#tdf blog

[korya-elana]

One difficult issue with DID that I never expected was keeping up daemonism. Prior to Syscovery this was never an issue. My daemons were always noticeably present, 24/7. Even after Syscovery, after I realized we had a diagnosis it was pretty easy, I think right up through the teens (of alter count). But now we're at over 30 alters and you know how sometimes an alter/headmate/part will say something but you're not sure who?

Turns out it can drown out your daemon's voice. We've been attributing most unidentified comments as an alter whom either didn't want to be or we couldn't recognize. But I'm starting to think maybe it's wrong to do that.

After a lot of introspection I realized that, even when I'm solidly in front, my mind is always obsessing over the System. Whether that's my OCD obsession or my anxiety about how many are coming out of dormancy lately, I don't really think that matters. Being able to disconnect and think about other things besides your System is healthy, but a habit I wasn't participating in. I realized I'd been ignoring them so much that I wasn't even telling them good morning/night anymore.

My daemons are endlessly patient, but I still feel really bad about it. So I've spent most of the past few days just really, intentionally giving them attention. Like, right now Ani is flapping around my bedroom as a freshwater ray and Thom's perched beside me as a yellow-headed blackbird (both eclipse suggestions from @xxboarpunkxx,'s Aka <3). And I can feel their excitement about today's eclipse. Their love for me and each other. Their appreciation of being included in my life.

It's surprising how acknowledging their presence clears my mind. I'm not currently obsessing over the System or whether or not I'm faking my DID. I'm not worried about what it means that we have so many coming out of dormancy right now or what the newly discovered sub-Systems mean for us. It's just ... quiet. Positive. I can focus on other things. The brain's quiet for once. Existing with your System is important, but I also think it's important to step away from it for a bit and just be you as an individual and all that encompasses.

[spicy-and-yet-sweet]

Ani Q&A 5/10

41. What is the earliest conversation you can remember having with your human? Hm. I think Em asked me if I wanted a snack and I told her I wanted chocolate xD 42. Do you have a favorite number? What it is? I really like three but I don’t know why xD 43. What is your favorite color? Does it differ from your human’s? I don’t have a specific colour but I reallyyyy like pastels! 44. How would you describe your sense of humor? Lighthearted with occasional puns 45. What annoys you? Early mornings. Purposeful obtuseness. Cold humidity. 46. What makes you happy? Bright colours! Rhea of Kit. Sweets, especially lemon based ones. Spring. 47. What makes you sad? Mud. Needless hostility. Too much chaos. 48. Where are you at this moment, and in what form (if any)? Currently wrapped around Em’s neck as a bamboo rat snake! 49. Do you use any form of social media (besides TDF)? Nope. I’m not as social as Thom is. I’m only on Tumblr to answer questions 50. What does your voice sound like? We haven’t found a good equivalent yet! It’s just alto and has a lilt we can’t describe

[thatdeaffeel]

There's been a rise in "im not deaf but" submissions.

It's a very simple community blog for people who are D/deaf/hoh/APD, it isn't up for debate or a complicated issue.

I respect CODA and PODA (acronyms that folk either love or hate and im not here to debate that either) and make space for them.

Otherwise, please stop filling up my asks.

[caffeine-and-sunshine]

We should do an intro!

Hi! My name's Ashley (she/her). I'm in my late 20's and one of the members of The Menagerie (@elan-sipelli). This blog is sort of going to be daemonism, sort of life experiences, sort of my job in a hospital, sort of my own religious beliefs. A hodge podge! My daemon's name is Azekia (more commonly known as Ziki). She's never, ever changed from her piebald ball python form, but I'm pretty sure that's not my analytical form. I love her dearly! She's been with me for my whole life. I practice Kemetic Orthodoxy and am a Shemsu of the House of Netjer. I make up one half of Huwienikhonsu (Huwieni). Together we are: Daughters of Khonsu Beloveds of Sekhmet-Hethert, Bast and Yinepu-Wepwawet Associated with Set and Heru-sa-Aset

I am safe for just about everyone and I do not engage in discourse of any kind. I hope you enjoy my content!

[amimere]

tdf plans!

so, after doing some considering, i have decided that my tour de fleece plans are as follows;

most days will be spent spinning the weft/warp yarn for my bachelor project, im aiming to fill one bobbin with singles per day on average and then have a plying and finishing day once all bobbins are full

rest days will be spent doing something that is not bachelor yarn, i have some colorful roving i might play around with on wheel or on drop spindle, i might also use rest days to sort and card more wool for the other days

for a mountain climb challange i will try to tech my mom to spin, i have taught spinning before so the challange is more for her than for me, but it should be fun either way

i will take any sickdays i need, and if im out of the house for travel at any point i will consider bringing a drop spindle with me to get some work done on the go

im not sure how often ill update the blog, but ill aim for weekly and on special days as a minimum and if i post more then thats just a bonus!

also, for any followers that might want to avoid the spam; ill be tagging the posts with #tdf and #tdf 2022 so feel free to blacklist those if you want!

@a-tour-de-fleece

[xschwarzesherz]

who up touring they france rn

[starbiology]

Hi. First, let me say that I really like you blog!! Your art is lovely.

I wanted ask what do you think will be the Darkest Faerie's role in the incoming plot? I remember her from the Altador Plot but I did that waaay back and can't remember seeing her much outside of that statue and the cool avatar. How does she tie in with what's happening now?

I ask because I see you mention her a lot, but I feel like I am missing many parts of this, both from you theories and Neo lore (that I can find on my own btw im not asking you to retell me). I haven't been in Neo these past few months but I might go back to weekly or daily visiting the site when the plot starts.

Thank you! 🖤🦇

thank you :D!!

One of the main reasons we know shes coming back for this plot was actually this past halloween event in which her and other villains are talked about being in a void.

A lot of the speculation is that the characters seem to be hiding in/lost/trapped in this void. The advent calendar was the first time we got to see what the void is and Kass' sword was in it too. The dialogue isnt on the site but its on SunnyNeo

Also this is still so funny to me 'Welcome to the Cosmic Horrors of the VOID. Enjoy, and happy holidays!'

Other important events that are gearing up for the plot was the 2023 festival of neggs, the faerie festival and its comic

And back on topic to The Darkest Faerie!

Looking at her story, for awhile I thought the only option that wouldnt be turning her to stone (TNT if you can hear me dont turn her to stone again) would be to kill her. It wouldnt even be a bad choice to kill her, shes a major villain across multiple plots. Id actually still argue it would be a fair end to her story.

But theres two points that make killing her off hard

The last time she was seen, she realized the ring she made to create wraiths was actually draining her life and she cant remove it. Pitting your good characters against a weakened villain is just narratively a very bad idea. It makes the hero seem weaker than they are and nearly no matter what the villain did, it comes across as cruel

The Altador council, despite having all the right to be angry at her or happy about her defeat, are So Damn Upset. The day of her betrayal is literally a day of somber remembrance

the entirety of this advent calendar clip just,,altador bro,,,you okay?

and of course the plot book

The council is stuck in a story of 'Used to be 12 heroes, now its only 11' its written on almost all inscriptions about them. It would be nice to see the council come back together again by TDF teaming up with them, even if it starts as part of a scheme of her's (which I wouldnt be surprised it does) until she finally overcomes her obsession with power.

It would make for a happy end to the council's story, otherwise theyre just going to be stuck in this state of mourning their friend

[otrtbs]

Hi! I’m a fan of your works but am not super present on tumblr so wouldnt know if you’ve answered something like this already- i was wondering if you are planning on writing anything else to publish on ao3? I just saw your secret history AU post and i was starstruck .. hope that you are well 💕

hello!! thank you so much!! <3

currently, i have a little bartylus gone girl fic that i'm updating on occasion (life gets awfully hectic for me these days) you can find here!!

but otherwise, my next big project is the dinner fic (Now with an Official Name: Sugar Hiccups) (which is in the works but not published to ao3. you can find bits of where i talked about it under the tags 'tdf' and 'the dinner fic' on my blog which i'll tag below!!

[if u like the more art/art history side of things i do have a short little something planned for november-ish which is just strongly jegulus focused]

[itsjunetime]

I made some improvements to my little terminal pdf viewer, tdf (find it here!), and made it significantly faster. Specifically, I've made it much faster at rendering entire documents in the background (though the time that it takes to show the first page is only slightly improved, if at all; that still could probably take some work, though I'm not quite certain what would be the best move there). Peep the attached image for exactly how much faster (render_first_page is a benchmark that checks how much time it took to render the very first page, and render_full is how much time it takes to render the entire document. these are being compared against the performance before my recent changes).

It's been pretty interesting to work on this - specifically, I'm using c libraries (poppler & cairo, specifically) to render the PDFs, but that means that a lot of easy-to-use rust parallelism features aren't available to me, so I've had to read a bunch of c source code and try out different models of parallelism to get something that works reliably there while also improving performance noticeably and remaining safe (though I did have to use a bit of unsafe code to get there).

There have also been small improvements in other areas, such as preventing ratatui_image from doing image resizing, switching to flume for channels, disabling anti-aliasing in cairo's rendering, and a few more things.

If anyone would be interested in a full blog post on this, let me know! I think it would be interesting to write, but might not be very worth-it if nobody cares to read it lol.

[analytic-daemons]

Introduction & Info

If you've stumbled on this blog at random, I suggest having a read of this!

Reason being, the topic of this blog is related to a very niche community and probably won't make any sense at all without context. :P

First thing's first, a quick introduction to me: I'm Rook, a queer agender adult. I use they/them pronouns, thanks!

I'm a daemian, and have been for over a decade. ^u^ I'm going to be crossposting modified versions of my analytic interpretations from TDF to here!

~~~~~

Right, before I get into explanations, some blog info!

I categorise analyses posted here with tags for different groups they belong to. So an ant analysis might be tagged with #invertebrate, #insect, #hymenoptera, and #ant.

Important note: posts here will likely contain images of animals, and that includes animals that may be triggers for those with phobias (such as spiders and snakes)! I will always tag these with the animal for categorisation purposes (e.g. spiders will be tagged with #spider) and I'll try and remember to tag them with trigger warnings too (e.g. #tw spider).

I don't prioritise writing analyses for well-known or iconic animals. You can expect a bit of a mixture!

Yes, you can request an analysis! Bear in mind these things take a big chunk of time to research and write, so please be patient with me. I'll edit this if my inbox gets too full. '^^

I'll be posting shortened versions of my analyses on this tumblr, but I'll also link to the full version on TDF (which has info on how I interpreted the traits I list) in the post!

~~~~~

Okay, Q&A time~

Wait, wait, you lost me. Daemian?

Right, context time! A daemian is a person who practices daemonism. Despite how it might sound, this isn't a spiritual practice or a religion -- more of a psychological thing for most of us!

Daemonism has its roots in the fan community for His Dark Materials (HDM), a book series by author Philip Pullman.

In HDM, every human has a sapient companion called a "dæmon" that represents their inner nature. Dæmons begin their lives as animal shapeshifters, but when their human reaches a certain age they settle into a permanent animal form which represents their human in some way.

Daemians took this idea and built a community and practice around it! Daemonism has two sides: one is to learn to communicate with your daemon, who is usually a psychological aspect of yourself or your mind; the other side is to find a fitting form. The latter is what this blog is concerned with!

The daemian community is a pretty old one by internet standards -- about two decades old now, if I'm remembering correctly! It's always been niche, but we're super welcoming to those wanting to learn more or give it a try. c:

So what's an "analytic interpretation"?

Within the daemian community, a few different ways have emerged to find what form your daemon might take to represent you.

Some of these align closely with the way daemon forms work in HDM -- they use cultural associations and animal symbolism. So, a lion might be proud, bold and lazy!

Analytic is a bit of a different beast. The analytic system was thought up by the daemian community, who wanted a system which more aligned with real animal behaviour rather than anthropomorphisation.

Analytic is a system that translates animal behaviour into human personality traits. There are conventions for how this is done, which give the system a bit of consistency -- but ultimately it's still more of an art than a science, and not everyone would interpret an animal in exactly the same way. That's okay, though! It's just part of the fun. :P

Analyses are write-ups which describe how the author interprets the animal's behaviour. That's mostly what I intend to post on this tumblr!

Analyses are written as resources for the daemian community, to help them find a form which they feel fits who they are. ^^

How does someone find what animal fits them?

Analytic form-finding is a big, big topic! There's a lot of depth to it, really.

Most people start their analytic journey by making a list of their personality traits. They can then compare this list against existing analyses, find animal behaviours that may align, or share the list with the daemian community so others can make suggestions!

If you're interested in getting involved, I highly recommend joining the daemian community!

There's two main, active centres for the daemian community online. The oldest is The Daemon Forum (TDF), which -- given it's a forum -- isn't the busiest place, but there's still folks around!

TDF also has a Discord server, which is a bit more lively! It's a good place to ask questions and interact with members of the daemian community.

Can I ask questions about daemonism / analytic forms / etc. here?

Yes! Absolutely feel free! Daemonism is my special interest of all time, I love talking about it. :D You can ask stuff about general daemonism too, not just forms or analytic stuff!

So... what's your analytic form? >:)

I'm an analytic European hornet and proud! 🐝🐝🐝

[spicy-and-yet-sweet]

Thom Q&A 5/10

41. What is the earliest conversation you can remember having with your human? Em had just finished the HDM trilogy and thought “I wish I had a daemon”. Being the trickster I am, I popped up as a red fox on the pillow next to her and said “But you do.” 42. Do you have a favorite number? What it is? Same as Em’s. 8 43. What is your favorite color? Does it differ from your human’s? I’m rather vainly fond of my own colour scheme. I keep it as often as I can. Em’s favourite colour is deep, wine-toned reds. 44. How would you describe your sense of humor? Dark, dry and sarcastic 45. What annoys you? Willful ignorance. Wet paws. Unnecessary responsibilities. 46. What makes you happy? Thunderstorms. Bonfires. Everyone in our System and the Crew’s. Hiking and backpacking trips. Travel in general. 47. What makes you sad? “Sad” is not an emotion I experience often but it usually occurs when I can’t help Em as much as I want to. 48. Where are you at this moment, and in what form (if any)? I am currently on the back of the couch behind Em’s head as a yellow-throated marten. 49. Do you use any form of social media (besides TDF)? Tumblr, apparently. I’m not a huge fan of social media, however. 50. What does your voice sound like? It sounds a bit like a cross of Ewan McGregor and James McAvoy

[thatdeaffeel]

tdf when UNMUTE! SOUND ON! MUST HEAR! AMAZING NOISE!

could you fuckers PLEASE subtitle things

[evoclangen]

Vague Evoclan worldbuilding things

The world here is obviously different from canon pokemon in several ways but I’m not sure how close to canon it is. I know that humans and pokemon trainers are still real and take the place of twolegs and kittypets but beyond that idk. I don’t think the blog takes place in any canon regions at least because tis too much effort to look up what pokemon would logically be there

I think that other clans are made up of other pokemon. Like maybe theres a MantisClan made up of fomantis and lurantis and scyther or something. If I ever encounter a cat with the right name perhaps EvoClan may not be entirely eevee-based

Idk what I’ll do about starclan and the dark forest. TDF is probably just the distortion world tbh but idk what the starclan lore will be

For the sake of my own sanity shiny pokemon are not real and pokemon with unusual colors are very common in this world. Mostly so that I don’t have to count every grey cat as a shiny eevee because that would be silly

[amimere]

tdf plans!

tdf is coming up and so i have to make some plans, the main thing is that im Not spinning 1+ kg of yarn for a large project this time >.< also my plans this year are abstract in the "i want to do this at some point" sense

with that my current plans are

prep and spin at least some of my angora fiber

spin sock yarn from some of the batts left over from last year

prep (and maybe spin) batts for a wooly hat

spin something colorful, be that from my estonia roving or those nice hand dyed braids i have

experiment with other non-wool fibers

possibly make something out of some handspun

as with last year idk how often ill update the blog but when i do the posts will be tagged tdf and tdf 2023, feel free to blacklist if wanted/needed!

@a-tour-de-fleece

[dayathena]

Intro Post

Hello

I'm Andy, I started daemonism 5 months ago (about) after hearing about it in various places and finally deciding to look up TDP

However, when getting into my own practice I went way too fast, assumed sentience too fast, changed things too fast and etc--I even wrote my RA too fast. I never felt fully connected to my dae or like I even really enjoyed daemonism that much, tbh

So I just decided to restart. My dae's name is Athena and she's tentatively a snow leopard for now.. idk I can't really project that well lol, but she feels very feline to me

This blog exists because I had a dae journal in TDF that I don't have the heart to delete, so because it's irrelevant I'm just making a new one here

Anyway, I look forward to being more active here!

[mallowstep]

i think i saw that post lol and SAME let me be a tigerdove lover in peace

(also i don't think their age gap is super bad???? he is a brand new warrior in fourth apprentice, she's a brand new apprentice, so they have around six moons of difference between them. which is. not that bad at all)

yeah, it's annoying to me because like...it's so not true. i've pretty much blocked and/or unfollowed anyone who does that kind of discourse, but i know at first i saw a lot of it, and i assume it isn't any better.

as for their age gap: the post implicates that tigerheart is around a year older than her, when in reality...that's just not likely. i was working this out earlier on discord:

i got distracted when i came back, and i didn't really finish working it out bc at that point i had moved on, i was just assembling facts in my head. in outcast, i think hjl are...idk, let's be generous and say nine moons old. tdf are implied to be new kittens, but we'll leave their age hanging.

later in eclipse, they're minimum six moons old. they're supposed to be new apprentices, so we'll pencil that in. that puts them at...idk, three to six moons younger than hjl. because of their age in outcast, i'm leaning towards six.

i don't remember exactly when millie's litter was born, but it was...well, it was really early on, wasn't it? because she arrived while hollypaw was still a meddie apprentice. and i don't think she had kits right away, but...urgh, let's say briarlight is nine moons younger than jayfeather, just to get numbers down. it might be more like a year.

we know bbb are apprentices with ivy and dove, so even assuming the maximum age difference, that makes ivy and dove five moons younger than them, and...14 moons younger than hjl.

14moons younger (dove) - 6moons younger (tiger) = 8moons.

hopefully we all agree with my work, here. that timeline actually checks out against tigerheart being a new warrior in the fourth apprentice, so i'm satisfied.

so...yeah. no. it's not that big an age difference.

(also, like. the post itself frames things so badly. i'm sorry to do this but i'm kind of angry,

he became a warrior before she was even out the nursery

that's possible with a six month age gap. that is not at all indicative of problems.

Tigerheart has taken Dovepaw somewhere in the middle of the night where he says that no one will find them there

because they're in a cross-clan relationship. this is so gross. it's framing it like he wanted to isolate her when it's literally because they're in a cross-clan relationship. somewhere no one can find them is so they don't get in trouble for breaking the code. like. jesus.

AND THEN. okay. well actually before that,

this exerpt from Night Whispers

i had to check this on the wiki, but NW is two seasons after the fourth apprentice. aka, dovepaw is nearly a warrior in this scene.

the post is so bad. it twists facts to hate on tigerdove for no reason, and i don't...i just am so fucking exhausted with it.

like jesus christ.

this post made me so angry i actually broke my streak of ignoring that blog. the blog has such a poor grasp on ages and i just fucking. want to scream. y'know how i rant about how feathercrow isn't pedophilia and it's actually disgusting to do that?

anyway i'm sorry i try not to be like this and i try to stay out of discourse but. tigerdove is a huge comfort ship of mine, and despite what you might believe, my comfort ships are things that are. y'know. wholesome family fun goodness. if tigerdove had an unreasonable age gap, i would know.)

<3