(no subject)

I woke up with this feeling like there's so much past and the people in it get further away all the time.
Big feeling, nothing to be done about it.


I also thought though that there's a logic of so far so good
by which we are immortal.

Like, if you have survived twenty years, then you know you can survive twenty years, at which point you'll have survived forty years, so you know you can do that again, and then you'll be at eighty years, and... so on and so forth.

It's bollocks of course, but encouraging bollocks, so there's that.



I shall find something to do in the here now and get on with today.

Where I am really frustrated

I think mass media is really bad for our sense of agency.
Or, you know, not, if you're the kind of person who does anything other than watch TV
so I mean my. My sense of ever being able to get shit done. My sense of being listened to.

Because the humans through the black window do not listen. They never, ever listen. And they never so much as do what I would want them to. Or, okay, yes, sometimes, fairly often episode by episode, but season by season or in who gets to survive or in character arcs as a whole or just in whose story the box thinks it is? Never.

It feels like having the door slammed in my face so damn often.

So this is a lot why I don't start so many new shows or listen watch as much as I could. I know it's going to give me scraps and then take them away. Why even start?

And I just feel so disconnected from characters I used to care about whenever the story they're given takes them so far away from whatever I used to value about them. It's like getting dumped by my TV friends. Again.

And it's usually on really important things like the shows being sexist and racist and hollowing out stories of some groups to serve others.

Or sometimes it's like in comics where storytelling is cyclical, so on the one hand you know your heroes are only depowered for now, or only dead for a cycle, but on the other you mostly don't get redemption arcs that stick either. Villain is villain is villain, sooner or later, no matter what they do or why they do it. There's no way out.

And a lot of the stories just aren't asking the questions I do. Don't see the same ethical dilemmas. Actually believe that humanity is a thing you can lose and rights are for people in the right categories.

Or the stories that do ask are just... really depressing.

I don't know.

I don't know how I'd fix things.

Make everything more Star Trek? Not recent kabooms Star Trek, make friends with everyone Star Trek.



But it just really grindingly gets to me that it's not me as gets to fix anything anyway. I'm just sitting here being small. The TV never listens.




And my solution used to be that I would write the better things and then my version would be so clearly better all the ther stories would change to match, but somewhere along the way I got too depressed to actually believe I even could.



I also stopped writing fanfic at some point, and that's a whole genre for getting the TV to listen to us.

Probably should go back to fixing that.

Dreamed something magnificent

It was sort of a timelapse history of humanity's first leap to the stars, all told in conversations between one of the project engineers and a simulation of his best friend. There was no warp speed, but stargates worked, so we had to be the gate builders with no shortcuts. Ben stayed behind to protect the project base on the Earth gate end, Cruz took ship and was going to sleep all the way to their nearest neighbour. But everyone that shipped out left behind an experimental imprint, an upload, that could run in then equally experimental VR. That way they could lend their expertise even while they were gone. So Ben started talking to that Cruz, and all we see of their world is these two, an aging engineer who starts out a dreamer but comes to think he missed his chance, and his eternally optimistic best friend, captured at the single moment he gave everything to give humanity hope.

So there was worldbuilding and politics, there were gates built on every continent before the ship left to carry their other halves to the new world, and initially investment was high, but it was going to take almost a generation to get there, and the gates came to represent what their olders had thrown away instead of investing in them. Inert lumps, the masses weren't believers, had no reason to be. And then one day things Ben comes in looking awful, low and like he hasn't slept in an age, and he has to explain to Cruz, they bombed the gates. Some set of radicals bombed the gates. And some of them didn't get through, and some only did superficial damage, but one continent? They used radiologicals. And that gate is now going to bake anyone who tries to use it. They bombed the gate and humanity is 1/8 closer to stuck here, and there's no fixing it, and he's just... so tired. Of guarding these things, and waiting on a future that's... it's going to be so alien to everyone who tried to build it.

So Cruz says show me, and Ben updates the VR. So now it's running like google maps, streetview plus, simulated three dimensional environments, all sorts of good stuff. But there's nobody else in their sim, it wasn't designed that way. So there's just these increasingly alien aesthetics in the new buildings. And Cruz likes wandering around as much as the next guy, but, he also knows he's in a sim. With really good physics. And a suit they used this to teach him to use that's meant to compensate for muscle wasteage but at full strength? Pretty much makes makes him a superhero.

Parkour!

So Ben, not to be outdone, brings his latest designs in to test out, and he's built himself dragon wings. So they're charging around this empty world, Cruz bouncing off buildings, Ben flying down streets that really never meant for this, and it's all golden awesome.

And like, it doesn't change the world outside, but that's not what talking to your friends is for. Whatever the world does, Ben has this. And he has hope again.

And then gate day arrives... and passes.

And then the extension.

And then all their margin.

And now? Now Ben is really low. Because his darling optimist best friend can't see it, can't change that much, the program would call errors on it. As far as he's concerned there's a dozen, a hundred, reasons for delays. They could still be on course. Have a little faith.

But Ben pretty much thinks he's lost his best friend. So he starts treating sim Cruz different. He's not just waiting, keeping on like they ever did. He's moving on.

So he kisses him, and Cruz kisses back, and it's golden.

But it's years. Years after gate day. Cruz the same young man he ever was, Ben getting distant and focused on the world outside. Thinks this is some kind of escape, all the things he never had. Doesn't believe there's future in it.

Then comes the day that light speed will show them what happened to the ship. And Cruz and Ben watch the feeds together. And it's textbook, it's perfect, the ship is exactly where it's meant to be, but only the automated stuff ever happened.

So the simplest explanation is Cruz just never woke up.

And Ben could hear that and go one of two ways. He could give up - on his golden time with his best mate - or...

But that's where the messages end. That's the last time the sim was woken up. There is no more.

On that end.



Years later than expected, out around a cosmically close star, Cruz wakes up, now the adverse condition is finally cleared out of the ship. And he gets his messages. And despite the sim's fears, he is incredibly happy with all the sim's choices. He'll take them on. He'll call them a memory. And he's walking around grinning, and his crewmates are like, why? Didn't Ben just dump you?


And Cruz is just, no. No way. You don't see it?

Ben is on his way.

He'll be here with the backup crew.

We just have to make it good for when he gets here.



So when the working day is done, now Cruz curls up with sim Ben, keeping him updated on the work they're starting, the planetary surveys and placing the gates, in total confidence he's on his way there.

Because Cruz is ever the optimist, and Ben is the engineer.

I win at Thursday

I did dancing, including attempting to learn part of a dance a lot more quickly than usual, and I got quite a lot of it. I like dancing :-)

And then there was shopping. Not enough juices so I substitued ribena, which maybe might work. But Sainsburys has new clothes season sales, so I got another nice plain black top for half price, and it was already pretty cheap.

Also I bought Rogue One, though it was sold out in its right place on the shelf, because someone had put one where Game of Thrones ought to be. Also there were many on a display later, but I thought finding it was funny.



... my life so fascinate...

I like Thursdays