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just another reblog blog

@the-thirty-fourth

you people will just. say anything

okay but do you understand that liz wallace made the bechdel-WALLACE test because she was a dyke who wanted to go to movies and pretend the characters were dykes and her friend alison bechdel happened to put her silly little litmus assessment into a comic strip and then the rest of everyone else decided it was a bona fide way of means testing media for Feminist Content? do you know that? it doesn’t sound like you know that

some of you are the dumbest motherfuckers alive

i am going to explain the bechdel test for people such as those in the tags

here is the original comic strip:

what the bechdel-wallace test is not:

  • an academic analysis of media
  • a bar that determines whether or not a movie is “bad” or “good” (by which i mean if a movie doesn’t pass the bechdel-wallace test that doesn’t make it bad, and if a movie passes the test the movie is not automatically good)
  • supposed to be taken seriously

what the bechdel-wallace test is:

  • a personal litmus test created by a lesbian who was, presumably, frustrated with the fact that women could not exist in the movie without a relationship to a man

it is not a way to “police what women speak about” because it does not apply to real people. it applies to fictional characters. also, the bechdel-wallace test does not stipulate that there can be no conversation about a male love interest. the women just have to talk about something other than a male love interest.

the reason the male love interest stipulation is there is because like… this test was created by a butch lesbian woman to determine whether or not she wanted to watch a movie. removing that part of the test violates the spirit of the test. it’s silly because it’s not supposed to be serious.

tl;dr stop misinterpreting the bechdel-wallace test you losers. op is right. goodbye

The lesbian origins of the test are important but as a fellow lesbian, it still astounds me that any women take issue with this. Because unless you are somehow the only woman around you, you are probably having conversations that pass the Bechdel Test all the time. Here are some of the ones I’ve had today:

-Talked to my mom this morning about what I’m wearing to my job interview tomorrow

-Gossiped with a female friend on Discord about something stupid that a different female-identified person said in another server

-Made plans with another female friend on Discord about meeting up in person this summer

-Talked to several female students about their final projects for my class

-Ordered Indian food from a female cashier at the student union

That’s an example of the types of basic, everyday female experiences that are left out of films that don’t pass the Bechdel Test. It’s why films with female protagonists where there are any other female characters of note tend to pass with flying colors, even if their stories are focused on heterosexual romance, because inevitably those two women are bound to discuss something else.

Every woman has some type of existence, some kinds of interests and concerns that aren’t about men. The Bechdel-Wallace Test is about if a film shows that or not. Doesn’t it bother you that so few films pass? Doesn’t it bother you that most of your life is not represented in movies?

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The most horrifying aspect of parents saying "my kid could do that" about art is that they never ever ever mean "wow my kid is good enough to be in a museum" and they always always always mean "I want to disrespect you so much I'll do it by implying that this thing is just as worthless as the things my child makes with their hands" and right in front of them too. Your kids can hear you u know, and the things they make with their hands are the least worthless and most precious aspects of human life I'll kill u

Listen my three year old child handed me a picture of a “weird bug” they had drawn this morning, and the explanation about the intention for it was as deep a journey into the universe as I could ask for. I instantly wanted to send it to everybody, not even to show it off, but just to explain things a bit. Look at this way of looking at the world, before one is taught differently; before one is shaped forcibly. Look at the purity and clarity of intention (something that my favourite artists and makers strive for, and which is what I am most attracted to: clarity of intention. The ability to communicate from brain to brain across the gulf of time, death, language, background, common ground. Knowing where you’re going! Knowing what you want to achieve - and doing it! The form does not matter!)

(Also, horrible things with legs. I’ll always give them attention too.)

(This was also a horrible thing with legs.)

So much of what we search for is here, all along. So much of what we chase after is already in this bug. The child scribbles it, hands it to the baby, who obediently folds it up and puts it in their mouth; the child answers a few questions, then runs off to get sticky; you are left holding the wonder, going: somewhere in here is something we are missing, something we’ve lost track of, and I could spend quite a lot of time trying to pin it down (anthropologically, psychologically, poetically, in a very special episode of a children’s cartoon, in a degree, as an instagram account)

What the hell else is art for, if not to send you on a little journey. If an artist can do that with a scribble then you should give them your attention. You should show other people, explain it a bit. Keep it forever as evidence of something - maybe a building, a collection that makes sense. You could call it a life or even a museum.

Show us the bug!!! Or describe it at least. I want to see it so bad.

- I love it! What is it?

- this is a weird silly bug. It’s weird!

- I love the smile.

- Yes, he’s very silly.

- I love the legs. So many!

- Yes; I drewed them like that.

- What does he do?

- He’s a present for the baby. He is a tummy bug (EDITOR’S NOTE: gastrovirus) and he loves sick (Ed: vomit) HAHAHAHAHA.

- Oh wow.

- HE LOVES TO EAT THE SICK! HAHAHA

- Oh wow. Did … did you know we use the word “bug” for two things - we can use it to mean a little animals, like a woodlouse, that lives outside? But also, when we say tummy bug, we mean a germ - the little tiny things we can’t see - they’re different. Which one is he?

- Oh this is a ninvisible bug.

- A germ?

(Image: a furry bug with lots of legs, wide staring eyes, and a slightly deranged grin from eye to eye.)

- He’s the BUG that makes you sick. That’s why he has so many legs. (Ed: here I thought this was possibly influenced by the educational book they have called “see inside germs,” depicting various microorganisms with flagella and mycelium and so on.) when it’s time to be sick, he uses his legs to tickle the back of your throat to make you be sick. And then he! eats! the! sick! HAHAHA

- (Ed: at this point I helplessly let go of my attempt to teach germ theory in the face of such superior theology) oh … wow.

- He lives inside you all the time but doesn’t tickle you all the time because it isn’t always time to be sick. He’s ninvisible. He’s not an outside bug. He’s the tummy bug. that’s why him make you be sick to come up to your throat and eat the sick. See, the baby loves that bug.

- does the baby… like germs?

- he is NOT a GERM!!

LATER

- what made you choose to draw a tummy bug, to give to the baby?

- The crying was annoying to me.

- Um…. I mean, why did you draw the bug?

- I choose a bug because they’re my favourite to draw to give to the baby to help them calm down. because the crying is annoying to me.

- What makes you choose to draw a bug?

- The baby loves bugs.

- How do you know that?

- The baby always calms down and stops crying when I’m give them my bugs.

- Oh, I see.

- I’m also best at drawing bugs.

- How are you so good?

- I’m just know.

LATER

- I see that you have cut the paper?

- Yes! I’m snipped him out carefully with the white (Ed: child-safe baby’s nail cutting) scissors.

- are you happy with it?

- Yes, I’m really pleased that I m draw him all by myself. He’s all wiggly biggly. I drewed him to be wiggly and biggly.

END

Some things that interested me: the way that the knowledge you put into them is synthesized and recreated: the very Greek-philosophy-of-medicine idea of the Tummy Bug as large soft benign prawn that triggers vomiting by tickling you. We are all fascinated by AI right now, the way it spits our own things back at us; here is a juvenile human intelligence, which does the same thing, but less predictably. The way the artist is already self-proclaiming their awareness of the audience: using the baby’s nail scissors, which are Allowed Blades, and stating in advance that they did so carefully, therefore dodging the expected reflexive criticism of “please don’t use scissors without me!” Or the tiresome parental “WHERE DID YOU GET SCISSORS?” The gentle reproach that the baby, fussing mildly for five minutes while I prepared breakfast, was so ANNOYING that the poor toddler had to create an art piece to meet this unmet need.

But also: a piece of work with thoughtfulness and attention given to medium, execution, and topic. Did it do its job? Yes. Did it communicate? Yes. Did it provoke reactions? Multiple ones. Was there intentionality? Yes. Was an emotion captured? Surely. Was the mark-making technically skilled and the result admirable? Of course. What about mastery? Mastery of some topics is clearly shown here. There was a clear trajectory from the artist’s brain to the audience’s, with evidence showing that the bridge was good.

And do you know that it is good? Yes, it is good. How do you know? I’m just do.

Often you have to re-enter education to get this much to grips with art, so it’s just cool to me. What we are seeking is so often found.

Natural Black Hair Tutorial! Usually Black hair is excluded in the hair tutorials which I have seen so I have gone through it in depth because it’s really not enough to tell someone simply, “Black hair is really curly, draw it really curly.” 

The next part of Black Hair In Depth will feature styles and ideas for designing characters and I will release it around February. If you would like to see certain styles, please shoot me a message!

YES! BOOSTINGGGG FOR MY FOLKS WHO WANNA/NEED TO KNOW HOW

[Image transcripts follow]

Black Hair In Depth [Drawing Hair * misselaney.tumblr.com ] 

[Page one]

Introduction: Unique Visual Texture

The subject of Black hair is largely overlooked in drawing tutorials, but this hair type’s visual texture and behavior is so unique that it deserves careful attention. We’ll start with the building blocks of drawing this har.

Up close, you will find that the hair has a wealth of different patterns:

  • micro-ringlets (small, tight, near-uniform coils)
  • micro-crimping (small zig-zags)
  • Sproadic strands (mixed loops and zig-zags, frequently changing direction]

Drawing this hair is a matter of layering lines which describe its texture:

Notice how, in comparison to straight-or-wavy hair, the texture also has an impact on the hairline, making it soft, gradual, and non-uniform.

[Page two]

Hair Types

There are myriad of hair typing systems for natural Black hair. The most common one is the Walker hair type system, which we will use for the sake of how abundant reference pictures are in the system.

Type 3C: volumnous corkscrew curls about as wide as a pencil.

Type 4A, 4B: Strands an an S (4A) or Z (4B) pattern, the locks about as wide as a crochet needle.

Type 4C: The most tightly curled hair, in a Z. The difference between 4B and 4C visually speaking is how tight the individual curls are, eliminating an easily discernable curling pattern.

[Page three]

Lighting for Afro-Textured Hair

Due to its pattern, most 4B and 4C hair behaves differently than other hair types when it comes to receiving light. Rendering it properly is an exercise in thought, especially for those who follow formulas to shade hair. Here are the major considerations:

In drawing other hairtypes, you’ll put these sharp pops of light in. This is specular highlighting, and you see it even in low lighting.

But afro-textured hair handles light differently. It still picks up the same amount of light, but it scatters it,s oftening these highlights for a matte look.

In drawing it left loose, think about this hair in layers from the outside in when you light and color it rather than using what you know from straight and wavy hair types. Block it into sections and then think about how they cast shadow on one another. This applies to 3C hair, but not as much.

[Page four]

Considerations For Hair Behavior

If you live in a context where you just don’t see Natural hair, you may miss out on these subtler visual points its character.

When parted, you see more of the scalp than you may have expected.

Due to a thing called shrinkage, the hair is much longer than it looks, sometimes up to 4 times longer.

This hair is finer in terms of density and generally in strand diameter, so it is actually much -lighter- than you might think!

[Page five]

Further Considerations - When Wet

In cartooning and stylized works, we exaggerate the excess weight of water, the shine, and how it will stick to itself. This is similar for Black hair in most cases, but tehre are hair types which react to water in a unique fashion that one wouldn’t intuitively assume.

In terms of body loss, wavy and straight hair goes completely limp when wet, but curly and coily hair keeps most of its curls despite the weight of the water within it.

Regarding the lighting, the sharp specular pops of light are smaller, tighter, and more noisy than in hair which water straightens.

The final touch is the behavior of water still in the hair; instead of sliding down to drip off in sheets, hair can bead up along curls. This is not in every Black hair type, rather the more wiry ones, but it is an interesting effect that you may wish to draw.

[Page six]

Coloring

The color gamut of African hair (as in purely from Africa) is largely from eumelanin, or brown-black. The undertones have cooler huse than in European hair, which usually has more pheomelanin. Instead of rufous colors, undertones like crimson and maroon are more common.

However, to say black and almost-black is the only range to ever use is nonsense. Make it honey blond, red, whatever, make it *green* even

Whatever color you pick, shade with the base color’s compliment to create a nice depth. Highlight with the same temperature as the base.

Side note: This is the tutorial I was referring to for this piece. You’d better believe I’ll be linking back to it properly now!

Keep ear protection on hand!

Keep stim toys on hand!

you'll never know when you might need them

Yup yup! I carry my noise cancelling headphones and Flare Calmer ear inserts with me everywhere!

flare calmer? are those earplugs? we have loop earbuds!

Yes!

Mine are translucent (I wanted purple). You can get them without the connection, but I prefer the secure version above.

I don't know how Loop works, but Flare Calmer's are hollow ear inserts that redirect sounds and reduce ambient pitch. I wear them most when driving so that high pitch sounds like trucks and motorcycles don't trigger my senses.

Lackadaisy Compositing Breakdown

Crew artist Marie “Eseralie” Leininger put this explainer together to demonstrate some of what the job of a compositor on a project like Lackadaisy.

‘Comp’ is one of those not-often discussed parts of the filmmaking process, particularly in animated media, where most of the focus tends to be on the animation itself. Because it’s really the part where all of the pieces come together and receive a final round of polish, though, it’s no less vital. Hopefully this provides some insight into what’s involved!

See the animated Lackadaisy pilot here!

Love the idea that in universe fanon changes the way the Minecraft people look. Doc wakes up in crocs one day, nods, smiles, and carries on. He's a little less reserved when he wakes up a quadruped, but it's kind of cool.

Jimmy, meanwhile, wakes up with fledgling wings after Last life. They take a while to fledge, and he thinks the colour might change. The whims of the universe are odd, after all. No. He wakes after Double life with the bright yellow feathers that had grown in throughout the sessions, and cries for the soulmate he lost. No longer does he hear whispers across worlds. No, now he can tell before someone dies. Never enough to prevent it, only enough for it to hurt. He sees Tango again and tastes death on his soul fire hair.

Some people change by their dream. Gem, for instance, is equally comfortable with horns and hooves or with butterfly wings.

Grian sobs as his wings, once a relief, brightly coloured and so, so different to the monochrome of the downside up, give way once more to purples. Tears fall from a thousand eyes forced open, watching.

Joe is delighted when, for a brief month, he sees through rainbow eyes. They fade, but turn up on Tuesdays and Rain days.

Cleo sighs the first time her arm falls off, and searches for Grian for sewing advice, remembering a disconcerting era of plastic eyes and floppy bodies.

Some folk barely notice. What's the difference between being something that looks like a normal guy but isn't, and being a normal guy? Aesthetically, not much. Sometimes, they can't tell until they smile and people flinch, until they take their helmet off and choke, until the disguise they painted for themself refuses to come off.

Zedaph, comfortably a sheep, wakes up in bed disoriented after a particularly surprising shrieker stack. The potential consequence of a shock to prey animals hadn't occured to him before... It would make a great Zedvancement.

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How I Wrote A Novel.

This, in a nutshell, is what I did to get a book with my name on it.

NOTE: This is just my personal way of making the words go. Other people have different ways to make their words go. In the world of words, there are no right answers. There’s just lots and lots of tea/coffee/tear stains.

1). The Idea

When I get an idea for a story, I open up a document, label it “Brainstorming,” and start making a bullet list of events that consist of the plot.

It has to be an idea with tangible weight. A stray bit of dialogue or something vague like Halloween, that doesn’t give me much to work off of. Halloween creatures living on the same street where it’s Autumn every day- now that’s something I can build from.

What kinds of creatures are they? What do they do? What do their houses look like? The best ideas are the ones that spark more.

2). First Draft

This is the easy part- and the most challenging. Easy, because there’s literally no bar. I just sat there and typed. But it’s a huge mental challenge.

When I was in first draft mode, I wanted that story out. I thought that by making it such a rough, far-away version from the concept in my head, I was only delaying the day where I’d hold it in my hands. Turns out, that’s what got it to take on physical form in the first place. So I quieted down, grabbed my laptop and some hot tea, and typed.

3). Dissecting the First Draft

After I finished draft one, I printed it all off and highlighted the scant amounts that were passable for the next phase. Dialogue, descriptions, setting- anything that didn’t look like it was up to par was scratched out and omitted.

I call the above pictures A Slow Descent Into Madness.

4). The Second Draft

On a fresh document, I rewrote the story altogether- and it make a difference. I was coming up with things I hadn’t even thought of previously. And it was surprising how much better the plot was than the first time around. But it was still rough.

5). Draft Three

My method was to start with the bigger, more obvious issues and work my way down. Any plot holes I found were noted, and my outline was constantly under revision. I cut out entire scenes and made mental notes on ways they could be fixed/replaced.

This is where I started cutting chapters in half to make the story flow better- but I didn’t bother writing in usable chapter titles. Instead, I improvised:

6). Drafts Four and Five

These were dedicated to correcting the smaller, less obvious plot holes. This was the point where the story finally started to look close to what would become the final version.

7). Drafts Seven Onward

With the story line looking how I wanted, I then moved on to sentence structure. That one song that looked terrible? Rewritten. Over-the-top descriptions and excessive prose? Gone.

8). Editing and Proofing

This is where I had outside help. Besides this useful tool, I had two people check for spelling issues and the overall story. Once it was in decent shape to be made public, I asked for some additional help.

9). Betas

My betas were in the age range that my novel was geared toward, along with a couple of teachers and parents (as it was middle grade). I gave them the full manuscript, along with seven basic questions like “Which characters were your favorite/least favorite and why?” and “Was there a part of the story that didn’t make sense?”

I gave my betas three months to read a 42,590 word story, and by the end they gave me back the review sheets.

10). Final Adjustments

After I read over the reviews, I let the comments sit for three days so that I could proceed with a clear head. I smoothed out any flaws, scanned over the MS twice to make sure everything was right, and that is how I got to the end of writing my first novel.

Next comes publishing- which is a different beast entirely.

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For future reference. Wow, what a comprehensive post.

Sometimes I hate posts like these because I would LOVE to write but every single tutorial starts with “ok so you have an idea! Here’s what to do next!” And I’m always like “NO I DON’T HAVE AN IDEA! THAT’S THE PROBLEM! i CAN FIGURE OUT THE REST BUT HOW DO YOU IDEA???? HOW????? TELL ME HOW TO IDEA!!!!!” as I throttle them

Possession Code Super Explosion

hey did i mention it very mildly annoys me when people confuse possession/mind control/hivemind infections/other similar tropes, so i made an entire “possession shorthand” code that can communicate almost all aspects of a possession/mind control/jekyll and hyde/etc character in a string of letters and numbers

i was very bored 

^ conditions

^ more detailed explanations of each condition

i tried to make it so that you can communicate enough to get a basic idea for the dynamic of any possession-esque character. DO i plan on using this to communicate with anyone? No but it’s fun to have

(rules for use if you wanna use it for some reason:

1. DON’T use for characters/people with DID, OSDD, etc. this is supposed to be for silly fictional tropes you’d see in a cartoon not Dissociative Disorders)

2. DON’T use for f*tish/s*xual purposes fuck you)

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

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attentiondeficitstarscream

someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help

me: my what

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What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.

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when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much. 

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings! 

The Website That Started Natural Multiplicity

Disclaimer: This is a post covering a deep dive of archived events that took place in the past. DO NOT harass or send hate towards anyone mentioned.

Introduction

So, who came up with natural multiplicity? When I’ve asked this question, most people reply by saying “Nobody! It’s always existed!” But that’s not exactly what I was asking them. Sure, the experience has always existed, I agree with them there. But what I’m asking about is the name! Someone was experiencing or observing something and then they put a name to it. They decided to name it natural multiplicity—so who did that? Who came up with that? 

Through my deep dive, I ended up finding the answer for myself.

As you may have read in one of my previous posts, multiplicity and multiple personality were terms that were often used interchangeably prior to the 21st century. They were used exclusively in reference to DID (more often called MPD at the time). Their origins are clinical, and they also held a lot of importance to the pre-Internet and early Internet dissociative community. (See my post on that here.) During this time, multiplicity and multiple personality meant a trauma-based dissociative disorder. The term natural multiplicity did not exist at that time—at least not in any relation to DID.

Prior to the term natural multiplicity, discussions about multiplicity being natural were usually discussions about how it’s natural to dissociate after trauma. Whenever someone mentioned that multiplicity was not a disorder to them, it was usually because the terms disorder or even MPD/DID had negative connotations to them, because they personally didn’t want to identify with medical terminology for other reasons, because they were not personally distressed by their alters, or because they had reached a stage in recovery where they were no longer struggling—not because they saw the experience as inherently non-dissociative or non-traumagenic.

But someone came along and kickstarted a changed in that narrative. This person was experiencing something that they felt wasn’t trauma-based or dissociative…and believed that it was the same multiplicity that everyone else was referring to as trauma-based and dissociative. This person decided to take that concept and redefine it to be inherently not trauma-based, not dissociation, and not pathological.

So, who was that person? Who decided to name something that was very obviously not DID the equivalent to natural DID? Well, your answer is: Astraea’s Web

Evidence & Archives

Evidence of this wasn’t really hard to come by because, well…they’ve talked it! While they don’t go around bragging about it, it’s certainly come up a fair amount of times. Other people have talked about it, as well.

“The concepts of natural multiplicity and healthy multiplicity are very new. We only introduced them about ten years ago on our website, and while several other websites exist now and plenty of online multiples know about these ideas (whether they agree with them or not), this is still a very small subset of the online multiplicity community, which is a very small subset of multiples in general. Most people do not know about these ideas because they haven’t been publicised enough; that is what Pavilion is for, but it’s gotten off to a very slow start.” - From Bluejay Young (a member of Astraea Household) on Livejournal Multiplicity. (2005)
“Astraea’s page was the first multiplicity page that was NOT about DID.” - From Amorpha System on Livejournal Multiplicity. (2005)
“(1995) Astraea’s Web, the first Internet website to describe non-disordered and self-recognized multiplicity, goes online in September.” - From Multiple Personality Controversy on Psychology Wikia (2006)
“I’m also putting Astraea’s Web back in. It was the first website to propose the idea of healthy multiplicity.” - From Bluejay Young (a member of Astraea Household) on the DID/MPD Controversy Wikipedia discussion. (2007)
“It’s important to allow the concept to be inclusive of everyone who fits, regardless of past abuse history or origins, much as is currently being done for ‘multiplicity.’” - From Anthony Temple (a member of Astraea Household) on “A brief history of midcontinuum”. (2007)

And, yes, this all checks out. During my deep dive, I could find no website that existed before Astraea’s Web that talked about multiplicity/DID as something natural; natural meaning not trauma-based, not dissociative, and not pathological in their own words. Here are my posts on how they introduced natural multiplicity to the Internet:

But it’s also important to hear it straight from the source. The archived essay “What a long, strange trip it’s been…” was published sometime in 2002 or possibly earlier. In this, members of Astraea Household reflected on their journey to joining the dissociative community, realizing that they were actually not dissociative, and introducing their idea of natural multiplicity to the Internet.

  • Part 1 (Discovering DID & their multiplicity)
  • Part 2 (Coming out & wanting DID normalized)
  • Part 3 (Experiences in the dissociative community, doubt, introducing natural multiplicity, & backlash)
  • Part 4 (The empowered multiple community)

My Thoughts

Obviously, natural multiplicity has evolved and changed so much over time. Present day non-dissociative plurality is so different from its origin! It’s like a dinosaur versus a duck. One comes from the other, and there are similarities, but they shouldn’t be looked at like the same exact thing. Even though the term natural multiplicity has died out, and it’s ableist as Hell, I still find its origins so fascinating and I hope that you guys can agree.

Like I’ve stated several times before, I don’t fault people much for their past actions. The times and circumstances were very, very different. DID research back then was bare bones, filled with inaccuracies, and being bombarded with controversy and skepticism. Also, Astraea’s Web has always presented itself as an anti-psych website so it’s not that much of a surprise that they were against diagnoses.

While I personally do not agree with how Astraea Household went about certain things, I could also empathize with the situation that led up to them coining natural multiplicity. Astraea Household’s journey read to me like a story of misdiagnosing a self-diagnosis…a mis-self-diagnosis?

Sometimes people self-diagnose because it feels like a certain disorder is the only explanation they have for their experiences. It can be frightening if that one explanation turns out to not be the answer—ESPECIALLY if you got heavily involved in communities related to that disorder.

If I self-diagnosed DID but then later realized that I didn’t relate to its causation or symptoms that much, then I’d probably just think I was experiencing something else. I wouldn’t be so inclined to think that it was the professionals who were completely wrong…but what if DID was the closest explanation I had for my experiences? What if most of my friends were in the dissociative community? What if me being multiple was a big part of my closest relationships? What if I had been telling people I was multiple for years and years? What if I had a hugely successful website on me being multiple? What if I had a big influence on the dissociative community? What if my entire career revolved around me being multiple? Damn, maybe I would have come up with natural multiplicity as well in that case. (Not saying this is why Astraea Household did it.)

Anyways, please go and make your own opinions on this stuff. That’s why I share it.

So I got blood drawn today, and left a note for myself last night to remember to fast.

It was much more confusing at 5AM than it was the night before.

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….as a person who works in a medical lab, my initial reaction to that sign was ‘This coffee pot is for use with blood only’ 

We have refrigerators that literally have signs on them that says ‘NO FOOD - BLOOD’ and ‘NO FOOD - SPECIMENS ONLY’ on them. 

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Same! and then I was confused as to the why of using a coffee pot for blood storage/processing lol

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vetstudentlive

Here is the opposite

I made a handy guide for any of my followers who aren't very familiar with Dragon Ball, in case anyone was feeling a little lost

:)

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Hope you found this helpful! ;)

It is 2:12 am. I am making a roast. My neighbor is coming home from the bars.

“Taste this, does it need salt?” I open my door as I hear her coming down the hallway and greet her with a fork and a bite of food.

“No, it’s delicious.”

I purse my black-painted lips in pleasure. “Knock on my door in 10 minutes, I will have a plate ready for you to take home. Ask the young woman behind you if she is hungry, I will have a plate ready for her too.”

“Thank you atty”

I hear sounds of confusion and assurance as they retreat to my neighbor’s apartment.

It is 2:47 am and I am making potatoes.

I am frying chicken, I am mixing waffle batter, I have potatoes in a cast iron pan that crafted in the heart of a dying star. That's how iron is itself crafted. Isn't that marvelous? Iron in your blood and in the pan and in dying stars.

We are all neighbors.

I hear giggling in the hallway, shy and nervous shuffling of feet, whispered encouragement to knock. I know this voice.

I do not rob them of this moment.

"Good evening," I say, answering the door after the soliticatory sound is offered. I am wearing the eyeshadow as my neighbor has instructed. I will need much practice, and she knows makeup.

But I can cook, and she and her most date enjoy food.

"Hi atty," my neighbor says behind the young woman standing in my doorway, she is standing behind the one whom knocked, who is at once the most embarrassed creature in any grassy glade bathed n moonlight --

-- and the hungriest soul to ever skulk from a bar upon being advised, You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

"Hi, um, atty...? So, we were... wondering..."

My smile is a sanctuary. I do not rob her of this moment, of this shyness, either.

In twelve minutes they will borrow two plates -- one orange with pumpkins, one black with bats -- and a small feast. They will retreat to their lair, excitedly discussing a movie or show or some other thing I will not have heard of.

I, myself, am listening to music they would be equally uninterested in understanding. A young woman kulning, Norway I believe.

But we we are neighbors.

I will receive the dishes in a day or two, fresh and washed.