lb_lee: a penguin saying "Just because you decide to sell out doesn't mean anyone's going to buy!" ($ellingout)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Rogan/Mori: So, way back in the tumblr days, I would see this multi urban legend that you could only become multi if you'd been traumatized before the age of... well, the exact age would change depending on legend iteration, apparently nine was the magic number I saw in 2011, but I feel like seven was another. I could not for the life of me figure out where this stupid idea CAME from, and it drove me crazy!

Well, surprise, but while digging around doing etymological research (i.e., digging in Ralph Allison's published papers), I might've found a source of the urban legend: Allison's "Critical Issues: MPD & DID Should Be Used For Two Separate Groups of Dissociators" CANDID (California News of Dissociation and Identity Disorder), 3(3):4, 1995. (And apparently I even knew about this back in 2011 when I first blogged about this stupid urban legend, but I didn't dig deeper or put two and two together.) This paper is worth discussing, just because... well, it's crackpot as hell, and a nice example of why you shouldn't believe everything a therapist tells you, no matter how famous or (once) well-respected they are (or were).

This started as us reading a stupid paper about this guy's cracked ideas, only for us to get sucked into pointing at it as a stellar example of why therapists should not be treated like gods. )

Status Report: The Struggle is Real

Jul. 20th, 2025 07:28 am
renegadefolkhero: (Default)
[personal profile] renegadefolkhero

Struggling a bit here. My current book is at about 60k and I'm projecting 100k, and "Why Am I Doing This?" keeps rattling through my brain.

One of my colleagues recently made $10,000 on their first novel the first month. Friendly reminder I recently had my best launch month, which was $250. This writer is three decades my junior, and very new to writing comparatively. They made more in one day than I made in a month. They made more in one month than I did in 3 years.

Read more... )

Anyway, all this to say, this is awesome, and this author is a very kind, hard-working person, but fml. Royalties are reflective of readership, so even if you ostensibly don't care about the money, you actually do care because that's the primary metric by which we gauge interest and engagement with the work.

As a matter of self-preservation, I've recently adopted the attitude "my books don't sell and that's okay," as way to sorta push through my doubts and keep publishing. But the truth is... that's not a very good strategy. Because you need a carrot and a goal. "I write because that's what I do" is neither. So I'm gonna sit down and revisit my goals and think about being a bit more brave in terms of my ambitions and defining my own success.

Cripping Interior Design

Jul. 18th, 2025 08:03 pm
lb_lee: Biff kissing M.D. on the cheek. (mori&dudema)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Mori: you know how some people got really into sourdough or birding because of COVID? Well, Biff got really into interior design.

Read more... )

Happy Birthday [instagram.com profile] sashagee!

Jul. 9th, 2025 09:45 pm
dorchadas: (Default)
[personal profile] dorchadas
She always forgets how old she is but she doesn't forget her birthday.

I took today off, partially because of her birthday but also because last night was [instagram.com profile] sashagee's birthday present--a Babymetal concert:

2025-07-08 - BabyMetal concert

Babymetal always put on a great show and this time was no different--they have basically infinite energy even though they've been doing this for fifteen years. The last time we went to see Babymetal, the show was very long--Babymetal didn't even come out on stage until 10:30 p.m. or so. This time they were out on stage at 8:30, finished by 9:40 or so, and we were home by 10:15 p.m., albeit having to run home in the pouring rain. I did think it was kind of funny seeing all the metal fans scurrying for cover. [instagram.com profile] sashagee's comment was that it made her mascara run so it was extra metal cred (she was full Baby side of Babymetal, in pink with glitter on and odango hair).

When we got there the line was wrapped almost all around the block, so we waited for a while and were eventually joined by [instagram.com profile] confuciousdragon. He split off when we got inside because [instagram.com profile] sashagee wanted to grab another Babymetal T-shirt, and the whole time we heard music coming from upstairs. We thought they were just pumping up the crowd, like what happened later when we were waiting for Babymetal to set up and they played System Of A Down's "Chop Suey" and almost the entire crowd started singing along, but when we got through the line, finished paying, and finally got upstairs, it turned out that Bloodywood had started their set at the exact time the doors opened(!!) and were almost on their last song! We got about one-and-a-half songs before they left the stage and then we had to wait thirty minutes for Jinjer to set up.

Jinjer wasn't really my thing--I was probably a more little critical than I should have been because the last song I had heard from Bloodywood was fantastic--but the story that user site="instagram.com" name="confuciousdragon"> told us did make me more sympathetic. He said they're a Ukrainian band who were just getting big when the war started and most of their songs are about their experience. It makes me wish I could have understood the lyrics to their songs.

Babymetal, of course, put on an extremely high-energy show that was tons of fun, and unlike last time, [instagram.com profile] sashagee didn't start feeling bad so we could keep our place the entire concert! We were in the back left the whole time, watched the whole show, and then [instagram.com profile] sashagee bought two more t-shirts (for Bloodywood and Jinjer) on the way out. Good thing we had them, too, because we needed them to cover our heads as we ran for cover from the rain.

I took the next day off because it was the actual day of [instagram.com profile] sashagee's birthday, and so she would have time to recover, most of the day she didn't do anything. We sat around for most of the day until the evening, when we went to her birthday dinner downtown at Ema. We ate there before last year, when we were wandering around down town and passed it and I suggested it as a good place, and [instagram.com profile] sashagee liked it enough that she seized on it for her birthday dinner. We got some of the same things we got last time, a hummus and a salad, and I got a "charred eggplant" that turned out to just be baba ghanoush under a rename (I was hoping for actual charred eggplant). The real start was the dessert, though, just like last time. We skipped the vanilla panna cotta and I got a lava cake and [instagram.com profile] sashagee got a pear honey pie. Both of them were delicious, though [instagram.com profile] sashagee didn't realize that the pears had been absolutely soaked in alcohol until she was eating them by themselves (without the pie).

When we were done, we didn't have any other plans and [instagram.com profile] sashagee was a bit tired, so we got back on the L and headed home.

Where LB Goes For Fun On The Internet

Jul. 15th, 2025 03:29 pm
lb_lee: a black and white animated gif of a pro wrestler flailing his arms above the words STILL THE BEST (VICTORY)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"LB, you're not on social media, and you live like some weird austere godless monk. Do you even have fun on the Internet???"

Oh, don't worry, friends. We have fun on the Internet:
  • Archive.org (for old music, old multi stuff, old website research, weird niche research... what DON'T I use Archive.org for? Seriously probably the website we spend the most time on)
  • Archive of Our Own (for prose fiction and porn--most known for fanfic, but its tag system is so good that we sometimes trawl the original fic archive for stuff)
  • the Anarchist Library (what it sounds like)
  • Bandcamp (for new music--I have YET to figure out how the fuck iTunes works)
  • LotusPrince's Let's Plays (this is the only Youtuber I really watch anymore, been watching him for over ten years, he is a softspoken, straightfaced completionist who tries to be positive about every game he plays, no matter how clunky or goofy, and he is still my favorite parasocial companion for when I am so brainblasted I really can't handle anything more complicated than "go to the right, fight boss.")
We use an RSS reader to stay on top of blogs and artist accounts scattered across the ether, but if it can't be RSSed, then we don't bother. Lotus Prince is the only exception; he's a self-limiting, Gatorade activity, something I only want when I'm badly depleted, and once I recharge, I'm off to the races again, digging around in 1998 soulbonding websites on Archive.org.

I only play one game now, hack103 (and we use our local offline copy. Our shoulder only allows it on occasion, but fortunately, Hack is from 1985 and pre-poopsocking, so it's a very easy game to put down for years at a time and pick up again.

Sudden shutdowns, lovely

Jul. 15th, 2025 11:07 am
dorchadas: (Office Space)
[personal profile] dorchadas
Currently dealing with my computer suddenly shutting down out of nowhere. No warning, no message in the event viewer, just bloop and full restart. It might be the PSU but it's a prebuilt so the PSU is placed under this dumb metal box thing and I cannot figure out how to get it open. I reseated all the cords I could get ahold of, blew all the dust out, and cleaned things up. We'll see if that helps.

It's not a "under load it draws too much power" problem because the last time it shut down I just wasn't doing anything other than browse the web, and it didn't shut down last night when I was playing Vintage Story taking up its 22gb of RAM. That of course makes it worse--if it consistently shut down when doing heavy gaming it would mean I had an insufficient PSU for my other components, but if it just does it randomly it probably means the PSU is going bad, which is a problem if I can't get under the case to actually access it.

We'll see if that cleaning helped.

Status Report: Best Launch Ever

Jul. 13th, 2025 09:54 am
renegadefolkhero: (Default)
[personal profile] renegadefolkhero

I'm so annoyed lol.

yeet report )

So I'm annoyed on two fronts. First is I don't know why it sold better. Second, this seems to confirm allllll that launch work and $$$ I spent before amounted to jack squat.

The conventional wisdom is that novels sell better, and longer novels sell better than shorter ones (understanding the people saying this are often in KU, which rewards length). Erom is not a conventional genre, and I traditionally write a pretty tight book, but I think I might loosen up a bit for the next one, aim for higher WC, and be less ruthless with my edits.

I have a hard time NOT editing the bejesus out of a book, even when it's a "this won't sell" weird-ass erom. I would like to get more comfortable with less work for these types of books. Final edits are by far the most tedious part of the process for me, and if I could cut that out and just write, have a good time, and yeet, that would be swell.

lb_lee: Rogan drawing/writing in a spiral. (art)
[personal profile] lb_lee
We will be tabling from 5-9 PM on Friday, July 11th (TONIGHT!) at EmVision Studios, 131 Essex Street, Lynn, MA 01902. We'll have comics and zines, including floppy copies of our Crisis Planning zine!

Check out the Eventbrite link here!
image behind cut )
Hope to see you there!

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne

Jul. 11th, 2025 07:56 am
renegadefolkhero: (Default)
[personal profile] renegadefolkhero

A possibly premature post, but I think some of you are familiar with this series.

I've been wanting to play a Shin Megami Tensei game but was never sure where to start. Players look favorably on Nocturne, and I understand the somewhat recent remaster wasn't very good, so I got PS2 running on my SteamDeck and gave it a whirl. Until now, I've limited emulation to pre-PSX for the most part, so being able to dig more into PSX and PS2 really opens up my options.

I went into this not knowing what to expect beyond "demons" and it's pretty damn compelling. The graphics have aged well and the atmosphere and mood is awesome. I wanted to set expectations, so I read a little more and according to HLTB this is about a 50-hour game. It has multiple endings, and the dungeon crawling is very crawly, and I think people got annoyed about getting a mediocre ending which, for a game of this length, is very understandable. Definitely not a "put down and come back 2 weeks later and still know where the hell you are" type of game. My gaming threshold tends to be 30 to 40 hours at the very best of times, so we'll see how it goes.

Many-Selved Etymology: role terms

Jul. 8th, 2025 05:18 pm
lb_lee: A clay sculpture of a heart, with a black interior containing little red, brown, white, green, and blue figures. (plural)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Rogan/Mori: Lark of Hungry Ghosts asked me about the origination of plural role terms (which are apparently now this super-rigid straitjacket of How Plurals Must Be?). I dove into my records, and here's what I done found!

It's possible these terms were used earlier than I found here. These were the earliest I could find them in the multi files I have on hand.

Core: This terms looks to originate with Billy Milligan's case, in use by February 1980 in Wallace, Wallechinsky, Wallace, and Wallace's The Book of Lists #2: "In addition to his core self, Milligan has at least nine other personalities" (380) and 1981 in Keyes's The Minds of Billy Milligan. Seeing as Milligan was imprisoned for rape in 1977, it's possible "core" was used in earlier news stories about the case; I'd have to dig in. But Keyes quotes it (and "host") as being used by Cornelia Wilbur on page 50; she also treated Sybil. So: Wilbur, by 1980?

Helper: used by Ross, 1989: 
"Most persecutor personalities are in fact helpers who are using self-destructive strategies." (110).

Host: first attributed to Wilbur in Keyes, 1981: “the original Billy, sometimes known as the host or core personality” (50). So that explains why "host" and "core" get confused a lot in these things, it's because Wilbur conflated the two in Keyes!

Inner Self-Helper/ISH: Ralph Allison created it by 1977 in Hawkworth's The Five Of Me: "[Phil] was, in the beginning at least, hardly a personality at all, but rather what Dr. Allison refers to as an 'Ish'--an Inner Self-Helper[...] a separate personality whose sole function seems to be to prevent the other personalities from tearing the physical body apart." (20) Allison says he started treating multiples in 1972 (Hawksworth, 5), so 1972-1977.

Original: Wilbur again! She uses it in Keyes 1981 (50) and the term "original Sybil" is used a decent number of times (sorry, my ebook had no page numbers). Flora Rheta Schreiber wrote Sybil, but it seems sensible that Wilbur originated the term? So, by 1973 for adjective form, will have to dig for stand-alone noun. (EDIT 7/10/2025: INCORRECT! This term is older; "original patient" or "original personality" is used by Thigpen and Cleckley (38, 153), so I should dig into older work to see if it's used previously.

Persecutor: Used by Ross (and Norton?) in 1989: 
"An interesting finding (Ross & Norton, 1989b) was a clinical triad of Schneiderian made-impulses, voices in the head, and suicide attempts. This traid should alert the clinican to the possibility of MPD, especially if the made impulse is self-destructive, and the voice is commanding suicide or is hostile and critical. The triad is indicative of the actibility of a dangerous persecutor personality" (Ross, 99)

Protector: Used by Hawksworth once in 1977 (72), but Keyes uses it more formally, declaring Ragen "the protector of the family" (xv).

 
 
"Caretaker" is proving weirdly hard to pin down, so I'm calling it quits on that one for now, but of all these other terms, all of them come from medical contexts. If they aren't outright, obviously created by therapists themselves (Ralph Allison, Cornelia Wilbur), they're cited in books that they were involved in--like Sybil or the Minds of Billy Milligan. These are terms created by medical personnel to compartmentalize and organize headmates like a stamp collection... and often deny us the right to self-determine or grow. There's an icky historical context there; there's a reason these terms were considered unfashionable tools of the oppressor when we came on the scene in 2007!

These therapists are not little tin gods you should worship. There's a reason Allison, Ross, and Wilbur have controversies about them! (And I'm not as knowledgeable about them as I should be because... well, read on.) So here's some information about that, as a sorta "multi beware, worship not your doctor" thing.

Why You Shouldn't Believe Everything Doctors Say )

Sources )

Just a hypothetical

Jul. 8th, 2025 03:51 pm
dorchadas: (Office Space)
[personal profile] dorchadas
What is the proper course of action when someone repeatedly participates in Teams meetings with coworkers without wearing any headphones?

You know, hypothetically.
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