Sunny Haven

Shapeshifter but for personality as well if I feel like it. I guess? For some reason I don't identify with the term, it feels different, but I don't know how. Bweh.

Maybe that's why when my headmates front, it never feels like they're fully taking over and moreso that they're piloting me around/asking me to do stuff for them, and the feeling doesn't ever fully go away. Not only 'cause my control issues but also because I am enjoying being someone else for a moment. Though, if that's the case, that kinda opens up the opportunity for headmates to pop up left, right, and center. Like there would pretty quickly be a Siffrin from ISAT fictive right now if that was the case, for however long I want to be him.

Maybe I can have, like, some headmate who's just a blob, something I can mold into whatever I please and then I can puppet around, letting them front so I can experience being someone else, something else. And the headmate would be really nice and chill and would let me do whatever to it, would let me make it into whatever I want.

i guess i forgot i wanted something similar to this months ago... and i remember when i posted this, a part of me had been wanting this for a long while... definitely wish it was under my conscience control but uh... it's been... okay. highs and lows even out to "okay".

Taking in a lot of the themes about creation in deltarune and thinking about Pink in chapter 5 had me thinking about her cousin and how he’d want to get in on making his dream come true as well (who wouldn’t?). It would be nice if MTT and Tenna could come to Castletown with Pink in chapter 6, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

I puzzled over drawing Pink as another ghost in the early part of the comic since ghosts in utdr lore dubiously can’t un-possess a vessel once they’ve chosen/bonded with it, and post-ch5, she’s possessing Asgore’s Mew Mew figurine, BUT for the sake of emoting/gesturing and showing her and MTT coming from the same place, I just had her as her ghost form. One last “HEY GUYS IM MOVING. GONNA GO LIVE AS MY REAL SELF BYE” before she’s gone. Gotta get her goodies, you know? And take her depressed cousin with her.

When MTT and Ralsei meet in the comic, I had Ralsei ask his name and pronouns, not only because it’s a first introduction and Ralsei is polite like that, but because he’s sensitive to the emotions of the Lightners. I also just like to see this greeting expressed in media because it should be so normal and natural, but with certain people in my life (even not explicitly anti-trans people) it turns a conversation tense or awkward. There’s nothing weird or wrong with asking someone’s preferred name and pronouns! And as a trans person, it doesn’t feel awkward to receive the question if it’s out of genuine respect and curiosity to get to know me. In fact, (like MTT in the comic) I’d be pleased to be extended that question in an introductory conversation. It’s no big deal to answer, just like answering “what’s your name?” Or “what are your hobbies?” It’s just another part of me, my gender identity. Nothing to be afraid of!

As for trans Ralsei, I see that trans coding within that goat… I don’t know what his gender identity is (since it seems even Ralsei has not figured that out about himself yet), but it’s there. Maybe we’ll see him explore more about himself, what he likes, who he feels he needs to be, and who he wants to be. And maybe Ralsei will realize she’s a girl or that they’re nonbinary (my personal headcanon leans Ralsei demigender—demigirl, demiboy, idk. But some kind of in-between) But that’s for Ralsei to figure out! I can only speculate… Whatever happens next for Ralsei, I hope he comes to love himself as an individual.

And Spamton. He enters the comic since he also has ties to MTT, but like with the rest of his life, he’s excluded, and worse, defeated by the reality of his world. It’s fiction, all of it. You might be able to draw the perfect you, might be able to imagine a body that would perfectly align with who you really are, but it’s all imaginary. An image. A dream. He’s trans despair (at least in this comic) for that discrepancy between body and mind that will always remain in some degree. His despair is the same as Mettaton’s despair, who narrates alongside Spamton’s visuals. They’re in unison there because they’ve both experienced the same feeling, only now with the help, care, support, and love of his community, Mettaton is able to feel more like himself—the true him through creation. It might be an imaginary Dark World, but it came to life with the love they all share, with the excitement they bring together to see Mettaton’s dream come to reality. When he leaves Castletown, he might just be a drawing of a fancy body, and Pink may just be a figure of a catgirl, but everyone they love helped them feel more themselves than they have their entire lives. And that made their real selves a reality.

And THAT’s why you share the pen with Spamton. He may be little and weird, you may not know him very well, but wouldn’t you have wanted that olive branch extended to you? Wouldn’t you have wanted someone to hand you the pen and tell you “I see you.”

Noelle: I feel so stuck in place and unable to deviate from the role I've been assigned that I'm willing to literally kill myself just to prove I can change something about my life

Susie: Even if it's scary, I have to learn to make friends and be myself, and to hope for a better future!

I obviously think almost everything this country is currently doing/has done throughout history politcally is reprehensible and I in no way venerate the leaders of this country or what it stands on. But at the same time- the United States is the only country I'm attached to. My family has lived here for generations. Essentially all my relatives are just American. I've been asked, "no where are you really from?", or, "Where are your parents from?" and it's like. The same city I grew up in, in the United States. And I know that if I went far back enough I could trace ancestors outside of this country, but not in the way some Americans claim ancestry from abroad. It's lost, stolen, from most of us.

That's the first coherent thought that enters my head. My head is full of thoughts. To many thoughts. Noisy thoughts. Noise and noise and noise.

I don't like it.

Two of the primates are chattering at each other. Urgent little creatures, them. These two seem more urgent than normal.

"... not her ..."

Two words snag in my mind. I turn them over in my mind with a detached sort of fascination.

I try rise to my feet. My skin slips on the wet surface and my body slams painfully on the smooth stone... or not stone. I don't know. These primates like their smooth not stone.

My shoulder smarts where it struck. No fur to cushion the fall. No...

I can see my paw.

It's not my paw.

It's one of those horrible little primate paws with wiggling, grasping little toes.

Not her. not her. not her.

A noise escapes my throat, some horrible moan that vibrates past fleshy alien tongue and cheeks.

The primate chatter cuts off abruptly and they look at me.

I look at them. I'm horrible and wet like a newborn covered in afterbirth. I have to blink the awful scum out of my eyes, but everything is focussing wrong. Contrast and sharpness are wrong. Colors are... there are too many fucking colors.

"Um... hello, yes?" one of the primates stammers.

"What." I rasp, words somehow finding their way from brain to throat to lips. "the fuck?"

The primate makes a face. A sort of abstract horror.

It crouches down. No, she crouches down.

"Hi," she repeats. "So... um... I can imagine you're a bit disoriented right now... and well, we're not quite sure how to put this gently-"

"What the fuck did you do to me??" I half moan, half snarl.

The thing that makes "safe and appropriate" so bad is that it basically tells the hypnotee that their safety is their own responsibility and works on the same logic as "no one can do anything in hypnosis that they didn't want to do"

The thing is? People can be coerced and tempted to stretch their limits and when someone is in a suggestible state they cannot be trusted to have unguided discretion on what is or isn't safe, especially when their perspective is in an altered state.

The correct way, from our experience, is to encourage subject agency not by saying "you can and will keep yourself safe" (itself a little better than the "safe and appropriate" language) but by informing them that no matter how far we go into scene, you'll remain aware enough to keep yourself safe.

Lotte's post is right when it says that a hypnotist should not treat agency and safety as gifts to be given. Subject agency is a hypnotee's responsibility and it's important to emphasize.

One of the things that we always brush into in our teaching is that we are HUGE advocates for "keep reality in the room" - people we trust, like and have played with in the past have criticized us, noting that our dissociative disorder skews our ability to be objective in this regard. So with the note that I do have a bias-- I want to reiterate.

Keep reality in the scene.

Trust on both sides of the watch relies on both people engaged in the play being able to safe word AT ANY TIME and that means that a hypnotee needs to specifically be told and taught to break scene and self-advocate at the first sign of discomfort. That alone causes some people to dry up because they want their brainwashing fantasies to be completely mindless... and I do think that CNC and edge play scenes can be aspired to but they should 1000% be after a rapport and routine has been built up enough that the hypnotee will know their limits and be able to break scene without thinking about it.

But like any conditioning that has to be trained. You can't just "safe and appropriate" your way into someone automatically breaking out of a deeply involved scene.

What one of our partners does with me is remind that I am a good girl when I take care of myself and that a good girl listens to their body when it tells them things, it informs their partner when their mind is wandering, it knows how to wake up when something distracts its attention and knows not to compromise its own safety by being altered in situations where full attention is required.

And that requires a level of training too. "You'll only go into trance when it is safe and appropriate" does not have the same guidance that "and if you're in a situation that requires your full attention, such as needing to drive or someone else outside of this scene needing your attention, you can just take a breath and draw yourself up, remembering to be alert and conscious before engaging in any tasks" like that's MINIMAL but it gives instructions that are not "don't do the thing"

Especially as hypnosis does not work with negative instructions.

"Don't think about a pink elephant" being the best example.

You need positive and directed instruction. You need to build a framework of self-advocacy and safety before you start taking that away and you need both sides of the watch to be on constant vigilance until that awareness is second nature.