Latest Posts by skinsheddingcycle - Page 4

I can't stress enough how much I miss StumbleUpon

My friends and I used to do this thing where we'd dress up on a theme and go do something totally normal.

We dressed up as pirates and went bowling.

We dressed as vikings and went to the grocery store. The security guard told us we had to move our longship because it was illegally parked.

We dressed as Romans and went to Blockbuster. The staff chanted, "toga! Toga! Toga!" at us.

We dressed up all steampunk and went to the museum. Tourists kept taking our picture.

people are genuinely scared of a roko's basilisk scenario? are they stupid?

realistically no, the number of people genuinely scared of a roko's basilisk scenario rounds down to zero, but the number of people scared of what AI might do to the world is significantly higher.

"My first language has a perfect saying for this, but it doesn't make sense in english :("

Say it anyway! You don't owe them perfect clarity. Be profoundly cryptic, speak in riddles, make them ponder what the fuck you meant by that. The anglos, like porridge, must sometimes be stirred, so they don't burn stuck on the bottom of the pot.

my dad, trying to explain the concept of money to me: say you have a sandwich, and i need your sandwich. but i don't have anything to give you. you're not just gonna give it to me.

me: i would just give it to you.

my dad:

omgg!! idk about the memory streams because it's very hard for me to observe my memory and thought processes but i absolutely do switch just like you! for the longest time i thought i wasn't a system because i didn't switch the "traditional" way or i didn't know it was a switch until it was already done because i was waiting for the telltale "out of body" feeling which never came

tysm for posting this comic, it was very helpful for me!

Hi I’m a newly discovered system and its been causing me a little stress that I (the host?) don’t experience blackouts or full amnesia, but then I read some of your old posts about feeling like everything’s in grayscale and emotional amnesia and was like “:0 that’s like me!”

I was wondering if you would be okay describing what it feels like when someone else fronts? That’s something I’m trying figure out for myself and maybe hearing other people’s experiences would help ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Also all the comics are amazing keep up the good work 👍)

so the uhhh. so the person fronting never really feels like they "disappear" or get pushed away it just feels like they Change Into A Different Person . but we still Exist while not fronting but nobody remembers what that's like because w. yeah no i don't get the technicalities of how this works i'm not worrying about it too hard

i think r/BenignExistence is my favorite subreddit 🥲 i love these pleasant little glimpses into strangers' lives

nothing in the world makes me more evil than just being kind of annoyed

Cuttlefish can change color to fade into the background. It can do it amazingly fast.

It's interesting to me how much people struggle to intuit differences of scale. Like, years of geology training thinking about very large subjects, and I'm only barely managing it around the edges.

The classic one is, of course, the mantle- everybody has this image of the mantle as a sort of molten magma lake that the Earth's crust is floating on. Which is a pedagogically useful thing! Because the intuitions about how liquids work- forming internal currents, hot sections rising, cool sections sinking, all that- are all dynamics native to the Earth's mantle. We mostly talk about the mantle in the context of those currents, and how they drive things like continental drift, and so we tend to have this metaphor in mind of the mantle as a big magma lake.

The catch, of course, is that the mantle is a solid, not magma. It's just that at very large scales, the distinction between solids and liquids is... squirrely.

When cornered on this, a geologist will tell you that the mantle is 'ductile'. But that's a lie of omission. Because it's not that the mantle is a metal like gold or iron, what we usually think of when we talk about ductility. You couldn't hammer mantle-matter in to horseshoes or nails on an anvil. It's just a rock, really. Peridotite. Chemically it's got a lot of metal atoms in it, which helps, but if you whack a chunk of it with a hammer you can expect about the same thing to happen as if you whacked a chunk of concrete. Really, it's just that any and every rock is made of tons and tons of microcrystal structures all bound together, and the boundaries between these microcrystals can shift under enormous pressure on very slow timescales; when the scope of your question gets big enough, those bonds become weak in a relative sense, and it becomes more useful to think of a rock as more like a pile of gravel where the pebbles can shift and flow around one another.

The blunt fact is, on very large scales of space and of time, almost everything other than perfect crystals start to act kind of like a liquid- and a lot of those do as well. When I made a study of very old Martian craters, I got used to 'eyeballing' the age based on how much the crater had subsided, almost exactly like the ways that ripples in the surface of water gradually subside over time when you throw a rock in to a lake. Just, you know. Slower.

But at the same time, these things are more fragile than you'd believe, and can shatter like glass. The surface of the Earth is like this, too. Absent the kind of overpressures that make the mantle flow like it does, Earth's crust is still tremendously weak relative to many of the planet-scale forces to which it is subject- I was surprised, once, when a professor offhandedly described the crust as having a tensile strength of 'basically zero;' they really thought of the surface as a delicate filigreed bubble of glass that formed like a thin shell, almost too thin to mention, on the outside of a water droplet. On human scales, liquid is the thing that flows, and solid is the thing that breaks. But once stuff gets big or slow or both, the distinction between a solid and a liquid is more that a liquid is the thing that doesn't shatter when it flows. And it all gets really, really vague, which I suppose you'd expect when you get this far outside the contexts in which our languages were crafted.

Humans are adorable.

Supporting evidence:

1. Humans say ‘ow’, even if they haven’t actually been hurt. It’s just a thing they say when they think they might have been hurt, but aren’t sure yet.

2. Humans collect shiny things and decorate their bodies and nests with them. The shinier the better, although each individual has a unique taste for style and colouring

3. Humans are not an aquatic or even amphibious species, but they flock to bodies of water simply to play in it. They can’t even hold their breath all that long; they just love to splash!

4. When night falls and the sky goes dark, humans become drowsy and begin to cocoon themselves in soft, fluffy bedding.

5. Some humans spend time in each other’s nests! Just for fun! It’s not their nest; they’re just visiting each other.

6. Some humans use pigments and dyes to make their bodies flashy and colourful! They even attach shiny dangly bits to their cartalidgous membranes!

7. Humans are very clever, and sometimes adopt creatures from other species into their family units. They don’t seem to notice the obvious differences, and often raise them alongside their own young!

8. If a human sees another creature in distress, they can commonly be observed trying to help! Even at their own risk, most humans are deeply compassionate creatures!

9. If a human hears a particularity catchy sound or tune, it will often mimic it, even to the point of annoying themselves!

10. Sneezes are entirely involuntary, and completely adorable. Especially when the human in question becomes frustrated

11. Humans love treats!!! Some more than others. Many humans will save these treats specifically for a later date when they are in need of comfort or reassurance. IE, pickles, pop tarts, Popsicles, etc

12. They’re learning to travel in space!!! They can’t get very far, but they’re trying!!! So far, they’ve made it to the end of their yard, and have found rocks

Everyone knows that everything is a Homestuck reference. It’s like Utena

There was a mermaid who had chosen to go onto land, who had given up her tail for legs, her fangs for square teeth, her feathery gills for pretty pink lungs. And she grew to regret it. She had fallen in love with a mortal man, and found him to be nothing but a fool.

She hadn't realized how diffenet her new body was. She knew she would have legs, she prepared for that, but she didn't prepare to really be a human woman. Her silver scales were now replaced with pale skin, which seemed so weak and easy to hurt to her, she felt flayed alive. She wasn't prepared to wear clothing on her body, which felt like being trapped in a net. And not to mention how slowly she moved, how strange and disturbing it was to not be able to swim miles and miles whenever she needed to, she was trapped in one little peice of the world.

Not to mention, she had to eat human food now, which was set on fire before it was served to her, and it was sometimes made of plants. She wanted to vomit just thinking about it, but her new body needed it to live, and she cried through every meal. And just as bad where her new reproductive organs, that were so much more complex, and bled for her constantly, and made it feel like she was always wounded.

The worst thing about her reproductive organs was how her husband treated them. She had fallen in love with him from the sea, watching him and knowing so little about his kind or his disposition. He wanted to mate nearly every night, but wanted no hatchinglings to come from it. And human mating itself was disgusting to her, instead of just laying eggs for him he'd somehow be inside her. She didn't want to imagine the details. She made excuses to keep him away, but she knew some day she would run out, and wept knowing it would happen.

Her husband was a strange human. She thought he was a prince when she watched him from the water but he had a diffrent title as a duke of some sort, bowing to a king on a different continent. She had seen him in uniform and thought him a hero, slaying dragons and orcs and devils and harpies and goblins and witches. But all the dragons and harpies had fled to the skies, and the goblins and orcs deep underground, and the devils and witches had gone into hiding. She saw him set fire to a witch once, she wasn't sure she was a witch though, but it wasn't brave, all she did was cry, he didn't fight her at all.

All her husband's wars were with other humans. Sometimes humans with diffrent flags who seemed the same as them. Sometimes humans who had been on the land longer then him, who his armies pushed further and further from the coast. Sometimes his own subjects, weeping and broken masses, people he hurt, those were the wars he won the most. She wanted to help him just to be with him, but she learned human women weren't allowed to fight. So when he was at war he was away, and when he wasn't all he talked about was war, and money, and the awful things he wanted to do with her.

She expected to be his wife in a way she wasn't. She learned human wives were treated like children to their husbands, that they had to obey them, that he could yell and her and hurt her just like he did his servents. She learned he was able to yell at his servents, she was allowed to too but she didn't. She learned things she had to do, she had to become civilized, whatever it meant to be civilized. She wasn't allowed to go outside the palace, not alone. And she wasn't allowed to pray to the gods of the deep, she had to pray to the one god of the humans, a bleeding god on a torture device, a sad god, a weak god.

There was one final night when her husband tried to force her to mate with him, more forcefully then he ever had before. He hit her. And though she didn't have fangs anymore she bit him so hard he bled. He tried to restrain her, to undress her, to undress himself. She ripped off the part of his body he tried to pit inside her. And she thought it so strange, how blood looks on land, flowing to the bottom as opposed to floating away.

She walked to the water after that. And slowly walked in, losing herself in the waves. Some people think she became a mermaid again, and that she's safe in her kingdom in the deep. But others think she walked into the water knowing she'd stay a human, and let the ocean filling her lungs set her free.

Reblog to go on a date with your monster. Like to give them a little gift.

Look under the cut to see what meeting your joyfriend is like.

1 you walk into a messy apartment, it looks like this is their first place where they live alone, away from other angels. They're sitting on a Lome mattress, cuddling a stuffed animal and watching TV. Despite everything they're still beautiful, their body youthful, and sexless, and athletic, their four white wings forever stained with blood. They look up at you with rose gold eyes, afraid, apologizing for if they scared you. But to their surprise you don't shy away from them, and somehow they feel safe and pure when you sit down to talk to them.

2 you see them in the shadows, alone in the dark of an empty park, changing shape, first a muscular humanoid in armor, then a wolf dancing through the night, then a combination of both, then finally a modern human in a ragged trenchcoat. Despite all their forms, their eyes are always the same. They come up to you and bow with a smile on their face. You slowly aproch them, for whatever reason their voice seems so familiar. You greet them with your hand as you would an animal, even as they're in human form, as you slowly pet their scars for the first time.

3 within the golden halls of an ornate train station you see them for the first time, through the crowd with inhumanly green eyes. They notice you despite everyone else. And you notice everything off about them, the wrong numbers of teeth, their hands occasionally having more or less then five fingers before returning back to normal. It's wordless but it doesn't need words for you to tell them that they don't need to pretend to be human around you. And for a momment you see them, naked, with branches for antlers, and the wings of a monarch butterfly, a serpent's head where a human’s genitals would be, and teeth made out of broken glass, and then only a rose exists where they once stood, but you know you'll see them again.

4 you see them for the first time in an empty parking lot, a massive creature with black eyes and countless legs, glowing yet dark, as they come twords you they take notes in an unknowable language. They inspect you as the dark matter pitter patters across your face. You expect them to hurt you as they reach out their claw but they only gently pet your head. You can tell that they're suprised, you're more receptive then most humans are. They give you a small peice of food to let you eat right from their claw, and it tastes batter then anything on earth.

5 you meet them in a café on a quiet side street. They don't like being seen by too many people. Their body is beautiful, but so inhuman, tall and slender, with silvery armor covering them from the neak down, their face pale and their eyes long since ripped out and replaced with red mechanical replacements. They're a bit afraid you won't be ok with them when you first meet them, but you start talking, and though they're shy at first they like the sound of your voice. They let you pet their head and they cuddle up to you, and their body is warm like a churning machine as you hug them for the first time, and they feel comforted in your arms.

6 you see them in a dark subway station. They clearly once were human, centuries ago, their body forever young, but pale and skinny, their eyes turned white and their mouth jawless and fanged like a lampry's. Their body is entirely sexless, barely shielded from the cold by a ragged suit. Most people avoid them, but you ask if they're ok and they just look up at you, when you ask if they're hungry they nod. You agree to give them some blood, and it feels like they're giving you little kisses as you offer them your wrist. When they're full you hug their cold body, and for a momment they're made warm.

7 an undead servent slowly brings them over to you in a wheelchair. Though their mansion is beautiful it's trapped in time, and dark even in the daytime. You can see the computer they're trapped in, it must be decades old by now. They look at you with an avatar meant to look like a drawing of themself, or at least how they'd want to look. Something about them makes you want to touch them, but you know you never can. You put your hand to the screen, and you can feel the magic flow through you, and for a momment that's enough.

8 you see them sitting there alone in a bar. A slender androgynous humanoid, they're wearing a black suit but upon closer examination it's part of their body, never to be taken off. You sit next to them, and they smile at you, you talk for a few moments and it's like they know more about the universe then you could ever imagine. They pet your head, and it feels like it'll kill you, but it only makes you feel more alive. They hand you a business card with their number on it, it says they're a servent of hades, they tell you you can contact them again if you like, they'll be around. When you look again they're entirely gone once more.

9 walking through an abandoned mall you see them, a life sized puppet, with stars and moons on its outfit, and a painted mask for a face. Coming closer to them you can see there's red liquid on them, and strange otherworldly bugs and mushrooms on their body. When you try to touch them they float in the air, and move as if they're alive, for a momment you think they'll hurt you but they run away. When you find them again, tracking them down to a dark arcade, you see they're crying. They expect you to hurt them but you reach out to help them instead, nobody's ever tried to help them like that before...

10 you see them ontop of a skyscraper's roof. They youthful human wearing a leather jacket smiling as a massive reptile, with bat like wings, and massive steel fangs, and a tail like a scorpion's flies down to them. You wonder if they'll try to calm it but instead they move together like one being, their eyes the same yellow color. The creature comes twords you, fire in its mouth, and poison in its teeth. You realize the two beings are one in the same, as the wyvern bows its head, ready for you to ride it, with its human body at your side.

11 for a momment they chase you through the night, the hooded masked figure running twords you, blade in hand. But as you cross the street they can't follow, it's as if they've hit a wall. The gods themselves have bound them. While you're in safety you look at them, there's a sadness behind that mask. You wonder, if they can't hurt you here, would there be any reason to hate them, would they choose to spare you if they knew your face, your voice...

12 all you can see is blackness, yet there is no darkness, only this slick metallic liquid around you. The lake bubbles up creating a false body with its fluid, first male, then female, then both, then neither. It beckons you in, and you know it would not let you drown. When you step inside all you can feel, all you can see, is the fluid around you, and you feel as if you're being held.

call your girl Bluetooth Speaker the way I made a temporary connection with her that she will always remember

I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

Feel free to repost, no need for credit

Gordon Ramsay: now tell me about this

Rabbi Akiva: This reflecting pool leads to the throne room of the almighty.

Gordon: Right, right.

Rabbi Akiva: But well, without reciting the proper prayers, you go mad.

Gordon: Bloody hell. Probably trapped in the treasury of the divine forever then right?

Rabbi Akiva: that's right. But if we make it to the next chamber, we get to measure the body of the divine.

Gordon: Well fuck me. S'abit piss for all the work we done to get here innit. Fuck alright then.

Rabbi Akiva: I brought measuring tape.

theodore i. geshkoff, balkan union; a road to peace in southeastern europe (1941)

absolutely. friendly reminder from your local russian: our government still says "we're killing only the nazis☝️🫡" while slaughtering ukrainian civilians, bombing schools and hospitals, etc. and it's plain obvious that they lie. then why isn't it obvious that israel lies, too?

with regard to israel stating that they’re “only killing terrorists”: you know that members of government can (and often do) lie, right. you do realize that we have historically seen multiple different systems of government commit crimes against humanity and lie about it, right. and you do realize that taking “we’re only killing terrorists” at face value when the casualty tolls for palestine and lebanon collectively are over 100,000 people and going “well they must have all been terrorists” is straight up racist, like plain as fucking day, right.

The Collective You

[one system's brief advice about accepting the idea of the collective you]

One of the best pieces of system advice started from a tumblr post and was elaborated by my DID specialist. I can't find the original tumblr post that started it, so I'm making a little post of my own <3 Share the knowledge. and also hope that someone can link the original post lol.

When I was REALLY going through it™ with my first diagnosis w/ DID, and a lack of integration, all of my alters felt like separate individuals, some of us feeling as distanced as a coworker or a stranger altogether. We were just getting a grasp on internal communication between all of our subsystems, and it was rough. We felt so entirely differentiated that we were our own people trapped in one body. While I don't really care about what language you use, all alters in CDDs are a part of one person [there's only one body and brain]- the collective you.

So obvs, I'm scrolling tumblr like the chronically online doomscroller that I am, and I see this post that goes along the line of not knowing who you are, but knowing you are 'you', regardless of who you are [referring to alters]. And it said something like "we're all me enough to pick up our meds"- something like that. iirc it was a half light hearted, half advice post, but that was really good advice for me. I kind of internalized it after I processed it in therapy. It's actually why I have started to love parts language lately tbh.

After further processing this idea in therapy, Identity Confusion stopped mattering in the grand scheme of things. I focused less on worrying about who I was, and just focused on the fact that I'm me. Just like the post I saw- We are all me. The example of all being me enough to pick up my medications just applied, like, everywhere. Even when it came down to the smallest things- with coping with other symptoms too.

Oh? I don't like coffee right now? I guess I should switch to something else. [differentiated alters]

Oh? I have barely any drawing skills right now? Okay, really sucks but I can work on something else and come back to it later. [skill variance between alters]

Oh? I have to go to a doctor's appointment? I know I'll forget that- Gotta write a list, and put it up on the board so I remember. [day to day amnesia]

You know what happened? My dissociation got better! Not immediately or entirely, obviously, and my memory [re amnesia] still sucks, but that's part of the disorder- plus other disorders that I have. This idea of the collective you is something that I think is really beneficial to all CDD systems, especially during the mid to later stages of recovery.

I, admittedly, credit most of my healing to conversations I have had with my DID specialist. Especially since, without her, I wouldn't have been able to process this idea of the collective me further, but the conversation wouldn't have been started if I hadn't seen that post on tumblr. This was a budding concept with us due to the separation we had. It helped with integration. GRANTED... Not every alter got the memo, obviously, but It's something that I'm still working on. Of course, being me comes with the prerequisite that I am a person with DID, and that I am made up of multiple parts.

Now for the piece of advice I got from my therapist- Though it requires a certain level of knowledge of your own system, such as a list of alters and some identifying info [fav drinks, fav colors, those type of things]. Look at the list of your alters wherever it may be. Just whatever you use for logging your system members. Look for the commonalities between alters. There will be at least some commonalities.

For example; A good 45% of us like bunnies, 45% like cats, and 10% have a liking for other kinds of animals. Using this information, I can pretty much deduce that 1. the collective me loves animals and 2. the collective me likes cats and bunnies especially.

Another example; I looked through our simplyplural, which has a favorite color thing [in ours at least]. By looking through the list, I figured out 1. wow I like literally all colors- my fav color is rainbows and 2. I especially like pink and light blue.

More examples; the list.. THE LIST... I looked through it and saw that a good 90% of us like MONSTER ENERGY DRINKS- of varying flavors, but the common denominator was Ultra Strawberry Dreams, but all of us like [or tolerate] water as a preferred drink. From there I can come to the conclusion that I prefer water over anything else and that I have a problem with monster [being light hearted but I genuinely do].

I hope you get the idea I'm going for. I used this process for nearly every aspect of our collective identity, though some had to genuinely be voted on, such as our LGBTQIA+ labels [offline, we just call ourself queer, but that's.. aside the point LMAO].

Obviously, there are going to be outliers- Having DID comes with the fun [/s] aspect of alters being differentiated from each other in some capacity. Example for the monster energy one- We have a handful of alters that HATE energy drinks- even just fizzy drinks in general. There's one guy who will only drink Black Coffee and water- nothing else. He's the guy who is always hiding away our monsters in the way back of the fridge, but guess what!! He's me!! The part of me that doesn't want me to ruin my health over energy drinks. The part of me that knows I deserve better than my unhealthy habits.

Getting to know the collective you is just like learning about your system! It is not inherently different than figuring out what an alters dislikes or likes are. The idea of The Collective You shouldn't feel scary or anxiety inducing- if it is, you may want to confront those feelings with a therapist if you have access to one. Every CDD system is the collective [or, well, system] of one fragmented individual- That is a studied and objective fact. I wanted to give advice from one recovering system to another.

No, this will not work for everyone, every system is different, but I'm hoping this post finds the right audience in knowing that it's worth a shot to try this!

"when people ask how you're doing, they don't really care." most of them do, actually, the amount they care is just directly proportional to how well they know you. you're just mad you can't be the main character of the Twice Daily.

i think one of the most offensive questions out of ones that i get asked often is "why don't you just leave ukraine"

I hate all of those old "Diana's/Artemis' Bath" paintings. Yeah, take myths about a virgin goddess not wanting to be watched naked... and make them into male gaze nudes.

That's just sexism, plain and simple.

Terfs don't touch this post.

If you have achieved something, please remember to observe a mandatory period of basking in the warm glow of your achievement like a lizard on a stone, lest you teach your brain that effort is futile, actually, because it didn't get to enjoy its happy chemicals, so, naturally, nothing good ever comes of trying. (And no, avoiding punishment is not a reward!)

I recommend, like, 5% of basking time in relation to whatever time you invested into achieving the thing minimum. And if you can't make your own bask, friend-brought is fine (= tell your friends!).

first image inspired by you monster (affectionate) by @slow-clap-processors

original images below

“We owe a debt to third world women theologians who have noticed the similarities between Mary’s life and the lives of so many poor women even today. Giving birth in a homeless situation; fleeing as a refugee with your baby to a strange land to escape being killed by military action; losing a child to unjust execution by the state; our newspapers yield up these icons of suffering even today. Mary is sister to the marginalized women who live unchronicled lives in oppressive situations. It does her no honor to rip her out of her conflictual, dangerous historical circumstances and transmute her into an icon of a peaceful, middle-class life robed in royal blue.”

— Sister Elizabeth Johnson, “Mary of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet” (via tigris-euphrates)