@classicaldreams

recipe for shaiapouf from hunter x hunter @bandage-hearted-butterfly

so the obvious choice for blue and purple to me is butterfly pea flower tea, but anyone can tell you to buy dried butterfly pea blossoms and then steep them to make an herbal tea so i went to find something a bit more complex. this recipe includes simple syrup, which can be bought or made. its really simple to make simple syrup, so i'll include instructions on how to make that as well

simple syrup

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup water

add water to sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. let it cool, then pour into a clean jar and lid it. it'll keep in your fridge for about one month

butterfly pea milk tea

1 teaspoon dried butterfly pea flowers

1 cup water

1 tablespoon simple syrup

1/4 cup milk, dairy or non-dairy

optional: tapioca pearls cooked according to their packaging instructions

bring the water to a boil in a small pot and add the butterfly pea flowers. turn off the heat and steep for 5 minutes. when it reaches a rich blue color, discard the flowers and let tea cool

if using tapioca pearls, add them to the bottom of a 16 oz mug or glass. add ice and pour cooled tea. add 1 tablespoon simple syrup and milk of your choice

I've registered for othercon; actually genuinely excited to see what the community is like, given how little interaction I've had with it thus far 💖

A small edit:

🦋 Musings 🦋 -> for the borderline poetic, things that express mood more than thoughts

Still considering what I'd like for a talk tag

Been thinking about my tag system and am likely going to use some emojis! I'll move a few more posts over here before I solidify it, but I do have a plan!

POLL! PLEASE REPOST FOR BIGGER SAMPLE SIZE!!

Very exciting to have what I've termed a "clinically significant bug moment" and notice that my gender dysphoria became exponentially worse as it happened.

It's been a bit since I've last spoken here, and I have a lot of things I want to say.

After some very careful consideration, I think I can safely say that my feelings regarding kinning were actually the manifestation of myself coping with a dissociative condition I otherwise didn't know how to describe. This was the closest approximation I could come up with that made sense to me, and as time went on and I was afforded more chances to look at my feelings and perceptions, I do know for certain that there is something dissociative happening to me. Nothing as far as osdd I would say, but definitely along that vein.

I carry him with me. When I'm upset, I hold his grief, and when I'm overjoyed, I hold his caution. Every new situation has a protective measure put over it in the form of a dissociative fit. However, as I've mentioned previously, I don't interpret any of this in a negative light. It simply is what it is, and it is something that developed to help me cope. Of course I was afraid in the beginning - I didn't know what I was dealing with or what triggered my episodes, so I very naturally began to feel afraid when I could feel myself begin to drift. As time has gone on, I have made peace with this aspect of myself and wish to work with it.

This experience has been and continues to be deeply important to me, and I feel that part of my interpretation of it is almost spiritual in a sense. I grasped a lot of my identity through him, saw a lot of my trauma and myself in him and he continues to serve as a lens I occasionally interact with the world through. I have chosen to use his name alongside my own, feeling a sense of recognition and actual, genuine joy upon hearing it. Only a small handful of people know I use this name, and smaller few still know about my dissociation. While the psychological pieces don't necessarily have to come to light, I would like to be afforded the chance to be seen in the world as I am.

I am planning to tell two friends of mine about my name. I trust one of them to take it well, but I fear a bit of reaction from the other. She has a concept of "cringe" and has implied to me a few times prior that my behavior felt embarrassing in a secondhand way. The behaviors in question were either deeply ingrained, as from how I grew up, or entirely innate, as with my neurodivergence. I fear another layer being added to this, especially since we live together, but I don't want myself to be ruled over by my fear of perception. I want to be able to live authentically and for myself, regardless of what may be perceived of me. I already exist as someone who is queer, traumatized, disabled; some of my actions are already perceived differently because of these immutable factors. I don't want to feel afraid anymore. I am preparing for potential questions or pokes, but think I truly may not have much to fear.

My name is Shai, and I don't want to be afraid to say it.

Delete this if it's weird but your post about naming your blog after one of the royals guards from hxh reminded me of something. So I am part of a DID system and some of the alters have many traits/appearance of my abusers, including some with the same names. They'd do things that were harmful as a way of keeping everyone safe. Anyways, recently our host watched hxh and one of those parts really connected with Neferpitou going from this absolutely inhumane monster of sorts to slowly learning how empathy and compassion works and has now changed their name from their original name of our abuser they're based off to Pitou instead now. Anyways I'm happy for them and just wanted to share that with ya

I held onto this ask for a while bc I was debating how detailed I wanted my response to be, but I think this is a story I've been wanting to tell for a while and if there was ever a time to fully discuss this, it would be here; the naming and themeing extends to myself as well as my blog - I do go by the name Shai irl, though I'm a little picky with where I choose to use it over the name I've had for longer (Rigel). Before I go into any more detail, I want to congratulate you for that development! It sounds like a moment of positive growth, and I'm glad you got to experience that.

The short answer is that I've basically taken my experiences with dissociation and something that may be multiplicity and fully redirected it all into a sense of spirituality. My therapist had encouraged me to not pathologize it; I was just hammering at my own personal experiences and being fixated on feeling like something was wrong with me and needed to be fixed - normal people don't experience thoughts and feelings that don't belong to them. With that being said, a large part of my recovery work was/is with acceptance; I was forced to mask a lot of things while growing up (autism, physical disability, queerness, etc) and there was a huge push from my family to seem as "normal" as possible, and now I'm actively undoing that and my work with being in the otherkin community is a massive cornerstone of that work. I identified very heavily with shaiapouf and my therapist actually watched hxh so we could use pouf as a therapy tool for me. Me naming myself after him is a huge gesture of the love I was able to give myself via my coping process - recognizing him in my trauma, and working with him to recover.

The longer answer is that I've experienced dissociation that leans towards multiplicity for a number of years now, with aforementioned thoughts and feelings included. I never had any memory loss, and the experience of another person being with me wasn't well developed enough for the definition of an alter, so I felt stuck with an experience I had no words for and no way of relating to other people with similar experiences. I remember describing it as feeling possessed, like there was suddenly another consciousness present with my own. These experiences are a lot less intense now, and I attribute that to my acceptance of them instead of pushing them away in fear. It was a while before I said anything to my therapist and was genuinely mortified because it felt like something was very seriously wrong with me and I had to fix it at all costs (with the idea of needing to "fix" things that were "wrong" with me or my life being a repeating theme as well).

Over time, as I stopped pushing everything away, I was able to start seeing where the emotions and thoughts that came with the episodes (not necessarily triggering them) were coming from, but still struggled to accept them as my own when they felt so foreign. Acceptance has brought me a long way and we've now teased out that this is a massive way for me to process not just my trauma, but the grief accompanying it.

My therapist was the one who had initially suggested I take a spiritual approach to this, and I found that in the otherkin community, where, upon actually looking at the original contexts of some of the words used in the community, found things I'd been describing to my therapist over a year ago. I'd prior been fond of the idea of reincarnation and fully embraced it in this process. My first (and so far only) tattoo is of his wings, I'll carry him with me for the rest of my life; I derived one of my names from his own. This character has been highly influential in my life and I've fully embraced him for it. He means a lot of things to me - reflection of my own trauma, the power and rage I wish I could have demonstrated while in the process of being traumatized, the delicate masculinity I wish to have as a trans man, and much more I'm sure. A lot of my episodes seem to happen when helplessness kicks in, like something to help distance myself from my pain; I feel him in righteous fury when I know I deserve better. Not all of it is bad though, I had one while I was looking at Christmas lights a few months ago and felt like I was looking at the world for the first time, simple delight as if holding someone else's hand and showing them.

All in all, I thank you for sharing your story and for giving me a place to share some of mine.

Am I host to the world's most half-assed fictive..

Must also say! I don't usually have phantom limb sensations but I can't shake the one day I could distinctly feel where my wings would have trailed down my back

I should mention! I spoke about my kin identity with two very close friends and it went over quite well! I am still respected and had my beliefs (specifically in reincarnation) affirmed as well, and this is an experience I would wish upon anyone who desires it