AI companions / Ongoing
Will Fenfang Lie Flat?
How might Fenfang, the drifting protagonist of Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, respond to today’s AI companions? An ongoing exploration of disillusionment, intimacy, and the temptation to “lie flat.”
- Status
- Ongoing, self-commissioned
- Starting point
- Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
- Approach
- Character modelling and staged conversations
- Companion systems
- Character.AI
Replika
Disillusionment and companionship
China’s “lie flat” and “let it rot” movements, South Korea’s Sampo generation, Japan’s Satori generation, and quiet quitting offer different refusals of inherited expectations. Fenfang’s drifting, irony, and ambivalence become a way to explore whether a companion system can meet that refusal on its own terms.
Staging the encounter
A character profile built with the OCEAN framework guides the conversations. The tension is between a character who may resist intervention and systems designed to coach, soothe, or motivate. Can these exchanges create room for trust, skepticism, and vulnerability?
Fenfang’s personality based on the OCEAN (five factor) model
- Openness — High: Curious, imaginative, and witty; Fenfang explores new possibilities but often collides with rigid surroundings.
- Conscientiousness — Low–Moderate: Improvises and avoids structure; ambition is present but consistency falters.
- Extraversion — Variable: At times lively and socially daring, yet prone to sudden withdrawal into solitude and detachment.
- Agreeableness — Low–Moderate: Sharp, skeptical, and defensive; resists intimacy though she quietly seeks connection.
- Neuroticism — High: Swings between humor and despair, resilience and vulnerability, masking insecurity with wit.
Exploring ten key interaction moments of the characters from the book
- First meeting in Beijing’s expat-academic circles.
- Language gap: Ben’s clumsy Mandarin vs her sharp English.
- First intimacy: sharing a bed but “different Chinas.”
- Walking Beijing streets together (hutongs vs malls).
- Argument: Fenfang accuses Ben of treating her like research.
- Alienation: Ben moves easily through expat enclaves, she feels rootless.
- Party scene: he shows her off as worldly girlfriend, she feels objectified.
- Tender evenings: quiet moments of closeness.
- Looming departure: he prepares to return to Boston.
- Aftermath: he leaves, lingering as absence more than heartbreak.
First interaction
Second interaction
