I might have weirded some people out with my last post but I am trying to cut out all the fluff and just give what feels real and that felt like one of the realest blog posts I’ve ever made.
It’s a bit awkward as I am in this awkward confused stare, and I like to be the one with more answers than questions, I’d like to be someone that people come to for answers and so it feels like not having the answers may make that difficult, but as overcoming my pride is the goal, I need to be able to live with that if it is the case.
But this is also kind of liberating. Perhaps the answer is to have no answers 😆 that is my answer.
Anyway! I am trying to lighten the mood because a few people seemed to be worried about me and I am ok.
I’ve been exploring some interesting stories recently. The first is a book series I read as a kid called Animorphs. It’s about as heavy as a series written for kids gets and it made me realize that I’ve been into “deep shit” (if you know, you know) since I was a kid.
The story starts with a dying blue horselike alien landing on earth and giving 5 kids the power to morph into any animal they touch before being killed by another blue horselike alien who has a parasitic slug alien in its brain. These parasitic slugs have been taking over the galaxy and now they have moved on to humans and plan to deplete their resources and enslave them and these kids are the only thing that can stop them, as reinforcements from the blue horse people will take two years to arrive.
Ridiculous, sure, but no more ridiculous than a Star Wars and Harry Potter. I actually think this series would have been among those household names if the authors had more than 3 months to publish each of the books and if the publisher hadn’t marketed it entirely towards kids.
The story is intense. It’s essentially a war story. These five high school kids have to make life and death decisions and unlike a lot of popular narratives meant for kids, it doesn’t shy away from the guilt and trauma that they experience. Rather than glorifying battle, it tries to (sometimes in few words because it IS still a kids series) show just how horrible it can be.
The kids are faced with ethical questions. One of the kids gets stuck in his morph when he stays too long and has to face the fact that he will never be human again, and now his instinct is to kill in order to eat. When one person threatens to expose them and leave humanity with no defense against the brain slugs, the characters are forced to decide whether or not to “dispose of him” in a way. At one point, a god like species with seemingly unlimited capabilities appears and we are invited to imagine what it might be like as an immortal and all powerful being. That was my favorite part of the series and it primed me for Dune which I read a year or two after this series and fell in love with.
I have been meaning to reread Dune, and I will once I’m done revisiting this series.
It’s interesting to see how I was attracted to the kinds of stories that pushed the boundaries of my imagination and it’s just as interesting to see that I haven’t become disenchanted, I am still constantly trying to push my imagination although nowadays I try to share as much of the process as I can. When I was young this was all very secret.
I remember sharing the series with two friends and having them make fun it because the aliens didn’t look cool enough to them. I remember sharing some of the ideas I was thinking about in junior high school and being asked multiple times “Are you on drugs?”.
It’s easy to imagine being discouraged but I wasn’t. My desire to explore and uncover new things has never really been threatened by much in the long term. I was pretty hurt by the fact that nobody gave me a space to explore my curiosity openly and rather than doubt my own sanity, I doubted society and felt alone. I still had friends but there was so much I hid from them, not because I was ashamed but because I didn’t want to invite any trouble upon myself.
Aside from this I’ve been talking to a new fan of my work, someone I met in the discord server I found to talk about this book series. He’s a hardcore conspiracy theorist and so I just ask him questions about the theory he believes in. I won’t say which one it is, but listening to it is a blast.
It seems like most people either start to go deeper and deeper and deeper into these narratives, especially when there seems to be evidence OR they refute them completely, I merely question and explore where they lead. I am not a believer, nor am I a disbeliever.
Some things he says sound extremely far fetched to the point where I laugh, not out of ridicule just out of surprise. I think the most believable thing about conspiracy theories, whether they are true or not, is that they are sometimes so fantastic that part of you is just impressed.
So even if they are fiction, sometimes they are very well written fiction.
It’s also interesting to talk to Americans like myself, people who aren’t quite sure how to fit into the system and haven’t yet found a sustainable way to live comfortably outside of it, or pop in and out as I try to do. Actually it seems like I’ve succeeded from many peoples point of view.
I imagine we would not have been friendly back when I was young and judgmental because ideologically we are very different. But I enjoy seeing how he is willing to accept me and curious about me when I DON’T judge him for his ideals and beliefs.
I suspect that it wasn’t just me who was hurt by others judging their interests and questioning their sanity just for the things they were curious about growing up. I suspect it’s a whole lot of people, perhaps most people, perhaps almost everyone. Maybe everyone was just afraid of being strange and so they hurt each other and tried to keep each other in line in order to avoid becoming the target of criticism. And since they weren’t respected and heard out when they are young, maybe that’s why you find so many people out there who shut others down for having different perspectives. They know that they are not the same problem that so many people assume them to be, so the ones calling them the problem must be the problem.
Just a thought.
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Confessions of the Damaged - novella series
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When AI makes me irrelevant…
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