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I've been meme'd
Dec. 14th, 2020 08:31 amThree more interests from hitokage
Dragons
I've had a life-long obsession with dragons. When I was very little it was second place to my obsession with horses. In my teenage years it was definitely thing number one. Later on it took second place to the vampire thing. :3
Dragons are a symbol of freedom (flight) and power (fire) so they were super appealing to me, as a child who felt very powerless and was simply dragged about with my parents wherever they went. When I encountered the genre of friendly/sympathetic dragons in stories, I was so very hooked! I would eagerly read anything with a dragon in it in any way, but dragon as hero was always my favorite.
My first finished novel, Dragon Child, stars an ordinary girl who finds out she is actually a dragon, and lemme tell you, that was very much wish fulfillment self-insertion there! (The town she lives in is "located" where my grandparents mesa-top cabin is, to give her a handy nearby cliff to fly off from.) The story, alas, remains incomplete, because it was meant to be first in a trilogy, so lots of threads are just dangling, and I still haven't come back to it. I really want to someday, but YA is harder for me to write, and also the middle book just didn't gel in the same way for whatever reason.
One of my first "other me" personas was SPark the Purple Dragon, which is part of why I go by that nearly everywhere on the net, since it's who I was when I was setting up a lot of accounts and meeting many of my first friends.
And speaking of other mes...
Healthy multiplicity
I get a little squirrely talking about this in public sometimes. I have gotten way more flak for it than for being queer or trans or anything else, tbh. I was once kicked from a trans suicide support chat for "faking for attention" when I mentioned it. And the number of "progressive" people who think otherkin, tulpas, soulbonding, etc. are valid punchlines for nasty jokes is really high.
To be clear, many of the communities built around those things are unhealthy and toxic in the extreme. But so are many of the communities built around such things as being trans, or queer, or just...having a difficult mother in law. (I was in the JustNoMIL reddit community almost since it started, and WOW did it turn into a toxic cesspit over the last couple of years.) So that's no judge of the validity of a thing!
But okay. Healthy Multiplicity is a movement/idea that multiple personalities can be a healthy thing to have. That one can have "Disassociative Identity Disorder" and not actually be disordered about it. This is how it is for me/us. There are currently 8 of us, though that's recent, there have been 7 for the last several years, and I don't know if the new person will be stable or not.
For us, it's a coping mechanism. We keep ourselves company, talk ourselves through things, split out difficult mental traits/conditions (depression, having a bad temper, etc.) into different selves to name and manage those things, and assign responsibilities and difficult situations to cope with to different selves. It's not without its flaws, I will freely admit that. It causes problems! And yet it also solves a lot of problems. I've discussed it with several different therapists, and none of them have been opposed to it, though I think only my current one has even come close to actually grasping how it works for us.
The current list of "us" in brief, in order of age:
Guardian - Our first creation, an asian dragon, and accidental tulpa, made by meditating on the image of it in order to not obsess over things we couldn't change in our childhood. Guardian intervenes when we might hurt ourselves significantly.
Aidan - The main me, a melding of the male vampire-feline Aidan and the previous genderqueer femme human main Stephanie. The person you're *usually* speaking with, but not always!
Yin - A bi-gendered wolf cyborg, and our anger and trolling instincts. A leashed and collared wolf, but not *tame*.
Serapha - A female vampire, and writing muse. She isn't *evil* but she is a sadistic bitch. The one who originally fell in love with our husband, but no longer super common at the "front" of things.
Andrew - Yin's boyfriend and the art muse, he does all the drawing. A muntjack-based kirin and vampire. Also our shyness, so you will probably never speak to him.
Angel/Angela - A winged feline paladin. She is our spiritual side and faith. But not in a fluffy way, she carries a sword for a reason.
Oni - Aidan's boyfriend, and a soulbond of sorts, as he was originally a Legend of Zelda character. (We do not believe in literal other spirits walking into our head, but he feels as if that past matters to him, even if it's fictional and he's entirely born of our subconscious. If you do believe in such things that's fine, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.) He is our courage, and also tends to manage Yin.
Talis - The newbie. A character from our most recently finished novel, who offered to move into my head and help out with things. A "fated hero" character inspired by LoZ, he's also remained largely cheerful while coping with a lot of shit, and would like to cheer us up a bit during depressed times. Whether this *works*, or he burns himself out, or vanishes for other reasons I don't know, but for now I'm quite happy to have him around.
Vampires
It is an obsession on multiple fronts. Vampires are hot! Vampires are interesting. There are tons of great vampire stories out there. Vampires have so much history and lore and stuff around them. So much potential meaning. And they can be anything from basically humans with weird diets to completely inhuman others.
I personally identify as a vampire, (several of us do, in fact, if you note how many of us are in the above list!) not for any supernatural reason, or spiritual reason, or because of any ideas about weird medical conditions, or any of the other things I find in the "real" vampire community. Just... A vampire is defined by drinking blood. Vampire bats, for example. Drink blood, ergo they are vampires. I drink blood, ergo I am a vampire.
It's not a physical necessity (though sometimes I swear the fact that my own blood is fucked up may contribute to the urge, I have very low blood pressure, poor circulation, and tend towards anemia) it's a psychological thing. Blood sharing is an intimacy in some ways more profound than sex. The animal mating urge drives people towards sex, but there's no instinct making somebody want to let me take their blood, that's entirely a choice. That makes it feel very deep and meaningful to me.
Alas, though my husband isn't afraid of it and doesn't mind it, he's also not remotely into it or turned on by it, and I do prefer to share this with a partner who's getting something out of it and isn't just obliging me. The fact that he's let me a few times in the past is a big deal, but it's not something I want to have to beg for all the time. So I currently do not have a partner for blood sharing, save virtually or in my inner space. Oni and Talis both do oblige me there, and my girlfriend Alice enjoys it via discord sometimes, but it's not the same, you know? Still, it's quite nice, and perhaps someday I'll have a local partner for it. I also like being drunk from, one of the few places where I "switch". :D
So yeah. There's probably way too much information about a few of my obsessions. :D
Dragons
I've had a life-long obsession with dragons. When I was very little it was second place to my obsession with horses. In my teenage years it was definitely thing number one. Later on it took second place to the vampire thing. :3
Dragons are a symbol of freedom (flight) and power (fire) so they were super appealing to me, as a child who felt very powerless and was simply dragged about with my parents wherever they went. When I encountered the genre of friendly/sympathetic dragons in stories, I was so very hooked! I would eagerly read anything with a dragon in it in any way, but dragon as hero was always my favorite.
My first finished novel, Dragon Child, stars an ordinary girl who finds out she is actually a dragon, and lemme tell you, that was very much wish fulfillment self-insertion there! (The town she lives in is "located" where my grandparents mesa-top cabin is, to give her a handy nearby cliff to fly off from.) The story, alas, remains incomplete, because it was meant to be first in a trilogy, so lots of threads are just dangling, and I still haven't come back to it. I really want to someday, but YA is harder for me to write, and also the middle book just didn't gel in the same way for whatever reason.
One of my first "other me" personas was SPark the Purple Dragon, which is part of why I go by that nearly everywhere on the net, since it's who I was when I was setting up a lot of accounts and meeting many of my first friends.
And speaking of other mes...
Healthy multiplicity
I get a little squirrely talking about this in public sometimes. I have gotten way more flak for it than for being queer or trans or anything else, tbh. I was once kicked from a trans suicide support chat for "faking for attention" when I mentioned it. And the number of "progressive" people who think otherkin, tulpas, soulbonding, etc. are valid punchlines for nasty jokes is really high.
To be clear, many of the communities built around those things are unhealthy and toxic in the extreme. But so are many of the communities built around such things as being trans, or queer, or just...having a difficult mother in law. (I was in the JustNoMIL reddit community almost since it started, and WOW did it turn into a toxic cesspit over the last couple of years.) So that's no judge of the validity of a thing!
But okay. Healthy Multiplicity is a movement/idea that multiple personalities can be a healthy thing to have. That one can have "Disassociative Identity Disorder" and not actually be disordered about it. This is how it is for me/us. There are currently 8 of us, though that's recent, there have been 7 for the last several years, and I don't know if the new person will be stable or not.
For us, it's a coping mechanism. We keep ourselves company, talk ourselves through things, split out difficult mental traits/conditions (depression, having a bad temper, etc.) into different selves to name and manage those things, and assign responsibilities and difficult situations to cope with to different selves. It's not without its flaws, I will freely admit that. It causes problems! And yet it also solves a lot of problems. I've discussed it with several different therapists, and none of them have been opposed to it, though I think only my current one has even come close to actually grasping how it works for us.
The current list of "us" in brief, in order of age:
Guardian - Our first creation, an asian dragon, and accidental tulpa, made by meditating on the image of it in order to not obsess over things we couldn't change in our childhood. Guardian intervenes when we might hurt ourselves significantly.
Aidan - The main me, a melding of the male vampire-feline Aidan and the previous genderqueer femme human main Stephanie. The person you're *usually* speaking with, but not always!
Yin - A bi-gendered wolf cyborg, and our anger and trolling instincts. A leashed and collared wolf, but not *tame*.
Serapha - A female vampire, and writing muse. She isn't *evil* but she is a sadistic bitch. The one who originally fell in love with our husband, but no longer super common at the "front" of things.
Andrew - Yin's boyfriend and the art muse, he does all the drawing. A muntjack-based kirin and vampire. Also our shyness, so you will probably never speak to him.
Angel/Angela - A winged feline paladin. She is our spiritual side and faith. But not in a fluffy way, she carries a sword for a reason.
Oni - Aidan's boyfriend, and a soulbond of sorts, as he was originally a Legend of Zelda character. (We do not believe in literal other spirits walking into our head, but he feels as if that past matters to him, even if it's fictional and he's entirely born of our subconscious. If you do believe in such things that's fine, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.) He is our courage, and also tends to manage Yin.
Talis - The newbie. A character from our most recently finished novel, who offered to move into my head and help out with things. A "fated hero" character inspired by LoZ, he's also remained largely cheerful while coping with a lot of shit, and would like to cheer us up a bit during depressed times. Whether this *works*, or he burns himself out, or vanishes for other reasons I don't know, but for now I'm quite happy to have him around.
Vampires
It is an obsession on multiple fronts. Vampires are hot! Vampires are interesting. There are tons of great vampire stories out there. Vampires have so much history and lore and stuff around them. So much potential meaning. And they can be anything from basically humans with weird diets to completely inhuman others.
I personally identify as a vampire, (several of us do, in fact, if you note how many of us are in the above list!) not for any supernatural reason, or spiritual reason, or because of any ideas about weird medical conditions, or any of the other things I find in the "real" vampire community. Just... A vampire is defined by drinking blood. Vampire bats, for example. Drink blood, ergo they are vampires. I drink blood, ergo I am a vampire.
It's not a physical necessity (though sometimes I swear the fact that my own blood is fucked up may contribute to the urge, I have very low blood pressure, poor circulation, and tend towards anemia) it's a psychological thing. Blood sharing is an intimacy in some ways more profound than sex. The animal mating urge drives people towards sex, but there's no instinct making somebody want to let me take their blood, that's entirely a choice. That makes it feel very deep and meaningful to me.
Alas, though my husband isn't afraid of it and doesn't mind it, he's also not remotely into it or turned on by it, and I do prefer to share this with a partner who's getting something out of it and isn't just obliging me. The fact that he's let me a few times in the past is a big deal, but it's not something I want to have to beg for all the time. So I currently do not have a partner for blood sharing, save virtually or in my inner space. Oni and Talis both do oblige me there, and my girlfriend Alice enjoys it via discord sometimes, but it's not the same, you know? Still, it's quite nice, and perhaps someday I'll have a local partner for it. I also like being drunk from, one of the few places where I "switch". :D
So yeah. There's probably way too much information about a few of my obsessions. :D