#<- for trigger warning

[cosmossystem]

Today is our system discovery day!!!! and like every year I'm reflecting on it.

Every year gets easier in some regards and harder in others. this past year our system has only grown by one member (a record low), but our experiences have wildly shifted in ways we've never gone through before.

for instance, whereas we used to all be fairly distinct from each other, now it seems like the slightest thing can trigger a switch. i believe this was represented by the walls we initially put up in headspace. like crush explained, we used to have distinct rooms for every member or group, tons of areas to go for activities… but now we only have a handful of those. I live with [counts on fingers] 11 other members in a house, and that house is connected to two other members' house as well. the barriers between me and them are very thin.

we used to Know when we got new members. it used to be obvious. now it seems a lot more difficult? like a few weeks ago we thought we had a new guy, but couldn't communicate with him, and now he seems to be basically gone. i know i have a median subsystem but trying to communicate with them isn't easy and i don't even know how many members i have anymore.

but, in terms of improvements, our smaller size means we get to know each other a lot better. One of our other members has started being more active again after i thought she was gone. and i'm glad!!! i've missed her so much and i love having her around. a few of our alters who typically stay further towards the back have started chatting again, and i'm glad about that too. i hope to get to know them better.

our communication has… not necessarily improved or gotten worse, sort of just changed. whereas we used to have sort of an internal "movie" where everyone would move and talk, and it felt more cohesive, we now have like an internal discord server where everyone chats and instead of cohesive visuals we just share memes.

and these days we share feelings more than ever. more bouts of speech loss means more difficulty talking, so instead we've learned to communicate through feelings instead. if one of us is sad, everyone knows.

mostly, like every year, i feel for the alters & members who aren't around anymore. It never gets easier. we lost several members in this past year--too many to count, actually. It's no one's fault, but we've been going through a lot of stress and trauma so i imagine it has to do with that.

one of the people we lost was my ex. i held a grudge over him leaving me at first but now i'm just resentful that our last conversation ended so bitterly and i never got to say goodbye. we were friends. we were headmates. how do you hold a funeral for that?

no one ever really talks about headmate death, but it is honestly traumatizing. at times I wish we experienced dormancy like others do. i can count on one hand the amount of times we've had a dormant member come back (including me) and most of the time it's debatable if they're even the same person. I'm not sure I'M even the same me. we all tend to share collective memories, and individual memories are not easy to trigger. So it's not reliable, to say the least, and that likely means i will never see any of them again.

i know i should be more upset-- and, i am, don't get me wrong. i miss all of them. But for us, we've learned to cope by having the knowledge that even though they're "gone", they aren't really gone. they just get absorbed back into our brain-network and someday they'll return, in the form of thoughts or memories or feelings. their memories aren't gone. their experiences aren't gone. they just become one with all of us again, kinda like a plant. (That mentality doesn't make it any better, mind you. just a little less depressing.)

this next year is going to be possibly the biggest one ever. new places, new people, new problems, everything. it might suck. in fact, it probably will. I don't know how it will go but i know we'll still be around, and all I can do is hope that we cope fine.

and also while i'm here writing this post i wanna thank the plural community. this is our 8th year post-discovery, and we returned this year to the community after six years away from it, and while it has some caveats i'm glad i got to see and meet many cool people to remind me that we aren't alone in all this. it's been fascinating to see how the community has grown in that time!

Anyway. long post over. happy 8th to us :] i'm gonna go have some cake.

-cass 💙

[feefal]

Viral infection Miku

[arrimorr]

The Knight is a bit weird under his armor. I would say that's it's not even an armor but a chitinous shell

[saddi3grl]

[kensatou]

"i would know her by reformed body alone... i would know her in death"

also... there's official art

[tofixtheshadows]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

[typona]

I couldn't get this scene out of my head after reading the book!

[wanderingibon]

anya deserved so much better

[emotionaleating]

pls don’t flirt with me i want to be nonchalant so bad but i unfortunately crave connection so intensely that i will give you my entire soul and forgive you over and over until i’ve lost myself completely and feel like i’m drowning

[drsonnet]

The last words of Aaron Bushnell before he set fire to himself outside the Israeli embassy in Washington - Free Palestine.

The original scene is true: capture photo from video shows #AaronBushnell sets fire while a policeman is pointing a gun at his burning body!! Cop went for gun instead of an extinguisher.

DrSonnet — #CNN #BBC #SKY #NYT,.... SPEAK UP. It's 2024, not... (tumblr.com)

“I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all…Free Palestine.” -Aaron Bushnell

"This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal"

-Aaron Bushnell

Shortly before his final act in this world, Bushnell posted the following message on #Facebook: "Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' "The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."

RIP Aaron Bushnell.. He decided to be a free man and not to be complicit in #GazaGenocide.. His last words were (Free #Palestine).

Photo credit: SOURCE: Krime Krime (@krime_1) / X (twitter.com)

#RIPAaronBushnell #AaronBushnell

#Gaza #freePalestine #PalestineLivesMatter

[nova1224]

Saw this on X/Twitter never related more in my life 💀

[kyri45]

Will Wukong have a huge panic™ because he thinks MK will never see him the same ever again?

Someone asked for hand holding so I gotta give you the most fluffiest elements in the most angstier of contexts.

Shadowpeach Bio Parent AU (PREV / FIRST / NEXT )

Personal comments under the cut (mentions of past self harm)

Around 3 years ago I had some anxiety issues, one of the main things that I thought it wasn't self harm for so long was the fact that when something that involved other people went wrong because of a choice of mine (even just minor inconveniences) the pain of guilt was so strong that to turn it down I had to physically sting my skin with my nails. (I play guitar, so I always have a hand with longer nails to play arpeggio). Never it went to the point that it would bleed, but bc of that I thought It was no problem. Thanks to my therapist I know that just because it wasn't the "typical" self harm doesn't mean it wasn't a serious issue.

All of this to say that I might be projecting a little. And honestly I can't even imagine how terrible Wukong might feel everytime the guilt comes back to him...

[greenhairedfreakglobal]

if nicocado avocado can do it, so can i

[saddi3grl]

[lostintheclouds-stuff]

My body is a circus and these are my clowns <3

[fuck-customers]

So I was doing this training module that goes over the employee handbook and got walloped by this sentence:

I'm pretty sure there's a set order to these things.