Monday, March 16th, 2026 04:12 am
Hi!

I have a character in a sci-fi universe who ends up "shipwrecked" alone on a completely uninhabited planet for two years. The planet, and the specific environment he lands in, are perfectly habitable by humans (we are in soft scifi territory here, very Star Trek inspired) and he's able to survive with some effort. (The details of how are not really important to the story - I know at least that he's the kind of guy who'd be able to salvage some tech and emergency supplies from his wrecked ship, and I'm comfortable with brushing past the details of what exactly he brought with him - but if anyone's really interested in coming at it from that logistical angle, I won't stop you!)

What is more relevant to the story is how this experience would continue to affect him by the time he's back home safely. I think there are a bunch of possible avenues here and I'd love to see people's takes on how they would approach this or approach researching it. For example, here are some of my cursory thoughts:
  • PTSD is certainly a likely long-term complication
  • It's implied that his shipwrecking was not an accident/was engineered maliciously - I imagine this is something he has dwelt on heavily throughout the two years and will affect his ability to trust people (and to visit other uninhabited planets in the future!). Seems like it would be easy to get caught in delusional spirals in a situation like that.
  • I know that prolonged isolation can cause hallucination/psychosis in some cases, especially in solitary confinement, sensory deprivation contexts, etc. Is that as much of a risk in this case? And if so, do you think he'd still be experiencing psychotic symptoms after the fact?
  • One of his personality traits is that he's fairly attention-seeking - I think it's likely this incident will exacerbate that and make him more desperate for connection
  • It'll probably alter how he approaches social situations in the future in general; that's something I'll definitely be thinking about
  • Perhaps he got into the habit of talking to himself on the planet, and this never went away
Sunday, March 15th, 2026 10:16 pm
Submitted by [personal profile] paxislandsystem! Thank you, [personal profile] paxislandsystem!

"You haven’t clicked on this song, you haven’t brought me along.
You just thought that you could clone yourself till nobody was wrong."


Blurb: Eclectic album written by various members of a plural system about relationship troubles, headmates fighting, and isolation.

Why is it worth your time?:
A number of songs get quite explicit about the nature of plurality and feeling incomplete, trapped, trying to stay in control, and longing for connection, as well as references to plural love in some form or another.

Plural Tags: abuse low-focus, plural creator, creator speaks from experience, fusion/integration or identityblending, fictioneers (many many many of them, but namely Jax from The Amazing Digital Circus and Glad0s from Portal come to mind, as well as presumably the other TADC and homestuck characters seen on the album cover), enmity, friendship

Content Warnings: headmate conflict, isolation, identity troubles

Accessibility Notes: Available (with screenreadable lyrics) on bandcamp in English for five dollars and a limited amount of free streaming, as well as in the form of a lyric video on YouTube published by the artist.

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 10:04 pm
Submitted by [personal profile] ghost_ship! Thank you, [personal profile] ghost_ship!

i've been here 'fore you knew me
a name without a body
we both know what we've been through
my darling, my companion
don't think, just let me shine through
more than your comprehension
i hope you know i love you

Blurb: Constant Companions is an energetic and unabashedly sincere album exploring connection and love. Along with Jamie Paige's own vocals. it features the vocal synths ANRI, Kasane Teto, Megpoid Gumi, Solaria, and Adachi Rei. And there's leitmotifs. And trans themes. And yuri.

Why it it worth your time?:
Jamie Paige uses a mix of her own vocals along with vocal synths to represent relationships between her parts in a cool way! The songs most explicitly about her plurality are really sweet and heartfelt. The sense of constancy and connectedness is a major theme in the album, and the inspiration for it's name.

Plural/1+ Tags:
abuse low-focus (only in "Object of Affection," where the monarchs use magic to suppress the will of their "prince"), creator speaks from experience, relationships intimate, romantic, and teamwork, type median and medical, voices

Content Warnings:
ROT FOR CLOUT involves the blurring line between self and commodity and the deep emotional strain stemming from that. Cadmium Colors and Clouddrop are about suicidal ideation (Though they do end on hopeful notes!). Object of Affection is an allegorical tale of parents suppressing their trans child's identity.

Accessibility Notes:
The album (with full screenreadable lyrics) is on Bandcamp! Unfortunately the CD and vinyl editions are sold out. Also can be listened to for free on various streaming platforms.

Misc. Notes:
Jamie Paige has talked publically about her experience with OSDD in her behind-the-scenes posts about Breeze Blows and My Darling, My Companion.

There's 17 tracks (70 minutes total): 1. Dyad 2. Not Quite There (with telebasher) 3. ROT FOR CLOUT 4. I Wish That I Could Fall 5. Cadmium Colors 6. Breeze Blows (with Marcy Nabors & Marlow Jacobs) 7. Aggrandicize 8. Liaison 9. Object of Affection 10. Clouddrop 11. My Darling, My Companion 12. Machine Love 13. BIRDBRAIN (with OK Glass) 14. Shiny Chariot 15. Strawberry 16. Manifesto 17. Dance Delightful

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 09:51 pm
Submitted by [personal profile] erinptah! Thank you, [personal profile] erinptah!

"Steven and Jake are part of your Hive. In whatever form, whatever body. Just like that, we understand."

Blurb:
Marc Spector is used to voices in his head. He’s used to waking up disoriented, unsure what his alters, Jake and Steven, might have been up to. He’s used to having an Egyptian god command him as Moon Knight, his avatar of justice and revenge. What he’s not used to: staring into the face of a literal, out-of-body doppelganger.
Another Marc, crash-landed from an alternate reality, begging for help? Yeah, that is a new one, even for him.
But before he can really process anything beyond Khonshu’s incessant alarm bells, it becomes clear this other Marc didn’t travel solo...

Why is it worth your time?:
Moon Knight has always been Marvel Comics' most-successful attempt to write a superhero with DID, and this spinoff novel (set in a universe similar to the main comics) is a worthy addition to the effort. Not only does the writer remember that Steven and Jake exist, he gives them roughly equal page time with Marc, and is clearly coming from a perspective of "all these characters are equally valid/important/interesting."
They're also dealing with Venom (a bodyjacking alien symbiote made of black goo, itself part of a Hive Mind), and Khonshu (the shouty Egyptian god who spends a lot of time in their head). The world-saving superhero plot is set up in a way that gives each of their personal strengths a chance to shine, and their shared experiences help the team-ups work, in spite of their varying levels of messiness and dysfunction. It's a fun time.

Plural/1+ Tags:
abuse low-focus, bodyhopping, cofronting, otherworld, relationships: family, relationships: teamwork, type: medical, type: spiritual, type: possession, type: switching. Does "Marvel-typical multiverse stuff" count as realitymashing? If yes, that too.

Content Warnings:
Genre-typical fighting and violence. Non-consensual body possession (canon-typical for Venom). Reference to abusive treatment at a psychiatric hospital. Character death (canon-typical for Moon Knight). Further warnings have SPOILERS! See comments.

Accessibility Notes:
Recent and mainstream book, I got the hardcover from my library. Ebook and audiobook versions are available.

Misc. Notes (if any):
To keep the cast list manageable, the writer knocks out one of each headmate for most of the book, so Local Marc and Visiting Steven+Jake are the ones left to handle the plot. (Chapter POVs alternate between those three, and Venom.) It's a little hacky, but it works, and each trio gets a nice reunion before the end.
I wrote a much more detailed review/reaction of the book here.
Sunday, March 15th, 2026 09:43 pm
"Raj... I... have never fucked as Shivalree before. Like... I do it alone... jerk off with it turned on... but I have never done it with someone else."

Blurb: (from the ebook listing) A pair of rookie “Creative” Fighters–artists with the ability to physically manifest their varied creativity as superpowers–square off in a Creative Fighting Championship underbracket 2v2, wherein they develop a taste for one anothers’ abilities. In the locker room afterwards they explore other applications for what they can do.

Why is it worth your time?: This is a case where we are using "median" because upon multiple rereads, it is fascinating seeing the unspoken interplay between Randall and Shivalree; panel by panel, you can see which is speaking or emoting, and it's subtle and fascinating to watch, Randall's "eeee, I'm getting laid!" excitement contrasted against Shivalree's swagger. In a non-porn but related comic, Every Hole #1: Randall, you see Randall's friend Alix unable to unlock Squidlock (who not only has different body language, expressions, and possibly gender, but also a completely different monster body) and in deep depression due to it. It's unclear just how separate the fighting personas are from the performer, but clearly being able to access them is a big part of being happy and okay. Also, the way this comic uses color is gorgeous.

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, cofronting, identityblending, realitymashing, median

Content Warnings: It's porn!

Accessibility Notes: Available in ebook (though only with Paypal payment) and paper versions (at least for now; it's trans queer porno so who knows how long that'll last), and also via subscription at Filthy Figments (which accepts all kinds of methods of payment, not just Paypal). Not screenreadable.
Saturday, March 14th, 2026 01:04 pm

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

Friday, March 13th, 2026 10:05 pm
For large-scale projects, specifically for ships. All my ship-related resources for the era are for the British Navy, and books on colour that I've read have been on artists' paints or dyes.

How would a French Imperial Navy vessel be painted, not at one of the big shipyards? Would it be mixed up on site from raw ingredients, or bought in? Would there be barrels, buckets with lids, cannisters, vats or what - and what would the paint be made of? 

Searching online produces info on painting scale models, or contemporary pictures of ships. I found a chapter on ship decoration in Conway's History of the Ship: The Line of Battle but that doesn't have the early-in-the-process details I want. I found an article on the pre-Revolutionary Navy in the International Journal of Maritime History, by David Plouviez, that's too early and still doesn't cover paint.

Thank-you in advance.
Wednesday, March 11th, 2026 08:30 pm
Because Biden told HHS that they couldn't stick kids with people who would make them more likely to be bullied into self harming, and Trump hates everything that Biden stands for including protecting kids from people like him, Trump is trying to stick LGBTQ kids with unsupportive "traditionally Christian" families. He's getting his stooge, RFK Jr., to propose scrapping protections for LGBTQ+ kids in foster care.

The Trumpist regime is trying to sneak another shortened comment period by us too quickly for people to protest. If you want to register a comment about how much these people hate children, etc, here is where to do so. And if you want to read the whole weasel-worded decision, you can do so here.
Tuesday, March 10th, 2026 10:52 pm
Okay, I thought I knew science, but after several days of researching this, all I've got is indecision and a headache.

Original fiction, unspecified not-too-far-future time.

My character is the pilot of a small cargo ship in the asteroid belt. (No FTL, no artificial gravity.) Said ship has sufficient radiation shielding to be safe under normal conditions. My idea is that there's an unusually strong solar event (solar flare? coronal mass ejection?), and he has to survive by positioning his ship on the shadowed side of an asteroid (rocks are good shielding), and use his excellent piloting skills to stay there until the storm passes.

1. Does this, theoretically, actually work?

2. I'd like the solar event to be a Coronal Mass Ejection, because some CMEs move relatively slowly, and that gives my character time to make a narratively interesting choice. But is it the CME itself that's hazardous to human life, or a sort of "bow wave" of radiation that precedes it? And if the latter, is that radiation moving at the speed of the CME, or the speed of light? (I keep thinking I have a grasp on this, and then the next source I read contradicts it.)

Guidance appreciated, fellow space enthusiasts!

ETA: Okay, based on comments and additional research the comments inspired, my takeaway is: (1) CMEs can happen with or without accompanying radiation, (2) the stuff in the CME itself is not dangerous to humans, (3) the dangerous-to-humans part of the radiation travels at the speed of light. Which means this story is probably dead; I really needed that longer warning time for the narratively-interesting parts, darn it.
Monday, March 9th, 2026 09:42 pm
A friend let me know about a new Bureau of Prisons guideline for treatment of inmates with gender dysphoria, which you can read in its entirety here. The short form is that they're denying trans inmates gender-affirming care despite medical consensus, and substituting conversion therapy, which has been proven to be harmful and does not in any way "cure" gender dysphoria.

My friend's letter, posted with permission )
Saturday, March 7th, 2026 07:14 pm
On March 9, there's a global women's general strike--- more information on the range of activities can be found here. (I tagged for a lot of different types of actions, accordingly, but there may be more ways to participate that I didn't see.)