acacia-shade

[acacia-shade]

I’m not a system/plural, but I took the advice of looking at myself in a plural lens and it’s astonishing how much more ok I was with being kind to myself, when I approached some aspects of my mind the way I would treat someone else. Just simplest things like telling myself how well I’m doing or that I deserve to rest filled me with a warm and intimate feeling that I don’t often get and I don’t feel the need to criticize myself all the time now. 10/10 highly recommend

That’s awesome!! Yeah definitely, if this new outlook just helps you see how to be kinder to yourself, that’s still useful!

[acacia-shade]

For my final project in my film photography class this past semester, I made plural family photos! Each member of the system who wanted to be photographed had their picture taken, then I scanned and combined the film negatives to bring system members together in a way you can't do physically!

Here's what the negatives looked like for one of them

It was very sweet to see how touched the systems I worked with were by the results. It felt good to give back to my community in that way ❤️

You can find more of my work on my portfolio website!

[acacia-shade]

I love finding random intros to plurality or other stuff from niche places that introduce concept as if they’re a common phenomenon or topic of discussion but it’s something you have literally never heard of. 

[acacia-shade]

system protip: if trying to keep track of your switches and fragments feels impossible and is driving you crazy, stop doing it. or at the very least dont put as much weight into making it perfect. you dont need to track every switch, you dont need every fragment logged. sometimes its easier to just exist as a system than drive yourself up the wall trying to micromanage everything about your system

[acacia-shade]

median culture is one moment you feel like you are too distinct to be median but then the next you are like "??? idek which one of us is fronting we all look the same..."

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[acacia-shade]

It’s okay if you don’t know who you are. It’s okay if you don’t have clear profiles on every system member. It’s okay if you struggle to make sense of yourself and your alters.

You can take as much time as you need to figure it out, but it’s also okay if you never figure it out.

You are allowed to simply exist as you are. Even if you don’t know who that is. Even if it changes by the hour.

[acacia-shade]

I say shit like "If my memory serves me" knowing damn well it serves the dark lord

[acacia-shade]

the dark reality of being plural is that you can't organise your system at all because every single alter gets in front, thinks "god this method of organisation is ass, i'm making my own version" and now you have 3 websites, 3 google docs, 2 spreadsheets, a simply plural, 5 obsidian vaults, 8 files across 2 different note apps that you haven't updated since 2005, and both mediawiki and dokuwiki on the same PHP server about your system and none of them have information about every alter

[acacia-shade]

gonna doxx an alter

[acacia-shade]

Absolutely obsessed with the new spot I found recently. Love when I let my instincts lead me, I always end up in the most peaceful places.

[acacia-shade]

“I want to be loved” <- must first go through the mortifying ordeal of being known

[acacia-shade]

[acacia-shade]

Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass

[acacia-shade]

🦀 and 🦑 for the ask game maybe?? ^_^

oh an ask hi o/ thanks

🦀 who is the BRITISH one

uh that'd be B (not his name, he doesn't want it shared here) probably. actually now that I think about it Tim has more of an accent but B has more vibes~ I think lol

🦑 which pillow pet are you (current fronter)

not me exactly but someone in cocon saw this when I was looking and really likes it, thinks it looks like them so yeah :]

[acacia-shade]

system ask game except the questions are moderately unhinged

🐠 who has the strangest fictional crush?

🦀 who is the BRITISH one

🐬 most likely to be turned into a frog by an evil witch :(

🦑 which pillow pet are you (current fronter)

🐳 who says y’all unironically

🐙 who’s the best at fronting (interpret this how you will)

🪼 who has the most obscure source? who has the most well known?

🐡 who’s the most insect adjacent. either in the little guy way or the EEEAAAAGHHHTKGJF FNN KILL IT way

🐟 who should be at the club rn

[acacia-shade]

This was going to be in the tags but actually I need to ramble about this because the only people I know who like this series don't really know anything about plurality so I've never really gotten to talk about this.

This this this this! There's a character and sure her plurality is symbolic of a bunch of stuff for her but it is also such obvious plurality it's not even funny. She is absolutely a system and I hate that people treat it like she's not just because it's like “just symbolism” or metaphor or something. She's like aware even? that she's a system even if she doesn't have the exact words to describe it in her world but like she knows. She outright expresses (at least in her thoughts? don't remember if she tells another character but I think she does maybe?) that there isn't only one person in her head and that there are different 'versions of her' who sometimes take control!

Like even the stuff it's supposed to be a metaphor for are like common plurality things. It's to show that she's compartmentalising stuff, that she's got trauma that she's not fully able to deal with at the moment, that she feels like she needs to become someone else to deal with certain situations. And I'm just like. all those things are really fucking common among systems! She can be a system and still be dealing with that stuff! It doesn't negate those things! Like it's also symbolic of other stuff but again that doesn't mean she's not a system, just that she has certain character traits and things to deal with.

And the plurality of it all makes so little sense to deny because just- she's a system. She is made up of different autonomous parts. Her system switches, and talks to each other internally, they have different priorities and wants, different internal appearances, different goals, different speech patterns and ways of holding themselves, they have different relationships with the people around them, and I'm just. How much does it take to 'prove' that she's a system. At what point does she get to stop being just a metaphor? Obviously you don't need all that to be a system, we don't necessary have all these things ourselves even. It's just this character does have all this stuff which makes it really damn obvious that she's a system for me at least.

i just feel like in general plurality is CONSTANTLY used as a metaphor in fiction. which isnt a bad thing!!! hell, its like that in real life, sometimes. but the problem comes when people do the whole "no no no its not plural because its a metaphor!" as if that erases the plurality. and if it were just a sometimes thing thatd be okay, but when like 70% of people like you in stories are like this and then everyone says that about them it gets really irritating really fast. especially because... then its difficult to approach the subject at all in any story after people have repeatedly ignored or the plurality reading or flatout like. insulted people for pointing it out. "its a metaphor" doesnt mean ot cant be anything else, and maybe consider why you say every plural character is a metaphor, also

[acacia-shade]

[ID: an illustration of stylized rainbow wolves running to the left, overlapping one another with translucent color. End.]

Playing with colors and tangents