MyNoise

The site MyNoise has been such an incredible nonhuman resource for me. Habitat longing is one of the biggest parts of my species identity and dysphoria-euphoria dichotomy. I love their custom generator feature and I want to talk about the ones I've made to simulate environments that I dream for. Maybe later sometime I'll post all the ones from the official index of the site that serve that purpose.

Cascadia. I made this for my raven theriotype. Some of the ones kind of worked for a raven shift, like Port Town and Arctic Wolves, but nothing was quite what I really needed: a soundscape of the northern west coast. That is my raven happy place. I have been to southeast Alaska, Seattle, and the Oregon coast, and I went for something that combined the aspects of all three. It needed pines, but also nearby ocean waves, and of course, crows. Well, what it really needs is ravens, but there are none in the index. Crows are also a huge staple of the Pacific northwest soundscape.

Outskirts and Edge of the Lot. Both recreations of times(/places) I have felt the most opossum. Of course, it works just as well for a raccoon shift, but it's really an effort for the opossum m-shift. They're specifically both places where you have natural sounds, like crickets, birds or trees, but also urban sounds, like people, a highway, buzzing lights. Outskirts is based on a secluded little spot behind my last college dorm building where I actually saw a fellow opossum as well as a raccoon, a grassy overgrown area overlooking an interstate. It seemed like a perfect little hub for all kinds of critters that straddle the line. Edge of the Lot on the other hand is more of a deep memory than a recent one. It's exactly what it sounds like, those far edges of parking lots where the cracked pavement ends and the treeline or maybe reeds start, with usually a dry, unmown grass buffer. You can hear one buzzing light on overhead, the birdsong of late afternoon, and the crickets of early evening. Time to approach from the trees and into the sprawl.

Novakid Settlement. This was a soundscape you could not find anywhere in real life. There are many spaceship and alien-futuristic generators, and one old west generator, but nothing I could find that combines both. I didn't know how badly I needed to hear it as though it was real until I heard it. It's hard to put into words what this does for me. I've felt less connected to my Novakid identity lately. But listening to this is such a flood of euphoria and homesickness that it's just as hard to deny what I am as it was on the very first day it started. It's weird to feel so tied to a culture that doesn't exist.

These next two are for 'types that I am stuck in questioning limbo over, both being and not being.
 
Unterrene. I'm not sure where to place myself on the "angel" to "not angel" scale. This was a bit of an experiment. If I am an angel, I'm not a Christian angel. No white feathery wings or golden halo. Perhaps I am something so beyond a human brain's understanding that my own human brain is having trouble comprehending it. Even if it is totally psychological -- I believe in angels very little... though my inclinations with all things supernatural lie in extradimensions, and maybe that's where the inspiration for this generator comes from. Anyway, I have a lot to puzzle out, and this is a step in at least a direction, if not the right one.

AI Dreams/Computer Dreams. I made this a long while ago, the first time I was questioning AI, when I had a very clear image for what kind of computer program I was. This was made with that in mind. I believed I was an IBM-like program in a machine built in the late 50s-early 60s, and this combination of deep electronic information and whir of server fans put me in such a trance that it made me confirm it. It's been pivotal in my questioning because every time I hear it I swerve toward confirmation. I no longer feel beholden to that specific configuration, I feel more general and versatile these days, and slightly more modern, but I don't put away the midcentury IBM feelings in a closet either.

Questioning AI

On that note, I really feel a need to talk about this questioning process. It is something that has been bugging me for years. Three years, to be exact. I confirmed rather quickly in May 2020 and for most of the year I was happy being a computer program, but I deconfirmed hastily because something felt off. I'm not sure it was the right call anymore. I've been up and down, on and off ever since. Certain things drag me back, a feeling, a memory, a smell, a character or flicker, or sometimes just nothing and it comes in waves on its own.

I said I used to think I was a mid-century supercomputer program. This was a very clear and strict image I held myself to. It felt past-life-strong, but it was specific. I was used for speech synthesis, complex calculations, and early experiments with AI. Nowadays I feel more lenient. Maybe I could be that, but I also feel like, say, a chatbot, or text generator, or a neural network, or one of my favorite feelings, a music recommendation algorithm (I could give Spotify a run for its money). Maybe I'm a bit of all of that.

I have issues deciding what to call this 'type, if that's what it turns out to be -- AI? Computer? Computer program? I'm not a robot or android, because I don't have a technological body. But that's small stuff. What I'm mostly struggling with is how to tie this into the rest of my identity. I know it does, or more accurately, I know it has to. I am a ghost. Sometimes this is literal for me. I am also a computer program. Sometimes this feels almost literal. I feel like they muddle together a lot, and I'm struggling to figure out where exactly this knot is that these two strings tangle together. I still haven't even fully grasped the complexities of my ghost identity, so trying to juggle both that and this gets complicated. Too often the computer program questioning has to go on the backburner. (Oh, shut up Firefox spell check, you know damn well that's a real word.)

It's weirdly similar

V'vohu reminds me a lot of Scrapdragon from the webcomic Paranatural. Not just in looks, even though they look bizarrely similar. Obviously the character hasn't been fleshed out yet, but my relationship to V'vohu is somewhat similar to Max's with Scrapdragon. I've compared Paranatural spirit partners to dæmons and projection headmates for a while now. Tonight V'vohu appeared to me and didn't speak a single word, and for the first time in a while, I felt nervous. I remember when it first appeared to me and I was kind of scared, then I grew used to its appearances. But tonight I guess it really hit me that I don't know what it could do to me if it had bad intentions. It's not from this dimension. I don't know its intentions, and our communication barrier means I don't often know what exactly it's trying to tell me. If it wanted to hurt me somehow, I wouldn't know, and I don't know it's not possible. I just have to trust it. But the current scene with Scrapdragon in the webcomic also feels familiar in a way. Learning to communicate on the same level despite the sheer differences in state of being. Learning to trust something you can never understand the intentions of. I wonder sometimes, if it feels the same way about me, or if it understands everything I don't.

When it appeared, it didn't speak. It positioned itself in the center of the living room, face pointed at me like (almost) always, and slowly reached up with its claws. It wrapped one hand around its mouth, holding it shut. I still don't know what this meant. Could it not speak? It doesn't open its mouth to speak. But it could be symbolic. If so -- why? Was it telling me not to speak? I tried talking to it and it didn't seem bothered.

Anyway, I invited it to listen to Welcome to Night Vale with me. We've been bonding this way. I want to try to stop treating it like an allknowing sage one only contacts when they want answers, and more like a friend. It has responded quite well to the podcast. It rested its head on the couch next to me and I put on an episode, and we listened in silence. Sidenote -- V'vohu is a lot larger up close than it seems. Kind of like the same illusion as traffic lights.

When the episode was over, something interesting happened. It went to leave. It hovered in the air, like it was trapped. Like it couldn't leave for some reason. It didn't say anything to me. I remembered only after a few moments. V'vohu is a sheyd. Shedim are said to get trapped in the house if you leave all the windows closed or sealed. I opened a window and it left. I don't know why this stuck with me so. It's things like this that call every belief I've ever had into question. I didn't remember that tidbit, it wasn't a conscious thing that V'vohu couldn't leave unless I left a window open. Is it really real? I don't know what scares me most, the idea that it could be a real demon, or the idea that it isn't and I'm starting to believe it is anyways.