Iro - entryway - nanon here.

nanon with the bump.

>>57068

Thank you for your message sir. Honestly, I'm probably more worried about you. Your frankly tell of a much more difficult journey than I'll probably ever know. Most of my pain comes from my childhood, and it is effectively my only obstacle when it comes to overall success (or at least the only one I can supposedly directly overcome).

There isn't really much of a reason for you to worry about me; it was always my destiny to end up on the outside, and I've just been doing my best to try to find ways to feel content despite that. I've made some friends with these guys that do nothing but play Mario Kart: Double Dash. They are very good (borderline speedrunners) and I almost always lose to them after the first hour of each weekly session, but I'm improving, and at least I'm finding friends.

Other clubs (philosophy, MTG, etc.) have not been fruitful; my autistic and neurotic tendencies seem to have pushed those people away for the most part. Sometimes I fear I am doing the same with those two gamers I call friends. Either way, I'm starting to become more comfortable coming out of my shell, especially since the shift in political winds may be more favorable to me now than then I shut myself in back in the late 2010s.

Also, I don't usually like using Discord, especially for direct messages; that's part of the reason why I'm always on anonymous imageboards in the first place (same goes for solarfair00 on here). I guess I shall send you a friend request via my alt. in case Iro ever goes down, though (I'm WonderPest).

Thank you for coming back!

Regards,
That Pikmin Guy

>>57079

>my destiny

> no reason to worry about me

>despite

> ....

that's why im worried, fren.

I'm happy to hear you are finding friends, and that you're slowly acclimating to outside life. That's truly grand.
now that we have a we to connect im less worried. now you know where to find me if you want to have a chat.
I guess I can also write a bot to trawl this place to beep when we I get mentions, but that would lose all the charm of the place, and I know im far too busy rn to trawl iro2 really deeply.
My path in life may have been hard, just as yours may have been hard, but I don't think I ever felt as alienated as you seem to feel, and that's what really gives me the creeps.
Have you ever read Kafka's transformation? or did you start thinking of the human-to-bug stuff on your own? I personally sometimes feel like a crow, or a shark, but those feelings have never stayed long enough to be a main part of my life. I worry.

today our capabilities to be alone have never been this extended, and neither did our capabilities of being thoughtlessly cruel. It is possible the world was cruel to you just because you were a bit different.

nanon out. Peace and happiness.

>>57080

>I don't think I ever felt as alienated as you seem to feel, and that's what really gives me the creeps.

>Have you ever read Kafka's transformation? or did you start thinking of the human-to-bug stuff on your own?

It was definitely the latter; I only really began to learn about The Metamorphosis when I asked people on /adv/ why they kept bringing up Kafka's transformation. I don't remember what prompted it originally, but I'm pretty sure an influencing factor was Blex, Vexing Pest, along with my general affinity and fascination with arthropods.

<https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/legends-strixhaven-2021-04-13

I've also felt similar associations with snakes and monitors. Not sure if it's because of my family's antisocial tendencies or if it's due to an association with the Gadsden flag. I also associate with puppets, for many reasons. I try to not let these identities affect me, but it's hard to keep them away when I don't hold any identity for myself. I have no natural group, guild, political ties, race, or even family to an extent.

>It is possible the world was cruel to you just because you were a bit different.

I wish I could come to terms with that, but I know that the things that make/made me different were hardly good things. Maybe one day I will find a way to make them good/better.

Hope to hear from you again at some point!

>>57107

ofcourse.

I often feel like a bug when im working with heavily technical stuff. or like a mantis. Yeah mantis is the right term - most of my animals are predatory.

Sometimes I sit and wait, waiting for the right equation to pop up, my arms waving forwards... if it pops up, I know, I will mangle it immediately, put it in shape, write it down in uniform words so formal it will never manage to wiggle away, ever,.

Arthropods were always scary for me, though. We have a highly poisonous one where I live so I always stopped myself from touching them. scary stuff - there are ones that can kill you just with at ouch of their already dead skin.

or so the kid-stories say. Don't know if it's true.

Have you thought of learning biology? I have a friend who is a snake researcher, and sometimes he feels like a snake to me. not in a malicious way (although im sure that if I was a threat to him he could have pulled that out), but he's just static. He sits and absorbs the world and acts only when the sun starts to warm him. He works as a snake catcher and gets very upset when snakes are harmed.

"Good things", "Good" is in the eye of the observer. I am happy to hear that even though you feel disconnected from society you're still trying not to harm it and still trying to make friends in it, even though society gave you a bit of a cold shoulder.

>For their final project as a mage-student, Nassari famously once "turned in" an earthquake that almost destroyed three campus buildings.

Nassari is muh man lmao, but i think i'd like to be a bit more of an octavia.

>>57142

>Have you thought of learning biology?

I've read some books and watched some documentaries on entomology, but none have sparked any interest in me. At best, I'm as interested in bugs as your average dog owner is interested in canines. It has given me some interesting views on nature, though. The insect world is extremely utilitarian and ruthless. Very few insect species survive unless they are good at achieving ideal conditions for breeding and/or having enough "tools" to live to those conditions. I kind of wish I had those tools for survival; seems like all the pros were bred out in favor of the cons.

>I am happy to hear that even though you feel disconnected from society you're still trying not to harm it and still trying to make friends in it, even though society gave you a bit of a cold shoulder.

I try to channel my more destructive tendencies in the form of controlled chaos. I specialize in strategies in games that favor luck over skill, partially because of my insecurities, but also due to my general lack of skill no matter how often I practice. I suspect that is due to my general inability to learn new things because of my lack of trust in the system or the people that occupy it.

<...Octavia took up residence on campus and has never left. After all, in its humble opinion, every student deserves the chance to see True Art in person. Some say it's incoherent, but it's really just a very conceptual thinker.

Interesting. I also try to be a very conceptual thinker, God knows I've spent more of my recent life trying to perfect the art of introspection. It only occurred to me the other day when I was speaking to my Dad on the trip back home (that's what I've been doing since Tuesday) that most people don't really understand how to properly introspect.
[...]

[...]
From what I've learned, the best way to introspect is to not just consider your own feelings and how/why they manifest, but to also learn from the ways other people's feelings manifest and to both understand how they cultivate and/or justify them (either directly or indirectly), and what makes them do so. To understand what and why you feel things, you need figure out how humans do it in general, as all thoughts and feelings are rooted in human experience. It fascinates me how humans have learned this lesson for hundreds of years, and yet we still don't understand that we must learn about those we don't understand before we can understand ourselves, since our own experiences blindside us from what's really going on in our brains.

Well, hopefully that's the right direction. A con of this strategy is that it constantly makes me unsure about what I know/believe, even shaking my belief in abilities I should know I possess, or even my own existence. It makes it very hard for me to know if the things I accomplished are justified, or even deserved, since I can't tell how much luck is involved. I assume a lot since it's really hard for me to understand the world around me.

>>57257

that is very interesting.
actually very very interesting. I have always placed my own experiences first in my introspection, Even though I accept my self is not constant and is literally "everyone".
im scared of starting on this road again. I will detach if I start introspecting that hard. I saw a zen documentary once and the young zen practioners reminded me of me in my first introspection periods - bitter, angry, depressed. tired of life. detaching, and feeling all the pain of doing so.
Please tell me how you came to this style of introspection, or give me some reading material.
-nanon.

>>57256

and on the insect things:
Nope, you did not get any cons. You are a hyper-evolved creature created for a specific circumstance, but you have a hard time fitting for the modern circumstances.

on the other hand, we have the literally highest adaptable brain in nature, so we are nature's best fit for the madness that's going on right on. Keep fighting on, man, You're fighting the good fight.

remember that your brain is a stupid machine and will believe whatever it wants to believe. If you believe you don't exist, you won't exist. et cetera. It's obvious that we don't exist in a permanent fashion like some people thing - there is no solid soul - but the sense of self is a thing that exists. It just dissipates away when you look too closely.
I think of myself as a shadow, sometimes. A shadow upon the land of consciousness.

>>57312

sorry man for preaching at you.
im going through a phase myself and im still shaking out energies.

>>57311

> scared of starting on this road again. I will detach if I start introspecting that hard. I saw a zen documentary once and the young zen practioners reminded me of me in my first introspection periods - bitter, angry, depressed. tired of life. detaching, and feeling all the pain of doing so.

Yeah, that’s an unfortunate side effect. I mainly end up that was because I don’t have any faith in my own existence.

>Please tell me how you came to this style of introspection

It came about via selective pressures; being myself got me into nothing but trouble, so trying to understand other people’s perspectives was the only way for me to not be directly hated. Then again, it seems like it has turned me into a social phantom that makes hardly any impressions on other people besides my exterior. I think my generation calls this archetype The Quiet Kid. It probably isn’t all that healthy if you can’t come to terms with your own suffering, but it does grant me benefits others don’t seem to enjoy.

>>57312

>You are a hyper-evolved creature created for a specific circumstance, but you have a hard time fitting for the modern circumstances.

>remember that your brain is a stupid machine and will believe whatever it wants to believe. If you believe you don't exist, you won't exist.

That does seem to be the case for me. You compare yourself to “[a] shadow upon the land of consciousness,” whereas I view myself as a shadow (Or maybe a mirror?) to society’s teachings. I was born a barbarian that wears its heart on its sleeve, and that is not the kind of person society, especially Leftist society, wants to endorse, so all those “barbaric” tendencies were beaten out of me. I’ve been left hollow, spending most of my time anticipating when the sun will go down and when all the shadows like me will disappear.
[...]

[…]
I think the Obsessed called this type of character the “Omega”; it’s the opposite of the Alpha, and instead of making people feel safe and secure, they make people feel very unsafe and are often scapegoats for all of societies evils. You see them in the school shooter-esque people that society constantly points to as the most hate-filled. While it’s obvious to bad that these people, arguably my people, aren’t actually dangerous, society treats them like creatures and they therefore that to act like they are creatures.
And then they start to believe they are creatures, and then they start to think like creatures, and when they start to think like creatures, they begin to think about going on a manhunt, if you know what I mean.

It’s a tragic tale, but society is too scared to look at shadows and treat them like what they really are, just like us. It’s a bit tangential, but sometimes I wonder if a similar type of message was trying to be conveyed via the Twilight Realm in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The Twili were always seen as evil creatures that needed to be kept in their own realm away from the Hylians, and it was because of the way they were ostracized that Ganondorf was sent to that same dimension and able to corrupt the most extreme of them to kill (almost) all of their royal family, let alone however many hundreds of Hylians and other sentient creatures. Even Midna despises the Hylians for the longest time because she believes that they never gave her people the chance to make their own case, because they feared what they were capable of. Could also just be a generic metaphor for tribal societies, but the general theme of feeling ostracized also applies.

>>57313

It’s fine. Like I’ve said however many times, I’m just glad I can occasionally talk to someone else without it feeling hostile in nature. I’ve only been home for about a week and it already feels lonely, especially given that my parents are mellowed-out sociopaths.

>>57404

Shadows are shadows. I don't see the distinction.
and creatures are highly varied. it is not nature's way to have killing machines type of creatures. That stuff doesn't survive evolution except in rare cases. creature -> psycho killer is entirely a creation of the mind, pure thing.

anyway, I started a worldbuilding thread on loomis -> scribbles > worldbuilding, see you there?

>>57478

>it is not nature's way to have killing machines type of creatures.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and while I mostly agree, I think an important distinction is that society is the one that conflates creatures (outsiders) and monsters (psychos), and while there is obviously a thick line between disenfranchisement and anti-social personality disorder, I do believe that a lot of the creatures that commit atrocities do so as an extreme “cry for help,” or whatever the more sophisticated term would be. It seems to be that they believe that the only way to aid in change is to take direct action, and frankly, considering the fact that corporations seem to have uprooted the government and have held it above its people like a “sacred democracy” in the clouds, it’s hard to consider anything else to be a practical solution. It also doesn’t help that all the activist groups play right into their desires (not like the FBI stops mass shooters or riots that don’t directly target favored politicians, interestingly enough).

Of course, I want to believe there are better solutions, not just because I don’t like having authorities constantly breathing over my shoulder, but because my perception of reality is already so bleak that I’m afraid what will happen if that perception becomes further tainted.

>Shadows are shadows. I don't see the distinction.

That’s a rather odd statement. Shadows reflect a two-dimensional impression of something three-dimensional from a certain angle; it’s only natural that they would vary radically based on the context of their existence. I still don’t really understand what you mean by “A shadow upon the land of consciousness,” but it sounds much less specific than the shadow I’m thinking of.

I’m not really good with worldbuilding; I’m good at building up characters I can relate to and building up concepts for wacky creatures, but not much else.