waggishcoyote

[waggishcoyote]

Another (as of now incomplete) furry VN I recently finished playing is Remember the Flowers. It was really good! A wonderful experience all around. But like ...

(Spoilers Below!)

Did anyone else notice that Cyrus, our MC, has an insane level of social and emotional intelligence?

This could genuinely just be my own personal bias talking. I've got a fairly robust social life, but I'm no extrovert. I have some close friends that I interact with regularly and a moderately wide sphere of acquaintances to boot. But if I'm being honest, I'm a novice when it comes to navigating complicated Adult Interpersonal Situations.

They rarely seem to come up in my friend groups (or I'm just ignorant ... yikes), and when they do, I'm usually able to get away with doing very little: serving as a soundboard for venting, providing some vague bog standard advice, staying out of the situation entirely, or some combination therein. I'm a bit socially underdeveloped, is what I'm trying to say, and my reading of RTF is probably colored as a result.

This being said, progressing through the linear narrative of the story in Cyrus' POV was an uncanny experience. Maybe it's just because Cyrus is canonically over 300 years old, but he is downright unreasonably good at navigating social situations.

"But wait!" you say, "isn't Cyrus a self-professed introvert?" Yes, and I (somewhat) believe him when he says that! Cyrus is not a master conversationalist outright. I'm talking about something different. Cyrus has mastered the metagame of social interaction. It's the way he carefully reads the people he forms close relationships with, and almost flawlessly updates his beliefs and behaviors accordingly. It's the way he balances spoken words and unspoken meanings. It's the way he boldly yet gently encourages his new friends to open up to him about their struggles while carefully avoiding overstepping boundaries in the process.

Interestingly enough, the narrative manages to portray Cyrus' social sagacity in a way that avoids coming across as forced. Maybe it's just authorial artifice, but Cyrus' help and advice never reads as being some contrived panacea for the social dilemmas he helps ameliorate. But ultimately, this doesn't matter. What is so impressive to me is simply that he is able to consistently be of service in the first place.

Like seriously, his success rate is incredible, and his talents are exemplified in the nuanced ways he provides social support to his friends. The way he encouraged Aaron to open up about his past life as a violent gang member. The way he consoled him afterwards, recognizing the terrible nature of his past crimes and denouncing them while simultaneously assuring him that he has grown, healthily reaffirming his humanity. The way he coaxed the blunt and hermit-like Vita out of their shell, laying the foundation necessary for them to come out of the bunker and to the surface for the first time since their rescue.

What was most impressive to me was the way he helped Canto and Silver's relationship. It's pretty damn bold to intercede in the relational struggles of two lovers whose multiple-years-long disagreements are coming to a head. I was cringing the entire time. I was sure that this was the moment that Cyrus' meddling would be his undoing. I was sure his efforts would blow up in his face, in one way or another. But they didn't!

Once again, I'm not stating this is as being a writing flaw per se. It's not that Cyrus attempted something within the story that should have been impossible, and was saved only by bad character writing. It's that Cyrus confidently intervened in an extremely challenging situation and managed to say (and do) all the right things necessary to believably help these two lovers work through their problems.

The outcome wasn't perfect. Silver and Canto break up. But it's pretty clear that they were headed for a much uglier fallout had Cyrus not intervened. Cyrus' intermediation alone allows the two to communicate, find a space to understand each other's struggles and perspectives, and come to a mutual and healthy (if still painful) decision to walk away from their romance. I think Cyrus might have known the two of them for several months at this point in the story (not sure, there are a few time skips), but this is still a miraculous outcome for someone who didn't know either of the involved characters at the start. Maybe it doesn't matter, but Cyrus might as well be a stranger to Canto and Silver, relative to the many years the two had known each other prior to meeting him.

I think, if memory serves, that Cyrus does make a few mistakes. He was a bit of a fool to trust Cooper. He was pretty short with Canto when they first met. He was a tad too pushy with Vita in their first argument about the safety of traveling to the surface. But these mistakes (besides the first) were never of massive consequence, and they were never wholly Cyrus' fault.

On a deeper level, one of the only crucial personal mistakes he makes occurs in a flashback from before the events of the story, in which his dedication?, ambition?, belief? inadvertently separates him from his family and sets the stage for the ensuing narrative. The only persistent character flaws we observe within Cyrus throughout the story itself are his trust, his idealism, and his self-sacrificing dedication to his friends.

But this level of social and emotional intelligence in our MC is still in complete contrast to a VN like Echo, where our main character and nearly all of the supporting cast are consistently saying all of the wrong things at all of the wrong times to one another, often to disastrous effect.

Compared to a Chase Hunter type, wise Cyrus represents an almost Ayanokoji-like level of MC self-insert escapism. It's the nearly same fantasy of the 10000 IQ charismatic anime protag, just translated onto a healthier (read: not downright Machiavellian) personality and story context. What if I had the confidence to help my friends in distress? What if I was able to speak without second guessing everything that comes out of my mouth? What if I chose all the right dialogue options in the infinitely complicated game of life?

I want to close by redoubling my assurance that this is not an attack on the verisimilitude and poignancy of Remember the Flowers as a novel. These observations neither hindered my enjoyment of the story nor seriously affected my immersion within it. As it stands, the facets of the story I discussed above ultimately constitute a small piece of RTF, and the game is still far from finished! I'm very curious to see if the story will eventually challenge Cyrus' personality, talents, and flaws as I've discussed them.

Thanks for reading!

[waggishcoyote]

2 am

just microwaved and ate two leftover smoked bone-in chicken thighs coated in a blend of umami spices I can't name.

body shaking euphoria

tail wagging throat barking ear flopping head swaying joy

unspeakable rapture

im a doggy doggy gets chimken I got chimken I love chimken im such a good boy bark bark bark bark

woofwoofwoofwoofwoofwoof

wagwagwagwagwagwag

[waggishcoyote]

I have a selfsame spirit to the wild ones. 

They are mine own kith and kin.

The glorious din that hallows me.

The delight found in rancid sin.

Tooth and fang and claw and ear.

Maw and grin and growl.

Don't ask me where your child hath been

Upon that midnight Howl.

He's gone mother, I consumed him.

Ate him up from the inside out. 

Licked up all his skin and bones,

his flesh and taint and gout.

So when you see my feral eye,

let freon freeze your blood. 

For I'm a fox-fowl Caracal,

a wowf thunder-shorn lightning rod.

[waggishcoyote]

Okay now that I've given my thoughts more time to settle I think I can do better than the post I made an hour ago.

"All Under Control" is a perfectly fine horror VN about a contagious supernatural chain mail curse with subtexts analyzing power dynamics in kink relationships.

While playing I was disappointed to discover that the hypnosis introduced at the start of the novel was not in fact the titular subject of the horror, and was instead merely inserted to serve as textual and subtextual context for the aforementioned chain mail curse shenanigans.

I really really really want to find fiction that integrates "realistic" hypnosis as a key story object while not treating its significance as being purely sexual in nature.

That is all.

[waggishcoyote]

I just read the furry horror vn "All Under Control" and ... I have some thoughts.

(mild spoilers below)

I really, really wish the story would've been confident enough to follow through with its initial exploration of hypnosis.

We are first introduced to two lovers and their (reasonably accurate) foray into experimenting with erotic hypnosis. The story gets some important things right. Tomas, the hypnotic subject, describes feeling as if he is "playing pretend" in the bedroom, only gradually experiencing flashes of "losing control," in which he perceives himself acting automatically on command. The narrative description succinctly conveys the ambiguity inherent to all experiences as a hypnotic subject. Is it all roleplay, or is it something more? Do such questions even matter?

"Accurate" hypnosis should neither be aggrandized as being all-powerful mind control nor denigrated as being simple fantasy. The story sets the foundation for an incisive exploration of hypnosis as it really is. Not something that strips power away in a single instant but instead something that works gradually over time, like any form of persuasion or conditioning. Part creative imagination play, part regimented training routine. Powerful not through its presence as a unique phenomenological state but instead through the way it wields specific and heightened combinations of things that already come natural to the human mind. Focus. Compartmentalization. Suggestion. Dissociation.

But this potential is killed straightaway in the rising action of the plot. I know I can't get into the writer's heads here, but I get the feeling that they didn't trust that "real-life" hypnosis could be powerful enough to believably take the story to the level of horror intensity they wished to reach. So they fell back on a common trope in hypno media and introduced an "arcane supernatural talisman," a cursed book that imparts the wielder with absolute control of their victims, whilst simultaneously corrupting the wielder's desires to the book's Evil Goals. All pretense of "lifelike hypnosis" is dropped and our partners immediately begin to engage in the most depraved and deliberately nonconsensual acts of sexual violence imaginable at the book's behest.

I cant help but feel disappointed by this decision. For a piece of horror media that seems interested in both textually and subtextually interrogating the nature of power dynamics in kink spaces, I feel like this choice is leaving a lot on the table.

For one, the evil-cognitohazard-mind-virus chain mail schtick is overplayed. Ring and Smile both did it better.

Secondly, this subtextual representation of kink in my mind fails to accurately capture a lot of what makes toxic power dynamics so pernicious. Abuse of power in BDSM settings often comes not from a single "mask-off" moment but instead through a gradual and sometimes mutual transgression of boundaries. A steady habituation to discomfort and distress that over time erodes an initial foundation of trust and consent.

It doesn't work on the textual level either. I'm supposed to believe that Diego and Tomas were engaging in unhealthy kink practices which ultimately lead to their abuse, but as far as I can tell the only mistake they made was attempting to spice up their sex life with an eldritch Necronomicon??

It might be needless to say, but I also do not think that the author's decision (as I framed it above) is even a necessary one. While it is true that hypnosis is not overt mind control, it is not true that "hypnosis can ONLY make you do things you already want to do." Paired with manipulation and persuasion, classical and operant conditioning, I fully believe that with enough time you could (plausibly) train a human to unwillingly perform most of the sadistic/masochistic acts portrayed in this story (minus the supernatural Lovecraftian hallucination bits).

This all being said, it does not fail to occur to me that I may be entirely off the mark in my analysis of what this story was attempting to accomplish. Perhaps "All Under Control" is best read not as an interrogation of "real-life" kink but instead as an exploration of hypnosis media in it of itself. After all, while any self-respecting hypno kink enthusiast would tell you that such powerful talismans of all-consuming hypnotic control are nonexistent in "reality," such tropes are rife throughout hypnosis fantasy and erotica. Perhaps the horror this story attempts to engage with is simply the natural conclusion of these self-indulgent fantasies as such.

Either way, I am left wanting for a piece of media that engages with the subject of hypnotic control on the surface level in a manner that aligns with my own experiences involving "real-life" hypnosis.

Maybe I'll have to do it myself.

[waggishcoyote]

I hope it's clear that my previous three posts weren't a call for "head empty uwu" escapism, nor were they an expression of fatalism in the face of the immense difficulty of making choices as a conscious agent.

Self improvement can and should be pursued for your animal self!

Good puppies can be trained, after all!

>:3

[waggishcoyote]

So instead I recognize myself as being an animal. Or more specifically, an animal that attempts to express itself as a human - a furry!

Animals do many things, but one thing animals do not do is torture themselves over the limitations of their cognitive faculties.

Many so-called "humans" are uncomfortable with the idea of calling themselves animals. They conceptualize animals as being distinct from themselves because "animals don't know any better, and we humans do!" But this is silly. What does a man with one dollar to his name have in common with a man who has a hundred million dollars to his name? Neither of them can afford a billion dollar mega yacht.

Sure, us homo sapiens are a lot smarter than the other creatures we share the Earth with, but it's pretty clear that relatively speaking, we aren't much closer to optimality than they are.

Of course, the analogy is fundamentally flawed. The progress of civilization as a whole is not all-or-nothing in the way that the purchase of a yacht is. As a species, we are bestowed with many obligations concomitant to our collective faculties of planning, reasoning, and progress, and these duties should and do exist beyond any simple binary.

But I do not deprecate any of these praxes by stating that I, as an individual, am scarcely closer to any moral, cognitive, intellectual, or decision-theoretic ideal than my dog is. This isn't to say that the marginal gains I can achieve by using my "human" faculties in daily life are not preferable. It is simply to say that I should not react any more harshly to my foibles than I would to those of my fellow animals.

Y'know, it's easier to avoid conceptualizing myself as ontologically evil for my flaws when I view myself as being a smol puppy dog, is all.

Bark!

I'm genuinely starting to think I do not coherently understand a single meaningful thing about myself.

I do not really know why I have the goals that I have. I do not really know why I have the desires that I have. I do not really know why I behave in the ways that I do.

I do not understand the nature of my own perception, nor can I comprehend my existence - neither as an agent within the world nor as a pure ontological concept.

My conscious mind is woefully unequipped to handle the vastness of all that I am. I could write a thousand pages and still never get there.

How could I ever account for each neuron, let alone the connections between them, let alone the things those connections represent? Someone duck-taped a puppy dog to the steering wheel of the most complex object in the universe. The only reason I observe any semblance of success at all is because most of the ship runs on autopilot.

I circumvent the limitations of my own intelligence by simply applying it sparingly. I use the full capacity of my logical faculties to complete only my most superficial tasks: writing essays, proving mathematical results, formulating code, solving circuits.

For everything else, I simply act. This isn't to say that I don't try to use my rational mind. This is simply to concede (regretfully) that no matter how hard I try, I will never find a closed-form solution to any of the high-level decisions that hold profound sway over my being.

My rationally will always be bounded, and the extent to which I feel as though I have successfully navigated a complicated situation corresponds closely with the extent to which I have successfully deluded myself with post-hoc rationalizations. The true questions, the true processes, and the true answers alike remain inscrutable.

[waggishcoyote]

This would all be fine if not for the fact that somewhere along the line, I convinced myself that perfection is the highest ideal of existence, and now I don't know how to escape.

The mindset is so, so toxic. Perfection as a goal is self-evidently unattainable. Perfection as a concept is fundamentally weaponized to perpetuate systemic abuses. We teach kindergarteners not to let perfection be the enemy of good but I just ... can't make myself believe that.

Like, perfection is defined to be that which is flawless. It's tautological to say that there is nothing more pristine than that which is perfect. Any arguments for wabi-sabi fall flat to me because aren't we just oxymoronically redefining "subtle transience" or "imperfection" as some higher attainment of ~true~ perfection?

So every time I fail, every time I do something stupid, every time I fuck something up, I can't help but view it as an instantiation of some Original Sin.

Why can't we "just" make the right decisions? Better yet, why can't we be blind to our errors if we are forced to have them? It is so cruel to exist as a lens that sees its faults. It is so cruel to be a creature that is unable to reckon with the consequences of its own existence.

But I know that I am who I am nonetheless, and I know that I will always be flawed. I must forgive myself of my fallibility in order to survive, and that is so, so difficult.

It is one thing to forgive mistakes. I forgive the mistakes of myself and others all the time. It is another thing entirely to forgive myself of being fallible. To forgive myself for being the type of animal that will never achieve perfection no matter how much "self-improvement" I attempt. I don't know if I'm capable of possessing that amount of grace.

I'm genuinely starting to think I do not coherently understand a single meaningful thing about myself.

I do not really know why I have the goals that I have. I do not really know why I have the desires that I have. I do not really know why I behave in the ways that I do.

I do not understand the nature of my own perception, nor can I comprehend my existence - neither as an agent within the world nor as a pure ontological concept.

My conscious mind is woefully unequipped to handle the vastness of all that I am. I could write a thousand pages and still never get there.

How could I ever account for each neuron, let alone the connections between them, let alone the things those connections represent? Someone duck-taped a puppy dog to the steering wheel of the most complex object in the universe. The only reason I observe any semblance of success at all is because most of the ship runs on autopilot.

I circumvent the limitations of my own intelligence by simply applying it sparingly. I use the full capacity of my logical faculties to complete only my most superficial tasks: writing essays, proving mathematical results, formulating code, solving circuits.

For everything else, I simply act. This isn't to say that I don't try to use my rational mind. This is simply to concede (regretfully) that no matter how hard I try, I will never find a closed-form solution to any of the high-level decisions that hold profound sway over my being.

My rationally will always be bounded, and the extent to which I feel as though I have successfully navigated a complicated situation corresponds closely with the extent to which I have successfully deluded myself with post-hoc rationalizations. The true questions, the true processes, and the true answers alike remain inscrutable.

[waggishcoyote]

I'm genuinely starting to think I do not coherently understand a single meaningful thing about myself.

I do not really know why I have the goals that I have. I do not really know why I have the desires that I have. I do not really know why I behave in the ways that I do.

I do not understand the nature of my own perception, nor can I comprehend my existence - neither as an agent within the world nor as a pure ontological concept.

My conscious mind is woefully unequipped to handle the vastness of all that I am. I could write a thousand pages and still never get there.

How could I ever account for each neuron, let alone the connections between them, let alone the things those connections represent? Someone duck-taped a puppy dog to the steering wheel of the most complex object in the universe. The only reason I observe any semblance of success at all is because most of the ship runs on autopilot.

I circumvent the limitations of my own intelligence by simply applying it sparingly. I use the full capacity of my logical faculties to complete only my most superficial tasks: writing essays, proving mathematical results, formulating code, solving circuits.

For everything else, I simply act. This isn't to say that I don't try to use my rational mind. This is simply to concede (regretfully) that no matter how hard I try, I will never find a closed-form solution to any of the high-level decisions that hold profound sway over my being.

My rationally will always be bounded, and the extent to which I feel as though I have successfully navigated a complicated situation corresponds closely with the extent to which I have successfully deluded myself with post-hoc rationalizations. The true questions, the true processes, and the true answers alike remain inscrutable.

[waggishcoyote]

I want to become an animal so that I may escape having to forgive myself for being human.

[waggishcoyote]

omg omg omg I love this piece and this character so much.

I love the effervescence of canine boys with big pointy ears and long slender snouts. I love the mystique of canine boys with sharp eyes and slender smiles. I love the organic rusticity of canine boys with pale tan fur and desert sand markings. I love the sartorial urbanity of canine boys who wear turtlenecks with vertical-striped textures paired with baggy overcoats.

This canine reminds me a lot of the coyote subject of a collection of artworks by Nagabe. In particular, there's one piece from the series, titled "見えちゃった？," that I'm hopelessly obsessed with. It features our coyote in nigh identical getup to the character in this piece, with a similar fur color and physique, staring the audience dead in the eyes with a red halo above his head.

I've spent a lot of time contemplating exactly what makes that piece so enthralling to me. I've come up with a few pretentious scholarly analyses that discuss religious juxtapositions and Jungian archetypes and aesthetic principles, but after seeing this artwork I'm starting to suspect my deal might be a LOT more straightforward than that.

In conclusion I love debonair coyoteboys I need more of them STAT.

commission for someone @ twitter!

[waggishcoyote]

the next fractions that do this are those of 17, 19, and 23 !

but the fractions of seven are the only ones in decimal base that do not contain zero as the leading digit of the sequence ... how quirky

just realized that all fractions of seven are expressible as cyclic permutations of 142857.

[waggishcoyote]

ok I did some more research. Apparently cyclic numbers (numbers whose integer multiples are cyclic permutations of themselves) take the form (b^(p-1) - 1)/p (a "Fermat quotient" for the curious), where p is some prime and b is the base of the number system being used. so it turns out that 142857 = (10^(6) - 1)/7, thus the fraction 1/7 takes the form of an endless decimal concatenation of the sequence of digits 142857, as 0.99999... = 1. Thus the fractions 2/7, 3/7, etc. are cyclic permutations of that same sequence

neat!

just realized that all fractions of seven are expressible as cyclic permutations of 142857.

[waggishcoyote]

just realized that all fractions of seven are expressible as cyclic permutations of 142857.

[waggishcoyote]

while I'm on the subject of introductions, I might as well introduce my pfp! He's a lovely adopt I got from the marvelous Kita Kettu. He doesn't have a name yet, unfortunately :(

I'm a furry myself, and I've always felt an indescribable affinity for the concept of portraying myself as an adorable fluffy animal creature. But also at times I feel a stronger aesthetic yearning to the mien of a vicious savage animal creature. It just depends on the current state of my internal self-representation, I suppose.

In this regard, calling Him my fursona feels a bit incomplete. I find his natural personality enough to contain some aspects of my identity but not others. My cup runneth over.

[waggishcoyote]

a tough thing to get over with these first posts will be finding my own style. I'm prob going to appear mercurial for a bit while I figure out what works best. I'll keep the metaposting to a minimum I swear 😭

[waggishcoyote]

Hi there!

I intend this blog to be my first foray into the practice of personal creation.

I've spent most of my life thus far consuming content - through literature, formal education, art, and social media alike.

I've spent hours lurking on blogs and forums wondering what it'd be like to post on these platforms myself, and share some of the many random thoughts that pop into my head within a somewhat public context.

In the spirit of self improvement and adventure I'd like to start doing that, and this blog will be my first attempt!

I intend to share my thoughts on math, science, philosophy, art, furries, music, literature, poetry, sexuality, identity, and more. These posts may take the form of off-the-cuff musings, careful exegeses, informal dialogues, or unintelligible rants, depending on my mood.

This will be an 18+ blog.

I'll probably post a more formal bio soon, but feel free to send me any asks that pop into mind!

Thanks!