Brinens and Things

I don't know how to word this, but that concept that we're higher beings deliberately becoming mere mortals -- well, first, I've only encountered it as an SFF concept, not a mysticism one, so my feelings about it are very much in context of why a human would write a story like that. But part of me feels like it's weirdly... hubristic? Like that it's sort of trying to make ourselves feel better about the human condition by expressing the idea that we have something the gods want. One of those types of stories that investigates "what it means to be human" on the premise that of course all the aliens or whatever want to be more human because it's the best of all possible worlds, whether that's by having emotions or whatever. Which... again, not sure if I'm being clear at all, but it annoys me in a very particular way, the same way that I get annoyed about the type of story where some kind of transhumanist power is offered and then it all goes to shit and "proves" that we're better off exactly the way we started.

Another thought or feeling I have about that concept is, that the sort of immortal higher being who would voluntarily become human would probably have to be... I don't know why my brain is saying "a Dorian Gray type", but one of the immortals people bitch about on tumblr who spend three hundred years having
increasingly drunken orgies and then decide the only thing that will make life worth living is even more hedonistic excess, and when they run out of excess they turn into serial killers or start voluntarily dying repeatedly for the adrenaline rush, instead of like... learning every language or mastering every craft or attending every college class or petting all the cats and dogs in the world, something interesting and useful. I'm not sure I'm making any sense, but basically the impression that the personality which goes "I need to experience life as a Mere Mortal" is sort of like a gamer who goes "this game is only fun if you play on hard-hard-hardcore-supreme and the fun comes from failing in a different way every five seconds", which is an attitude I despise.

I'm not sure this is going anywhere. I'm mostly not awake. I probably have more thoughts if I remember to have them later. I almost certainly have thoughts about mainstream romances, but those are warped by the fact that my main exposure is actually to mainstream *Christian* romances which don't include sex scenes, just misunderstandings and misogyny. But I saw somebody once say "vanilla sex is also a kink, just an accepted one", and I go back and forth on that depending on the definition of kink I'm working with, but it's definitely a take that I think would work with the "oh everybody is into X" attitude you describe. Like there's this bundle of Acceptable kinks including PIV sex, mild maledom/femsub, very slightly taboo things which are spicy because forbidden (I think that has to be a Christian thing, spinning off the necessity of being guilty about sex in general and displacing it onto things that are more acceptably guilt-inducing than just PIV sex which the reader is assumed to be okay with), etc.

The memory play thing specifically, I'm not sure I have a theory about. I do know that you're possibly the only person I know whose identity is so heavily formed by being a bundle of memories; I feel like I know more people with quite bad memories who just sort of live with it as something that doesn't interfere with their fundamental sense of self, and for me, even though I have an extremely good memory for the most part, things like having lost 2010 don't destroy me. (I did do a lot of blogging in 2010, but I don't reread it, because when I do it gives me flashbacks, and the feeling of having a flashback to a time you don't have conscious memories of is *deeply* unsettling even for someone like me who isn't as bothered by the simple fact that there is a time I don't have conscious memories of.)

Like, I think I've run across the "you've forgotten all the amazing sex we had so I have to wink-wink-nudge-nudge ~remind~ you". I'm just not sure where it would hypothetically come from. Maybe the... idea is that once you've gotten used to each other's quirks, sex has to be boring, so by erasing memories you get back to the early days of infatuation where you were having wild hot sex at all opportunities? ...jesus. That's *sad*, if so. Taking the concept of the unhappy established relationship that far. Like if you're not having at least as good or better a time once you actually know what each other likes in bed... wow. *headshake*

I mean, maybe that's not it at all, but it's the best hypothesis I have right now.