A Voice

    I know it's not my place to fix things. I know it's not on me to make the world a better place. I know that I, alone, can't address every problem facing everyone.

    But I wish I didn't live in a world where the people in charge kept telling me to shut up, to stop complaining. It's not even about them being happy, it's about them wanting the world to be what it was when I was small. 

    I hated that world. I could survive, but I wasn't happy. Yet I'm supposed to want that world badly enough to ignore everything I think is wrong. 

    Why do I have to ignore myself? I want more, I always have, but I was told that even the act of wanting it was wrong and stupid. 

   I don't have any arguments, but my heart keeps begging to be heard. I'm willing to walk alone, but I don't want to be ignored. I can understand hatred, but thinking I shouldn't be listened to feels wrong to me. Maybe I'm stupid, but even stupid people have the right to live in a world that makes them happy. 

    If you can reach people, please, listen to those of us who can't speak. I can't speak for all of us, but I know that the world has us feeling so lost right now. We wanted change, we wanted a better, safer world, and you took it from us like you've taken everything else. Have you forgotten where your power comes from? 

Silence

 I will spend my life fighting
The silent emptiness
I see sucking us
Away.

I will spend my life screaming,
Begging to be heard
By those 
Who will never know me 
Or care. 

I will spend my life staring
Into Infiniti.
Seeing everything
And nothing at once.

Seeing all that is,
Was,
And could be.

Remembering that
In the end,
Only I can give meaning
To my life's story.

Others say my words do nothing.
They only spread anger and fear.
But what else can I do!
What else can I do,
But rage and scream
At a Universe
That will only ever care about itself.

Everywhere I look,
I see those who have succumbed to the silence
Surrounding them.

Why must I spend my life voiceless?

Luck

     I don't think there are many people who want my life, though I suspect a lot of people who aren't in any danger of needing to live it would say they want it, but I've always felt that I'm really lucky.

    I was born Autistic, but that gave me the ability to see a world nobody else could see and a love of learning weird, seemingly useless things. No, I don't have any friends, but I have all the time in the world to dream about wonderful worlds. No, I don't have a job, nor do I see myself being able to get one anytime soon, but I have a mother who lets me live with her and a blog I can write on a lot and I can spend all my time chasing my passions. 

     Honestly, though I sometimes wish it didn't take so much luck for me to have what I do.

      Am I wrong in thinking that where I am, jobless twenty-something loser with no friend living with her parent, should be the lowest a person could get? It is the lowest person we're willing to acknowledge after all. But it takes no effort, at all, to point out that we live in a world where it's possible to get much, much worse off then I am. People who are homeless, addicted to drugs, stuck in group homes, stuck in abusive relationships of any sort. These people wind up being invisible, because problems like theirs are hard to fix, and we don't want to do anything to fix them. 

   I don't think that society is being unfair to me personally, even if I do still hope to win the lottery someday. I hate that it's being so unfair to so many other people, and when you mention this no one seems to care. 

   I used to ride the bus when I was in college, and one day I saw a homeless woman getting on the bus. When she got on, I saw her looking at a seat with I look I know only too well, the look of someone who wants to sit down but doesn't want to upset the person she sits next to. That's when it hit me that I was only two steps away from homelessness myself. Do the people who look down on homelessness think they're safe, because they don't need to worry about what people will think before they sit down? Or do they just not want to think at all because then they'll remember just how fragile society really is?

    I don't count myself as a social justice warrior, because I don't go around fighting for justice so much as I go around complaining the system's unjust so the people in charge might decide to fix it. I am, I'll admit, complacent, and I'm just as bad as most people are at admitting that I'm not immune from fates cruelty. I also can't shut the voice that says I shouldn't have to care up. I don't want to have to worry about other people, especially since I get the impression that I can't fit in with them anyway. Maybe I didn't care about them before, so that's why I can't fit it. Apathy isn't limited to psychopaths', after all.

     I just know that I don't want to live in the world, but I want the world I don't live in to be a place that I would love to live in. 

Ramblings

     Most days my goal with this blog is to write an opinion and hope that everyone sees it and is moved to change their opinions because of me. 

    This is not one of those days.

     I've been a leftist for about four to six years now. I don't want to say I drifted left because of the 2016 election, but it was a huge factor in me being where I am now on the political spectrum. I confess, I mostly ended up where I am because I'm of the opinion that only radical leftism has a chance to stop our country's fall into fascism. 

   Recently, Queen Elizabeth II died. I've said my peace about that, twice in fact. In hindsight, I think I was trying to reassure myself that there was nothing wrong with sympathizing with the Queen of England. Maybe it does say a lot of unfortunate things about me that I do that, I leave that up to you to judge. All I know is, despite the people online (that I follow) making it very clear they think the Queen was a monster, I still see her as a victim of circumstance. All of us are, when it comes right down to it. I also don't think that having power thrust on you is any better then being forced into poverty, and I suspect most of us think that to. It's just that in one case you live on the edge of disaster, in the other case you wear unethically sourced jewelry and your funeral grinds the country to a halt. 

   I'll also be the first to admit I find a lot of the left's takes, that I've seen at least, to be questionable to downright laughable. That doesn't mean that I think they're wrong, on the whole. I do think that even having a symbolic monarchy is a little ridiculous for any country trying to be a democracy. I don't think anyone's death should upend a country this much, even in America a presidents death doesn't cause funerals to get cancelled. I have no clue how common my opinions are, but I honestly hope I'm in the minority. 

    And maybe I'm just stupid for wanting all my opinions to be perfect. After all, if it were possible for a person to have perfect opinions all the time, the internet wouldn't be what it is right now. 

The ArtBot

     I wish I could be a paid artist. Really, I wish that I could be a paid anything. That's not going to happen, unless you're one of the people working on high value AIs, you don't get paid to do anything these days, you just get enough money to allow the government to pretend we have something close to an economy. Or so my father tells me. 

     Art jobs were the first to go. I'm told that back in the twenty-first century, the last time everybody was able to find work, everyone thought that Art Jobs would be the last jobs to go. First would be manual labor, then the skilled jobs, then the artists. It turns out that Artist aren't as original as they thought they were, and the AIs of the time learned how to mimic them flawlessly. By the '30s, no artist could find meaningful employment, not when so many "Bots", as they were called, could do a better job for free. 

   Not that they didn't try. They innovated, spoke out, tried to get politicians to regulate things so they could do what they loved. Nobody listened to them. "Get A Job." was the only response they got. That worked until stores started replacing workers with robots. Then everyone knew they were in trouble. 

     All mainstream art is produced by AIs. It's good enough, but I personally feel like it's lacking in soul. I prefer the art that people post on the KarmOs art service. None of it is good, but all of it is real. At least, it's made by real people. My favorite art is art based on the art attempts of twenty-first century AI, before the days when art AI was made with the idea that people expected art to change. It looks horribly outdated, but people use it to try and express how it feels to live in a world where humans no longer have a place, because they need food and water and shelter. So many of these pieces are built off the question, "What are we going to do now?"

    I know that I can't be a paid artist, but that won't stop me from making art. Maybe it's just because we all have money from the government these days, but I'm not sure why the people of the twenty-first century thought that artists would just stop working if they couldn't make money. KarmOs history states that there's never been a time when art could be counted on as a source of income, but people made art anyway, even before they were able to sell it to anyone. I won't deny that I wish there were better ways to feel useful then just posting doodles on KarmOs and hoping that someone, anyone, will see them, but I'm told that's how the internet always was, and plenty of people in the twenty-first century felt just as hopeless as we do today, but they had jobs. Maybe it's not work that makes you happy, maybe it's believing that people want you.

Will AI Take Over the World?

    I'm not asking that as a hypothetical, I'm asking because I don't have an answer.

    I'm not surprised that so many people are scared that AI is coming to take all our jobs. From what I've read, it's a definite possibility. I'm luckier then most in that while I'm not safe from becoming obsolete, I'm not expecting to make money. Frankly, I'm curious to see if AI even can replace human creativity. I know that AI can create a work based on existing templates, and I'm sure it'll reach the point where it can create new genres and mediums on its own, but can it look at human society and figure out what we want to hear? Can it have it's own opinions about what's right and wrong, independent of its creators? Can it shape human society indirectly, or will it always have to rely on controlling internet access? 

   To me, the biggest stumbling block AI will have to overcome is its customers. We've all seen self check-out stands, some people love them while others despise them. Yet, despite the reduced worker costs of self check-out, no store I've been in has abandoned traditional cashiers, and a lot of places don't do self check-out at all. When I think about that, I have to wonder how much this brave new world will rely on us being willing to put out trust in machines. Is it possible we'll live in a future where there will be "Written by a human" stickers on books? Will our doctors be the people telling us what the machine tells them, because so few people trust doctor AI? Does our future really depend on innovation, or does it just depend on us being willing to not give up on one another? 

The Center of Estellia

     "Why didn't you run the law by me before you made that stupid declaration?" I scream at James.

     He looks a little peeved. "I didn't know that you were interested in law. Isn't it outside your domain?"

     "Not when it could impact the economy." I yell back, "Don't you know the entire economy of Fairyland is built off of humans coming in search of opportunity and then wiling it away on games, shows, and drugs. If they had to be inside at night, we'd lose everything. Not to mention just how crowded the city would get."

   "The law doesn't apply to Fairyland, or any of the Nightmare Realms. It only applies to the human city, and they don't worry about opportunity. They just lay around all day and hope that they authorities don't notice them."

     "Do you honestly expect me to believe that? I know how you Shadows work. First you say something only applies to humans in the human realm, then it applies to humans in general, then it applies to Nightmares who don't have a Nightmare form, and finally it applies to Nightmares who are unwilling to vote to have the Shadow god killed. I refuse to let anything happen that could danger my countries economy, and if I have to put you in the center of a clown show, I'll do so in an instant."

    "Emily, the humans are getting more aggressive. Just last night a human entered the Shadow Dreamworld."

      I can't hide my disbelief, "Are you serious? No human, no matter how desperate, would ever enter the Shadow Dreamworld. I don't know any who sleep, personally, and the ones I see in Dreamworlds are too terrified out of their minds to be a threat. If this is the best attempt you have at propaganda, it's a poor effort."

     "This human was different. She sought me out and then obliterated me. I don't know how else to describe it. One minute I was channeling all of my ancestors arts at her, the next I was awake in a cold sweat and I couldn't get my body to relax enough to go back to sleep.

    "I've been hearing about other humans attacking Nightmares as well, within and without the Dreamworlds. The worst thing is that I've heard there's an unregistered Dreamworld somewhere. Nobody on my team can find it, and we haven't heard about anyone going there, but people keep reporting it. I don't put much stock into these reports, but people are talking about the possibility that a human without a bloodline may have mastered lucidity, and maybe even awakened. The most extreme thing I've heard is that a human has become a Dreamer, and is planning on destroying Estellia if the gods don't give her what they want. I don't want anyone to be scared. The humans have to remember what's at stake if they decide to cross us."

    I laugh, "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I haven't heard anything about a human fighting other Nightmares, and my parents work with Midnight Nightmares. And why would a human have anything to do with an unregistered Dreamworld? That old myth about humans being able to build Dreamworlds on their own is just that, a myth. No human has ever been able to do that, and no human ever will."

    "Are you saying that I'm a liar?"

     "I'm saying that people are misleading you. Think about it, what do they have to gain from telling you about a human with lucidity, when they could just find them and take them on as an apprentice without telling anyone? Doesn't it seem a bit more likely that they're tricking you into clamping down on humanity so hard that the other Nightmare's turn against you and replace you with someone who's more likely to do what they want? My advice is to ignore them, unless they have some amazing evidence that proves that a human is truly a threat to us. Repeal this law. Let us go back to a state of peace. The humans know by now that trying to hurt us will only hurt them ten times more in the long run." 

Writing My Favorite Story

    You know the story I've been writing using the Short Story label? It's been around for more then a decade. Well, for me at least. The main character, Cassandra, was the first character I wrote who stuck around. To this day, she's one of my favorites. While I don't think this is my best story, I keep coming back to it because I love experimenting with it and seeing where it will go. That's what I'm doing now, writing and seeing where the story will end up. I may someday write an official version, but I don't think there will ever be any sort of canon to this story. I love it too much for that. 

The Worst Writer

 I remember sitting at a table,
Writing on lined paper,
An exercise for the first grade.
I wanted to write 
As well as the other,
But my letters never looked right.

How much of my time was spent
Learning to write 
Between the right lines?
How much of my life has been spent
Making sure my letters look the same 
As everyone else's?
I'm grateful to live
In the age of electronics,
For no one will know 
That I'm the worst writer of all time.

I was ten when I read the book
That would change my life forever.
The book that told me that to be a dreamer
Was to be a writer.
That was the moment I knew the path that 
I was meant to follow.

As soon as I could type,
I wrote every story
I thought worth putting to paper
I read everything I could about writing,
In books and on the internet. 
As I wrote my first stories, 
I found myself learning an important lesson.

Even if you're only typing a story,
There are still lines you must write in,
Your story must still follow certain rules.
Always have a beginning, middle, and end.
Always make sure the main character learns a lesson.
Always have a happy ending.
How much of my time did I spend
Learning where the right lines were,
So I could write between them the way I'd always done.

Recently, I've been reminded of something
I've known since I was young.
No rules, no matter how strict,
Should apply to everyone.
Maybe I shouldn't look to a rulebook
To learn how to write,
On paper or online.
I'm not saying I wasted my time
Learning to write
Between the lines,
But it's time I found my own way to place them. 

Thoughts

   I'm currently hoping that didn't say anything offensive in yesterdays post. I don't support the existence of monarchy, I was just struck by how many people seemed to be angry at Queen Elizabeth for being Britain's figurehead. I know she could have done more to help people, but to the best of my knowledge royalty doesn't make any political decisions in the UK anymore and hasn't for about two hundred years. Most of the colonizing was happening under the watch of the prime minister, and England stopped conquering countries about when her reign started. She probably should have said something, but my understanding is that, for better or for worse, she wanted to keep the Monarchy together. 

    I don't think she deserves credit for decolonizing, because she had nothing to do with that either. I also won't blame anyone in one of England's former colonies who wants to celebrate, because England has done a lot of awful things to most of the countries in the world. I just don't think it's fair to blame Elizabeth for most of it. 

   Personally, my main reaction to the news is to just shrug. I'm not British, nor am I in one of the countries with royalty on it's currency, so I never cared that much about the royal family. In my mind their soul purpose is to get married and attend public ceremonies, that's it. It's not a life I want to live, but apparently Elizabeth didn't mind. She did her job the best she could, and I can respect her for that, even if I do still think it's time the UK moved past it's monarchal phase. Love or hate her, she ruled England for seventy years, and even if it was only ceremonial, I think that's still pretty impressive.