when I was little, I had an original character. she was my first. i was impressed with my originality: i had done the impossible. i had created something— someone— with the use of no references. with no outside inspirations. it was said that a human couldn’t create without ‘cribbing’ from things she had already seen. but i did. and she was unlike anyone else.

due to traumatic events, she laid hidden; buried, in repressed fucking memories. but… with enough inspiration— something tickled. other things reminded me of her. in conglomeration with my memories, a thousand thousand points of light all touched, outlining her very form again. and, soon, i began to see her. irrevocably.

i had always been enthralled with googirls. when i was little, i was ashamed and dismayed that i could not turn into a liquid. it seemed more natural than what i was doing: moving meat. this seemed so strange. i also couldn’t interface with any machine i touched. too primitive. not the right hardware—

i remember when i first began to play Splatoon. the dark markings around their eyes reminded me of someone. that— they call it a ‘bandit’s mask’. the dark around a raccoon’s eyes. i call it the latronis larva: the mask of robbers. or, neutlarva.

the dark circles around my eyes, i had always found beautiful. i wanted them to be darker. i needed them to be.

when i found the tanuki girl, it was a godsend. finding a 3d model of her was even better. she had the inkling-like facial marks; my skin color, and hair color; and, i had always enjoyed having kitty ears, and a big floofy tail.

to say that my original design came from my memory is not intuitive: it came from a past life; from a past life’s memory. i remember standing in a mirror; and i was not human. when i first gained consciousness as a ‘human’ child, i quickly went to work, trying to remember what i was.

a genuine space alien. though that term does not make sense outside of human thinking. of a species that is still unknown to all. an unlikely addition to the anunnaki.

several things helped me remember. that Star Trek episode, original series— white on one side, black on the other. i was orange on my right; blue on my left. my species did not have a bodily conception of right and left, for we were not symmetrical in form. we did not have form.

with what i have seen, i have nearly re-constructed my previous, precious form.

it’s so nice to be beautiful again.

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memory of a past life notwithstanding, my child mind quickly went to work, customizing the alien.

i loved cartoonies. so, she had to be a cartoon. but because cartoons ended, and i hated the thought of dying again, i decided that she should have no limits— no boundaries. seeing Roger Rabbit and Cool World solidified this for me: she should not be bound at all.

then i saw Max Headroom, and that was it. she should be like Max Headroom: some transcendent, TV-elemental. an unbound, cosmix, Lovecraftian horror, that parasitized technological media; fire. it ran through energy; electricity.

a technological contagion. some sort of beneficent virus; that infected constructed, or projected, mindscapes.

like we live in reality, she would live in our creations. and she could go anywhere. why, she could step beyond reality: traipse through fiction like Freddy Krueger lives in dreams.

where monsters are in dreams.