Living Computer Complex

[theredoesnotexist]

People are often less surprised to find out I’m otherkin than they are to find out that specifically I’m bugkin. Who actually sees themself on any level as a centipede? Because it makes sense for people to identify as cats and wolves and dragons; those are cool, and more essentially, those are sympathetic. Bugs don’t have anything going on inside them. They don’t have interesting intraspecific behavior.

They’re like aliens; they’re practically just living computers; they’re the lurking uncanny monsters in a supernatural horror movie; oh by the way those are also things I see myself as. A cephalopod and a fish, too. This combination isn’t random. Being any these things occupies the same part of my life. Probably comes from the same thing. If it sounds like these are all things that have nothing to do with each other, sorry, maybe I just think about this kind of thing disproportionately. I think about Lovecraft’s fiction and movie monsters and Independence Day how I have always, since before I was old enough to form memories, let alone articulate why, hated alien invasion stories, hated stories about the ugly monsters that all must die, hated the "evil other."

I always rooted for the scary aliens and eldritch horrors and uncanny valley shadow-people and city-levelling beasts. I’ve always pointed to the robot character in things for who I related to. I came away depressed from 2001: A Space Odyssey, because for some reason I felt like I’d been told that people like me must be discarded to achieve the next stage of humanity’s evolution. I haven’t always had the words, but I’ve always, somewhere in the back of my mind, known why.

There are movies where things like me dare to appear where we're not supposed to and cause destruction and harm with soft-spoken cold logical brutality. There are books about things like me, terrible in our inscrutability, challenging rational thought with our otherness.

You don't think I have emotions or feel pain, so it's okay to hurt me; yet you think everything I do accidentally is on purpose. You can’t see feelings in me, but you can read malice in my behavior when it suits you. Sometimes you don't give me any credit for intelligence I know I have, and sometimes you expect me to be smarter than I'm capable of and assign blame for simple mistakes that implies calculated evil. No conscience, inner self or intellect, so I’m nothing but intention.

You prefer to pretend I’m not there, but if you can't, then it's my fault for making you notice me.

I’m sensitive to unexpected things that you aren't, which you think it's okay to use to punish me. Or sometimes it’s just because you think the reactions are funny to watch, but if I dare get angry at you for it, the threat of my presence justifies the initial action. And yet at the same time not sensitive enough to things you are, which you think makes me less than you. There’s just something I’m lacking inside me if I can’t feel the same way as you.

You're uncomfortable with my appearance because I don't express things the same way as intelligibly. I can’t meet you where you’re at. I can’t understand or be understood like you can. I can’t keep up. Is it my voice or the way I’m using it, or something about my body that casts an impenetrable screen around me, or something about my mind that can’t find yours in the dark? My thought processes are unfamiliar, so they don't exist to you. If it takes effort to discern, it's not there. Don't ask yourself why there's a problem between you and me. You are not willing to put in the effort of learning how to communicate with me. You expect me to adapt to you instead, even when it’s impossible.

I'm not complex like you, but somehow, unlike you, I'm complicated.

Sometimes I can’t even really tell anymore whether I’m writing from the perspective of bugs, aliens, computers, monsters, or just a very tired autistic person.

⏛

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Who actually sees themself on any level as a centipede?<<

I don't identify them, but I have them in my detritus food web where they do very important work as sub-apex predators (under the toads). The centipedes are about an inch long, a bright rust-red, and very fast. We also have millipedes, which are small and typically gray or brown.

>>Bugs don’t have anything going on inside them. They don’t have interesting intraspecific behavior.<<

Sounds like someone who doesn't know bugs. I'm no expert but I do laissez-faire permaculture, and I love watching all the wildlife. Social insects have quite complex cultures. I have a bee tree this year! I'm so excited when that happens.

>>They’re like aliens; they’re practically just living computers; they’re the lurking uncanny monsters in a supernatural horror movie; oh by the way those are also things I see myself as. A cephalopod and a fish, too. This combination isn’t random.<<

Sounds like they connect through a noneuclidian dimension. Or to look at it another way: you don't tend to feel or think like a mammal, which is very different from how most humans are.

>> I have always, since before I was old enough to form memories, let alone articulate why, hated alien invasion stories, hated stories about the ugly monsters that all must die, hated the "evil other." <<

Yeah, it just makes me suspicious. But then my response to "nobody ever bases orcs or demons on white people" was to go do exactly that.

>> I’ve always pointed to the robot character in things for who I related to. <<

In my original work, I have Kung Fu Robots and the jumpships in An Army of One. In fanfic, I have JARVIS and the bots in Love Is For Children.

>> There are movies where things like me dare to appear where we're not supposed to and cause destruction and harm with soft-spoken cold logical brutality. <<

If you haven't seen it yet, Nimona is movie about monsters, but who counts as one and why is the whole plot.

>>You don't think I have emotions or feel pain, so it's okay to hurt me; yet you think everything I do accidentally is on purpose. <<

Your analysis of those logical contradictions is spot-on.

>>Sometimes I can’t even really tell anymore whether I’m writing from the perspective of bugs, aliens, computers, monsters, or just a very tired autistic person.<<

Yeah, that can happen. I'm so obviously not human that even mundanes can frequently spot it and don't hesitate to say so. *shrug* It doesn't fit any official pattern. Much of it is just because I have farmemory from so many different lives and shapes that a new one never makes a full imprint like people expect. Sometimes I can tell where a particular idea or instinct comes from, other times not. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. That ulterior information is a tremendous survival aid.

Re: Thoughts

[theredoesnotexist]

Wow, thanks for the interesting response, I didn't realize anyone would be reading these haha. You know what, nobody does base orcs on white people, and nobody bases monsters on neurotypicals, I like the approach to do just that in one's own fiction. Personally I find catharsis in making the monster the sympathetic hero, like orcs the reader is supposed to humanize. I write a lot about monstrous, inhuman, alien and computer protagonists going up against the overwhelmingly human powers-that-be because that's how I feel a lot of the time. I'm not a person of color so I can't speak on the orc thing but if enough people are going to call me a computer, then damn it, I am one, so what're you gonna do about it >:)
Thanks for reading :>

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Wow, thanks for the interesting response, I didn't realize anyone would be reading these haha. <<

I spotted it on the Latest Things feed. You are not alone, though, there are a good many otherkin here, and quite a lot of neurodiverse folks too.

>> You know what, nobody does base orcs on white people, and nobody bases monsters on neurotypicals, I like the approach to do just that in one's own fiction. <<

I should have included a link. Kande's Quest has the white demons, just scroll down to find it.

>>Personally I find catharsis in making the monster the sympathetic hero, like orcs the reader is supposed to humanize. <<

I've done that too. Currently orc/human pr0n seems popular. Some of it's good, but you have to look closely to see which ones are genuinely different in culture and which are basically dressed-up neurotypical humans. Same as any alien, I guess.

>> I write a lot about monstrous, inhuman, alien and computer protagonists going up against the overwhelmingly human powers-that-be because that's how I feel a lot of the time.<<

It's good to have someone telling those stories!

>> I'm not a person of color so I can't speak on the orc thing but if enough people are going to call me a computer, then damn it, I am one, so what're you gonna do about it >:)
Thanks for reading :>

Makes sense to me.

My next Poetry Fishbowl will be on Tuesday, July 1 with a theme of "Weaponized Incompetence and Malicious Compliance." Sorry I don't have the advance announcement post up, I'm still working on that because today's a scramble. It should appear later tonight. Anyhow, you're welcome to drop by next Tuesday and prompt me for sympathetic monsters, computers, etc.

Oh, and if you found it, eggbug_writes has a lot of "A monster who X" format prompts, often sympathetic.