brightberries

I woke up this morning thinking about Final Fantasy 14 and about my sisters and thought, what if I made a Xaela OC again... but she's technically a Self-Insert?

My thought was that, their are two Xaela tribes that kinna could help with what I miss from home.

You see, my species was different and we had a hivemind that we were all connected to but we also had free will but also, we couldn't go outside during the day because, the sun burned out eyes. Like, I guess we were light sensitive?

And then I remembered the Mol and the Kagons from FF14.

The Mol could be an interesting way to help with the Hivemind aspect because they listen to their "God" through a Shaman and they go where their "God" tells them to go so they're really nomadic or they can be stationry and stuff. Then there's the Kagon who just don't go out during the day at all because something to do with not wanting to be in the light of the sun god of the Steppe?

Then there's like, I could maybe combine them and make my own clan but I unno what I would even name them...

Current Mood: thoughtful

lb_lee

Oh right, forgot one more book for giveaway: A Novel Love Story, by Ashley Poston. Woman’s car breaks down in her favorite romance series, but the author died suddenly and now the series is in stasis. For the romance-loving fictioneers among you!

Same rules as others: free in the States, you pay shipping if you’re internationally.

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/45741.html

tiercelgreen

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: frustrated

lb_lee

EDIT: all books claimed!

~~Mori: Want some multish books? We got multish books for giveaway! Cost you nothing if you're in the US; you pay shipping if you live overseas. We got:~~

~~C.S. Friedman's~~ ~~This Alien Shore~~ ~~- crip multi space opera~~
Benjamin Walker's Beyond the Body: The Human Double and The Astral Plains - Rawlin cannot make me read this. We tried, but we got the Psychical Research guys, and we don't got to chisel no citations out of THEM. So I am liberating it unto the universe, y'all.

Current Mood: geeky
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/45220.html

lb_lee

Rogan: We dropped into the sci-fi library briefly because there were a few books we wanted to add to the system... and found a big stack of comics on the cart labeled with our name. Turns out someone had donated the entire series of Transmetropolitan in trade paperback and we are the Person Who Knows Comics, so everyone decided to leave it for us. (Far as I know, there's one guy who knows manga and that's about it.)

We don't much care for Warren Ellis or his work (and this was not for lack of trying, back before we decided that our reading for fun is FOR FUN, plus Elli's reputation nose-dived), but Transmetropolitan is one of those series that are huge for a lot of people and critically acclaimed, so we are relieved to have the whole series just horked up in bulk in one go, sparing us the work. Thanks, mysterious donor!

We added it to the catalog, stickered and shelved it, and made a note on the mailing list so folks would know what we did.

The senior librarian responded with a bemused remark along the lines of, "I have no idea what Transmet is or why it matters, but yay, thanks for taking care of it!"

To which someone else responded, more or less, "yes, that is why we made it LB's problem."

Well, we've achieved our goal of becoming the head person for the comics section, I guess! (Seriously, though, we're glad about this. If we're the only person in that library who knows what Transmetropolitan is, we should be the one who handles comics.)

( comics library stuff )

Current Mood: amused
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/44845.html

gillman

Life has been chaotic. A lot has happened. I have started grad school, gotten an appointment with my GI, gotten an appointment with my gyno, and a handful of other things. The fist half of this will be health-related woes, but the tone does pick up.

I had a horrible GI flare again. I went to a doctor last time and she gave me anti-acids, but considering that this is a microbiome issue (I am 99% sure), that won't do anything. Besides, they gave me horrible fatigue as a side effect. My friends and I think that my GI issues (which have been going on for years at this point) might have started because I was on doxycyclinen for.... a year and a half. Now, I didn't know enough about antibiotics in 2018/2019. I had no idea this would happen. I don't even think I knew doxy was an antibiotic. But my GI issues started in 2019 and... well we simply think I do not have a gut biome at this point. At least, not a well-functioning one. My GI appointment is in November, so I'm just taking a probiotic until then to see if it helps and trying to eat basic foods and other gut-healthy things, like yogurt.

All of my GI issues ran me ragged for a few days, as they usually do. My mother has assumed for years that I simply eat so badly and that going to a GI was an over reaction. HA! She doesn't think that now. After 2 weeks of cutting out all the foods she thought was causing this, narrating the 48 hours of no sleep, 72 hours of no eating, and prescription anti-acids doing nothing, she is finally on board with this being an actual issue that I have. Yay!

She's also has finally admitted that I do need some sort of medication for my panic/anxiety. I think she is still convinced that I speak too negatively to myself (I don't) or have low self-esteem (I don't) or that breathing exercises will fix me (tends to make me worse, actually), but I don't care. It's great to have her help with that. I am an adult, I could have easily gone to a psychiatrist on my own, but I've asked for medication multiple times as a teen and was always rejected and convinced that the side-effects would be too negative. She's still on my ass about how they might reduce my sex drive (she thinks I have never been in a relationship. I still need to come out to her about that...), but IDGAF right now. My period is still acting up and I don't want to reach the pits of hell I was at in the spring again. I won't be having a ton of sex this year, anyway.

My gyno appointment is for this still-fucky period and also to help me get going towards medication. It also is in the city on September 11th.... me and my girlfriends 2 year anniversary! So I will be heading down there and staying with them for a day or to for my appointment and to celebrate. We will both be super busy this year, so we're getting out time in with each other while we can.

As much as the health things have sucked, I think things will be turning around for me.

My classes this semester are going to be really interesting. I'm excited. It's a lot, but I think it will be good. I have so much reading to do.... ha.... But I have my own office that I am decorating! And I am getting paid! My best friend is in vet school and I get to see him almost daily. My other best friend graduated and took a job at the university. I like nearly everyone in my cohort save for one person, and I feel very bad about not liking her, but you can't like everyone. I think once she settles in more, she will start to grow on me. Some people are just a bit abrasive and strong. I need time to get used to them. I hope that's what happens, I don't like disliking people.

I have a "job" proper at the university, too, and I start tomorrow. I'm a little nervous, but I think it will be good! I'm still in training, so I won't be on my own just yet.

Yesterday I went to the farmers market with a friend of mine. This is the first time we've hung out since she admitted to being in love with me while drunk. I, being aromantic and in a relationship, had to reject her. But I am trying not to let it ruin our friendship. If I had to stop being friends with everyone who admitted they were in love (romantically) with me, I'd lose a lot of them. Which sounds almost.... arrogant of me? But this has happened at least five times already. Six if you count my current partner (who just happened to admit it to me when I was single and open to trying a new relationship out). Most of them are still very dear friends of mine. Anyway, we went to the farmers market and I got a ton of scuppernongs and baklava! I ate all of it in one sitting and got.... very unwell. If I'm going to be sick, at least it's off muscadines and baklava. I ate so many that my mouth is like.... still feeling it. I can't really get the muscle memory of eating them out of my mind. They were crazy sweet. I want more. Hooooly cow.

She also invited me to play DnD with her and some of my other friends! I said yes, of course. It's a homebrew based off of the book of Revelations. Fantasy Revelations (which makes sense given that we all met in the Anthro department, each of us studying something related to the bible somehow). I'm getting to play a big sexy templar knight woman, so I'm excited.

I'm sitting on my porch with my coffee, watching the humming birds. I think I am going to get a smoothie, lock in on my readings, and then go see my best friend and work on my afghan. This has been the first quiet moment I've had in a while, and just wanted to toss an update out there. I'm doing a lot better than I was earlier, here's to me continuing to do well and not sinking back into whatever the fuck was up with me last spring.

Current Mood: amused

lb_lee

What a organizational nightmare. We took a CD-ROM of:

2973 files
713 folders
25.6 MB

—and after deleting all duplicates, superfluous images (background textures, etc.), it is now:

473 files
36 folders
15.8 MB

—and is actually fucking organized. (Issue 10 was in a subfolder in Issue 9. No author names were in the file names. You people live like this? YOU PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THIS!)

All that remains is finishing the Table of Contents, listing what articles we want for later, and zip-and-ship on back.

Articles we want to go over for ourselves:

the one where female multis are all just schizophrenics who really wanted to fuck their dads
the one where PTSD is just paranoid schizophrenia
the one that advises legal attack when accused of child abuse
the one about how those guys who made child pornography didn’t make child pornography (spoilers: they made child pornography, it just wasn’t illegal til ‘77)
the one that used as data on false allegations of abuse the accusations reported by the accused of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation... while admitting there was no testing of veracity whatsoever.
the occult cop who quotes the Bible a lot
the one about the pedophile journal interview

Gold star to Flash Renamer, that little program that made this WAY easier.

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/44495.html

wandering_castor

So I previously thought Tallstar was a fiction kin identity up until about a few weeks ago when it came out “hey, so I’m a fictive” color me shocked and surprised because previously I was calling him a fictive but it felt off and not right so then I dropped the label. Well turns out I was wrong and it shouldn’t have been up to me to drop it. I should have asked him because turns out he was right.

Tallstar (He/They) a fictive of tallstar from Erin hunters warrior cats series, a very nice cat and someone who I would call a friend tbh. Now how did I come to understand he’s a fictive instead of just me? Well besides him telling me that he’s one, he also fronted for a week straight. Which okay to be fair I thought it was just me really feeling like Tallstar but then there were memory gaps and I was like “wait..”

So yes he’s system member now!! Which is exciting! That makes them the 5th nonhuman including yours truly. We seem to have a system full of nonhumans and therians which is very cool. But other than Tallstar coming into play I guess Dean and I have been building our relationship together! So have Flora and I as of today. It was surprisingly easy to help her front. It is a bumblebee therian. Overall my system members feel happier and that makes me feel better and like I’m helping instead of being super controlling like I used to be.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: My bedroom

lb_lee

This is a silly post of a silly photo and also Rawlin's new hair style.

Rawlin enjoyed having hair that read as feminine to humans, but discovered she REALLY cannot stand the sensation of hair on the back of her neck in summer. She mostly wore it in a topknot, but then she could not be petted, which is a tragedy, so she asked Mori to cut her hair in something short but femme, so now she's not too far off from where she was at in the start.

Rawlin with a new undershave bob haircut. Her ears are pricked forward and she's smiling.

Telling you the context for this photo will not help or improve anything, so we just aren't going to tell you what it is, just that no Tiptoes were harmed in the making of this photograph.
( Dog catches cat. Cat wins. )

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/44243.html

lb_lee

Crazy Boys Make Rules
Summary: D and Rogan aren’t sure what to call what they have together, but they make rules about it, plus Rogan dumps a douchebag.
Series: Crazy Boys
Word Count: 6000
Notes: Winner of this month’s fan poll! If you want to gain extra poll weight and support work like this, check out my LiberaPay and my Patreon! Also, though White Lake’s name is made up, everything else about it is completely true.

Click here for Content Warnings (contain spoilers!)

anti-black racism; concussion, urine, vomit, benign hallucinations, and other aftermath of injuries (no violence is shown).

Junior Year: Rogan

D is getting increasingly concerned about our not-relationship.

( This is the one place where we don't have to do what they expect us to do. )

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/43816.html

lb_lee

(Post title is a lie; only one of these programs is by a guy named Dan.)

Nowadays, it is expected that every program you need will come from a centralized depository, or “the app store,” guaranteed to be functional and trusted. But crusty garage salers we, we sometimes enjoy using third-party software gotten from websites that look like they haven’t had a style update in twenty years, run by a random guy named Dan. Blessings upon the Dans of the world, who have made our computing experience infinitely better! And what is a blog for if not to advertise these random programmers?

(All of these programs are for Windows. Linux had all these things either built in or easy to get.)

( wonderful mostly-free programs by randos sometimes named Dan )

EDIT: BuildBooklet by our friend Leaf. She made this so we could make print-order PDFs of our comics using DrRacket (a bigger project she worked on). Doesn't work on Windows XP, but it works on Linux and Windows 7 and later! It does exactly what it's supposed to do! A+ work helper that freed me from having to rely on Adobe!

So here’s to the Dans. Cheers! Do you have any “guy named Dan” programs that you swear by?

Current Mood: nerdy
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/43697.html

gossamer_musings

I have been thinking about personhood again lately. I believe it is no secret that it is a particular anxiety for me, this not being a person business, and I guard my sense of self perhaps over zealously. But I have been thinking.

I am not a singlet (someone who is the sole inhabitant of their interior universe and body) who shares a body with other singlets, am I? I am in constant dialogue with the others of my system, with my friends, with the books I read, with the world at large. And maybe I have been reluctant to accept how interconnected I am with the other people in my mind, because I fear that accepting and embracing that interconnectedness makes me less myself--makes other people less likely to accept me as myself.

Unfortunately, this is not an illegitimate fear. But "to oppose something is to maintain it". If all roads lead to Mishnory, "[I] must go somewhere else; [I] must have another goal; then [I] walk in a different road.” If I let the specter of unpersoning loom large over me--no matter how justified my belief is that many of the people I will ever speak to in my life would not believe I exist as myself--then I unperson myself. I maintain the thing I am afraid of. (The quotes are from The Left Hand of Darkness. I do not need to give you the name of the author--you know.)

So, if I want to exist as myself I must exist in the company of other people, inside and outside. I worry that even you do not see me as myself, only as another shadow in Julian's brain. Do not be fooled by the fact that he is our most frequent fronter, he himself is only one part of the larger ecosystem.

I struggle with depersonalization because of our predisposition to dissociation, because the wavering light of my most essential self is always on the verge of going out unless I kindle it continuously. I am vigilant because I must be. Because I also struggle with depersonalization as a result of living in a society that denies it to me. In her essay In Defense of De-persons, Johanna Hedva argues that self-mastery and self-defense are "the most legible and preferred forms of selfhood within a society built upon the ideology of possession" and that "the state itself is a device that simultaneously produces and perpetuates de-personhood while negating the possibility of self-control." She proposes instead a type of person-ness excluded from the universal definition of personhood, the de-persons who have not had the privilege of authoring their own experience of their life, who have been dispossessed and made person-less. Persons defined in relationship to each other, and their Other-ness.

What might I become if I let myself go undefined except by relationship?

The place to begin is by turning our backs on that throne, and toward an agency that doesn’t depend on enlightenment humanism, on the universal, on the self-determined subject of a rational mind, on the hegemonic figure who has power over himself and others. Such an agency can only function by constructing against its human, the monster, the monstrosity of the Other. If our kind of agency depends on anything, it will depend on recognizing and honouring that we are all of us disordered, messy, incorrigible, that we are in relationship to others and interdependent on each other, as much as we are each of us different—and that is fine.

Still, the idea of admitting that I am constituent and constituted by others feels like death. I am struggling with a sense of enclosure, I am struggling in the master's house.

I don't know where I am in my own mind. There is no locus of self, no stone for the lares of the field at each corner, no Janus to tell me where the threshold of I am, and where someone else begins.

Last week, Coriander sat outside and meditated, as she has been trying to do more frequently. I awakened during that meditation and became curious. We have been trying to work on visualization while we do this (and sometimes I can feel images foaming beneath the grey surface of my mind) and so I turned my attention to visualizing a teal circle (my colour) on a white background and my attention flipped into our mind's interior dimensions. I had flipped my gaze backwards, I had given myself a second head--"May You give, Father Janus, what we ask of You"--and I looked into a room with white-washed walls and wooden floors and sunlight coming from somewhere--though no doors and no windows were there--and I could see us all gathered in a circle, for this was the room where our thoughts come from, the room of our interior awareness where our bodiless bodies are allowed to think.

For Ursula LeGuin, there is a house of life that we inhabit "a high room made of wood / with sunlight slanted down the air to the empty floor" but that house has a door. Where is ours? Where is the doorkeeper?

There is a fallacy in me, somewhere, and a fear that keeps it company. But I have named myself after faraway places (a secret name), and I want to find a way out. I want to build a door.

PAX.

WORKS CITED.

1. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin

2. In Defense of De-Persons, Johanna Hedva

3. Martial Epigrammata 8.2.8

4. Some Mornings, from Finding My Elegy by Ursula K. LeGuin

Current Mood: thoughtful

wayward_explorer

I want to play beautiful music but I don't want to practice

I want to learn languages but I don't want to study

I want to adore nature but I don't want to go outside

I want to be friends with people IRL but I don't want to reach out to them

I want to conserve energy but I don't want to get off the computer

I want to be healthy and fit but I don't want to exercise

I want to get my neurodivergence diagnosed but I don't want to lock in and actually organize that

I want my space in the house to flourish but I don't want to put in the effort to organize it

I want to change my dietary habits but I don't want to navigate how to improve them and balance that with family needs

I want things to change but I don't want to make the effort

And I hate that

Why can't I just push through it?

Why is this so hard?

lb_lee

Rogan: I have an exciting thing to announce: my friend Kimball Anderson has started publicly releasing their comic, How To Rest! (Read on their website: https://outside-life.com/c/how-to-rest/ Buy ebooks from itch.io: https://earnestattempts.itch.io/how-to-rest )

( what it is and why you should read it )

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/43456.html

lb_lee

Rogan: This post is brought to you by Phosphor of

hungryghosts nerd-sniping me again. He knows my weaknesses and he asked, "someone in Otherconnect was wondering - when did the concept of system names become a thing?"

I plunged into my records and here's what I found! (With the gracious help of

erinptah!)

The first time I've found what we might call a "system name"--that is, a name for the whole kit and kaboodle of body tenants that isn't just the body's legal name and/or individual names--is in 1905, in Morton Prince's Dissociation of a Personality.

erinptah dug through their copy and quoted this bit:

With this hypothesis in mind, all three members of "the family," as Sally used to speak of them, were interrogated, in search of some accident or emotional shock which might have caused a split in consciousness. (213-214)

Sally was a personality of "Mrs. Beauchamp," not considered the "real one," and not treated well by Morton Prince, so I think it's important that he notes that it's specifically HER who used this name, "the family," for the group. And it was not a one-off! Over a decade later, German philosopher Schiller mentions not just "the Beauchamp family" (396) but also comments on the Doris Fischer case by calling them "the 'Doris' Family" (391). Clearly he found the idea useful!

After that, though, I have a big gap in my records. (System names probably exist; I just haven't been able to FIND any for easy reference.) Headmates are generally referred to by their individual names/psuedonyms or, for the whole of them, by their legal name or psuedonym--Billy Milligan, Sybil, Eve, etc. There is this sort of unwritten assumption that the legal name is the real person that encompasses everyone within. There isn't the group names we see so often now--the Flock, Zyfron System, Loony-Brain, etc. Where did these come from?

The first record I have (after Sally in 1905) is "Cafe D'Air" from the June 1986 issue of Speaking for Our Selves, #4. There are also people going by things like "S. Jeremy," "CW of Bonnie," "Bogie and Scarlet," the usual chaining together of names.

In 1987, the Troops for Truddi Chase broke ground in insisting on having their book, When Rabbit Howls attributed to them under that name, rather than just Truddi Chase. Thanks to S4OS (the first multi community record I have), it's clear that the Troops didn't originate this idea, but they certainly helped popularize it, and the idea of a group name became pretty common afterward--it's all over the place in the Many Voices newsletter, alt.support.dissociation, and books like The Flock, by Joan Frances Casey.

So as best we can tell, the idea of group names seems to be multi-originated, possibly to get away from the medical thing of just calling us by individual names or the "real person's" name, maybe around the '80s when multis actually started talking to each other and leaving records behind that I can actually find? I'll have to reread "B. C. A."'s "My Life as a Dissociated Personality" to see if any group name gets mentioned there.

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/43076.html

gossamer_musings

Lately, I have been thinking about access intimacy. This is a term coined by Mia Mingus, describing the intimacy you can build with someone who understands, respects, and anticipates your access needs, often without needing further explanation--and therefore someone whom you can trust with your safety. She describes this as a feeling she has most often found with other disabled people, but which can also be found with able-bodied people who make the effort to learn. Access intimacy can arise easily or with effort, spontaneously or over time.

I think it is a very relevant concept for people in our two communities. Both alterhumans and plurals go unknown and unrecognized all the time. When recognized, we're often treated as weird, crazy, confused, dangerous, or as if we are just playing pretend. Additionally, we deal with needs and necessities, instincts, desires, phantoms, and more that many people haven't even comprehended as possible. We may need accommodations other people don't, even when we aren't disabled due to our alterhumanity or plurality, because the world likewise is not built for us. I think a lot of people (myself included) deal with the fear that relationships with non alterhuman or non plural people simply aren't possible because they won't ever understand us, or put in the work to do so. We keep closeted for the same reasons. Access intimacy isn't a guarantee with other alterhuman and plural people, though, nor is it impossible with orthohumans and singlets.

When we don't know of this desire, when we are starved off attention and love, for accommodation and understanding, it becomes easy to overlook the ways in which access intimacy can be built, and easier to ignore what goes unacknowledged rather than bear the pain of starvation.

But, today, I am asking: what would access intimacy look like for you? What do you need that you are not getting? And whom can you approach with that need and with the hope that they will bend their will towards fulfilling it to whatever extent they can? What access needs does your alterhumanity/plurality create for you?

For me, access intimacy can look like the following:

Reading works by Ursula K. LeGuin and discussing them with me
Sending me things that sate my drive to explore the world
Being told I've helped someone understand themselves, someone else, or the world better
Asking questions about my personal mythology and pointing out things I might have missed or not considered
Initiating or participating in the ways my species and culture construct courtship and relationships

I am (and we are) lucky to have friends who put in work to recognize us. That's how I know of a lot of things that give me this sense of intimacy. If you don't, I wish for you that you may find them.

Current Mood: grateful

Reading

Navigation

So, what if I was a Xaela again?

Fictive Book Giveaway

Frustration

Multish Book Giveaway

The Only Post We Will Ever Make About Transmetropolitan

Shaking my fins!

IPT Journal Treasure Garage Sorting

Unexpected changes, otherwise called “well that’s a surprise!”

Rawlin's Hair, LB's Vessel, and Tiptoe the Unconcerned Cat

Ch. 3: Crazy Boys Make Rules

Lifesaving Programs By Guys Named Dan

A Letter to my Therapist on the Subject of Personhood.

Some conflicts

How To Rest, by Kimball Anderson

Quick'n'dirty History Regarding System Names

Access Intimacy in Alterhuman and Plural Contexts

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