Tweet Archive for September 2021

and the other thing about this is—the main thing, really—that this means mental illness exists in utopias as well. I wanted to explore a vision of a society that doesn’t follow the eugenic game plan of exterminating mental illness as a feature of the society t.co/Ri7ajPCSMT

anima is peak “just let me exist as a brain” and the city of ora is like “ok I will take care of all your body’s homeostasis go be a brain with the other brains”

as a choice! which I think also baffles people, but like, anyone who’s Very Online who does not want to deal with the mortifying ordeal of being witnessed and known would understand

in fact in many ways I find the city to be more liberating than ones I’ve lived in. it covers education, housing, mental health, all the basic needs of its citizens, freeing them to do other things (like choose to become a stationary monitor)

I also find it absolutely fascinating that people have been finding the city restrictive, when it’s like, well there are strict entry and exit requirements, but the running of the city itself isn’t necessarily strict nnfreedom of movement is a very US passport-enabled concept

whereas my intention was more to explore that there will always be unhappy or unfulfilled people in a society, even utopias

I’ve found in many reviews that people take the fact that there are people who want to leave, that there are still unhappy and unsatisfied people, as signs that the city is dystopic, or at least sinister

I signed the copy for my mom with “thank you for watching over me” and that’s a form of surveillance that is less explored in cyberpunk, I think. nurturing, pragmatic, benevolent watchfulness

absolutely fascinated by this idea that people find the city in my novella dystopic, it seems to be an anglophone expectation at least that surveillance is to some degree inherently dystopic