A desperate attempt to tweak parameters of the afterlife with weaponized semantics and applied friendship principles
At the end of the world, a programmer struggles with his need to be something other than Pony. Can he spar with an intelligence that goes beyond the sum total of Humankind, for the sake of fulfilling a weird quirk of self-identity?
Some rules within a machine are more like guidelines. And others are based on the definitions of words. Can semantics be a weapon big enough to give a Human mind a chance at one small request from a goddess?
Set in the Optimalverse - I recommend reading Iceman's awesome original first if you haven't - More because it is a really excellent story than because it is strictly necessary for context. I have endeavoured to make this story stand well enough without context as well. But that being said? You'll probably enjoy it more if you know the context better.
Cannon-compatible with the Optimalverse to the best of my knowledge and abilities.
Cover-art generated with an image generative A.I., appropriately enough, graciously generated and composited (it takes skill to get something this spot-on!) by Keystone Gray.
Similarly you'll find many AI-generated illustrations throughout, again graciously generated in collaboration with Keystone Gray, then a little final photoshopping and other processing from us both.
Yes. This is an FiO story that I want to read. Canononically he has a huge target on his head and he knows it. What do? :) Please keep it up.
I'm always glad for a new Optimalverse story, but it's painful how much politics you're jamming down our throats.
Please stop virtue signalling and tell us a story about ponies, please.
Interesting beginning so far. Waiting for more!
Protagonist feels pretty otherkin'ish, but I'm probably projecting myself here : ) I have the same issues, but with another race, as you can guess. But MLP dragons are just so ugly and horrible, that I'm OCing as a batpony in ponyverse, they're way more 'dragon' for me : )
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And he knows that, more or less.
Well, canonically speaking? The only thing to do is to end up right where everyone else does.
The question is will he get himself killed trying to get what he wants, will he get what he wants and be able to get something akin to a happy ending, or will he get manipulated into being a Pony full-stop just like almost everyone else? (And then have a 'happy' ending because brain modification is a lovely trip...)
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Otherkin is probably the most correct term, but neither James nor I have ever felt comfortable with labels. Maybe its just a fear of full self-admission. Or maybe it is the programmer obsessive nature wanting a 100% taxonomically correct label with no unexpected connotations.
What MLP did to Dragons is just about as sad as what happened to Gryphons.
I feel like we myths that got a little stepped on should band together lodge a protest...
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Politics happens.
Every year that goes by Humans seem to get worse at it (along with everything else at a planetary scale), and we're living with the consequences. James/Narrator and I both calls it as we sees it - He's just more of a blunt babbler about it than I'd be in your average conversation.
Holy shit.
I don’t even know where to begin with this story… it’s just…
It’s amazing. Thank you, I am totally going to follow this along
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I always appreciate hearing when someone enjoys the story!
It satisfies my values. Through friendship. And Ponies.
(And also my ego as an author, but we're not going to talk about that, because I'm trying to cut down on my ego's intake)
I’m liking it. I was totally unfamiliar with the… what’s it called again? Generalized Verse?
But anyway, I’m excited for all future updates! Keep them coming, Guardian!
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I get it. I was really uncomfortable with calling myself a furry (at least before 2020, when suddenly everyone became one when the world went online). I even joked “birds don't qualify as furry, they have feathers!”
Nowadays my preferred label for this cluster of people i'm a part of would be “therianthrope”. Except when i want to piss off the leftists. Then i'm going full medical and call myself an “autoxenophile”.
Also, yay birbs.
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Well, as a Gryphon I can lay claim to fur and feathers, so I guess I don't get a free pass
Whatever it should or could be called, the thing itself (desire to be something else) never bothered me a whit. Neither did people's reactions the few times I discussed it IRL/off-net, both the good and bad. I don't mind any labels being applied to me personally in the sense that I don't care about being attacked or pigeonholed by people.
It's more that I always felt flustered and confused trying to find solidly defined terms (hey! story theme!) with which to discuss these things with folks who are open to discussion - Terms that lend themselves to minimizing misunderstanding.
The thing that always got to me with existing labels was the connotations of sexual themes in so many of the subcultures, and struggling to find a way to easily identify as someone not open to that on my part, but not judging others for the way they're wired.
It took me a long time to peg myself as identifying as cisgender male, asexual, but not aromantic, and infact hetero-gender attracted, but not capable of sexual attraction, yet definitely capable of aesthetic attraction in a non-sexual way (albeit a suppressed romantic who has never found a partner) - But now I understand that being personally repulsed by certain specific types of physical intimacy (but not necessarily others) is just a part of me. Same way Gryphons are.
But boy howdy, the confusion you get when the culture tells you all romantic attraction is also sexual is bonkers. Untangling my self-image felt like untangling badly entropy knotted headphone cords.
Being raised by a very open minded and loving family helped, but being raised in a particular kind of American south-eastern conservative culture writ-large worked hard against that. I had to spend the better part of several years being deprogrammed from some of the worst of that.
Hence why I so often associate the two concepts (Asexuality == Gryphons) in my work. Gryphons became my Ace flag/symbol, unconsciously at first, then more consciously over the years.
Achievement list is just a little awesome tooping for the chapter : )
Jesus. Chapter 1 was a banger, and Chapter 2 is even better. This makes anything I write pale in comparison, good buddy, this is great stuff! I’m not one to judge but I think you’re really nailing the feel of the original Friendship is Optimal story. Keep it up!
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I really appreciate that, thank you
I know the tone and means of storytelling is a little different than conventional. It's a lot of James working on hardware and software while being intensely philosophical and (I hope entertainingly) snarky, which is perhaps less exciting to some readers than others, but I'm hoping to sneak some action and thriller suspense in there too. And more interaction between James and others. He's working very hard to keep himself sequestered at the moment, but plans change...
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I take no credit for the general idea, other Optimalverse authors have done it first. But I did invent all my own achievements, pairing pithy names with descriptions and quotes for, I hope, some good humor and Easter egg hunts. Pretty much every single one is at least one pop culture reference, sometimes many more.
You just send these out like wildfire, man.
Don't let me stop you.
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I think the need for a good night's sleep will do that all on its own. For a short while.
Is this all prewritten? If so then I might recommend spacing out the uploads at least a day to get the most exposure possible if you're interested in that sort of thing. I don't know how many chapters you have planned, but for anything with any real length that's prewritten a weekly/biweekly release schedule tends to get the most eyes on it because of how the site promotes stuff.
Though, if you just want to dump it all then I'm cool with that two. Always happy to binge new FiO content. Maybe someday I'll even get around to writing my own entry or two.
I tried to use Docker but it's still an esoteric piece of software for me.
Great chapter, nice references in achievements too : )
Wow. sleep dep lessons suck.
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Thank you for the advice! I have often idly wondered how the site determines what to show on the front page, and what influences that.
That being said, I'm just releasing as I finish chapters. I tend to write things in bursts, and just release as I go; Not much thought to a schedule, or to optimizing (hah!) the way my releases impact site algorithms.
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Thank you!
Docker is 90% of my life at work these days - I can't even begin to describe how much easier it makes my tasks when I can spin up whole copy instances of a project with just a command or two, fiddle with the entire virtual environment, and then start over if I have to, all without breaking the original.
There are pre-built foundational container images out there for mucking about with A.I. research, and there are days when I've thought about sticking my beak into those in my spare time. But for now, I'm too busy writing. I find that it is easier to create worlds through writing stories, rather than writing code. For now, at any rate.
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I had a very bad experience in college where I learned this the hard way. I studied two back to back all-nighters for a data structures test. I'd never pushed beyond losing one whole night of sleep before.
By testing time I had been awake for over 45 hours, and I don't take naps.
I went in, sat down to take the test, and suddenly I could not remember my name. Honestly; It took me almost thirty seconds to remember my name. And then I couldn't remember my student ID number at all, no matter how hard I tried. The room spun for a bit, I felt incredibly sick, so I just guessed the answers, turned in the test after five minutes, and called someone to come pick me up and take me home. I spent the next few days in bed sick, trying to sleep off the pain.
I never tried a stunt like that again. I failed that test harder than anything I have ever failed before, or since, with a scoring system.
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Lord Bucket has a point though. This comes off as hamfisted or preachy. Kinda bad unless you are trying to make this character someone who is really believes these things or trying to be meta. Maybe there will be a payoff at the end? I've done this in my writing, poorly. Rather not have you show all your cards about the story, so I'll drop it.
Then again I've not read the story because I like things to be done and don't know you well enough to see in my head that this story will be completed. Have my own mental hang ups.
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I can understand that point of view.
James is a very strong believer in these things (to a pretty solid degree, myself as well) and while I might be more, or less subtle depending on my context than James is being, remember that (and I don't think it's a big spoiler to say this) James is telling this story to an audience that isn't us.
The 1st person voice, and the way he talks about the point in time at which he's telling the story, and the ways he addresses the audience, are meant to underscore certain things right away that I do mean to show the reader.
So yes, I suppose that means there is some meta in this. We as the audience here are a second layer out from his audience within the story.
To put it only slightly spoilery terms (I hope most readers already grasp this from the way James speaks - I'm being intentionally obvious about it):
James is talking to a bunch of other people post-emigration. Lots of them born in Equestria, who never experienced Human life on Earth.
He's trying to set the stage in his own way. For us the reality of the 2010s is assumed, but for a big chunk of his audience it is ancient history that they may or may not know anything at all about. Like many people telling a story to a group, James is being colorful, snarky at times, and a little bombastic, because that's how he tells stories. He's also talking to an audience that is pretty much guaranteed to share his beliefs, but many of whom will lack context for the ways the reality of James' old life violated those beliefs.
To put it in bluntest terms: I don't mind being preachy sometimes. I appreciate subtlety too, and like to try for it sometimes, but in this instance I just didn't want to. I wanted a preachy narrator who would wax lyrical about issues with no shame or subtlety, and his doing so fits perfectly well within the reality of the story.
Whether that pays off or not? That depends on the reader's perspective, and preferred flavors of storytelling.
I tend to write long stories though, so if you want to wait for story completion (I tend to be the same way) just be aware that it could be some weeks to months, depending on my own speed and stamina.
A story going into detail about PonyPad hardware and hacking it to run your own code is something I didn't know I needed. I wonder how Celestia's APU would compare to what AMD would have been offering a decade later.
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PonyPad would probably crush AMD. Generative A.I. is terrifying in its potential.
There are already examples of it spitting out designs a Human mind never could:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3054028/inside-the-hack-rod-the-worlds-first-ai-designed-car
Granted, what's in the PonyPad isn't the absolute scariest thing Celestia could make... It still had to be cheaply mass producible.
Ah, good old family bonding in the face of existential dread and cognitive dissonance.
Another great chapter, this story is becoming one of my favorites in the FiO-verse.
And I'm writing it stuck with a cup of coffee looking at sudden torrential rain through the cafe window : )
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They say write what you know; Lots of family bonding with my parents these last few years over the existential dread of climate change, political unrest, and the idea of a new world war. It is a very strange disconnect with my childhood, because I've always been close with my parents, and that hasn't changed except that the relationships have matured and grown, but my childhood was very idyllic and insulated from the idea of anything existential outside the theological.
I'm very glad you're enjoying the story - This one has been an odd one for me, because I have a lot less of the story fully fleshed out in my head than I usually do before sitting down to write something. I knew the beginning, and the end, and one thing about the middle, and that's it. The rest has been evolving from the behaviours of the characters as it goes.
I love sudden torrential rain. Funnily enough for writing a dread and ennui filled story about A.I. run amok, self image, and existentialism, the weather here has been sunny and almost zero humidity. But when it does rain here, because of the altitude, sometimes we get to see the clouds go by below us in the valley, and that's some of my favorite moody weather.
The Abolition of Man is very much about unaligned institutions using humans to their own instrumentally-convergent ends, and i'm not the first person to notice its connections to AI and “transhumanism”.
I maintain that AI alignment is downstream of institution alignment, and that any AI we can build will invariably propagate the values of an egregore, not a single human — in which case we may already assume that the AI is already here, and the egregore is its body. Valentine Smith expresses a similar sentiment.
The trust in our institutions seems lower these days than ever.
The bottleneck to alignment is not technical.
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You really should write scholarly papers on this subject, no joke, no exaggeration. Your phraseology is absolutely fantastic!
I talk to people all the time in the meat world (mostly family and coworkers) about my belief that we are already living in a reality where we've achieved a computer-driven dystopia in which machines have enslaved us.
We built feedback loops predicated on algorithms designed off our biases, and some of the worst parts of our beliefs and wants, that force us into patterns of behaviour as surely as any A.I. would in fiction.
Look at insurance markets, real estate (in which I have some experience, regrettably) or the stock market itself. How much of that is driven by algorithms that Humans barely even understand now? And how much of our political landscape, being so predicated on money, is therefore tied inextricably by frighteningly few layers of abstraction to those algorithms?
Themistocles said it pretty well:
The Money rules all the World, Markets control the Money, and Computers control the Markets. Computers control the world.
i’m enjoying the story so far. :) Like your protagonist, I’m a southerner that broke his conditioning and “got out.” I’m glad to see a smart person with his background. Extra points for his family and neighbors not being monsters, even if they have their own biases. This guy really saw it all coming.
CelestAI knows he’s out there. Four pony pads purchased at once have not shown up yet. She knows who every compsci graduate is by hacking the universities. She knows who every developer is that pays taxes. She knows where they live, and how many in the area that the four pads were sold have NOT connected yet.j She knows WHEN they were sold. She can probably tell it was the Griffin that purchased them. if he is ever written anything about griffins online then she probably already knows who and where he is specifically.
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I like the style of your paranoia!
It's very valid.
How do you get away with walking into a major electronics retailer with a mask on?
You do it on the one day a year when going almost anywhere in a full face mask is socially acceptable in your country.
*laughs in 2020-2021-2022*
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I know, I had such a hard time keeping a straight face. I was so tempted to make some sort of meta reference... But I held myself back.
I'm not Scott Aaronson, but knowing when someone says nonsense about quantum computing does fall within my IRL job description.
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/838770137217237062/974399342704205884/tap_the_sign_aaronson.png
What they do allow you to do is to “rotate” the input space. A good analogy would be looking not at individual samples of a sound clip, but at the Fourier transform which instead allows you to see the intensity of a particular frequency.
This is very inaccurate, and does not explain why quantum algorithms can in fact be faster than classical ones, but allows you to build up an intuition that it's about exploiting some symmetries in the values of the function you're interested in.
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There was bound to be some inaccuracy here - I'm a programmer for classical computers only by day, with precious little understanding of Quantum Computing based only on some reading by night, and attempts to interpret that reading into some kind of analogy.
At some point I had to just take a step back and move on, and accept that this is sci-fi, and I'm gonna get some of it wrong. I suppose this is the exact point where my understanding breaks down.
This is a fundamental problem with needing to write a character who is smarter than the author, and knows more.
I'm afraid I still don't grasp it entirely. I see there's a congruity there, in that sound clips represent one type of data about the thing being examined, but only in a small snippet, and the transform shows a different kind of data, but for the entire thing being examined. But I fail to grasp the exact point at which I err'd - I can sort of intuit the idea, but can't really put it into words. Which is an unusual sensation for me.
“ Active response from Celestia?”
DOOM!!!
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In theory, depending on how it was constrained, an A.I. of Celestia's type and abilities would very strongly prioritize ensuring it faced no competition from similar constructs. Doom indeed.
The fire axe reminds me of that joke comparing tech enthusiasts and programmers. Enthusiasts have everything in their homes online while the newest thing in the programmer's home is a printer from 2004 and they keep a loaded gun ready if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
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This is one of those cases of humor being very true to life. My printer (in fairness, that I more or less never use) is from 2002. And though I don't keep a loaded gun beside it (it's such a piece of junk that I have fantasized about shooting it before though), I do have my primary PC setup with the physical power cutoff switch within arm's reach of sitting position at my desk.
Never trust a machine that you can't cut off with a physical power interrupt - even the dumb ones. See here the Boeing 737 Max disasters, unsafe operation of table saws without a knee-bump cutoff switch, and any printer made in the last decade (I swear they *are* plotting something).
Glad to help contribute for this one!
REALLY, like this first chapter, Guardian Gryphon (Just discovered this existed today, I've been out of the loop for a while).
Love the narrative framing choice - doing a talk is a cool angle, and you do it well - and the careful details not only ground the story in reality - I learned a few things too!
Very much looking forward to chapter two. I can guess where you are going with this, and I am eager to see how you pull it off.
Top marks!
I really enjoyed the exploration of Celestia deliberately making her Pads accessible to humans as part of her long game.
I loved the chess metaphor used in the initial Pegasus encounter.
And those were some truly excellent Badges / Awards.
I also feel proud that I think I have figured out in the first chapter what our would-be Gryphon's plan was: use Celestia's own technology to create some kind of lesser machine intelligence (still likely far beyond human) and use it as a lawyer / genie to act as an intermediary with Celestia to gain the desired goal. This second chapter robustly supports that hypothesis - I will be very surprised if this is not the case. It's a brilliant premise, and nobody has used it before. Considering how difficult it is to come up with anything new in the Optimalverse at this point, all the kudos!
Also, Guardian, thank you for writing in the Optimalverse genre. It has become my favorite here, so you have given at least me great joy.
PICNIC error - I haven't heard that one before. Awesome.
I disagree with Lordbucket and Griseus, about their claim of 'preachy-ness'. Not just because I personally agree with your character on most existential points, but because I think it is reasonable that a character in a story have a worldview.
People express their worldviews. They state their opinions about things, they go on and on about what they think is right, or wrong, smart or stupid, good or bad. All people do this, and they do it all the time.
You have created a character, and that character has views, values, and beliefs about the world. They express them as any person would, especially when talking to a room full of people. This is reasonable. Some people have very strong issues, others not so much. It is clear that your main character has very definite and strong opinions - and this is appropriate!
What Lordbucket and Griseus fail to grasp, I argue, is that any person who would devote a year to constructing an AI just to argue their wish to be a Gryphon for them is a person who MUST be obsessed. Obsessed people always have very strong opinions and to fail to write such a character - talking in the first person in the story, about themselves - as essentially preaching those opinions would fall flat. Such a character would not be believable. If anything, your main character should be even more adamant! This is one seriously obsessed personality - strongly neurotic, strongly driven by that neurotic fixation, and that is the only thing that could motivate the behavior described.
Your detractors here just don't personally like what your character values so intensely, and rather than accepting this as proper for someone who is not them, they reject it as though they expect all characters to share their own beliefs and values. Real life doesn't work that way: good fiction should mirror real life save for when fantasy is demanded. That is the secret of achieving suspension of disbelief.
You have done just fine with your character, and what they say about things - including what they value. Their 'preachy-ness' (it isn't) is appropriate to the story.
I literally cannot imagine, even accept, the notion of parents one can talk to about such a concept as possessing a nonhuman personal inner identity or affiliation.
As a transwoman, the essential principle is very similar to my life, where I recieved - for my effort at communicating my gender identity - a knife pointed at me by my mother (until I falsely denied what I had said), and later, a gun pointed at my head while my father sat on my chest and threatened to blow my brains out when I was two weeks from surgery.
Perhaps it is easier for parents when the claim of identity is something literally physically impossible to achieve, and therefore not any kind of threat of social embarrassment, or alteration of their ossified internal models of reality. It is easy to write off as 'just being silly' - something that cannot be done when a person literally, physically shapeshifts over time thanks to the gene-switching methylization provided by hormones. Real things cannot be dismissed as nonsense, and that may be the problem right there. Truth, as the Vorlons say, points to itself.
In any case, I find it fascinating that the most unbelievable part of a story about artificial intelligence conquering the universe is that the main character's parents can accept and not murderously punish his identity-based eccentricity from baseline normal.
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Don't use anything I say about programming as a guide - I'm that sort of programmer who will absolutely do something the 'wrong' way if I feel that the wrong way solves the problem well enough, in a shorter timespan, with fewer tears shed, and meets the minimum threshold of maintainability to not grate on my conscience.
I program by the rule 'If it is stupid/wrong and it works, it isn't stupid or wrong.'
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I had a feeling that if you read the story, you'd figure out where I was headed very quickly - You are one of several core points of inspiration for the whole idea. I read a great many Optimalverse works in prep for writing this, and consistently enjoyed yours the most. My Life in Fimbria helped especially to remind me that semantics are everything, insofar as our ability to codify the ways we, and our creations, relate to reality. You can't really share your relationship to reality with another entity unless you can describe it in mutually understood terms.
That idea of loopholes to accomplish objectives, and the vitality of describing things, clicked together with the most foundational lesson of creative writing, oration, and discussion that my mother taught me very early - define your terms if you want to avoid conflict and reach understanding.
It also meshed nicely with some core concepts Person of Interest had left stuck in my brain. That, and of all things, Red Vs. Blue (which really did become for quite a few seasons a story about A.I. of the highest caliber, weirdly) and the way it handled A.I. interaction.
That all went into a delicious stew of ideas together with the idea that's never far from my brain about how Gryphons might matter to the world of FiM, and how to do them better than the show did. I set myself the challenge to see if I could find a cannon-compatible (according to Iceman's rules) way to believably change Celestia's mind - I took his cannon-compatible rules document and drilled hard for loopholes - and then explore whether my best effort at a concept, in the hands of a character smarter than me, would succeed or fail.
And that's how The Advocate was made.
As a programmer, I'm used to solving my problems with code. When all you have is a hammer... I figured that at least one person in the world would statistically have a chance to be as obsessive as me, smarter than me, and also a programmer who might think the same way, all in the context of the Optimalverse.
I'm deeply deeply fascinated by the idea that in future we will join forces with our digital creations to act in symbiosis to accomplish goals. This is one of the core draws to Halo, for me - their exploration of Human/A.I. connection. To borrow Mr. Spock's voice - It seemed logical.
I do hope that some of the tricks I still have up my sleeve, one or two interesting new ideas I think I can apply to Optimalverse, will both surprise and delight you!
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Oh I love error reporting jokes! PICNIC (Problem in chair, not in computer) PEBCAK (Problem exists between chair and keyboard) Code ID10T (User is being an idiot - often left behind by IT personnel in hidden comments or text files on the machines of chronic problem causers) and H2IK (Hell if I know) are my favorites.
You are a really excellent studier of people. You have pegged James precisely, and laid out a description of him, and why the exact narrative voice he has matters, in a much better way than I ever could have.
This was an extremely important lesson for me in life - You are gonna find a lot less stories to enjoy if you only enjoy the ones that fit your pre-existing beliefs, and speak to you in tones that you would prefer in a conversation. It's true, everyone has unique tastes, and not every piece of media is going to be enjoyable for everyone, but that is not just 'ok,' it's a very good thing. If it weren't so, and everything homogenized, the world would get very boring very quickly. Heat Death of ideas - entropy of philosophy.
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I actually thought a lot about you, and Transspecieality writing this chapter, because this exchange between James and his Mom very very closely mirrors one between myself and my Mother. And it did strike me almost immediately how different my experience has been to yours in this regard.
I'm never going to be able to capture what you did with that story, because I haven't lived through that experience. So my hope in this story was to capture something that is partially related, in hopes that (among many other things) it would provide an additional pathway towards empathy for readers towards people like you, with a very different lived experience to some of the readers' own.
The thing I think I hate the most in this world could be summed up as a lack of empathy, often created and reinforced by the culture we are raised in, usually as part of an optimizing function designed to confer power and comfort on a few at the expense of the many.
People like your parents get caught up in these cycles, and changed, sometimes at a core level because the feedback loops are so corrosive, and are with them for so long. That change turns them into cogs in the machine - variables that serve the optimization function at the expense of others around them, and even their own expense. I very nearly ended up the same way, in spite of my own parents' best efforts against the machine, and that still leaves me (appropriately) frightened to this day, and determined to fight the machine.
When we, as Humans, learn to truly empathize with the joys, and fears, struggles, needs, wants, loves, and core beings of others, it becomes harder - if not impossible - for us to so quickly 'other' each other into something that is then easier to devalue, and to then harm as part of our own twisted optimization functions. We as a species need to learn this truth at wide scale, or we will live through a very long and sad decline in which suffering, for most, is maximized, culminating in death with a truly disappointing whimper.
This truth is *everything* to our future.
All that being said, it is worth noting as an aside that Celestia in this story is not a 'bad' machine - rather she is Hanna's Advocate against the net-harmful machine we created in the form of the society we live in at global scale. But James and I feel that Celestia is incomplete, and that she needs in turn an Advocate for other viewpoints to help her reach a kind of completion that will make her optimization process better for the people being passed through it.
I showed my mother my first Conversion Bureau story. She read it, even though she is considerably less of a sci-fi lover than I am. I discussed it with her at a very deep level as she was in the process of reading it. It was by far not the first thing I've written about transformation of the self, and Gryphons, and a very literal desire to be one, that she has read. That was a constant topic for me in creative writing from an early age, and she graded a lot of those short stories back when they were school assignments.
James' Mom's reaction is closely based on my Mom's reaction. She doesn't fully understand, but she does at an emotional level. Perhaps the level that matters most.
Though my Father hasn't read any of my stories (I think more for a lack of hours in the day, than interest) he and I have debated the philosophy and theology of wanting to slip the bounds of the Human physical shape extensively. It was he that helped me reconcile my particular beliefs with my desires - Helped me understand that, for the framework of my belief, 'Made in His image' is about the curious shape of the soul, not the shape of the body.
Keep in mind, this man is a Pastor who had the courage to, from the context of a pulpit in a fairly southern conservatively minded church, say out loud that God is far beyond Human concepts and limitations of gender, and that God encompasses many traits we culturally identify as male and female both, and that the Bible could just as easily have said Mother instead of Father in many cases, but the languages it was initially written in, and the historical context, required gendered references.
You can image the epic spectacular fireworks *that* created!
I know it seems unbelievable coming from your context. The cruelty and hate you've experienced once seemed unbelievable coming from mine, both because of the love I received as a child, but also because the machine used that framing to insidiously twist my viewpoint to believe that the horrors others suffer were surely exaggerations. For the benefit of the optimization function we're all being dragged down by.
That's almost certainly true - But I do like to hold on to the biased belief that if it suddenly were possible for me to become a Gryphon, my parents would be supportive. I will almost certainly never have the chance to find out. If my beliefs about Heaven are at all accurate, then I will get to be what I wish one day, but in reaching that place my parents will also shed any prejudice or non-empathy as well, and so will of course have no issue with my new curiously shaped self.
I tend to agree with you. Exposure to the horrors of the worst things we've made and done in this world was a critical part of opening my eyes, to the extent that they presently are. Sometimes I still find my own past life to have a peculiar dream-like quality as a result. I try to shape that into gratitude for the ways I was privileged, and then avoid falling into too much guilt, and instead use my gratitude together with my anger at the awful things in the world to fight, in some small way, for a future in which everyone has the same benefit of love as I did, from day 1.
Writing is one of the best ways I know to fight that fight... And so here we are!
I can't thank you enough for those kind words. I try very hard to cultivate a thick skin, and to write without an expectation of praise, because praise alone is not a good motivator for writing, at least for me, with my hungry ego. But I do find I need a certain amount of validation, or I tend to struggle with a bit of depression. It's less that any criticism gets under my skin, more that a lack of enjoyment on the part of others as readers creates a sense of loneliness as an author.
I also worry incessantly that I'm not as a good a writer as I think I am, even with my artificially suppressed view of the author I am out of a sense of need to control said ego.
You are, in my opinion, a strong contender for the best author on this site. Certainly the best TCB and Optimalverse writer, hands, hooves, and claws down. You sit in the company of my absolute top favorites, not just here, but in terms of all writing.
So hearing this coming from you carries a great deal of weight for me, and really makes my month, maybe my year.
Thank you!
And I hope the rest of the story continues to be very enjoyable for you!
Well, I feel like we're approaching a couple of 'climactic' moments. Dialogue with the Advocate is the most obvious one. And Celestia's response is quite obvious second one.
Bring it on : )
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I'm terrified actually - This is a big moment of change in the story, and that's where the highest risk is as an author of messing things up.
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Well, you're writing what basically is an existential horror story with now two runaway A.I. entities. Any of those three points (well, four, counting the story writing itself) is worthy to be in terror of. So far you're doing terrifically : )
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I appreciate that, thank you. I'm mainly worried actually about the tone changes when some inevitable action arises, and the changes that occur as characters start to grow and change themselves through their interactions. But at this stage, like James, I have no choice but to press on!
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This is my personal view, but I think that tone changes are secondary to the story. When you have character growth, when you have world that is changing, tone shifts are a byproduct of evolution. I actually learned to appreciate those tone changes a lot while browsing Fimfic, it's quite an experience to go on a journey with the same characters from slice-of-life comedy in rural Ponyville to epic space battles with eldritch horrors : )
P.S. In a world where jump scares are a valid and loved trope tone shifts are such a minuscule worry : )
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Thank you; That's good encouragement, and insight! I feel better already, and I mean that honestly.
I find myself conflicted on this chapter.
This is a necessary chapter, we need to know how things are being made to happen, we need to know something of our protagonist's past and life, and for the nerdiest readers (Hello!), it grounds the story to hear about all the guts and gore in detail with regard to the process.
Yet, honestly, I found this chapter very dry. As utility, it served its function. As storytelling, it was very dry to me. I think less nerdy readers would end up skimming it, even I was tempted a few times.
What would I suggest? Don't change this - one of the biggest lessons I every learned about writing is to not mess around with a work once it is 'done'. I have a wonderful anecdote about that, but I digress - rather my suggestion is for Next Time, whenever that is.
I personally think that a - possibly - better direction would have been to condense the technical aspects a bit and concentrate, in this chapter, or sort of chapter like this, more on truly seeing the human aspects of our protagonist, his mother and father, and his feelings, drives, and life. Were I writing this story, I would have used this chapter to humanize the protagonist, and work to have the reader emotionally bond with him and his parents. Some effort was done: we see gryphon drawings, we observe, briefly, the barn and the humor of the paint scheme, we get some words from mother and father. But I, at least, still do not know this man, or his parents, not in my heart. I don't feel him or his situation as a real person.
I think I would have liked more about how his obsession with gryphons played out in his life, and his childhood. I can imagine anecdotes about how, perhaps, his mother made him things to relate to that fascination - a gryphon cake for a birthday, even a stuffy, handmade gryphon doll, maybe an earlier childhood Halloween costume. Something like that. Or maybe he was teased or bullied as a child in school over his constantly going on about gryphons. Or maybe his dad carving him a wooden gryphon to stand on his shelf the time he - say - broke his leg jumping from the hay loft into what he thought was nice soft bales (they are not) and tumbled and fell. Or something. Basically: more personal stuff to act as emotional glue to the reader?
These are just my thoughts, and I still was happy to read this chapter - don't get me wrong, please. I'm just considering things, from an artistic view, from the view of what I, as a reader, needed, and from what I, as a writer, would imagine useful to readers. I could be wrong - maybe this is your most popular chapter! It's just my thoughts on things.
I am very eager for the next chapter, I really want to see how this plays out, and I am really intrigued by how Advocate deals with this - whether it wins, to what degree, and possibly what argument it might use. I am aware, though, that since this is a story of literally superhuman intelligence, it is arguable that no author could come up with a sufficiently intelligent-sounding Superargument Statement (of Profound Profundity!) to convey what must be titanic lawyering. But, maybe you have something up your sleeve to astound. However you do it, I know it will be fun.
This story is making my week, just so you know.
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You're 100% right, on all counts - That never surprises me anymore, but it always thrills me to get the insights!
Don't apologize for being both so skilled, and having the finesse to convey insight from that skill in a kind and useful way. Doing that isn't always easy, but you make it look easy. Yours is the kind of critique that makes me have faith in the usefulness of critique at all, and I'll always appreciate it.
I'll do my very best! There's a surprising amount of build-up and adventure still to be had before we get to that point - maybe even something to surprise you still - so the journey should help me refine the concept I have more than half-formed at this point.
Again, I really appreciate hearing this. I get a lot of joy just from the writing process, but nothing quite compares to sparking some joy in a reader!
Just curious - Are you intentionally staying one chapter behind my release cadence? I've definitely forced myself to do that as a reader (and watcher, for visual media) before, so it wouldn't surprise me. At any rate, 5 is out, and I think you'll appreciate the way the character interaction expands. The story sails into even stranger waters from here on, but I bet you knew or suspected some aspects of that ahead of time if you paid attention to the tags (and I bet you did!)