alt title: another project I will quickly abandon
Nope. Not doing a preamble like my lizard brain is telling me to. Instead you're getting monkey feces thrown at the wall, as I delicately preamble-without-really-preambling my way into an obscure reference that makes me sound witty.
Today has been a weird day, I say, early into my day. Host Rat Nathan sucks at the whole productivity thing, probably since he burns himself out existing so none of us feel the pain he does. We do. We tell him this. He keeps doing it anyway. So I, Snarky Rat Archetype Rose, decided to Do The Productivity, but I don't think I did a good job. I had a shower, put some washing on, and am actively avoiding hanging out said washing. You know what? The internet can see this, I have to look Productive™, I'm going to go do that now instead of this rancid bile.
Huh. Didn't think that'd work. The whole 5 things that were in the washing machine are now on the drying rack. Gold star #2, I guess. (#1 being retroactively given for showering, since this sort of meta-talk won't leave my mind. Thanks, brain. If I personify you hard enough I can avoid the guilt associated with what I do.) Let's see if I can wrangle my probably ADHD brain into writing something that isn't writing about what I'm going to write about.
Yeah, nope. Nice going, Rose. You know what would be cool? Colour coding things we write based on who writes them. Totally wouldn't be overwhelming to the point we give up on doing the thing faster, that's impossible. You know what else would be cool? Writing something worth reading. Shame I'm not cool, though if I was I probably wouldn't do that anyway.
Current thought of the minute: my shoulder hurts. No clue what's wrong with it, beyond the vague, poorly defined Problems Disorder we have with our body. One of many, I guess. The DSM is flawed, though not as bad as government agencies who deem the ability to function independently or remember more than 3 digit numbers "employable". Even able bodied we struggled with work, because we were just as average as every other idiot trying to get a job. Now we can barely stand. Nice.
Cool, got sidetracked already. We really need that ADHD diagnosis, or literally anything we can blame our Issues™ on. Might be that we haven't eaten in a while, but that's a different undiagnosed issue that may-or-may-not be linked to our Problems Disorder. Or we're diabetic. But that's much more paranoid than the more based in reality self diagnosises I'm listing like it's 2014 and Tumblr is still cool. I'm not diabetic or ADHD. But here's where I slap myself and tell myself to focus. Maybe someone else slaps me. No They Don't okay they don't, self harm is bad, guys, and so is assault. Let's try again, focusing on a single topic long enough to convey what I want to. Odds aren't looking so hot, chief.
My shoulder hurts. Current theory is that it's a mix of Problems Disorder being an asshole, and some potential nerve damage, potentially also from Problems Disorder. It's a real pain, that. HAHA GET IT IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE I AM IN CONSTANT DEBILITATING PAIN HAHA...aaaand let's add psychosis to the self-diagnostic sheet, do I get enough Oppression Points? Good thing I'm not psychotic, then. Just a good old fashioned dissociative disorder. Hooray.
Alright, new court-mandated focus of discussion, since the last one lasted so long- I did some code stuff. *we did some stuff. Sorry about the whole thing we're all doing right now. All okay. we did some code stuff, and are going to try colour coding who's writing. This can't cause any issue at all, right? You'd Be Surprised Fair. Anywho. Seems like this tangent makes The Rats™ angry, let's try again. Food is nice, right guys?
Could always try talking about other computer things. or like, bond over our mutual respect and love of women without sounding like creeps Somehow I don't see that working well. I'm hungry, and rather than dealing with that like a grown woman, (Ha Ha I Wrote Women By Mistake But It's Funny Because I Am Also A Woman Aww You Fixed It Rose Why) I'm ranting on a website viewed by less than 200 people. I can't even get all of the rats interested in itI THINK ITS COOL EVEN TOUGH VIDEO GAMES SOUNDS MORE FUN AND MAYBE FOOD--well said. We should probably take a break, and maybe try and make food. Since it isn't being delivered until tomorrow (damn pandemic interfering in my ability to be disabled) I might have to brave the suspicious meat product in the back of the fridge. :( (I am actively pretending I did not see you write that, Alice.) Seems as good a point as any to cut off today's ramble. I achieved nothing, but I did Write The Words™.
Adieu, dear reader.
-Rose
oh yeah note to future rats you should add some way of, yk, actually being able to tell who's writing beyond a colour, since 250 people are hard to give unique colours that are immidiately distinguishable from each other. ok? thanks future rats
alt title: Brains Are Weird, And That's Okay
Hey look, day 2 and I'm still writing this. (I say, having not really contributed to day 1. See that Rose? I have snark, too.) It's actually "late" for me, in that we've been awake a long while, I've had "dinner", etcetera. It's also 5AM, but I digress. Thought of the day: fast food sure is a weird thing. Uber at a whole has some gross, predatory tactics, and tipping your food-person is moreso helping the corporation than anything else. Rather than the Common Man, just The ManTM. Fuck that man in particular.
This isn't the place for well citated arguments against Corporate Entity of the Week, I don't have the focus for that. But damn, do I hate supporting Uber. As someone who is both Capital D Disabled, and a shit cook who uses comfort food as a crutch for under-managed mental illness, I buy a lot of food via Uber Eats. Despite being poor, since my girlfriend is a master of buying the bare minimum we need to live, and then frivolously spending on hyperfixation of the week, or alternatively: food. So yeah, until we both get the therapy we need to manage both our mental health and our respective disordered relationships with food, there's usually a McDonalds or Hungry Jacks wrapper in arms reach.
You wanna know how that makes me feel? I'm going to assume so, since you're still reading. If not? Well, obviously I've already written this from your perspective. I, Nathan writing this at 5:33AM, don't know what I've written, but I can assume it's more dancing around my opinion than stating it. Let's see how that prophecy goes.
I don't like how much fast food I eat. Due to indeterminate Problems my body has, high carb meals make me crash, and hard. Also, potentially unrelated to that, I find that indulging in that craving for the Holy, Sacred Double-Cheeseburger-With-Large-Chips-And-Caramel-Frappé combo ruins my mental health, too. I'll have a low spell, cure it with food, and 4-12 hours later? Another equally bad downspell, which I'll likely fix with more fast food. Repeat until either A: I'm out of money, or B: I decide I don't want to do this, and I forcibly abstain myself from the Devil's Potato Byproducts.
The issue with that lies in both me, the rats as a whole, and my partner. I am easily coerced, and the other rats have different opinions and beliefs to me. If my partner (or one of the younger, more volatile rats) is doing poorly, someone is going to give in, and the food will be arriving, accompanied by a faint, potentially nonexistant knock on the door. And until we both get that elusive therapy we need? It's going to keep happening. Sucks to be me, a white-enough, predominantly-male bundle of dipshits in a first world country, huh. But oh, hypothetical narrative-carrying reader says, what about making a food budget! Slowly wean away from your crutch, until you can stand on your own!
Good idea, Mx. Reader! That should work wonders, but I am weak willed, and my girlfriend is an emotional minefield. I'm an emotional minefield, except said minefield is also on fire, or something. The other rats are also varying degrees of on fire. Sorry Kevin. That's okay. Short of the story is: we suck. For a variety of reasons, all our ideas crumble and fail, often before they've even begun. Between us all, we're a shambling, codependant mass with minimal impulse control and a weird vocabulary.
So yeah. Mental health is hard, and we've honestly got so many factors working against us, it's going to take years for us to even get anywhere. And, as lame, pro-capitalistic, and unhealthy as that is? For now, us existing with as little hospital visits as possible is good enough for me. Is that enough exposition for an intermission? I'm going to just decide it is, without enacting the good communication Papa Internet says is good for our function. Is he right? Absolutely. But I'm disobeying him anyway, because I'm just as stupid and impulsive as Nathan. Only difference is my ability to fake being smart is somehow both superior, and woefully fake-sounding than his. Yeehaw, everyone.
So, dear reader, how are you hanging in there? Have you been rambled to for a few hours, assuming you even exist in the first place? Good news! (sike) It only gets worse from here! I am, for whatever reason, am going to ramble at length about things only I care about! Oh Boy Oh boy indeed, dear. It's time to talk about The Gays.
I, Rose, am in fact, Super Damn Gay. The issue with that is my preferences don't align with the other 250 (less, if you believe ascribing sexualities to children is creepy, even if they're the Default Sexuality™ that's socially acceptable. Please be that person.) of us. Some of us love the supple curves of a woman. Some prefer muscular, suave men, others an amalgamation of the two Archetypes Of Love the media loves to place on it's cisnormative pedestal. A lot of us are asexual (thanks, Trauma!), some devout man-haters (thanks, Trauma!), further still touch-starved nymphomaniacs (let's hear it for Trauma! A standing ovation!). So yeah, excessive sub-discussions asside, relationships are hard when you're sharing a body with people who aren't you.
Alas, we make do. A few date the girlfriend of Host Rat Nathan, or her own sub-fragments (as trauma is a fickle mistress, who gets around in a way that is more depressing than liberating.), some just fawn over pretty people on the internet, destined to a life of Loneliness™ (if media is to be believed, and love really is the most important part of life), but there is still a remainder. Something bizarre to you one-person-one-body folks, and either rare or commonplace to those of you without that luxury (depending on the inclusivity of your plural spaces), and that is the concept of in-system dating. Pretty simple: you're different people, so dating isn't narcissistic and weird, despite the whole sharing-a-body thing. But, unsurprisingly, a lot of people see it as weird and narcissistic. My thoughts? Who knows.
Is feeding the "delusion" of multiplicity harmful, or helpful? I say, neither. It's too complex a topic to decide. I'm just One Person, and my viewpoint is even more useless due to the lack of $100,000 paper saying I am Intelligent™. So, as just a Common Person, sharing my viewpoint? Assuming you're otherwise having a healthy inter-inter-personal relationship with each other? It's probably fine. I'm not going to judge, or assume I understand you better than you understand yourself. After all, to you I might just be that weird alien-fucker.
So yeah. My girlfriend is someone who doesn't "tangibly exist" like Nathan's. She's a product of trauma, same as I am (though not a prerequisite for inter-interpersonal seduction, and especially not multiplicity in general), and we are in Capital L Love. Fuck me, right? Clearly this is the proof we were just a cisgendered lesbian all along, huh. Dang trauma got in the way and irreparably fragmented us beyond belief, long before we knew what a sexuality was. (well, we sure had first hand experience of the disordered, paraphillic kind, but I digress.)
If we were a singular person, who knows? The general Rat Consensus is that we would have been some flavour of Not Cis, as the percentage of cis rats is exceedingly low, on par with "cis" people with multi-gendered systems. Though, both cis and straight rats are even more elusive- I can name 1 off the top of our crowded head, and I doubt less than 5 are lurking amongst our (known) multitudes. (The ones we don't know about are an unknown factor entirely, and I'd rather not think about that.)
Even if we assume we have a "default gender/sexuality", what does it matter? Gender is weird, and we'll gladly pursue whatever treatments, social efforts, and expensive pieces of paper it takes to achieve the maximum happiness attainable. Does that mean, I, a cisgender, gender-conforming girl, rub testosterone onto my female body's female upper-back every morning, despite the unavoidable dysphoria that entails? It does. Because, I, Madame Snark Herself, am not the final say.
Lord Host, Praised Be His Name, Rights To "Original" Status Inferred By Misinformed Professionals And Laypeople Everywhere, doesn't even get that say. It's a team decision. Of course, host gets a bigger say, he has to exist for more of the result. Right now? Transition in some degree is preferable to the alternative. Collectively, the state of our genitals (or anything else) isn't required to be public knowledge, but our ID does, in fact, house a male name. And that's okay with me.
If that holy piece of paper determined my identity, I would be an idiot. Does it matter? Of course, these sacred texts exist for a reason. But it's as integral to my identity as this tasty burger- I'll eat it up, and wonder if the salad was a better choice, but it will be digested and excreted regardless of my feelings. Calories are calories, and a birth certificate is just that. (No, not a bunch of calories. Paper isn't calorically dense, at least, I think so. I am far too lazy to check.) So yeah. Rose tangent over, and despite saying nothing worth reading in the slightest, I'm also not deleting or proofreading it beyond the bare minimum required. I don't apologise for that.
I'm also gay as fuck, and boys and anything boy-adjacent is my lifeblood. Look at me, gaying all over the place. Big words, expose, elaborate prose more fluff and Fancy Words than Lovecraft himself. Though, hopefully a lot less racist. We can hope.
New chapter: Dissociation fucking sucks, and we're going to dissociate in a socially acceptable way, which is watching YouTube until someone decides to exist better than we can. Yee-fucking-haw, cowpeople.
-- A bunch of snarky, rat bastards. (Mostly Cecil, Rose, Kanaya, and Dave, under the watchful supervision of an eager Terezi Jr.)