and sameness. When you can be anything, why be similar to your neighbor? I think there will be some pressure to have similar forms within a single habitat or cluster because everybody has to operate with the same forces and tools and such. The doors have to be sized for everyone to fit through.

I suppose though, when I think about it, why do I want them to be so similar? I mean, what's my drive for that? Is it just a matter of kink? That I like a closeness of culture?

Ahh that might be why they are so similar! Because of a desire for closeness. That's a big part of what they are now, a community bound by strong empathy and close bonds of friendship. So they might want to be alike after all. And grown out of an early desire for closeness, they formed a larger society and ecology all their own, in their own habitats, making a cutesy candyland to live in as happy friends.

I suppose then another problem raises its head; the hedonism trap. When you're able to completely design your shape and mind, and you're self-sufficient, why not maximize your own pleasure? Dial your happiness to 11 and just bliss out but stagnate, doing nothing else? In order to survive you need purpose and drive. Otherwise you're just floating there for no reason, waiting to be gobbled up by some threat or another.

There will probably be threats in the future that will need to be kept under control. Replicators like grey or khaki goo, paperclip optimizers, that sort of thing. I'm generally want the Adorabillians to be pacifists and value life, but what is life? Is grey goo alive? I'm not sure if they'd treat it like a disease or a person or an animal.

The original Adorabillians, when they were aliens, they had a cultural point of view that death is a disease and so the first thing they do on encountering mortals is to make them immortals, but also incapable of reproduction in the normal way, so they don't overpopulate themselves. But it was never clear for me on what their scale was. Living creatures are complex biomes of constantly dying creatures. Just making the macroscopoic life immortal wouldn't do much for the microscopic life. So it's complicated.

I'm not sure if the 'mortality choice' will be considered a mental illness in the future or not. Is it a sickness to want to die? Can it be cured? Or would changing someone so that they nolonger want to die be effectively killing them and making a new person? It's very complicated stuff.

Anyways I think for the sake of making a choice and being able to write about them, the Adorabillians will treat non-intelligent replicators and similar threats as a disease. So they'll be like other societies in the future, developing blue goo to fight the grey and khaki goo. Intelligent replicators can be reasoned with, but what about violent forces? I don't want the Adorabillians to be violent.

Before I had considered having an interceding force that would defend other cultures whether they wanted it or not, which is a thing that happens irl. People will stand up for the weak or even those who choose not to fight for themselves. But when I tried describing those people, I realized they were basically rogue authoritarians, a sort of contradiction. Some people said worse things about them. It hurt, let's not go there though.

So how would the Adorabillians defend themselves against violent enemies intent on pillaging or destroying them? I'm not sure about that. :/

8:39am - So the idea was to write a positive story about the Adorabillians, so there probably wouldn't be any pillaging or destroying anyways, but what would I write about?

There's a couple ideas I have. One is writing about their origins and development over time. Another is writing about the struggles of an Adorabillian missionary trying to get others to join their culture. Neither is particularly fappable though, and as someone who primarily writes smut I'm not sure what to do about that. I mean, I write pretty interesting scenarios but the point is to have a good time irl with yourself while you enjoy the mental images and themes.

So that brings us back to that problem I had before. Why do I let my worry of other people seeing me poorly keep me from writing corruption stories that glorify villany when I know I'm not a villan for real? Why don't I just write that darker story that I keep thinking of, with its tantalizing scenes of fetishistic pleasure?

I don't know.

Maybe I should just take a left turn and write something that isn't either of those extremes? I was thinking of a world transformation story involving toon paint rain. I'm not sure how to put it into words though. I have a few other scraps of ideas. Nothing so solid as those others though...

Anyways I think I'm going to pause writing for a bit and watch some Issac Arthur vids on YouTube. Food for thought, and all that.

10:43am - I watched a bunch of those youtube vids. Good stuff, but I think my brain is full for now.

I didn't do any 'work' while I've been at the McDonalds but I did get out and I feel somewhat better. I'm planning to get some lunch too before I go home, in about 15 minutes. So, I'll figure out something to pass the time. But, I will go home after that.