Changes, but Like, in a Cute Way · 2:21am Oct 3rd, 2020
So obviously, this blog is just me cheekily pointing at my avatar and going, "hey, look! I've changed my avatar!"
But also, you know, I've just spent like three hours thinking up why I gave such importance to the old avatar, I kind of want to talk about it. Because, let's be clear: it was a screenshot from the show RWBY, and I don't actually like the show RWBY. I used to, in college, because I found the fights enjoyable, but the show itself was kind of shitty, and I stopped watching it soon enough.
The choice of avatar was quite literally me pausing the video to grab a drink, seeing I had paused at a cool frame, and going "heeheehoohoo lady smirk" and quickly screenshotting it. That's about it.
Still, hey, thing has stuck for so many years, hasn't it? It's going to be weird to see the new profile picture when I log on from now on, and I assume it's going to be weird for you too; it'll make it sound like what I'm writing is not being written by me. That is, until I get used to it, and then you get used to it, and soon enough nobody will be able to remember what my old avatar was.
But still, something about the idea of identity, I keep thinking about it.
I once heard a recording of a woman with short-term amnesia; she would forget the last fifteen seconds of her life every fifteen seconds. She literally repeated the same words every time--asked the same questions, and when given the same answer, would react in the exact same way. Every single time. It felt robotic; the person talking about the recording described it as eerie, like it was the living proof that humans are running on a program, like free will doesn't exist.
But y'know, I was kind of relieved when hearing that. Because my head is completely empty, see; I believe there's a colony of butterflies living in there. I don't think before speaking, and I don't have an inner monologue: I know what I think about something when I open my dumb fucking mouth and loudly tell everybody about it.
Which, when I was a little kid (ages eight to fifteen or so), always kind of scared me a little, because this means there's no consistency to my reactions or train of thought, there's no pattern to what I say or do. It's just random reactions at the whim of the butterflies in my head--do I have an identity, a personality, if I can't predict myself? Nothing informs the process before I say something. If given the exact same conditions, would I react the same way? Would I still be myself, or does my self not exist?
It sounds like a wanky question, because it is, but here's the thing -- I ain't playing alone in this soccer field, and I didn't even bring the ball. Jorge Luis Borges wrote in 1925 about The Nothingness of Personality, where he explains: it is enough to walk down the corridors of our past and look at ourselves in the mirror to look at the face of a stranger. What is "you", if remembering the "you" of the past makes you curl up and want to die? Nobody remembers their fourteen year old self and doesn't want to punch them in the face.
Mind that the argument here changes a little. Borges seems to equal growth, change, with a lack of existence. I worried that if you wiped my memory and put me through the same situation I might react differently, because I'm an idiot -- I feared that my personality was just the appearance of a personality, and nothing else. Borges worries by thinking: if the self is made out of passions, thoughts, love, and hatred; if the human soul is the sum of our experiences, but we never stop experiencing, then there is no constant self, and there is no constant "I". You're yourself now, but you won't be the same self tomorrow.
Different iteations to this idea pop up here and there through here. Marcus Vispanius Agrippa wrote "I hate, I know, I don't know, I chase, I laugh, I dominate, I complain. I'm philosopher, god, hero, demon, and the entire universe."
Torres Vilarroel says the same, but makes it a bit less confusing:
"I feel anger, fear, pity, happiness, sadness, greed, laziness, fury, calmness and every good and bad affections, and laudable and reprehensible exercises, that may be found in every man, alone or together [...]. This alternation of contradictory movements, I've heard called 'madness', if so, we're all mad."
Meaning: there's no you. There's no self, no personality. Everybody feels the same things, just at different times. Borges quotes both extensively, making his point that everybody's sort of the same exact being, and personality doesn't exist. John Donne said it best: "No man is an island/entire of itself/each is a piece of the continent/a part of the main."
Two problems with this:
- You can absolutely, one hundred percent, predict how people are going to react to things.
- That is not what any of the things I quoted mean.
Borges was 25 when he wrote The Nothingness of Personality; it is my humble opinion, as someone who's also 25 at the time of writing (though not for long) that he didn't understand Agrippa or Vilarroel that well. Or Donne, for that matter. Every man is indeed a piece of the continent, no man is an island, but that means that everybody feels the same emotions, everybody's capable of love and empathy and mercy and kindness. It doesn't mean we're clones or that John from Accounting doesn't have anger issues, man. People are different to each other, people have personalities.
It's easier to see in others than in oneself; in my case, sure, I fear that since I'm not thinking, I might just be acting randomly -- but my family and friends can absolutely tell how I'll react to things, and have done so multiple times. And I can predict how my sister is going to yell at me when I tell her I broke her nice jade ornament by accident this morning, to give you a completely non hypothetical example.
We're made of passions and emotions, and those are momentary, but personality is born out of the strength with which we feel those passions, out of the ones we act on and the ones we repress. Character is defined by the things that make you feel things and the things that don't; by the things you're willing to learn and the things you ignore for your own sake.
We're all part of the continent yes, and no person is an island, but we all get to harvest our little patch of land and pick which fruits we grow, is what I'm saying here. And yes, you might change over time--but the way you grow, and the way you choose to grow, is also what makes you yourself.
So I got over this whole semi existential mangle of fears once I stopped going through that phase of teenagehood. But the recording of the woman with short-term amnesia was still nice. It was like, oh, hey. That's one fear of childhood that's proven to be wrong at last, with tangible proof to boot.
But still. Three hours to pick a new avatar, huh.
Y'know maybe we never really abandon those fears of childhood. If I went back to that moment in college and saw the same funny screenshot, would I pick the same picture? Do I have a consistent personality, a consistent self, and is that consistent self attracted to a random screenshot of an objectively mediocre-to-bad show?
Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe I hesitate so much when changing avatars because like Borges, I fear that part of my self dies whenever something changes, and it's something you can't go back to. Maybe I just have a fondness for the old picture, random as it was; it's been with me for a long time. The avatar and the name are how you present to others on the Internet, and the Internet is a big part of my life. I could pretend that they're not part of my identity at this point, but I'm not fond of lying, so I won't bother.
I don't know. We're all predictable -- I definitely am; I can tell you that when I announced "hey guys, I'm getting a new avatar" half my friends went "oh he's absolutely going to quote Marcus Vispanius Agrippa now, that's classic Aragón right there" -- and personality exists, I'm sure of that. I'm also sure I want to change avatars, and I want to stop having RWBY as my business card. But I still hesitate.
I guess some childhood fears never truly leave us. Ironically, that also means, some things will never change.
There's also relief in that.
Also what do you think of the avatar. Cool or what. Look at me all purple and shit.
I'm aware this is not my usual brand of blogs, bug dang, this one was fun to write and it's 4am, and what can I say, sometimes all you wanna do is go a lil crazy.
It suits you.
Sassy Diamond, who's about to open her mouth and say something completely off the wall. Though maybe not at the speed you pull off.
Friendship ended with anime avatar Aragon
Pony avatar Aragon is my new best friend
5369592
It doesn't quite embody the 'walking drug trip' vibe I get from you but it does look terrific.
5369592
Despite the fact that you say basically the exact same things that you've said before, I seem to parse it in a completely different voice. Gonna take a while to get used to this, and probably meeting you at least once in real life again while you're wearing a Diamond Tiara mask before I internalize this new avatar. It's very pretty, though!
It's a cute avatar! It fits you, or at least the little I know of the person that is you. Plus, y'know, happy pony go wink.
And I know what you mean about "that phase of teenagehood." I, too, had a period of my teenage years full of existential dread, a crisis of what defined the self and if I was normal, and if that was a good thing. (Though instead of punching past me in the face, I think I'd sit them down and have a long talk about what the world looks like outside of the bubble I grew up in. Past me very well may want to punch me in the face, but past me was a lil shit.) Now I live in a perpetual state of "fuck it, this might as well happen, let's see what stories come out of this," which is much easier to manage.
RWBY had some great fights, and some decent character designs at the beginning of the show. It turned into a mess when they decided that plot was the thing they should be focusing on.
........ how the fuck did you write this so fast
I for one welcome our new smug DT era of Aragon.
That seems like entirely the wrong conclusion to draw. The woman wasn't an NPC with one line of dialogue. It was more of a time loop situation. She had the same response because she was the exact same person, reset every fifteen seconds. No new experiences to build on, no way to grow, no possible stimulus that could get her to exercise her free will in a different way.
... Oh hey, that's apparently what we're talking about. I should really stop commenting on blogs midway through reading them.
This feel almost Lovecraftian, and by that I mean "Why is this dead guy afraid of this?" To live, to have each day impact you, is to grow and change. Fearing that is fearing the nature of existence. Which makes about as much sense as writing a scary short story about air conditioning.
... Yeah, I really should read the whole thing before commenting. But I still like what I wrote, so nyeh. Mutability and adaptability should be embraced when the time comes (says the guy who hasn't changed his Derpibooru avatar in about six years.) Change is the one constant in life; you may as well have some changes occur the way you want them to, such as adjusting your aesthetic to the smug, sassy, wealthy horse.
Cool new avatar.
As you said, maybe for a while, but we'll get over it.
In a way, it's actually kinda reassuring when someone goes from a non-MLP avatar to a pony one, as opposed to going in the other direction. Whenever I see an author swapping from a pony to non-pony avatar, I can't help having that little voice in my head wondering whether they're losing interest in MLP, and may therefore write less horsewords from now on.
I've had this avatar since I joined the site...
Another pithy quote along the same lines: a man cannot cross the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
Also, apparently I'm older than you? If I hadn't already moved on to the same phase 5369605 is currently in, I might worry about how you're the one with a career in law.
Writing an entire blog about change with new Avatar of DT, who's whole arc was about change. Seems fitting!
5369596
Is it okay if I still think about lighthouse avatar Aragon?
5369592
I think it looks good! Knowing you personally I think it's fitting that there's a bit more expression there. If you follow from your avatar once being an inanimate building to a flat 2D anime picture, you've been making some real improvements.
5369655 Pretty much the same here. I blame sloth.
FWIW, I believe personality is a summative thing, in that the sum of a person’s experiences shapes them into a wholly unique individual. So yeah, if you or I were to have our memories wiped clean, we’d probably be very different people, but since that kind of thing basically never happens, every new change we make in our lives makes us a different version of ourselves that can still be traced back to the old versions.
Anyway, god fuck yes sassy teenage Diamond Tiara is everything and your taste in choosing her as an avatar is exquisite.
Cute new pic indeed. Didn't expect the side lesson in existential dread, but you're nothing of not generous.
- yeah, guess this is part of why I have this nickname .... I prefer to be consistent across time.
Philosophy tend to do interesting things with your/our brain. Keep it coming?
5369655
5369714
Single avatar gang represent.
On the subject of the reality of personality I recommend reading I Am That by Nisargadatta.
Nice. I almost didn't recognise you.
The avatar continues to be sassy, and thus continues to be Aragon.
And an intriguing look at what makes up a personality, too.
I don't know who you are, but I like your style. You should stick around!
...not on fimfic though. I know a pretty neat discord server you should join!
Honestly, everytime I've heard you talk, I just thought you sounded like a genius or something
I played World of Warcraft for the better part of 9 to 9 and a half years. But... that ended six years ago.
I still use the Burning Crusade wallpaper featuring Illidan and Akama as my desktop. The one from year 3 of my time playing...
I think we hate giving up on what was, because we don't want to lose what made us into who we are now. Regardless of whether that's how things actually work. (I don't think it is.)
Plus, the good times make for even better memories!
So what i get from this blog is that I want to play Stranded Deep while listening to The Corries on repeat.
Thanks Aragon.
P.S.: Yeah, I use the icons to remember people so whenever one is changed I'm confused for a while.
Should probably give Jung's books a read. I actually had a very interesting conversation the other day with one of my friends about the differences between character and personality, so I felt Carl Jung's way of reasoning really hit home for me in terms of discussing human behavior and growth.