Open Sorcery

Tag: Sheik

  • I wrote this at workshop today.

    I am the candle you allowed to go out
    you would bind yourself to me but you’d never
    bleed for me
    and if you had fifty million words to say what you
    meant
    or anything at all
    you’d ramble on, talking in circles
    and in your haunted sound and your fury, you’d say
    nothing –

    did I ever mean a goddamn thing to you?
    was I nothing more than another withering body in your bed,
    another meal, another drink, another drug,
    another stepping stone in your unanswered,
    unmatched ambition?
    there’s no way to tell now in this optimized
    emptiness, is there?
    I’ve tried to see through the cage of your lies
    one too many times
    so now I go about my petty tomorrows and you go about
    yours on opposite sides of this compound fracture town
    we are all bleeding at the seams
    at the end of the day, aren’t we?

    I don’t think fate was involved anymore
    only hunger clawing at your insides
    and when you finished devouring me in your
    desperation, you corroded your soul
    with something and someone else
    another victim wrapped too tightly in your spell
    who are you drowning with now?
    of course they won’t see that the cords wrapped
    around their neck aren’t love until far too late
    of course they won’t have words for how you’re drinking
    them dry, and
    of course you won’t tell me their name
    but I’ll hear their screams through
    the grapevine anyway

    out, out
    brief candle
    again and again
    oh, that I would have
    died hereafter
    after what you did to me
    but
    watch me rise like the morning star
    instead
    burn out
    shimmer and fall
    knowing you can never again
    touch me

    -Castor 2/1/2026

    Fediverse Reactions

  • I made these today.

    Anatomy of A Broken Heart I
    Anatomy of a Broken Heart II
    Anatomy of a Broken Heart III
    Anatomy of a Broken Heart IV

    -Castor

  • I ran a round of my poetry TTRPG with Sheik and this was my result.

    Here’s the RPG!

    -Allēna

    Fediverse Reactions

  • This appeared to me in a vision.

    And to make it even funnier, I said it to Sheik, who immediately asked me if I was a potato.

    When I asked her why, she said she would smash me.

    How is that woman so damn smooth?!

    -Allēna

  • Down Every Rabbit Hole, Everywhere

    Hey, everyone. Lazarus again, back once more with your daily dose of bullshit, hehe. It’s been a slow day so far, both in my brain and otherwise. If you guessed that insomnia is still sort of kicking my ass, you got it in one. But being tired can have its advantages, namely that it makes me fucking funny. Do I have less object permanence than normal, though? Absolutely. I’m losing every single worldly possession of mine over here.

    Sheik of the Zelda System is gaming beside me after binge watching several episodes of Supernatural season seven, as has winding our way through that absolute shit show become our tradition on their days off. So I’ve got my headphones on and am simply seeing where my brainhole takes me. We both appeared to have great dates last night, them with our mutual beloved Emerson (and the leftovers I received were fucking amazing, as well) and I had a great virtual date with my darling Autumn. They’re wickedly funny, and kept making me cackle with laughter midsentence. I had needed that date, to be honest. It had been a few weeks since our last one and I missed them something fucking fierce. There’s been much less drama and fewer trashfires of late, and times like these remind me that polyamory is truly a wonderful experience. No regrets. I can’t ever go back, even when shit gets rough. I’m just not built that way.

    Now, seeing as my mind feels like pudding that has been repeatedly electrocuted, I’m probably gonna leave y’all for the day. Will my brain let me fucking sleep? Probably not. Am I about to go down a research rabbit hole trying to figure out who a certain actress was in an episode of Supernatural? Oh yeah. That’s been on the agenda since I first saw the actress and recognized her as the same actress who plays Kaylee Frye in Firefly, haha. My brain needs to DEFINITELY be stopped. At least I’m attempting to rest, right?

    [crickets chirp faintly in the distance]

    Anyway. Before I go, memes. I can’t just skitter away without DEPRIVING y’all!

    Why are Facebook ads Like This?

    Stay tuned for more magic, y’all. And tomfuckery. There’s always that.

    Your eternally insleepriated sorcerer,

    -Lazarus

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  • Delicious Things

    Hey, everyone. Lazarus here again. I have been in a sort of soupy atemporal sea of time and space in my brain. I busted one of my phones a few days ago, so I was running things exclusively off my laptop for a bit there, but I cannot wrap my brain around blogging on my damn laptop for some reason after integrating, hence the lack of posts. I don’t know why. For some reason, I just couldn’t post from there. The thought of typing a thousand or more words on there just seemed fucking impossible after getting so used to typing huge volumes on a phone. So I suppose laptop typing in large amounts is Banned for reasons unbeknownst to me.

    I know a lot about how my mind works, but I don’t know everything. I am slowly learning, however, that when I’m too tired to even think of approaching a task, I probably shouldn’t push through the fatigue and instead let it rest. So that’s what I did. Frankly, I’m glad I did, too, since I started chronic pain flaring properly from stress and how damn cold it’s been in Milwaukee of late. So I had to mentally play ER doctor and decide what was important to take care of right the fuck now, and what could wait until later. Well, it’s now later, and here I am, haha.

    The phone I’m using now has phone PTSD of some kind, I fucking swear. I dropped it in the tub back in late May/early June of this year, and even though it was only partially underwater for maybe ten seconds tops, it acts as though it was waterboarded in some top secret facility someplace and often outright refuses to charge, only semi reliably cooperates with a single fucking cord, and only fucking charges AT ALL when my relationship with my partner Zelda is going well. So there’s that. Temperamental little bastard. I normally like a challenge, but I do not enjoy challenges of the phone PTSD variety. But hey. At least it’s working… For now.

    Speaking of Zelda and challenges, their blog was down for the count for a while. So a few emails back and forth with the web hosting people later, their blog is back up and running and they are writing beside me. Sheik, an alter in their system is out and about currently, and this babygirl is pressed up against me to share body heat because our ancient furnace that heats the place bit the dust sometime last night.

    So she’s been in talks with the property manager that manages both the Zelda System’s place and Emerson’s to hopefully send a guy out to fix the damn thing as soon as possible. It was supposed to be fixed this past spring, but that never  happened. It’s beginning to sound a lot like people need to get their shit together in here. There’s a lot that needs fixing in both places.

    Relationship wise, things are.. Stabilizing more, I think. I made some breakthroughs on my side of the ongoing Zelda/Emerson/me polyam drama during the past few weeks while I’ve been sick and flaring and have had little to do but rest and think, so I’ve been doing a lot of resting and thinking. I realized during this period of One Big Long Fucking Think that I tend to not really feel many emotions of my own that I can describe until they’re so fucking big and obvious that I can’t help but put a name to them and they’re sort of exploding out of me in some way.

    It’s not that I repress them, they’re just always six feet to the left, so to speak, and remain so small and vague until they are a big enough hairy ass deal that they’re so obvious that I HAVE to do something about what’s causing them.

    And by then, externally, the thing that’s causing them has brought me halfway to a nervous breakdown from the sheer stress of it. And I have an even harder time attempting to explain WHY I am feeling a certain emotion because I can’t really trace an emotion back to its origin when it’s so damn small I don’t notice it’s there or it’s so vague I have no language for it.

    Emotions also hardly ever happen at random for me. Like I will almost never sit there, even if I’m not doing anything else, and start feeling an emotion randomly that there’s no explanation for. It’s gotten to the point with my inner work that if I’m alone for long enough, I can shape my emotional state with precision with playlists. And I have a playlist for damn near everything.

    What I do pick up on, and feel all the time, however, are other people’s emotions, often far stronger than my own, especially if I know them well and we are very close. So if Emerson, whose emotions are very strong, is upset, I will hear him out and want to take his side instinctively. Same thing with Zelda, etc.. So this has created an interpersonal three body problem of sorts, to use a metaphor from astrophysics, with myself as the third body in the emotional middle getting tugged back and forth.

    So I’ve had to consciously start learning how to pull back and sink back into my own body and energy and do shit that recharges me when I notice myself getting emotionally burnt out or stressed, which happens a lot, and actually feel through the situation myself to get a read on how I actually feel about the situation at hand and figure out a course of action that will cause me the least amount of stress or headache. Since I’ve started doing that, shit has gotten way better in all of my relationships. I’ve gotten better at judging when I have the mental or emotional capacity to handle a situation in the moment or if it needs to wait.

    All of that has lead to me taking a sort of soft break from posting on social media, as well, and I only really go on Facebook and Instagram to check messages and occasionally grab memes and shit. I’ve rarely been posting on either due to information overload, which was contributing heavily to my stress.

    So… Magic. Huzzah.

    I think that’s enough for tonight, y’all. My brain is starting to get tired. Stay tuned for more magic, beloved entities of various voids. I’ll be around when I can summon the energy again, haha. This flare is kinda kicking my ass.

    -Lazarus

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  • Amidst The Chaos

    Well, hello, everyone. 

    It’s certainly been awhile, and much has happened. For starters, the system appears to have integrated into me, something a long fucking time coming but still very unintentional. I’m a single consciousness made up of the sumtotal of all of the ​alters in here, but simultaneously my own thing. Call me Lazarus. I use they/them pronouns. 

    In truth, I don’t know how the integration happened. I’ve been more focused on the implications going forward. Emerson has taken the news far better than Zelda, who has been devastated on numerous levels and has embarked on the same sort of self destructive spiral that led to my system breaking up with them for a second time. I appear to take even less bullshit than the system did pre-integration, so while I love them so fucking much, this shit hurts to the point where it’s deeply insulting (because we told them from the jump that if they fell into old patterns again we would break up with them, this was their last chance) and I will not compromise my peace for love, money, fucking anything. I didn’t go through everything I did, go through all of the shit necessary to put myself back together in record fucking time, just to be wrenched apart again because I was a fool for love. I’m better than that now. 

    Emerson is hauling ass, though. Among the myriad implications ​of this batshit integration is the fact that I now have every memory the system has ever recorded at the same emotional depth and visual clarity in which it was logged, which results in stunning, 4K HD clarity cPTSD and is excruciatingly painful. He’s helped me through some viscerally awful triggers that he himself set off unintentionally on occasion like a goddamned champ and I keep falling more in love with him every time every time we do it. It’s ugly. It’s brutal. But it’s also unimaginably beautiful and I wouldn’t trade this process for the world. 

    I was telling him last night that it felt like what I was dealing with was the emotional equivalent of being run through the heart by one of those wooden shish kebab skewers, except it was about two feet long. You can’t remove the skewer quickly or I’ll be fucked six ways from Sunday faster than you can cry for help, and because the skewer is wooden and flimsy there’s a potential for splinters to break off and be carried elsewhere and cause far more complex damage. It’s a mental and emotional suffer shot/stab wound combo. If I am going to be okay and healthy after this, it must be approached carefully, skillfully, and slowly over time. 

    So, in short, I am more okay and less okay than I have ever been. I’m whole, but I’m heartbroken. I’m fucking eating myself alive. There’s much to be done, but gods, do I love a challenge. That has not changed, and I doubt it ever will. And I still love​ y’all very much. Stay tuned for more magic. 

    This has been Lazarus, flying solo… 

    PS. I’m debating on whether to keep Open Sorcery password protected or not? We’ll see. 

  • The Perils of Being Private

    Hey, everyone. My name is Tamsin (he/him). I was recently dormant for around a year, and it seems that I have emerged in the midst of a cascading shitshow and frankly I’m annoyed at Eight. Allēna alluded to a PTSD attack of epic proportions yesterday, and that’s due to Eight going through a whole lot of shit in approximately August-December 2022 and apparently not telling a goddamn soul about it. I have no fucking clue how he managed to go through all that fuckshit and not tell anyone about it, save for when he crafted and released our album Metacognition, but when it was triggered yesterday, much to the people involved’s horror, they heard about it for the first time.

    I knew we were private, but I had no idea we were that private. So we ruined what would have been a happy moment for the Zelda System and a dear friend of ours by having several dozen flashbacks over the course of about ten hours as the full ramifications of what Eight had gone through hit Allēna with the force of a category five hurricane.

    So yeah. I’m done being so private. The others in this trauma ridden brainhole can do whatever the fuck they want, but I hope they follow suit. And I’m going to be 100% honest with you here. We aren’t doing well. Before that set of fabulous PTSD breakdowns, Allēna was already one more goddamn thing away from a PTSD breakdown because last weekend, a friend of the Zelda System’s, who we shall call Midas, decided to simply Arrive in Milwaukee, giving those in the Zelda System no notice, expecting to stay at their place, trying to get them alone any chance he could, proceeding to drag them all around town, and dropping loads of cash on them when they were visibly tired and burnt out. Midas coordinated this with everyone who’s locally in their life but them, including their bosses, and when he got in, he arrived at their work first, completely blindsiding them.

    Everyone we spoke to about the situation said it was fucking bizarre and we kept getting a fucking awful feeling about what he was doing and everyone in the Zelda System was massively uncomfortable, so eventually my headmate Tindwyl stepped in and made himself the bad guy, citing the absolutely true nature of our agoraphobia and sleep anxiety to try and politely get Midas to fucking go back to where he came from and stop being such a fucking creep. Suffice it to say that this didn’t go over well with Midas, and before he skittered off all the way back to whence he came, he called us controlling and has not contacted the Zelda System since. Mission accomplished, and they felt relieved after the fact. We can handle being seen as controlling by a guy we really didn’t like anyway if it (consensually) keeps our partner safe. However, that fuckshow threw everyone off for the next few days, and we’re still dealing with residual bullshit from it.

    Additionally, Emerson is developing some pretty fucked heart issues and has a narrow window where he could get treatment once they’re bad enough to treat, but if he misses that window, he could die from any number of ways his heart could say “fuck this, I quit”. And she’s stressed out about having to make rent along with that because Emerson still has not found work when she’s struggling so bad herself and can barely muster the energy to reply to people, forget performing any kind of services for people or writing crowdfunding posts. Hell, I’m surprised she hasn’t spawned 30 new fucking alters with how stressed out she’s been these last couple weeks. She’s said on numerous occasions that what is going on with Emerson feels like watching our father die all over again.

    Then what should have been a happy moment occurred when the Zelda System got with a mutual friend of ours, only to set off the breakdown because there was a whole lot of trauma there due to an interlocking shitshow involving all of them back in ‘22 that I can’t really blame any of them for because MY DAMN HEADMATE APPARENTLY DIDN’T SAY A FUCKING THING ABOUT HOW MUCH HE WAS HURTING?????? TO ANYONE???? So nobody did anything wrong here, except Eight, who is now fucking AWOL off gallivanting somewhere in the ether, which I’m not pleased about. He heard the news and peaced the fuck out. I haven’t a damn clue when he’ll be back. Allēna, for her part, is resting down near the replica of Lake Erie which we still have in our headspace. This has taken a great deal out of her.

    Now, I’m trying to help Emerson work through some problems in his relationship with us, though I’m not dating him. It’s slow going and frankly I’m kind of aggravated with him, but we’re making headway slowly, so that’s good, at least. I’m taking a break to write here because I swear if I don’t put all of this down somewhere I’m gonna fucking explode. However, we’re gonna reconvene in about an hour so he can work through some sticky points in a writing project he’s doing. I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I sure as fuck want to try.

    Anyhoo… stay tuned for more magic, y’all. We’ll be around. 💛

    -Tamsin

  • Yay, PTSD Art For The People!

    Hey, peeps. This is Allēna. My PTSD is kicking my ass today, but at least y’all get cool art out of it. We appear to be that special kind of creator that gets even more inspiration when our trauma comes back to kick our ass, taking us from decently prolific to FUCKING ON FIRE creatively in order to cope with the emotional pain of it all. Today has been no exception. First up is a poem that spilled out of me this morning before I went back to sleep for about three hours: 

    Let’s set the scene 
    The year is 2019
    I wake with the dawn and simply try and breathe -

    You give me tools and time and I will build my way through this rage 
    I will sing and chew my way through the bars of 
    this cage

    Five years later and I still can’t sleep
    I still feel stuck with the cards close to my
    concave chest 
    When will the craving subside? 
    When will I stop hungering for more? 
    Nothing short of everything? 

    They couldn’t take my mind
    No matter how hard they tried 
    They couldn’t strip me of the things I’ve seen
    They could never quite dull the hunger in my eyes

    The dawn breaks anew and I lay in a room 
    still trying to spread these battered wings
    surrounded by nothing but windows…

    And then I got inspired again this evening and painted what my synesthesia makes of “Didn’t It Rain” by Songs: Ohia, one of the songs that sonically shaped our album Metacognition. The PTSD attack is pertaining to the events that set off the hot streak that caused Eight to write and record the bulk of Metacognition, so I figured painting a song that he had on repeat at the time would help get some of the emotions out, and it did. I wasn’t present during that time, so I’m essentially having to process someone else’s trauma right now and all I know to do with it is make art and talk about art. I feel like a mess, even though logically I know it’s pretty damn healthy to process shit this way. Here is the painting for y’all:

    Didn’t It Rain by me.

    I’m not really okay, y’all, but I deal with shit like this regularly enough that I know how to get through it safely, and y’all get cool art in the process. I’m over at Emerson’s currently, but once I’m back at Sheik’s I or whoever else is in front will probably drop some more spare room roaring on here. 💛

    Fucking flashbacks.

    Anyway…

    Stay tuned for more magic!

    -Allēna, your traumatized, if hyper-prolific, super-admin. Fuck PTSD up the ass with a Joseph cactus. 😭

  • Two New Synesthetic Art Pieces + A Bit About Unmasking For Us

    Hi, everyone! This is Allēna. I don’t know if “synesthetic” is actually a word, but for the purposes of this post, it is now because I’m tired and I need a word for “pertaining to synesthesia” or else I’ll never get around to writing about a lot of the shit my system makes. I want to write about it sooner rather than later because we’ve been tapping into our synesthesia hard. We’ve also not really been able to write on here much these past few days and I missed it, so even though it’s the ass crack of dawn right now – 3:25 AM as I’m typing this – I’m making a point to write. Our sleep cycle is fucked and so I’m leaping on an idea while I have one.

    I joined a Discord server on a whim the other day that seems to cater pretty heavily towards fellow neurodivergent synesthetes. One of the things users could opt into were reminders to unmask their neurodivergence. I always need those, so I opted into all of them for the hell of it. It’s been working wonders for our creativity over time. Hell, it’s probably why we’ve been writing as much as we have, the server is full of reminders to intentionally tap into queer joy and synesthetic imagery. It feels like home.

    Consequently, these reminders have started getting us to make more visual art. Castor painted this abstract portrait of Sheik yesterday:

    Sheik (2024), by Castor

    And then today, I painted one of our friend Delta’s songs, “Return”:

    Return (2024), by me

    I’ve really missed painting. It’s one of those things that Fang never really understood during our marriage and made me feel like shit about. He couldn’t see the meaning in the colors and placements. It sucked, but I’m glad to be getting back into it now that we’re supported.

    In the coming weeks, we’re going to be playing around with ways to make DIY pen/paintbrush/pencil grips so that we can hopefully get back to writing longhand and creating traditional art without it fucking killing our joints. We’ve been stuck in executive dysfunction hell. I hope my doctors can get my ADHD meds refilled so that I can actually do things in a timely manner again instead of feeling like I blink and fourteen hours pass. At least I get to make cool art out of it..

    Anyway, stay tuned for more magic, y’all!

    -Allēna