The Stitchpunks

Mori: Blessings on whoever scanned a 1947 copy of the lesbian magazine Vice Versa #7 online; it meant I was able to read this fun little short story about a woman who oh noes, is torn between Pat, the butchest of butches, and Flora the femmest of femmes! Whatever is a poor Kiki to do?

Thought other folks might enjoy this. So here ya go! (Sorry, don't think it's screenreadable; I can textually transcribe it if folks want? EDIT from Sneak: pantha did it! Thanks! :D)

(I of course only found out about this thing courtesy of a bibliography of queer speculative fiction at the sci-fi library. WE'RE BACK, BABY!)

Realized we may well have never outright said this, so we might as well make it clear: over the past few years, some of the LB alter family has grown more hivemind-y, and at times with less differentiation, in a way that doesn't bother us.

There are a few demographics in here, and the ones we call the "alters" are all people who split off the original girl who inhabited this vessel (Mori, Rawlin, Gigi, Rogan, Sneak, and Miranda), rather than folks who had their own lives and came here from elsewhere (Biff, Falcon, Grey, Bob, and Mac). The alters are like threads of a greater rope, and we unravel and rebraid ourselves sometimes to achieve our goals, though only while working on corporeal tasks that engross us, such as working on a story. When engrossed in making group art, it can sometimes be hard for us to tell who's doing what! (Other times it is not. Coming In or Staying Out was very much Rogan drawing, while the Rawlin comics are all Mori drawing.) And constantly interrupting ourselves from the work to ask, "who am I?" is pointless and annoying, because in that moment, it doesn't matter.

This has also been happening sometimes while chatting with people or posting. We sometimes don't tag our entries because we don't know who's talking or care so much, or we share enough of an opinion that it no longer matters being like, "all the alters agree on this paragraph though Sneak questions Sentence 6."

Mori, Rogan, Sneak, and Miranda can braid like this without too much trouble, but Rawlin especially and also Gigi are still pretty separate, presumably because they still have a lot of memories and history that remain buried and lost to us. As we deal with that, perhaps they'll be able to rebraid with us easier in the future.

The braiding happens without our conscious effort, and we unravel just as fluidly. We don't think of it or call it fusion or integration, because neither have the right feel or connotations. We were threads ripped from a greater cloth, which can never be remade again. Now we are braiding ourselves in a new way that suits us, when it suits us, a cord and not a cloth.

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We were at the nearby Indian grocery store to stock up on yogurt (only they sell it in the giant quantities we require), when Biff noticed something new: enormous Ziploc bags filled with clearly-homemade momo (Nepalese dumplings). There are a few momo joints around here; maybe it's some sort of mysterious shadow kitchen thing?

Anyway, there were tons of these big gallon-size Ziploc bags, crammed full and tersely labeled in Sharpie as to their contents: (halal) BEEF, (halal) CHICKEN, and... VAG (veg).

It's Pride. We bought the VAG MOMO.

And guys, they were delicious. So flavorful! Cabbage, carrot, (probably?) chickpeas, onion, cilantro (we think), herbs and spices. We've bought bags of potstickers from the (southeast) Asian groceries around town, and they tended to be pretty bland. Nice, but bland, so we took to cooking them with sauces to flavor them up. But these? These packed all the flavor they needed. More support for the "ghost kitchen" idea.

They were expensive ($32), but they were so worth it. That bag will last us a long time; we spent half the bag feeding us and two roommates tonight, and we had leftovers, so that's an easy six meals' worth in one bag, a good treat item. And if I'm going to shell out for food, I'm happy to be giving it to my local Indian grocery and this mysterious momo chef!

Rogan: so, today was rough, but a kind stranger made it much less bad than it could’ve been!

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