Princess Columbia's Brainrot

Dear Princess Celestia Tumblr

Once Upon a Time in Canterlot

Back in April, we (the system) wrote of our experiences in becoming a system...again. I won't rehash it because it's easy enough to pop that link open in another tab and read it real quick before coming back here. All done? Good, let's continue.

Since then, a change happened, and it really was something we should have expected.

Hello, I'm Sunset Shimmer, and I'm a Fictive in the system known collectively as PrincessColumbia.

That there's a former pony taking up residence in this mindspace probably isn't a surprise, we did pick the name "Princess Columbia" back...before. Before the most recent wave of (calling a spade a spade) Naziism in this country, wherein white supremacist cops think they're being clever in coopting the Punisher logo, it isn't really a surprise that the faction of the American public that think it's a good idea to install a dictator completely fails to see the irony in claiming they have any right to use The Gadsen Flag, which is the original anti-Tyranny banner of this continent. It bothers us no end that the icon we selected before the rise of Fascists within the Tea Party (remember them?) is now connected with the very people it was made to signal the fight against.

But I'm rabbit-holing.

It's a Lovely Morning in the Mindspace and You are a Moon Princess

Hi! Speaking of rabbits, I'm Usagi! Just like Sunset's a fictive, so am I. 😁 Really, it's not surprising that, if Ranma's here, so am I. We started Fission back when we were a system before, and the two main characters were...Ranma and Usagi. 😋

The New Status Quo

Ranma here; So in April, Helen and I had reached a...deal. It was unspoken, mostly, slapped together from our respective interests and passions. We also wound up creating a distinctly unequal claim to the responsibilities. Helen was the parts of "PrincessColumbia" that I didn't get, plus a few things that being freed of me allowed her to express more fully. This means she saw me emerging with the approximate mental age of 20 and decided to 'mom' me. It was unintentional, that's something we've worked out, but it meant she saw herself as the de facto load bearing member of the system. Anything that stressed us out she claimed full ownership of and only portioned out bits to me that she absolutely couldn't handle. This left her spinning plates and me sometimes sitting in the back and twiddling my thumbs. Half of what kept me front-and-center for the initial weeks of us existing as a system, that is being in charge of our physical health and being Helen's coach in her own head, had to stop for safety; we live in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, which can reach up to 99℉ (37℃) at night and this made going out for morning runs an actual health concern. Without the constant reminder that we were supposed to be equal partners, she basically sidelined me. This was extremely self-defeating (we were literally created to help each other) so I figured out how to wake up before her without disturbing her, age myself up (being a headmate has its advantages) and gave myself purple hair. Take notes, because this will come up later.

Helen freaked right out, panicking at the thought of a new headmate. I had to revert back to my "standard" form to get her to calm down, and at the time played it off as a bit of a joke. This also will come up in a little bit.

A Challenger Enters the Arena Apartment

[Sunset] During June, our girlfriend went to Indiana, ostensibly for a month. Many of you were supportive as Helen was fuming over the conditions that our girl encountered there, but the one bright spot in all of that was rescuing a nine-year-old cat that had been neglected and abused. Patches came to our home and was half-starved and had trauma responses on a hair trigger. One of those responses was to rip and tear in response to something that triggered kitty PTSD, resulting in us having an infected hand. We're doing much better now, the swelling has gone down completely and the actual puncture wounds are just bumps on the skin now, but there were immediate consequences.

Ranma's ailurophobia, which she thought she had left behind in whatever caused her to spawn in as a headmate, came roaring back with a vengence. Not enough to trigger a nekoken, but she was catatonic in the headspace for a while. The next morning when she went into the kitchen to make breakfast, one of the cats followed her in and tried to beg for food and it took Ranma by surprise; she was a shaking, sobbing mess that was jumping at shadows.

Helen, who loves cats, found herself in the emotionally conflicted place of feeling protective of Ranma but the perpetrator of Ranma's distress was a 6-pound cat that had only done what she did due to abuse that we were trying to help her recover from. The poor cat kept trying to apologize with physical affection but Ranma was terrified and this triggered Helen's anger...the cat is confused, to say the least.

[Ranma] I'm doing better as the pain recedes. I'm still not eager to be around Patches, but Hexen's a sweetie and I'm able to give her hugs and kisses again.

We're currently on an antibiotic course, and if you've never looked into how antibiotics work, they're basically killing pretty much everything in your body, including you, they just kill the infection faster than the host. A side effect of this is the body has what's called a 'gut biome,' a literal complex ecosystem of microscopic flora and fauna that actually works in tandem with your body to digest food. Depending on the biome in your stomach and intestines, you have a chemical stew that those symbiotic life forms inside you use to provide you nutrition and energy and even alter your brain chemistry. Antibiotics, unfortunately, wipe a LOT of that out, too.

We've been on antibiotics before, most notably after surviving living homeless, so we knew what to expect, up to and including a fogginess of the brain and low energy. We planned for about a week of that and arranged a bottle of probiotic to repopulate our gut biome...and got one that includes strains that some studies show an increase in fat digestion efficiency. Basically, we're taking the opportunity to min/max our digestive system.

What rather surprised me was the discovery that while I was learning how to epically troll Helen with my appearance and behavior, she'd been suppressing two new splits to the system. A few days ago Helen allowed herself to be distracted and that let Sunset and Usagi out to play.

A Pattern of Misbehavior

[Ranma] Remember what I said about Helen freaking out about the possibility of us splitting off into new members of the system? Yeah, she apparently was trying to keep us "normal." Some of our old fears and phobias came back as time progressed and she forgot the purpose of the system is to protect the whole of it, not for one member to be life's punching bag.

She kept behaving badly, almost entirely because she has a need for control, almost pathologically. She'd 'let go' for things that she specifically had ceded to me, but outside of that she was being her usual dragon self and just hoarding everything, including all the stuff she really should have asked for help with. Stupid, stubborn lizard!

[Sunset] Additionally, whenever Helen would 'break' as a result of everything she was hoarding just being too much, Ranma had to take over, even into situations where Ranma was not ready or even willing.

[Ranma] FUCK that job! I swear, I don't know ho you and she deal with it!

[Sunset] Heh, anyway, we needed a middle-point between the two extremes of Ranma and Helen, which is where I come in.

[Usagi] These redheads don't seem to know how to have fun, so I popped in, too. Not much more to say about me, I'm pretty much what you expect if you watch Sailor Moon at all.

Well THAT was Unexpected

[Sunset] Two days ago we were viewing some porn. We've been tired and stressed and needed some 'us' time and we have a...pretty wide variety of tastes, so wound up venturing into some artists libraries and tags we don't normally go, and one piece (On R34 somewhere...?) and this one featured a big, buff dragon lady having her way with a smaller, daintier dragon lady.

Damn near everyone was floored when Helen got 'excited' about the idea of being the smaller dragon lady. This was a complete inversion of Helen's usual preferences and Ranma, Usagi, and I teased her...well, a little mercilessly.

[Ranma] Not proud of it, but we were functionally bullying her.

[Usagi] But only because she was responding positively to it! We're here for each other's care and protection and wouldn't ever have continued if she had told us to stop or wasn't enjoying it.

[Sunset] Right, so that particular session had the interesting result of Helen basically de-aging and becoming...small. If I were to take a guess, she's younger than Usagi, and she's not a whole lot older than her canon age. It was cute, she acted like her usual grumpy, slightly distressed self, so we finished up and went to bed.

What completely bowled us over was she hadn't returned to her 'normal' incarnation by the time we were up and about the next morning.

She's still here, but she's decided to be a kid again. She'll surface and take control occasionally, usually when we're writing or taking care of our daughter or (and we discovered this tonight) building lego.

The New-New Normal

[Sunset] So, yeah, things have changed. Helen is no longer running the show. She's completely given "the keys" over to me, and I've split time with Ranma and Usagi for the most part. I've instituted a bit more balance in our life (Helen had been obsessing over working on Code of Ethics to the exclusion of nearly EVERYTHING else), tackled a few tasks that Helen's executive function just wasn't up to handling, and running a bit of triage. Usagi has volunteered to take over the household cleaning and similar chores, Ranma has taken back her role of managing our physical body, and I'm in charge of a lot of the 'adulting' that Helen was doing.

And speaking of Adulting, we've had a long, rough (but productive) 72 hours, we're getting dinner and going to bed.

See you tomorrow, your beloved student overly-verbose system,

Sunset S., Ranma S., Usagi T., and Helen M.

(Adapted from a message to a Discord server)

...into the Troubleverse

If you've followed me for even the slightest amount of time in the last couple years, you'll know I'm working on a rather large mega-saga called "Code of Ethics." For those coming in cold or getting this on a reblog (or through tags, I'm learning to actually use those), Code of Ethics (CoE) is a cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi novel series that takes a look at the playground established by QuietValerie's Troubleverse and says, "...what about the bad guys?" Quite literally, that was the inciting thought that spawned the entire thing.

If that's not enough of a foundation, the entirety of QuietValerie's work is exclusively queer. I struggle to think of a single protagonist that isn't trans, and ALL of the "good guy" supporting characters I can name off the top of my head are some color of the rainbow. Troubleverse bears a strong resemblance to Bobiverse, something QV has stated quite plainly whenever she gets a chance to talk about the origins of the series. One of the magnificent things about Troubleverse is how the whole series tends to be a whole sequence of stage magician magic tricks. "Oh, look, a story about a sad little wet dishrag of a 'boy' who discovers they're trans through VR," says the stage magician as their lovely assistant strides out on the stage wearing a box that makes it look like their torso is missing, "Ah, but you've really been reading about The Singularity and this is an existential fight for sentient rights!" reveals the magician as he reaches into his back pocket and pulls your wallet out.

The brilliance of the entire series is encapsulated in that example. You start out reading in Trouble With Horns about Tami, a chaos gremlin that punches bad guys first and never asks questions. By the time you reach the end of the currently published Digital Exodus chapters (Patreon Exclusives at the time of this writing), you're cheering on the post-humanist future the protagonists of the series are building for themselves after escaping the confines of Sol, which is descending into a new dark ages as the oligarchs stop pretending they're not running every government on Earth.

You absolutely should read it. Do not look at the word count, just pick up Chapter 1 on Scribblehub and read.

A couple years ago, after binge reading the entire series (subscribing to QV's Patreon just to get access to the stuff that was behind the paywall and I'm still subscribed to her top membership tier to this day), I thrilled at the way the main character from all walks of life and from every social strata told the collective might of Culture™️ and Tradition™️ and flipped it the double-bird as they rode out of Sol aboard the ark-ship Cherish ...and couldn't help but think, "...but what about the bad guys?"

I don't have any more love for fascists, racists, Nazis, etc. than any other left-leaning person on this planet, but I do remember, rather vividly, being one of the people that was thoroughly steeped in fascist, imperialist culture, being told that we were the good guys and fighting the good fight and that there was a place in Heaven for us if we just held the line against the forces of evil. I remember seeing Nazi flags flying in front of Disney World and people I thought were supposed to be the good guys proudly standing with racists and fascists when the masks came off and realizing I'd been surrounded by the very evil I thought I was fighting.

Breaking away from all that was...terrifying. It wasn't fast, it wasn't easy, and it was a nightmare made real in ways that have left me with as much CPTSD as the actual abuses that I suffered while ignorantly steeped in that culture. When you have to walk away from everything that you know, everyone that you thought you could rely on, you're having to cut off parts of your soul and cauterize the wound.

If I hadn't had the queer culture to fall back on, the open love and acceptance of my fellow trans folk and the support of the "Rainbow Mafia," I may not have made it out. There were Elder Queers that survived the AIDS crisis. There were transwomen in their 60s stepping out of the closet for the first time and finally getting on hormones. There was a whole community of people who were there to help catch me when I fell from Reagan's (cis-het-white) "Shining City on a Hill."

In Troubleverse, the entire queer and Digital Sentient communities bug the fuck out of Sol as fast as their ship's engines can take them into the black. The solar system is, by that point, well and truly fucked, so it's easy to see why they'd do that; there's literally zero chance of them making meaningful change, the world simply has too much invested in the old ways of doing things, so changing so queer folk and Sentient Artificial Intelligences aren't marginalized is simply too tall an ask.

And around the time QuietValerie published the last public chapter of Digital Galaxies, the United States of America was gearing up to elect one of the worst fascists the world has seen in a century, proving that Apollo really, really loves smacking sci-fi authors with that stupid red dodge ball. The number of transwomen alone that were fleeing the country even before Trump was confirmed proved that the desire to just get out wasn't a stretch, and is even the best thing for the person doing the fleeing. Absolutely no shame or shade to those women, no any of the other marginalized people who have done similar.

But I couldn't join them. Because I would have had to leave my kiddo behind, and I refused to do that to them.

So my question wasn't just an author seeing a possible canvas for an interesting idea to explore that the original author hadn't, it came from my own lived experience of being one of the bad guys and being unable to flee the system of oppression. I know the guilt and shame of being one of the people that made the decisions that, in hindsight, are extremely regrettable and probably contributed to the nightmare that requires an escape.

If Exodus leaves the solar system and takes an entire generation of queer folk with them, what about the bad guys who wake up one day having realized that they are, indeed, the baddies, and oh god what are they going to do? Who can answer the questions that they're now forced to confront? Who's there to preserve the history that the oligarchs and fascists want buried? Who's going to triage the wounded and weary and start the healing process so that the pain of recovery is at least not as traumatizing as it might be otherwise?

Enter Diane

Dylan Samuels was one of a handful of elite agents working for the Cyber-Division of 'the agency,' the single monolithic organization that was assembled from the TLAs of America in the wake of World War 3. Taught all his life that the American Republic was the last bastion of true religious freedom in a world determined to exterminate God's people, he wanted to do the good and right thing, supporting the government that held the line against the heathen armies outside the American Wall. When the A.I. that humanity created to run the world went rogue, Dylan was part of the first group of Americans to respond, stepping up and defending the country against the machines that were trying to wipe out humanity. In effort to just keep up with his colleagues, he worked on a special weapon in secret, revealing it only to his boss. He was told to keep it secret, and then his boss turned up dead the next Monday. Taking the last directive to heart, Dylan programmed in a 'cloak' that made the weapon impossible to see if the virtual eyes viewing it weren't connected to a neural network that didn't have Feed Forward, one of the key hallmarks of true sentience that can actually be traced to a physical structure in the brain. This weapon made him an order of magnitude more efficient than any of his coworkers and nearly unstoppable in VR realms. This eventually led him to an assignment that would put him in a UN VR Pod using tech so far more advanced than any American rig that it might as well be alien in origin.

(Fair warning, if you keep reading you'll be seeing a LOT of spoilery spoilers what spoil, so if you're interested in reading the series cold, head on over to my Scribblehub page and get started there, then come back after you've had a chance to get through the entirety of what I've managed to get written and published, then go to my Patreon and Discord server so you can join my weekly live streams and be part of the audience as I gush over all the things I've already got written that I can't post about without spoiling like a motherfucker. Still with me? Alright, spoilery spoilers what spoil below the cut.)