The Fine Line

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

There is a fine and sometimes well-nigh invisible line between reality and fantasy.

No?

“I did it because I had a hunch” — true or false? I mean, was it a hunch, or did you make it up a-posteriori? “I’m wearing my lucky hat” — true or false, or just something you convinced yourself of, in order to have courage. That voice you heard in the night, was it true, or your subconscious who knew that tomorrow you were likely to get in an accident in the snow?

More importantly, the things we tell ourselves to get through bad times. “I’ll be fine. I can tell they’re just joking.” Are they real or a fantasy?

Of course, I have perhaps a greater temptation than most people. See, I can make up really compelling stories, and by this point I’m not even aware I’m making them up. Do I believe in them? Well, no. I’m very careful to know which voice is mine.

So what is this in the name of? There was a post on twitter taken from reddit and frankly horrifying. I’m not linking because partly I am lazy, and partly I don’t want to horrify anyone. And the post was fairly horrifying in the sexual sense. No, I don’t think in the “he should go to jail” sense, but people could interpret it that way.

It was from a guy trying to figure out how to introduce his daughter to his sex doll, since the daughter was likely to be in his custody soon.

People who read it took it under “it is his perversion to involve the kid in his sex games” which would in fact be worthy of jail. But what I suspect is happening is far more horrifying and scared me, personally, a whole lot more than that, particularly given the chances of his ending up with a kid in his care.

To explain: in further conversation it became obvious that he didn’t want his daughter to know he had sex with the doll and then the solution of putting the doll in her own apartment (!) you read that right, as his mistress and dirty little secret came to him.

And what became obvious throughout the whole thing is that he didn’t think of the doll as a doll or a sex object at all.

He was so far in his fantasy life, he had endowed this doll with a personality, thought he was communicating with her, and was convinced they had a “relationship” and she was his “Girlfriend.”

I don’t know how common this is in humans at large. I know that little kids can get like this. They can be so in their play that they convince themselves the toy train really has feelings; the teddy bear is their friend; the doll really wants her hair cut.

Some of us never lose that, and can drop into that mode even as adults. But I think there is more than those of us who make a living from writing our stories who do this. And that people who are less used to walking back and fort across that line are more likely to get lost.

I know I, myself, at a very stressful point in my teens lost track of the line. Like, I was so used to spending time in my room talking to my imaginary friends, that I was afraid of mom going in there. What if she saw them.

I think, honestly, that’s where that poor SOB at the origin of the post was. How did he get that way? I don’t know. Perhaps there was something organically wrong with him to begin with. Or perhaps he went through some enormous trauma, and emerged from it so broken that holding to the illusion that the sex doll is a real person who really talks to and has feelings for him was the only way he could survive.

Now, I realized most of us never go that far into fantasy.

But 2020 broke all of us a little bit. And I swear while I don’t think any of us has gone so far as to have a full blown relationship with a human-shaped piece of silicon (If you have, don’t tell me, okay?) I bet I’m not the only one who has developed unhealthy coping habits (a minor addiction to social media, blogs, internet. I mean I sort of had one before, but when I find myself reading the news on my phone as soon as I open my eyes in the morning to make sure no one blew up the world? It’s probably too much.) And some of those might involve forms of evading the world and reality. Whether those are full blown fantasies, or a minor addiction to oh, Jane Austen fanfic (the fact it seems to be increasingly written by AI is curing me!) or stupid computer games, or mindless romcoms…. it doesn’t matter. If you’re doing it as a self-calming mechanism, it risks being abused. And like any such mechanism being abused, it risks cutting you off from reality and the rest of humanity.

Look, as a past master at getting lost in fantasy, and as someone who has an extremely addictive personality and unhealthful coping mechanisms? Sure, if you have to have something to cope fantasy is better for you than alcohol or drugs. But “better” doesn’t mean good.

As I found out, when I forcibly dragged myself our of my “lost in fantasy period” as a teen, reality is where you live. The place you go to escape is at best a waste of time, and at worst a distraction from actually living your life.

It is acceptable to get unhealthy coping habits for a little while if that’s what you must do to survive.

But don’t stay there. The longer you indulge the escape, the harder it gets to come back.

Come back now. It will hurt like a mother, and it will be difficult. But the longer you delay, the harder it will get.

Come back now. We’re here for you.

165 thoughts on “The Fine Line”

  1. Well, well, your prescience remains almost godlike. Well, more like a spirit, I suppose. Telling me I’m on the right course. [DYSWIDT?] Electronic distractions of the “game” type began to be a strong portion of my reality in a time that marked both retirement and COVID mixed with increasingly unpleasant medical issues with nasty symptoms but no particular threat to longevity. Just started weaning myself back to reality, and losing the 15 pounds that accompanied the distractions. It’s really not been painful at all, other than all the sore muscles and joints from my improved exercise routine.

    Thanks for the hand up and high five.

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  2. When the Dragonette was little, her imaginary friend was a 2-foot tall Superman. I remember her once stopping dead in the mall and turning around to tell Superman to stop stepping on the back of her shoes. He was very real to her.

    And in case you’re wondering where she got that from, I had to stop reading one of Ringo’s series because I woke up one morning wondering why I was bothering to go to work, since the Posleen were on their way anyway. I am a lot more wary of getting fully immersed in a book or series now.

    But Covid did break a lot of people, especially in those states that kept up the pretense of it’s universal lethality for years. Add in the sheer insanity of therapists who believe their job is to help you accept your fantasies instead of telling you to get over it, and you end up with, well, believing your blowup sex doll is a real person.

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  3. I’m sure you meant “a human-shaped piece of silicone” but silicon has subbed for human relationships for quite some time now – the Virtual Girlfriend game is the #1 dating simulator in the world according to its (her?) creators, and AI is already heavily involved in the fantasy friends market. As the two – silicon and silicone – become more integrated, the creepy Redditor will be joined by countless others willing to disengage from reality. Meanwhile, how many of us are carrying on corresponding friendships with Meta’s bots?

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    1. I think you’re right; relationships with bots or androids seem to be an inevitability for at least a significant percentage of humans in the future. Time to go rewatch “Cherry 2000.”

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        1. Because he found out a real person is better than a fake. Had the lesson pounded into his head, more or less.

          Cherry just didn’t have a programmed response for that situation and was trying to fill a gap in her data set.

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    2. Right. LLMs are good enough now that you can have fairly realistic-sounding conversations with them as long as the human half of the conversation isn’t trying to break the illusion by pushing the boundaries of the LLM’s training. Combine that with sexbots and the Virtual Girlfriend experience will be pushed far enough into reality that many people will be tempted to just “check out” of even trying for relationships with real human beings any more, because they get more emotional fulfillment from their fake conversations. It’s ultimately unfulfilling — there will never be grandkids to play with in your old age if you go that route, for example — but it’ll be a real temptation that my children (oldest now entering elementary school) will be faced with when they’re adults, and will see some of their peers succumbing to.

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      1. Non-creepy example of LLM conversation: a guy took a speech-to-text model, a text-to-text model, and a text-to-speech model, and turned all three of them into plugins for Skyrim. He then trained the text-to-text model on the dialog that Bethesda had written for all the Skyrim characters, and trained the text-to-speech model on the voice acting that had been done for those characters. The results shown in the video I saw were pretty amazing: the five-second pause between the human speaking and the characters answering was the only thing that broke suspension of disbelief. More powerful video cards will soon take that pause down to a second or less, and soon you’ll be able to talk to your video game characters and have them answer you with unscripted conversation (within certain bounds: the Skyrim-trained LLM wouldn’t be able to discuss spaceships).

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        1. Reality can always “crash” fantasy. Everything is hunky-dory until you lose electrical power for extended periods of time.

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      3. I can’t speak to women’s experience but for a lot of men I suspect the more fulfilling elements seem so remote and unlikely that the hump of approaching real women well not be overcome in favor of LLM.

        At least that will be self selecting out of the next generation.

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    3. Something to keep in mind is that “dating simulator” includes things like the KFC dating game, visual novels, various otome games, slice-of-life simulators, freaking Dragon Age….

      Yeah, they have some kind of support for a free-or-cheap 15 year old app being the most popular of a sub group, but kinda like thinking that guys reading James Bond novels will mean they sleep with dozens of women and conduct assassinations, it doesn’t hold out so well.

      They’re a Choose Your Own Adventure romances.

      (Or pr0n. Sometimes really weird pr0n. Don’t look up the orc massage parlor one, I think it causes SAN damage.)

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        1. :laughing:

          I am both curious, and horrified, of what would happen if you were writing a game romance novel.

          The vast majority seem to stop at the “and here’s the cover of the romance novel” scene, though my sample is strongly aimed at otome type.

          My daughter’s playing one that removed the romance and has you playing as a bartender in a fantasy world.

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            1. That’s what most of the “dating sims” are.

              You choose who your character will interact with, raise reputation, etc.

              I’m really fond of the anime based on “oh look a villainess in one of the dating games.” (Usually more based on the light novels, honestly, but they’ve adopted a lot from otome games as well.)

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    4. Two things I suspect the invention of true sex synths will cause: a significant downturn in marriages and birthrates (yeah, another drop), and a decrease in the number of severely frustrated men (or should that be an increase in only mildly frustrated men?)

      And you can expect that technology to continue to “improve”; because there is a very real consumer need for it. That need is being driven by the severe damage western civilization has taken from the ZPG, feminism, LGBTQXYZ movement, and creeping Marxism.

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  4. I tend to get a little emotionally involved with my twenty-plus-year-old cars that I daily drive because I work on them all the time. I don’t like to see my tools or my books handled carelessly, either. It just rubs me the wrong way. I think it’s a fairly natural thing for us to have a pseudo-emotional relationship with the objects that we use every day; a relationship in which we quasi-anthropomorphize the inanimate.

    Speaking from the viewpoint of evolution, the hominid that treats his tools with respect and/or reverence probably had a tendency to take better care of his tools, and that probably led to higher survival rates among that subset than among those who handled their tools as mere objects; so perhaps people with tool anthropomorphization were selected for passing on their genes. Heck, maybe a lot of religion comes from some human tendency to anthropomorphize the abstract.

    But getting an apartment for a doll? That’s next level. That’s like “Tom Hanks having conversations with Wilson the volleyball” level stuff. The dude clearly needs to touch some grass; or maybe there’s just something way off in his grey matter from the start.

    A certain amount of withdrawal from the world is, I think, necessary. We need down time; we need unstructured time. If we don’t get it, we don’t function well and we’re not happy. But you’re absolutely right, escapism can’t stop us from going to work or prevent us from paying the bills. I like getting a couple of belly laughs a few nights per week from sitcoms to unwind (last night it was an episode of Gilligan’s Island with the kids); but it can’t become a world unto itself.

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    1. LOL! “White Cat’s House”!

      Years ago, a buddy used to cat sit for my Ginormus White Maine Coon. While I was out of town, he would stop by after work, socialize with Big D, feed him, and clear the box. He often brought his Small Son along.

      Since I wasn’t there when they were, Small Son assumed the place belonged to Big D. Only later did he learn that Uncle (Mailclerk) lived at “White Cat’s House”.

      Too funny.

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      2. At Agility and pack walks no one knew my name or any of the other owner’s names. Everyone knew Pepper’s name. Knew the other regular dogs names. But their owners? Other than the organizer? Nope.

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    2. My wife has a saying; “Everyone needs a certain amount of mindless drivel.” The problem is when you get it from MSNBC. That is the fantasy world that is the most dangerous.

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      1. Any fantasy which consistently presents as reality, rather than as “let’s pretend”, can be dangerous. And when, like MSNBC or CNN, it pretends to be the only reality, it’s even more so.

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  5. Now they’re building sex robots that talk and move. This will lead to a lot more such delusions.

    The computers we can build today are not in any way intelligent or conscious. At best, they can semi-randomly select bits from a huge data set that more-or-less fit into a particular context. With frequent disconcerting and/or baffling failures.

    No matter how finely made the body, how clever the programming, they are not individuals. There is nothing there to connect or have a relationship with. Cats have more going on than any computer we can make with our current technology.

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    1. It may depend on whether people want a relationship of equality, or whether they want one of master and slave. Considering the number of people supporting Globalism via the Democrat Party, the ability to ignore reality and indulge in schizophrenic sexual fantasies doesn’t surprise me.

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      1. That makes about as much sense as having a ‘master/slave’ relationship with a refrigerator. It’s a thing. With our current technology, we can’t make a robot that’s not just a thing. Like with ‘sex changes’, the best we can manage is a semi-convincing fake.

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        1. Never underestimate the ability of people to convince themselves the something exists even when it doesn’t. Magic may not be real, but magical thinking damn sure is.

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          1. Charles Williams’ Descent Into Hell comments on this. The antagonist (of sorts; Williams wrote fantasies where humans were often caught up in Divine occurences), a less-than-honest professor has the (unrequited) hots for one of his students, and somehow manages to conjure up a fantasy version of her that acts as a succubus. This does not end well.

            All of Williams’ work is interesting, but this one was more accessible than some.

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          1. Precidely. To anyone with the slaveowner mentality, slaves aren’t people; they’re merely things, no different from the refrigerator or the toaster.

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            2. If they just want the services, sure, they want a thing, but for those who actually want a slave, it’s being able to make a thing of a person that’s the kick.

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            2. Wrong question. I get great satisfaction out of being the owner of a hard-working tractor. And I confess that a number of us consider tractors to be persons too. And you’d better be careful about dissing inanimate objects or you may offend your computer enough to make him or her decide to not play nice.

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            4. A lawnmower isn’t designed to be a persuasive imitation of a human being.

              It’s not designed to hit the buttons of “person” at all.

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  6. Society and technology can amplify fantasy, especially the rich, media propaganda saturated one we live in.

    One of my personal reactions to actual reality being more clear over the last 25 years is the reaction I have to escapism and fantasy in my life. It’s harder to enjoy large amounts of fiction. I’d rather be distracted in my downtime by learning or doing more, as long as it’s different from my daily job and chores.

    My spouse and I were discussing the lifestyle differences between two 20-year olds in our family. One was raised in reality and is doing well on her own. The other spoiled and coddled and has no idea how to function outside her imaginary world. She is trapped in a bubble and probably never be independent.

    This is true of the folks with TDS or those that trust Big Government, Big Media, Big Science, Big Pharma, Big Food, etc, hence the term being “Red Pilled” when they wake up to reality.

    And it’s hard not to point out the mass fictions that the public at large and many here still believe in. Not everyone has gone down the rabbit holes in pursuit of What the F is Actually Going on and Why.

    Just look at what is going on with GB and the grooming scandal. The magic dirt didn’t change backwards culture that got imported. The elite don’t give a poop.

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  7. I think you need to watch the movie, “Lars and the Real Girl”, where a troubled young(ish) man buys a high end sex toy doll and it becomes his girlfriend…but it’s not what it seems. He creates her persona as a virtuous woman, a missionary, introduces her to his family, to his brother’s upset. His brother and sister in-law get him to bring her to their local MD for a checkup and once there, the doctor starts doing therapy with Lars. She tells his family that when he resolves his mental issues, the delusion will go away, in the meantime it would help if everyone would accept her as real. So everyone does, the entire town goes along with it! Bianca even gets a job, becomes a volunteer at the hospital and gets awarded volunteer of the year. But as Bianca becomes more real, Lars starts mentally healing and ends up with a real live girlfriend. This is actually a charming movie (I think anyway) about an entire community uniting to help one of their own recover from a serious mental condition. He never has sex with the doll, to him she’s a real person who’s safe and accepting of him. Just watch the movie and see what you think, it’s a very interesting take on mental illness to say the least.

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      1. Why am I not surprised that Hollywood made a movie both reinforced a community-wide accommodation and embrace of people substituting fantasy for reality, and prescribed the same as an efficacious way to “cure” mental illness and vastly aberrant behavior.

        It is no wonder the scandals involving such behavior keep rolling out of the Hollywood culture.

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      2. It’s a fantasy, not a mental illness how to get better video! Watch it and then let me know what you think.

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        1. For a lot of us, a “fantasy” that has realistic steps that would result in destroying people, not helping them, is not only a suspension of disbelief– but it will utterly infuriate us.

          Because stories are supposed to touch on what is real.

          There’s no deeper real in “everybody lie and act like she’s real, it will make him get better.”

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            1. Whooof, yeah.

              It’s like they’ve gone from having no idea what physical damage does, so they go full on Quentin Tarantino, to having no idea what psychological damage does….

              (Odd note, when I was checking I had his name spelled anywhere close, saw the guy for the first time. He… looks exactly like the kind of guy who would produce the kind of films he makes.)

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              1. Been trying to get the bunnies active again and they’re vaguely poking something about “show people who have been traumatized and what it takes for them to get better”.

                No idea yet if that’ll make something solid….

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                1. You kind of already do that, in your stories.

                  Your “fire demon” is nothing if not traumatized, in A Net of Dawn and Bones. (And Embers, of course. Actually…who in Embers isn’t traumatized…. )

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                  1. Oh, Aidan’s definitely traumatized. *Wry G*

                    ATM, though, the bunnies seem to be toying with, “A guy who never expected to be in combat and wasn’t trained at all for it ended up in a horrible hostage situation. Survived missing a few pieces, and is currently spending time foraging every day because it’s time he can avoid people and still contribute. Runs into someone just as skittish… visiting Earth from Somewhere Else.”

                    Which would give their first encounter, besides “Yikes!”, a flavor of “Wait, this is not one of the kinds of people who hurt me… maybe I can dare being curious. Just a little.”

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                    1. Hm…something came to mind.

                      There’s two kinds of folks who are skittish– those who are allowed to be, that is, the cost of being skittish doesn’t outweigh the value of not risking taking harm, and those who have been hurt badly enough that they don’t care what the costs are, they are going to get away.

                      Seems like it might be useful.

                      (I’m definitely Type 1. Yes I jump, and might even flatten your nose, even if you think a jump-scare is “funny.” Because the social cost of ruining your amusement is waaay less than the risk of me getting hurt from the one in large number who would mean me bad.)

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                  1. Oh, always!

                    …I read Stephen King as a teenager because I was desperate to get my hands on books I hadn’t read. Firestarter, not a problem. Pet Semetery, Cujo, ‘Salem’s Lot? Yeah, no…..

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        1. The movie not only has the individual with the reality-defying break have their delusion, the movie insists that everyone else honoring and endorsing their delusion is the only kind reaction.

          Hmm, yeah, rhymes with something else in recent societal events….hmmm…wait… it’ll come to me….

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    1. Or scoop poop. Inside for the cat, outside for the dog. Also mow the lawn or weed the garden. Maybe participate in a trash pickup to experience the dirty joy of others!

      :D

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    2. Or rip out (some of) the grass and plant yourself a garden, then watch the songbirds and the bumblebees for a little while. I know it’s the wrong season for it, but you can daydream about future gardens . . .

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      1. USB powered “plant light” and one of those stupid little $2 “gro ur own!” plants.

        I have a six inch tall rose that is the most *pathetic* looking thing…. but it is alive.

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        1. We have the Random Flower the Neighbor Gave the Daughter (Tm). A CUTTING no less. And it’s survived, in a vase for something like 3 months now. (and just put out a new flower.) We’re not sure how it keeps going, but it does and it brings everyone in the house an absurd amount of joy. (Me included)

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  9. One of the stories in one of the books on hypnosis I read (it might have been Hypnotism by G. H. Estrabooks) was about an instructor who didn’t have time to do a proper hypnotic induction for a class demonstration and so asked his ‘subject’ to play-act along for the demonstration. And then the fellow couldn’t move at the end of the class – the play along had become the induction and the ‘trance’ took.

    Another story was of a fellow who was god enough to make up his own visual hallucination – a dog. But he had to stop after a while as when called it up frequently, he started seeing it even when he had NOT summoned the hallucination.

    And this is consensual, low-grade stuff with the mind. And that’s plenty tricky already. The kicker in the Estabrooks text is that while he agrees “You cannot be hypnotized against you will” that require you are aware of things going that way. “You can be hypnotized without your consent.”

    A few years ago, a fellow who was known for his persuasiveness was the Big $BigBoss at work. He called an all-hands meeting for the night crew and spoke. And at one point he talked in an odd manner that threw folks – including me. It was creepy and I felt… off… for a while until I realized what was going on. Back when I was deeply (ahem..) into hypnotism I did try some self-hypnosis. I never got any visual hallucinations and the auditory ones were such a jolt I woke up. But I did “install a ‘circuit breaker'”… I can be hypnotized, but it MUST be consensual. He tripped that breaker – and it took me a while to realize it. I then realized I had heard the manner of speaking before. Oddly soft & low, very repetitive. It was the same patter I’d heard Jim Wand (professional hypnotist) use years earlier. Was the fellow aware of what he was doing, or just happen onto it? I cannot say, but I’m glad to not have to deal with him now. That level of (attempted) manipulation… is Not Good.

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    1. Orvan, would you be willing to contact me off-blog? I am actually working on a personal project involving hypnosis/neuro-linguistic programming, and would appreciate an outside perspective.

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      1. Not sure I could be any real help, but I am willing to talk, as it were. The trick will be to rig up contact with screwing up the semblance of privacy. Thus, I won’t be posting contact info here. But Our Dear Hostess has been informed it is alright for her to pass such to you off-channel.

        As mentioned above, I work nights, so there is apt to be some delay and “live” is.. spotty, shall we say?

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    2. Oddly soft & low, very repetitive. It was the same patter I’d heard Jim Wand (professional hypnotist) use years earlier. Was the fellow aware of what he was doing, or just happen onto it? 

      I’ve read public speaking guides that say to drop your voice so folks have to focus on what you’re saying, so it’s possible the latter, or he got training that was for “effective persuasion” and — well, yeah, it was, but….?

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  10. Twelve comments in and no one has yet mentioned Mr. Universe and Lenore? Wow. (If you’re googling it, use “Firefly” in the search string.)

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    2. Or, the real life example of Japanese man Akihiko Kondo, who in 2018 “married” the fictional vocaloid character Hatsune Miko. It’s in Wikipedia, or you can do a search for “Japanese man marries Hatsune Miko”, for anyone curious.

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  11. Honestly this is one of the reasons I prefer books as my “drink of choice”. In an emergency I can always drop the book!

    But… yeah. I’ve seen a lot of people who just can’t seem to make reliable contact with other human beings to keep themselves oriented toward reality. I’m not sure what to suggest.

    I do think the whole “constantly walking around with earbuds” is really not helping though. You’re listening to stuff and/or people that are not physically there, while ignoring what’s around you. That’s a bad mental habit that exacerbates everything else.

    Though, minor up note?

    Think I saw the kid on the bike again last night. This time his bike had a headlamp. So maybe his mother still thinks I’m nuts, but she at least did something to protect her kid from being a young idiot.

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    1. Also, it is dangerous to walk around with headphones in because yeah, you’re not aware of your surroundings, so much more likely to be a target of petty crimes – and some not so petty crimes. Just . . . just don’t do it, okay? Stay at least a little bit aware, even if you live in a very safe neighborhood. Even seeing someone looking around and aware of what’s going on around them can prevent some crimes of opportunity.

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        1. I live a couple blocks away from the local university. I also see it All The Time.

          Oddly, since Covid happened, there are a lot less people who refuse to look at other passers-by, and some of them even smile back, now.

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      2. How many victims were easy targets because they were too busy looking down at their phones utterly oblivious to the world around them, which was readily apparent to the evildoers, psychopaths and crazies.

        When one is out in public, it is essential to pay attention to ones surroundings in order to reduce the chance of being a victim. Those who go around looking like victims, tend to become victims.

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        1. Probably a goodly number. It’s funny on video when someone walks into a tree or a fountain and emerges mostly unscathed. It’s not so funny when someone is robbed or worse, and never knows what hits them because they are literally head down.

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  12. The big problem with escaping fantasies is…what is the alternative for those trapped?

    In my case, I think I’m mostly safe because I have to share my fantasies and that’s by writing. But I know that I’m tired of dealing with a “reality” that keeps pretending that horrible things are wonderful. That a pretty enough lie is better than a truth. That the monsters are already here and we can’t fight them because I’m the monster for being white, heterosexual, male, interested in other cultures, etc, etc, etc.

    I haven’t pulled the loud red handle and escaped totally into fantasy. The ideas in my head are not as substantial as the simplest touch of fingers on my neck by someone who cares. Or good chocolate cake. Or the wonders of finding something new to read.

    Sharing with a friend something I like…

    But I keep getting told I’m not allowed to have these things. That to try is wrong.

    Probably the only good thing is that I’m far too stubbon to stop banging my head against the brick wall.

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    1. Sometimes you can help people, sometimes you can’t. At some point they have to dig out and function or not. It’s not your moral duty to save everyone. At best you can help a few and that makes up for the rest. Don’t get caught in a crab bucket or tilt against too many windmills.

      There’s always been ugly dressed as pretty since the Garden of Eden. It’s better to know it exists, avoid it, fight it when possible, and seek out the True and Beautiful. This last year proved that we can fight against the monsters. We always have to fight, some of us forgot monsters exist.

      You are allowed to laugh and have joy, especially when the storm is nigh.

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      1. People keep telling me this, and yet the things that give me joy tend to get me into arguments. Not legal arguments, you understand-with the exception of some fashion choices entirely on the up-and-up. But I’m getting the “time to downsize” grump from Dad because I’m trying to put in more bookshelves. Or get my DVD and BluRay collection organized because I do not trust streaming services.

        Or the concept that I’m allowed to actually desire partnership of some kind.

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            1. More hugs.

              And yeah I enjoy my streamed music but I know it cou,d change. I threw a car salesman into, “hit in the back of the head with a board,” mode when I mentioned the possibility a musician’s Playlist cou,d be removed for a Bad Thing said 20 years ago. The idea had never entered his mind.

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              1. That’s my biggest concern with digital everything these days, especially with the sheer level of control that is growing over the Internet. Too many ways to segregate content and things that The Powers That Be don’t want to see out there. It’s why I’m still buying physical media whenever I can.

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          2. You can limit your exposure and sensitivity to them in many circumstances. Distance works wonders. Turning off media can help. Switching jobs. Focusing on self improvement instead of acceptance.

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              1. I’m waiting on this startup to take off and hoping that it does. If it does, I’m looking at moving to Tennessee with the rest of the team, or at least get a place there to live most of the time. This will be a good thing, or at least a not-bad thing.

                There is no way, short of winning the lottery, that I can make the $50/hour minimum in California for a reasonable one-bedroom apartment. Even Dad realizes this. And considering my history with roommates, I’d have better luck with sex dolls selling photos on OnlyFans than most human roommates.

                Media? I’m trying to find a dog-proof screen because the TV in the family room is just at the RIGHT point out of the corner of my eye that I can see motion. And Dad’s hearing is such that he cranks the volume up, on streaming programming that has no clue how to balance out sound levels-quiet conversation that you have to turn the volume up to hear anything, over-dubbed explosions from badly choreographed gun battles. (1) The new noise-canceling headphones I will be ordering soon should help, but until then…

                (1-I’ve developed a massive hate-boner for Taylor Sheridan at this point. Everything that I’ve seen that he’s made is of the “and then it gets worse” theory of show production. At the end of Yellowstone, I wanted to see Jamie-who he clearly thought was the villain of the show-sell the ranch, buy the whole Rez, throw everybody off their land, and put in cheap condos because that would be poetic f(YAY!)king justice after years of him being treated like a punching bag for every member of the family. Landman, every time there’s a dinner scene, there’s a knock-down, drag-out fight. Every. Single. Time. Utter waste of some good actors there, too. Terrible dropped-in author tract materials as well.)

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                1. Bluetooth headset for Pop solve the noise issue? I also use noise cancellers (plantronics). They work best on constant spund, versus variable. “Both” you and pop might be a thing.

                  My father had Bluetooth hearing aids, and a gadget that fed the TV sound to them directly. He could crank it and no one else knew.

                  they sell privacy film for monitors. Gives about a 10-15 field of view. Otherwise black. I have also suspended flags or other fabric from the ceiling with thumbtacks to break an annoying line-of-sight.

                  Had to privacy-box a desk once. Used pvc pipe and pipe joints like tinkertoys, bunch of shower curtain loops, binder clips, and big neutral color sheets. Instant video booth, and block all distractions. But opens up easily.

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        2. Oof, I’m sorry, that’s rough.

          My father is thankfully more inclined towards putting up more bookcases than telling me to downsize my mostly carefully curated collection, then bolting them to walls to ensure that I don’t die in an avalanche of books during a potential earthquake. But then, we all love books in our house, and he sometimes comes to me looking for recommendations . . .

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          1. It is, but I can understand Dad’s perspective. He always grew up running light and had to deal with at least three members of Mom’s family (her, one aunt and her grandfather) who were Hoarders with a H. We’re almost two years out from Mom’s passing and we’re still finding stuff to clear out and get rid of that she just kept.

            He’s also watching the families of his colleagues having so much stuff to get rid of when they pass, one particular friend who has a seven-figure gun collection that he wants to die with (and could probably get eight figures for his planned memorial mausoleum if he started auctioning it off now with him still around to give context), and Dad’s way of dealing with stress and frustration is to fix and repair things.

            I really want more bookshelves so I can clean out my storage unit and move into a smaller one, by doing that I can save some money a month on costs.

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            1. I found that some of my nicer shelves can store two rows deep. Thus old keepsakes, reference books, etc can go behind the second/front line of paperbacks etc.

              “Shelf on top of bookcase” was another cheat. it did require some interconnecting attachments and an “earthquake anchor” at the top to prevent tipping.

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        3. Most of my books are digital and backed up to 3 separate locations, 2 which are out of the house. Very few are fiction anymore. After 40 years of consuming fiction, I find the real world with real people is much more interesting. (With very few exceptions for special occasions.)

          My days of thousands of physical volumes have passed, I try to keep hobbies and pastimes contained to my office. (Sans some larger tools and antennas stored out of the way in the shop.)

          The household physical media (music and videos) is in storage in the shop, my spouse has made a hobby of putting them on a small NAS, which we will backup offsite with friends that do the same. We have thousands of movies and television shows due to my spouses job, but they are out of the way and I barely sample the collection since I’d rather be learning real things in reality and doing stuff.

          Owning oodles of things doesn’t bring joy to me. Stuff owns you. Having enough to live and some other tools to do various things other things works for me. I’ve purged a few times in my life and changed it for the better each time.

          1 Corinthians 13:11

          I’d rather cook for friends, recycle computers for others, work on useful job skills, read about the early church, learn geology, dig into open data, prep for whatever, rehab my knees, fix ham gear, work with the dogs, pet the cat, fight city hall, redpill the ready, do chores, than cocoon in place with a bunch of collections of stuff and no room to walk.

          The right partner showed up when I went through major changes, (career, family, health, location) to better myself. It was damn hard, but any worthwhile accomplisment is.

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          1. My big issue is that a lot of the books I need for research are not available in digital format. My goal is to set up a home media server and move most of my physical media to that, but that’s a long-term project.

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            1. This is why I’m finally unpacking the massive library, and our entire living room is lined with bookcases. I’m now contemplating where else I can possibly put them, because I think we’re going to come up short.

              Liked by 1 person

            2. I’m the opposite. Almost everything I need for work/hobbies is digital. Even some of the historic stuff you wouldn’t think would be digital has been scanned by someone.

              Media servers have really gotten much better and much easier to use.

              Proud of the spouse. She managed 98% of the project herself including researching the server and drives. Went with a Qnap and used Plex for the video app/service.

              I wanted to frankenstein the hardware with a refreshed corporate workstation, etc… but it would have been more hassle and pain.

              So when you eventually get around to it, it’s a good doable project.

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    2. How many of the people telling you that you cannot have those things are themselves not real, or have so embraced fantasy that they are no longer real?

      The media likes to say you can’t, but the media is not real.

      We gotta get you to move someplace where real is normal, somehow.

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        1. Be careful with what you request.

          I spent a good chunk of my childhood in some very bad situations, so there are some situations that closely simulate Hell on Earth.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. Short version: it’s not an accurate portrayal of Heaven. It’s really, really, not.

          If you want the longer version, try to find a copy of the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn. It’s intended to be an accurate summary of what the Bible says about Heaven, as opposed to how popular culture portrays it. (Harps, halos, wings, floating around on clouds? None of that is from the Bible). It skews more towards Protestant than Catholic, so if Foxfier has read it I’m sure she’ll have some objections to parts of the picture it paints. But if you want to know what Christian teaching about Heaven is really like, that book is an excellent starting point.

          Medium version (brief TL;DR of the book): the Bible talks about a “new Earth” more than it talks about Heaven, a version of Earth with all the screwed-up parts removed or fixed. Where we will not lounge around all day, but have work to do. Meaningful, fulfilling work, that we enjoy, and that doesn’t get boring. And we’ll be in real bodies, able to enjoy good food and drink. None of this “disembodied spirits getting bored” nonsense.

          If you want to know more, I suggest finding a copy of that book; if your local public library doesn’t carry it, try calling a few local churches to see if one of you will lend you a copy.

          If you don’t want to know more, then I’ll end this comment here. :-)

          Liked by 1 person

          1. “… if one of them will lend you a copy”. Typing too fast and missed an editing-induced error. Hopefully it was clear anyway.

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  13. Years ago I saw a funny. A young girl on a bike (knee pads, helmet) on the sidewalk with training wheels. Her much older brother, late teens, riding in the street. The little girl said “You shouldn’t be riding in the street.”

    He said, “I’m a big boy. I can do that.”

    And the child snapped, “Big boys can die, too.”

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  14. Well, I like to imagine that I’m a Dragon but I don’t fool myself into thinking that I could send Dragon-Fire against Idiots. [Crazy Grin]

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      1. I always liked how T.R. Fehrenbach described fougasse in his Korean War history This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness:

        A fougasse was an improvised land mine, consisting of a 55-gallon POL drum filled with napalm, a small explosive charge, usually white phosphorous shells, and a detonator. When exploded, the crude mine threw a mass of 3,000-degree Fahrenheit flame over an area ten by thirty yards long, with extremely salutary effects on any CCF [Chinese Communist Forces] who might be nearby.

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        1. Close enough to “dragon Breath” for social purposes.

          Ordinary gasoline propelled and ignited by a BP charge is easy to set up, wire up with model rocket engine ignition stuff, and touch off remotely on command or boobytrap, should your novel protagonists need to fight off Zombies, Orcs, or Posleen.

          Ooh. Zombie Posleen. …. Where is the Cleric? … Ouch.

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  16. If I had to guess, the Redditor’s divorce caused a mental slide that led to his current attitude towards his doll. And unfortunately, he’s not likely to snap out of it absent something drastic and final “killing” the doll.

    It’s a shame.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. I used to think that I have a fairly clear eyed view of the world, and that being clear-eyed is a curse. What I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older and gone through the continuous disenchantment that is life is that I was, and probably still am, lost in illusion.

    The depravity goes beyond my imagining. Most recently the whole collapse of the UK. The ruling class there is more concerned with protecting some Pakistani ped@s than maintaining their security relationship with the US. It’s not as though their army, excellent as they are individually, could take on the NYPD, never mind the Russians. Of course the girls the grooming gangs targeted are just poor, white, trash — slags in the local argot — and there’s nothing the quivering Labour lovies hate more than the working classes, (reminds them of their grandparents, shudder.) still, there has to be something more. Which begets the question, what about the boys? There have to be boys. Bacha Bazi and all that.

    That where it gets interesting as the great English ruling class vice, other than flagellation, is boys. I suspect it’s similar for the US ruling class. makes one wonder, what the hell is going on? I wait for Epstein’s list to start to find out.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I’ve known about the grooming gang issue for at least six to eight years. Definitely pre-COVID, and how quite a few people have been complaining and they were the ones arrested, not the “Orientals” (they can’t say Islamic because that would go against the current socialist/communist cant). And how the police did everything they could to avoid arresting the people involved.

      And I’m honestly surprised that we aren’t seeing more about male abuse as well, especially younger males. There is a disturbing amount of Islamic theory on how proper and suitable older male “mentorship” is, and the three great English vices are flogging and boys and cross-dressing…

      (I honestly think that there are senior members of the UK power structure that would honestly torpedo the relationship with the US for something with China or Iran, because they hate how we shine a mirror on their weaknesses. I also think that if Maggie Thatcher was in charge today, she would get along far too well for the British Deep State with Trump.)

      Liked by 1 person

  18. So in anime land, there is talk of various behavior patterns that may or may not be real, or may or may not be overstated, when compared to real world Japanese behavior.

    Lots na lots of claims about Otaku, Hikkomori, etc., and where real, perhaps some of it is copycat effect, like is probably partly true for US spree killers.

    One of those is the 2D waifu or girlfriend. Which is explicitly about attachements to fictional characters.

    Milder and more common is having one or more characters one is particularly attached to, as a fan.

    There are very definitely reports about some much more disturbed or delusional approaches.

    Anyhow, lots and lots of Japanese comic books and stuff about robot girl friends.

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  19. Interesting…

    I have been “working” within our family fantasy for a couple of months now. Wife person got sick and never really recovered. Continuing issues cause a ‘roller coaster’ recovery pattern but each up is impacted by a down and the down slide is slowly winning. We keep hoping she will get better and be able to come home – or at least be better and able to interact from a nursing home setting. Sometimes the hopeful ideation for the future is nothing but a fantasy something I (and the kids) have had to deal with. No medical reasons, nothing to treat and nothing to do but keep her comfortable and enjoy the very brief mental returns.

    Nope… Not coming home.

    Just ended 17 day hospital stay to return to nursing home. Need to do a re-admission package of paperwork after return from hospital. Included is the do not resuscitate (DNR) document. It’s very sobering and reality based point. This pivotal moment has made us face reality and accept it ain’t gonna get better and the fade will slowly remove her from us. Oh, sure – hope still lingers but the reality is there and it’s inevitable. Real life has to be lived.

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    2. So sorry to hear that. My mother passed away last year due to dementia and Alzheimer’s. My dad had to put her into a care home for her own safety a few months before she passed. It had to be done. But at the same time, it also tore him up inside.

      It’s never a pleasant decision no matter how evident it is that it needs to be done.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. As someone who has seen a fair number of people who should have been put into dementia care, but were not because family couldn’t face it (or, in one case, asshole son with power of attorney didn’t want to sell mom’s house to fund it, so he let her suffer in confusion and more freedom than she could deal with any longer), your dad did the right and kind thing. I know that doesn’t stop it hurting, but it really is the kindest thing you can do when your loved one is past a certain point.

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        1. My dad equated, “nursing home,” with, “hellhole,” and refused to even consider putting Mom in one. That may have been a favor in my brother’s slide into addiction, as he was involved in her care. I was peripheral (and guilted), but I saw enough to know how hard it would have been to endure on a daily basis.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Almost definitely was, I’d think. That kind of care can literally kill the caregiver. There was one point I was running on 3-5 hours of sleep a night for most of a year.

            …Yeah, I think that did me more damage than Covid.

            Liked by 1 person

      2. My uncle went into care after his wife died, although it was clear by that point that he would have to go whether she lived or died.

        Latest news is his hospitalization.

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  20. I don’t know how common this is in humans at large. I know that little kids can get like this.

    It is quite common. It is fundamental to the business model of OnlyFans and its peers as well as Instagram and TikTok influencers. Blogs, to a lesser degree, rely on it for their success as well.

    We also have chatbot virtual girlfriends combining the two.

    A parasocial relationship via a website is even more dangerous based on murders and suicides that have already occurred.

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  21. I don’t know how common this is in humans at large. I know that little kids can get like this.

    It is quite common. It is fundamental to the business model of OnlyFans and its peers as well as Instagram and TikTok influencers. Blogs, to a lesser degree, rely on it for their success as well.

    We also have chatbot virtual girlfriends combining the two.

    A parasocial relationship via a website is even more dangerous based on murders and suicides that have already occurred.

    Like

  22. Been a reader for a while, though not really part of the commentariat. Wanted to say thank you for this post, especially the closer – I have been coming to terms with my own over-escapism for the past several years. I have gravitated towards the predictable and controlled variety, whether video games you can’t really lose, mediocre movies and shows which don’t threaten or inspire, even spending more time re-reading familiar books instead of gambling on new ones. It’s pretty clearly an overreaction to a lack of stability, control, and reliability in my situation; but it’s also become a dodge where I can tell myself I don’t have much agency, rather than manning up and trying hard things. Thank you again for your encouragement and constancy in these times :)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “We become brave by doing brave things.”

      Sounds trite. Is absolute truth. Bravery is acquired. Learned.

      Keep pushing that boundary of yours, and in the near future you will wonder that it ever existed.

      Never Quit.

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  23. Many years ago I had a strong yank back into reality that scared the daylights out of me – because I had not realized how far into my own head I’d slid. I’m glad it happened, but at the time it really shook me. That’s one reason to put stories onto paper – so I don’t submerge so far I start to disappear.

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  25. Holy s**t if this guy is that far gone, what is her mother like, that HE is getting custody?!?!

    And if she isn’t that far gone, gosh I hope someone who knows the family makes sure the court sees this X thread and the lawyer makes it abundantly clear that this is not a mentally healthy or stable man one should trust with custody and care of a child… (how old is the daughter?! Not that it matters, really–but younger means more years he can cause massive damage.)

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  26. The Palisades fire in LA County got a lot of attention yesterday, for good reason.

    Well, a new fire broke out last night here in the county, called the Eaton Fire. This one is potentially more serious due to the location. It started in the hills, as these fires typically do. But this one’s running right up along the actual urban areas of places like Altadena and Pasadena. If you watched the Pasadena Rose Parade on New Year’s Day, the “yellow” area on the map posted on Cal Fire is literally just several blocks north of that parade route, which goes right through the heart of Pasadena. The line between the yellow area and the rest of the city is the 210 freeway, which – as an eight lane plus light rail down the divider freeway – would ordinarily be an excellent fire break.

    Yesterday we got hit with a strong wind storm (the Santa Ana) the was predicted to reach over 100 mph in some areas. So that eight lanes plus rail freeway? It might not be enough…

    While I don’t think it will happen, the Eaton fire could conceivably devastate one or more of the outlying cities in LA County instead of the usual “damage is limited to the high risk areas in the hills” sort of situation we usually see here.

    Cal Fire map link –

    https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/eaton-fire

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