This blog mentions NSFW on it! It will be tagged #kink or #nsfw. Do whatever you need to do to take care of you! Kink, D/s, and power exchange are a big part of our life, and we don't have many plural and alterhuman focused spaces to share about that. This is one such space. We go into deeper discussion on our side blog, @chameleons3-ad. There is no in depth discussion or fetish content on this blog.
We hope to talk about just whatever. It just so happens we've never had a shared tumblr.
Also wanna post art and writing. All will be tagged and have content notes.
Any and all syscourse sent our way will be ignored and/or thrown in the proverbial trash can!
We're Chameleons. Not The Chameleons, or Chameleons Collective or anything like that, just Chameleons. We're a three-creature system and we have a neighboring system that we don't interact with very much as of now.
Our "how long have you known you're plural" timeline is complicated. We have known that we three are Chameleons, and not just one person, for around two years. We've known about our neighbors for much longer, and, they went away for a while.
Words we prefer:
System members
System mates
Selves
Others
Plural
Words that are OK:
Alter
Brainmate
Words we dislike:
Headmate
Multiple
Links
Our website we need to update more
Our website we need to update more, but for adults
Our dreamwidth
Tags (in progress)
chameleons post: original posts, no reblogs from others
chameleons dot text: anything with our words on it, reblogs or originals
"I hate how American media will just make up a European nation rather than do any research, so I'm going to get back at them by writing a story set in a fake American state" like, do you have the slightest idea how much American media is set in a geographically impossible fictional small town located in no particular state and characterised entirely by some guy from Los Angeles' collection of half-remembered stereotypes about the American Midwest? They've already got the "lazily inventing fictional parts of America" bit locked down.
No, if you want to play the Uno reverse card on American media, what you need to do isn't to make up a fake state: you specifically need to wilfully misrepresent southern California.
pedestrians don't seem to realize how exhausting using a wheelchair is, both manual and powered. i had to wheel around a hospital today with several ramps i had to go up and down multiple times, and even with my smoov i ended up with shoulder and chest pain and deep exhaustion.
people look at wheelchair users and think "well you're sitting down all the time that doesn't take effort" no actually it does. pushing a manual chair takes a lot of fucking effort, especially without a power assist. repetitive stress injuries are a huge problem manual chair users encounter all the time. going up hills and ramps is so deeply fatiguing.
this doesn't just apply to manual chair users btw. power chair usage can also be really exhausting, especially for people with complex seating needs. going over bumps and cracks can trigger many symptoms such as spasticity, pressure sores are common, even just sitting upright can be exhausting for many people.
basically don't assume using a wheelchair takes 0 effort, it really really does. getting to "sit down all the time" doesn't mean it's easy.
im gonna need you able bodied motherfuckers to stop comparing the extreme pain and exhaustion that comes with using a manual chair to being in a car for 8 hours. not even remotely the same thing.
You guys are always like "being crushed by 10,000 tons of rock probably feels good as hell" or "being torn to pieces by hunting dogs would low key fix me" and I feel like those things would actually be unpleasant.
checking - parts of my diagnosed OCD that you might not know can be OCD
disclaimer: just because you experience some things on this list does not mean you have OCD (or any disorder related to these at all). these thoughts and behaviors can come from multiple sources and can also be completely normal in moderation. these thoughts cross the line into OCD when they are not better explained by something else and they cause dysfunction or distress in your life
checking looks like a lot of things, not just checking the stove. sometimes checking is small and minimally invasive but other times it's more intrusive. checking can look like:
checking texts/emails/etc. I sent over and over again to make sure I didn't send porn
rereading everything I send (or post online) over and over again to make sure I didn't accidentally say something terrible
replaying the day in my head to make sure I didn't do something awful
ruminating on conversations to make sure I didn't say something awful (and often ruminating on specific things I said and imagining worse ways I might have said them)
when I read about or hear about something bad that some people do, investigating my memory to make sure I didn't do it
resubmitting assignments online multiple times to double check that I attached the right file
tapping everything I carry with me to make sure I still have it
adding and removing email recipients to make sure I'm adding the right people
tapping my headlights on my car while driving the make sure they're still turned on
turning my headlights in my car off and on multiple times before leaving to make sure they work
one of the things that sets OCD apart from doing these things normally is the repetition. many people will feel randomly anxious that they sent porn in a text and they might check once. someone with an OCD compulsion (like me) will check 10,15, 20+ times because no check feels good enough. there is no satisfying the itch that compels you to check to make sure you weren't sending porn.
we've definitely posted about this before but if i see one more person act like the only forms of childhood trauma that exist are abuse from family or sexual assault i will actually start crying and it will be so so so loud everyone will hear it from every corner of the earth
THE SCHOOL SYSTEM !!! PEER ABUSE !!!!! ISOLATION !!!!!!!! RACISM !!! SEXISM !!!!!! MEDICAL ABUSE !!!!!! NONCONSENSUAL SURGERY !!!! POVERTY !!!! SO MUCH MORE !!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Natural disasters! I never see anyone talk about that one and as a result I spent years thinking that watching my hometown get destroyed on the news and subsequently having to uproot my entire life at the age of seven wasn't Real Trauma because there was no Abuser™
This disability pride month remember to include and not separate yourself from disabled people with higher support needs.
I need physical help for all self care and showering, I use adaptive cutlery or else I can’t feed myself, I’m also both bladder and bowel incontinent and will be wearing adult pull ups soon.
No I’m not babyish or gross for needing physical help, I have ataxia spastic triplegia and left sided weakness, this makes fine motor skills very difficult and also makes it so my bladder and bowel muscles are weakened.
If you also have higher needs just know you aren’t alone🫂
part of being an adult is figuring out what eveyone else's definition of "going crazy" is. to you it is not sleeping for 60 hours, writing 80k words in one sitting and expiriencing enough anxiety to kill a horse. to beth from accounting its buying a ticket to Columbus, Ohio. and to your friend its consuming so much ketamine you lose all of your posessions and wake up with five broken bones in a ditch somewhere and then proceeding to do it again the next day. to your other friend its writing a letter to their favourite actress about how much they appreciate her work. to your neighbour its laughing loudly in a grocery store whilst in pajamas. maya from uni hears the voice of her dead father making jokes with no punchlines and she considers that to be quite normal - to her going crazy would be hearing her husband instead. your downstairs neighbour will take night walks naked sometimes and claim there is nothing weird about him. there are literally no rules to life and all meaning is in the eye of the beholder.
If you experience any changes in body control (switching, possession, etc.), then establish some form of consistent, asynchronous external communication with your system. External communication has a major benefit: you can still talk to each other across switches (asynchronously) even if the inside of your mind is a mess.
You might set up a journal, whiteboard, calendar, a "single user, multi-account" app like Mytter or Antar, sticky notes, etc. Anything goes as long as your system knows to check it occasionally (or at the least, in an emergency).
We recommend choosing an analog method for your fallback communication method if possible, as a power outage could take out a lot of digital methods. A spur-of-the-moment piece of paper left on a table is better than nothing, but it's less likely to work than a pocket notebook or bulletin board that every system member knows to use for communication if needed. You can always add an app or program once everyone knows where to go for your analog fallback.
Discuss how you want to treat each other. Keep it loose and informal for now- don't make any absolute Laws just yet. Think of it more like the quick agreements that roommates make with each other for practical reasons: "I'll do the dishes if you do the laundry".
A few classics: "try not to die, don't kill anyone else, don't get any tattoos as an impulse decision, and don't throw out things that don't belong to you."
Don't force agreements on anyone. If someone disagrees, then stop and discuss their concerns to find a better agreement. See: Consensus Decision Making.
Map your system, if it feels right. This can help you learn about each other, but it can also be soothing to feel like you have some understanding of who's in your head when you're being flooded with new system members.
Again, keep it simple. What do you actually need to know? What would help you in a practical sense? Start there, then branch out if you'd like to get to know each other better.
Consider making a simple guide to your life. If someone had to handle a day in your life with little to no prior knowledge of it, then what would they need to know?
Where should they check to see if you have any appointments? Are they responsible for feeding any pets? Where can they find money if they need it, and how do they know how much to spend? Do you have a job, and do they need to work it? Etc.
Hopefully you never need this guide, but it's a lifesaver for any unexpectedly amnesiac system members.
Focus on building bridges and trust. Get to know the folks in your head. Find ways to talk and just get to know them. Listen as much as you talk, if not more.
Learn to lean on each other for support, if you can. Trust is one of the most valuable things that you can have in a system. Trust gets you through a lot of tough situations. Give your system members every reason to trust you, and try to learn to trust them in turn.
If someone is hostile, then ask what's driving the hostility. Do they feel under-represented in your life? Does peace make them feel unsafe because they don't know where the threats are? Are they bored, scared, frustrated, or routinely unhappy?
What can you do to support them? What do they need to feel comfortable?
Don't worry about knowing everything. You're just figuring this out- give yourselves some grace for not knowing as much as everyone else seems to. (Besides, they know less than you think. I've yet to meet a system without a single mystery left in it, including folks who've known for decades, and many systems are forever figuring things out in one way or another.)
Ask for information when you need it and let your system explain itself over time; let your system set the pace. You'll get better information that way, and your system will learn that they can trust you to respect them when they say "no, don't touch that yet."
Screw plural community labels for now. Seriously. Screw figuring out origins or consciousness or whatever the linguistic dividing line of the month is. Don't worry about it. These words come and go. Get to know yourselves first.
Why am I suggesting this? Community labels will still be there when you've figured out how to work with each other in a practical sense, and your stronger understanding of each other will make it much easier to find whatever words you wind up needing. Hunting for words now is likely to get you stuck trying to cram a bunch of shifting unknowns into someone else's categorization system, and it might cloud your situation more than it clears it.
Given that you're still settling into the idea of sharing a head at all, getting into the nitty-gritty of labels is probably going to be less helpful than figuring out how to handle doubt and denial issues (or getting communication going, or learning to manage switching, or...), hence the recommendation not to worry about it.
That said: do use labels if you need them. Just remember that labels are tools. Don't let the tools use you.
Also, screw the discourse. If you listen to any one item on this list, make it this one.
Plural community discourse tends to be a little bit rancid in the "debating whether your experiences exist meaningfully in our spaces" way, and it will fuck you up as a new system. Get past the worst of your denial or doubt issues first to avoid worsening the "oh my god, am I faking without knowing it" hell brainworms. Please. I am actually begging you. Avoid the discourse until you've dealt with your own existential doubts.
None of these things are obligations, nor is there any rush to do them. It's just a cluster of things that I tend to suggest to newly discovered systems, and I realized that I don't think we've actually rattled these off on this blog yet.
being a trans guy is great because you get all the negative effects of being a woman in a patriarchial society and all the negative effects of being a man in a patriarchal society
The Following is intended to be commiseration with our shared suffering and not derailing.
being a trans gal is great because you get all the negative effects of being a woman in a patriarchal society and all the negative effects of being a man in a patriarchal society
also absolutely not intended to derail and just to be like “fuck this shit sucks and I hate that u guys have to deal with it too”
being nonbinaryis great because you get all the negative effects of being a woman in a patriarchal society and all the negative effects of being a man in a patriarchal society
Got nice video of a nerodia looking for tasty crayfish over at our usual fishing spot. He was very polite when he realized we were there. Just kinda popped his head up and chilled.
