in which Brin somehow manages to be among the most singlet people she knows

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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While I’ve completed the move to the new laptop [link], it’s occurred to me that my on-site Tumblr drafts folder is also not included in my backups, and I should probably clear *these* drafts out too.

Tumblr doesn’t seem to provide information on when a draft was made, but this one was already pretty old when I mentioned it in June 2017 [link]. It also pre-dates my switch from italics to asterisks to denote emphasis: I have edited its word-emphasis method to help the emphasis show up more reliably.

(This post is not entirely unrelated to my previous post [link], which is what reminded me to do this now.)

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I was sick, and it was the middle of the night, and earlier I’d been having problems where my brain would skip straight to dreaming while neglecting to fall asleep first. (It is a strange and unpleasant experience to dream non-lucidly despite also being aware of one’s body lying on one’s bed. Especially if one is having a nightmare about alien invasions.)

I knew I was going to sleep terribly, one way or another, but I was determined to lie there until morning and hopefully get a bit of restorative unconsciousness here and there. (Sometimes I get to bed a bit late, but if it is Designated Sleeping Time *and* I have already gone to bed, by god I will lie there as long as it takes (or until 8 AM or so, whichever comes first). I do not give up on bedtime.)

A couple hours in, I heard a voice in my head. It wasn’t mine.

I was 14, so by this point I’d already read a bunch of neurodiversity stuff on multiplicity. I was in a lucid period and knew she was *probably* a transient hallucination, but the possibility that she might not be didn’t freak me out.

I calmly explained to her that while I was not *inherently* averse to considering her a real person, given the circumstances I was understandably reluctant to assume sapience, and she would probably do the same in my place. I told her that if she were still there when I was fully awake I would provisionally accept her personhood, and if she stuck around even after I’d recovered from my illness we’d start hashing out plans for co-existence. In the meantime, real or not I could use the company. Any ideas for a conversational topic?

She ignored me, and continued complaining about having to share the pain of my ear infection. Shortly after, she was gone.

(Okay, this next bit may require some context. My thoughts often take the form of dialogues, which seems to be fairly common. People vary in the level of independence of these “conversational partners”, but I am pretty far towards the singlet end of the spectrum, and perceive myself as consciously controlling both halves.)

So a couple hours after that, around dawn, I was thinking (like you do), in dialogue form (like you do), and…not all at once, but gradually, I realised: I didn’t know what he was going to say.

And he said “I know, it’s weird, isn’t it? Is this what it’s like, being alive? Is this how you feel all the time? So *vibrant*?”

He said he knew it probably wouldn’t last long, and that while he *liked* being this way, it wouldn’t be *so* bad to go back to being a mere part of me. It wasn’t like it was dying or anything, just…he wished we could at least merge *properly*. He was sad that I wouldn’t remember this conversation from his perspective, that this part of him, this interesting experience, would just *vanish*.

(He wondered if he would get it back if I hallucinated him again in some future illness, if other hallucinatory hims would have continuity with this one. It hasn’t happened again, so we haven’t found out.)

He was, at least, better company than the complaining woman.

Tags:

#whether he was actually sapient during that conversation I don’t know #I expect the woman wasn’t but he was more responsive and *much* more introspective #in which Brin somehow manages to be among the most singlet people she knows #oh look an original post #amnesia cw #illness tw #death tw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

another-normal-anomaly:

hustlerose:

when you’re taking to yourself in your head do you refer to yourself as we, i, you, or he/she/they

I most of the time, you when giving myself orders or commenting on a precious thought, they when involuntarily narrating my life in my head.

Tags:

#we a plurality-possibly-majority of the time #I and you quite a bit #she almost never except when predicting things other people are going to say/think about me #looking at the tags on this post I see ”we” is actually pretty common #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #in which Brin somehow manages to be among the most singlet people she knows

Just out of curiosity: How do you talk to yourself? Answer in tags (if you want).

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

aegipan-omnicorn:

1. I give myself pep talks in the first person, a la “The little engine that could.”

2. I chide or berate myself in the first person: “I’m an idiot.”

3. I give pep talks in the second person: “You can do this, [my name]!”

4. I chide myself in the second person.

5. I narrate what I’m doing in the third person, as if I were the protagonist in a story: “They rolled  out of bed, early in the grey morning, thinking only: Coffee!”

6. Discuss what I’m doing with someone who isn’t there (either someone from history, my own past, an imaginary friend, etc.)

7. All of the above.

Tags:

#I won’t swear I’ve *never* done 5 but if I do it at all it’s rare #other than that all of the above #though when there’s chiding to be done it’s mostly first-person #and when there’s pep-talking to be done it’s mostly second-person #(which makes a lot of advice on the subject weird because they assume it’s the other way around) #second-person thoughts don’t address me by name that much though #(in early February my brain adopted a habit of calling me ”love”) #(I remember the time period because I thought at first it was some kind of celebration of Valentine’s Day) #(but it hasn’t stopped) #(it’s kind of nice though so I haven’t tried to get rid of it) #((…wait hang on are we talking about thoughts in general or specifically talking aloud?)) #((I don’t talk to myself out loud much)) #((I think when there are pronouns for those they’re usually first-person (sometimes singular sometimes plural))) #((but more often (”often” being a relative term) it’s pronoun-less stuff like ”wait no not that have to do this first”)) #reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #in which Brin somehow manages to be among the most singlet people she knows #tag rambles

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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transgirlkyloren:

also I wonder if it is possible to influence the kind of voices you get by expecting your voices to be kind and helpful before you hear them. seems like it has a low downside to try to acquire those expectations if you’re in a high-risk group for voice hearing

Tags:

#there’s actually a thing buried in my Tumblr drafts #about how spending my early adolescence in the neurodiversity blogosphere #led me to treat my influenza(?)-induced hallucinatory voices with respect #(the mildly annoying one ignored me and I think the nice one appreciated it) #while I was aware that given the circumstances they were likely to be transient #the idea that they might not be didn’t scare me #not being scared sounds helpful #this post seems like it qualifies for the tag #in which Brin somehow manages to be among the most singlet people she knows #(I wonder if I should post that draft at some point)

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

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Objectively Correct Vowels, by Alison Morais

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sinesalvatorem:

Because so many people were being Wrong On The Internet, I decided to upload an accent sample which uses all the relevant vowels in the manner G-d intended.

Transcript:
If I err on the side of caution, then I can’t marry either Mary or Kerry.

My reaction went something like this:

“So, brain, was any of that weird?”

Weird is such a subjective term.

“Was it different from how we would say it?”

Well, her “can’t” [here pronounced in an attempt to mimic it] is all British…

“I meant the other bits. Were they different?”

The difference is insignificant.

“So there was a difference?”

I don’t know. The difference is insignificant.

English plays so fast and loose with vowels that there’s no point paying attention to fine distinctions. We might not even use consistent vowels for any of those words ourself; I honestly don’t know.

“No wonder you’re so terrible with accents.”

Yes.

Tags:

#language #reply via reblog #in which Brin somehow manages to be among the most singlet people she knows #(to be fair keeping the original dialogue format rather overstates the extent to which the two are separate entities) #accents

Anonymous asked: Nonternary for both crush and ship meme

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sinesalvatorem:

Would anyone like to explain to me WHY he’s so damn sexy before I make up my mind on dating him?

Inner genre-savviness: Clearly nonternary has mind-control powers.

Me: You frequently suspect people of having mind-control powers. You have read too much erotic horror.

IGS: But foreshadowing!

Me: *sigh*

Tags:

#honestly I don’t even *like* erotic horror #but beggars can’t be choosers and also it’s kind of fascinating what a very finely honed sense of genre-savviness can do #and I suspect I may have been doomed to be towards the generally paranoid end of the psychological scale either way #reply via reblog #sexuality and lack thereof

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sinesalvatorem:

My college has a Christian youth group.

And black people are more religious than average.

So they keep going up to me and asking if I want to join, because I fit the profile of wants-to-join.

I could say I’m an atheist.

But I say “Sorry, I’m Jewish” and they get so confused.

I am proud of my life choices.

First thought: “Why is being black and Jewish confusing? When I first learned you were black and Jewish, I just assumed you were from the Ethiopian Jews. I mean, I gather that isn’t actually true in your case, but in general Beta Israel is a Thing.”

Second thought, addressing the first: “You know, just because we’ve heard of Beta Israel doesn’t mean it’s remotely common knowledge.”

Fair point.

(And while I had heard of the Ethiopian Jews, I was not aware until looking at the Wiki article while composing this that very few of them actually still live in Ethiopia. They’ve mostly moved to Israel, apparently.)

Tags:

#Judaism #reply via reblog