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ilikereadingactually · 11 months

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The Archive Undying

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

WOW, this is a ride, in so many ways. i really dig sff that drops me in without explanations and lets me learn the world through context, and i adore a book that really asks me to do a lot of thinking and piecing together and interpreting subtleties. i'm a go-with-the-flow reader, i don't really go back to look again at anything or look up words as i read, i trust the narrative to make sense eventually. this book satisfies and rewards all of that!! i found it a little denser than is ideal for me, but dense in that lush, humid way where you're a little out of breath all the time. i don't think i fully have a grasp on the world or the nuances of the plot, which makes it feel pleasantly surreal and makes me really excited for the next book.

i do feel fully invested in and in love with the main characters, which makes the whole thing work for me. Sunai is such a mensch!!! Veyadi tries hard and loves with ragged edges! everyone is a personality and a delight even when they're deceiving each other and switching sides and screwing up and hating themselves, and i think it's because Sunai's pov is so tender and generous. he's a big mess, and is willing to accept and forgive the messiness of the people he loves; how could he, wounded as he is, expect anyone else to be flawless? it makes me love him, and makes me love everyone who loves him.

other highlights for me are the complexities of personhood presented here: there are corrupted AI gods and humans damaged by their interfaces, there are intelligences within intelligences and fragments of being and surprising mergers of thought and self. it's like a political conflict happening inside a funhouse, with pleasingly incomplete religious underpinnings that put me in mind of A Psalm for the Wild-Built, except it's nothing like that book at all in tone or temperament. also, mlm main characters, which seems fairly rare still in this kind of epic speculative fiction, plus interesting gender things going on in general! also also, i'm such a sucker for Asian-based sff worlds, and this one has that feel: some East Asian, some Southeast, some South, flavoring the names and the language and the food and the feel without any one-to-one mapping of cultures in this book onto cultures in the real world.

the deets

how i read it: an e-galley through NetGalley, from the elusive Tor, my current fave publisher just pumping out bangers all the time. upon getting access to this i felt the way you do when a cat chooses to sniff your hand.

try this if you: like to float and be carried by beautiful prose in a vast and deep moving landscape you can never see all of at once, enjoy queers making bad choices for good reasons, dig a book where the relationships are varied and interesting and often sexual without any of the usual "romantic" tropes, have feelings about questions of selfhood, or understand revenge but prefer mercy.

maybe not for you if: you get very frustrated by books that move fast without explaining much, and books that are purposefully playing with mysterious perspectives and voices. this book does not show its cards, and i love that but i know it can be a dealbreaker for some.

some lines i really liked: this is a loooong book so i picked out a few.

It is excruciating to behold. Sunai understands that they know each other. He and Imaru first met Ruhi when he and she were still running together, and Imaru brought Ruhi's letter to Ghamor only a couple of months ago. None of that mitigates the bodily shock of seeing them together. Talking. The panicked realization that they could talk to each other about him--that they have likely already done this--compels Sunai to interrupt.

...

He never imagined that Ruhi might already have chosen to do the damnable thing himself. It makes him feel a certain fuck of a way.

...

"It killed the sentinel-fowl," says Veyadi.

By the counter, Imaru stills. "What?"

"I killed the sentinel-fowl," Sunai clarifies.

"That isn't explaining," says Jin. "What do you mean you killed it? Lay it out plain for those of us who aren't fondling each other's neurons."

pub date: June 27, 2023!

#books and reading #book recs #bookblr #the archive undying #emma mieko candon #this book is fondling my neurons #book reviews

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delimeful · 2 years

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tear it down (around my head) (6)

warnings: unreliable narrator, physical & mental abuse, violence, dissociation, panic, remus-typical body horror, PTSD, painfully high number of dad jokes

Everything was not fine.

Patton shook his head, trying to focus on the meat he was browning. That wasn’t true, not really. Here, everything was wonderful.

That was the problem.

One day turned to two, turned to a week, turned to two weeks. And Patton was still here.

In all that time, they hadn’t made a single mention of kicking him out, not even Umbra. They’d settled into a routine, displacing their usual lives to live in what had to be a secondary safehouse, and Patton had somehow been folded into that routine without any of them thinking twice.

He wasn’t the best cook, but he was good at what he knew, and he had the time and the energy to make meals where the others dragged themselves back from patrol looking near-ready to collapse. It was the least he could do for them, even if Dee insisted on buying the groceries.

When their schedules got really rough, Umbra in particular had been sustaining himself on pre-packaged snacks, coffee, and stress. Patton seemed to be slowly but surely working his way into the hero’s good graces through warm meals alone.

Remus was an inventor in the kitchen, and so excited to try bizarre combinations that it was contagious. Whenever a dish went sideways or Patton had an odd idea for a garnish or sauce, he found himself setting the trial portion in question aside for Remus to try.

Whenever Dee got the chance, he would appear in the kitchen to help him, chatting as they worked through preparing each dish, probably making sure Patton wasn't poisoning anything. He had mentioned several times that Patton ‘really didn’t have to do all this’, but Patton had noticed the way his shoulders had eased and his face lightened when everyone ate together.

He enjoyed the cooking process, too, introducing him to new recipes or better ways to prepare certain foods. Patton suspected that Dee would have been filling this role already if it weren’t for the fact that– no matter how many hands he had on hand– he simply didn’t have enough hours in the day.

After all, it was The Conductor who seemed to do most of the managing when it came to their chaotic crime-fighting trio, and even when they weren’t patrolling the streets or battling megalomaniacs, he could be found nose-deep in extensive legal documents or making phone calls to mysterious contacts and/or friends in high places. According to Remus, it was thanks to him that the three of them could use their abilities without being impeded by local law enforcement in the first place.

It was amazing, watching the way they put their all into being heroes, into helping people. Even someone like him. It was only natural that he’d want to return that kindness as much as he possibly could.

And so it went.

Every day, Patton did his best to make himself useful and make the three of them happy.

Every night, he tossed and turned under the force of horrible, gut-wrenching memories, fragments of a life he didn’t want to remember.

Every morning, the pit of guilt grew larger in his gut and he thought about telling Dee.

And yet, the words remained locked in his throat, all stoppered up by the idea that he’d tell them just as soon as he had to leave. The promise that he’d confess once he finally overstayed his welcome.

But he was still here. And the memories were getting worse.

They’d started out like that first dream. He still felt like himself, if a version of him that had been through an unending streak of bad days. The memories would start during little moments of solitude, walking the streets or curled up at home, finally feeling like he was half-settled in his skin. No matter how hard he tried, he could never remember his surroundings or read any of the street signs.

Then, the dream would shift to a punishment, like he was being reprimanded for those little moments of selfhood even in his subconscious mind. They varied in method and intensity, but none of them were as simple or painless as that first memory’s blow.

He learned that he could tell how old the memory was by his reaction to the worst punishment. In the old memories, the ones that were even hazier than normal and patchy at the edges, his memory-self would struggle and writhe and beg. It would take several other people to pin him down and force him into a kneel, their harsh hands leaving heavy imprints.

In the more recent memories, he didn’t fight. He folded to his knees and simply waited there, still and silent and unrestrained, for the blistering pain to white out his vision. His mind was mostly blank, but the reasoning still lay there under the surface: They went quicker that way. Only a single hand laid on him that way. Boss was happier that way. It was better.

Patton woke from those memories sobbing every time, trying to remind himself that it wasn’t real, that it wasn’t him, that he hadn’t given up hope. But he had, hadn’t he? If someone pressed along those fault lines, wouldn’t he do it again? Didn’t the memories prove that?

He hadn’t known it was possible to feel so betrayed by one’s past self.

Patton was jarred from his thoughts by a timer going off, and found himself stationed at a cutting board, halfway through dicing some chives. Hadn’t he been in the middle of something else before…?

Turning, he could see the ground beef sitting on the stovetop on low heat, already seasoned and ready to be scooped into taco shells. The smell of cumin and garlic powder was thick in the air, seemingly impossible to miss. He had no memory of even pulling the containers from the spice rack.

He’d lost time again. It was so easy to get caught up in his own head these days. Alarmingly so, when he didn’t know just what lay in the corners of his mind. There might be a supervillain in there somewhere. He was lucky that the episodes had been subtle so far, enough that he could just be dismissed as airheaded.

Something was wrong with him. Really wrong. He needed to tell the others.

The front door opened, and a chorus of three mismatched voices called out a greeting, toppling into the kitchen like sleep-deprived college students.

Umbra ducked past him with a grumbled ‘behind you’ and hauled both the first aid kit out from under the sink and four plates from the cabinet, Remus hopped up to sit on the bar with bloody lips and a cheshire grin that was missing a tooth, and Dee stripped off his outer armor to don his favorite apron (emblazoned with ‘No Bitchin’ in My Kitchen’, courtesy of Remus) before bustling over to the stovetop.

“Welcome home,” Patton told them, watching as they bickered and set the table and slowly but surely let the strain of a long night slide off their shoulders.

It was late. They were tired. He would tell them later.

—

“Umbra, now!”

His lips twitched down into a muted scowl as a bubble of darkness descended on him, blocking out his view of the street around him. Surrounding him entirely in darkness, with only his own glowing form visible in the void.

Only a heartbeat later, there were multiple hands grabbing hold to his arms, legs, all of them attempting to pin him in place. For a moment, his mind grew confused, a memory of punishment– of darkness and gripping hands– overlapping with the present for just long enough to make him pause.

“Surrender,” The Conductor demanded, his voice strained with the power of maintaining his constructs. “Whatever it is you’re dealing with, we can get you help.”

Anger bubbled hot and bright in him. These false heroes were a plague, and they insisted on trying to infect him. Unforgivable.

The bubble of shadow constricted closer, heavier around him, but it didn’t matter. They couldn’t hide away in the darkness. He was the bringer of light.

His glow grew into a piercing shine, brighter and hotter until it was burning away the hands and evaporating the darkness. Cleansing the scourge from this city, as always.

The so-called heroes disengaged, more than familiar with his blast radius, but he wasn’t willing to let them go so easily. He would engage them here, keep them occupied and contain their impurities while Boss made changes in the city unhindered, working on a bigger scale than these meaningless skirmishes.

He didn’t like the heavy darkness. A small, distant part of him cowered away from it.

With an outstretched hand, he pulled back his light before it could finish its usual crackling halo and redirected the energy towards a new target, one darting between the shadows cast by his brightness. Between one shadow and the next– there.

“Umbra!”

The others’ warning only gave the hero enough time to turn his head. His eyes went wide and frantic, the terror on his face lit from below as the bolt of concentrated light struck true.

—

Patton woke to a scream strangled in his throat and hot tears in his eyes.

A dream. Just a dream. … A memory?

No, that dream– it couldn’t have been a memory. It couldn’t have been. It hadn’t been like the others, where he felt like a real person, like himself, and only realized it was a dream when he woke up. This one was different.

He had watched from the eyes of– of Lightshow, fine, he could admit that much. But the shift of his gaze, the wave of his hand, the step of his feet? Patton hadn’t been able to control any of it. He’d been forced into the position of a silent spectator, trapped in place, forced to watch as his body moved and fought and burned.

It wasn’t a memory. Those weren’t his thoughts. It was just a nightmare, a normal run-of-the-mill nightmare, constructed by his mind as some twisted response to stress. He was feeling guilty over not telling them, and his brain had taken it too far, that was all.

It had to be just a nightmare.

Patton tried to calm his breathing, to lay back down, but Umbra’s expression at that last moment flickered into view every time he closed his eyes.

Eventually, he gave up, just like he had that first night, and climbed out of bed. On the nightstand, the clock’s digital numbers glared up at him; three AM. Maybe he could figure out something really fiddly and time-consuming to make for breakfast. Maybe Umbra would help!

To his surprise, when he rapped quietly on his door (to avoid ‘scaring the life out of’ Umbra the way he had that first night) and poked his head out, there was no hooded figure sitting next to his door, back against the wall.

Had the other two finally convinced him to stop keeping watch on Patton? Or…

A sudden jolt of foreboding ran down his spine, and he pulled the door open wider, looking up and down the hall. Nobody was there. Had something happened to him?

Patton hesitated; they’d never explicitly told him to stay in his room while they were sleeping, but it only made sense that they’d want a potential threat contained. If he started wandering around now, would they be upset with him?

A flicker of that memory flashed in his mind’s eye again, and it was enough for him to force his shoulders firm and cross the threshold. A potential punishment wasn’t important. Not when Umbra could be in danger.

He hurried down the hall, only registering the sound of lowered voices a beat after he’d burst into the common area.

Remus was laying on the couch, flat on his stomach with his face buried in his arms, and above him on the back of the couch–

“Umbra,” Patton said, unable to contain the relief that swept through him. It didn’t even matter if he was in trouble for breaking the rules. Umbra was here, he was alright, he was safe.

The hero in question blinked at him in surprise for a moment before frowning, more confused than upset. “Lightshow? What are you doing up?”

Remus popped his head up, craning it back at a painful-looking angle to grin at him. “Glowbug!”

Patton smiled back and drifted a few steps closer automatically before stopping short, remembering that he had yet to explain himself. He opened his mouth.

“You weren’t there.” … That wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all. That wasn’t an explanation, that was an accusation!

Before he could start panicking, Umbra raised his eyebrows questioningly, and then seemed to put it together. “Oh. Yeah, I left to help Remus. Figured you probably weren’t going to get up and murder us all on only two hours of sleep.”

“Unless…?” Remus drew the word out suggestively, and Umbra jabbed his heel into his back in retaliation. Neither of them seemed upset at him, not even a little.

Patton dared to step a little closer, shaking his head and showing them his empty hands as proof that he had no murder plans. Remus pouted, letting his head flop forward once more.

“Help with what?” he asked, watching the way Umbra was applying pressure to Remus’s back curiously.

Umbra stiffened a little, narrowing his eyes at him the same way he always did when he thought Patton overstepped in his questions (which was frequently), but Remus didn't hesitate to answer in his place.

“Power malfunction,” he said, his nasally voice muffled through the couch cushion he was talking against. “Couldn’t sleep, so Paramoan here is keeping me company.”

“I couldn’t sleep either,” Patton replied wryly. A power malfunction? “Are you… hurt?”

Both of them went oddly still, and Remus rolled over onto his side to shoot Patton an incredulous look.

“Wait, do you not know my power?” he asked. Patton flushed, embarrassed. “Holy shit, you don’t know my power!”

“Here we go,” Umbra said with an eyeroll, drawing his legs up and tucking them under him like a cat as Remus squirmed up into a sitting position. He was going to give a demonstration of his power. Patton felt dread begin to fill his lungs, making his breaths shallower.

“Behold,” Remus announced grandly, waving his arms and wiggling his fingers dramatically for a moment before slamming his hands together. He had his two hands fisted side-by-side, with a thumb poking out between his pointer and middle finger of his left hand.

… Wait a minute.

“Tada!” Remus crowed, pulling his fists apart to reveal that he’d ‘separated’ his thumb from his right hand. It was a classic grade school magic trick. Above him, Umbra was facepalming.

Patton muffled a chuckle, smiling good-naturedly. “Remus, I may not remember much, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I know that one.”

“Aw, damn. Well, here, for your troubles,” Remus said, and dropped the thumb into Patton’s hand.

The thumb. The single, unattached, warm thumb.

Patton looked up, eyes wide, and Remus waved at him gleefully. His right hand was conspicuously missing a digit.

The thumb in his hand wiggled.

A short, strangled shriek of terror escaped him. “Your thumb!”

“No, Patton. It’s your thumb now,” Remus told him solemnly, apparently completely unconcerned.

Patton skittered over to Remus with his hands cupped around the missing appendage, mind racing. Could a finger be reattached? Would it heal if they put the pieces back together!?

The others had jerked back at his approach, but Remus obligingly held still as Patton grabbed his injured hand and inspected the wound that would surely be gushing blood by now.

The wound that… wasn’t gushing blood at all, actually. Instead, there was a dark green patch where flesh and blood should have been, as though Remus’s insides were made of clay. When he looked down at the thumb in his other hand, the severed end of it looked the same.

“Superpowers,” Patton recalled out loud, and slumped over onto the couch as his utter panic faded. “I forgot about superpowers.”

Remus immediately started cackling at his expense, and even Umbra had his face turned away to hide amusement of his own. Abruptly, Patton realized that he was so exasperated that he’d forgotten to be scared. He hid a smile, waiting for Remus’s amusement to die down before holding his hand out.

“I’m sorry Remus, but I can’t accept this gift,” he said, offering the thumb back. “It’s too opposable.”

That had definitely been a snort from Umbra’s direction. Patton resisted the urge to fistpump.

“Ah, well,” Remus replied with a delighted grin, taking the thumb back and reattaching it to his hand with ease. “You win thumb, you lose thumb.”

Patton cracked up. “I can’t believe you!”

“Just be grateful he didn’t do ‘pull my finger’ instead,” Umbra told him, shaking his head, the beginnings of a smile on his face. “He pulled that one on me and I threw the finger at him.”

“So cruel!” Remus agreed enthusiastically. “I mean, on one hand, I was wounded. But on the other hand, I was fine.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Umbra grabbed the nearest throw pillow and attempted to smother Remus with it. The homicide attempt was accompanied by snorting laughter, though, so Patton thought it was probably fine.

He hoped so, anyways: he was too busy laughing himself to perform a rescue.

#sanders sides fic #sanders sides #ts patton #ts remus #ts virgil #ts janus #patton-centric #superhero au #superpowers au #tidamh #tear it down around my head #my writing #writing #sorry this is late i was evicted #my internet access is infrequent as a result so if i dont reply to something its because i just didn't have time #hopefully ill be more active soon #love u all ttyl

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soracities · 6 months

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Ama Codjoe, from "The Bluest Nude" [ID'd]

#q #lit #quotes #poetry #typography #id included #ama codjoe #fragments of selfhood #personal #m #x

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moonmerkee · 1 year

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drbased · 4 months

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The self may be an illusion, but the self is necessarily a whole; that is, there is nowhere else the self resides: when we say the 'the self is an illusion' it is the same as saying that this chair is an illusion: the chair is, chemically speaking, mostly empty space, atoms held together by mysterious forces that when experienced from a certain distance become form and purpose combined; regardless, the chair is still a distinct entity by the very nature of its existence. Likewise, the 'self' may be a confused congregation of biological forces, impulses, thought, stimuli, feeling, attitude, memory, knowledge - but it is still necessarily itself; there is no other self.

So, then, with the model of the self, with the recognition of the self as necessarily a whole - what of the parts that seem to conflict? In the modern day (I cannot speak for generations past, but no doubt this has always existed in different forms), we treat the self as fragmentable and fragmented. 'Mental illness' forms a tumour on the self, possibly malignant and destructive if engaged with: depression, anxiety, addiction - all these form a shadow in the corner of our eye, representing something we Must Not Indulge - the only time we are encouraged to face them it is combative. The most well-meaning psychologists still have this view: our approach to mental health is, ultimately, double-think - you have a point of view, and that is valid, but it is Wrong.

So, then, what if your Mental Illness(tm) is part of yourself - is it a bad part of you? Is it rotten, should it be amputated? Well... I wouldn't be so hasty. Most people jump to the amputation first: I did that at first. But after a decade of depression, I came out the other end agreeing with it. I chose to not be depressed because I care about my happiness, not because my 'logic' was wrong, or an overreaction. There is no such thing as an overreaction, because the mind, the self, exists as a separate entity from the rest of the world precisely because it is the place where thoughts, feelings and attitudes get to exist freely without moral consideration: the only moment they become 'wrong' is when they cause harm - and, even then, 'wrong' is not something all-encompassing, a bad mark on a test; there is no 'wrong' and there is no 'should' - there are only actions and there are consequences. And if you dislike the consequences, well - there is your answer. I decided that there was an irony in my depression I didn't much like: my depression was obsessed with the idea that I didn't deserve the pain and hurt that I grew up with, and so I said 'I agree with you, I didn't deserve that pain - and if I didn't deserve it then, I do not deserve it now'. I agreed with myself - instead of claiming some greater, more dramatic narrative to justify my pain, as if there is some objective measure of pain, I recognise that my mind is a safe place to say 'fuck you, that hurt and I didn't deserve it'. I was finally able to accept my pain, something my depression had never let me do. In essence, my depression was me procrastinating on my pain - never quite feeling confident enough in my own independent worldview, in my selfhood, to accept it and move on. To fill in the gaps, my depression created a dramatic narrative. The reality, however, was embarrassingly mundane, and overcoming embarrassment was a large part of overcoming depression: if it really wasn't All That Bad, then what was I so miserable about all the time?

Mainstream recognition of mental illness says that there is a Logical and Correct mode of thought, and that anything else is a false logic, an aberration, incorrect, dangerous. My experience of mental illness recovering is the recognition that no singular mode of thought is inherently logical: by choosing happiness, I am not choosing something more logical. My depression was a form of martyrdom: I refused to be happy simply because the world demanded my compliance. My new 'logic' is one that says there is no logic, there is only action and consequence, and I do not like the consequences upon myself of martyrdom, especially martyrdom that only hurts me. I was not making some radical statement in being depressed, and in doing so I was refusing to acknowledge my full self-hood. I used to express that I 'didn't feel human', and looking back it floors me thinking how literal that expression was. The dramatic, ironic self-deprecation we use to describe ourselves we pretend is poetic flourish, but in reality is the self crying out to be noticed, to be whole: in the modern day we are forced into believing that we are Comfortable, that we are not Allowed to be in pain, and any pain is covered up with self-deprecating jokes, and mental illness labels are used as premature self-flagellation to avoid acceptance that we are individual human beings with wildly differing points of view, attitude and things we like. You wouldn't say you 'can't cope' with going to the ballet, but rather that you simply don't like going to ballet. A major embarrassment of mental illness, and a major thing recognised in healing, is that you were pushing yourself to do things you didn't like doing, and then labelled yourself as 'unable to cope' with them.

Non-depressed me is not a whole-lot materially different than depressed me, but the I feel different, I talk different. I engage the fullness of myself in the decisions I make; if there are consequences I dislike that contradict with each other, I engage with them instead of immediately dismissing one as inconvenient and wondering why I then feel uncomfortable. I noticed early on that my depressive episodes only seemed to impact things I didn't want to do anyway; sometimes those things were embarrassing, if only to myself. In finding myself I had to shrink my world down - the endless hope of my positive periods was engaged with, and I had to recognise that I do not want to be everything for everyone all the time, and that I do not consist of boundless possibility, I am not simply walking potential: I am messy, I am human, and I am whole.

#my writing #wisdom posting

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domesticatedferal · 2 years

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Chokecherries

Do you ever wonder what you might have been

if you weren't you?

Who might be here instead?

maybe you'd be a girl who likes girls

or a fox who likes cats

Maybe you'd like yourself, in that world you don't get to see

or maybe not

for me that is what waking up is like

I wonder why this is who I am sometimes and why I can't be you

I wonder why I had to have this happen

and what might have happened if they didn't get me

I am the oldest one left.

Do you know what it feels like to die inside

not like people mean when they joke about that

but to genuinely feel part of yourself die?

i do

i can't forget

I could have been sweet and innocent

a tender fruit for another girl's mouth

But that is a world for the other side of the mirror

-Chokecherries

#spilled ink #fragments of selfhood #plural system #ego death #trauma mention #childhood trauma #ptsd #abuse victim #poetry #dissolution #parallel lives

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orange-orchard-system · 1 year

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Have you ever heard of a plural singlet?

For those who haven't, it's someone who is a singlet that is plural. This may mean that they are fragments of one person, their plurality spikes at certain times or they exist as one person with multiple states of self.

As a plural singlet myself, would the identity be something that bridges the disconnect of experience of plurality and singularity without having to fight over how experiences are.. experienced?

I see and know about the overwhelming hatred and/or off-putting feelings about singlets mainly because of past misunderstandings and the fact that most singlets are not plural. Singlets are usually in a place of "No, you're not welcome" to "you're fine, just don't speak over me" and it's starting to feel odd being stuck in the middle or not experiencing one or the other enough for one side to claim me.

We've never heard of this sort of thing before. I'll be honest and say I'm not sure if you're looking for advice, just commentary, or something else, but it's interesting to hear about this sort of thing.

I think empty systems have spoken up about similar experiences of feeling estranged in the past, and median + midcontinuum systems may be able to relate to some other experiences you've mentioned. I don't know if there's a perfect solution to the problems you've brought up – identity is messy, selfhood even more so, and for as much as people generally like to neatly organize things, with all the complexities of the self, it's far from easy to separate the world into "us" and "them." Which is probably a good thing, to some degree at least, but I don't have many thoughts down that path.

I get what you're saying, though. It reminds me of how "straight" and "cishet" are used in queer spaces. You'd think that these words neatly describe those who aren't queer, but there are straight and cishet people who are queer in ways that might take people a few minutes to understand, if they do at all. For those situations, I've always thought that simple phrases like "non-queer" probably work better, and maybe in plural spaces, "non-plural" would work better than "singlet" when trying to describe those who aren't plural, but I don't really see people using the phrase "non-queer," and I doubt the plural community is gonna pick up the phrase "non-plural" any time soon. After all, if the general definition of singlet seems to mean the same thing as non-plural, why make the change? ... That's what most would probably think. Might take a good while for folk here to understand that people have their own reasons for using seemingly contradictory terms to describe themselves.

But, eh, maybe that's also partly because the queer community is more experienced with complex identities. I've always thought of the plural community as the queer community's younger sibling when it comes to things like this. I can talk about aroallo acespecs on an aroallo blog and get people nodding along or chiming in with their own experiences, but plural peeps ain't really so used to something like that in this ballpark. All the infighting, misinformation, and chasing people into the closet ain't help none, either.

Idk. I'm rambling because it's late and I like theoretical + meta discussions maybe too much for my own good. Hope you have a good day. Feel free to send another ask or just reblog this if you want to talk more about this. I ain't good at reaching out first because I forget people exist, but I'm here to talk as long as it doesn't cross into extreme vent territory.

#asks #front soup.txt #long post #don't mind my ''ain'ts” btw. I ain't show it too often but my dialect is all over the place

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