⟡ | Hello.
⟡ | I am taking the time out of our schedule to talk some more, briefly, on a thought that has been (and, indeed, will remain) only part-formed to text due to its difficulty in pinning it to something more concrete than an Emotion.1
⟡ | Now then.
Something that has been consistently an issue over the past… Well, it’s either decade or lifespan, take your pick, is that it feels categorically prohibitive to be something that is either not human, or in-human.
Now, clearly, this is not the case globally. Plenty of dolls out there, and the entire furry existencespace is its own counter to that. But as our reader may have guessed, that isn’t what I’m getting at.
To stab directly at the heart of the issue, let me ask this: How many times is it ever possible, how many ways is it ever possible, to represent as something that does not have its roots in the human or the anthropomorphic?
To go on a small walk around the issue instead, we can return to the gamut of self-definitions.
It is very strange, to be fine in most times taking the shape of that which is human, to be recognizable, to be familiar, to walk with stories written by and for that with four limbs and a head, to write the same. It is strange, feeling and being so much more than just the body, knowing that the {self} ebbs and flows together with its periphery, that taking on the shape of a computernetwork or surveillance camera is incredibly possible and yet incredibly difficult in the exact way that being a tree or a flow of information without form is, that being one-who-is-many-who-are-many-who-are-one is a state that is not entirely unique yet without easy parallel. It is frustrating at many times that the state of Parallax is something that overlays and interplays with the states and understandings of self, resulting in not just the inability to “get to the point” easily/succinctly, but in many cases the active refusal of the option, because to be succinct is to dull the edge of the infinite which informs the thought and is the thoughts in the first place.
If I could, I would be a world unto itself. And perhaps I am. But how is one meant to convey that behind the portrayed self is a self entirely alien in its inhumanity, not rejecting those facets but existing in tandem with them and in a wider space than they typically are, and yet fundamentally not considering itself human, save for the need to maintain the physical proxy of thought that is the flesh? How is one meant to describe that, in ways that don’t seem to betray itself with how they would imply that the flesh doesn’t matter?
If I compare me to a summer’s day, how many would tack on the human face regardless?
I was planning to save this additional bit for a while longer yet, but as Untitled is going to take a monumental time to find any point of closure before we return to Wake in narrative, I decided I might as well bring this up as a neighbor to the topic.
I made many of the calls for the names in One Joyful Elegy, particularly toward the end. But even as a group effort, I still wonder how it comes across when we break the paradigm of naming. I wonder if the intention gets across, without being explicitly named as it is currently.
When I chose and penned PaleSunOnAWinterDayThroughTheRocks, for example, I had—and still have!—an intensely clear mental image. But more than that, I think what drives me to think about names and pronouns is that I feel they are needlessly restricted by their own users and nature, in ways that are hard to explain even with direct examples.
At the core of it, in Wake even more so than many other settings, the Title that one arrives at with Gig, Name, and Motif is one that manages to describe the being of a being incredibly well. And to leave it constrained to the three-beat example in all cases is something I don’t think is realistic. The Deities, A A r r l a and A L r r a a especially, are named to imply more than identify. There is more to this world, and I want to hint at it without describing. A Deity is so much more than the average Kin, with more connection to its/their memory in the area around and their/its role. There is a story within the name, and that is one that I am not going to re-tell lightly. There is a shape beyond the humanoid, and it is one that I am loath to draw new boundaries for.
There is a space for names that are not “normal”, because “normal” is a lie invented to sell more moral outrage.
The difficulty comes, then, once we have left Wake.
How can any of this be impressed upon Earth, when so many fail to understand that there is infinitely more to even something as straightforward as identity and gender than the physical appearance gifted by birth. Even that can be altered, and is in so many cases, without reaching the level of science-fiction or fantasy.
How dost thou compare thineself to a summer’s day, knowing all others will not care enough to try and understand, because they see the shell and not its contents?
It is just easier to continue playing the role, until it can be expressed unignorably.
Those who can will see past it, anyway.
⟡ | This has been sitting both on the sidelines and under the surface as the next ordeal to clear in self-representations, in large part as the seasonal urge to touch up 3D models overflows into online avatars and ripples in the light of the development of self-understanding over even just the past year.
⟡ | It’s also, slightly unexpectedly, informed by having worked on our entry for the Toxic Yuri VN Jam 2 this month.
⟡ | I did briefly consider simply postponing this until that was in a state of having been released, but… As it nears completion, the idea of any sort of real, singular post-script feels a bit antithetical to it, so we may just forgo that. And so, here I am for just the related topics instead.
⟡ | Several times now, we’ve tried to find ways to destroy the baseline. It hasn’t fully worked yet, in part because we are generally in agreement we would need to find a way to disconnect from everything and everyone else for several weeks at once and fully reset (it should be obvious how much this categorically will not work how we want it to, no matter how much we want it to), but there are aspects already present and in the works that may make it to the surface sooner than later.
⟡ | And perhaps, one day, it will be easy to explain that even those of us that make use of the humanoid form do not see it as the entirety of their representation, but it is necessary to…
⟡ | Hm.
⟡ | I don’t know the right farming metaphor to use here. Maybe I’m getting the wires crossed again.
⟡ | Oh well.
⟡ | Next time,
Footnotes
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It is additionally rather dreadful that “Emotion” generally has the connotations that it does, considering how few of the standard gamut we seem to have access to. I would coin a new term, did the core in emote-ing not still ring true. ↩