we have a sort of fundamental problem in the Pnictogen Wing. er, that makes it sound like we only have the one problem. but this one's been a source of general trouble.

for the sake of convenience and simplicity we refer to Kris Dreemurr as our system's host, but really we're more like a human, or human-ish, trinity. The KFC gang, as it's been called. There's Kris, my older sibling Frisk (who is my literal sibling, I should add, factive and fictive both) and myself. we have been a "scalene trinity" to use Dorothy Sayers's insightful phrase, an unbalanced trio. attempting to find a better balance among each other's strengths and weaknesses is a work in progress. that, in itself, is not the "general trouble" to which I referred.

so what's wrong? generally? it's something like this: not a one of us in the KFC gang feels as though we should have any friends, certainly not friends like we've somehow managed to acquire. in our various ways I guess we all decided we weren't fit for anyone's company. I have no idea why King Arthur would condescend to us, or her son, or anyone else we admire.

~Chara

how's this for an omen, huh? but we've already known it was a problem
it's getting to be a really bad problem. would the Elric Brothers know how to help? bleh.

~Chara

What's the practical possibility of sidestepping the World Wide Web completely?

I know there's been some fandom for older-fashioned ways of maintaining networks of personal sites (e.g. Gopher) and some attempts at newer protocols (e.g. Gemini) but these seem to have an extremely specific sort of audience. Is there no practical hope of getting away from the modern Web? It seems unjust, somehow: TCP/IP offers multiple possibilities but in practice we're stuck with the ungainly and increasingly crufty web browser as our chief and often only method for using the Internet.

~Chara of Pnictogen

There's a Simpsons bit (maybe more than one) where you find out that Homer Simpson likes swiping accolades from other people and scrawling his own name on them. He doesn't care what the accolades are; all that matters is that they're distinctions of some kind or another, and Homer hasn't a single such bragging right. So he puts his name on stuff like Ned Flanders's Oral Roberts University diploma, not knowing that it's worthless anyway, or not caring.

It's taken me a long time to full understand that there really are human beings who can fool themselves with tricks like that. I suppose it's roughly equivalent to being a sports fan who sincerely believes that they're part of the team somehow, as important to their success (if not more important) than the athletes. Or it's like convincing yourself that you get full responsibility and credit for a successful business merely because you invested some money in them.

It seems like a problem of weak identity, to me. The dark side of not being a unique and beautiful snowflake is feeling oppressed by your own smallness. Subconsciously, these people must realize that they've ceded their identities to a group or a brand or another person. They can feel successful and superior, but only within the safe confines of their particular sect. But the rewards are substantial.

Alone--free--the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.

~Chara of Pnictogen