The State of Zmeydros 12-15-2023 (Overall Good, but Weird) (Patreon)

If you want to understand what happens from here on with me and my story projects, this post is essential.

Elara's writing this entry, the laquine writer y'all know and love. If me having to say this out loud is odd, you'll have to read below for context.

I'M TRANSITIONING (Male to Female Herm / Fem-leaning Enby)

If you don't know yet, I started estrogen and am getting more feminine in many ways. My body's always been a bit in-between and my doctor is trying to get my insurance to approve genetic testing. I'm finally growing breasts and heightening the curves I already have. I'm keeping the dosage low and not taking testosterone blockers because I am a trans herm, not just a trans woman. It's working fantastically and I feel better than I've felt in ages and I'm quickly moving toward my female herm goals. My emotions have been way closer to the surface and I've been able to work on mental health things I never thought I'd figure out.

USEFUL FACTOID - There's actually a term outside of furrysphere for people who someday want both sets of parts: Salmacian (rhymes with dalmatian).

Resources:

https://salmacian.org/

https://www.furaffinity.net/user/salmacianfurs/

MENTAL HEALTH (Multiple Personalities)

My journey toward mental health has been difficult due to severe childhood trauma. I've discovered I have four personalities. The last one (Mabel) surfaced on Thanksgiving morning and disrupted everything over again. That said, I'm not only experiencing the freest flow of emotions I've had since I was five years old, I've finally figured out something about my (Elara's) personality. More on that later.

All four personalities can function well in my life and there's very little dissociation (switching between them doesn't hinder memory or other processes much, and they all have full awareness).

As weird and difficult as being plural (having multiple personalities) is, it was way worse when all those personalities were jumbled together. I kept feeling like I had no idea who I was and everything I did in life had four separate perspectives at any given time. It slowed me down drastically and caused  me to freeze up when I had  to make even the simplest of decisions.

Every alter, when they're fronting (basically driving my body/being the most present), or are in back, sees themselves as their anthro furry self at least seventy percent of the time. Makes being in a human body weird. We all have pretty severe species dysphoria.

(If you have questions about what plurality is, etc, go here: What's plurality? https://morethanone.info/)

ELARA: Laquine herm with white fur dotted in black spots and  black ear tips who is close to the person y'all have known this whole time. Only difference is that I've realized the dominant parts of her were in Mabel and Ramda and I'm actually a very submissive person. Warning: I will bite hard if anyone other than my closest loving connections tries to be dominant toward me, though. I don't like things that are overly sweet or spicy and can deal with bitter things pretty well. My sense of humor is random and sits at the edge of insanity (making no sense at all). I also have hints of Ramda and Sadie's sense of humor.

SADIE (emerged end of September): Fuchsia-scaled herm dragon who is like a bubbly twenty-something girl. Shi's very girly and has lipstick lesbian vibes, but is also proud shi's a herm and is great at just going with the flow. Shi loves any color that matches hir scales and is extremely emotionally aware. Loves wearing dresses and other things that embarrass me to wear XD. Honestly, shi's just fun to be around. Shi loves sweets and doesn't like overly spicy or bitter things. Shi's better at baking than the rest of us by a mile. Sadie is incredible with words to the point that we are often astounded. Shi can come up with lyrics like it's easy, shi can find the perfect word to describe something, and shi can make word-based jokes that get belly laughs. Shi's very much a switch and will go along with anything just to play around.

RAMDA (emerged early October): Dark-fuchsia-furred herm wolf who I unknowingly based Ramda in "Remiel's Fall From Grace" on. She's dominant, playful, and very butch lesbian. Has an amazing fashion sense and has to be watched because she can and will horde jewelry and shiny things. We're all surprised she's not a dragon. She likes spicy food and can drink espresso shots, or poorly brewed Folgers coffee, black. Bitter things hardly bother her. Her sense of humor is dark and macabre and she'll happily help people misinterpret what she says to lead to hilarious misunderstandings.

MABEL (emerged on Thanksgiving) : Cow herm with an udder who is very much a cool mom. People have been comparing her to an openly lesbian version of  Mrs. Frizzle from "The Magic School Bus." She's incredibly good at comforting people who are struggling without getting sucked into their emotional turbulence. She speaks with a beautiful feminine Georgia accent because she really likes it and thinks it fits her. (It's an accent I copied to perfection years ago when I was in Atlanta. I didn't realize I'd copied the feminine version of the accent because I was in denial about my transness for most of my life.) She likes hearty home-cooked meals like ribs, pot roast, and fried catfish. Her sense of humor is more story based and employs punchlines quite well. Mabel is dominant and huge into exploring kinks. Every one of us agrees that she's our favorite alter. She is a comforting, playful presence that helps us all grow as people.

All of us share the same general sexual attraction: we're pansexual, but primarily attracted to trans women, trans men, enby individuals, anyone who's body defies the gender binary,  and of course, herms.

All of my personalities are different enough that it takes only a couple conversations for people to tell the differences and quickly know who's fronting. One of my greatest fears is that, since all my alters can do just about everything I can do, my plurality is incredibly hard to hide. It's not like I've ever been "normal" or really able to control how bizarre I am. The one thing that makes it so I'm not freaking out, and am mostly okay, is that we're very fluid and can bring the alter to the front that we need in a given situation. Every once in a while, though, who's in front switches without us realizing right away. That can get awkward since we all sound different from each other, especially Mabel vs the rest of us.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR OUR WRITING

Splitting into four personalities has overall helped immensely because I'd been stuffing my emotions into corners of my mind instead of dealing with them. I felt constant anxiety instead. The downside is that it has caused a lot of chaos and I'm still adjusting to being four people. We all like to write, but we're all seeing everything from completely different perspectives.

There's lots of things we wrote that were a jumble of four different people's ideas where no one labeled whose idea it was because they didn't know they were collaborating. This is why some projects have been a lot more difficult than others.

For instance: Remiel's stories have a backbone of mostly me and Ramda collaborating. We can see how we worked together on it. Persephone and Tritonia, on the other hand, has ideas from all four of us in it and it needs help if we're going to continue that series.  Tail Virus stories and stories involving Sable are very much a collaboration between Mabel and Sadie. When Mable and Sadie are both close to the surface, our shorthand for it is "Sable" so, yeah, Sable's what you get when you combine them. I'm pretty sure that "New Year's Deer" and "Going Viral at Tomorrowland" was a combination of me and Sadie working together. We are not completely sure which combination of us was writing the "Dating a Herm Werewolf" and "Ghosting Through Life" because we know Ramda was involved in both, but it's kinda a jumble.

We are not saying the stories that got jumbled are bad. The problem I'm describing is related to our attempts to continue these series.

All the projects that are a jumble have a plot trajectory and worldbuilding that is unstable in our head. We have trouble figuring out what happens next or how things fit together gets confusing after a certain point. Also, looking at the structure of these stories, they keep trying to have a good story arc, but it never fully manifests.

THE BAD NEWS is that we weren't split before we did development work for the Herm Wild West and Sexy D&D Novel. We don't actually know how we feel about these projects right now and are confused. It's all kinda a mess in our heads.

We're working to figure out what to do about the stuff that we've already written that's jumbled as well.

THE GOOD NEWS is that now that we're not all jumbled together, all four of us can contribute to the development and writing process without things getting nearly as jumbled. It's amazing how much better things are when we simply know who owns each idea and can see how it fits or doesn't fit.

MORE GOOD NEWS: We've figured out how to continue the Remiel series and the Tail Virus stories we have planned are safe because they aren't jumbled. We can see clearly how to proceed. We've also started developing a possible story that would cover multiple personality stuff from an angle that's not only sexy, but is very approachable for y'all.

OPTIONAL READING: WHAT I FIGURED OUT RECENTLY

Up until two weeks ago, I'd been trying to control everything and everyone in my life so I wouldn't get hurt. I was extremely careful not to manipulate things in a way that hurt people and everyone close to me was pretty happy with me, but it was making things far more difficult, especially for me because...I'm a very submissive and very vulnerable person. Always having to take the lead and avoid any possible threat was giving me constant anxiety. This is possibly the hardest thing I've ever admitted to myself and others, but I don't like being in control all the time.

As a result, I've worked to let other people in my life make decisions about things when we're doing them together and other things where it makes sense. Stepping back from having to control everything and constantly worrying if I made the right choice has left me in a much better mental state overall.

Everyone close to me is enjoying this because they have more freedom to surprise me, to help carry some of the load of decision making, and not have me trying to plan what we're going to do every single day. Very often when I wake up these days, I have no idea what's going on that day beyond a couple things I know need to get done and I'm okay with it. That used to be very not the case.

If you made it this far, thanks for your attention. I know this was a lot, but I have a natural wish to be understood and also to be completely open with the people who spend their hard earned money to support me.

Thank you for your support. I am doing way better than even a week ago and I'm writing regularly again.