Music: Abel Selaocoe, Portico Quartet, Aurora, Of Monsters and Men, The Crane Wives
Video games: Pyre (Supergiant Games), Minecraft, Fallen London, Sky: Children of the Light, Disco Elysium
Birds: especially herons, cranes, and albatrosses
Stories: about grief, yearning, and the tragedy of being unknowable even to oneself.
And, of course, tea!
Profile photo credit: Ryan Everett on Unsplash.
My headmate's account is @slightly-sigilant, and it's also the main blog for our account. Likes and follows will come from there! My system as a whole also has a website, if you're curious about us.
I don't have a DNI; I block as I see fit. I don't appreciate the petty bickering that the internet calls "discourse," so please don't involve me in it. Thank you!
thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.
"We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or to hate, to see or to be blind. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them, and then to become the storyteller."
was outside earlier and a bird Came Up, squatted down, fluttered it’s wings at me and opened its mouth like a hatchling begging for food (it was a grown female) so I went and checked the seed cube in the feeder and the thing was completely covered in mold. this is one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened to me. how did she know im the one in charge of the birdseed. How Did She Know To Pantomime Hunger At Me. Hello.
i have spent my afternoon confusedly getting dressed, driving to the store, purchasing a new seed block, driving home, washing the cage, and getting the feeder set back up. i don’t take this much care for my Own nutrition. ive been bullied into a grocery store run by a tufted titmouse. i feel so loved
The things we do in the world matter. Kindness matters. A small kindness fed this bird, and that matters very much to that bird.
To quote Brennan Lee Mulligan: “In the same way your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings, are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don’t, then it doesn’t.”
Yes, they are! And they're always watching. Always.
You may think that because birds are small and round and oh-so-cute, that they aren't a threat. Wrong! Their fluffy feathers, their dainty beaks, their seemingly gormless eyes... all of it is a deception. All of it is a ruse behind which they hide the greatest conspiracy of our time.
Yes: conspiracy!
[An inline image of a warning sign showing a cartoon seagull divebombing a cartoon person holding ice cream]
(Figure 1: Would an innocent creature do THIS???)
You see, dear reader, I have been a bird for over twenty years. I have borne witness to aviankind's [the text ends here, as it's the end of the page]
My hobby is cataloguing the various Wrong ways that characters in games hold a cello.
(To be clear, this is in good fun. I'm aware of how hard it can be to rig and animate characters, especially when they're interacting with objects!)
Both pictures: It is possible to play a cello standing up - one example is Nubia's performance in the music video for Never-Ending Winter. But you certainly can't do it like that. This Reddit thread delves into the hows, but to put it simply: you'll need either a strap or something to prop the endpin upon.
In addition, I think that the cello must be angled so that the instrument leans into you, not away from you. Fingering becomes a nightmare, otherwise. (For the curious, I've discussed the physics of the left hand in this post.)
Heartopia (at left): The bow clips through the strings. That's the most obvious detail. What troubles me more, though, is that bow hold. That's not where the frog is! For that matter, that's not how you hold any object, unless your fingers are inhumanly long.
Sky: Children of the Light (at right): Sometimes, you'll bow near the fingerboard for a more subdued sound. I don't think that was done on purpose here, though. Bow hold is... not quite there, but more plausible than Heartopia's, at least.
But that left hand. That left hand. That cello is in freefall. An extremely expensive disaster is imminent. I hope you know a good luthier, sky child. I hope you have plenty of candles saved up.
(A mirror of a post that I made first on Reddit, and then to our website.)
In a discussion about system member roles, it was brought up that much of the history around roles has been buried. There is no reference for who came up with the concept of roles or where the older roles like "protector" originated. My system is in contact with LB Lee, who are an older system with a great dedication to researching and documenting plural history. We reached out to them to ask if they had any knowledge regarding the origins of system roles, and they wrote a post about their findings.
The post itself is extremely well-cited: it delves through medical texts and biographies from as far back as the 1970s. It is worth your time if you have an interest in plural history. But I think the most important takeaways come from these paragraphs:
[...]of all these other terms, all of them come from medical contexts. If they aren't outright, obviously created by therapists themselves (Ralph Allison, Cornelia Wilbur), they're cited in books that they were involved in--like Sybil or the Minds of Billy Milligan. These are terms created by medical personnel to compartmentalize and organize headmates like a stamp collection... and often deny us the right to self-determine or grow. There's an icky historical context there; there's a reason these terms were considered unfashionable tools of the oppressor when we came on the scene in 2007!
These therapists are not little tin gods you should worship. There's a reason Allison, Ross, and Wilbur have controversies about them! [...]
To be clear, I am not sharing this to shame systems for using roles. Nor am I sharing this to claim that roles are for trauma-formed systems only and that it is appropriation for other systems to have roles. Please do not use this post as grounds to start yet another exclusionary slapfight.
What I do want us, as a community, to do instead:
(continued under cut)
We should question the assumption that system member roles are an innate part of plurality, especially when it comes to systems who do not fit within medical models. If we are to be a truly inclusive community, then we must refrain from making assumptions about how a "normal" system works.
We should think carefully about how we are using roles. Roles, if they are used, should be descriptive, not prescriptive. It is okay for a role to be important to you, but it is also important to recognize when it is a vehicle for unkind expectations. It should not be the end-all, be-all of your identity. To every system member out there: you, individually, deserve to exist without having to justify your existence with a role.
In general, we should be aware of which terms and assumptions come from clinical contexts, think carefully about the contexts in which they arose, and avoid applying them by default to all systems. Again, I do not mean this in an exclusionary sense; I am not making an argument that we should divide these things into "all systems allowed" and "trauma-formed systems only." Rather, I am calling upon us to remember that, while it is true that people benefit from competent psychiatric care, it is also true that psychiatry is not infallible. Both on the institutional level and on the level of individual doctors, it is as vulnerable to the prejudices of greater society as other professions are. Many marginalized communities had to fight to be treated with respect by psychiatry - and even now, abusive forms of "therapy" persist, diagnoses are used to minimize the trauma of people of color, and official publications talk about disabled people as less-than. The plural community is no exception to the struggle. We should not uncritically adopt psychiatry's assumptions about us. We should not center singlet outsiders in discussions of our lived experiences, our validity, our lives.
What does this look like? Many things: this is a mindset, not a set of rules. But, if it helps to have examples...
When meeting new systems, we can refrain from asking them what roles their members have. Likewise, if we ourselves have roles, we can choose whether to disclose them or to keep them private.
If we learn that someone has a certain role, we can refrain from making assumptions about them based upon the role. We can ask them what the role means to them if we have questions.
If applicable, we can look at the roles that are present in our own systems, and ask: "Are any of these stifling our individual growth? Does this role bring the member who holds it joy, grief, or both?"
We can refrain from assigning roles to other members, and instead allow them to choose their role. (Including no role at all, if that's their choice!) We can also give them time and space to explore who they are before choosing a role, and make it clear that it is always okay to put down a role, and that they will be loved and valued nonetheless.
If we do not feel that roles are working for us, we can try living without them to see if having no roles works better.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If any of you are feeling stuck because of your roles, I hope that it inspires you to find a new way forward.
truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.
