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Body is the Beastmaster and we are the mons

So I'm piggybacking off of what Kab wrote about our beastmaster archetropes because what I think is probably a little closer to the body is the beastmaster/tamer and we are the beasts/mons.

Most headmates in here could count as a monster or beast whether literally or metaphorically, and it's very common for headmates who don't technically fit to have a more mon-like representation (e.x. a Pokemon Trainer fictive in here has a pokesona he uses for himself more).

But when fronting it becomes a little closer to feeling like the body is the Beastmaster and we're being summoned, and with that we sort of become the Beastmaster as well as the summon monster. Though the body isn't really a thinking entity (unless you could Mebbit which... actually, wait a minute...)

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ChatGPT Psychosis

Rogan: Okay, I know I owe responses to folks, but am kinda blurgh, so I promise I haven't forgotten y'all, it's just been a busy couple weeks!

So, thanks to

erinptah, yesterday I learned about ChatGPT psychosis. As I linkjumped through the rabbit hole, one thing that stood out to me was how shocked people seemed to be that folks "with no prior history of mental illness" were falling into it. And I was like, "Well, yeah, of course, why is that surprising?" but I realized that other folks may not know this, so let me tell you why ChatGPT Psychosis happens to "normal people."

( The human mind is a delicate thing. You gotta be nice to it. )

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breaks,
mod post

Fifth Break

You ever get to an hour before you plan to post something, then you get distracted, and suddenly it's an hour and a half after you planned to post the thing?

Good thing it's a Break Week!

Feel free to use this week to get ahead on future moods, revisit old moods, bask in your finished moods, or just ignore your mood theme completely! This week, it's all up to you. However you choose to spend this week, I hope it's a good one for you!

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Pencorpus

This is the second and only other term I have made for myself. See the original post on tumblr here.

Pencorpus

From Latin paene ("almost") and corpus ("body"). Literally meaning "almost a body". Inspired by the word "penumbra", which is defined as "a space of partial illumination (as in an eclipse) between the perfect shadow on all sides and the full light" or "a surrounding or adjoining region in which something exists in a lesser degree".

A term to describe a nonhuman identity that is not experienced in full or otherwise feels hollow, disjointed, fractured, or void of emotion [when compared to an individuals other nonhuman identities].

A group of regularly occurring nonhuman experiences that are not linked to an already known kintype, theriotype, or other personal nonhuman identity; not categorized wholly as a cameo shift or otherwise made up of too many moving parts to be easily described as a cameo shift; not inherently connected, but often times experienced within close proximity of each other; important to someone's experience. A pencorpus is considered an identity or state of being purely because the body or mind is experiencing itself as that thing, not because of a spiritual or emotional connection.

A pencorpus is not a singular experience, but rather a way to describe multiple shifts or experiences without having to explicitly describe each one. A pencorpus may be made up of different cameo shifts, residual shifts from anteatypes, or any other combination of experiences. It is is a labeled bag to throw things into so that you can talk about them more easily.

Further Discussion

This term, much like satellotype, was created for my personal use. Anyone is free to use it (I would be happy to know that I've helped others articulate themselves), but do note that this is me looking at myself, as opposed to me looking at the community.

I have a lot of cameo shifts. I am the type of beast who can call upon any phantom sensation at will. I have been since I was 7 or 8. Many times, I default to a gillman. Not always, though, and when I'm not a gillman, I have a variety of cameo shifts. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes its only one, sometimes I experience them all in a day one at a time. If you take all of my regular cameo shifts and shove them together, I'll look something like a jersey devil. Sometimes the specifics change, but this has been happening regularly for over a year, with some of the cameo shifts that make it up having always existed in me.

Like cameo shifts, I experience being a jersey devil without identifying as a jersey devil. But this is not a jersey devil cameo shift, it is a collection of unrelated, regularly occurring cameo shifts that resemble a jersey devil. I could, if I wanted, just call it a jersey devil 'type and move on. And many others would likely do just that, instead of coining a new term. But I have no emotional attachment to jersey devils. They mean little to nothing to me in the context of being nonhuman. It's void of all the meaning that many of my other 'types hold. It's an experience I want to talk about without attributing it more significance than it has.

There is also the question of "why not call it a cameotype?" And it makes sense, since we often talk about cameo shifts, but a cameotype is an earlier name of the paratype. And a pencorpus is, in my opinion, the spiritual opposite of a paratype. It's something you experience that is a bit disconnected from yourself, that holds little importance despite it being a state of being, as opposed to the emotionally or spiritually significant paratype.

I am putting this term on my dreamwidth the same day that I posted it to tumblr, so my thoughts on all of this don't really differ much from the tumblr post.

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Satellotype

I have created a few terms for myself to better articulate the way all my different experiences interact with each other. I've decided to post them here.

The original tumblr post can be found here.

Satellotype

“Middle French, from Latin satellit-, satelles attendant”
“a celestial body orbiting another of larger size; a manufactured object or vehicle intended to orbit the earth, the moon, or another celestial body”
Potentially “satelle” for short.

A term to describe a nonhuman identity that revolves around, enhances, describes, acts as an accessory to, is only expressed through, or otherwise is secondary to a primary 'type, 'link, and/or alterhuman or nonhuman identity or identities.

An identity that may be otherwise inaccessible unless though interaction with another identity.*

A kintype for your kintype, a sense of nonhumanity that impacts how one may experience or describe a specific 'type. A way to articulate an underlying sense of understanding towards a nonhuman identity.

A satellotype may not be literal. A wolf therian may have a cryptid satelle attached to their wolf identity, but that does not make the wolf itself a cryptid. They may feel that their understanding of their 'type, their expression of their 'type, or their experience with this 'type is reminiscent of a cryptid.

This may be used those who wish to describe the way multiple 'types or 'kins interact with each other. Sattelotypes may come and go, be permanent, or there may be multiple types active at once, but they always act secondary to a "primary" 'type. A satellotype, despite being secondary, is no less important or impactful than the 'type it revolves around.

Further Discussion

I've been questioned about satellotypes similarity to paratype by two or three users, and usually others speak about the two labels in the same breath. I do think that they are similar. A satellotype can be a paratype, there is overlap. They are not the same to me, though, as I made satellotype to help me describe how I can only be an alien by being a gillman. I am an alien, just as much as I am a gillman. But I can not be an alien alone. Only by indulging in my gillmanhood, grumbling, lurking, eating fish, swimming, etc., can I feel like the alien I am.

When trying to think about how to create a term to articulate that, I decided to make the satelle not necessarily a full identity because I could see the label being bent and wanted to allow for elasticity. For instance, a wolf who may feel like a domestic dog. But they only ever feel like a domestic dog when interacting directly with their wolf-ness. They are not necessarily a domestic dog, may not connect to domestic dogs, but experience something akin to domestic dog-ness when being a wolf in certain situations. Given that the exitance of my alienness "underneath" my gillmanhood results in an alien-like gillman, the idea of other underlying non-identities that impact another 'type didn't seem like much of a stretch.

I think that elasticity is what caused for the confusion and overlap with paratype. Was it a mistake to emphasize both aspects equally? Maybe, I don't know. I had never made a label before satellotype, so I'm not surprised that there are some things I did wrong. It's also important to note that I made this label for myself, and I posted it so that I could have a definition to point to when someone asked what in the world a "satellotype" was. My understanding of the label has grown significantly since I first wrote it down, and I'd like to sit down and rehash some parts of it at some point. The definition here is the original, with one line added in, noted by the asterisk. The discussion here is also different, as I wanted to address it's similarity to paratype directly. I will likely reblog the original post with my thoughts later today. Or whenever I get the chance.

godbwye

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Pokemon Trainer/Beastmaster Archetrope Ramblings

This has come up a few times, but because our social circle irl is predominantly Pokemon and we have that as a special interest, we loosely have a collective Pokemon Trainer or broadly Beastmaster archetrope. I fit this more strongly personally, but it's also a common enough theme in our system that I'd count it as up there for collective identities.

We love any collectable mon stuff, especially if there's an easily accessible physical element of it. That's why we love collecting TCGs because they're so easy to get and store, and playing physical tournaments turns into a tangible thing we can do with them. We also collect Pokemon figures and toys. This also extends to why we also collect Bakugan and things like that. Though physical accessibility is still a big thing and so we don't have a lot of big, specific collections outside of Pokemon, but we have a lot of little guys from stuff like Moshi Monsters, Beyblade, Neopets, and a lot of it is because we've found them while thrifting.

To us I think this also stretches what counts as a "mon" or the subject of a Beastmaster. Because we've gotten more into the Cookie Run TCG, the characters to us feel closer to that, but that's not remotely how the actual game treats them. It comes down to I feel a specific summoner attachment to it and thus in my brain they become that. It's like Herb Cookie winds up being a battle species instead of a character.

For some reason this is only a thing with physical media though. Even though we play a lot of video games we don't feel as strong of a draw with digital media, but I think that might be because we wind up replaying/resetting a lot of games. We'll still generally lean towards creature collecting games or like playing as Beastmaster characters (most recent example I can think of is Ochette from Octopath Traveller II). I think it's also having some kind of tactile thing makes it feel more grounded and real to us since we're otherwise very hands on.

Mississippi legal challenge: beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

Current Mood: excited

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plural:etymology

@Sobqjmv-sphinx dug deeper into “headmate!”

sobqjmv_sphinx expanded on my research and proved it was used by multiples before DesperateFans! Check it out! https://sobqjmv-sphinx.dreamwidth.org/5620.html

We’ve updated our own post adding this note.

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brief thoughts on public housing and how it did not die, but was killed

Alyaza Birze (August 25, 2025)

earlier this month i read There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone; in the course of that reading, a section of Part Two stood out as demonstrating many of the worst, most ghoulish aspects of housing politics today. today we're going to focus on one of these aspects: the intentional murder of public housing.

i'm sure most of my audience doesn't need me to tell them that public housing was intentionally murdered; however, you might be unfamiliar with how this was done in practice. it was not just that public housing—over a number of presidential administrations—was racialized into housing suitable only for non-whites; that public housing was stigmatized as poverty-stricken, portrayed as crime-infested, described as full of drug-addicts and degenerates, and written off as “monstrous, depressing places,” in the words of Richard Nixon; or that public housing was defunded by a thousand, bipartisan cuts. it was that public housing, in many cases, was violently dismantled by capital in the service of profit—a neoliberal spin on the "slum clearance" of old. case in point, Atlanta, which Goldstone notes served as the model for contemporary dismembering of existing public housing stock:

[Beginning in 1994] Atlanta Housing Authority embarked on an ambitious campaign to dismantle the city’s public housing. Democratic mayor Bill Campbell appointed Renée Glover, a former Wall Street lawyer, to serve as the CEO of the agency. Under her leadership, AHA showed little interest in refurbishing Atlanta’s dilapidated projects, where a remarkable 13 percent of the city’s population (and 40 percent of schoolchildren) were living—a greater proportion than in any other American city. Rather, the agency rebranded itself as a “diversified real estate company” and took on the new mission of creating entire communities “from the ground up,” as Glover put it—which meant tearing down public housing complexes, giving eligible families vouchers, and enlisting private developers to build, own, and manage mixed-income communities where the projects had once stood.

But AHA’s innovations didn’t stop there. Inspired by efforts at the federal level to move people from “welfare to work,” AHA became the first housing authority in the country to impose a strict work requirement on its beneficiaries. These measures, declared an admiring column in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had turned the city’s housing authority into a “conservative’s dream.” When Glover described her approach as revolutionary, she wasn’t exaggerating. The Atlanta Model, as it came to be known, was soon adopted as the blueprint for redevelopment in Chicago, Miami, and a number of other major cities.

the beauty of this mass-privatization for capital was the immense value and profit it provided to all of its participants—with the exception of actual tenants, who were left to flounder at the whims of the housing market and almost wholly cleansed from their long-time neighborhoods. particularly indicative of the fate of social housing tenants was what happened to the Techwood Homes project (once the pride of the Public Works Administration). despite "$1 billion of private investment that poured into the area" after its demolition in 1995—or rather, because of that $1 billion in private investment—the vast, vast majority of its tenants were displaced in favor of upscale tenants from which a much greater profit could be derived. again, quoting Goldstone,

In Atlanta, as in other booming cities where apartment vacancies were at an all-time low and rents in the private market were soaring, [Section 8] voucher holders suddenly found themselves competing for fewer and fewer eligible units. Many voucher-accepting landlords saw that they could extract greater profits from unassisted tenants.

to say nothing of the aforementioned stigmatization of public housing tenants (and low-income tenants generally), which wrought consequences far beyond the bounds of public housing projects like Techwood Homes. even though Section 8 was—in effect—a compromise with capital, capital-holders fought obliged participation in the program and, through the decades between the New Deal and present day, grew increasingly oppositional to the tenants reliant upon it for shelter. when Techwood Homes was demolished—along with every other public housing project in Atlanta—it reflected the belief that people dependant on Section 8 are not worthy of anything. there is no money to be made off of them; they are not responsible enough to deserve shelter, even from the government.

the result has been exactly what you would expect. even before the onerous requirements applied to voucher holders, many privately-operated apartments simply do not take Section 8 and render the value of holding a voucher moot. the "socioeconomic mobility" that is ostensibly offered by Section 8 is totally vaporous under market conditions, because a Section 8 tenant is invariably a unit operated at a relative loss for a landlord when the precious few vacant units to go around are a profiteer's dream. in the absence of public housing, there is no possibility here but a sort of social purification.

Current Mood: rage

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Vocal Synth Rec: MINIMUM RAGE by MonochroMenace

(Cross-posting from the vsynthrecs community.)

Type: Song
VSynth Featured: Kasane Teto
Link: MINIMUM RAGE by MonochroMenace

Watch on YouTube

Reccer's Note: This and Billionaire Buffet both coming out within a few months of me getting my first retail job... Somehow, I've been feeling a particular kinship with Teto lately, idkkk. Also, Teto's purple hair is a reference to the artist's previous song featuring Teto, Regret Rock!

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The Icariad: A Tierlist of Songs called "Icarus"

On a brief roadtrip to pick up my second partnersys from the airport, "Icarus" by CHRISTON came up on shuffle. My wife made a joke about the Crane Wives being on testosterone now, in reference to their own "Icarus" song as the band she was more familiar with. This sparked a rabbithole of looking up every single song titled "Icarus" currently available on spotify. The result was a 90 min playlist and this corresponding tier list.

You can listen to the playlist here. Youtube mirror may be forthcoming.

Requirements for the playlist and tierlist

Title must be "Icarus" and only "Icarus". Songs with additional words in the title are disqualified and cannot be included in the Icariad.^[1]
Not every song was included; songs that were classified as "Singles" didn't get added mostly because I wasn't sure how to do it without accidentally just starting the song itself
Songs are ranked on two axes. First is overall song quality, second is on the quality of reference to Icarus (Icarusity, if you will). References were judged by:
- Whether they directly said Icarus's name or not
- The degree to which they captured the story
- The effectiveness of how they utilized the metaphor

Rankings obviously differed by the individual participant - where we had disagreements, I will clarify the ratings and reasoning behind them.

( Commence the Icariad )

Current Mood: exanimate

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Soulbonding History: "Destroying your soulbonds is murder" color bar

When we joined the soubonding comms on Livejournal in 2007, we often saw the following bar in people's profile pages:


They're people, friends, lovers. NOT Satan. Destroying your soulbonds is murder.

(Color bars of this type were common things on Livejournal at the time; I expect because it wasn't an image and thus didn't require imagehosting, saving bandwidth and work.)

Because it is in danger of being lost, I want to credit the originator of this. I also want to talk about some of the context around it, and why it got made.

( This is a post about death and murder. )

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plural:etymology

Soulbonder Etymology: dar'morende and tai'morende

Doing these together because their histories and citations are identical.

tai'morende (noun)
Meaning: 1: originally intended to be “an alternative version of [a] character's entire world inside your head” (Eclective, 2002), but due to misunderstanding apparently became 2: a fictional character who takes on an independent life, but who doesn’t stick around for long (ibid).

dar'morende (noun)
Meaning: 1: original meaning: same as soulbond. Due to misunderstanding, it became 2: a fictional character who takes on an independent life to their creator or audience and sticks around.

Coiner: soulbonder Catherine Rain (Eclective’s 2004 glossary) on the soulbonders' Just For Writers (JFW) AOL mailing list (Eclective 2002).
When: by 1999-9-17 (Lyn)
Where: Soulbonding term, never went further.
( Their rise and fall. )

TL;DR: The only reason anyone these days knows these terms existed is because of Eclective. I can’t find anyone else using it except Lyn, once; all other citations go to Eclective's 2004 glossary. These term are the least-known a term can be and still justify being in the glossary.

( Citations )

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Many-Selved Etymology: "Headmate"

EDIT:

sobqjmv_sphinx expanded on my research and proved it was used by multiples before DesperateFans! Check it out! https://sobqjmv-sphinx.dreamwidth.org/5620.html

Hungry Ghosts have discovered they can nerd snipe us by asking us, "Hey, we heard that 'headmate' came from soulbonders, is that true?" We honestly didn't think we'd discover it, but thanks to the amazing power of ljsear.ch, we got a really good start!

Meaning: 1. (RP, original term) the relationship one role-playing character (AKA a sockpuppet or "pup") had to another, as opposed to their relationship to their player (AKA "typist"). 2. The relationship between any tenants of the same vessel.
Coiner: the DesperateFans roleplaying community on Livejournal? (First used by Pollution/mr_p_white?)
When: by 2005/4/18
( the rise of headmate )

TL;DR: the term was coined by 2005 by roleplayers (who, if any of them were soulbonders, they sure didn't fess up to it anywhere I saw) and spread through Livejournal into plural comms like plural_living within three months. It also spread via RPers, muses and muns (2006-01), soulbonders (2006-05), before finally getting picked up by multiples (2007-02). With the fall of LJ, the term spread to tumblr, where it became so widespread that even Urban Dictionary heard about it.

If you manage to kick the can back earlier than this, please let me know! RP was never my realm, and my trail goes cold there.

( Citations )

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Spirited/Many-Selved Etymological Glossary Index Page (1816-2016)

Sneak: This is a (forever IN-PROGRESS) hub page for all our deep dives into the origination, rise, and fall of terms used for what we loosely call "spirited" or "many-selved" folks from 1816-2016, including: various forms of medical multiplicity (dual consciousness, MPD, DID,etc.), medical backlash multiples (empowered multiples, natural multiples, endogenic multiples), plurals, soulbonders, and whatever else we trip over, just so we can have it all in one place.

We are cutting it at 2016 because that gives us a good 200 year window going back to our earliest medical multi records in English, and also because we do not want to dig into the microlabel boom. Pluralpedia is better for things like that. We might later kick the earliest year back, but I doubt we will go any further into the present than 2016.

Quick Alphabetical Index:
A ~ B ~ C ~ D ~ E ~ F ~ G ~ H ~ I ~ J ~ K ~ L ~ M ~ N ~ O ~ P ~ Q ~ R ~ S ~ T ~ U ~ V ~ W ~ X ~ Y ~ Z

Previous Glossaries Used in the Making of This Document

( A )
( B )
( C )
( D )
( E )
( F )
( G )
( H )
( I )
( J )
( K )
( L )
( M )
( N )
( O )
( P )
( Q )
( R )
( S )
( T )
( U )
( V )
( X )
( Y )
( Z )

( Previous Glossaries Used in the Making of This Document )

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Part 5, Week 6

Shoot, is it already the end of Part 5? Time sure does fly...

This week's Minimum and Medium moods are: Relaxed, Silly, Uncomfortable

This week's Maximum moods are: Blah, Apathetic, Blank

Goodness, those are some bland moods to work with 😂 Still, there's potential in all of them! What do you think? Are you going for all three, or do you plan to stick with one and call it good? Are you a mood sommelier who can accurately detect and depict the differences between these moods? Let's talk about it!

Current Mood: enthralled

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Spaceman, by Marc Hempel

While doing sci-fi library magazine organizing, I found this short comic, "Spaceman" by Marc Hempel, that does realitymashing in a really effective cool way! He needs barely any dialogue or text to express the visual concept of daydreaming; it's so good.

And someone on Pillowfort kindly digitized and uploaded it!

Current Mood: frustrated

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Writing Is Hard

I hate having to write down my coherent thoughts on Siffrin having implied internalized homophobia for this analysis essay. Can’t I just point to Siffrin saying that he wishes he didn’t experience romantic attraction, Bad Touch, and their religion being implied to be based in ideas of unchanging fate, and then gesture at all that vaguely for a while

Current Mood: discontent

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Local Nerd Complains About Localization Differences

CRK localization can be really bad, specifically WRT Shadow Milk.

English localization: “Excuse me? I’m sorry to disturb you… But I’m still the MAIN CHARACTER here!” // Original text directly translated: “Sorry, but I’m still the main character. You haven’t forgotten about me, have you?”
In response to Shadow Milk saying she should trust him (“her colleagues”), Eternal Sugar says in the English localization: “Would you~?” // Her response directly translated: “Would I trust you if I were you~?”
English localization: “Well well! Where are my favorite minions?” // Original text directly translated: “Kids~?” (Context: he’s calling out to Black Sapphire and Candy Apple.)
English localization: “We all live for some spicy drama, amirite?” // Original text directly translated: “Is it okay to say when hard things are hard?”

That last one is especially egregious imo. I don’t even know where they got that

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My Thoughts on the Appare March Preview

Part of the reason why I find Fuuta singing in pre-war Japanese so interesting is because, up until now, he's always been a character focused on progress, thematically. An intense focus on the internet, technology in its many forms, and progressive views. Even spraypaint is associated with rebellion, punk, and the like.

But, of course, religion is associated with its opposite. Stagnation, or regression, perhaps. "Traditional values"... While we don't know much about Amaneism quite yet, we know that Amane's original cult stressed a refusal of modern medicine, and the values of purity/non-vulgarity.

So now, Fuuta is singing in such old Japanese that many Japanese viewers either borderline or outright do not understand him. From "progress" to "regress", from the future to the past.