Here’s some positivity for systems who split easily!

Not all systems function in the same way. Many systems may find that, for whatever reason, they split or form new headmates and alters easily! Splitting new system members often is nothing to be ashamed about, and systems who split easily deserve to be accepted and celebrated in our spaces. So here’s to all the systems who split easily!

☀️ Shoutout to systems with dissociative disorders who are easily traumatized and split alters as a result!

🌸 Shoutout to gateway systems who easily gain walk-ins or visitors!

💎 Shoutout to disabled systems who split new headmates whenever they experience negative symptoms of their illnesses or disabilities!

☀️ Shoutout to traumagenic systems without a dissociative disorder who split new headmates easily!

🌸 Shoutout to systems who split new headmates often without any idea as to what’s causing them to split!

💎 Shoutout to headmates with a high alter/headmate count due to how easily they split!

☀️ Shoutout to pyro systems who have experienced a large influx of headmates for any reason!

🌸 Shoutout to endogenic systems who are often forming new headmates, whether consciously or unconsciously!

💎 Shoutout to polyfragmented systems who regularly split new fragments!

☀️ Shoutout to mixed origins systems who commonly gain new headmates for a wide variety of reasons!

🌸 Shoutout to systems who struggle with a fear of faking due to how often and easily they split new headmates!

💎 Shoutout to systems who love the fact that they gain new headmates easily, and to those who often struggle with this aspect of their multiplicity!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with splitting new headmates often and easily. It’s okay to have lots of headmates or alters, and to gain them regularly with little to no outside influence! If your system regularly splits new members, we want to remind you that each and every headmate in your system is still special, unique, and wonderful in their own ways, and your system as a whole is beautiful just the way it is!

To those who split headmates easily, we want you to know that we see you, we support you, and we love you! Gaining new headmates often can certainly be challenging or exhausting, but we want to remind you that you don’t need to try and change or hide any aspect of your plurality in order to be loved and cherished by this community. We hope your whole system can find a future full of peace, happiness, and self-acceptance! Until then, know that we’re here for you and wishing you the very best. Thanks so much for reading, and have an amazing day!

Although I may probably be going quite (a bit) too far for saying this - about the people who state this certain thing about Blossomfall, - but-

I honestly think that people who believe that Blossomfall is being immature for being jealous of Briarlight by stating “she’s an adult now, she doesn’t need her mother’s attention and support” just -

Feels like they have at least a bit of a mindset of those type of people who believe that once a teenager turns into a 18 year old, they must AUTOMATICALLY and/or IMMEDIATELY know how to physically, mentally and/or even financially know how to be fully independent and take care of themselves completely alone.

(possibly maybe even having a bit of a similar mindset to some of those parents who kick their child out of the house immediately when they turn 18 years old expecting them to be perfectly fine automatically living on their own (with 0 help?!))

And is someone who just recently turned 18, this belief about recently legal adults is honestly quite untrue.

And is especially true for Blossomfall’s case, considering the fact that she isn’t even moving away to live independently from her family - because she lives within a Clan, which has (at most) around a “small” group of 20-30 people - cats - within it. The place that Blossomfall lives with is the place that she’ll STAY and live within for the entirety of her life, as well living with the people she grew up with - including her mother, Millie.

So the fact that Millie is neglected to see her daughters within a small tightened community - heck, a small tightened group - that they’ll live within for the entirety - or at least, the majority - of their lives, making Millie neglect even MORE impacting and/or noticeable for Blossomfall to experience compared than the average person. Something that’s also hard to ignore when you live and work around and/or with your family members on an everyday basis.

And the fact that Briarlight became disabled when she, Bumblestripe and/or Blossomfall were RECENT adults, making the neglect a bit more impactful, considering the fact it started to occur when Blossomfall was only JUST legally came out of teenage-hood and occurred when she was still quite young, which is QUITE different compared to if the neglect occurred when she was like… around the age of a 25 - 30 year old person I suppose.

Also the fact that Blossomfall shows systems and/or signs of being a “glass child” - feeling and/or being completely or mostly ignored, while their sibling gets all of the affection and love - which is something that can happen in real life, especially with children those parents put more effort and/or love into seeing and/or taking care of their disabled children than their able-bodied children.

Plus - at the very least, from what I heard about her - Blossomfall KNOWS and/or is AWARE that her jealousy towards her sisters is “negative” and/or “irrational” to the point that she literally believed she had deserved to go to literal kitty cat H*LL for it. Over a situation - neglect - that her own mother decided to do, which is something that’s NOT Blossomfall and any of her sibling’s fault.

And while yes, Millie does, care about her Briarlight, her disabled daughter and knows that she may need special care for her disability - that does NOT excuse Millie for NOT giving Blossomfall and Bumblestripe love and affection when she’s able so, let alone within a small tightened community where her children live with and/or around her daily will feel more impacted by her neglect that’s quite noticeable to the people Blossomfall lives around.

And the fact that Millie treatment of Briarlight and her disability is NOT good and is even ableist (at times), which is a WHOLE other (and worser) can of worms itself.

*sighs* Look, I’m not trying to bring back the (past) mindset of the fandom EXTREMELY hating Millie for neglecting Blossomfall.

I’m trying to state that Blossomfall maybe quite a bit over-hated for reacting to Millie neglecting her and her brother within a tightened small group/community, even regardless of how irrational her jealousy towards her sister is. To the point that I wanted to inform people about it within this confession.

So…yeah. Thank you for reading my confession about Blossomfall, and I hope that you at least thought it was a quite interesting confession to read about.

.

for the character meme: dulcie or cam or pal or a character of ur choosing!!! hehe

!!!!! ty lem!! im gonna do my girl dulcie...

favorite thing about them: honestly just the way she's written- it never fails to make me emotional that she *is* explicitly written as being brave and strong, but tamsyn neatly sidesteps the "inspiration porn" ableist stereotype of writing a character as being brave/strong *because* they are sick. dulcie isn't brave or strong because of her illness. her strength and bravery are explicitly positioned, IMO, as being in response to surviving *ableism* and other people's condescension towards her and mistreatment of her, rather than surviving her illness itself, if that makes sense. her health is just a fact of her life, it's not moralized. which i really, really appreciate. it's a small shift, but it's very meaningful to me.

ALSO deeply special to me: her intentional and careful commitment to boundaries re: The Palamedes Of It All. a refreshing change of pace, as far as these books go vgjtjxdjt

least favorite thing about them: i mean. houser. :/

favorite line: three way tie between "truly, wonderful news for my haters," "i am sick of roses and horny for revenge," and "oops, there i go again, never doing what i'm told"

brOTP: gideon!!!!! i think it's a crying shame they've never met. i think they'd get along tremendously. the whole cytherea gideon thing was Horrid and Awful in so many ways, but it always Extra stings (in an adding-insult-to-injury sort of way) when i think about what it would have been like if gideon had REALLY met dulcinea, and not cyth. dulcie would've been a great friend for her, i think. they'd have been so good at making each other laugh

OTP: honestly these days it's cam? @ palamedes ily but get outta here gayboy it's yuri time now. plus i just love chewing on the concept of cam + comphet, and cam + subconscious internalized misogyny, and cam + gender, and cam + her relationships and interactions with other women. i think there's lots to explore there. camdulcie has a certain "when i was eight i didn't realize i had a crush on the new girl in my grade so i just wrote her a note that said 'get out of my school'" energy about it, To Me

nOTP: idk if i really have one for her, specifically? idk. ianthe or something, fuck it.

random headcanon: stoner. on all levels except physical she is taking fuckall huge bong rips. on the physical level though her lungs suck so i think she'd be a tincture girlie. she's got chronic pain she deserves it. am i projecting? you tell me

unpopular opinion: idk if this is an unpopular opinion exactly, but i always see people referring to thee rejected proposal as being something born primarily out of love/out of romantic intent? and i don't know if that's necessarily how i see it. it was CERTAINLY, and obviously, a factor. but at least from my interpretation of pal's monologue to cytherea at the end there, i get the sense that he had already accepted her boundaries in that regard, because he says he "understood that he was a child." and we also get camilla saying that his motivations in proposing were primarily a means-to-an-end way of getting her off the seventh and letting her die with dignity. iirc her exact words were like "so she could spend what time she had left with people who cared about her." like, don't get me wrong, i think pal is lying to himself if he says that being in love with dulcie wasn't PART of the motivation there. but i find it a lot more interesting in a worldbuilding and social commentary way to interpret the circumstances there as him offering, essentially, to be a hospice doctor at age 19, and marriage being the 'easiest' way to get her off the seventh/planet medical malpractice. there's an imperial misogyny ownership-through-marriage throughline there that's nauseating, as well as the implications re: disability and agency and autonomy, and i think that's all very interesting to explore. i think this view is supported in part by the paldulcie interaction in TUG, where she alludes to the idea that she was cognizant about the impact that bearing witness to death and loss up-close and personal like that changes a person, and that she didn't want to do that to pal and cam, especially given their age. i think it informa dulcie's character and grants her additional narrative agency to look at things from that angle, of her "no" being in reference to *both* the age gap AND her intentional choice to continue suffering on the seventh, rather than put two kids through being hospice caregivers and/or widowers at nineteen– no matter how many times and how sincerely they kept offering, no matter that she would've absolutely had a more peaceful and comfortable end-of-life HAD she accepted his proposal and gone to the sixth to die. i think it says a lot about her as a person, that choice. there's a quiet and meaningful responsibility to her as a person that i find fascinating. and her character is just sooooo firmly rooted in and informed by disability politics, on every level, and i feel like people don't engage with that aspect of her characterization enough!

song i associate with them: ooooh SO many, i have a whole playlist. but i think the biggest ones are

-the drama by kesha ("friday night, get too high, keep checking my pulse, am i dead yet?" / "in the next life i wanna come back, as a housecat as a housecat! i'd sleep and play in the sun, i'd be a fuckin' cute son of a gun!")

-avant gardener by courtney barnett (the whole song really, but especially the lines "the paramedic thinks i'm clever cause i play guitar, i think she's clever cause she stops people dyin'," and "i take a hit off an asthma puffer, i do it wrong, i was never good at smokin' bongs." i just think she'd love this song.)

-honorable mentions include stoned at the nail salon by lorde, life according to raechel by madison cunningham, rose-colored boy by paramore (@ palamedes, lmfao), picture me better by weyes blood, extraordinary machine by fiona apple, rubberband girl by kate bush, last words of a shooting star by mitski.

favorite picture of them: oh man well it obviously has to be my icon... art made for me by the lovely @franzias-cave !!!! based on the concept of "the woman is dying, please do her the decency of allowing her to look the part in fanart." my girl... she's a malign fairy, she's a hot-eyed wraith <3

ty lem this was so fun! i love my gworl :')

I love you, trans people with intellectual disabilities. You deserve to have the same opportunities as everybody else, and that's because you are a person. You deserve to be happy. Intellectually disabled trans people deserve the exact same respect, recognition, and love that (should be) afforded to everybody else.

Intellectually disabled trans people, you deserve to make your own decisions about your transness. You are allowed to want for transition or to change your name, clothes, hair, pronouns, or anything else. You deserve support and understanding. I hope you are able to receive that. You belong in this world as your true self. Your transness and your disability/disabilities are not bad things - they are good, and they are important.

Just saw someone refer to the literal footage of the pogrom in Southern Israel as “Zionist Propaganda” so like. Get blocked. Fuckstick.

You antisemitic monsters cannot wail for “evidence” of the atrocities committed by Hamas because you refuse to believe it happened despite the seemingly endless accounts (and yet you were willing to accept that Israel bombed a hospital without a second thought) and then refer to the video evidence TAKEN BY FUCKING HAMAS ITSELF as “Zionist Propaganda”.

At this point ANY good faith I had in you fucking antisemitic shitstains is gone. At least the Nazis are up front about the fact they see me as subhuman. You whine and wail about needing more proof and then when we have it, you claim it’s propaganda.

Just call me a kike and leave like I know you want to. Just be honest about the fact that your care for Palestinians only extends to the length that it allows you to celebrate Jewish death.

We will NEVER trust you again. Ever.

and this is also why i think that any meaningful community building/advocacy/support around madness/neurodivergence/mental illness needs to be founded on principles of liberation and abolition, and that we need to be able to distinguish between people who are allies based on our shared values + goals, and between people who use some of the same language as us, but are fundamentally advocating for separate things.

One example I see a lot of is the idea of "lived experience" professionals, people who have a career in the mental health system and who also have some personal experience with mental illness. These professionals oftentimes will talk about their own negative experiences in the mental health system, and come into their careers with a genuine desire to improve the experience of patients. But their impact is incredibly limited by the system they have chosen to work in: the coercive elements of psychiatry incentivize professionals to buy into the existing power structures instead of disrupting them. And as a whole, many lived experience professionals end up getting exploited and tokenized by their employers and used as an attempt to make carceral psychiatry seem more palatable. Professionals in this dynamic are not working to effectively challenge the structural violence of their profession: they become complicit, even if they do also have good intentions and provide individual support.

(I do know some radical providers who have found innovative ways to fuck up the system and destabilize and shift power in their workplaces, but this is a very small number of providers and is not most of the lived experience providers I've talked with.)

Another example I see a lot in our spaces has to do with the evolution of the neurodiversity paradigm. I feel a very deep connection to the original conceptualization of neurodiversity and neurodivergent as coined by Kassiane Asasumasu, but in recent years I've seen a lot of people using neurodivergent language in a way that feels pretty dramatically different than the foundational principles. This isn't saying that people should stop using ND terminology or that all neurodivergent spaces are like this--rather, I just want to point out some trends I see in certain communities, both online and in my in personal life. Although people will often use neurodivergent language and on the surface, seem allied with concepts of deinstitutionalization, acceptance, etc, the values and structure in these community spaces often rely heavily on ideas of classification based in DSM, and build very prescriptive and rigid models for categorizing different types of neurodivergence in a way that ends up excluding some M/MI/ND people. Certain types of knowledge are valued over other types of knowledge, and certain diagnoses are prioritized as worthy of support over others. There's a lot of value placed on identifying and classifying many types of behaviors, beliefs, thoughts, actions, into specific categories, and a lack of solidarity between different diagnoses or the wider disability community.

Again, this isn't to say that ND terminology is bad or useless--I think it is an incredibly helpful explanatory model/shorthand for finding community and will call myself neurodivergent, and find a lot of value in community identification and sharing of wisdom. I just feel like it's important to realize that not every ND person, organization, or initiative, is actually invested in the project of fighting for our liberation.

when thinking about our activism, as abolitionists, it's important to be very specific about what our goals, values, and tactics are. For example, understanding the concept of non-reformist reforms helps us distinguish what immediate goals are useful, versus what reforms work to increase the carceral power of the psychiatric system. And when building our own value systems and trying to build alternative ways of caring for ourselves and our communities, we need to be able to evaluate what brings us closer to autonomy, freedom, and interdependence. I need people to understand that just because someone is also against psych hospitalization does not mean that they are also allies in the project of letting mad people live free, authentic, meaningful, and supported lives, and that oftentimes people's allyship is conditional on our willingness to conform to their ideas of a "good" mentally ill person.

Doctor Beverly Crusher @SpaceDocMom May this be the year your health care workers take you seriously and actually give you the attention and treatments you deserve. emojis: black heart, blue heart, masked. 1:30 PM · Jan 1, 2024

look i love spot just as much as anybody else but if i see somebody actually unironically siding with him and saying hes in the right, im gonna think theyre fucking insane

finally found a place to read With the Light online and i'm thrilled; if you haven't read this manga i do Legitimately recommend it

Sometimes, I think I'm not doing enough to try to "cure" my IST. Then I remember that I have been suffering from symptom since I was four-years-old. In that time I have:

walked, danced, rode bikes, rode kick scooters, used multiple different exercise machines, did pilates, and other exercises from then until now,

Eaten fruits and vegetables multiple times throughout my life,

And quit drinking soda for weeks at a time.

Nothing changed or helped. If nothing helped me growing up, I don't have much hope for the same thing helping now.

The only things I have access to now are medications and the ability to add extra salt to my it when need be. Unfortunately, I'm not on medications because I.) my vitals are already so unpredictable that I tried a med that affected my vitals for three days and felt like shit those three days, and 2.) I've heard the only med that helps only helps a handful of symptoms, and I would feel like a failure if The Med didn't help me.

So at the end of the day, I feel like a failure for having a "mild" form of Dysautonomia (because I don't pass out and can stand for five minutes before I start feeling symptoms) and planning on petitioning for a custom wheelchair at my next doctor's appointment.

i hate how ppl use are you feminist? as a question whose response means something™ like idk man i support human rights and that's it. are women humans? then great i support their rights as i do all other human beings. i think it's more of a red flag when people start hard and fast emphasizing their support of a specific branch of human rights and not the whole of human rights if that makes sense. that's why you get people who support queer rights but think anti-queer palestinians should die. the only question should ever be do your support human rights? you can argue back and forth about who gets to use the label woman but you can't argue about whether any human being is a human and since they are a human they deserve to have their humans rights respected and fulfilled. it's not to say that identifying as a supporter of a specific minority group is outright wrong and specific groups help to emphasize the specific needs that are still withheld from that group which is important and necessary. but acting as if there's some like higher merit in someone specifying i'm an x rights activist as opposed to saying i'm a human rights activist makes no sense to me personally.

(Vague post)

Popular analog horror has gone down the antisemetism rabbit hole so I no longer feel bad about using a vaguely similar idea. I think we need a Jewish analog horror ARG in fact

Et culture is wanting to complain about your hand tremors but feeling like people with "real disabilities" will think you're faking

♡

okay this is gonna be Controversial or whatever and i don't really care but you have Got to stop acting like people using words in contexts you don't like. is the most important problem that we all need to focus a lot of energy on. This is vaguely in response to someone i saw going off at someone who's post they Entirely Agreed With but op said "delusional" in a not exactly positive context and THAT became the issue to focus on, rather than the actual subject at hand.

like please. can you stop. for a moment. take a deep breath. and remember that this is not the most important issue for disabled people in real life. nowhere near. nowhere near

we all have limited energy especially disabled people. and there's so many things you can do that will make disabled people's lives tangibly better, beyond just avoiding being upset by a string of letters. the words are not the problem. the words may be a symptom of underlying societal issues but please can we address the societal issues instead of yelling at people about words. you're just gonna make people defensive and then you've created a division and an enemy where there really needn't be one. when you could be spending your energy in so many other, more useful ways

here's a couple examples ok

disability benefits/welfare. lobby your government. get involved with activist groups. campaign for disabled people to get enough money to live on and then some. campaign to remove barriers to access to support disabled people are (/ should be) entitled to

social stigma around disability. this doesn't mean yell at people over words they use but it does mean this. tell people being disabled (/delusional/crazy etc) isn't a bad thing, campaign for mental illness and neurodivergence to be seen as disabling conditions, make people aware that the vast majority of us will become disabled permanently or temporarily at some point in our lives. destigmatise use of mobility aids and such. make support easily accessible and don't make disabled people have to ask and fight for support where it can be avoided. don't make disabled people prove their disability and don't make them have to get more sick in order to get help. etc.

there's so much more but this is like the most basic stuff n i might make a seperate post about this. point being. stop making it seem like words people use are the main issue When They're Really Not.

seriously. discourse about what words are okay to use in what context is a great way to stall progress and distract from the actual issues disabled people face, that threaten their lives and livelihoods. just look at what's happened with lgbtq activism - progress is reversed and erased while baby queers fight each other about slurs. its sickening

by arguing about language you're putting the cart before the horse. can we please make sure we don't have to fucking fight for our lives first. and THEN maybe we can tell people to stop using deluded in a negative way. but can we make sure disabled people can survive and thrive first. can that be the focus of our activism please. yelling about words is not real activism holy shit you guys.

The for you tab once again reminding me that not only do abled people despise me but disabled people do too

hate hate hate debating politics with cis white teen boys. this guy just spent 10 minutes debating in favour of capitalism because “if we tax the rich more then everyone will earn the same no matter how hard they work which is basically communism and communism is bad”