Originally Posted by
auden67 
I took the crash course for AVRT and really enjoyed the rationality behind its premise, and appreciate the psychology behind its practices. I for myself, though, I can't really call my AV "beast". It rings too closely with biblical interpretations of Satan or the antichrist, and while I know we want to take the AV's nasty tricks seriously, I can't jive with that terminology.
Trimpey stated somewhere that he hesitated for a long time before deciding on the term Beast when people wrote to him about this 'concern'. Even without the Biblical connotation, though, it still fits, because the Beast brain really is the brain of a Beast. If you look at the structural model that RR uses, with the picture of a human brain, the neocortex is large in comparison to the midbrain.
In animals lower on the evolutionary scale, such as a mouse, the midbrain makes up a much larger part of the whole brain than in humans. Humans are animals, though, and we still have the same needs and primary survival drives as all mammals. The Beast of AVRT is an artificial, perverted survival drive originating from this "lower" brain common to all Beasts.
Personally, I just can't give my Beast a pet name, certainly not anything nice or endearing. It isn't human, it has no conscience, and it doesn't give a damn about anything except that next fix. Homeless, living under a bridge, freezing, and headed for worse, but with a bottle of whiskey in hand?
"That's great! That's what life is all about!" says the Beast. No, that's just not human in my book.