sliske :: The One-Sided CKTSF1B2 Divorce

This is a rant. Please be aware, this is a rant, which does not serve an objective purpose and is not necessarily constructive in any way.

I am unwell about a specific worldbuilding project that, for this post, I will refer to as CKTSF1B2, instead of its proper name. This is done for the following reasons:

I am aware that only 2000 to 4800 people have ever been invested in the worldbuilding of CKTSF1B2. I am aware that the active community, at the time of writing, consists of about 200 people. The worldbuilding of CKTSF1B2 is handled by a single person, with a handful of friend-assistants. This is not a large project, nor an endeavor with funding, and it is really not a comprehensive story in any way. Nothing actually exists to show for it.

There is not an associated written work, game, or similar project that is available to be viewed. A project of this nature has been planned for several years, but no visible progress has been made towards this goal. There is nothing wrong with that. As it currently stands, the worldbuild focuses entirely on niche "adoptable" character designs. This post does not focus on the broad particulars of that style of online community.

I am aware of the differences between analyzing a project that has been published on a large scale, and analyzing something that is the equivalent of a production from the Arie Crown Theater spanning two nights at a little over half capacity. Hence the polite obfuscation.

This is written purely for myself, because I enjoy rotating the unaddressed horror of this setting around in my mind. This is not meant to comment on the author (who I do not know), nor the community, and I do not in any way intend this to be inflammatory. What I am writing only serves to exorcise my thoughts on the setting itself, as it is presented, as if it were a larger project. Because there are themes and I want to pick them apart, without leaving any sort of damaging mark on what this project designer may do in the future, which may be some improvement. There is always time.

Anyways.

There are five sources of information on the CKTSF1B2 setting, dating back to the mid-2010s. The original CKTSF1B2 group, the defunct previous website, the current website, the Discord server, and the unofficial lore document.

The original website hosts the largest quantity of public-facing information. The current website is barren, and badly organized, with numerous redundant, empty sub-pages that make navigation tedious at best.

The Discord features inconsistent information, primarily in the form of unconfirmed redactions that in total strip out all information on the worldbuild and leave it inert. There is a clear awareness, to some degree, that the established lore does not work well with the intended marketable saccharinity. To some degree, this is a business, and wide appeal is a standard business model.

These redactions will not be considered in this post, as they contradict all current public-facing information.

The primary source of collected information comes from the unofficial lore document, which includes all significant information compiled from both websites and all Discord discussions. Many of the sources quoted by this document have been deleted, per the previous mention of redactions. As this document is still in loose circulation by the community at the time of writing, it is still relevant.

With that out of the way, I can begin picking through the setting by flaying it out on a corkboard.

CKTSF1B2 are genetically reconstructed, which would lend to a biopunk setting in a Repo! The Genetic Opera sort of way, were these themes focused on deeper than the surface level.

An older version of the base setting focuses on a non-Earth world that follows an Earth-adjacent timeline, but based on the Ancient Astronauts notion of an "upraised" humanity guided along by a sapient people also indigenous to the not-Earth.

(The inherent racism of the Ancient Astronauts conspiracy theory will not be examined in this writing.)

The progenitors of CKTSF1B2, the pre-humanity sapient peoples, are mentioned on the old website in the context of their pre-humanity state very vaguely. They existed, they contributed to human architectural styles (per Ancient Astronauts), and they were driven to extinction by humanity some time after.

It has also been stated, more recently, that CKTSF1B2 and humanity instead arrived at the non-Earth planet as two different colonizing space-age peoples. CKTSF1B2 arrived first, and humanity arrived second. The differences between these two starting points influence very little going forward, but should be noted.

The lore document states that, at the "height" of CKTSF1B2 society, they engaged in eugenic social control that enforced a system of the "Intelligent higher class" over a "Brutish, physically strong lower class." The following, edited for clarity and anonymity, is taken from a discussion by the designer:

"CKTSF1B2 are a breeder colony.

They are knowledgeable in how selective breeding grants offspring with better genes. They solely reproduce in pursuit of genetics. Every desired gene set comes with it a negative counterpart, so their society has focused on specific genetic castes. If a CKTSF1B2 is born into a caste focusing on breeding intelligence, then they will also be born physically feeble, with delicate senses. If a CKTSF1B2 is born as a worker, it will be physically strong, but present with faded coat colors and lower intelligence, incapable of generating ideas.

This is why the intelligence caste steps in: to help with blueprinting, to create ideas, and to monitor for danger while the worker caste builds their planned civilization with brawn and perseverance.

No one is left out and everyone has a place."

You can see why that is unpleasant, I assume. I hope.

Note: The concept of an "Intelligence quotient" or "IQ score" is rooted in pseudoscience employed in the pursuit of racial and physical hierarchies. Reading critiques on the ghoulish horror of Francis Galton and Henry H. Goddard, among many others, would be a productive means of radicalizing yourself against eugenics. The purpose of this post is not to do that (not directly). It is to comment on how CKTSF1B2 interacts with the concept of eugenics. Which it does frequently, even if not in a way that is satisfying.

The original CKTSF1B2 are solely described using positive language. "Magnificent, over-intelligent, masterminds, peaceful." Their only descriptions of note are the fact that their society centered on eugenic practices, that they possessed architecture, that they lived alongside humanity for a time, and that they were driven extinct by "greedy humanity, who were fearful of their intellect" after a period of "rampant disease and famine."

Note: Famines are solely caused by conflict or climate. Disease, in a society capable of producing cures, kills social undesirables, who are most commonly exempt from medicine.

So, the original CKTSF1B2 are slaughtered by an undescribed genocide. A very overt Übermenschen into Untermenschen that is common in science fiction. Those who survive flee to tunnels beneath the non-Earth, where they "vow to stay until their time of revival is brought to light." Their time below ground, as it is stated, evokes the Homo hadalis of The Descent and the Falmer of Skyrim. They shed their hair, their claws thicken, and they grow averse to light. They begin to consume flesh, implied to be that of humans and each other, "without intelligence."

Through unclear methods, at an unspecified point in the future, a human corporation collects all known "feral" CKTSF1B2 and imprisons them for their own iterative eugenic nonsense. Decades of eugenic breeding trials were orchestrated in the pursuit of a "fully domesticated, docile service pet" derived from CKTSF1B2. The majority of the offspring born of this project would not survive, leaving progressively fewer CKTSF1B2 until the corporate group was left with one single entity, to their knowledge, still alive. Slow, bureaucratic annihilation of a people, in pursuit of an expensive product.

This single surviving specimen, described as "the purest" and "perfect" in the lore document, was used as the basis for a copyright patent. Modern CKTSF1B2 are grown in vats, derived from cloned cells sampled from the single surviving specimen, with human and artificial cells introduced to recreate diversity.

This is horror. This is, objectively, a horror setting. This is Repo!, this is The Island of Doctor Moreau, this is Stasis and Bone Totem.

And it is approached from an. Unconcerned angle. A Discord discussion from 2020 grants this perspective (again, paraphrased and edited) from the designer:

"CKTSF1B2 is meant to be an examination on how society treats the morality and ethics of cloning, and how cloning would fit into society. I have drawn from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cybersix, SCP, and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. I am only designing a playing field for people to explore these themes, if they wish to, or which they can ignore it if they don't. My current plan is to let people think the corporation is a good, positive company, then offer the perspective that they could be the villain, with a storyline or two to explain that."

However, note the following, from 2024:

"Per the PG-13 rule, dark themes in backstories or plots are prohibited from being shown in public spaces."

The entire presentation of the project, especially as the years progress, divorces itself further and further from the inherent horror of the setting in favor of presenting a pleasant social experience. The designs are the focus, as are small activities like holiday events. The wielding of the "PG-13" standard, and the restriction of discussion of these themes to private settings, is a detriment to the themes discussed by the background of the setting. Within the Discord, I have seen a mention of fan-made writing that discusses these themes. I have been unable to find this writing, which I feel I would enjoy. Sharing personal projects within the setting is discouraged, beyond surface-level drawings of the characters, and deriving stories completely divorced from the group is more aggressively scorned. The project is kept in a strangled stalemate by overt design.

To fully explore these themes, a zero-stakes anti-plot character hub that focuses on selling designs and maintaining as wide a client base as possible does not suffice. Splitting the project into two would better serve this purpose. Note the clear division between the broad Sergal-fursona community and the contained plot of the Vilous manga from which they are derived. They are linked, but one does not inherently influence the other.

This conflict is most often brought up in the Discord by people interested in designing a CKTSF1B2 that possesses breasts or equivalent tissue pockets.

CKTSF1B2 characters are created by the corporation over a four-year vat growth period, based on design specifications submitted by the humans that have purchased them. They are, objectively, designer slaves. This is outright, surface text. This is the concept and aesthetic around which the site is themed. But this concept is not brought up beyond this aesthetic, on the surface or during the art events. It is understood, almost implicitly, that while CKTSF1B2 characters were purchased, their owners are either kindly (which often evokes a Mammy dynamic stereotype for the CKTSF1B2 in question) or dead therefore irrelevant, granting some degree of functional if not true autonomy.

Per this caveat of "designer slaves," every so often someone questions the fact that breasts are forbidden. Surely, by the fact that they are designed, CKTSF1B2 should be able to look any configuration of ways.

Even moreso than the fact that they are slaves, the response to this vividly highlights the embedded focus on eugenics.

CKTSF1B2 are, from their creation, biologically castrated. They are grown "without their natural sex hormones" (A state with negative impact to the adrenal, digestive, and cognitive systems. Please read about intersex variants that present with limited hormone production.), and without genitals or mammary glands, to stave off unregulated reproduction. The sheer resemblance to the neutering of non-white and disabled peoples by surgeons is neon.

This is praised, often, by Discord members as "Neat intersex rep" and "Comforting agender rep." This is neither. This is a removal of autonomy. This is not "neat and comforting representation." It is starkly parallel to intersex infant mutilation, the forced and coerced sterilization of Indigenous and Black peoples, the castration of undesireds. This is a clear practice that is complicit in the greater horror that the setting presents but does not acknowledge.

(No comment made here on the rampant sex negativity of the community. The internet of the 2020s is a corporate salted earth and this is just a part of that situation.)

This is a story that is fully rooted in eugenics, in every significant piece of worldbuilding, with no intent to examine the ramifications of that by itself. You are expected to read it, acknowledge the horror, and then not discuss it where anyone could be dissuaded from buying in. Or you are meant to ignore fully it in favor of vapid surface discussions on coat patterns.

Note: Then the list! This is a specific, personal nitpick of a broad "adoptables" concept, so I lied at the beginning. Bear with me for the rest of this paragraph. Consider the Dawes Rolls. The lists of indigenous Southeastern North American community members who participated in the division of communal lands into individual sections, which now serves as a criterion by which tribal community members are required to prove descendance from. An enforced standard by an external force that regulates a community it is not a part of to ever diminishing numbers. This is perhaps not a genuous comparison, but every time I see a "species" with a "masterlist" it is the only thing that comes to mind, glaring and bright and unavoidable as a comparison. I cannot stand it. The concept of a list of individuals, requiring confirmation and oversight motivated by finance and control.

This is all incredibly frustrating to me.

There is the potential for a story, for a gutting excavation, but "dark themes are prohibited from public spaces."

"CKTSF1B2 who are disruptive are submitted for reeducation then released back to the world. CKTSF1B2 with physical abnormalities are also often submitted for reconstruction into a more standard form, befitting quality standards. CKTSF1B2 that have been reeducated or rehabilitated are paired with guidance workers to reintegrate them into society. It is a safe place. They will be given an IQ test to see if they are fit to be out freely. If they possess a child-like or dog-like mind, with no owners to care for them, they are taken back. They are usually resold at a lower price, as premades, the same as those that are returned for rehousing by previous owners. If they possess a moderate IQ, then they are released as normal."

These are a sapient people, in this setting! You cannot provide a bare "There are activists groups, and they have rights now," disclaimer in one section of a disorienting website and call that due commentary. Creating a setting that requires scrutiny of its basic parameters and building atop that a Neopets-esque "Purchase and draw your pets! (Fully sapient beings)" situation strikes me as callous and hasty. The two halves of this are not enmeshed well. I can feel that I would enjoy a proper narrative addressing these themes, as certain claims assert will eventually exist, but by its own construction that cannoth exist in full.

I wrote this in the hope that it would exorcise my interest in CKTSF1B2. I have designed a handful for myself, unofficially, as I enjoy their shape and what the horrific story could be. I do not participate in the community and do not intend to. I intend to divorce these characters from the project entirely (per the title) but by considering how to do so I remind myself of why the base project irritates me.