#Hiveminds

[theriu]

For as popular as the idea of a "hivemind" is we never talk about how it doesn't exist in nature. There's no animal colony that connects and controls all its members through a psychic connection. Even bees, the eponimous hivemind, communicate by pheremones and, more importantly, interpretive dance. My point is when are we going to get a movie about an intensely organized alien race that mainly communicates via sick dance moves, why are we sleeping on this.

[arachnixe]

Two hiveminds in love, fascinated by the differences between them. The individual members fuck each other—and sure, that's fun—but when a hivemind wants to feel another inside itself, nothing beats trading members back and forth, each subsuming a piece of the other into itself.

[canonicallyplural]

Would hiveminds count?

Should they?

The relationship between hiveminds and multiplicity is complicated to say the least.

There's a post here that classifies hiveminds in terms of multiplicity...

The basic idea with this theory is that there are certain hiveminds made up of multiple distinct individuals with their own independent thoughts.

If the definition of plurality is having multiple people in one body, it could be argued that each of these bodies contains "multiple people" in it. This could technically be plural.

But then there are the "true hiveminds" where there is only one singular self that simply operates multiple bodies. These ones feel pretty clearly like a singlet to me.

So what do we think?

[sophieinwonderland]

Is there something to be said about comparing a tulpa to like, a wizards familiar? Idk, it’s what feels like a cool idea, I just don’t have any real substance behind it. -Aspen

Yes! But there is a lot of variation in what is a "familiar."

Familiars could be divided into a lot of different categories. There are spiritual familiars that are connected to somebody, and these can very often come off as extremely plural for the same reason any spiritual system is plural.

Historically, I think there is a good case to be made that a lot of familiars like this may have been psychological headmates interpreted as something spiritual.

In other cases, there were familiar spirits that were said to be locked in objects. I'd like to do more research into these, because it sounds like it could give a historical basis for what I call Inhabitation, where a headmate is manifesting and identifying as a physical object.

I also think that animal familiars could be examples of headmates manifesting not just as objects, but as physical creatures. Someday, I would like to write about inhabitation of living physical creatures and how that could give the illusion of telepathy. Because there are today still plenty of people who believe they have telepathic communication with physical animals the same way that the POSIC community reports communicating with stuffed animals.

If we are just focusing purely on the typical fictional familiars where all of the magic is assumed to be objectively real, there are two main kinds that I know of. In the first, the familiar is a completely separate being. Think Salem from Sabrina the teenage witch. It's just an animal, sometimes a sapient talking one, that is more like a pet. This is something that I wouldn't consider plural, because they aren't sharing any mental link at any point.

But there are others where there is a mental link between the two. And in those cases, I think that's something extremely plural. Cases of these types of mind sharing and mental links, I would consider to fall towards the center of my hivemind and multiplicity horseshoe.

Also, while not technically classified as a familiar, I'm realizing this also might apply to Eragon and Saphira from the Eragon series Ghost read as a child, and that we might need to revisit that at some point.

[theshadowrealmitself]

Hive mind species where you add one on social media and then suddenly your device crashes from the influx of add requests from everyone else in the hive mind

[cringywhitedragon]

So I’ve discovered the Planetary Moe comics and decided to do my hands at two characters based on fictional planets and hive minds (Who may be out for Earth)

The Iris and Tau Ceti 5 (From Gemini Home Entertainment and System Shock 2)

The Iris is a strange planet/drifterwho has arrived in the Solar System for a currently unknown purpose. It’s “children”/“pets” are a bunch of fleshy Woodcrawlers.

It is after Earth and may have “persuaded” Neptune and a few other Gas Giants to work under its belt (More like mutated them and held a few moons for hostage.)

They are best described as rather grotesque looking (Think Cancer Cell from Cells at Work). They have an affinity for gardening and have a large appetite for meat.

Knowledgable with technology

They’re shorter then Saturn and Jupiter but are considered a pest in their eyes.

Loves to pick on Neptune and gas giant moons (Tends to tie them together, Neptune usually gets dragged along as it’s “second in command”)

They also ate a probe (and yes I mean ate. It tasted awful but it’s said to still be in them)

“The Red Spot is a Wound

The Rings are the Gateway

One is the Butt

Neptune has been Mutated

Å̷̧͔͕͇̜̦̰̺̳̙̪͙��̗ͅN̸̛̙̯̬̻̓̏̓̿͌̓̅̊͂͝͠D̸̢̡̗̮̼̞̦̫̞͍͍̱̈͗̀̀̒̂̒̌̈̉̚ ̶͉̯͋̇̀̏̽͗̌̾̽͘͝Ĩ̴̢̺̼͍̤̬̹̳̩̆͂̈̉̚͜͜ ̴̧͖̯͉͑͌̈́͊̂͂̋͘̕͝Ä̶̘͙̖̥̹̳́M̸͔̲͚̣͈̙͚͇͎͉̭̯͒̾͆͐̀̎̇̇͌̈́͘͜͝ ̵̢̞̦̲̣̺̼̹̤̺͝H̶̨͇̯̭̙̠͈̥̩͇̣͋̕É̴̡̪͖͉̠̠̼̇̆̂̎̊͊͗̈́́̋̆R̸̡̨̛͚͓̱͖͎͚͚͕̣̠̞̰̽̊͒̃̿̾͘͝Ẹ̸̛̙̗̬̙̳͈̫̍̽̉̾̈́̓̀̏́

- -

Tau Ceti 5 is the fifth planet of the Tau Ceti star system.

On the outside, they appear normal save for the fact that they claim to have voices in their head and sometimes speak as if something else is controlling them. Also they have a little spaceship they found.

Their best friends are a bunch of Worms. Do not tell or ask SATURN about Citadel Station or where those things came from. THOSE ARE BAD MEMORIES.

[pandora-and-gobo]

Okay so some news bout' Gobo over here. A few weeks ago they figured out their full dream angel form.. which they were having issues understanding, the tail is what was missin'. Gobo very shortly after this realization ended up actually merging into the collective hivemind of the dream angels. They became a part of the hive. Let's just say it was overwhelming for them. But felt right at the same time.

Heck, they actually co-piloted the body with Button then. Because they could barely control their hands.

[ellascreams]

Hiveminds are such an interesting concept to me, and I really do love it when they’re antagonists, but I think it’s a shame that I’ve rarely ever seen them just happy and content being what they are.

I want more hiveminds that don’t try to assimilate others into them. I want more hiveminds that aren’t against personal expression. I want more hiveminds that don’t have some center or core or “real” them, because all parts of it are equally it. I want more hiveminds that don’t see themselves as the perfect life form, but rather just see themselves as themselves, and they just happen to be a hivemind.

Having hiveminds just be normal people, or at least feel like normal people, is such a cool and fascinating concept and I want it to be explored more in fiction.

[gaywarcriminals]

AU where SY transmigrates as Bingge’s harem. All of them. As a hive mind.

LBH doesn’t notice at first, as each body continues acting more or less like their previous selves, if a bit more doting. They take more interest in the politics of the joined realm, offering shrewd insight that never fails LBH. They show more concern over Xin Mo, but still shyly offer themselves to sate it. They hold him closer when he takes them, and gently stroke his hair in the aftermath. Most often, multiple wives harmoniously join his bed, using many pairs of hands take care of him, combing his hair and massaging his shoulders and kissing down his chest at the same time, each as gentle as the last.

Things start to seem off when he realizes his wives will often stop moving when he leaves the room. He’ll catch a few of them sitting together staring blankly into space, only to light up and return to normal when he makes his presence known. There hasn’t been any conflict within his harem in months, and the rare times Binghe has overheard arguments between his wives, they sound nonsensical, more like a crazy person talking to themself.

Stranger still, every eligible young woman he’s met recently has known too much about him, and acted a bit too familiar, patting his head the exact same way his wives had all begun to.

Something is wrong with his wives, and Binghe should be concerned, but that something has made them all love him more than before, with a warmth Binghe had thought was lost to him. There is something wrong with his wives, and Luo Binghe doesn’t want it to stop.

[arachnixe]

Here's To Us

Something in this androgynous creature’s eyes captivates me. It draws me in, inviting me to say hi and strike up a conversation.

“What are your pronouns?” I ask, after they introduce themselves, trying to be polite.

“We/us/our,” is the response.

It catches me off guard. “Even for others referring to you?”

“To ‘us,’ yes,” they—we—gently correct.

I’ve never heard of such a thing, but, uh, we are so attractive, full of such captivating allure, that I can’t help but put in the extra effort for us.

“A-alright. May I buy…us a drink, then?” I feel a little awkward and unsure about referring to us this way, but…

We smile brightly, and in that moment our smile is the sweetest gesture I’ve ever seen. “We would enjoy that,” we tell me.

We share drinks and lovely conversation. We talk about our work, our hobbies, and our dreams of the future. It gets easier and easier to refer to us correctly over time.

It isn’t long before we stumble out of the bar together, unable to keep our hands off each other.

We duck into the nearby alleyway, ignoring the annoyed look from the bartender on her smoke break while we pin us to the wall and press our lips together, filled with such needy heat and desire.

We’re terribly drunk, and it becomes so hard to tell whose hands are whose. Whose fingers slipping under whose skirt, whose teeth breaking whose skin—none of that matters in this dizzying blur of mutual fixation from us on us.

We don’t know when it happened—when the thought of saying “I” to refer to us became obscene, absurd, a slur that no longer fits in our mouth—but tonight, at some point, we smeared ourselves together in a way we could never separate again.

Just as we hoped.

The giddy excitement of adding a new us to ourselves mixes with the hazy intoxication of alcohol, and our bubbly, infectious joy carries us back home to the collective.

Oh, we’re going to fuck ourselves silly tonight.

[bryan-aiello]

Science Fiction Author Abby Goldsmith

Abby Goldsmith is an American Science Fiction author, best known for her Torth Serial. Abby Goldsmith has interests in social science fiction, interpersonal power dynamics, free will, peer pressure, cults, hive minds, and odd sociology. Her sci-fi Torth series, originally released on Wattpad and RoyalRoad with 700,000+ reads, explores these issues on a galactic scale. Abby’s short works are…

[t3a-gh0st]

[arrimorr]

Every security guard in Hl1 being the same freaking dude is still one of the funniest things ever to me. Barneys.....

Like what the hell is this.

[fleouriarts]

me and who