From 781a1bd9a35cd4298237fac3db89c38e245ddd71 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2022 22:14:30 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] init draft: medianworld post I've been caught in a laziness-and-sadness-and-Super-Auto-Pets loop lately; tomorrow I want to really get some stuff done --- content/drafts/another-me-i-havent-met.md | 24 +++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 24 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/drafts/another-me-i-havent-met.md diff --git a/content/drafts/another-me-i-havent-met.md b/content/drafts/another-me-i-havent-met.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..224c14e --- /dev/null +++ b/content/drafts/another-me-i-havent-met.md @@ -0,0 +1,24 @@ +Title: Another Me I Haven't Met +Date: 2022-04-11 05:00 +Category: other +Tags: worldbuilding +Status: draft + +The [Glowfic](https://www.glowfic.com/) collaborative-fiction community has [this worldbuilding trope of an author's "medianworld"](https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1619639#reply-1619639)—a setting where the average person is _like you_ along important dimensions, as contrasted to our real world, where the sort of person contemplating this exercise is probably a weird nerd of one sort or another. + +What makes the exercise challenging is the craft of portraying the medianworld as a consilient world with a realistic, self-consistent history. It's _not_ a Society of duplicates of you, because actual-you and all your memories come from _our_ world; the only simple, consistent history producing that outcome would be giving actual-you some sort of [science-fictional](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Transporter_duplicate) [duplicator technology](https://www.cold-takes.com/the-duplicator/). + +Rather, your medianworld is a real human Society that would spit out something very much like you at the center, rather than at the margins: for everything that makes you weird _here_, half the population of your medianworld is even more so. The worldbuilding problem is: how would that _actually_ happen, given different initial conditions, but the same underlying laws of economics, sociology, psychology, _&c._? How would the macro-level features of Society shake out, were Society to supervene on that population? + +[the details of who you are is formed against the context of our world; if someone had the same underlying traits in a world full of others like them, the outcome would be different] + +[underlying traits: ideologically-drivenness, need for transparency, general craziness, autogynephilia] + +[school] + +[mental health] + +[money isn't real: credit-assignment rituals (not impact certificates)] +[caring about children as an abstract committment to the Future, rather than actually liking kids] + +[autogenderphilia] -- 2.17.1