User blog comment:DYBAD/Character Sheet/@comment-26322734-20190612000520/@comment-4867780-20190613123713

 Grand ! Long time no see indeed ^ ^ How have you been ? I was just reminiscing a few days ago about the amazing SF empires and technologies you wrote about on the Wiki, wondering what you were up to these days and if you had made your official debuts in the meantime. Too much responsibilities to handle at the moment ? Or is it the storytelling side that is proving more difficult than expected ? I always sucked at this, so complicated and demanding compared to world-building.

 It's the privilege of writing for the sole enjoyment of it : it doesn't bring any money or recognition, but you can create exactly what you want the way you want it, refine and cultivate them at your own pace and leisure for however long you wish. There is some wonderful freedom to it I wouldn't trade for all the success in the world ^ ^ Plus the idea of Lawrence and Selforge are delightfully refreshing in a fictionland full of struggle and drama, so even the work part is enjoyable and the motivation always present.

 The way I understand it, "plane" is a very broad concept that doesn't refer to any specific scale or system but simply a coherent fraction of reality. A plane may be a pocket reality, a dimension, a universe, a multiverse, a purely abstract realm, any combination of the above or something else entirely, so long as the given territory has a distinct existence of its own.

 Lawrence's home plane is particularly elusive on this regard, as it size and complexity increase geometrically on a daily basis alongside its overall Selforge population (particularly the Legacy Heaven section which automatically welcomes all children conceived during casual encounters), so it's really hard to measure. All things considered, I would say that "multiversal" (multiple universes) is the more reliable answer, as to how many universes exactly that depends on when you ask ^ ^

 Lawrence's core identity was hardcoded at "birth" during the absorption of the original human into the shard that brought it to sentient existence through a process I call "prime imprinting", inheriting a refined version of the human's personality (perfect cross-retroactive understanding of all experiences, decisions and consequences) that irreversibly defined his sense of self and the person he is.

 In other words, while his mental capabilities and functional upgradability are limitless, Lawrence lacks the psychological plasticity of human beings. He can gain in wisdom and complexity through further learning and experience, but his "essential self" is fundamentally unchanging, unlike humans whose personality is naturally flexible and heavily shaped by their day-to-day environment.

 That’s why he is incorruptible on one hand, and never a true hero on the other, why his lifestyle remains the same over the eons, why he is always equal to himself and invariably true to his principles. It’s like wood carving : you can sculpt it in many different ways, polish and varnish it to perfection, but from beginning to end it’s still the same wood – refined yet unchanged.