Forgetting and Remembering

Aside 1: The difficulty of a forgetful people's trends

Beauty standards... were ruined. With the power of absurd cramming, android designers had successfully warped beauty standards and especially ideals for both men and women severely out of the realm of biological practicality. In fact, amongst the old-tech connoisseurs frequently mocked as being 'two generations behind,' people would frequently refer to animated works, especially by the antiquated (dead) company of Dis - what was it again? Ridiculous waistlines, overwhelmingly extreme extremeties, wax-smooth faces the likes of which some 451 book mocked, all of those traits led the forefront of modern trends.

The natural result? Surrogates, abortion, gender fluidity, and most of all, a general lack of attention paid to said physical ideals when actually considering relationships.

The biological nuances of android and android reproduction will not be discussed here. No, I refuse.

Escapism didn't quite run rampant, thankfully, but many a time people didn't wise up to relationship requirements and the such until the ripe old age of 35. Fashion trends were so fluid that unless one owned some absurdly large company, they were better off just sticking to their own style (financially, at least, maybe not socially). Advertisements slowly crawled towards being more mundane, as the efficacy of sensationalism dropped like a rock in water.

Animation in general, and especially anime and associated media (manga, manhua, manhwa, webtoon) was as alive as ever, though the content and especially the genres varied wildly year by year. And the names were sometimes different. Much terminology grew outdated, though the exact replacement for said terminology was difficult to pin down.

It was in this environment, that we had a silver-haired android girl, casually and quietly sneaking a read at all of the manga and manhua in the book shop. It wasn't against the rules, or laws, for that matter, but was of course seen as a less-than-moral move.

"You know, I can buy those for you, right?" A black-haired boy sidled up to her, speaking with the tone for a good friend, a slight smug look on his face.

"No need to buy it when I can just read it here." The girl kept her head in the manga book, and kept reading.

"So you plan to stay here for... three hours?" The boy walked up a step and grabbed a volume of a different work, after looking at the series and volume she was reading.

"You say that like you don't waste days' worth of time reading. Shoujo manga, at that." She turned a page.

"I read light novels too, mind you, of all different genres. And what's with your weird preference for humor and terrifyingly crass material, anyways?" In his hands was a manga from a truly ancient series which recently added some post-arc material, commonly abbreviated 'TD' and causing in its readers 'PTDD.'

"Rereading that side story again, are you? Almost like you don't have a life of your own." The girl turned to look at the boy, and pouted in response seeing him engrossed in the same story the... fifth? tenth? something-eth time.

"It's very heartwarming. And just well written in general." The boy looked up from the book at the girl, and noticing her pout, ruffled her hair lightly. He had a slight height advantage over her.

"Oh, really now." The girl took his hand off her hair and hurriedly made sure it wasn't ruined too much.

And that was how time was spent amongst a small group of people, visiting book stores and having fun.

With more time than ever, people spent much of their time on their hobbies. As a result, people in various hobbies grew ever more entrenched. Where reading 50 light novel volumes in a year was considered a feat in the decades prior, nowadays people were easily reaching 70 to 80 volumes. And with such dedication required in most other groups, more people joined the video gaming and reading groups than before, resulting in more time spent at home or various quiet places.