#mirroid

I call this image “Huntermun Reborn” in part because it’s the first official upload of my current incarnation since I changed it a few years back.  I’m not sure if it comes across, but I’m female in this image... and this is the first such completed, full-body picture of such I’ve managed to complete since I realized I was transgender.

Overall, I am very happy with it... though I did hit my maximum number of layers with the resolution I was drawing at in Procreate on iOS.  I may need to reconsider my dpi.

For any who’ve already taken note, yes the pose and weapon are based upon a similar pose by Zero of the Mega Man Zero series.  I did not copy or trace, I simply eyeballed to get it approximately right.

My avatar/persona/fursona is a bipedal mirroid wolf which is a kind of biological and cybernetic humanoid wolf person in this case.  Mirroids are “mirror humanoids” or made-made creations in the mirror image of humans and/or animals.  The race and it’s variations are from a game I’ve been working on which you can see further down in my Tumblr and hopefully again soon here near the top in the relatively near future. See you in the Future, —Huntermun

Deviant Art - Weasyl - FurAffinity - Ink Bunny

I am certain you've heard of "déjà vu"… the concept you're seeing or doing something that you've done once before.  An idea, a feeling… something inescapable that is trying to tell you this moment has already occurred.  You've already said these words or moved this way… even if you cannot recall where it ever happened before… even if it actually has never happened before.  That's déjà vu.

It comes from French, which you might have already guessed or known, and translated directly means "already seen".  Makes sense, right?  Well, I've got a related premise for you… It's called "même mémoire" which means "same memory" or, Americanized, "mememory" (pronounced: meme-mor-ree) because it's also related to meme's… little bits of culture or interaction passed on to others through non genetic means.

Genes and Memes… we rockin' Metal Gear Solid yet?  Good.

Mememory was a word originally coined, jointly, by corporations and the mirroids they created as a way to describe what in the original days was a much more common phenomena… a moment in which two or more mirroids were able to connect through the shared identical experience they'd been imbued with.

As perviously explained, mirroid brains initial configuration contains a number of base memories which are most often stored for language—including slang—as well as some human or animal interactions and basic bodily functions like walking or singing.  These memories can come from all animals, not just humans, and packaging them together can make a proper default template for any particular mirroid.

However, you may be able to jump ahead here and guess at some of the issues with this concept.  Namely, that it makes an individual non-unique.  The more reused, the more set, the more manufactured the origin of a mirroid's base memories, the harder it is for them to wrap their mind around being a functioning and fully formed individual.  Coupled with their recent history of mistreatment by human beings, it is not hard to believe that the more similar a mirroid is to another, the more likely they are to resent that similarity.

It can be difficult to impart this feeling to human beings for they cannot, under normal circumstances, experience a mememory.  Try it.  Try to imagine a shared event you've had with other people… say a yearly video game party.  You and your friends were there.  You all brought PC's or TV's and game consoles and you all played together.  "Isn't that the same memory?" you may be asking?  And, no, it is not.

On the most basic level, one of you was Player One while another Player Two.  One of you got up and went to the bathroom and missed another friend landing a sick 168 chain combo down Big Mountain in SSX3.  Whatever your experience was, even though you shared it with other people, they did not have the same exact memory as you did.  Their dislike of alcohol or your sneaking the last slice of pizza for yourself all made your own experience unique even though you all were a part of each other's memory.

But mirroids are instilled with other people's or other animal's memories to start with, because they are created fully grown.  And so that always means that, to start with, their memories have at least one other duplicate out there somewhere.  Furthermore, we're talking about production lines and corporations… and mass production has been in the human industrial mindset for centuries by the time 21XX rolls around.  This ends up boding ill for the first mirroids produced by someone other than Dr. Valentino, because corporations have long been problematic in one regard: people are people, and people are supposed to be unique… not cogs in a machine.

In hindsight, the mistake was quite obvious.  Dr. Valentino made the original six mirroids within the now accepted sexual spectrum… one male, one female, one heale, one shemale, and two herm.  Though, interestingly, the female mirroid was created as a transgender man, so while the group consisted of the now commonly accepted sexual configuration of mirroids, it was lacking in the female gender identity.

Taken a step further, the original six mirroids were also comprised of vastly body structures and sizes.  Vulgal was a Large sized wolf, while Xi was a Average sized humanoid more resembling an angel than a man.  With sizes ranging from Small to Large, and body types of biped and quadruped, each mirroid's shape, sexuality, gender identity, and dramatically different memory configurations made sure that each of the six were themselves unique to start with, but essentially guaranteed their opportunities to have unique and varied lives from each other.

And it is likely that Dr. Valentino's testing phases on her mirroids came across the concept of "Même Mémoire" as it would be unlikely to have been coincidentally avoided in the six mirroids the world discovered.  As the doctor's prior robot designs were all based upon wolves, the extra effort to make a smattering of different human-animal hybrid memories cannot be overlooked as exhausting and time consuming… work she likely spent years on just to make those six individuals.

The most egregious mememory culprits were companies during the various mirroid wars.  One company, focusing on building animal stock with human intelligence for instruction and direction, would have entire farm populations with identical histories.  Even without human intellect, this would have been confusing to the animals… because whose bone, whose owner, whose mate is this if not your own?  With more instinct comes more a fight to maintain what is yours and you, but when everyone around you is also you, who is it you're not supposed to fight for what is yours?

The famous WarTaurs of the third major conflict were themselves designed this way on purpose because it had been so time consuming to create just one with complete memories that fully functioned.  Initially, the hope was that by making fewer mirroids in this way that the problem could be avoided, but sadly that was not the case.  With few other WarTaurs to share experiences with, and the few that you could meet having your same experiences, WarTaurs—more than any other mirroid—were far more prone to suicide or Enlightenment procedures.

Essentially, their outward uniqueness forced their inner sameness to be a major note of stress and self-doubt.  It is also why so many of them found comfort in war… using their skills to build themselves a history of unique battle experiences.  Oppositely, other WarTaurs who were captured in war and modified against their wishes had traumatic POW experiences which, in an unfortunate twist, also made them unique compared to their same-run brothers and sisters.  And so, even though they may have been 'more damaged', they were also far less likely to end their lives due to mental anguish of not being unique.

As a result of the phenomena of "même mémoire", an interesting culture has become self-imposed by most mirroids.  Most mirroids go through a phase of being an "input junkie", often brought about by confirmation of a mememory experience, though not always.  In a desire to further differentiate themselves from one they interacted with, or even from their usual life experiences, they will seek out of force upon themselves unique experiences.  They will break their own comfort zone, confront a phobia, move to another city for a time, completely change their hairstyle or cloths, or any number of other sudden and dramatic changes to assure themselves that, going forward, they're having lives and experiences no one else has.

Mirroids, more than humans, have an understood cultural fear of being the same as someone else.  Moments such as arriving to a party wearing the same dress take on a whole other dynamic if the person wearing the counterpart thinks and act just like you do.  It's because of situations like these that, beyond their usual animal-like features, culturally make mirroids different than human beings even with their similarities.

See you in the Future, —Huntermun

Well, right, so first I have to build the universe—or, in this case, the "Engine".  There was a lot of incrementing and modifying... and "Fighting System 4.2" had a byproduct that I hadn't expected... allowing me to make a Debug Menu for every created and randomly generated Character in the game.

Also, the Fighting System cannot be tested until Characters have Stats, and so this byproduct works together with that System, allowing me to check the Character Sheets for every Character in the game and change them as need-be.

The overall set of Systems is nearly all built, I think.  After that, it'll be lots and lots of writing and game balancing.  More writing than game balancing, honestly.  I've still got physical variables of Characters to work on, but I should be able to do that as I create scenes with them.

About a month and a half ago, I began work on a Text-Based RPG—with real Role-Playing, not just stat-based interactions—called Adaptation 21XX.  Maybe this’ll be the final name, maybe it won’t, but I am taking this opportunity to catch up everyone on what I intend this game to be... while also testing out my ability to cross-post between Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

What Adaptation 21XX is is a fully interactive story where you get to make your own custom character—or select a pre-made character—and progress through a Three Act structure... keeping in mind that this is a video game and thus the main bulk of the content is going to be in Act II.  That’s just how this medium works.

The story happens in the 22nd Century—hence the 21XX—in the year 2143 [in the current build].  You will be playing as a Rogue Hunter, a member of an international policing and military force technically aligned with the “World Government”, such as it is.  The thing’s in it’s infancy.

What’s a Rogue?  Good question.  But before I answer that, I have to jump back in time to 20XX—the 21st Century—and a time of great turmoil for the human race.  This is a history lesson, and an brief if simple example of my writing... if this doesn’t do it for you, then mayhaps this game is not going to before you?

A Chinese/Korean scientist by the name of Dr. Mara Wáng worked in cooperation with an Italian scientist by the name of Dr. Lucy Valentino.  Lucy was a cyber-biologist whose focus was in recreating life functions—living organisms—through artificial means.  Mara, on the other hand, was a roboticist, focusing more on machines software and wetware rather than making superior machines modeled after nature.  Together, they worked as a team to create a fully artificial lifeform that could work and think for itself.  True artificial intelligence.

They had each reached into their early forties before they succeeded in creating eight strong prototypes, a single family unit modeled after a pack of wolves.  Though Lucy’s focus had become the interactions—simulations of love and caring, the writing of software to govern the “Three Laws” in a way that made sense, and so on—Mara had instead turned her attention towards weaponizing the doctor’s creations.

Apprehensive though Dr. Valentino may have been, Dr. Wáng’s intentions were not malicious to start with.  After all, international government funding had been what allowed their research to flourish, and try as many government had, no one could surpass the efforts of these two exceptional women.

History writes that the turning point came when Dr. V’s efforts with their cybernetic wolves brought more love and attention to her than to Dr. W.  Some say there was jealousy here.  Others say, instead, that the “realism” of this love brought concern from the international community and subvert threats that the whole experiment would be shut down then followed.  The world just was not ready for two scientists, women no less, to become the creators of a new race...

Dr. Mara Wáng had fretted over this happening, and could not stand the thought of having wasted nearly her entire a life in work that the rest of the world was too ignorant to understand.  Or, maybe, she really did want to play god.  Either way, she took six of the eight wolves her and her partner had created and reworked their chosen skills into weaponized beings of mass destruction.

This was the first major war of humans against machines, and it did not go well.  While initially held as a suspect, Dr. Lucy Valentino was released and given the funds to create robots to fend off her old friend, Dr. Wáng.  These masterful war machines, working as a pack or alone, all around the world, brought back materials for Mara to use in her new creations.  Soon enough, the doctor had created a full hidden base that created inferior—though massed produced—robots to fight as an army subservient to her Robot Alphas who were, by their software, subservient to her.

Months passed and Dr. Valentino could not create the new machines asked of her.  She had never wanted violence, but a means to understand life and machines as one design.  In an unexpected move, one of her two remaining wolves made a leap of logic: if Dr. V could not bring herself to make machines of war, why not make a machine of peace to end the war that was ongoing?  This simple robotic wolf had therefore volunteered to become the world’s new savior...

Ultra Wolf was created, an armoured and lithe version of one of Dr. Lucy Valentino’s “inferior” wolf designs.  Decked out in white and blue armour, this wolf was granted wetware meant for swapping out many different weapons.  Earlier in the conflict, Dr. V had determined Dr. W’s six stolen packmates, now known as the Robot Alphas, all used the same interface the two doctors had been working on for additional equipment packs for the wolves... an interface meant for interchangeable equipment used in rescue operations.  The knowledge had not been useful to Lucy at the time, but with Ultra Wolf’s design came an important fixture: she had the capacity to swipe the more powerful weapons of her lost brothers and sisters should she be able to defeat them.

Thus began the first of four major conflicts between Ultra Wolf and Dr. Wáng.  It would be nearly twenty years of conflict before Mara was defeated, and Ultra Wolf vanished from history.  It is believed that the strong-willed, cybernetic wolf became the focus of Dr. Valentino’s new research... because Lucy fell into the shadows, only making contact with the outside world once or twice a year, presumed to be in a depression over the death of her one-time friend and the loss of her greatest creation—her daughter, she felt—Ultra Wolf.

Fast forward to the turn of the 22nd Century—hey, if you like this narrative, just wait till you play the game!—and a new race of machine people is unearthed near what was believed to be the final resting place of Dr. Lucy Valentino, the coastal city of Earthsaver, SC, USA.

These six creations, named mirroids, were designed in the mirror image of humanity by Lucy’s assessment.  But, more than that, they each incorporated aspects of animals both in appearance in thought.  Apparently, Dr. V had determined that humanity’s issue with defiling the planet over centuries lay in part with them not being one with the natural world, and making the race a fusion of human and animals seemed as a way to strike a balance.

And, for a time, this went well.  Though Lucy had created her race more than thirty years before hand, the technology and materials used in the process were not easy to replicate in full.  Alloys used, jells required, and a number of other factors were all not simple to reproduce, and reproduction was just what the world desired.

Governments and businesses of the world—which were, sometimes, the same thing—jumped at the chance to recreate mirroids to their own purposes.  But after eight years of mistreatment, the humans quickly learned that mirroids did not abide by the “Three Laws”.  Not being bound in programming to keep humans from harm, mirroids decided for themselves to rise up and take the fight to their oppressors.

It was only after two of the six original mirroids took sides with their race that the World Government deemed these machine-made terrorists as Rogues.  Thus, the Rogue Hunters were formed... a group with international ties and authority, designed to hunt down and deal with any hostile mirroid threats.

Three decades have passed since that first war, and Rogues are few and far between... except for one historically important place on the map: Earthsaver.  For whatever reason, tensions have escalated in the last half-decade and Rogue reports are not just occasional throughout the year, but daily.  Daily in a megalopolis cityscape of over 10 million residents.

And, yeah, you're character has just been transferred.  They’re not new to being a Hunter, but they are new to Earthsaver, and simply fighting Rogues is only the beginning to their problems.  The story really kicks off when the pieces begin to fall together and your character becomes perhaps irrevocably changed.

That’s your starting plot for Adaptation 21XX.  I hope you like it, and I hope you’ll join me on this journey... where I make my first game in 20 years, and we all get to see if playing it is as fun and enjoyable a read as I hope it is.

See you in the Future,