#making myself not exist. basically. anyway

[broke-on-books]

*sigh.* okay I know this post has a lot of notes so this has likely been said many times before (so sorry) but from what I can see from the picture, this is actually NOT a Spanish (Christian kingdoms of Spain) fortress! Kind of. At least not in the way described in the post. Let me explain.

Now I'm not Spanish myself, I just study this stuff, but I've spent a decent amount of time visiting places like the one in this photo (twice. I've been there.) and studying history and architecture from this period so this claim immediately threw up a bunch of red flags for me. Because uhhhh. Muslims clearly built this fortress.

And when I say "this fortress" I'm referring to the Alhambra. Yeah, this Alhambra.

Ok so basically while I can't confirm 100% this is the Alhambra because none of the angles on the digital tour or in my own photos show that specific angle (notably, the broken wall) I can say with near certainty that he's at the Alhambra. Look at the photo again:

You can see similar features in the 2nd photo (an image I captured of the Alhambra this summer!) The strange point [location 1] in the background of our picture (NOT typical of Moorish architecture) would then be part of the Palace of Carlos V (King of Spain), where we can see the architecture style is markedly different.

& don't play the fortress vs. palace game with me! While our guy above is clearly standing somewhere in the Alcazaba (fortress portion, on the right), the oldest portion of the site, we can see similar buildings below Carlos V's palace, those being the palaces of the Nasrid dynasty, the series of Muslim rulers who were defeated when Ferdinand and Isabel took Grenada in 1492, ending the reconquista and taking the Alhambra as their own seat of power.

Basically the joke here (while funny!!) Isn't accurate because his claim that the Spanish built this fortress is incorrect bc even if it wasn't the Alhambra (which it totally is) it means that the Spanish would had to have built a fortress specifically following the styles and architecture of their enemy sometime during the centuries of reconquista instead of just. taking over a muslim-built fortress and adding a few of their own bits and pieces (maybe). Which like they're known for doing.

Like there are some historically Christian-built buildings that exist in imitation of Muslim architectural styles that do exist in Spain - aka the Mudéjar art style (ex: Pedro I's Palace in the Alcázar of Sevilla for one) but you wouldn't see that with a fortress??? Idk this got long but it's a strange claim that any Christian king would have built this, especially if it is (it is) the Alhambra which is like very famously and very clearly Islamic site. Like in the palaces they have Quran verses engraved into the walls and everything. Like that's literally what it's known for?? Also the founding purpose wouldnt be to "keep the Muslims out" it would just be to keep other ppl out. Bc thats what a fortress is for. Also Muslims built it.

TLDR; the joke is funny but does not work historically with the location pictured (where it makes no sense), which was used for essentially the exact opposite purpose described in the post. So anyways love the spirit but he would have made more sense going for a "reverse reconquista" joke instead

[eversionimpulse]

How We Learned to Front on Command (and maybe you can too!)

a post by Naomi (she/her) about how we use voice and body language to control who's fronting

-

When we first realized that we were plural, back in 2014, we had no control whatsoever over who was fronting. There was no way of passing the baton back and forth, not that either of the alters who existed at that time would have wanted to. We didn’t have amnesia about each others’ experiences, but we essentially lived separate lives that intersected with each other at random. One alter would front for a long time, and then a random circumstance in our life would force the other one to the front, who would front until she was forced out. Things continued like this for a while. One of the alters was much more active than the other anyways.

Around 2018, we first started trying to actively pass fronting back and forth. We would do it by thinking very hard at each other, by getting into situations the other would want to front in, or occasionally by trying what was basically a summoning ritual. The first method was unreliable, the second method was a lot of work, and the third method took too much time and too much obviously weird behavior to be used in most social situations. Things continued like this for a while, too, until life circumstances led one of those two alters to suppress the other entirely for a couple years.

In 2020, our relationship to plurality changed quite a bit. The temporary singlet we had become realized she was miserable that way, and tried to mentally reach out to where the other alter had once been. In response, I began to exist. I’m not the alter she was reaching out to (who was at that point definitively gone), but I had a lot of her traits, especially at first. It was a messy awakening, and again we mostly switched based on circumstances or with considerable mental effort. However, after a while, I noticed my mannerisms starting to become noticeably my own. This is where we had a bit of a breakthrough.

I had the thought that I liked being different, and that it would be nice to assign mannerisms more strongly to each of us: voices and body language, mainly. So I set about deciding what kind of voice I’d like to have, and she decided what kind she’d like to have. I developed a low, languid, fry-heavy style of speech with a lot of intonation to it. She spoke as fast as she could think, with lots of vocal pauses and a more casual, breezy tone. I caught myself making poised and calculated movements, hip-driven and limp-wristed. She lurched through her day a little off-balance, letting her full strength fall where it may. One day, she tried to imitate the way I moved, only to discover that after a second or two, it was no longer her imitating, but me fronting. That’s how we figured it out.

So, to stop being coy about it, here’s the idea: by deliberately attaching different vocal and physical (and typing) mannerisms to different alters, by noticing the differences between us and cultivating or exaggerating them, we’ve trained ourselves to front on command, and I think that perhaps you can too. The way I see it, we’ve managed to anchor mannerisms so firmly into our individual personalities that to perform the mannerisms of an alter is to be that alter. Except in situations where one of us is really having a hard time fronting (or isn’t willing to), imitating another alter will bring that alter to the front.

You can think about it like an actor getting into character, which brings me to the actual technical advice. My number one piece of advice is to develop ways of moving or speaking that, at least to you, make each of your alters really feel like themselves. At first this will feel like clumsy exaggeration, and probably like you're just pretending, but once you get a feel for it you’ll be able to settle into something more natural. Whichever behaviors or vocal tones you want to use as a switching trigger should be ones that are fairly distinct to each alter and not shared by others. If you don’t have those, then make them up! Try out different characteristic voices and behaviors until each of your alters finds at least one thing that makes them feel like themselves.

It can really help in this case to use specific anchor phrases, usually paired with a gesture. I’ll run through our anchors here as an example. The anchor we use to bring Cass to the front is to sigh, slouch our shoulders, and wince out “sure” in the sort of breathy growl he tends to speak in. For Jules, we perk our head up as if noticing something, take a deep breath, and let out a higher-pitched, friendly “yeah!” on the exhale as if we’ve been asked for a favor. For me, we roll our head back and forth, cracking our neck, then shake the tension out of our upper body, find a comfortable pose with our shoulders back, and go “hmmm” nice and deep. Elise is new as of writing this, but for now it seems like we can get it to front by ceasing to try to make any facial expression at all, looking directly at a (real or imagined) conversation partner, and giving a monotone “hello.” And for Marceline, we tuck our elbows in tight to our sides, press our knees together, and say “ok” in her distinctively nasal voice. We don’t always do this full routine in order to switch, but it’s the guaranteed version we rely on if we can’t do it either by thinking at each other or with just vocal tone. Yours don’t have to look exactly like this either. You could use smaller or larger gestures than we do, or you could use full sentences as anchors. Ours are one word because they’re essentially out-loud responses to having been silently asked to front. 

So, why learn to do this? I’m sure the idea of switching on demand, for readers who can’t already do it, probably sounds pretty appealing. But just to spell it out: this helps us make sure that in situations where one alter feels safer than another, or where one alter’s skills are more valuable than another, we get to decide who is there and experiencing that situation. It lets me front in situations where we need to be confident and assertive, it lets Marceline front when we’re in pain and need to avoid using up our limited energy, it lets Cass make small talk with strangers in public. It can also help to make sure than an alter who is getting distressed can switch out and cool off instead of having a meltdown. But it also has some unexpected benefits- developing distinctive voices and mannerisms on purpose can keep us from bleeding into each other or merging at times when the boundaries between us are getting porous. It also means that people we trust enough that they’ve spent time with all of us tend to eventually start recognizing who’s fronting without having to be told, which is a tremendously affirming feeling once it starts happening. Not only is it a useful tool, but it also makes us feel more like our own people. The cooperative aspect of this technique has made it easier for us to remember that we’re a team, too. It’s a nice feeling.

One question remains: when doesn’t this work? For us, it tends to be less effective when the alter being imitated is in a particularly unstable state, either emotionally or in terms of identity. We can also fall out of practice with it if we don’t use it openly for a while due to social isolation, even if it’s just relative isolation from people around whom we feel safe being openly plural. It comes back with practice, though. For others, we’re not sure how possible this technique is for systems who have significant amnesia between alters. I suspect it may also be less effective for systems who tend to go very long stretches of time without switching. Plurality is so varied and experiences with it so individualized (it is, after all, your life) that it’s really hard to say how well what works for us will work for others. If you try it out, though (or if you already do something like this), I’d love to hear about it! Tell me how well it works, how it feels, what your most exciting discoveries have been. This especially extends to systems whose experience of plurality differs dramatically from ours (number of alters, degree of separation, degree of amnesia). I’d love to know if systems unlike ours can use something like this, or if not, what it was like to try anyways.

[robinsnest2111]

if I had a place of my own again you bet I will bombard all the people I love with requests and offers to come over and hang out. Cook, bake, watch movies or shows together, have sleepovers if the work schedules align, arts n crafts while sharing space, cuddle and nap piles if the fancy strikes. the whole 9 yards.

sucks that I can't do that rn...

[crookedfivefingers]

3.13 | ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀꜱᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʟᴏʀᴅꜱ

link to the post I accidentally wound up prattling endlessly about in the tags 💀

[cadaverskey]

if i'm being entirely honest i find the term "spiritual psychosis" annoying at best. it makes me feel as though i, as someone with schizoaffective disorder, need to work extra hard to "prove" my spiritual beliefs are valid.

here's the thing. my spirituality has always been and will always be flavored and colored by being schizoaffective. even when i was an atheist i could not untangle the two. there's never going to be a way for me to know where the line is drawn between my spiritualism and my psychosis. for example i will probably never shake the idea that i died and was resurrected, and that event holds SIGNIFICANT spiritual meaning for me, even on antipsychotics, even when i can recognize that yes, it's probably the remains of a delusion.

so please tell me, why is it anyone else's business if i incorporate that into my religious practices? it harms no one and gives me one more reason to rejoice. if it started causing actual problems, putting me in danger, causing me distress, bringing along disorganized thinking or anything of the sort, that's when it would be time for me to get help. but really and truly i would not want random people im not close with to tell me to get that help, especially if their only clues into my mental state come from my spiritual practices. i am not a dog to be taken to the vet. sometimes people are psychotic and we exist in your communities and we have religious beliefs and you have GOT to suck it up and allow space for us, however our conditions affect us and our practices.

it's also just. buries my face in my hands. you can just say psychosis, you don't need a special term for it. again it just makes me feel like i'm being singled out and not being taken seriously because there's a long LONG history of psychotic/schizospec people having our mental illnesses used as reason to disregard us. please just mind your business.

[hwangyeddeongie]

it gets to a point.

[californiaquail]

anyone else feeling fundamentally incapable of adjusting to society. also just discovered there's a 30 tag limit which i can't believe i've never hit before

[eschynite]

Maybe I'm projecting and being hopeful but I mentioned to M that I don't even get to shit by myself in peace lmao and I feel like something clicked for him. Bc I was like hey, at least you get private bathroom breaks at work (noncombative). And since then he's been a lot more acquiescent when I ask if I can nap and stuff

[sonknuxadow]

okay sorry for having opinions on sonic shipping but . the more popular a ship is the more likely i am to be annoyed by it so its probably for the best that my favorite ship is one of the not as popular ones . but also the way sonknux gets talked about (or not talked about) as a result of it being less popular drives me up the wall . what do you mean it doesnt make sense. hes literally not staring at the moon and thinking about him💔

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

hmdnfbt something something 🦾

🦾 = A disability headcanon

Since you didn't specify a character I'm just gonna go through a handful just as they come to mind while I type

Grian and Tango are very ADHD to me, because I like inflicting pieces of myself onto fictional characters <3

Mumbo is also probably neurodivergent, I'm leaning autistic but I'm not autistic myself so I am also kinda biased towards ADHD because it's what I'm familiar with. Definitely anxiety tho

And side mention to my avian!Mumbo HC8 AU (where he gets wings from the Soul Juicer Incident) - I could see him having some sort of disability-ish thing going on with his wings never growing in fully, and instead staying small and unable to fly, if that counts as a disability given that he wasn't even born supposed to have wings?? But he would need some adjustments to any sort of elytra if he wants to ever fly again, given the wings being in the way, so I think that counts

Straying into DSMP, I also had an old headcanon for cRanboo using a wheelchair or being an ambulatory wheelchair/cane user, but never got to flesh that out to much. They are definitely ADHD to me too (because projecting again). And honestly I effectively headcanon them as immune compromised too tbh, with how bad I imagine their immune system to be. cRanboo gets sick constantly to me

cTechno also is definitely at least ADHD (but that's just canon) and maybe some sort of chronic pain or migraines from his execution and/or other injuries he's sustained over his life

And I also like the headcanons about cTubbo being deaf in one ear and/or blind in one eye, and having chronic pain from his execution

(ask game here)

[wild-at-mind]

If you ever see me becoming one of those transmisandry people, please fucking call me out immediately.

[tvrningout-a]

i'm creating a whole frikkin fantasy world with a conflict and everything, lord help me

[kutyaharapas]

im only bearable when im drunk. its only bearable when im not sober

[charlottedabookworm]

#29 - Contravention

feat Rihnn

is this any good? no. does my brain like this prompt? no. am i running on sheer spite to just finish this month? yes

"I'm so sorry," the stranger in front of xem says, their hands on their child's shoulders, shushing them gently as they cry, red-faced.

Rihnn picks xemself up off of the ground gingerly, leaning against xir staff. "It was an accident," xe says and xir lips twitch in an attempt at a smile. "Here, I am a healer, let me help," xe tells them, gesturing at the child, pretending that the words are not ash on xir tongue.

The parent smiles at xem, desperately grateful, as xir hands flicker with aether that dances along the child's skin, soothing aches and closing scrapes.

The child, wide-eyed, laughs as if they are being tickled, their tears forgotten.

"Thank you," their parent says and they shift, as if to say more and-

"Good day," xe says with a bow of xir head and xe runs. Xe runs away as much as xir leg will allow, leaning heavily on xir cane and the bile the rises in xir throat is not only because of the fire that burns in xir thigh.

It is only when xe is far enough away from the village that xe stops.

Xe stops and xe collapses against a tree and xe wants to scream. Xir throat is tight and xir hands are shaking and somewhere in the village, Ianna Carver and the child she named for a brother she doesn't remember carry on with their lives and-

"We had a deal, Rob," Rihnn whispers. Xir eyes prickle painfully. "I was supposed to bring you home to them."

It should have been xem...

[skitskatdacat63]

Having a mental breakdown over the video of seb and mark's Singapore date... 🫠

[waytootiredstudent]

.... I once more have a John Oliver video for the topic:

It's not bananas but it does highlight the same principal problem - Low prices keep people in poverty and the fact that a few companies buy a big part of the market means they have a lot of control over those prices.

There is a part that states pretty frankly that here is a bottleneck in the production chain: a lot of people farm cocoa beans, a lot of people buy chocolate, but only very few companies buy and basically control the cocoa bean market.

The video is about chocolate and cocoa beans, but the underlying problem(s) can very easily also be applied to other things than cocoa beans.

I'm asking this genuinely, as a 19 yo with no education in economics and a pretty surface level understanding of socialism: can you explain the whole Bananas discourse in a way someone like me might understand? In my understanding it's just "This is just a product we can give up to create better worker conditions and that's fine" but apparently that's not the full picture?

alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we're all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it's not really about bananas per so--the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.

so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: 'oh, these ridiculous communists think it's imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally'. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!'.

there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas'. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn't really 'have' them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals--when they're not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn't you know it, it's those intervening middleman steps--export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.

when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.

why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there's the fact that if they didn't, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!

this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy' a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas' -- honduras only 'has a lot of bananas' because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it's long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.

so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:

the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimes murdered

the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate

shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paid at all or forced to pay to work (!)

bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they're produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.

so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it's a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not "if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys", but rather, "if there's a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that".

(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?' reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)

and again, let's note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it's not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don't care and neither does anyone else. it's about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!

tldr: it is not imperialism when produce go on boat but it is imperialism when produce grown for dirt cheap by underpaid workers in a country with a devalued currency is then bought and exported and sold by usamerican companies creating huge amounts of economic value of which the nation in which the banana was grown, let alone the people who actually fucking grew it, don't see a cent -- and this is the engine behind the cheap, available-every-day-all-year-everywhere presence of bananas in the usa (and other places!)