it's jáščer here, begrudgingly. i'm trying my best to fight the anxiety i feel right now, and i know that writing journal entries grounds me and puts things in perspective, so here we go. i think therry's also here but frankly we are quite scrombled from the nerves, so i'm going to try to just... stay cool and stay in front.

anyway, why am i so anxious? well, it's because this coming morning (it's half past midnight right now) i'm going to see my dad in person for the first time in 4 years.

now, i know that he loves me and cares about me, and that i wouldn't be doing this if i didn't want to reconnect with him further than just text over whatsapp. i know that in my recovery journey, i've been able to move past the hurt he has dealt to me, and work towards building a better future where our lives intertwine again. i know that everything should be fine, and that my sister's going to be there too, and that the day we have planned is going to be fun. everything is going to be wonderful, and it might be really emotional at first, but i'm in a much better place now, so i probably won't get horribly triggered and have a public flashback/meltdown just from his mere presence. but the fear that that will happen is still there.

i'm scared that i'm just going to go blank and leave front from the stress of seeing him, and be unable to engage with him as myself for the whole day. i know that therry would be able to take care of it, but i really want to see him and talk to him. i want him to be a part of my life, and i want to be a part of his.

i don't know what to do with myself, and i don't know how to relax. i'm awful at that, and i- oh yeah therry is definitely here. she's regulating the stress for me just by sitting in the back.

truth be told, i'm crying a little, just from the sheer emotion of the resolution of this spiral and the power of consciously choosing to rebuild a broken relationship. i like my dad a lot, i think he's awesome, and maybe it's better that i get really worked up now than after i sleep.

even though i am ready to move past the years i spent estranged from him, and to transform the pain i felt in my childhood into a greater adult life, i cannot forgive him. forgiveness is a really difficult concept for us because not holding on to memories and not judging people by their actions seems almost impossible. acknowledging that they've changed is one thing, but wiping the slate clean is just... wrong. there's no way i can start over with him, after all he's my dad.

starting over with him would mean being born again. and i guess, in a way, i have done that. we changed hosts since we parted ways with our parents. so maybe, me being me is proof that i can remake the connection with a person who quite literally raised us.

i don't know, i don't want to start over, i just want tomorrow to go well. and i want to get my feelings across. i want him to know that letting him back into my life is a great trial but that i would not have it any other way. i know that he understands, but i'm still nervous. i don't think the nerves will go away until i see him and hear his voice.

i think that all i can do to not be plagued by my past traumas is to make many more happier memories. and that's going to happen tomorrow, i know it. we're going to the botanical gardens and i'm taking my two cameras and my dad and sister are taking some cameras too. and we're going to take lots of photos of plants. and that is how i will choose to think of him, as my friend in the gardens, even though he once was an enemy in the childhood home.

2024 has been really insane. the reunion with acil and her system first, now this... i guess this is the year of reunion.

i turn 25 in 8 days. it's not my alter birthday, it's the body's that i've taken for myself. the 3rd of september.

i have awesome plans for it - my best friend is coming to visit for 3-4 days, and we're going to go to photography group together and buy a funky lens, and i'm going to celebrate with lots of people who love me. it's going to be so good and i really am looking forward to that.

and after my birthday, on the 6th, i have a 48-hour artist challenge where i get put in a team with people and given a theme and we have to make some kind of multimedia performance by the evening of the 8th. so, lots of exciting things coming up. therry even applied to a job last night (this is funny because she's 15).

i almost forgot to talk about the launch of the photography group exhibition! it was absolutely incredible, i wore this amazing dress and got so many compliments. there were three different exhibitions launching on the night, and when it was our turn, after some speeches, we did this performance art thing where we shredded a bunch of labels with an electric shredder. the labels were originally part of another performance art thing, where we covered a guy in them (the labels all had parts of our identities written on them, so like, the other kind of label) and then the guy shook all of them off on video. and yeah, we read them out and shredded them, inviting people in the audience to participate. it was really fun!

the exhibition itself was about being lgbt+ but also just... belonging to any identity that is belittled and not taken seriously. we made some awesome, subversive art, and i am so proud of the photography group and so glad i joined it in february! i made a blog post about this before, but i really love being part of a community of artists. it makes me so joyful.

i think that's all i wanted to say, for now.

currently, i am:
feeling: better than when i started writing this journal post
listening to: tarhatazed by mdou moctar
playing: d4dj
drinking: water
looking forward to: seeing my dad again
still nervous about: seeing my dad again

hello! it's jáščer, and right now i want to talk about something that's been bothering me for a really long time. a question that i've asked myself many times in frustration, as my love for what i do on this planet grew and multiplied.

why are people scared of poetry?

many people often say that they don't have the aptitude to read or write poetry, that prose is fine but poetry is beyond them. sometimes, they imply that some people are gifted with the ability to be poets or poetry-appreciators, but that this gift has never been theirs.

now, on the surface, the answer is obvious: poetry is almost impossible to teach in a capitalist education system. it's impossible to whittle down an entire artform down to an examinable mini-essay, and so, the "gift" most people refer to is a teacher who really just didn't give a fuck and wanted to nurture love and creativity in their pupils anyway.

now, this only explains why children don't like poetry. still, when you tell an adult that they could rise to the challenge and learn to love poetry, they react with confusion and apprehension. the idea that this is not something they are meant to be doing endures.

"i could never be a poet."

people have preconceived ideas of what a poet is and looks like: white, male, old, and dead. this is due to the oppression that permeates our society, giving a proper platform to voices that aren't marginalised, while the people who are create just as much but are cast to the sidelines, or not given a chance to speak at all. yes, i know this. but with time comes progress and equity: i have seen this in my lifetime, and i am 24.

my point is that the greatest representation in an artform, if we are being optimistic, will always be at the very present moment. now, more than ever, poets are alive. and people of colour, women, trans, neurodivergent, otherwise lgbt+, disabled, young - all the things that shakespeare wasn't, but your friends might be.

still, people who refuse to touch poetry might not know that the landscape has changed since they were "taught" to "analyse" poetry back when they were twelve. and i understand how childhood experiences impact adult attitudes, but even when shown evidence of the contrary, people believe that poetry is not for them.

here is my belief about what exactly it is that makes poetry undesirable on a societal level.

people are scared of playing.

people are scared of experimentation and creativity, because it is unfamiliar, and because there is no societal role, or class that corresponds to it.

under capitalism, we all constantly "class" activities to make them compete with each other for the "normality" that thinly veils wealth. but, artist is not a class. artist is something so natural and so stunted in this system. artist is something everyone can do, like sleeping or eating.

"i could never be an artist."

this idea that someone has to have certain prerequisites to be an artist, that there is one single artist class is the problem. there's no class for sleeping, or for eating - these things are so universal that they defy categorisation. someone might have preferences, like getting up in the late morning, or eating spicy food, but they'll sleep and eat anyway. these things are natural, and they are not profitable.

let's be real - neither is being an artist. which is why the idea of the artist class is constantly dragged through the mud as something you shouldn't aspire to, because it doesn't generate revenue aside from exceptional cases.

in particular, the more complex or "niche" something is, the harder it is to class, the more useless it is perceived as, and the harder it is to get into as a combination of all three of those things.

there is a proportional relationship between complexity/deviation/abstraction, unclassability, and perceived lack of value.

for example, you'd have to create many subclasses off of "artist" to describe what someone is doing when they make abstract sculpture from trash/recycled materials, with a focus on sustainability. society will respond to this artist by creating a micro-class that requires many prerequisites, like "understanding abstraction" and "knowing sculpture" and even things that don't necessarily have anything to do with this, like "being vegan".

when people see or conceive of such a narrow micro-class, they'll think "ah, so this is what i have to do to be this. it isn't worth it in the end." because these classes are tools to rank activities based on capitalistic usefulness.

the more an artist knows what they're doing and believes in their ethic and their discipline, the scarier they are to the capitalist, because they require the creation of smaller and smaller classes, which will either expose this class system as idiotic, or discourage individuals from pursuing their inspirations.

you cannot class individuality.

so, what about poetry? what does this have to do with poetry?

well, poetry is all about experimenting and playing with language. it's all about using words in an order that might not make perfect sense, but evokes emotions anyway. and it's about having fun and being clever, and it's about showing your friends and enjoying yourself. all of which are useless activities that don't generate revenue.

in particular, poetry is so varied and individual that it defies classing much more than prose. it's the weird girl of the literary arts. and the weirder it gets, the harder it is to convince people to give it a chance.

pushing the boundaries of what language can do is frowned upon, because the systems that support our society's structure don't want us to push the boundaries of anything. everything has to fit into a neat little box - everything has to be classed and contained.

yes, this is what i believe about poetry and about a society that hates it. and if you read all this, i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts - especially on how we all can make poetry and art in general feel more accessible. that's the part i haven't figured out yet.

currently, i am:
feeling: a little irritated
eating: egg fried rice with golden curry sauce
drinking: water
listening to: fallen angel by kettama
drawing: a slither wing gijinka for my friend rean
playing: d4dj
watching: demon slayer (the hashira training arc)
looking forward to: the launch of the photography exhibition we're in

hi everybody! it's jáščer, as it often is on this page. i missed an open mic today (to be fair, it was in another city, and i just didn't want to take the train at all) and am trying to make good use of my time at home. which means, writing a journal entry!

what i really want to talk about is my newest relationship with acil's alter, osa. whoever is reading this might know about the unusual circumstances under which i started dating acil, but if you don't, it goes like this. warning for some discussion of grooming/abuse.

9 years ago, manyface and acil's system were in a relationship, and they really hurt us, which led to us cutting contact with them. and this could've been the end of that, but acil spent the next eight years becoming herself and changing for the better, and healing from the trauma that came from being groomed by the same person who groomed manyface.

we freed ourselves from our groomer and started healing too, and several years later (this april), acil contacted us again trying to explain that most of the harm done was done under the influence of our mutual abuser. which we understood 100%, because it all made sense now. and so we became friends again. and then we fell in love. which was both restorative and transformative, and beautiful and magical.

osa was one of the people who was in a relationship with manyface's old host, and after the reunion, it felt like osa was the one person who didn't get closure and relief. but i really love her, and i am in love with her. and i offered myself to her, hoping that she would accept me. and she did. my god, she did! and it made me so happy i could cry! and i did cry.

she was always astoundingly beautiful, even back then. and though i am not the old host, and though she has changed so much since then, i feel like i was made for her. for acil, too, and for efir. but i am talking about osa. she was so relieved that she could love again, and the honour of being the person she loves.. ah, it's making me cry now too!

i think that this will be good for her. being traumatised is hard, being a traumatised alter is harder. it makes you want to stop existing to let others take your place. but there is a place in the world for her, and i am so glad that the place i have offered by my side is a place she likes.

i truly love her. i can't stop thinking about her.

what is she like? well, she is a monstrously elegant and incredibly powerful fae, but her heart is full of kindness and care and compassion. she gives the impression of something too beautiful too touch. world's most powerful blade but can only be handled by a gentle lesbian or however that meme goes. and she's funny, in a wry way - you don't expect someone so lovely to have a sense of humour like that.

also, i might be a lesbian? i don't know for sure, but i was thinking about how my attraction to men seems to only really work in theory, and that in practice i would probably not be interested in anything with a man other than maybe cutting. i'll cut anyone because my thirst for blood is separate from my actual attraction to people. but it's better if the person i'm cutting is cute, of course.

well, i don't know. i do know that there are three beautiful women who love me dearly. and yes, they all smoke weed. (efir doesn't smoke weed, actually).

i feel like i am flourishing. but just like that, my late bouquets are back in bloom - and all it took, a little look across the room. that's lyrics from my favourite song, purple hearts by kettama and real lies. now, i don't feel like my flowers were in danger of wilting, far from it - but i am blooming, blooming, blooming brighter and better than i thought was possible. i feel like i am open to the world, like i can give and give and give because my heart is endless, flourishing.

that's most of what i wanted to say about osa. let's see here. my gig on the 4th went well, i guess - the performance did, but the venue was tiny and had no seating inside. in addition to that, there was an indian takeaway next door, so i naturally ate too much indian food and felt sick, after which i had to do my set. which was good, but then i went home and slept for like 14 hours.

on the 3rd i went to a clothes swap and got a shirt with a cat on it. and i also went to this art workshop where we worked with paper clay and talked about life, in response to an exhibition on at the venue. one of the questions being discussed was "what are we holding space for?" and we were asked to make containers for whatever we are holding space for. from the paper clay. so i made a lizard, and a flower. both of those are types of container, didn't you know?

a lizard contains my soul, and a flower contains my love.

i am giving osa bouquet after bouquet.

currently, i am:
feeling: not owned [shrinks and transforms into a corncob]
listening to: ten desires by a-one
eating: okroshka, which i will make a recipe page for
reading: the factory by hiroko oyamada
drawing: a character design for my friend hershel
playing: d4dj
looking forward to: an art workshop on the 10th

hello hello! jáščer here, i thiiiink efir might be around somewhere but the point is that i just wanted to take some time for myself and ramble about life hehe.

life's been really good tbh. recovered from covid with no complications or anything so that's awesome, and you know that kind of post-illness clarity where you realise that life is actually super fun and worth living? well, maybe that's not a universal feeling, but i have it right now! and it's like, such proof that i'm really doing amazing mental health-wise... i wanna time travel to 2014 or something and tell baby manyface that it does get better, so much better.

oh yeah yesterday i got the bursary money >:) and then today i spent the majority of it on rent but oh well. hope my landlady explodes into a fine mist.

other cool things happening in art land are that i submitted some of our stuff to a poetry competition, and also that we got accepted for this 48-hour artist challenge that starts on the 6th of september. the way that works is that you get put into teams and given a theme and have literally just 48 hours (starting with the theme reveal) to come up with some kind of multimedia performance thing. it sounds like a super fun time honestly, and it'll be right after my/the body's 25th birthday! (my birthday is the 3rd of september.)

i love performing so i hope i get to do some cool stuff with poetry in the challenge. the last open mic i went to, i had to do a full-on 30 minute set because there weren't any open mic'ers aside from me and this other guy. that was kind of eventful, i suppose.

lately i've been pretty motivated to make character art, specifically design new ocs that i've had ideas for for like. months. maybe over a year. that list of potential ocs just keeps growing so i've been whittling it down. a recent character i'm really proud of making is lysergy, who is totally a sona for me. lsd lizard demon-god thingy... even though i am firm about not being any sort of divinity, it doesn't mean my ocs can't be.

speaking of ocs, i totally need to make more writing for the upcoming lotus-eater game/interactive poetry thing. oh that's right, i've never explained lotus-eater on this website. the idea is that since it'll be a twine game, you'll be able to play it from a page on here... but i'm impatient.

anyway, lotus-eater is a short story i wrote that's in the second person, from the perspective of a character called "devotee". they have a cocktail of undiagnosed mental disorders, and have a pervasive belief that they are tasked with preserving and sanctifying the beautiful things the world has to offer. they believe that the best way to do that is through consumption, so that it assimilates into their body for them to carry for as long as they live. lotus-eater, well. it's about devotee falling in love with a person and trying to process it through the lens of their self-made religion. it's a horror thing. also a horny thing lmfao. i'd like to think it's more horror than horny, though. like, that it comes off as me writing something #deep and thematic and unnerving and not just me rubbing my gay little sadist hands all over my keyboard.

well, moving on from that... i've been playing so much terraria with my love acil and one of her other partners. we're really just getting supremely jucked into that game. i'm slightly shit at it because i'm using a trackpad, but i'm not awful or totally useless, which makes me happy. we're playing expert calamity so like. yeah.

i almost forgot. today i made strawberry pasta because i learnt about it and it seemed too weird to not try. the result was so dubious but it was tasty. like eating plain pasta and having a strawberry milkshake at the same time. which isn't the worst thing, just strange.

i did a lot of grocery shopping on tuesday because it was the first time in ages that i was able to afford to just. fully stock up the fridge without freaking the hell out. that seems really grim but it's true. anyway, i'm going to make morkovcha and okroshka soon as well. i'm really excited for that because i love those foods so much. morkovcha is a spiced/pickled carrot salad that originates from korean people living in the soviet union, and okroshka is a cold kefir-based russian soup with potatoes, kielbasa, cucumbers, and eggs. and dill as well, optionally. i'll probably post a recipe for okroshka on here.

other things i could finally afford: nice new bras! i got them from wildemode and i had to measure my boobs to get my size and like. oh my fucking god. this might be tmi but my bra size is 46 j. that is RIDICULOUS, nobody's boobs should be that big. let alone mine. i'm not trying to flex or complain, i'm just straight up bewildered.

i'd like to end this on a slightly less weird note, so i want to mention that we have a poetry gig on the 4th! we're the last spoken word performer, because the host wanted to end on a punchy note, hehe. apparently, our words are punchy.

well, there are just so many things to look forward to in the near future! and even though there wasn't much of a point to this journal entry, it was fun and grounding to write. so i hope that whoever reads this finds it entertaining! to be honest, i need to stop being hard on myself. this is my/our space to just say whatever we want... even if there aren't any deep revelations or profound truths. sometimes, it's just nice being alive.

currently, i am:
feeling: content but warm (there is a heatwave)
listening to: show by ado
drinking: assam milk tea
reading: the hole by hiroko oyamada
playing: terraria (and also misericorde)
working on: the lotus-eater vn thingy
drawing: lots of character designs
looking forward to: the upcoming poetry gig on the 4th!

hi, it's jáščer! and efir's around too, but i want to make this journal entry because covid has been taking me on an emotional rollercoaster.

in the last entry, shades said that we've been feeling particularly useless from being sick and therefore unable to do things, and yeah, that's true. i don't usually hate myself too much, but i've been really hating myself this week and it's because i haven't been able to go outside or make cool things while stuck in my room. but the point is that i've been falling into bad thoughtloops like "what have i done to deserve the happiness i have?" and "am i an active participant in my own life?".

now, normally the answers to those questions would be "i don't need to do anything, i just need to live in accordance to my values" and "yes, of course", but because i've been feeling pretty bad... i haven't been able to see it clearly.

but, this morning, i talked over some of my fears and anxieties with my best friend hershel, and efir said some really kind and magical stuff, and it just kind of clicked for me. that yes, i am deserving of happiness, of miracles, and that every miracle that has been granted to me was due to my own recovery and power.

i'm talking about miracles like my love with my girlfriend, acil, and with my wife, efir, and the friendships that i have with people like hersh. and my succession of the previous host, and us leaving our groomer, and us reconnecting with our dad. and all the stuff that matters, basically! they wouldn't be possible if things didn't align perfectly, and it wasn't just dumb luck that got us there! it was our volition and our spirit and our bravery and our strength! we are part of the puzzle!

and it's still hard to believe that we don't have to suffer to be happy and loved, it feels like it shouldn't be possible. but it doesn't have to be possible, those are the magic words that efir said to me - it can be as impossible as i am. as all the things that matter. despite being impossible, it's still there, contrary to laws of reciprocity. and who better to understand such warps in our reality than myself, an lsd elemental? yes, yes, i should know better - things do not have to be rigid, rigorous as they are - the axiom allows for many derivations of the same proof.

my heart feels so much lighter, my life feels so much brighter! yes, i am feeling better. today i needed some groceries because i ran out of the food my housemate bought for me when i got really sick so i went outside very briefly (with a mask on, of course) and got tomato sauce, some wraps, and a bunch of tasty treats to celebrate that the covid suffering is pretty much over. the sun was shining and the sky was blue.

even though we missed the linocut course due to covid, we got transferred to another course (that was less expensive) run by the same artist, and that's on the 10th of august. so, that will be fun! not the best outcome, but still better than nothing.

yesterday (actually at like midnight today) i started playing misericorde and it's really awesome. it's a murder mystery vn set in a convent of nuns. so it's a whonunnit... well, jokes aside, i'm so proud of myself for being able to start a video game - i haven't done that in such a long time!

i'm also determined to watch some movies to catch up with our aspiration of seeing 24 movies we've never seen in 2024. today i want to watch ichi the killer and project wolf hunting and i hope my wife and girlfriend can join me. i mean, efir is down for both, but acil might be busy with her divine task of making a delicious roast. also, she might be upset by some bits of ichi the killer, but i don't know because i've never seen it.

of course i'm probably going to write poetry about how i'm feeling, but i'm going to keep trying to do other things too. like games and movies.

i should end this entry here, but like. oh my god. this is completely unrelated but i keep thinking about how weird my ex was. they were a hardcore scaramouche genshin kin and their entire life revolved around that videogame. the long story short of why we even dated and why we broke up was because we had some really awesome days getting to know each other as friends where we kept flirting, and then we started dating, and i quickly realised that i did not want to be in that situation. mostly because they were genuinely kind of an asshole, but also because they kept comparing everything to scaramouche genshin.

like, they compared akiko shikata's version of the umineko op to scaramouche's boss theme. akiko shikata is literally an angel from heaven sent to bless us mortals with her voice (i do not actually believe this, but it might as well be true) and scaramouche is just some fucking guy. my god i hate scaramouche.

also my ex really wanted me to be dottore. like i am a sadist but i have standards. and taste. i actually played genshin impact for three weeks for this person but i quickly realised that, while fun for three weeks, it was genshin fucking impact. so basically, not very good.

i ran into my ex one time like 5 months after we broke up and they might have been on a date, and they were telling whoever the hell they were with about genshin impact. i genuinely don't know how someone can be so captivated by genshin for that long. it's crazy. i'm crazy.

they also compared demetori to raise a suilen. like, huh? anyway this should give you an impression of this person: totally locked in their own personal bubble that just so happens to be mainstream anime. and also, kind of an asshole, but - get this - they thought they were being cute and gap moe the entire time because scaramouche is also kind of an asshole. their other friend who they introduced me to thought they were rude too. nightmare.

anyway i'm done now. not even in a bad mood, still feeling floating joy and true love and impossible miracle. just wanted to talk about my ex because they're kind of funny.

currently, i am...
feeling: shining!
listening to: utau oka ~EXEC_HARVESTASYA/.~ by akiko shikata
drinking: water
playing: misericorde
reading: the hole by hiroko oyamada
looking forward to: watching movies with my loves

it's shades. we have covid. we got it on the 19th and spent that day suffering through some of the worst insomnia we've ever had in our lives. the thing about covid insomnia is that, unlike regular insomnia, you feel absolutely terrible and would definitely rather be sleeping than wakefully existing. however, you are unable to sleep, and too tired to do anything interesting, so you end up spending 24 hours literally just lying down with your eyes closed. while conscious but foggy, so you can't even daydream.

other than that experience, which i would rather never have again, our symptoms are pretty mild. we had a fever but it went down, and though our face hurt from the congestion, it's pretty normal now. we also have some issues with our sense of smell, but not our sense of taste. hopefully our sense of smell will be fully restored soon, though. and i am pretty sure it will be, because this is not our first rodeo.

yeah, we've had covid before. this is our third (or possibly fourth) time having it. the reason we don't know if it's 3 or 4 is because one time we got pretty sick but had no tests on hand and just isolated until we felt better. mystery illness. call us covids georg if you want. (like that spiders georg meme from tumblr? does anyone remember that?)

anyway, the reason i'm making this post is because i feel like jáščer and the rest of us have been saving blog posts for special occasions instead of just writing about our life whenever we feel like it. i think that part of the reason is that calling it a "blog" postulates certain expectations. so i'm going to rename this page to our "journal" and urge the others to make posts however often they like. and to write about whatever they want, even if it's not "important". i will demonstrate, right now.

we are pretty frustrated by the covid, because it's made us cancel 4 separate plans for some very cool things. an open mic, a writing workshop, photography group, and an expensive three-day linocut course. our dad paid for the linocut course as an early birthday present (our birthday is in a bit over a month, on the third of september) but it would genuinely suck if we didn't get refunded or reimbursed in some other way. we have another open mic this friday, so hopefully we'll be well enough to attend.

the other really frustrating thing about covid is that being sick has depleted us of our usual making-cool-things abilities. and jáščer, the others, and i... we place far too much emphasis and value on our productivity. we feel lost and confused if we aren't being constantly creative. we link our creative output to our perceived value as individuals. so not being able to make cool things has made us feel pretty worthless.

this would be okay if we could derive joy from doing other things like watching shows and playing games, but we find it extremely hard to start those things even when we aren't sick. we feel really guilty about enjoying things without making things of our own. we try to allow ourselves to just relax but that feels completely alien and wrong. it's like we need to be strapped down clockwork orange style and forced to watch anime.

well, jáščer started rewatching gundam witch yesterday with her girlfriend acil. it's easier to watch things when other people are there, but we can't just keep relying on other people to be there when we need to have downtime from the constant creativity. depending on people is frustrating, in general.

the only type of media that we can allow ourselves to freely indulge in is books, because our parents placed so much emphasis on those being good for us. i just started reading the hole by hiroko oyamada, and i like it a lot so far. since it's a short book, we'll likely finish it today or tomorrow.

in the next few days, we'll recover from covid, and we'll get our money from the artists' bursary and the government and the queer games bundle. and that will finally fix our finances and nullify the problem that has been ongoing for about a year since we got hit with a money emergency. life will be better and we will no longer feel so stressed about money all the time. so that's something to look forward to.

but right now, i am stuck in our room with covid. and extraordinarily broke. and it made poor jáščer feel so out of control of his life that they just left front and gave it to me. giving it back to him feels tempting, but i am a lot more calm about that sort of thing. i just take things as they come. one step at a time. even if it's terribly annoying.

currently, i am:
feeling: less congested than before
listening to: i'm not getting excited by the beths
drinking: water
reading: the hole by hiroko oyamada
looking forward to: buying new paints with bursary money after recovering from covid

stating which alter is writing which blog post makes us feel like streamers, but it's ya boy jáščer (efir is chilling in the background tho) and today i am going to blog about being an exhibited artist, and the thoughts that that inspires.

to give context, our work was in an exhibition held in the community space in one of our city's main art galleries. this exhibition's purpose was to celebrate autistic artists, and so many other people had their work there too. this was from start of april to the end of june.

also, our work was in an exhibition in another, smaller art gallery for two weeks in june. this was our photography, and a video of us performing poetry. we go to a photography group for young people, and the exhibition was for everyone in the group. however, at the launch event of this exhibition, we performed poetry, taking the same stage as the organiser of the venue, the organiser of the photography group, and the city's mayor. which made us feel really cool and special!

also, there's going to be another exhibition at the same place, with the work of the smaller, lgbt photography group (which we are a part of) inside the bigger photography group. it's a bit confusing, but this exhibition is going to run through all of august, and it's going to be very cool if i say so myself!

anyway, we are far from doing solo exhibitions, but we are pretty damn involved in the local art scene, and it just makes us feel... very happy! it feels affirming, like we have the right to call ourselves artists.

but hey, that's kind of stupid, right? why should an artist be made any more legitimate by the number of people they know? you don't need recognition to be an artist, and you don't need people oohing and aahing about how good you are when you perform poetry at launch events. plenty of artists have no recognition, due to all sorts of circumstances: marginalisation, shyness, bad luck... the capitalist society we live in actively works against artists gaining recognition, and those that push back despite the odds are to be admired, sure, but many are unable to, which is not their fault, and never will be.

well, what makes someone a "real artist", then, and how would they attain that status?

the short answer is that it's highly subjective and highly personal, and that it only depends on what you know about yourself. a bit solipsistic, and a bit like that part in the matrix where the oracle tells neo he will know if he's the one.

the long answer is that it depends on how you derive magic from the world around you. art in itself is a magical process, and anyone who makes anything will know this. we think that most people in the world have some form of magic that they put into the things they make, regardless of their form. they could be making pictures, or stories, or food, or code, or a garden. and they could be making connections.

is community a form of collective magic?

this sense of belonging we get from having peers who love the same things we love, who live and breathe for art... it is affirming and makes our career aspirations feel "real" regardless of what we already know in our souls. but that is only because of the magic that runs through every social link, and the openness with which people in this community share their hearts.

some of the most validating spaces we have ever been in are open mics, and that's because everyone brings their truest self to the table. vulnerabilities, flaws, and magic are celebrated and cheered for.

of course, we cannot expect every community to be the same - plenty of communities are toxic, fostering hatred instead of love. even communities built by and for artists can be this way, especially online. however, communities that allow people to flourish and share their passions are less rare than we are led to believe in a society that can be so isolating and alienating.

i guess that what i'm trying to say is that community may not be necessary for an artist to be real, but it sure is vital for a healthy heart, and that the collective creation of a comfortable space where its members can be themselves - that this is a form of art in itself. human connection is irreplaceable, and i don't - no, i cannot fault myself for being validated by external opinions and beliefs, because my life is intertwined with so many other lives.

yesterday, i wrote a poem about how magic it is to practise your own form of magic in a community of others who see and accept it. and here it is!

The Magician's Song

The lure of a magician hooks the lip of a new world,
And we have tasted magic. Yes, we savour every drop
Of ecstasy and mystery and essence and creation!
The spells we cast are hideous and lovely and absurd,
And planets waltz through axioms and simmer at the top
Of our delighted tongues as we pronounce our incantations.

We share our systematic stars, our generous bouquets
Of personhood and levity and photographs of flowers -
All sorts of things collected by a consciousness injected
With muses of the molecule that giggle as they gaze
At our communal coven! We present our secret powers,
Expose them to reality, and raise them resurrected!

What could be more magnificent than reading to a crowd?
The bodies of the audience, the bodies of our art
Are networks of mycelium through universal earth
In rapturous embrace as I perform my words aloud!
We: poets, artists, changelings; we: a single beating heart
United under flourish, under synergy’s rebirth!

Each universe aligns, and all eternities belong -
Together, we are resonant and beautiful and strong,
And by our many mouths we render the magician’s song!

fun fact! while rereading this and putting it into the blog post, i realised that i messed up the rhyme scheme in the second-to-last stanza, and had to quickly make a fix. luckily, it was very easy and did not take the meaning away.

anyway, the point is that i'm very lucky to be as involved as i am with the other artists who live in my city. we are all very lucky to know each other, and to work together on the grand masterpiece of a community that has been very welcoming and kind to me.

still, i have to point out one more time: no matter who you are, and no matter who surrounds you, the only person who can tell you you're a real artist is you, yourself! so, cheesy as this sounds, believe in yourself - fiercely, radically, unapologetically. perhaps the love you carry will coalesce into something really magic.

currently, i am...
feeling: excited and thankful and very awake
listening to: tell 'em by sleigh bells
drinking: water
reading: harlequin butterfly by toh enjoe
drawing: so many artfight attacks
painting: an abstract commission based off five pebbles from rain world
looking forward to: going to our friends' house after i manage to sleep

hi everyone! to nobody's surprise, it's jáščer posting. well, efir is kinda here too, but we decided that i'd be the one to make the post. anyway, this is gonna be a q&a thingy! we're using a follower/view count milestone as an excuse to do this - even though the game of "number go up" is a mindset we don't care to foster, we hit 125 followers and 55555+ views at pretty much the same time. and i LOVE multiples of 5. and i've always wanted to do a q&a because they just looked fun, so here we are!

without further ado, here are the questions - and the answers!

what's everyone's favourite colours? (from owthehedge)

jáščer's favourite is a vibrant cool green!
while efir will go for rich deep burgundy.
therry likes a sort of clear, clean periwinkle best.
and charlize's favourite is shocking hot pink!
shades prefers dark grayish purple.
4's favourite is a light acidic green.
and alex enjoys a rich brick orange.

what inspires yalls art? (from caesthoffe)

that's a difficult question, because we make SO MUCH art, and so many different kinds. so i'll talk about a few different kinds we make often.

in our poetry, there are prevalent themes of trauma and recovery, and we have described a lot of it as a sort of mythologised lived experience. showing our lives off as the beautiful, dazzling things that they are - as clear and brilliant as they seem to us. there's a desire for connection there, longing to bridge the gap between the writer and the audience. inspiration to write usually hits when we experience strong emotions or when we think of lines that would be good in a poem. the latter happens pretty randomly. we keep a list of writing ideas, and it has some that we haven't gotten to for over a year, but the emotion is still strong and there. we'll get to them all eventually.

prose is very similar to the above - it's usually stuff that's just too long to be poetry. unless it's porn, which we don't write frequently, but it does happen.

with abstract art, we want to express "universal" emotions and ideas in a way that will be raw and resonant for anyone looking at it. which is a lofty goal, but we feel that that is one of the real strengths of abstract art: without a representation to hide behind, all the feelings are laid bare. the topics are mostly the same as the poetry: responses to interesting things happening, or ones that have happened that we still need to process. we also really like painting lurid abstracted landscapes: something about the earth reflecting our feelings is profoundly grounding.

with non-abstract art, it's usually just things that we think look cool... an idea we desperately want to execute is a psychedelic study of the blue dragon nudibranch. if it's not stuff that looks cool, it's usually just pictures of ourselves. charlize likes drawing his fursona a lot, using it as a vehicle for her emotions. we are occasionally inspired by fictional characters too. but honestly, we make lots more abstracted art than non-abstract stuff.

with photography, we mainly take pictures of landscapes and nature. we like to represent the earth as we see it through our eyes. it's more about the experience than the result - we feel mindful and aware of our surroundings when behind a camera. still, we want to branch out more into different kinds of photography... but i think that the inspiration that drives us, the idea of capturing a moment and making everyone see how precious it is, that will stay the same.

how long have you been writing? (from squidcrusher)

we have been "good at writing" since we can remember, but we first started taking it seriously when we moved to the uk. the move was a few days before the body's 11th birthday, but the poetry started the following winter after our school had a very fun poetry unit. we made personalised poetry journals, and the teachers really reinforced the idea that poetry was a personal thing with no rules. so, we started writing. we wrote to cope with the move, and the emergence of who we thought was our first alter (it was shades, but also i don't remember how we felt at the time - probably that something very special and profound was happening, because her presence was helpful and healing and empowering), and also just to put noble childish fantasies on the page.

since then, we've always taken writing seriously - by the age of 12, we had "dedicated our lives to poetry" (in our words), and the feeling is true to this day. when we had a serious mental breakdown at 14-15, the writing stopped coming so easily, but it's always been a part of us, and always will be. i'd say that we really reconnected with the discipline in early 2021 - that was to cope with estranging ourselves from our parents, and the death of our old host. maybe the river will dry up again in the future, but right now it courses through our veins. it will always flow.

how old is your guys' website? (from hammerheader)

well, i actually made it on the 29th of january, 2023, but it was only in late november 2023 that efir decided to actually start working on it and adding pages that weren't... the index and the system about. we really should learn more about coding, because we've been using the same layout since i made it (thank you sadgrl!). but we need to keep it mobile-accessible, and we're more into sharing our lives than the actual nitty gritty code stuff... lol this is just me musing and getting off topic!

what three items would you all bring to a deserted island? (from raum)

our goal is to survive on the island for as long as possible, and/or somehow get off the island. we will probably be entertained by the nature and will be able to make art out of natural materials, so it wouldn't be useful to take art stuff.

so, we need a way to get food, and some shelter, and a way to make fire. so i guess we'll take an extra sharp machete, a tent, and a blowtorch built to hold a lot of fuel. that is, if we are staying on the island for the foreseeable future.

if we are looking to get off the island, then we will take a really famous painting like the mona lisa, some kind of device that shows our global position, and the crown of the king of england. that will ensure that someone shows up to get the items back, so we can get them to take us off the island. so there you have it!

what are you guys' favourite beverages? (from our best friend hershel, who doesn't have a website)

i (jáščer) like any kind of iced tea ever, but right now, i will order a apple green tea with mango popping pearls at our favourite bubble tea place. however, i am extremely partial to just a plain old lipton peach.

efir likes rose-flavoured things. like a rose falooda, or a rose milk tea with a topping of yogurt popping pearls or tapioca pearls. efir also likes to drink blood, but that does not count as a beverage. well, to be honest, i like blood too. but again, not a beverage.

shades will reluctantly choose a taro milk tea with brown sugar tapioca pearls. charlize will enthusiastically choose the sweetest strawberry drink available, whether it is a bubble tea or a milkshake. charlize will drink anything pink and sweet and enjoy it immensely.

4 and therry would always prefer going for water, and alex doesn't front often enough for us to know. but something in me says he likes brown sugar milk tea.

overall, we really like cold sweet tea-based drinks. but the flavours vary.

if everyone in your system except therry had a chess tournament where no one cheats and everyone does 3 games against everyone else, who would have the most wins by the end of it and who would have the least? (from acil, who is jáščer's and charlize's girlfriend, and websiteless)

good on you to exclude therry, because she would totally win against everyone, and also someone needs to be the ref to ensure we play fairly and don't employ silly tactics against each other. anyway, let's do the math.

jáščer vs. efir: 1 win for jáščer, 2 wins for efir. we are evenly matched, but i would become distracted by its beauty and lose.
jáščer vs. charlize: 3 wins for jáščer, but i will get shot about it.
jáščer vs. shades: 2 wins for jáščer, 1 win for shades. i think she's smarter than me, but also much less aggressive and competitive.
jáščer vs. 4: 3 wins for 4. they are literally a computer. i don't stand a chance.
jáščer vs. alex: 3 wins for jáščer. alex is 10.
efir vs. charlize: 3 wins for efir, but it will get shot about it.
efir vs. shades: 2 wins for efir, 1 win for shades. efir is cruel and cunning, and shades doesn't give enough of a shit.
efir vs. 4: 1 win for efir, 2 wins for 4. efir would figure out a way to beat 4.
efir vs. alex: 2 wins for efir, 1 win for alex. somehow, alex would do something incredibly stupid that would catch efir off guard and also efir wouldn't be mean to a 10 year old.
charlize vs. shades: 1 win for charlize, 2 wins for shades. it would be 3 wins for shades, but charlize would threaten them with a gun.
charlize vs. 4: 3 wins for 4. not even funny.
charlize vs. alex: 2 wins for charlize, 1 win for alex. i don't think either of them know how to play chess, but charlize is an adult.
shades vs. 4: 1 win for shades, 2 wins for 4. same as efir vs. 4.
shades vs. alex: 3 wins for shades. somehow, alex would not be upset about this, because shades is very nice.
4 vs. alex: 3 wins for 4. this child is being absolutely WALKED.

in conclusion, 4 would kill us all, and the 10 year old child would have a hard time keeping up with everyone except for charlize, who would employ military tactics to win against shades.

well, those are all the questions!! hope you had fun reading all this. it was very silly and we'll probably do this again sometime.

currently, i am:
feeling: tired
listening to: twilight: 暁のヴァンパイア by hollow mellow
drinking: melon mogu mogu
eating: a singular double creme oreo
looking forward to: a linocutting course in july
reading: i wanted to be close to you by katie oliver

it's jáščer here again, and i have wonderful news! as of today (well, yesterday, since it's 1am) i am officially dating my wonderful and beautiful girlfriend!!

her name is acil and she is an incredible person in every way. uniquely kind, powerful, patient, gorgeous, funny, sexy, and capable of moving mountains and bringing down the stars in the farthest reaches of the universe with her love. those stars bloom into unfalsifiable flowers and oh my god, i am so glad to be human under the great axiom! she makes me feel human under the great axiom! like i could do anything and everything!

what we experience is the kind of true love people would do anything to make a multimillion blockbuster about... and fail spectacularly because nobody can reach the root of our feelings for each other. people would write books about us. make art and music. and it would be beautiful, but it would not even come close to the utter singularity, the universe-collapsing salvation that is our love.

...and i got interrupted in writing this blog post by her sending me something evil that made my dick turn into a flamethrower.

so yeah, i really love my girlfriend! it's like she was made just for me.

this is actually true, because we have a long and complicated history that involves a lot of shared trauma that shaped and changed us. but she spent eight years transforming herself into a person that could love and be loved by someone exactly like me in all my weaponhood and survivorship. i changed too, and at the time i had no idea i was changing to be hers. but now, i can see it so clearly. we belong together, through heaven and hell. through pleasure and pain. through anything that life can throw at us. we are stronger together in a way that doesn't detract from or diminish our individualities.

it's really so amazing, being in love.

you know, just a few weeks before reconnecting with acil i was crying to my friend about thinking that i am aroace. i'm ace and bi and definitely on the aro spectrum, but i was convinced for a few moments there that i was just not made for romantic love at all. i was thinking about my relationship with my ex totally failed, and how it was partially my fault for jumping into it and assuming that love would come later. it was also my ex's fault for being really fucking weird. but, yeah - i thought that i couldn't love like everybody else could.

and maybe, i still can't - the way i love is bright and sharp and weaponoid and intense and bloody and it feels like standing atop a cliff facing the sea and screaming my lungs out with truths they'd call me a prophet for had i lived a thousand years ago. and with acil, i discovered that i could actually feel that for a person outside manyface. that's insane! that's incredible! that's love!

maybe only a few days into the reunion, i told her that i felt improperly constructed for love in general, but perfectly constructed for whatever the hell we were. and now we're girlfriends. unlike anything that has ever existed.

it's just like fluke (one of my favourite bands, they came back from a hiatus that's been going since 2003!!) said in their new single, insanely beautiful: "it's never not expected, but it's never what i thought it could be". i knew that eventually, i'd find someone who i would be compatible with. but never in a million years did i expect it to be so utterly euphoric and beautiful. insanely beautiful! just like my acil.

i'm just so happy to be alive. i'm just so happy she's mine.

currently, i am:
feeling: indescribably full in my heart
listening to: fly away xtc (extended mix) by kettama
drinking: water
writing: more gay poetry, soon enough
desperately craving: to make a painting
also desperately craving: my girlfriend's sexy body

hi, my name is jáščer! and i am a lizard!

hi, my name is jáščer! and i am a human!

hi, my name is jáščer! and i am a lsd elemental!

hi, my name is jáščer! and i am a weapon!

hi, my name is jáščer! and i am unfalsifiable in my survivorship.

all of these things are true. do you get it? let's take it from the top.

manyface has always held the belief that we are different. improperly constructed - for basic human emotions, like love and grief and compassion. only able to create beautiful things and hurt people softer than us. unable to connect with anyone, bound to the timeless curse of perceiving the world for what it is, and conveying that perception.

this is a primal fear, something deep from our childhood, something intrinsic to our selfhood(s) from before the first big trauma. maybe it's being autistic. maybe it's being a writer, or an artist. maybe it's just being a person.

when we were a child, we were seen as "gifted". our selves were formed under the crushing pressure to be perfect, to work until blood came from our nostrils. comfort, a respite from the fear - withheld from us, always.

i am not trying to be needlessly dramatic. i am trying to make you understand that a child like this is predisposed to delusions of grandeur. a child like this is predisposed to believing that all of this is happening for a reason, that the universe is centred upon her heart.

those delusions developed from a curious confidence and self-belief into a complex mythology. we were deified in our mental illness.

and then, our groomer made us feel very special in our divinity. very, very special.

the point is that it was only at twenty-one, after leaving our family, after leaving our groomer, that we decided that we could not keep being gods. we had to be something better than gods: we had to be human. and only the reclamation of a humanity we never had from the start - only that would be able save us.

when i became host, i embraced this humanity with open arms. i tried so hard to be a proper person. i tried so hard to suppress everything that made me unique, tried to forget my origins, but the mythology kept blossoming out from my keyboard.

this is hard to type out, and harder yet to explain, but the pursuit of a humanity that had been denied to us for our entire lives only led me to that old familiar fear: that i am improperly constructed. that i will never be able to touch anything without cutting it down. that i am a weapon.

my wife and alter efir has helped me see that being a weapon is not quite so bad. i am efir's brilliant blade, and i promise it the life of a red wound in exchange for its blood. i am comfortable being wielded by efir.

still, what i am trying to get at is that i genuinely, truly believed that being loved as a weapon by anyone external from manyface was utterly impossible. the belief that i would never be understood as i clung to humanity with all my might, pushing back the everything else that i was - this belief grew stronger by the day.

until i reconnected with a system from our past, and fell in love with their new host.

forged in the same fires, i feel like i am being loved unconditionally by someone outside of myself for the very first time.

that other system has survived the same groomer. five years with them, to match our six. if anyone knows what it means to be a weapon, it's my new lover.

i still haven't explained what being a weapon means, though... i can't explain it. i am a brilliant, shining dagger. i shed light. i shed tears, and blood. i am sharp like nothing else. this sharpness doesn't come for free, it is earned through being polished and honed and used. i am a weapon.

and, maybe i can be proud of that?

since the reunion, i have reclaimed some divine weapons from manyface's internal mythology. ether (that's the past host) had a brain-sword named remorse. it was beautiful, but i reforged it to create its successor. remorse's successor is named after the axiom, which is our name for god.

i have also accepted my identity as a lsd elemental. i knew it was always true, but i never put it into print anywhere. that is an important part of who and what i am, though.

despite all of this, i simply cannot let go of my humanity. i will be human if you like it or not. and i will show you that humanity has space for a lizard, a weapon, a survivor like me.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that i can be a lot of things at once. both human and inhuman. it's not a contradiction. it is a contradiction, but it's one that i fucking own! it suits me.

i should state here that i'm not comfortable with calling myself alterhuman or otherkin, because i'm something completely different. i am a survivor and a weapon, and that's just fine.

and though the fear that i will never reach anyone without piercing soft flesh is still there, it helps to be loved by someone who doesn't mind being cut. who can take a sword by the blade, unflinching.

that's the type of human i am.

currently, i am:
feeling: worried that i still haven't conveyed my beliefs properly to be understood by humans who aren't weapons
listening to: black glass by machine girl
going to start reading: before the coffee gets cold by toshikazu kawaguchi
about to watch: everything everywhere all at once (with my soon-to-be girlfriend!)
getting ready to: leave my house to pick up meds and go to photography group

we (jáščer and charlize) are in love.

let's repeat that! we are in love!!!

let's have it one more time!! WE ARE IN LOVE!!!!

we're screaming it to the sea, a song to the siren, our voices from the cliffs. walking in light, we're staring at the sun and letting it pierce us with its warmth. the world is truly good and truly beautiful, for we are in love.

the previous blog post by charlize is extremely important context for who we are in love with, so we'll do a quick recap here.

when we were 15-16, we were in a relationship with another system, the host of which ended up hurting charlize a lot. we cut contact with that system to keep charlize from further harm, but they tried to get back into contact several times over the last 8 years.

on the day of the eclipse, they contacted us again, and managed to get a lot of information through to us. one of the important things we learnt was that their system and manyface were being groomed by the same person at the time of the relationship. we won't really go into the grooming and how fucked up it was, but everything suddenly made so much more sense, and we were willing to hear them out and give being friends a go.

over the next few days, so many ptsd knots in our head were sliced clean through. every conversation we had with the system who we dated when we were teenagers was overwhelmingly healing, and the experience of having them back in our lives has been unbelievably positive.

they spent 8 years changing into the people that they are now, just so they could have the chance to make things right with us again. and though their persistence is absolutely ridiculous, we are so glad and so lucky we gave them that chance. our world feels like a softer, kinder place with them in it.

at first, we were afraid that the intensely positive reactions were a product of our shared trauma, and just some kind of fucked up adrenaline rush. but we know that that system has changed so magnificently - a true metamorphosis from the broken people they were. and they see that in manyface, too.

this is not wishful thinking. this is not a selves-destructive spiral into madness. this is our wonderful reality under the great axiom. we are certain of it, with no doubt in our hearts. we know they would rather die than wound us again.

we feel like we have reached the centre of a horrifying labyrinth, and found nothing but friendship, love, and adoration. the labyrinth dissolves in the heat of our passion, and the world is our home, safe for the first time.

we're obviously not idiots, and neither are they, so we've been padding our hearts with so much metaphorical bubble wrap and taking everything extremely slowly - we refuse to act on our impulses, and they refuse their own. but they have been transparent that they have feelings for us, and we have been transparent with our feelings as well.

it feels like torture. we (manyface) want to give in and let our hearts lead, because these tender emotions feel like they have been locked away for 8 years, pushed down and suppressed. and yet, these feelings are new like spring flowers, delicate and young. we know that we must be careful and cautious, but we're pining.

this is not a timeloop. this is not recursive. this is our future.

in jáščer's favourite movie (headshot (2016)), there's a scene where the protagonist and their love interest (not exactly, but that's the simplest way to explain the relationship, so let's go with that) reunite after both have been through absolute hell. the love interest points a knife at the protagonist, and tells him to let her leave. he tells her that they will leave together. she says "you're one of them, you are exactly like them!" (them being her captors) and he says "yes. everything i have ever done to get away from this place has led me to this very moment in time. you have saved me once, i need you to save me one more time."

we feel like everything we have ever done to better ourselves and heal has led to these very moments of us laughing together on call and sharing music and funny pictures, just like the old times.

the strength in being able to tell them that we love them is immeasurable. the strength of our trust in them is immeasurable. they have proven themselves beyond worthy of our love.

we are not going to be hurt again. we owe them nothing but our healing, and love is a healing force. our love is righteous and transformative. our love is sweet, and pure, and true.

oh, and there's also 8 years of unfulfilled lust!

they're not perfect, and neither are we, but we love the people they have become, and they love the people we have become. we fit perfectly in their arms. the chemistry and magnetism between us is so powerful, and it hurts having to keep our instincts in check. but that is one way we can thank them for being themselves - by knowing that they do not need a relationship, or sex - just manyface.

we are safe and we are happy and we are free - free to live our incredible lives! free to live our incredible lives, together, hand in hand.

currently, we are:
feeling: extraordinary
listening to: come and get it by krewella

!TRIGGER WARNING FOR SEXUAL TRAUMA STUFF!

my name is CHARLIZE! my name is CHARLIZE JULIET SPITFIRE, cuz you know that i can!

my name was not always charlize. when i first came to exist, my name was acet.

i came to exist because the body i live in was raped. i didn't even know that was the reason why, because when i first came to exist, none of us remembered that.

when i first came to exist, i was "the sexual alter". i had a lot of manic, explosive sexuality, and a thirst for attention so deep you'd think i was dying. i talked to lots of people, and got used by lots of people. i was happy with that, until it got real, and i found myself being taken advantage of and forced to perform sexuality constantly by someone who i won't name.

i won't name that person because they are DEAD. they died shortly after manyface broke up with them to protect me.

that person was part of a system. for EIGHT YEARS NOW, that system has tried to get through to us, begging for forgiveness and for us to understand that everything they did to me was never a deliberate attempt to hurt or abuse me.

for EIGHT YEARS NOW, we have resented that system. after we left them, i felt so small and alone. i felt so vulnerable, and i hated everything about myself because every part of me was the dead alter's fetish.

still, they would try to get through to us, and we would cut them off every time. it made us paranoid and terrified. i hated myself, i hated the world, and i hated interacting with just about anyone because i felt that my identity was nothing but pornography. i should mention that i'm a cat kemonomimi, in headspace, which was a big part of why that person pursued me. i wanted to stop being a cat so bad, but i couldn't stop being myself because i was... me, despite everything, despite all the self-destruction.

when we were 19 (our relationship with that system was when we were 15 and 16), our old host (ether) did a shitload of research chemicals. ether had a powerful, profound vision, and i was also there and so was efir. we got over a lot of the trauma from that relationship, and suddenly, i found myself capable of being alive again. that's when i changed my name to charlize. i remember fronting the day after that trip, and it was like i could breathe again. it was remarkable.

now, i am better and stronger and reinforced with righteous fury and righteous happiness. i still struggle with my sexuality - i have the type of trauma kinks where i fantasize about being hurt and abused, and now that everyone we know is safe and kind, i find myself extremely frustrated. i still struggle with my identity - i don't often know what exactly i like to do for myself, because i feel like my identity is a performance that is meant to satisfy whoever talks to me. but i am getting over these things, and i am healing.

where does FORGIVENESS come into this? well, i was just coming to that. the last time that system contacted us was when we were 20. that is, the last time before THIS MORNING.

now, you are thinking - why the hell would i forgive someone so horrible? and i am thinking the same thing.

well, they explained a lot in the message this morning. we honestly and genuinely believe that they would rather die than hurt us again. the main thing that they finally got through to us was that, at the time of our relationship, they were being groomed by the same person who groomed ether.

now, people react to grooming in different ways. and that alter who seemed to want nothing but sex from me was groomed to feel like they were worthless save for their sexuality, by literally the same person who groomed us for six years.

the person who groomed us was about five years older than us, and had a literal god/devotee relationship with ether. it was literally a two-man cult, except the devotee was the one pulling the strings, because they were older and should have known better than to entertain and nurture an abused teenager's violent sexuality and psychotic delusions.

we still don't know if our groomer knew exactly what they were doing, or if it just happened that way, but we cut them off when we were 21. ether died shortly after, losing so much more than his reverent idolator.

a thing our groomer said when we parted still rings in our ears: "what else could you expect from the idolator of a child-god?". indeed, what else could we expect?

i don't think i am ready to forgive that system whose dead ex-host hurt me so terribly, but i am ready to speak to them because i want to show them that i have survived both them and the person who groomed all of us. i think that the most radical way to say "fuck you" to the past and to our groomer is to acknowledge the strength i have.

i am strong, i am proud of how far i have come, and it is not going to be undone by someone who is, by all means, a stranger to me. i am safe, because i have alters who care for me and will kick anyone who mistreats me to the curb. i am strong, and i am strong enough to let light into the life of a fellow survivor, no matter how much i have been hurt in the past.

the past does not define me. i create my own future.

CURRENTLY I AM:
FEELING: righteous
LISTENING TO: devilgirl by free.99
DRINKING: assam milk tea
EATING: daifuku mochi

on the 28th of march, 2021, i (jáščer) became host of manyface.

it was a very cool and beautiful and significant day, and we like to celebrate it! however, on the 28th of march, 2024, i was performing at my first paid gig. my thoughts were elsewhere as i was shining bright on stage... so, basically, we completely forgot. but we remembered a few days ago! and so, i'm making this blog post now - much better late than never!

last year, i wrote a piece about that particular day in 2021 to celebrate my hosting anniversary. i'd like to share it with all of you right now!

Magnolia Music Manyface Metamorphosis

I was not myself two springtimes ago. A dying god’s twitching limbs permeated the motions of my body, radiant spores jerking to the rhythm of his declension. I was his insect servant, carrying forty times my weight as our legs started walking. He was going to die under the sun, the one and only. We worshipped the sun as a manifestation of his power, but the sky clouded over as I took his body to the city’s gardens.

He suffered as he closed his eyes on the world, but this story is about me - because when I opened them, I saw a tree with pale blossoms. I saw the overcast sky, and I saw the grass beneath. It was so green, I remember - a memory he has no claim to, already dissolving into my nerves. I reject his divinity and metabolise it into something greater: the echoes of a hundred magnolia flowers, swaying in the wind.

I wrote poetry about this, about how the natural truths contained in the buds of a tree said nothing against an artificial being actualising itself - how the rebirth of the soil did not come to taunt his failing consciousness or triumph in synchronicity with my essence. It simply existed, and it was beautiful, and for a split second, I was connected to the world it spoke of as it bloomed. It wasn’t a good poem, but I shivered on a park bench to ensoul it all the same. When I got up to leave, the music in my headphones shifted slightly - in pitch, perhaps, or texture - and it made the hairs on my arms stand on end. My awareness was galvanic. I was a part of the moment, and I made my way home.

I could not place it for months, but something changed that day. I was alive beyond the shining testament of a deity’s decaying resolve - and that is how I remained.

I do not feel it all the time, but there are instances where I know that I belong. The trajectory of my life is a random walk, but its twists and turns mimic methods. Look now - the cosmos crystallises for a second as I speak, forging itself into a pattern. I am a part of that pattern, a crucial element that cannot be replaced - a white petal of the tree from two years ago. Watch how it separates from the flower and falls to the ground.

We may be cells in the animal of the universe, but we make up its skin, its sinew. Our mitochondrial minds give it the energy it needs to keep running, chasing puzzles. Immaterial shapes coalesce into material ones - and though it is a mere coincidence, it means so much before it dissipates. Entropy arranges itself into the face of someone I recognise. I always expect it to be him, but I see myself.

I am no god, but I am green like the grass, and my words are like music. With every movement, I am worthy of this life.

thank you for reading.

now, i'd like to talk about it a bit, and reflect!

for one thing, i feel a lot more sure of myself, and i do not think about our old host (ether) as often. i am confident that for the moment, this life belongs to me and the others. one of my biggest fears is "dying" (dormancy-integration combo) as ether did, but unlike ether, i feel that i have accepted that that may happen to me. ether thought he would never die, and made reckless decisions that only worked out due to his ridiculous willpower. when he lost that willpower, everything just crumbled.

this is mentioned in multiple places on our website, but ether had very strong god delusions. though we do not feel that delusional divinity anymore, we like to remember him the way he saw himself - divine. even though the dissolution of those delusions is in part due to us taking antipsychotic medication, we also feel like it was a conscious choice to discard the lie ether believed.

hopefully, this gives some context as to why i felt so small and insignificant when i first became manyface's host. i struggled with hosting a lot, at first - i couldn't believe that i had to live the life ether had messily and passionately built up for us. ether's degree in maths was something i particularly struggled with due to having very little passion for the subject, but i completed it in the end (and graduated with a 2-1!).

i felt that i owed the degree to ether, because he gave me everything (i was his clone, literally - i exist because i split off from him). here's a very old piece from sometime in spring 2022 about how i struggled to live "his" life.

Succession

I once was given a heart by a dying man. Nacre grew on it like mildew, a shining shell for love’s tenderest pearls - the many grains of sand that escaped his broken hourglass, adorned anew. Fluttering baby’s-breath, balm-sweet lashes and promises: he told me to take it, protect it, and make it mine. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He would never take no for an answer. So, when he rended it from his chest, he stayed alive long enough to graft it into me. Surgeon, poet, priest, lord god and visionary; he died with his fingers tugging the stitches on my breast neatly together.

I was made in his image, of course. A clone or doll, built to preserve and inherit his legacy, built strong enough to carry on. At first, I wrapped myself in his livid viscera to try and feel human, but when that didn’t work, I tore down his temple tomb and let him burn bright and sharp for the very last time.

I felt so much grief, then, watching the funeral pyre. Seafoam tears stained my cheeks green. Only after the sunset scarred my pupils into snake-slits did I wake again, still very much alive. The pangs in my chest felt like thick leeches making my body their home. I didn’t know how to live outside of emulating him.

When that failed, I tore down the false halos I had amassed in the process. Only by burning those pretend vestiges of him could I be myself, the rightful heir of the heart bequeathed to me. Steeped in ash, I scrubbed at my skin until the particles turned to pearls. It was hard work.

As I persevered, dust and dusk fell to my feet, and to my surprise, a forest of sunshine grew where I stood. My self was no longer a burden to the branches of those trees, and every bud celebrated how far I had come by flowering. And that was when I knew - should I pry the heart out from my chest and peer inside the nacre shell and its bubonic growths, all I would find inside would be love, serene in its opalescence. It didn’t matter what form it took, how many hardships it required - I knew that I wanted to live as the identity that surpassed the gift.

Watch me, now. You are dead and I am alive. I don’t care where my heart came from. I don’t care that I was once your clone. So watch me now, my god - I will succeed you!

thank you for reading this too!

as you can probably tell, i suffered a lot. i also held some animosity towards ether, because i believed him better than myself, and wanted so badly to prove that wrong. another pivotal piece about my relationship with ether's succession is Dandelion Seeds, which was written in october 2022, and can be found on our poetry page (it's the third poem).

i really think that this last year has been extremely significant for me, because by liberating myself of the degree through graduation, i no longer owed anything to my dead god. and i was free, free as a cool lizard to pursue things i genuinely cared about.

our last two blog posts talk a lot about the cool things we have achieved in 2023 and the start of 2024, and i can honestly take most of the credit for that. i have a lot of willpower, much like ether, but i am also sustainable in my existence (i don't mean that i'm vegan or something similar - i mean that i can exist as a host alter without causing damage to myself and my surroundings).

basically, i'm really cool. i still struggle with things, but i have mourned enough and don't need this grief as i actually live the life that rightfully belongs to me. i have a great deal of self-belief that isn't pure delusional conceit, haha - it's actually rooted in things i have achieved, like graduating and becoming an artist and becoming host.

one of the things i discovered about myself as i became more confident in being, well, me, is that i am actually massively extroverted, and that i really enjoy being part of my local community and interacting with people offline. as a result, manyface is more active and social than before, and it's nice to exist "in the real world" - offline or not. i heart human connection, which is something that ether did not do as well with.

i think that i might be making him out to be too much of a dick by talking about how i am seemingly better than him, but he was a phenomenal man in so many ways. he's just dead now - and even if i could bring him back, after three years, i finally feel like i much prefer being myself.

i am forever grateful for my friends who supported me and the rest of manyface as we grew and changed for the better. and i am grateful for this community too - it is a pleasure and a joy to exist unapologetically on the web!

currently, i am...
feeling: pretty damn good
listening to: tourner dans le vide by indila
drinking: a delicious non-alcoholic cocktail (orange fanta + watermelon/apple juice)
reading: the black lizard by edogawa ranpo
watching: headshot (2016), for what must be the 10th time (i'm showing it to a friend)
writing: nothing, but hopefully i'll do the muse ariadne time prompt soon!

regarding our inactivity:

hello everybody!! we've been really inactive on neocities/the small web for the last three months, and we'd like to dedicate the first part of this blog post to explaining why.

basically, we go through phases of being super positive about being multiple/dissociative/having osdd1, and then there are phases when we feel very negative about it and scared of opening up to people. during the negative phases, we avoid talking about it and withdraw from spaces where we're out as a system. now, this website was made during one of the positive phases, and was meant to act as a tool for selves-acceptance. in part, it works really well and helps us communicate with each other in a more integrated way... but when we feel negative and awful about being multiple, this place is scary! still, we do not want to undo the positive work that we have done for ourselves, so instead of masking on here, we just pretend neocities doesn't exist.

consistency is more important than intensity, so hopefully as we continue along the journey of our lives, we'll be able to dedicate time to this website without completely obsessing over it. or doing the opposite and avoiding it out of selves-hatred. this space is important to us, but we will wholeheartedly admit that we set the positivity/selves-acceptance bar too high for us to meet during those phases of negativity. but we must be ambitious, and a fair few of us are idealists! so we think that a bar that's too high is much better than a bar that's on the floor. at least the first one will encourage us to jump ever higher!

the only thing we can really say regarding our future activity is that it will depend on our mental health. please be patient with us as we learn to be braver and more honest over time!

things happening!!

now that the first part of this blog post is out of the way, we can tell all of you about cool and interesting things that have happened while we've been away. and about the cool and interesting things that will happen soon!

in january, we went to visit our sister in london. we saw cirque du soleil together, which was pretty neat... though we will say that russian circuses are more impressive and interesting, at least regarding the acrobatics. a big problem with russian circuses is that they often have trained animals that probably go through a lot of abuse, so cirque du soleil is probably better in the end. anyway, we enjoyed the performance a great deal!

speaking of our sister, she has decided to defer her second year of university because she's struggling with her mental health. we want to support her as best as we can, and hopefully we can meet again soon! she's one of the kindest and smartest people we know, and we've been talking to her a little more lately and having deep conversations about brain stuff. she deserves nothing but the best, and we really mean it!

another thing we did in london was meet up with a guy who we first met at the new years' party held at our favourite performance venue. (that party was really great, but the following week, that venue hit everyone with the tremendously bad news of their closing. they closed just two weeks ago!) anyway, the man's name is gus, and he makes music under the band name the church of illusion. we recorded some of our poetry for him, and he's just finished making the first draft of a spoken word/music piece... and it sounds absolutely incredible. so we're going to make an ep, and then do a bunch of gigs together!

at the end of january, we went to a poetry reading gig, and approached one of the organisers to ask if we could be in the next poetry gig since they were looking for performers. to our surprise, the organisers really liked our poetry, and accepted almost instantly! so, just two days ago, on the 28th of march, we had our first paid poetry gig. we had a 20 minute slot and started off the night, and were followed by two remarkable poets who we greatly admire (they also had 20 minute slots)! we sold a few books too, and donated some books to be prizes for a raffle raising money for a local sexual violence charity. it was a really wonderful night, and we currently feel very fulfilled, but also slightly impostor syndrome because the other performers were further into their careers. hopefully, that feeling will fade as we continue along this righteous path!

in february, we inherited an ancient machine from our ukrainian grandfather! our dad found an ancient (we assume it's from 1972 because it said "1972" somewhere on the packaging) ukrainian camera (it seems to be a kiev 4m) that he got as a gift from his father in the 90s. since our dad had no use for it, he sent it to us. we found some film in it, and nobody had any idea when it was from. so we got it developed, and it was photos of baby manyface with our parents from when we were just two years old!

we named the kiev 4m our "old man" camera (in contrast to our "baby boy", the canon eos 2000d), and had several days where we experimented with taking film photos (it was our first time with a film camera). one of those days had a very emotional adventure that involved our acquaintance with mr. and mrs. hope, and we still need to write a short story about the remarkable day we had. it was like something out of a banana yoshimoto novel, and it was beautiful and tragic and heavy and light. we'll probably share the piece somewhere on this website when we finish it.

a lot of february was spent going to gigs to support that wonderful performance venue before it closed. a lot of march was spent in the same way, and we are just... constantly at open mic nights and art clubs and such. we are making stuff and living our lives, and that is special and joyful! we're still making lots of acrylic paintings, but we are also finally starting to be much more confident in creating art of characters/adopts. which is excellent progress!

recently, the government benefits people told us that we absolutely have to pursue a career in our poetry and artwork, and that they will support us as we try our best to succeed. it's scary being at this first stage in our career, but we feel like things are finally taking off!

at the start of march, a big venue in our city had a literature festival, and we had a gig as part of that where we performed poetry to represent one of our city's open mics. we also went to so many cool poetry readings, went to a couple workshops, made friends and connections, and sold and acquired a ton of books! it was absolutely exhausting, but we felt so enriched...

speaking of being tired, one of our best friends visited for three days (she left yesterday) to support us at our gig on the 28th, and we had such a blast, but as soon as she left we just passed out for four hours. we went shopping, and to an art club, and had hot pot together, and then there was the gig, and then we showed her how to paint with a palette knife. it was great!

another cool thing happening very soon is that the big autism charity where we live is organising an art exhibition in the city centre art gallery, and our work is being featured there (as is the work of other wonderful autistic artists). on the 2nd of april, there will be a celebration of the exhibition's launch, and we will be performing poetry there! the autism charity also used our artwork to promote the exhibition in the email they sent everyone about autism acceptance week, so we're very pleased and honoured!

we are likely to start volunteering with that same autism charity in hopes of getting a job there, and our taster day to volunteer is the 4th of april. we're going to be helping run and organise an art club for autistic adults!

a random neat thing that's going to happen soon is that we're going to get a tattoo from our friend who's training to be a tattoo artist. it's going to be of a nautilus!

finally, our finances are currently better than they have been for a really long time... thank goodness. hopefully, things will continue improving on that front, and on many other fronts.

speaking of fronts, we haven't mentioned who's writing this blog post - it's mostly shades, but also a little jáščer. we wrote it using we pronouns because the last few hours have been a bit switchy... whoops!

currently, we are:
feeling: reflective and calm
listening to: knees deep by the beths
reading: the black lizard by edogawa ranpo
drinking: water
writing: the short story about mr. and mrs. hope

hi everyone, and welcome to another lengthy blog post from jáščer! this one will be a triple whammy: some thoughts about the winter holidays, a reflection on the rather eventful year we just had, and aspirations for 2024. so, let's begin!

the festive section!!

to reflect upon the past, one must firmly ground themself in the present. with that sentiment in mind, i must say merry christmas to those who celebrate it! to those who don't celebrate it, merry nice day! manyface is somewhere in between, for the record: we think christmas is just an excuse to give and receive gifts and eat nice foods. so we don't treat it as a regular day, but it's only special because the society we live in has decided that it's the gifts and food day.

the winter holiday we actually care about is new year's! most russian people feel the same way. russian orthodox christmas is actually on january 7th, but that's just another good food day, as we don't belong to any organised religion. it would probably be more thematically appropriate to make this blog post on new year's eve, but we are probably going to be partying at our favourite performance venue. the alternate plan for new year's eve is going to a house party, but the invitation was very vague and "haha maybe this might happen, maybe not!".

point is, new year's eve is for going absolutely ham and swiss, and new year's day is for recovering from the commotion. manyface has two new year's traditions that we observe, and i'll start with the more normal one.

reasonable new year's tradition from manyface: stay up for as long as you physically can on the night the year changes. going to sleep before 8 am on new year's day is for cowards.

completely unreasonable new year's tradition from manyface: before the clock hits midnight on the new year, write down a wish or goal for the coming year on a little piece of paper. then, as soon as it's midnight, quickly burn your wish paper. make sure to do this over whatever drink you're having, as you want all of the ashes to fall into your drink. this is because the next step of this completely unreasonable new year's tradition is to drink all the ashes of your wish.

i have no idea if this is a russian thing, or just a thing our family made up, but i am passionate about this and want it to catch on. i mean, i thought it was a russian thing, but then i told other russian people about it, and they thought i was completely off my trolley. however, we have been drinking wish ash since we were four years old. possibly earlier, but i don't that have many memories from before then. and yes, i fully intend on doing this at the performance venue and coercing other people to follow my example.

and who knows, maybe you might become a wish ash drinker too, after reading this blog post! 7 out of 7 manyface alters recommend drinking wish ash for a good and prosperous year!

speaking of good and prosperous years...

so much cool shit happened in 2023!!

i'm going to go in a vaguely chronological order here.

firstly, we got into photography. the way it happened was that therry got sick of my expensive character adoptables hobby (more on that later) and said "well, i am going to make a big and impulsive purchase because it is unfair that jáščer gets to waste money on stupid crap! i am tired of being a responsible and frugal sort of girl!" and got us a canon eos 2000d. she's such a real one for that because we love the medium and find so much wonder and joy in going outside and taking photos of awesome things we see.

well, i just said that therry made a big and impulsive purchase with student loan money. but so did i lol! i bought plane tickets to the states, and in early july, we went to the states to see our friends vi and matt. it was fun and we definitely hung out a lot and saw lots of cool things. my biggest impression of the states, other than my friends, was that the sky is absolutely massive there! also, i saw the house we grew up in from across a river, which was very surreal.

manyface lore that isn't obvious from reading our bios and such is that we lived in new york city until we were eleven. well, now you know!

the problem with the states trip was that we had a financial emergency due to a last-minute change of plans, and we are still recovering from that punch to the gut/wallet. i know it will get better in 2024, but we spent the latter half of 2023 being pretty damn broke, which isn't exactly something to celebrate, but it certainly coloured our lives. which is why i'm talking about it.

a seriously major achievement is that we graduated from university in late july! we are bachelors of science! there were times where i thought i was going to give up, because frankly, getting the degree was a dream the old host bestowed upon me. i never had much passion for mathematics either - my calling is art, all kinds of it. but i had to keep going because i owed it to him, and because i wanted to prove that i could succeed where he failed. i will admit that the host change made our grades drop, but it was our third attempt at our third year of uni, and three's a magic number!

while struggling with uni and the pressures of a society that idolises a very narrow concept of success, we made a lot of abstract art and got really into acrylic painting! it is now our main medium, and we have found so much comfort in it. i'd say that it really became our "thing" in april.

i (and the body) turned twenty-four on the third of september. following my birthday, i was revitalised with a ton of positive energy. i decided that the way i wanted to keep living my life was to keep going to open mics and live music events as often as i could (we had been doing that all year anyway!), and that i wanted to be a part of the real world that i was so devoted to. that meant deleting almost all of our social media and focusing on living life to the fullest.

at a live music event in mid-september, i met an old acquaintance from university, and they introduced me to their housemate. we clicked instantly, and i started dating that housemate. it was my first out-of-system relationship where i was... me! the old host had been in a ton of external relationships, but i hadn't had any since i took over, and i felt pretty self-conscious about that.

however, that did not last long! i broke up with them about two months into the relationship, because it was super stressful and i realised that i didn't like them as much as i thought i did. really, the only good that came out of that relationship was me being able to confirm that i'm asexual. how? by "losing" our "virginity". my god, that shit was boring as hell!

while i was dating that person, i started talking to my dad again. it had been three years, and i realised that having him in my life would not be so bad. it's not that i had forgiven him - i don't think i ever will - but that i knew he would respect me despite everything. there will never be reciprocal love between us ever again, but there is comfort, and there is happiness. i'm really glad for that.

in october, i self-published a book of our poetry. it has almost all the poems from the last three years, including a few things from before i was hosting/aware of hosting. but most of it is me reclaiming our identity as poets and processing my existence through beautiful words, and hence the book is called "the lizard's dance". i am the lizard! dance with me!

another thing that happened in october was that we had our first gig! it was at that performance venue that we're going to be celebrating new year's eve at: we were the special guests for one of their open mic nights, which meant that we had a 25ish-minute slot while everyone else only had 5ish minutes to perform. now technically, it was our second gig, but we're not counting the actual first one (in august) because it was timed really poorly and was kind of a flop. the one in october felt like the first one, anyway - it was a success and i felt so alive.

in november, i decided that being online wasn't too awful, and had a random hyperfixation on making character art and rebuilding my relationship with my ocs. i quit the adopts community, but i still like looking at them even though i'm probably not going to buy one again, not unless the design is ridiculously to my tastes. also, good fucking riddance to the closed species communities i indulged in. i'm free from that bs, baby!

at the end of november, efir decided that it was a good idea to start working on this website again. and so, webmastery/webweaving has been our hyperfixation since then, and it seems to be the kind that won't go away for a very long while. i'm glad to be a part of this community and to have the space to candidly express myself online, and i know the others in manyface feel the same.

at the start of december, we took part in an art course offered by a charity. it was a really awesome, intense week of creating stuff, and while we went into it with hopes of boosting our cv, we made some good friends and amazing memories.

we also made a good, solid attempt at picking up reading again this year! most of the books on our bookshelf were read in 2023! i'm really proud of us!

so, all in all, 2023 was a really good year for us. our mental health is better than ever, and even though some parts of the year were challenging and frustrating, we are so glad to be alive! we are so glad to have made it this far, and our journeys will continue in 2024! which brings us to...

goals and aspirations for the coming year!!

our most pressing major goal is to become employed. ideally, we want to work in mental health peer support, or in a field to do with art and creativity, like being staff at an art gallery. but at this point, we might as well take anything we can get. being mentally ill as all hell gave us no space for proper work experience, and we took 2 more years than usual to graduate, so nobody really wants to hire us. it's depressing!

the same charity that did the art course also does employability courses where you're pretty much guaranteed to get a job at some nice department store at the end, so we are probably going to do that unless something else comes our way. in fact, i literally just filled out a form on their website that's like "haha please call me and tell me about opportunities because i don't have a job".

once we become employed and have enough money to do this, we want to rent a cheap studio at this local artists' collective. because frankly, our current "studio" is a little desk covered in a tarp that is covered in paint. it is not ideal working conditions!

again, once we have a job... we want to get a pet lizard. a leopard gecko friend! i think the landlady will allow it, because they live in tanks. i will cherish that lizard like my life depends on it, mark my words!

now, this is kind of corny, because who the hell says "oh yeah my aspiration is to consume more media"... but we really would like to read even more books and watch more movies. for books, we'll aim for 36 (3 per month) and for movies, we'll aim for 24 (2 per month). the reason i'm even saying this is because we have this stupid weird complex where we feel like we're not allowed to have fun unless we're creating something or "being productive". so this goal is about destroying that complex as much as it is about getting into more things.

also, i'd like to get physically healthier. i don't hate being fat, but i'd like to build more stamina, get stronger, and be more active because we had a health problem crop up where the only solution to get rid of it is losing weight. it took us a long time to accept how our body "wants" to be shaped, but if it's compromising our health, then we should try to reduce risk and harm.

what else? well, we obviously need to keep creating and sharing cool and beautiful things! i hope our artistic skills and techniques grow and develop, and that we find more local communities to call home. we're already pretty solid regulars at that performance venue we'll probably be spending new year's eve at, but it'd be awesome to have even more places like that.

building off that last point, one of the reasons that place is our favourite is because we're out as a system there. so i think that in 2024, we should come out as multiple in more places. it's scary, but it's worth it and it makes us feel so happy and loved when people call us by the right names and treat us as the individuals we are.

finally, we'd like to spend more time with our sister before she goes off to study abroad in australia. she's a bright shining star in our lives, and we want her to know how loved she is. she's been struggling with her mental health over the last few years, so we hope that 2024 is kind and healing for her, and that we can be a part of that healing.

there's a whole lot of stuff that we want to happen! and i believe that we can make these goals into reality, because we are amazing and strong! i am really proud of how we lived through 2023, so i hope that when we look back on 2024, we feel the same sense of victory.

currently, i am:
feeling: powerful and victorious! proud and festive! good!
listening to: sunrise by indradevi
reading: solanin by inio asano
eating: nothing, but i had some freshly baked triple chocolate chip cookies while writing this post. i just took my meds like 10 minutes ago if that counts?

introduction.

we have been drawing since we could hold a pencil, but we first held a tablet pen when our body was about 14. the tablet belonged to our father, and quickly became ours because he did not have much use for it. we still have that tablet, actually, and often use it to draw! it's a wacom bamboo ctl-470. sturdy thing.

the point is that when we first started pursuing digital art, we were obsessed with drawing our favourite fictional character at the time (terezi from homestuck) over and over again. we were downright prolific with the terezi pictures. and then after terezi it was aria from crypt of the necrodancer, and after aria it was ocs. by the time we were 19, we were frequently doing character commissions.

now, flash-forward to september this year. i'm writing in my diary, and it's a rant about how i simply cannot justify character art as "real art". don't worry - my feelings changed following that angry day in september, but the question is: how did i get there? and if i was denouncing our roots as artists who actually take art seriously, what the hell did i consider to be "real art"?

the answer to both of those questions, as you may have guessed from the blog post title, is "abstract art". after abstract art changed our lives for the better and utterly revolutionised our creative processes, i was ready to denounce our history as character artists - and i still am happy to throw it away! but after understanding my fellow artists and their feelings better, i have no reason whatsoever to devalue them!

now, i will talk about some trauma i have associated with character art in this post, but i don't want this to be the topic of the entire thing. instead, i want the topic of this post to be "why i love abstract art".

i want to be clear: i'm making this post because the average attitude towards my favourite style is the same as the one i erroneously held towards character art. people will look at a pollock and say "no way that's real art"! and this isn't to mention duchamp's infamous fountain that's been kicking the asses of abstract art haters for the last century...

abstract art changed our lives!

well, to understand how abstract art changed our lives for the better, you have got to understand that our lives weren't great at the time we picked it up. we had estranged ourselves from our parents, and were struggling at university, and had just cut ties with a system that had been our best friends for the last six years.

the problem was that they were five years older than us, and groomed us, and that the relationship had the wackiest power imbalances you could conceive of. the other problem was that most of the character art we did was gifts for them, or commissions for them. pretty much everything we drew was for them, and after we left them, the thought of drawing a character of any sort made us absolutely sick.

still, we were bursting with creative energy. all of these horrible things in our lives had to find their way out of our body and onto the page, or screen. by the time we decided to defer that year of university, we had made three abstract pieces.

i'm not going to show the piece we made on the night we decided to defer because it's signed with the old host's name, and it feels wrong and private. but i will show the first one we ever made, a month or so prior to that decision, at the house of one of our (current) best friends:

look at that! isn't it cool? it's got so much stuff going on, and it looks pretty even if you don't understand what it represents! that hardly makes for what i value in "real art", but it makes me so happy to look back on this piece.

anyway, it was by the third piece that we realised how truly liberating it was to make abstract art. you had the freedom to make anything you could think of. you had the freedom to say "these are my emotions, and good luck trying to decipher them. i can help you, but only if you care enough to engage with my work". you had the freedom to actually express what was on your mind instead of using an oc or fictional favourite to have that layer of separation. emotions would flow with the shapes and the colours, and when it reached people, it would touch on these universal feelings of love, or hate, or despair, or survival - just through a few forms and hues!

we started experimenting with abstract art. first it was just stuff with markers on paper, but then it started being digital, 3d, pyrography, acrylic pour, acrylic impasto. and though we've found a good niche in acrylic palette knife paintings, it was abstract art that gave us the freedom to step out from the comfort zone of drawing terezi, or aria, or ocs belonging to those awful people over and over again on a wacom bamboo ctl-470.

abstract art is real art.

what do i mean when i say something is "real art"? for me, "real art" is something that is sweet and pure and true. it has to be honest, you have to put love into it (even if it's spiteful in nature), and it has to possess some sort of resonance. and obviously, art is subjective - something that looks this way to me may not strike those chords for you! sweetness (love in creation), purity (universality, resonance), and truth (being honest and earnest) might not even be what you're looking for at all - your artistic triple may be "provocative, ingenious, and beautiful". but the ideals i defined are ones that i strive for when i create something. i want my work to have those qualities.

i've made things that completely miss the mark, and i've made things that don't even try to reach it. but most of what i'm proud of firmly reaches those standards in my mind. you don't have to feel the same, of course.

for me and to the others in manyface, our abstract art captures "universal" feelings that come from the heart. when i say universal, i mean that most people can relate: feelings like "i'm in love" and "i survive against all odds" and "i hate my abusers" and "today i am happy and free".

that universality is something we find valuable, and it generally affects us much more than anything that requires a representational lens to view the emotion through.

from talking to someone nice in the 32bit cafe discord server today, i got to understand that most people want that lens of representation to have a bit of distance from their feelings, or to use it as a guide for them. i knew that that friend (the one whose house we went to to make the first abstract piece) felt that way about their character fanart, but i didn't realise it was a feeling a lot of people shared.

so i completely get why people make character art, and don't denounce it at all, even though i was very frustrated with not being able to understand it when i made that diary entry in september.

"but jáščer, didn't you say manyface made character art for ages and ages?" yeah! the feelings we put into it was "i love terezi" and "i love aria" and "we love our horrible ex-best friend", and so i'm kind of indifferent to it - those feelings aren't compelling or universal, and they're hardly true anymore. that's why i'm happy to say that our lives as artists truly began with abstraction.

again, abstract art made us realise that there was so much more to art than "i'm a fan of terezi and aria and also want to make an awful person happy". art could be much more than that! art could be anything we dreamed of! and that was what finally made it "real", to us. something worth dedicating our lives to.

so what of those famous examples of abstract artists taking the piss that people always bring up, like the guy who taped a banana to a wall and sold it for a hundred grand or something? well, we couldn't tell you. we believe in giving everyone a fair chance. (even though we might forget that belief in frustration!)

maybe the wall banana guy was really onto something in their conception of that idea. or maybe they were laundering money. but i don't really care, because the haters are still talking about the wall banana, which means it achieved... something!

all of this should be taken with a grain of salt, because the only people we make the rules for are ourselves. but discovering abstract art showed us that there were no rules at all, at least when it came to the limits of what one could create.

conclusion.

well, i hope that you come out of this feeling inspired. the greatest honour would be to have changed someone's mind about abstract art, or to have given them that moment of clarity where they think "ah, so this is why abstract artists do that!".

a greater honour would be to have someone read this and think "i really want to make something abstract right now!" and then actually do it. please, if you make something abstract after reading this blog post, please show us!

if any of this made you angry, just remember that it's my perspective and that at the end of the day, it doesn't have to be important.

finally, if you read this and thought "that's great, but i still look at abstract art and see a bunch of shapes that mean nothing", i simply must show you this comic from 1947.

i hope that helps! not only are you a space, but you can become a space that's also an abstract art admirer! or even an abstract artist. the possibilities are endless!

- jáščer

hiiii!!! this is our first blog post!! exciting, right? i think so! jáščer wanted to be the one to make it but i stole the front because he can't have everything to himself!! hahaha, i love her, but they're real selfish about being conscious >:(

so, the reason that I'M the one writing this right now is that a dear friend of ours got some awful news, and we can do nothing to help. and so i simply REFUSED to let us be totally miserable and instead decided that i'd rather seethe with righteous rage!! i mean, it's always better to spit fire than mope quietly in a corner! at least, i think so because that's what comes naturally to me!

and like, when jáščer gets sad, xe starts thinking about all the other bad things in our lives, like how we're in the finances trenches and still don't have a job. despite the fact that we're on track to slowly crawl out of those trenches, despite the fact that we're surviving and even thriving and generally in such a better place than before... really, it makes me so angry! we've achieved so much and yet it sometimes feels like our lizard friend takes it all for granted.

i don't take it for granted!! i might be mad as all hell, but i believe in thriving in spite of adversity! so i gotta take all this aggression and turn it into aggressive joy. and you know what, i think i WILL!!

we really extremely fucked up our sleep schedule recently so it's 3:35 AM as i write this sentence, but i'm determined to stay up until the morning and go to the bookstore and the bubble tea shop!!! this was more jáščer's plan than mine, so i'm going to kick his ass into appreciate being dragged outside by yours truly :p

now then, what do i have planned to occupy myself until the morning? well, i gotta whittle down our backlog of art trades, which SOMEONE foolishly took on because they were hyperfixated on character art. and now that that we don't feel that enthusiastic about drawing people, these trades are downright oppressive... and i guess i'll just have to take one for the team!

what else? i gotta code my page of the website and take a bunch of personality quizzes! that's gonna be the fun part of the night, i think. although i might take a nap before i do stuff to clear my head from the anger i feel!

i bet that jáščer would talk about why we're moving our diary from being in a physical book to being a page on our website. the answer is that that it's much easier for us to type than write by hand, and that the physical diary started feeling a lot like a chore to maintain, because we'd just write what we did every day and that's it. and damn, that shit's hard to remember! so maybe, we should just focus on writing what we want, when we want to. and sharing our experiences with others is both fun and motivating! (i love attention)

the physical diary was a solution to a problem we no longer really have: the desire to talk about our days but no social media to do it on. and it's not like it was a good solution, because we'd still tell our friends about the cool things that happened every day. plus, once we had it for a few months, it was just bullet points of like... every event that took place. which is just BORING! not to mention tedious...

point is, the blog idea is a good one, i think!!

currently, i am...
feeling: angry but motivated!! tired, too...
listening to: urge to urinate by pianoid
drinking: water