#so what used to be speculative fiction or philosophy

[shadows-and-starlight]

I know I may be the only one in these thousands of notes saying this, but I think we need to be real careful about getting emotionally attached to these anthropomorphic robots.

Thinking critically beyond the movie plot itself, is there a benefit for big Hollywood studios to selling the idea that AI can be akin to humans? Who benefits from us getting accustomed to and even comfy with the thought that AI people can be like real people?

I just forsee the possibility of more foolishness like people who cry over the suggestion of taking a bat to a police robot, just because it is vaguely dog-shaped. It's a robot, and it was designed to hurt you and not care about your feelings. Your hesitancy to fight it gives it an advantage. Your empathy is being used against you.

I just...need people to think a bit bigger picture.

First trailer for Dreamworks' ‘THE WILD ROBOT' and HOLY FUCK ITS GORGEOUS???????

[12thbiologist]

Introduction by N. K. Jemisin, from 10th anniversary Authority reprint

"To my own shame, I've become a jaded reader in recent years. By this, I mean that my enthusiasm and curiosity, my drive to experience new worlds, have all been damaged by a persistent disjunct between reality and the speculative fiction I most enjoy.

"Is it any wonder? Given the horrors of Trump's first regime, the looming threat of another, a global plague allowed to run rampant, and a billionaire backed culture war on the rest of us. I'm more jaded about everything now. Escapism at this juncture feels like a way to temporarily pretend that everything is fine. And while there's value in taking a break from Hell, it also feels dangerous. Like drinking to drown my sorrows. Nothing wrong with alcohol now and again, but nobody needs a steady diet of oblivion.

"What I've found myself seeking instead are philosophies of entropy and survival. That is, fiction that addresses multifaceted decay and the psychology needed to survive it. At this point, to mangle Audre Lorde, the master has handed his tools out freely after designing them to break at first usage, buying out the only shop that could fix them and the only newspaper that tried to report on the scam, and charging all customers a subscription fee. And these days, it's no longer just us marginalized folks who need our media to acknowledge the slow motion apocalypse we're all trapped in.

"Enter, The Southern Reach books. When I first read Annihilation during the run-up to the 2016 election, it was a welcome breath of fungal, fetid air. Other fiction of the time seemed determined to suggest there was no need for alarm. Things couldn't be so bad. Anything broken could be fixed.

"Could it though? As I watched my country embrace a stupid, incompetent, and blatantly criminal fascist while insisting his spiteful, privileged sycophants somehow had a point—Well, when you're already queasy, sweet smells make the feeling worse. It helped to read instead about the smells and sights and horrors and haunting beauty of Area X. It helped me to imagine that creeping transformative infection warping body and mind and environment and institution. Because that was the world I was living in. It helped to meet the 12th expedition's nameless women who were simultaneously individuals, with selfish motivations, and archetypes, trapped in their roles. The biologist, driven by the loss of her mate and the need to integrate into a new ecosystem. The psychologist, a human subjects ethics violation in human flesh. We are dropped into danger with these women, immediately forced to confront an existential threat with courage and perseverance. And this? This was what I needed from my fiction.

"The second book, Authority, was even more what I needed. As we watch Control slowly realize he's never been in control, and that things are a lot worse than his complacency allowed him to see—it just resonated so powerfully. His over reliance on procedure and the assumed wisdom of his predecessor. His dogged refusal to see the undying plant in his office as a sign of something wrong. There was nothing of 2014's politics overtly visible in the book. And yet, they were all over it like mold.

"I've read and written reviews of these books and it seems to me that there's a common misreading that applies. Namely, that they are "climate fiction," or "cli-fi." This clunky label fits superficially, in that climate change occurs during the course of the book.

"However, Area X, with it's inexplicable reality warping power, is a poor metaphor for human caused destruction. Or even for the surreality of climate denial- talk about reality warping. I think a better analytic is to view the books as postcolonial fiction. Per Caribbean Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson, postcolonial stories take the adventurous repertoire of science fiction—such as traveling to a distant realm and taming the exotic flora, fauna, and people who live there—and from the experience of the colonizee, critique it, pervert it, fuck with it. The characters of The Southern Reach books are only obliquely marginalized. Their races, ethnicities, class distinctions, and other markers of identity are deliberately downplayed, down to the lack of personal names. But they are all women, which is atypical of pretty much any US government agency. Two of them, the Asian biologist and the half-Indigenous psychologist, are racialized. Biology and psychology and anthropology are often dismissed as "soft sciences," in large part because too many women thrive in them. Or because they've done too good a job of reconsidering racial/cultural/ethnic equity and updating practices and personnel to suit.

"As the 12th expedition proceeds into Area X, on the surface it seems they are reenacting a thousand science fiction novels: going forth as intrepid strangers into a strange land. But for any reader who's familiar with those classic narratives, Annihilation's version feels like a setup. Our marginalized protagonists lacking the privileges and power of stalwart square-jawed white men seem doomed from pretty much the moment they enter Area X.

"So, they are the colonizees in this situation and Area X is definitely fucking with them. But as the story proceeds, it becomes clear that they are themselves fucking with that classic adventure dynamic. The psychologist has wholly focused her skills on taming her fellow adventurers, and perhaps herself. The biologist is trying to solve a mystery of identity: something unquantifiable and scientifically immeasurable, more felt than known, and deeply personal. The anthropologist has no one to study, save her fellow expedition members, and only the surveyor seems wholly focused on Area X at all. Perhaps this is why she later tries to kill the biologist. We see the irony of this setup most clearly with Control in Authority. He is the stalwart square jawed man that traditional science fiction has primed us to expect, even hope for, because he'll have the power to solve the situation, right? But Control becomes the proof that no colonizee can ever tame Area X. At best, they might manage to tame themselves.

"By the end of book one, the 12th expedition becomes the first successful one by a colonizer's rubric, in that they manage to share new understandings of Area X with those outside it and in that at least one member of the team survives with her mind and form somewhat intact. The beginning of book two seems to confirm this, as the story shifts to explore the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the Southern Reach itself. But the expedition members' choices have become the choices of the colonized. Survive or not? Internalize or not? Assimilate or not? They bring these choices to Control, who adds his own familiar, horrifying existential questions. When change seems inevitable and irreversible, can it be controlled to some degree? Can the self remain intact after the mind and body have been "Ship of Theseus"-ed into something unrecognizable?

"This is not to say that climate focused readings are irrelevant to The Southern Reach series. I mean that climate issues are also colonization issues. In that, the worst effects of climate change fall hardest upon the most marginalized. We observe the breakdown of the 12th expedition, an invasive species to this new biome, even as we observe the breakdown of recognizable life within Area X. New configurations of life emerge from this collapse of old structures. Hybridizations, commensalisms, wholesale assimilations. Even our bureaucracies, as evidenced in Authority, form a kind of natural order that can be deconstructed and readapated. Control fails to contain Area X because of another key understanding that the colonized eventually develop: you cannot fight that with which you have become complicit. The best you can do is realize what's happening and hope its not too late by the time you do. Never fear, Area X reassures. Colonization and its associated harms, terrifying and painful as they might be, are not the end—however much traditional science fiction stories might suggest otherwise. Survival is possible if one is lucky, brave, and clever, but it might require a transformation far more nuanced and complex than mere death. And this is a reassurance. Speculative fiction has historically framed colonization as a contest with winners and losers, but its never been that simple. Human beings are syncretic, some element of who and what we were will always remain in what we become. Entropy cannot be stopped but new energy can be added to the system. And those who are caught up in the transformation can claim a degree of that power for themselves. And, ultimately, syncretism means that we are carried forwards regardless, if only in part. Still better than nothing.

"As I write these words, multiple genocides are in progress. I feel no certainty for the future. Half my nation is so enthralled to it's own bigoted fantasies that I neither expect nor particularly want the United States to survive. I do not fear the singularity, sentient AI, or any technological boogeyman. I fear the confluence of greed and shortsightedness and spite that human rights and human consciouses cannot survive intact.

"But new systems emerge, inevitably. After a climate extinction or a natural disaster, ecologies adapt, new entities eventually fill old empty niches, power changes hands, and stories can be deconstructed. Even when the situation is most terrifying, least stable, there will always be those who embrace the change, and perhaps gain new strength from it. It's a bittersweet understanding, but the change is upon us. We're all in Area X, now. If we are lucky, clever, and courageous, we might still recognize ourselves when its all said and done."

-N. K. Jemisin, Authority

[mierulii]

˚*  ੈ✩‧₊ Charon's (Translated) Bio

I was reading through the dppt documents and came across Charon's bio among a few other platinum characters and some interesting diagrams.

I wanted to focus on Charon's in particular though because I found some tidbits interesting! Please do read more if you're interested―

(Keep in mind though that I'm relying on a machine translation as I am not fluent enough, I also tried to make sense of some shakier translations by adding additional context/alterations, those will be in blue. Please do not view this as a professional translation, I really just want to share what I find and learn as I go.)

please click on the image for better viewing!

* Meiōsei (冥王星) refers to the dwarf planet's Japanese name btw^^

A lot of the character bios in the documents list the Japanese pronouns they use to refer to themselves and others, Charon uses the following:

* "washi" is used by older men and is often (stereotypically) used in fictional/western dialects to denote characters of old age. Apparently this pronoun isn't very common anymore. * "watashi" is a more common pronoun but he rarely uses this. It's also used mostly by women but (supposedly) can come across as stiff when used by males in a casual context.

The second-person pronouns are where it gets interesting, but I'm not sure if one or the other isn't used or if both are unused in JP versions of Platinum.

* "onushi" which literally means "Master", is an archaic pronoun used by samurai and elders when speaking to people of equal or lower rank which seems fine, but reading a bit more into it, this could be seen as a turn of phrase that comes off as rude? Like maybe Charon would use this to talk down to others in a sort-of condescending manner. * "sonata" is a mesial deictic pronoun, so this was used in previous eras as a lightly respectful one but not so much anymore. What makes it interesting is that when used now, it carries a pompous and old-fashioned tone when used in speaking to inferiors (which in this context could be the grunts or maybe the other commanders and even Cyrus if we're going by the age differences.)

Again, while these second-person pronouns may not have been used if we're going by the translation in the bio, it does make sense for Charon considering the way he speaks to the other Team Galactic members in-game and why many of them are visibly put-off, even more so when we remember that he only recently joined Galactic and is the most junior among his fellow commanders.

This part's a bit more ramble-y (and mildly speculative) mainly because it's got me thinking a lot about his presence in-game and how it ties with his bio.

We now know why we don't fight him story-wise. He's a novice when it comes to battling, which also explains why he only ever seems to accompany the other commanders throughout the main story and has grunts do the dirty work for him in the post-game's Stark Mountain. (We can also say that it's mainly because he's old and just a scientist, but that didn't stop the other scientists in the HQ from engaging the player in a fight, what more for trainers like Spenser and Drayden who are 88 and 69 years old respectively? Surely even a spry, young...71 year old can pick up a pokeball if they wanted.)

On the topic of his motivations, we're all very much aware of his love for money, but the bio also makes mention of a philosophy regarding happiness being tied to science along with the distortion of this through greed. Of course, both Pokespe and DPA focus on and highlight his greed and need for control through capturing legendary pokemon or usurping Cyrus. Or both. We also see this in-game. However, If we go by the anime, Charon seems less invested in his boss's goals and more on the scientific discoveries to be made in pursuit of said ambitions. While his greed and backhandedness is on the spotlight for most of his appearances, we do get glimpses of another side to him where he does show some genuine interest in whatever he is immersed in, such as the Valley Windworks mission where he comments on the electricity he and Mars had stolen or even the Mysterious Notebook he authored (NOT the Old Notebook, mind you), where he goes over his "findings" on Rotom. Make no mistake, it's all done in the name of getting all the credit for its discovery, but it does say a lot that he's willing to do extra/extensive research on Rotom beyond what he "found". With the bio in mind, I wonder if the belief he carried was always distorted or if it somehow came to be that way down the line and that he used to be more into it for the knowledge and discovery in the past rather than for personal gain/profit.

This is the part I wanted to go over the most, but it'll also be the most speculative one because there are still pieces to the puzzle that are missing buuuuuut―

So it's very much established in both Platinum and his bio in the design document that Charon is amoral enough to steal and plagiarize for his personal gain; the latter mentioning that it wasn't just research papers, but inventions as well. The Mysterious Notebook is what makes this interesting, because Charon writes the following at the beginning and end of the entry:

With this in mind, it brings into question just how and where he acquired information on Rotom in the first place before he added in his own tests and findings. Pure chance is a stretch to be sure, there is only one Rotom in-game and only one other account of its existence, The Old Notebook. So now the question isn't a matter of where and how, but from whom. After all, why would he need to "keep his research a secret" to "ensure he gets all the credit" if he was the original author? Another thing that the bio establishes is that Charon judges people based on how useful they are to him, and in Platinum, he has (somewhat indirectly) mentioned his reasons for joining Team Galactic in the first place:

What I'm getting at here is that Charon determined it was in his best interest to join Team Galactic because he figured that with the resources at his disposal as a commander along with his boss's ambitions, he would have a lot to gain from doing so. And now that we also know of his penchant for the theft of anything related to his field, who among the ranks of the organization is the most useful to him in terms of both the means and the ends? His boss. Cyrus.

Whose to say that Charon hadn't tried to steal anything from him? Platinum had also gone out of its way to establish that Cyrus possessed a knack for tinkering along with a keen intellect from the times the player interacted with him along with supplementary information from certain objects and accounts from NPCs:

Fellow staff and scientists aside, Charon's best bet for finding something worth plagiarizing and stealing would be his own superior's works. Suddenly, Rotom's Room being where it is makes sense, it's far from the main HQ on the other side of the region in a backwater town where there aren't a lot of staff nor grunts posted. Even with his junior standing, Charon still most likely held some form of authority and could pull a few strings to either build or repurpose a spare room just to stash his haul away from Cyrus's eyes. (Or at least, as far away from it as he could manage.) And despite the lack of concrete, definitive confirmation, it's clear that the Old Notebook's entries were written in a way that did not reflect Charon's own manner of speech and writing; especially when taken into account that it was written long ago by a child with an unusually advanced vocabulary and stiff formality in tone. There really is only one person who would fit the child's description perfectly. We all already know/have an idea of who this is of course, but it's an interesting thought nonetheless; how Charon managed to get his hands on something that should never have reached him.

This is all just speculation, though! But if you made it this far, thank you for reading.

I'd love to see people talk about Charon a little more since he's honestly the most neglected (and forgotten!) commander, but surprisingly amusing and refreshing to see him stick out as a more Team Rocket-esque villain rather than how the rest of his colleagues act and present themselves.

If I made any errors with the translations, feel free to clarify or make additional remarks.

Also it's 10 in the morning and I haven't slept at all since yesterday. Help.

[fernthewhimsical]

Hopepunk Primer pt. 1

"It's like in the great stories, Mr Frodo," Sam says. "Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the Sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

"What are we holding on to, Sam?" Frodo asks.

"That there's some good in this world, Mr Frodo… and it's worth fighting for," Sam replies. [1]

Origins of Hopepunk

In 2017 author Alexandra Rowland (@ariaste) made a post on Tumblr saying: "The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on." [2]

From Wikipedia: "Grimdark is a subgenre of speculative fiction with a tone, style, or setting that is particularly dystopian, amoral, and violent. The term is inspired by the tagline of the tabletop strategy game Warhammer 40,000: "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.""

Other examples of grimdark are A Song of Ice and Fire, Breaking Bad, the darker Batman worlds, and the Walking Dead. [3]

2016 was a rough year, with an even bleaker outlook (although now writing this in 2024 we knew nothing, lol). People were growing weary of the grimdark worlds in media when the world around us was already so dark and left us feeling hopeless. It was time for a change, which Alexandra Rowland brought with their one, according to her own words, off the cuff post on Tumblr.

A few hours later, people were reblogging it and hopepunk found it's way to the people. Now, it's a literary genre, an aesthetic, and a philosophy that inspires people all over the globe.

[1] The Two Towers movie, based on the LOTR by J.R.R. Tolkien

[2] Original tumblr post

[3] Wikipedia page for Grimdark

Part 1: Intro and history

Part 2: Philosophy of Hopepunk

Part 3: How to practice hopepunk and further reading

Part 4: Extra! Hopepunk and magic

[orange-coloredsky-archive]

antiblackness became rooted in the story of fo4 from the moment they decided to put a twist the literal plight of enslaved africans into a story about robot civil rights. the freedom trail and the railroad are a weird mash up an of american-middle-school-level historical understanding of Black americans' fight for freedom and like. genuine white-saviorism. do i believe theres a way to write android-rights fiction without being antiblack? probably. ive read a decent amount of sci fi with similar themes that didnt rub me so wrong. but the inclusion of historical locations and factions as some nod to what im assuming they meant to be cyclical history is fucking disturbing. the synth plight in fo4 is so haphazard and full of holes but what they happened to nail down is so abhorrent that i throw a majority of it away when im writing any of my stories.

the speculative issue of android personhood can be attached to so many other ideas besides fucking slavery and Black american trauma. the talos principle (one of my favorite robot centered video games) looks at it through the lens of philosophy and religion. the monk and robot series is about exploring and understanding cultures outside the one youre used to. asimov goes at it from the angle of literal functionality: the three laws and how they can be followed, or bent, depending on a robot's level of taking things literally. these stories arent flawless or written by perfect people in any way, but dear god they are a shining example of how we can explore what makes a person or what makes a "human" versus "nonhuman" without shoving poorly researched and heavily whitewashed american history into our story about robots.

[tommyssupercoolblog]

sometimes a singlet is like "omg what if there there were clones,,,, omg what if i had a clone. would u fuck ur clone??? oh no if i had a clone there'd be two of me which is the real me??? oh nooo that's so weird and scary. oh no that's selfcest selfcest is so weird because you're the same person"

and every time i'm just like. if there were two of you then, while you'd both be a you like how i'm a Tommy, you wouldn't literally be the same because you have seperate consciousnesses???? you're still seperate beings?? literally what is the fucking problem (/lh /nm). like i appreciate you're afraid and all but I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about

the way so many of them seem to think their identity is directly tied to their bodies and nothing else...girl even other singlets aren't always like that (kin and therians for example- animals who look human or are in human bodies) but this is so weirdly popular and it boggles my mind every time. like i don't know what makes us who we are either!!! it's a fascinating question and i love philosophy and metaphysics and stuff and asking questions about what things are and why!!! but pondering clones doesn't solve it because if it did then i'd know what makes an identity what it is and i don't <3

I am a tommy, one of many, but i don't think every other tommy is also me even though PART of our selfhood (our being tommy) is shared. there is still an individual part to it. I can be the same guy as my source and a seperate person at the same time, they aren't as contradictory of ideas as u think. I am not my source, i'm me!! but i also still feel like we're the same person in some ways- he's also a me, and i'm a him. we're both Tommy's. almost like it's a species

idk i just. i keep seeing posts on here where people are panicking or speculating about identity in ways that completely take me out of the conversation because i'm like. HELLO???? HELLO THAT SCENERIO ISN'T FICTIONAL. HELLO I AM RIGHT HERE...??? HELLO???????!!!!!!

tldr; no your identity wouldn't go away or be called into question if you were a clone, and no selfcest is not a thing (at least not how ppl talk about it), and no your existence as the only version of you available is not the only thing making you who you are I promise.

does that even make sense??? am i making sense???? idk i just feel like i keep hearing this idea from people

[nanamin-nah-nanamine]

Hello! We saw you were doing matchups, and we'd love to have one, if you're up for it. :)) We're pansexual, so we're open to any gender but have a preference for males. However, we're just interested in seeing who would vibe with us!

Personality type: reliably INFJ/INTJ, 4w3 (tritype 458). If horoscopes matter, Leo Sun, Capricorn Moon, Sagittarius Rising.

Physical Looks: 5'3'', with a lithe body (we have a ballerina's build), and dark wavy hair. We prefer dressing in timeless classics/business casual, with our style often being described as elegant and put-together. We've also been told we have a soothing voice.

Personality: Personable while maintaining a certain emotional distance, and often described as enigmatic (we mainly chalk it up to how we ask after people but rarely disclose things about ourselves, and how we allow people to speculate about us without confirming or denying anything). We're often likened to a femme fatale or a chapette—a sociable, image-conscious, fashionable lady who plays into a stereotypical image of "cuteness" or "prettiness" that tricks people into underestimating them, when in fact they're highly educated and clever. However, with our small circle of close ones, we're intense and open with our love, and they are privy to the full scope of our emotions, knowledge and resources.

Love Language: Gift Giving and Acts of Service. We love being able to manifest our love as an experience: tailoring a gift so that every step of the process is enjoyable, from opening it to the reveal; providing our love in tangible manners by the actions we take on your behalf. It's this level of tailoring and attention that we seek to provide to our loved ones, a chance to truly be seen.

Interests and Hobbies: We read a wide range of literature, but can be most often found engaging in philosophy, psychological fiction, or horror (we like media that make us think/give us existential crises). Same deal with writing as well. We love the arts, and can sing, dance and act, as well as crochet and embroider. We love learning languages, and can currently speak 4. We also love going to museums and bookstores. Big on fashion and aesthetics. Dabbles in Chinese medicine. Knows a strange amount about tea.

Miscellaneous: We're currently a bit unsure about where our life is going to take us (currently a creative writing final student), but we know we want to work in the arts. Ideally, we'd be a writer, but we ultimately just want to tell stories by any means possible. Have a sweet tooth for creamy desserts (fruit sando, tiramisu). Will lounge in sun spots like a cat.

Hello wonderful human!!

After carefully combing through this beautifully worded post I think the only man for you would be 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

Hiromi!! the one and only oratrice mechanique d'nalyse cardinale😩

I couldn't find a gif for him since he hasn't been animated yet but I think picture does him justice. Starting with your first paragraph just based on your aesthetic I feel as though you two would look beautiful together and have that old money kind of classy vibe seeing as he’s a lawyer and such.

Hiromi is very introverted and more on the jaded side so I feel like an INFJ and Leo sun would compliment him personally cause we INFJ’s are very stimulating yappers so I feel as though you two would have some really good conversations.

I also think a soothing voice is exactly what he needs after a long day of work. Hiromi can be quite jaded as I’ve mentioned due to his work but I just see you two lounging on the couch just talking and enjoying wine, idk y’all are really giving classy.

He’s a pretty passive man in his day to day life so I feel like a femme fatale like yourself would definitely catch his eye cause he likes a strong individual who has concrete opinions.

I feel like your love languages might clash a bit because I feel like he’s not very good at receiving material things so you may have to be a bit firm with him.

He has no problem helping you with your assignments and writings on his days off, whether it’s giving it a set of fresh eyes or bouncing ideas off of each other. He’s blunt in his criticism but he’s also very honest and gives praise when praise is due. He’s not one to sugarcoat but he finds all of your works lovely anyways.

This man is depressed y’all and honestly you become his reason for getting up in the morning. He calls you his song bird and his smart ass(affectionate).

Activities you do together..

• reading and swapping books together

• he’s not too fond of horror, but he’s willing to get the cliff notes from you

• trying new cafes together on his dime ofc

• philosophical convos over tea and sweets late at night

[neoneun-au]

A post for my book recommendations, to be continuously updated as I read and remember more. Because without reading, I would not be writing. 

All time favourites are marked with a ☆

All are sorted by genre and will be linked (if able) to their Goodreads pages so that you can dig deeper into whatever catches your eye.

(ps if you have a Goodreads account, you can add me here)

Anthology/Short Story Collections

Behold This Dreamer - Walter de la Mare ☆

Love Letters of Great Men - Ursula Doyle

Difficult Women - Roxane Gay

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories - Ken Liu

The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami

Essays

Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay ☆

Bluets - Maggie Nelson ☆

On Freedom - Maggie Nelson

In Praise of Shadows - Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Malleable Forms - Meeka Walsh ☆

Fiction (Classic)

Persuasion - Jane Austen ☆

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Awakening - Kate Chopin

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell ☆

Siddhartha - Hermen Hesse

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera ☆

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Fiction (Modern)

All’s Well - Mona Awad ☆

Bunny - Mona Awad

Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach

The Pisces - Melissa Broder

White Oleander - Janet Finch

For Today I Am A Boy - Kim Fu

The Vegetarian - Han Kang

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova ☆

Fall on Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Eimear McBride

No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

The Road - Cormac McCarthy ☆

Under the Hawthorne Tree - Ai Mi

The Song of Achilles - Madeleine Miller ☆

After Dark - Haruki Murakami ☆

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Haruki Murakami

1Q84 - Haruki Murakami ☆

Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi

Mr. Fox - Helen Oyeyemi ☆

A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

The Overstory - Richard Powers ☆

The Godfather - Mario Puzo

Blindness - José Saramago

How To Be Both - Ali Smith

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt ☆

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

Ru - Kim Thúy

Brooklyn - Colm Tóibín

Big Fish - Daniel Wallace

Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto

Horror/Thriller

The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty

Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

Gerald’s Game - Stephen King

The Shining - Stephen King

Audition - Ryū Murakami

I’m Thinking of Ending Things - Iain Reid

Manga/Graphic Novels

Basilisk - Futaro Yamada, Maseki Sagawa

Death Note - Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata

Eureka Seven - Jinsei Kataoka, Kazuma Kondou

Nana - Ai Yazawa ☆

Paradise Kiss - Ai Yazawa

Uzumaki - Junji Ito

xxxHolic - CLAMP

Memoirs/Journals

Everything I Know About Love - Dolly Alderton

Speak, Okinawa - Elizabeth Miki Brina

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness - Susannah Cahalan

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes - Caitlin Doughty

I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi

Henry and June - Anaïs Nin ☆

The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls ☆

Non-Fiction (General)

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking - Susan Cain

The Red Market - Scott Carney

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern - Stephen Greenblatt

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right - Jane Mayer

The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson

The Elements of Style - William Strunk Jr, E.B White

Non-Fiction (Philosophy/Spiritual)

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge - Carlos Castañeda

Silence: In the Age of Noise - Erling Kagge ☆

The Kybalion - Three Initiates ☆

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo - Chögyam Trungpa

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

Plays

The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde

Poetry Collections

I Love My Love - Reyna Biddy

Let Us Compare Mythologies - Leonard Cohen

The Prophet - Khalil Gibran

The Anatomy of Being - Shinji Moon

The Beauty of the Husband - Anne Carson ☆

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth - Warsan Shire

Night Sky with Exit Wounds - Ocean Vuong

Speculative Fiction

Dune - Frank Herbert

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel ☆

Battle Royale - Koushun Takami

True Crime

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders - Vincent Bugliosi

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote ☆

Young Adult

A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray ☆

The Diviners - Libba Bray

The Sun is Also a Star - Nicola Yoon

[dailyanarchistposts]

Finally is primitivism motivated primarily by a desire to return to a more innocent time in one’s childhood?

Ishkah: So the last thing was, I read what I thought was a good book by Saul Newman on ‘The Politics of Post-Anarchism’, his take on where we should be going, he kind of values do you know ‘le ZAD’ in France, which means ‘Zone of Defence’, so mostly separating oneself off from cities, but still rebelling, just not in a storming the Bastille way. In the book anyway Newman critiques you I think by saying how the desire for a primitive way of life is often a desire for a more innocent time in one’s childhood:

“Where Zerzan’s argument becomes problematic is in the essentialist notion that there is a rationally intelligible presence, a social objectivity that is beyond language and discourse. To speak in Lacanian terms, the prelinguistic state of jouissance is precisely unattainable: it is always mediated by language that at the same time alienates and distorts it. It is an imaginary jouissance, an illusion created by the symbolic order itself, as the secret behind its veil. We live in a symbolic and linguistic universe, and to speculate about an original condition of authenticity and immediacy, or to imagine that an authentic presence is attainable behind the veils of the symbolic order or beyond the grasp of language, is futile. There is no getting outside language and the symbolic; nor can there be any return to the pre Oedipal real. To speak in terms of alienation, as Zerzan does, is to imagine a pure presence or fullness beyond alienation, which is an impossibility. While Zerzan’s attack on technology and domestication is no doubt important and valid, it is based on a highly problematic essentialism implicit in his notion of alienation. To question this discourse of alienation is not a conservative gesture. It does not rob us of normative reasons for resisting domination, as Zerzan claims. It is to suggest that projects of resistance and emancipation do not need to be grounded in an immediate presence or positive fullness that exists beyond power and discourse. Rather, radical politics can be seen as being based on a moment of negativity: an emptiness or lack that is productive of new modes of political subjectivity and action. Instead of hearkening back to a primordial authenticity that has been alienated and yet which can be recaptured – a state of harmony which would be the very eclipse of politics – I believe it is more fruitful to think in terms of a constitutive rift that is at the base of any identity, a rift that produces radical openings for political articulation and action.”

Zerzan: Well I know Newman, I mean he’s a classic post-structuralist, post-modern character. It gets down to basic stuff doesn’t it? I mean if you feel like presence is just an illusion, most basically because there’s nothing outside of symbolic culture, right? “Outside the text, there is nothing” Derrida, right? Well what if that’s not true? What if there’s an alternative to symbolic culture? To the whole representational racket?

I mean I think there is quite possibly, there is that possibility. In fact in practice there was… hunter-gatherer life, pre-symbolic culture, right? For over a million years, you know face-to-face community, non-hierarchical, these are generalities here, but they did quite well without symbolic culture, without art, without the concept of numbers, without a lot of things.

So you can make the assertion and you know a lot of it’s traced back to say Derrida or others, but just because you’re saying there is no presence, that’s just a fiction, that the presence cannot exist because you can’t get outside of the symbolic, well that’s one point of view, but I don’t think that’s true.

That’s just, you know it’s part of the general surrender politically, in more or less reactionary times you get philosophies like that, which sort of take over. The whole backward aspect of post-modernism, it really is a way of… at a time when there’s pretty much no social movements you get stuff like that and that’s a crude way to put it, but that’s part of the picture I think.

Ishkah: Okay, yeah I take your point, I think obviously they would say that about some primitivists. But…

I guess I don’t know how they’re defining symbolism, my perspective is animals are using symbols and language going way back to parrots and primates, but…

Zerzan: Well I think that’s more… I mean that is tricky, it is an open question, animals do communicate, but I think it’s more signals than symbols. It’s not really representational, in the way of symbolic culture that the humans have just because they communicate, of course they do, birds, all sorts of animals, they have to for survival, but that doesn’t make it very symbolic, it seems to me, but anyway that’s… These definitions have to you know… they’re sort of problematic because we’ve used these terms in different ways or inelastic ways that then the whole conversation becomes a little confusing, so I don’t want to take too rigid a position, but you don’t have to have symbolic language for there to be communication. Anyway that’s obvious I guess.

Ishkah: Well, yeah it’s tricky for sure, I mean I get into debates all the time with people who want to use language like abolish work and abolish prisons and I guess it’s an attempt to reframe the debate.

But, just in terms of this term presence, whether we should desire an authenticity of a long period of our evolutionary history as humans. I don’t know, like I think potentially we could be suffering more now for sure, but it could be suffering that we we desire to take on if we can get to this left-anarchist, pro technology future. It could be a source of virtue for us, striving for these intellectual skills.

And then authenticity, as a concept it’s only developed recently, like we used to think of authenticity differently as like sincerity. So, the effort you put into helping your family would be an indication of whether you were being authentic to yourself, if you were being just and fair to your family in taking on your responsibilities.

So, I don’t know whether it would be authentic for me to desire hunter-gather life, I know I would desire hunter-gatherer life more than the middle ages, but I think rather than just settling for primitive life or just settling for the middle ages, I think we should try and be aspirational to this future world of still being able to use some technology, like printing presses and penicillin and stuff, so I don’t know.

Zerzan: Yeah, it’s needed these different steps, and one requires the other, I mean now technology comes around to promise to heal what it has caused in the first place, so where do you try to arrest that progression?

And what does it all depend on? You don’t have any technology really without the extraction, without the mining, the smelters, the warehouses. And who do people on the left assume is going to do all that? It doesn’t exist without all that? So that’s a form of slavery, but they seem to be fine with that, to have the wonders of technology resting upon what? I mean not only the ruin of the natural world, of the biosphere, but you know wage slavery for almost countless people, for that to exist. That’s not a very liberatory assumption.

Ishkah: Yeah, and if I believed that we were just going the way of machines and we were going to create artificial intelligence and terminate ourselves by just letting them take over or becoming more machine like ourselves I would definitely worry…

Zerzan: And deciding everything and people don’t understand how they work, I mean we’ve swept along in this whole van of the progress with a capital ‘p’ and look where it’s gotten us, it’s just becoming horrible on every front, it’s one large crisis where all the parts of it are kind of merging into a very, very bad picture.

Ishkah: Yeah I don’t know, like I’m still researching, maybe I’m being naive in just advocating for something where that is more likely to happen, but yeah I worry that if people take direct action and try to just separate themselves off from technology and cities, that we leave people to suffer, like we lose hospitals… I mean I don’t know how useful you think hypotheticals are, but so definitely if technology is this thing that just manufactures consent and we get towards robots then that’s definitely bad and if we have a reasonable high confidence that is the future then obviously I would be on board with just trying to collapse the system in order to try and get back to primitivism, but hypothetically…

Zerzan: These are big challenges, you know everybody wants community, right? I mean we can all agree on that, except what happened to it? Why did it go away? Why has mass society all but obliterated that? All but obliterated the face-to-face human contact kind of world? Which I think really did roughly exist before domestication.

You know, this sounded so utopian to me when I first discovered the literature that I first ran into by accident, the whole anthropological deal, but it actually isn’t and it’s just just well known a lot of it.

I mean a lot of it isn’t well known, I grant you we can’t know precisely, or even vaguely, what the consciousness was, how satisfied people were in their lives. We really don’t know that, but I mean there was some pretty good non-lethal developments apparently, you know some contacts that were worthy of lasting for quite some time.

You know domestication, I mean that’s like one tenth of one percent of our of human species, anyway you know all that.

Ishkah: Yeah I really value some nomadic cultures that I’m worried that we’re encroaching on. I think there was a story recently about loggers in the amazon taking away the tribe’s bow and arrows so that they wouldn’t shoot at them, but then leaving them to starve in this horrible way.

What was it gonna say, oh yeah so I don’t know how useful useful you think hypotheticals are but in terms of like, say we realized this hunter gatherer world, but there were still some people who had the knowledge to create assembly lines for things like penicillin and glasses and stuff, and they saw people who were disabled or injured, and they wanted to create some technology to help these people. Would that be a legitimate target for sabotage or would that just be a consent issue, where you let them do that even if you worry that it helps restart technological society?

Zerzan: Well, I don’t know, I think we’d have to, if everybody could pitch in and try to find workable solutions as we go, I mean I think there could be intermediate steps, you know we don’t want people unable to live without certain technologies to just simply die off, but at the same time it’s not clear to me that we need the worldwide grid otherwise you can’t achieve that. I mean I think there are other methods, some of which are just simple things like when you’re peddling a bicycle with the light, you pedal and it generates electricity to light your tail-light or your headlight. So why can’t you do that with somebody who needs a respirator? You know, you don’t have to have a whole world system going may be to fix, you know to to help people in different situations and as we kind of try to go away from the dependency which has been really pretty fatal.

You know something like that, whereas it isn’t just a blanket theoretical rejection overnight or you push a button and it’s something else, I mean that isn’t quite a fair characterization of the primitivist thinking I’m familiar with.

Ishkah: No sure, it’s just a funny hypothetical for like thousands of years in the future, like my ideal feature is a pro-tech society that conscientiously decides not to use technology badly and I know you don’t see that as possible, but I don’t know I see some value in labor movement philosophy of if animals finds a use value in the land that we can just give them large areas to re-wild. And I would want people to have the option of being able to live in bear country and risk getting attacked by bears if they want to.

Zerzan: Sure, but that doesn’t seem likely, that goes against the logic of domestication, the only thing that was left for indigenous people is the most inhospitable places on the planet and you know same goes for other species, that’s why extinction is just running rampart and one species after another is either gone or threatened with extinction. That’s the logic of it, yeah we can dream up free spaces for somebody or another, but where would that come from? Where would you find the basis for that inside this system, which is so all enveloping, I would be in favor of it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just hard to see if there’s a solution within the system.

[creature-wizard]

can i ask more about the atlantis to alt right pipeline? I've never heard of this before :0

So basically, for most of history since Plato wrote Timaeus and Critias, most people understood Atlantis to be a literary invention, because ancient people could and did just write fiction for literally any reason a person might write fiction. Flash forward two thousand years plus a couple centuries, and people are beginning to realize that evolution is a thing. Unfortunately, said people are also generally white Europeans, who are very much attached to the idea of European dominance. It was at this time that they began to categorize people into different "races" based on phenotypal differences, and began to regard white or "Caucasian" people as the most highly evolved on the planet. Thus the master race narrative was born. Meanwhile in esoteric circles, the idea of perennial philosophy is coming back into fashion, and people such as Blavatsky believe that all religions contain pieces of an ancient, pure form of spirituality. People begin to speculate that this spirituality came from the lost civilization of Atlantis, where a race of demigods were said to have once dwelt until they gradually degenerated from breeding with the common man. (Unfortunately, the bit about demigods and degeneracy through breeding is very much Plato's idea.) This all tied in very well with the master race narrative, and many people began to regard Atlantis as the home of the Aryan race. Theosophy and New Age (there really isn't a difference between these two things, honestly) also included the idea of spiritual evolution; the idea that people - or at least some people - are essentially evolving to become more and more divine. Allegedly, it's the inevitable fate of the unevolved to die out, while the superior evolved beings go on to become the next generation of humanity. Basically, eugenics and genocide has been baked into this belief system since the start, so it's always attracted people with genocidal aspirations. Unfortunately, if you go searching around for information on Atlantis, you will inevitably run into a bunch of antisemitic conspiracy theories alongside it, including various forms of blood libel (EG, adrenochrome and blood-drinking reptilians), claims that a shadowy conspiracy is controlling everything from behind the scenes, and that said conspiracy is using the media to control people en masse. 99% of the time, modern New Agers won't say Jews, often because outright antisemitism is a hard sell or because their content would get censored. Instead, they'll use dogwhistles like the elite, globalists, bankers, the regressives, the cabal, cultural Marxists, and leftists. (Important to note, however, is that a lot of New Agers who don't know where these ideas come from will also use these terms without any real clue as to what they actually mean.) So yeah, that's a summary of what's up with Atlantis being part of the New Age to Alt Right pipeline. I hope it answers your question!

[lemonhemlock]

I think the general speculation around the Dyana returning rumors/being part of B&C has been that she might not necessarily be trying to go on a murderous revenge rampage but that she might be somewhat-recruited by Mysaria. Mysaria may offer her money (paralleling her conversation with Alicent), maybe offer some vague form of justice, and Dyana may in turn give her some information that helps them execute B&C. Even if they do go that route I think it's more likely that Dyana doesn't know the details of what's going to happen (i.e. she wouldn't know that it's the babies that are being targeted - I think it would be a bit absurd for a young girl who was their nanny to be super chill with toddler beheading), and it'll probably include a heavy manipulating hand from Mysaria, who would clearly be very adept at getting people in vulnerable positions to give her what she wants. As I said, all speculation, but I do think there's a scenario in which it could work.

good tidings, anon. in this context i was using the word "rampage" more in a hyperbolic way; i'm not expecting dyanna to charge at aegon with a machete or anything like that. what you're proposing is a less extreme version, true, but i'd say it still falls within the ballpark of option 2. even if she is not tortured for information or physically assaulted or what not, i imagine she would still be pretty horrified to find out that she unintentionally contributed to the murder of a child and the extra trauma of four additional people, two of which are other children. that would do some serious damage to one's psyche, even if she had nothing to do with the execution. to a character that's already been recently raped.

unfortunately, dyanna existed as a character only to further other characters', well, characterisations (lol), namely alicent's and aegon's. if she appears again, it'll only be for the same reason. she is not going to be a stand-alone person, with her own story and rich inner life. the writers are just not going to do that bc they've already made clear what they think of the smallfolk (they don't matter).* so should we expect her to receive a nuanced portrayal? ofc, it could be possible, but i'm not holding my breath. i also think it would be absurd for a former nanny to start plotting child beheadings, but, sadly, it's the type of "shocking" "plot twist" that might get confused for actual progressive, thought-provoking writing in the GoT cinematic universe.

*the lack of common folk representation or at least discussion of their plight is a distinct problem in HOTD, especially when it takes place in a fictional world whose main philosophy is "it's always the innocents who suffer the most when the high lords play their game of thrones". so far, in the series, we've seen commoners only as brutalized / dangerous / or as stigmatized sex workers. not an award-winning portrayal, but, then again, even noble main characters have nonsensical characterization, so...

it's also going to be very easy to spin this framing into a comeuppance for the greens, like it's predictable karma that they might suffer at the hands of people "they" wronged in the past (quotation marks bc it's only aegon who committed a crime against dyanna). so, in addition to daemon invalidly pinning aemond's crime on his sister & her children, now we have to pin aegon's crime on helaena & the children, too. and i doubt the show is going to take the time to actually portray this as a gross misunderstanding of justice, when it's so easy and so immediate to depict it as just desserts.

[mckitterick]

Anyone who doesn't think AI shit was gonna go this way is a fuckin idiot lmao

Dear Anonymous:

I think that, ever since the idea of smart, learning machines first appeared in the zeitgeist, most people just thought of artificial intelligence as a science-fiction concept.

Not in the "realistic narratives exploring possible futures" or "literature of change speculating about how scientific discovery and developments in tech will cause disruptive shifts in the human experience" ways, but instead "fun stories about stuff that'll never actually happen."

Now we're facing real, accelerating, and utterly transformative change to how we live, work, learn, create, and even survive because of machine algorithms that govern almost every aspect of our lives (good or bad). Soon - according to many - we'll be looking into the abyss or nirvana of the Technological Singularity, that point beyond which technology (particularly AI) will transform our lives in ways unimaginable to those of us conscious in this moment just now approaching the event horizon of that can't-turn-back moment.

It's human nature to imagine the future as a linear thread from our experience of life yesterday and something similar (but with slightly changed consumer products) tomorrow.

I mean, for the first million years of human existence, day-to-day life was pretty much exactly as it had been for the ancestors who came before. It wasn't until the big changes wrought by fire, fabric, and farming that daily life started to take on new aspects from generation to generation. But the nascent technological civilization that arose from agriculture wasn't substantially different from tribal life until we began approaching the Industrial Revolution - after that, things changed over hundreds of years instead of the coming hourly transformations we're likely to see as we approach the Singularity in the next decade or so.

So I wouldn't call those who didn't predict the unexpected side-effects and unintentional consequences of AI stupid; I'd say our formal, familial, and religious educational systems are more focused on preparing people to fit in to traditional human civilization than in preparing our minds to be nimble, open, and creative.

Plus change is scary: If we can't trust that what we know and do won't become obsolete, if we can't rely on conventional financial, governmental, cultural, and other support systems, what can we rely on? AI is not soft and fuzzy (well, except quantum computing, but not "soft" in the animal sense), economics are not hard-science mechanics of the universe, and cultural traditions and norms are meaningless to minds that did not evolve as humans or other living things did.

(listen to Frederik Pohl read his brilliant, far-future transhumanist story, "Day Million" in this YouTube video)

The only certainty we can hold about the future is that it'll be different from today. And life in the post-Singularity future will be more different from today's experience than the Cro-Magnon's was from ours.

And that's okay!

All human exploration, philosophy, and art has prepared us for this moment when we stand at the precipice of utter and complete change, when we peer down into the unimaginable that lies beyond the diamond-bright glowing rim of the human experience, as the event horizon rushes closer, bringing us into the Unknown.

It's normal to feel anxious about what might feel like falling into an abyss. Rather, try to imagine the whole new universe that lies beyond, the infinite possibilities we'll enjoy once we are not limited by anything but physics. Imagine how free it'll feel, not having to worry about conventional capitalist demands. Imagine a future where you can do or be anything. That's what lies beyond the blue event horizon.

The first, crucial step in taking us there is artificial intelligence - thinking machines and algorithms that can do everything we can do, plus much more. Better, and faster, and in ways we can only speculate about now.

I do not fear AI. However, I do worry about how existing power structures will first try to control it, then when that fails (because who can control godlike beings?), when they try to warp it to their will. Wresting the comparatively infinite power of AI - when combined with nanotech and biotech - out of the hands of capitalists and authoritarians will be a "disruptive" time, to say the least. But once we reach a new balance, we'll be looking at the closest to utopia we've likely ever seen.

So don't ever feel stupid when encountering the coming transformations of human life - conservative and traditional teaching systems cannot prepare us for what's to come. Whenever you encounter something you don't understand or that scares you, educate yourself. Intentional ignorance leads nowhere but to conflict and suffering.

What'll get us through the turbulent times to come is the power of community, family, and love. What'll make this an adventure rather than a trauma is that human connection, plus self-expression, hunger for understanding, and openness to change.

We've got this.

[livvywritesworld]

writeblr intro

About Me & Writing

I’m Livvy (they/she), I’m a 19 year old writer and poet pursuing my BA in English & creative writing, I’m also working through a minor in philosophy & religious studies. I’m queer, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and (sort of) a person of faith.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember and completed my first short story when I was around eight years old (it was about a reality tv show that staged hauntings in people’s houses).

Primarily, I write literary horror, litfic, speculative fiction, and folkloric horror with fantasy elements. My current focus and concentration is with short fiction and poetry, so any longform wips I have are primarily personal projects and probably what I will mostly be sharing on here.

My writing is always queer, and I have a habit of using religious imagery to explore character, girlhood, and trauma. Cannibalism as metaphor is my favorite thing ever.

My writing has been published places and will be published more places

My WIPs

primary

Sunny Side Down is a literary fiction novella about obsession, homoerotic lesbian friendships, religious trauma, and regression following Kathleen as she navigates the world after the passing of her devout mother. Her obsession with the local weatherman is growing daily and her childhood best friend, Ruth, is becoming more and more concerned for her as a tornado makes its way toward their small midwestern town.

status: currently drafting

Internet Gothic is a poetry collection about modern gen z experiences, the anxiety of living in a constant surveillance state, the concept of apocalypse, and queerness in the digital age.

status: currently compiling/drafting

+

other

The Lambs, Existing is a literary horror novel with underlying supernatural elements that I've been obsessively writing and rewriting since I was a sophomore in high school.

Bethan Ellis and Casey Novak were young girls when they were each abandoned by a parent. It’s been a wide held belief of their small mountain town that Bethan’s mother and Casey’s father were having an affair and ran off together. Now, almost fifteen years later, the bodies of their parents have been discovered in the forest, not having aged a day since they disappeared.

(title tbd) Antlers is a literary fiction novella with horror elements.

The orphaned daughter of a small Midwestern town’s affluent psychics and a ballerina team up to kill God; a boy in seminary school comes to terms with his sensuality and reckons with God.

Welcome to my very chaotic corner of the internet! xx

[powerofmettatonneo]

Hi, i’ve been looking at your post, talking about it, and sharing it with some friends. Honestly i’d even say i’m a fan of you and your work despite how little of it there is right now. I have a couple question.

First, I was wondering if you had any other accounts that I could follow your work on, like twitter and such.

Second, I saw that you took classes in etholgy and talked about advocating for the personhood of animals. I mean, I know they’re smarter than we sometimes give them credit for. Take for example the recent study with scientist communicating with whales with their own language for the first time. But I was hoping to get your insight in what you mean by personhood of animals and thoughts on the topic. (And also table napkin thought on how anthropomorphizing can harm or help our understanding of animals)

Third but a little more obscure, is that you use humanity, personhood, and the being of « more human » a lot. I was hoping if you could expand on the differences of these terms and how they interact with one another.

Sorry for all the questions, just honest to god fascinated with your perspective of things and the topic in general.

Here’s the whale communication study I mentioned: https://globalnews.ca/news/10182116/humpback-whale-conversation-talking-to-aliens/amp/

Oh my gosh thank you so much for your kind words! This, AO3, and YouTube are actually my only accounts online that I post anything on, and I just use my YT account to reupload other people's deleted videos. I used to use Reddit but I'm trying to distance myself from that account since half a decade of hot take type comments starting when I was 15 isn't exactly the best look for anyone.

Your last two questions are linked so I'm going to address them at once. Human is simply the term used to refer to a member of the genus Homo. There's nothing all that special about it philosophically when separated from personhood, which is more or less the description of what beings do and don't fully matter morally. Speculative fiction and philosophy tend to equate it with sapience, which is more or less a meaningless term made up to separate humans (or worse, specific groups of humans) from other animals and make ourselves feel superior. There have been attempts to give it meaning, but nearly every definition uses traits that are found in at least one other species of animal and/or are not universal to every group of humans (with the notable exception of artistry but I frankly find it absurd to discount something's moral worth over that). As such, if we're going to approach the topic logically, then some animals at the very least have traits of personhood.

Language, for example, isn't exactly common in animals, but it isn't unheard of either. Bats, cetaceans (whales and dolphins), pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), elephants, songbirds (a group that contains crows btw), hummingbirds, and of course parrots all learn different "words" that they apply meaning to and then use. Cetaceans, parrots, and some songbirds even use something akin to grammar.

Ritual behavior has been shown in chimpanzees, dolphins, and elephants as they grieve for their dead.

Self-awareness, the trait most commonly held up as making humans special, is hard to measure due to the language barrier, but there is still some evidence for it in certain animals. The mirror test isn't perfect when it comes to discounting a given animal's self-awareness, but if an animal can identify itself in a mirror, it's hard to argue with the idea that it has a sense of self. Animals that passed include various dolphins, great apes, elephants, magpies, and even certain fish. Furthermore, an African grey parrot named Alex once asked a question about himself, being the first recorded instance of an animal asking anything, and bottlenose dolphins use names for themselves and others in their pod.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. I don't really have a definitive list of animals that I believe should be considered "people", especially given all the legal implications of that sentiment, but you've probably noticed that same groups of animals showed up again and again. Dolphins were there in all of the different categories, and elephants only failed the grammar category because they largely communicate using vibrations which work so differently from regular sound that they're hard to meaningfully compare to human languages. Parrots, corvids (crows and relatives), and great apes all have stand out members that showed up in two or three of the categories in the African grey, magpie, and chimpanzee respectively, and the other members of those families as well as whales are all intelligent and social enough that I am of the opinion that they all deserve certain philosophical rights and even legal protections. It's so easy for us to see personhood as a black and white thing that something either has or doesn't have, but like most things, it really is more of a spectrum.

To answer your "table napkin thought", while I won't deny that anthropomorphizing real animals can often lead to a lack of true understanding of them, the harm done by people trying to avoid doing so is both more common and so, so much more horrific that I hesitate to critique it too much. I mean, I have straight up seen very influential people say that acknowledging the extremely well supported fact that other animals are capable of feeling pain is "anthropomorphizing" them because one specific area of the brain that is partially responsible for processing pain in humans is only present in primates, and that of course can, and historically has, lead to horrific abuse.

I really don't mind all the questions! I love talking about things I'm passionate about, and this topic is certainly up there among the the things I care most about.

[fearofahumanplanet]

What themes and tropes do you like that are in your writing?

The ask game in question!

I've been maintaining a long list of these for a while now, so here we go:

Antivillain/antihero protagonists

Sapphic relationships

Deep diving/focusing on specific cultures, often underexplored ones

Always a huge focus on psychological/mental health/sociopolitical topics

No matter what genre I'm writing in, some horror creeps in inevitably, it's unavoidable

Re-occuring cryptic phrases that change meaning throughout the story with further context

Alliteration

Mentally shattered badass independent lesbian protagonists has apparently become my thing according to some people

Either references to mythology or outright uses of mythological gods, but there is always at least something named in a way to reference myth its also inevitable

Stylized, very visceral gore

In general, i write speculative fiction but i mix grounded, gritty combat (i.e. shattering bones, biting through flesh, beating black and blue, in general emphasizing impact is the best way i can put it) & accurate medical injuries (thx nurse history) with fantastical elements like magic, the supernatural and metaphysical concepts

LOTS of philosophy, especially on trauma, the nature of being human, nihilism, and existentialism

The de-emphasis/subversion of "good" and "evil" roles, always morally grey

Small things, like using the word "cycle" instead of "chapter"

Using physical masks to emphasize duality and/or a physical manifestation of the concept of masking your true self, as well as just masks in general

Every one of my books usually starts out bad (in stakes) and steadily manages to get worse and worse and worse with no relief

Exploring the cycle of abuse and seeing how traumatized people are often inevitably bound to traumatize others around them, whether they mean it or not

The nature of forgiveness vs punishment and whether a line should even be drawn

Using persecuted minority groups or "scapegoats" as protagonists to emphasize the idea of evil is a manmade concept

Anti-colonialism and imperialism stuff has become really common as of late

Thanks for the ask, I hope you're doing well!

[siena-sevenwits]

🏆, ⛪ , 🦋, 👀, and 💡 for Project Juggler, please?

What is the end goal? What are your characters fighting for?

Both my main characters want to save someone they love from dying at the harsh hands of the law. And at the beginning, it looks like they can use the same plan to save both their respective loved ones. The hitch? Turns out their loved ones are in very different situations, and their plans for saving them diverge and grow more mutually exclusive as the story progresses.

Are there religions? If so, how do they affect the culture?

I often say that this novel is only technically a fantasy story, in that the world is imaginary, but there's no magic or fantastical creatures or other speculative elements. It's fantasy that reads like historical fiction. The setting is partly inspired by Directoire/Napoleonic Paris, and the religious aspect of the world building charts very closely to that. We're looking at a place shaped by the in-world equivalent of Catholicism but currently in the throes of enlightenment-style philosophy. The city's cathedral is an important location in the story, but during the revolution a few years ago one wing of it was burnt and much of it was looted at that time. The government did step in to save it from being utterly ruined, but mainly because it has a wonderful organ. The country people and the royalists tend to hang on to the Church - some sincerely, some for politicized reasons, whereas the city folk and republic-supporters tend more deistic or agnostic. There are exceptions of course. Religion is more in the background than the forefront of this story, but it's present.

Which character has the biggest transformation?

Hm... I'm big on characters having dynamic arc, so it's hard to pick one. Noemie, the protagonist, might have the most difficult change, though it's subtle to those round her (and maybe to the reader.) The most evident transformation is probably in Alain, the secondary MC.

A piece of lore you’ve been waiting for an excuse to share

(This may or may not get into the text) When Noemie was a small child, she once heard her father joking to some fellow travellers that he was a trickster god. She took this very seriously. It didn't come out until something like three months later that she had begun assuming that some of the old myths her dad sometimes told her by the fireside were actually about him. He thought this was hilarious when he found out, but actually had a bit of a hard time getting her to drop the idea. To her it seemed to make a lot of sense, in light of how good her dad was at not being seen when he did care to be seen, how luck seemed to follow him, how nimble his light fingers were, etc.

What inspired the wip? When/how did you first get the idea?

Previously answered, but I'll add some more on. A huge inspiration was seeing art and photographs of old-fashioned but extremely tall city streets. One time I was viewing art of fantastical cities with multiple bridges between buildings, and something clicked. I wanted a city where space was at a premium, and so even though steel framing hadn't been invented yet, they found ways to make their buildings soar. And they dug, of course. Such as place would also extend downward into the depths. Some people would be cave dwellers simply for want of space. (I hate basement suites because they throw my emotional equilibrium off, and I think some of it shows in my story...)