#Relationship footnotes

[buckbuckleybegins]

I’m starting to think there was something really fucking weird in those cameos like hypnotizing subliminal messages or something bc WHAT DO YOU MEAN YALL CRASHING OUT THIS HARD ABOUT A WHITE, RACIST, SEXIST, ABLEIST, TRUMP-SUPPORTER MAN THAT CAN’T ACT??????????!!)?!:!!!!/!/!

WHAT IS GOING ON???????

[shouldprobablybereading]

I didn’t notice this sentence when reading the draft. But now I’m thinking of the parallel to how important Navani and Jasnah are to Dalinar’s journey with that same book and visions.

He trusts Navani to write down the visions for him, and she’s the one who figures out that they’re real. It’s part of what makes them spend time with each other again and eventually get married. He asked her to teach him how to read.

Jasnah is of course the one who read the way of kings to him originally. And they are among the first people who he lets go into a vision with him.

[hellofastudysession]

am i rlly going to write a death note literary analysis when i could be doing other things

about the discourse going on in the tag abt "death note is acab and thats why the characters couldnt better the world with the note (/written in somewhat jokey matter)" vs "death note is trying to say we all have potential for evil, especially if you get a chance to insta-hurt ppl without repercussions, and it doesnt matter if youre a cop or not", i personally feel like it ignores the things that i like abt death note, which is "both of these things are true", and simultaneously "both of these things do not matter". the first part of this is dedicated to the first point, the latter to the last.

first point. i think its an important part of the message and themes (unintentional or not, and i lean on the former because... come on, can you really say the author intended you to not think of the cops as good people, at least compared to light and l) that light is a cops son, and that almost everyone who gets the death note is cop adjacent/thinks like a cop and is already corrupt/powerful when they get it (mello raised to think hed be just like l, yotsuba group is self explanatory; you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me teru "churchill" mikami, who was hand selected by light out of a bunch of rabid kira supporters, is a normal citizen). i appreciated the cop post bc its rlly important to not gloss over that aspect.

all of this would be an argument for "only someone like them would do something like this, and i am not like them, so im above them and immune to thinking about what id do with it", but... misa is the MOST important outlier in all of this bc her murders are solely selfish in nature and shes not doing any of this for "the greater good"!!! her nature of being an exception and still a very very bad person is really really important...

or it would be if death note gave a shit about her character at all!!! im not talking about her tragic side, im talking about exploring the ramifications of her killing people the way lights murders are (somewhat) explored. that would strengthen the message greatly! but shes dismissed and that weakens it overall. firstly, she's dismissed by the characters when l only sees her as a way to get to kira and basically shelves her the rest of the time. secondly, shes dismissed by the narrative when her character is gradually ground down to a stump and (not to sound perilously close to the bad takes ppl meme about) she never faces repercussions for her actions. every other character using the death note is treated relatively seriously, but misa just dies bc her love is dead. im not saying this isnt a... fitting punishment or that it isnt in character, but it doesnt fit snugly into the theme other people are talking about of "you reap what you sow" at all.

we do have something of an equivalent to misa's grayscale motives. surprise surprise, its light yagami. first is light's characterization in the musical (i will also note that misa never kills anyone in the musical). light's thinking is coplike, yes — he literally starts his first song by talking about "throw[ing] away the key" — but also, oddly enough, could be read as progressive and therefore sympathetic to tumblr ("let the corporations make the regulations / and hold no one accountable when everything gets wrong / let the rich and famous get away with murder / every time a high-priced mouthpiece starts to talk, his client gets to walk"). compare to the anime and manga, where his bigotry and pride and disgust come from a place of lukewarm dissatisfaction and boredom. the musical has much less time to play around with lights character, so it gives the audience something to immediately hook on. more on how that actually plays out later.

in the animanga, none of this is justified from the start. animanga light could say he was just killing people to make humanity way, way worse, and that wouldnt matter, because at the root of it, it was always his boredom that made him pick up the note. of course he actually believes in justice and believes hes doing the right thing (no, he believes he's doing the wrong thing, for the sake of the world... the right thing, because he is god...), but it was boredom at the start. all animanga light says about justice and righteousness and the law is a front in the end, bc he is exactly like l and misa — amoral. selfish. searching for entertainment. hedonistic. we know this. he kills naomi misora*. he kills lind l. turner. everything hes saying deserves to be dismissed from the beginning.

"but doesnt that mean you agree with the discourse post you wrote this post to argue against?" like i said, i agree with both of them! but i... still think its not right to reduce death note to the message of "the power to kill people is bad". because that is not exactly what the story is saying, even though that's literally its whole plot and therefore reaching that conclusion is self explanatory (lmao). let's look at the concept of mu. nothingness. "there's no heaven or hell". The Real Slay The Princess (Death Note Essay) Starts Here.

in light's final moments in the death note manga, while screaming about not wanting to die, he remembers that the first day they met, ryuk told light that "there's no heaven or hell. no matter what they do in life, all people go to the same place. all humans are equal in death". it is retroactively revealed that light knew this the whole time, operated under this knowledge for all the years we watched him — the knowledge that nothing he does is actually bad, that nothing any human does is actually bad, that shinigami are not "evil", that the universe does not care. that no one cares except humans. this oblivion absolutely terrifies him more than anything anyone could ever do to him. its what he thinks of before anything else as he flails there, screaming, dying. one could say everything he does after that day is him trying to escape that fact, or wrest control over it. but it doesnt work.

here are the lyrics of requiem, the musical's final song, sung over the bodies of l and musical light, a light who was at least somewhat good-intentioned at first: "sleep now, here among your choices / then fade away / hear how the world rejoices / shades of gray / gone who was right or wrong / who was weak or strong / nothing left to learn". this is the final message the death note musical and the manga chose to leave us with. there is no judgement. even after all that acknowledged hurt, after all the damage done, there is no judgement.

in the manga and anime alike, the world is just as fucked when light picks up the death note as when he dies. sure, we as readers can guess otherwise logically (and be optimistic, believing the world was never fucked regardless), but that's not what death note wants you to think. it ends with matsuda and another member of the task force noting how the world is worse again even though they killed kira (matsuda is clearly much worse for wear, but still determined), we see the shitty motorcycle band again, it ends with misa and a whole kira cult on a mountain even though kira died a long time ago...

its extremely important that light is never killed by any human or any aspect of the law. he is always killed by ryuk: a chaotic force completely detached from human sensibilities, one that does not care about good and evil. same with l; in the anime, manga, and musical, he is always killed by rems senseless, morally gray love (and you could argue in the kdrama that hes killed by love there too lol). justice is just a set dressing.

this is not just because death note is a tragedy, because good and evil can still matter in a tragedy. the theme of "nothingness" and "good and evil doesnt matter here" is also shown in a situation relatively unrelated to light winning or losing, or being good or bad. and its in fucking lawlight of all things. we all know ls not a good person. we know lights not a good person. this is tip of the iceberg death note knowledge. but the moment they start to interact, none of that starts to matter. textually, their relationship becomes more important than the people theyve killed and hurt. and the thing is? the thing is? THAT WORKS STORY-WISE. THAT'S ENTERTAINING. AND IT'S NEVER TEXTUALLY CALLED OUT IN A LASTING WAY. l and lights relationship, no matter how much i meme it, is genuinely important to the themes and "mu" because it makes it clear that despite all the pretensions, despite everything, this was never about good and evil. and it still works in the story. this is why death note is simultaneously a comedy — isn't the battle of good and evil supposed to matter more? well, fine, i'll keep watching this anyway. that suspension of disbelief comes crashing down the moment l dies, though, and a relationship built on nothingness (the "mu" sort, meaninglessness, not "character development" nothingness, theres plenty of character development) gives way to just nothingness (again, "mu", not light's post-l depression nothingness), forever.

(an aside: there is no one to root for in death note, and the only things to root for are either interesting character relationships, convoluted plots, or complete and total destruction: for everything to end so no more damage is done.)

not to say that death note does not encourage its readers to consider what damage they might do with the death note (obviously.), or that its characters never do. look at matsuda, a much easier heroic figure to latch on to than soichiro because of his unique place in the cast dynamic and because he's willing to consider both sides of the situation and kill light instantly for all he's done. its just that the story's own stance on the subject is... complicated by the existence of shinigami worldviews and by its own insistence that the world cannot change for the better.

also, this is not to say that this is executed well by the death note manga at all. it is a very strong tool, artistically, to establish and then violently remove any emotional connections between characters and make your story only about the exceedingly convoluted lengths characters go to to survive and catch each other so the reader can realize how ultimately pointless all of this is, but like... is that a good story choice if that's all you do? i would say not really. add in a good dollop of misogyny that destroys the second-to-last character who might actually be an interesting contrast to the rest of the cast's dull one-track focus on winning and justice, and youve got yourself a shitty story that... honestly still achieves what it went out to do, just not in a way id ever want to replicate.

anyway, back to the parts death note's actually trying to say. no matter what any human does in their life, no matter how they try to hurt or help the world, they all die in the end. hey, light, they all die in the end. once dead, they can never come back to life. and the seasons turn. and the world rejoices. and you say "goodbye"...

that's all.

no analysis of death notes overarching theme would be complete without nears final monologue, the definitive roast of light, the "you're just a murderer" speech: "what is right from wrong? what is good from evil? nobody can truly distinguish between them. even if there is a god." if we take this as talking about the actual god in the room (ryuk) as well as light, then near admits that humans will never be able to withstand these overwhelming forces and that, using justice and happiness and selfishness, they are just scrabbling to find meaning in things they ultimately have no control over.

but of course, near does not stop there. "[...] even then i'd stop and think for myself. i'd decide for myself whether his teachings are right and wrong." nears alright with not having control over everything, because near can still control nears own actions. these forces can and do exist, but they have no sway over nears own humanity — unlike light, who caved.

one of the creators of death note said they believe its message is "life is short, so everyone should do their best". the first time i learned this, i was like, thats... nice and optimistic, but an awful reading of the story! "life is short, so everyone should be desperate and striving like light yagami", who literally cut off other ppls lives for his own life? what character in death note are we supposed to strive towards when we "do our best"? they all do awful things with their lives! honestly, maybe they shouldnt have tried their best, if this is what their best is!

but with the view of "mu"... it makes a bit more sense. just a little. maybe.

there is no good and evil. there is only what humans think, and no matter what we do, we all die in the end. it is easy to be crushed and terrified by this in the same way light is, but what is more important than justice and righteousness and finding meaning is... doing your best. not being a person that hurts others too much. not letting yourself get swallowed up by an ideal. not going too far. and simultaneously, trusting yourself.

it leaves a few questions, though... was the currently dead l even a little bit right about his blatantly amoral approach, then? was there a point to this pain, and me slogging through this dumbass manga, and all the people that have lost their lives to a selfish teenage cop's son and the whims of everyone chasing after him? was there a point to any of this...?

the manga** never answers this. it stays clinically impartial until the very end. the musical is anything but clinically impartial (and i love it so much for that), and its ryuk that has the last word.

"there's no point at all."

of course theres no point. none of this was ever supposed to happen. that is what matters more than all the hurt and the crimes and the pain.

and that's... actually okay, because it's over now.

yes, death note has many really important themes present in its story, but its viewpoint is nihilism first and foremost. thats why its so fun and easy to play around with all the other messages, because no matter what fun or torment or awful things or righteous justice or absolute nothingness or sentimentality happens in between, there is always an end.

there is always the end.

[pass3ra]

cressida's storyline was genuinely shameful tbhhh it's like they started rewriting it in the first half of the season then completely forgot about the changes they'd made to make it fit the book plot and it just ends up making everyone else look bad😐 every character in the second half got a "penelope did nothing wrong" lobotomy so we ended up with eloise completely ignoring cressida being sold off to an horrible man (when she made every effort to support her in the first half of the season) and for some reason resenting her for pretending to be lady whistledown? Then they somehow frame her ignoring colin's offensively bad pleas as it being her turning away from redemption when all she's trying to do is escape being trapped in the country with her likely abusive aunt... and it ends with her meeting her horrible fate and it still being framed as tragic only to immediately juxtapose it with the bridgerton family winning the idgaf war while gleefully seeing off francesca and her future dead husband. The bridgertons were the villains of the season frfr

[cruelplatonic]

ruminating on 'the vees died despondent nobodies' thoughts

velvette interrogates vox after she hears him give various conflicting and bombastic accounts on air. a selection of these include: blew his brains out on live television, administered the death penalty for killing his "bitch wife," a tragic accident involving two shetland ponies, dubiously legal iranian yogurts, and a whole lot of cocaine. the actual cause was shockingly ordinary- a heart attack in front of the television, alone, his corpse only recovered after two weeks passed. he was watching a game show and his last mortal regret was never even learning who won, because he died during the commercials.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Dead dashboard confessional parasocial hours: it’s been so nice to see Taylor kind of reclaim her place in the world and work out in real time what does or doesn’t feel good in terms of being out there, and she’s clearly flourishing on a personal level by taking in all these experiences! And idk if it’s just the late hour or the post-livestream hangover or what, but it just kinda feels like something shifted yet again last week — like she and Travis did their goofy little skit because Theatre Kids and it was fun and felt good and she’s like “YES more of that please!”

And I’m not saying that as in “omg she’s going to publish her entire life online now” at all, but more in like, it’s kind of endearing to see her try these new things and figure out her boundaries and be like “yes this sparks joy and I want more of it in my life” (or on the flip side, cutting out the things that don’t and protecting her peace). I know that ET article earlier today was just a fluff piece to keep stoking the fires until they can actually Say It, but there’s something about Tree’s the quote saying they had fun coming up with it and were glad they got to share that moment together and want to keep having fun like that was just really sweet. And again, I don’t think it means they’re going to publicize their lives regularly by any means, I really do feel like it was like, “hey you know what would be funny?” And they took it from there — almost like that skit was for them and we were lucky to be bystanders to the bit lol. They just have so much fun together and it shows. I don’t think they’re trying to capitalize off their relationship, I think it’s just the pop star on a global stage equivalent of that one couple you have in your friend group that always goes all out for Halloween with the elaborate couple costume and commits to the bit every year.

It just seems like they’re really settling into things and figuring out as they go along how they can do the things they want to do within the parameters of what feels safe and joyful and is less scary than it once was. Taylor got to take part in her own way in something meaningful to Travis (e.g. the Super Bowl) and he’s gotten to take part in something meaningful to her (the show) and it’s just really sweet how they embrace each other’s worlds. And maybe it was “new and defining” because Taylor’s never been that overt before on stage on a tour of this scale, and not only did the world not cave in, she had a blast and got to have a chuckle. For someone who said she always wished she had someone by her side to share her successes with and never did even in her longest relationship previously, it’s got to be wild to literally have her partner on stage with her on her record-breaking tour.

No wonder she’s probably gagged at all this. The universe really did shift and it was all for them etc.

[averlym]

"one day, i cut him an apple. when he saw it, he laughed" (click for better resolution!) ,,, tag from @elliotly

[ruushes]

Since you said you liked talking about it, I’d love to hear more about Nox’s dynamic with all the companions/their dynamics with each other!

☺️☺️☺️🥰🥰🥰💕💕💕

sorry this took so long! i wrote Literally So Much Text that mostly wasn't even relevant and was finally was like hmm maybe i ought to trim this down a bit lmao. THANK YOU for asking!!! 😭😭🙏

Lae'zel - strong competing personalities but with underlying shared respect. intensely pious kingsguard for court jester type relationship. she gets them to take things more seriously and they bring out her curious side. disagreements get heated. they sell their soul for her. connection over being born a weapon, losing everything, grief for a version of yourself that can never be.

Shadowheart - meangirl for meangirl relationship. strong foundation of trust. learning to confide in one another vulnerabilities they’d otherwise hide but still hiding from each other sometimes. connection over loss of memory and building a new identity from what remains. rejecting the god that defined their entire lives besties. they give each other their identity crisis haircuts.

Karlach - maybe the most conflicted dynamic? personality-wise they’re house on fire but the chaotic good in karlach struggles with the chaotic just-recently-bumped-from-evil-into-neutral-by-head-trauma in nox. she can fix them (maybe). undertones of denial and desperation. fun-loving when they’re not driving each other insane. fire for matches sort of relationship.

Wyll - shared love of adventure and flair for the dramatic. connection over losses of freedom and autonomy. they help him find a little constructive selfishness and he shows them that selflessness can be rewarding sometimes. person who gives too much and person who takes too much struggling to find balance. deeply earnest guy who gave himself a superhero name for lying fake bitch who also gave themself a superhero name relationship.

Gale - connection over loss of ability, the frustrations of recovery, chronic pain. mildly dictatorial president of the chess club for delinquent class clown relationship. shared love of talking for literal hours. his frank and honest approach to discussing emotions scares the shit out of them. both swing wildly between feeling like the best and the worst and when they're in the same state it’s dangerous.

Astarion - both feeling seen, understood, and accepted at their most monstrous. messy. two people feeling their way forward in the dark and sometimes stumbling. would make a potent evil power couple if they weren’t both innately a little goofy and making each other even goofier. connection over compulsive violence, sexual trauma, dehumanization by a cruel master. learning how to be a person again together. spawn for spawn relationship.

[strugglingatart]

That one tiktok that had every bi/pan/queer girl I saw be like I too want two boyfriends that are also boyfriends to each other but it's Mazey, Fabian and Gorgug... that's it that's the post

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Thinking about how for all I joke about it Cecil never had any choice about forgetting traumatic situations. His brain just does that to cope cause brains don't always know what is right for you.

In fact a lot of times Cecil keeps retraumatizing himself over and over for the smalles amount of closure and even creating problem with his relationship with Abby because he keeps trying to fill the blanks, to understand, researching into it only for his brain to delete all the traumatic memories again and again and again.

Forgive the Gravity Falls reference, but Cecil is not Fiddleford nor part of his cult (albeit they are all also very understandabld in their actions), he never choose it. He might start choosing it sometimes but it is mostly because his brain is already doing it anyway so what's more denail? The idea isn't as terrible because having random blank spots all around is all he ever known. I mean it is implied he've been forgeting things for a long time.

I like to think that moments like Abby story finally playing on the radio this time is Cecil actually retaining it somehow. Even if not in all details. Is Cecil finally healing a bit because his brain didn't just delete everything.

[rat-rosemary]

Wait Philza asked Dream for a blessing too (even without any form of belief in Dream), right? But in that one-shot he seems to despise The Call and think very little of Dream (as a person and a god), so why even ask a blessing?

Techno I can see him doing some research and maybe admitting he was a little too harsh with the whole "becoming full animals with all the instincts thing", and maybe asking Dream for a blessing to try and see for himself.

Phil thinks he should get the blessing as a default for simply wanting the power of it, and since he didn't get it and does not fully understand what it means, he considers it a curse and Dream an unworthy God.

(He did come into that relationship with this mindset tho. That Dream would definitely ne inferior to Kristen but why not get a power up for free if he can? Except it's not for free because that's not how that works and he's pissy about it.)

Techno does study on his own and tries to understand it. The problem is is that Dream is a new new God, as in. He's in his actual 20s. So there's no ancient tomes that he can go read to understand exactly how Dream's powers works.

Everyone who is blessed know what their instincts are, but they also don't know, meaning they understand it on a personal lever but don't know how to explain it to someone else, specifically not to someone who has no clue what they're talking about.

So that leaves only 4 people who are Dream's "scholars" in a way, Wilbur and Tommy, who learned from comparing to other gods and testing one thing or another when they could get away with it, and George and Sapnap, who grew up with Dream and understand him better then anyone else, but who do not want to talk about it

Techno does end up being blessed by Dream eventually, but because Dream is not his main God his blessing is weaker, so the instincts and powers are as well.

[in-mutual-weirdness]

On Dating My Partners

Here is a personal essay on being in a singlet-plural relationship, originally posted on cohost (RIP) and subsequently onto dreamwidth as well. Enough people liked it both times that I'm sharing it here as well.

So, dating and plurality are topics that get covered a fair bit online, when you know the right places to look. Tumblr's got a not-insignificant corner, even if I don't go looking for it. Unfortunately, the broader public not knowing a ton about plurality also means that there's a lot of facets of my relationships that I don't really get to share or talk about. I had a handful of opportunities to write about it recently, so now I'm making a big ol' post about it here. In case it helps people learn, or understand something a little better, or maybe gives some folks an idea of what their lives could look like.

Also! If you want to hear more about dating from plural folks themselves, I'd recommend you check out the work of LB Lee (on dreamwidth and itch.io), and the many videos available on the plural events youtube channel, the archive for the Plural Positivity World Conference. There are other written accounts on people's personal blogs and youtube channels, but these are the ones I personally go back to often.

--- 2 Girlfriends, 1 Butch, and Assorted Roommates in a Trench Coat My partner(s) and I started dating when we both thought we were cisgender. We'd figured out our respective flavors of queer, more or less, but transness was something that emerged over the course of our relationship together. There's nothing quite as fun as t4t high-fiving on the escalators as you swap places in the gender binary.

Of course, even with our established baseline of queerness (and even after my partner had already spoken to me about being nonbinary), I was nervous coming out to them at the time. It's a big deal after all, to tell your partner that you're not the person who you (or they) thought you were. In a lot of ways transness is an unfurling of what was already there, and a partner who is flexible and compatible enough will be able to accept this change as who you are, and keep growing alongside you. But also. How do you know if the person you are going to become is someone who will be compatible with them, or if they will stay compatible with you?

All this to say, I think in a very real way, our existing experience with coming out and transitioning in the context of a relationship prepared us both to better handle the syscovery when it happened.

I'm not gonna like, go into it in a lot of detail. That's really not my story to tell. I will say that I owe a lot to the educational and outreach efforts of folks who were already out and plural, from the 20-teens onward. My partnersys sorted their selves-discovery out with the help of some close plural friends and many good written resources around plurality, questioning, and figuring things out. Meanwhile I'd also benefited from casual internet friendships with both that same system and other systems who I'd met among other internet communities. As many of y'all already know, few things help better than simply getting to know people from the identity/affinity group and these folks becoming part of your normal. And several of them helped me way at the beginning when all of this was new and a little confusing and scary because it was new and not yet known or predictable.

Eventually, people in the system started taking on names, and figuring themselves out as individuals. And that's when I started getting to know them as them and not just as the gestalt single person I'd known up until then. And being able to do that has been one of the best parts of my relationship.

One of the major, baseline requirements toward respecting plurality is being able to treat different system members as independent autonomous people. Yeah, they're a collective in the sense of being all in the same body, and there's gonna be a degree of memory & knowledge sharing depending on the system in question. But like, they're still separate entities from each other, which means you gotta forge a relationship with each of them as individuals. What was once a relationship with a single person now is a multifaceted web across multiple people, with different comfort levels, boundaries, and personal tastes. That was the first major piece of advice I got, when I binged through a DID youtuber's channel[1], and watched the video their partner made.

In his case, he spoke about how his partner was Jess, the system host (not all systems have one, but this one did). The other system members were all distinct people who he forged unique relationships with. Some of them were still interested in physical affection/intimacy, while others weren’t, and they were simply roommates/friends. Even though they weren't all dating, however, he saw forming a relationship with them and getting to know them as an essential part of his relationship with Jess, and part of his duty as a partner. These were important people in her life, after all, and at minimum he didn't want to be an asshole. So he spent time with all of them, talked to them about their interests, and did stuff they liked together. No matter who was out, he respected them as a person, respected their autonomy and their boundaries when they differed from his partner’s, and didn’t treat them as peripheral or disposable, or do things like ask them to bring his partner back out, please. (Fewer ways to make someone feel unwanted than to directly ask them to get someone else instead. They have a place in this body and in this world as much as anyone else in the system does.)

Some systems do date as a collective, where every member participates in the romantic relationship. My partnersys does not, however, so our relationship is much more like the one from the youtube channel. Three of the most common fronters are my partners (the aforementioned two gfs and one butch [Edit: at time of this repost, we're now married]). The rest of the system members are either close friends, or similarly are people I care about because of their connection to the system and my partners. If they don't show up externally often, I may not be very close to them, but like. They're still people in my family unit and household.

All of us are tied by our mutual connections to the members I am dating, and our lives intersect closely due to us living together and all the system members sharing a body. Not all of the system members share romantic love with me, whether due to incompatibility, personal disinterest, or stuff like "being 12 years old". To a degree, I was already used to dealing with these sorts of incompatibilities or drastic changes in boundaries - they just used to manifest as shutdowns where my partner would suddenly withdraw from affection and not want to be touched. Some of that was more typical "I feel like shit and don't want to be touched", but some of that was also people with very different boundaries sharing a body in an atmosphere where they were socially expected to be available and receptive to touch at all times, and failing to do so was a mark against them as a Good Partner. (Even if I knew to respect sudden withdrawals, none of us are immune to societal messaging.) If anything, knowing what's behind it has made it much easier to accommodate and meet everyone's differing needs. It's made me better at being a truly safe person to be around, because I know they're there and can respond accordingly.

It is nice being able to date my 3 partners. In the same way that transness is an uncovering of what was there, I recognize aspects of each of the system members in ways they acted before discovering plurality. We have the many years of previous relationship history to build from, but it is a joyful thing to get to learn each of them as themselves. The things they like, the specific dynamics we build between each other, the ways they understand themselves and their relationships. All 3 of them are therian and bring those aspects of their identity into their relationships as well (i.e. ways they like to give/receive affection, ways they structure their relationships. The wolf has his pack, and one of the dragons has her hoard - each valued, unique, but never given primacy or ownership over her. I will be her husband, but she won't be my wife.) Getting to know them means each of them get to be loved as themselves, and like. Yeah, I am loved many times over because there are more of them. I love the cheerful energetic affection of Quinn, the gruff protective masculinity of Ace, the devastating femme elegance of Orchid. Each of them show up so differently even within the same body - in language, in voice, in mannerisms. I love how each of them love me in different ways, and how that feeds different facets of me. I love being shared by them, and the ways they'll tease me about each other. I love the act of caring for each other, and the ways those make our collective lives better because their needs are being met.[2] I love the ways that these have all added to my life.

--- Intersections with Polyamory: or, Sharing the Trenchcoat On top of me having this web of relationships, each of them also have their own partnerships with others. Some of these are spread across multiple bodies, and some of these are other folks within a single system. I make the distinction because sharing a body and therefore having to share consciousness and control of said body imposes some practical limitations on your daily life.

For one thing, you straight up cannot control who's at the wheel at any given time. Some systems have no control over switching, but even those who can control switching and consciously hand off front time to each other don't always have that control. Sometimes people might white-knuckle from stress and get stuck in front, to the point that even if they try to let someone else show up, they'll resurface by accident. Sometimes people run out of steam sooner than expected, or are struggling with something that makes being present too painful, and have to hand it off to someone else. Others might spontaneously show up because something has pulled them to front, or they get so excited they barge past everyone else.[3] They might be one of your partners, they might be someone else. It means that even if you're dating multiple people and hold them in equal esteem, you won't always get to spend as much time with them as you want. Or they might want to spend part of their limited slice of front time talking to other people, who they also have relationships and obligations to. Time is still a very present constraint, when the same 24 hrs and limited physical energy must be shared across multiple people.

Even if you can request people to get someone else...well, see what me and that other partner said in the previous section. That is not a request that can be made lightly, if you value everyone's autonomy. If you make someone feel unwanted, or disrespected, or less important/real than the others, you are Being A Dick. And that unequal treatment causes internal conflict for the system. Simply from a pragmatic point, you make shit worse for your partner if you cannot be nice to the people sharing their head.

In terms of how that impacts relationships and communication, for me it means having to save shit for the next time they're around. If I want to talk to Ace about a book we both read, I gotta wait til he's around. If I found some cute gay art for Quinn, I save it if she's out of town, so to speak. Yeah, if I post the link in our DMs, she'll be able to see it eventually, but I can't just keep spamming Quinn-links into the channel when someone else is there. It gets tiresome for them, especially if their interests don't overlap.

Their level of internal communication means that I can mention stuff to others and they can usually pass it on, or have a solid guess on what that person's response would be. For example, when I wrote a book review post and talked about reading it with Zanj (one of the "roommate" suite), I sent that passage to Quinn for a onceover before hitting post. Zanj eventually also showed up to comment directly (another reason to be careful with direct communication - you may unseat the current person in front if the person you've summoned crowds them out). For bigger things, like taking on a roommate or making travel plans, or anything that needs direct input from everyone, you do just gotta wait. The opinion of one person won't necessarily reflect the opinion of another, and while they can discuss stuff internally to reach a collective decision, that shit also takes time. Some folks may be difficult to reach, or they may need to resolve an impasse first.

Sharing the trenchcoat here also refers to the complications of dating multiple people in the same body. It is important that you not forget who they are. I've had moments where one person was out more consistently for a very long stretch of time, and when a different partner was out for a while, I treated them like the first person out of habit - got surprised by something the second partner did differently, or when they expressed an interest that the first partner didn't have. If you can see how that would be frustrating or hurtful to people who didn't share a body - congratulations. You now know exactly why that felt shitty for the second partner.

It is also important that you share independent time with each person. Yes, they have collective memory, so a date night I enjoyed with Ace is something that all three of them can remember (and I'm pretty sure Quinn stole his leftovers the next day for lunch). But like. This follows once again from the basic principle of "they are independent autonomous people." They will want different things. One may enjoy much more casual intimate touch, another may be asexual and disinterested in that kind of touch. The ways you banter with each other or spend your time together will be different. And like, shared memory doesn't mean they will feel the same immediacy to that memory - memories Belong to the person they happened to, even if you share the same brain. Quinn and Orchid know about the date, but they don't feel connected to the memory in the same way because it happened to someone else. If I want to date them, I have to date them. Otherwise all I'm giving them is secondhand affection and care. Not a great way to prove that you care about and value them as a person.

At the same time, this relationship arrangement is also different from previous poly arrangements I've had with people across multiple bodies. It's certainly cheaper to find shared housing with three partners if they're all in the same meatsuit. I don't have to navigate travel or scheduling in the same way - they handle the sharing of time among themselves, according to ability and circumstance. I just wake up and see who's around that day. And even if they're not in front, they can still be around. I have physical tokens and reminders around - a plushie they like, or a necklace they own. I already liked keeping orchid flowers in the house for personal and cultural reasons - now I have one more. The person who's in front may also pass on commentary or reactions, and I briefly get to glimpse them from their life inside. They all have a shared collective history, and we draw from the same 8-year accumulated bank of in-jokes and shared language. They rotate in and out of my daily life with ease, immediacy, and fluidity. It was different from the much slower work of building from scratch with someone entirely new. But it is nice to do that work as well. There is a different kind of novelty in getting to know someone with an entirely different life history, or physical body. This doesn't diminish the value of my partners, or make them less real as individuals. Just a difference in circumstances.

--- Why write this post? Plurality is pretty damn normalized in a fair few corners of the internet. I can track my arc of education and acclimation from stigma to familiarity. But that didn't mean I was prepared for it to enter my life in this way. It's been a net good, but a lot of it was stumbling through a significant period of uncertainty and having to figure shit out as we went. Some of that is unavoidable, because paradigm shifts are kind of just like that. My partners couldn't tell me shit they hadn't figured out yet, and they had to establish their own baselines first before we could reach a point of stability. I think about transition and relationships, and the difference between partnerships that do or don't survive a gender transition. It's no mistake that as more people become familiar with transness, there are more relationships that survive intact. Sometimes people change in a way that does make them incompatible, and that's always a possibility even with partners who do understand and support you. I would be lying if I said that all of this was easy, or that it didn't require a lot of effort and patience along the way. And sometimes that is a source of incompatibility as well.[4]

But also I don't think it takes a saint to date a plural person, anymore than it takes a saint to date a trans person, or a disabled person, or to date interracially. The partner from the youtube channel knew very little about DID when he first started dating his partner as a teen. But his reaction to hearing her say there were other people in her head was to go, "okay, so when can I meet them?" Stigma and oppression make things harder, by exerting pressure on relationships and priming people toward suspicion, scorn, and fear, instead of the curiosity and open-mindedness necessary to support you as partners. It is scarier to face down a paradigm shift in your relationship if you have no understanding, or a misinformed understanding of what that change will entail. I think about "trans widows" who see their exes' transitions as harm done to them, or see their exes as fundamentally dishonest or deceitful people. I think about common public perception of plurality, and the ableism bound up in it. I think about what I might have done with my fear and confusion, had I not found safe and reliable sources of information, had I not already been cross-trained through my immersion in transness, had I not had safe avenues to process and handle those raw feelings without dumping them onto my partner(s). I think about what would've happened to my partner(s), had their selves-actualization come at the cost of a foundational relationship they'd built their existing life around. There is a world where this went much, much worse. I know the outcome we got is not something that everyone gets, and christ but I want to make that a little more common. I want to help even one person get a better outcome. So here's my amateur roundup of things you need to know, if a partner comes out as plural.

Don't panic. It may introduce a lot of new problems or factors you don't know how to deal with yet. But you can and will learn. People have done this before, and will be able to tell you how to do it. You just have to find the people and places to ask.

Be supportive. Selves-discovery is a complicated and scary process. They're gonna be uncovering a lot and learning a lot of necessary skills on the fly. And you, as an established stabilizing presence in their lives, will be an important source of support through this process. Be ready to listen to them, no matter how strange or contradictory the things they're saying might sound. They may describe things that sound physically impossible, like phantom limbs, or having teleported into the body from somewhere else, or feeling like they're a different age, ethnicity, or species from the body. They may vacillate between believing they're plural or thinking they're a fraud and it's all fake. Believe them about what is true for them in that moment. Brain stuff is weird and symbolically driven - your perception, especially if it's persistent, is real enough to directly impact you, and flat disavowal doesn't make the impact or perception go away. You have to respond to the impact, and do what makes your life easier to live. Even in a case of clear-cut denial, when you see pretty clear evidence of plurality, you have to meet the denier where they're at. Otherwise you'll piss them off or make them feel unheard.

Be a safe person. If they ask you to keep their confidence, keep it. If someone new shows up and they're really scared/confused/sad/angry, help them de-escalate. They may not know who you are, or who/where they are, and need grounding. Find out how they're feeling, and what they need, and help them get it if possible. You may need to use the dementia toolkit (i.e. if they ask for something that isn't possible/safe, like "going home" to a place that no longer exists). Try to meet the need that's driving the request, whether that's feeling safe, or having autonomy, or wanting something familiar. I've sent scared kids off to work with a childhood stuffed animal, and while that didn't fix everything, it did help them calm down enough for an adult member to take the helm.

Give your partner space to discover things. This is the most important lesson I learned from transness in relationships. Open a trans subreddit or online community space and you will find stories aplenty of partners who tried to bargain folks out of their identity, or who imposed their desires over a trans person's exploration and self-definition. The same thing applies here. I kept my theories and thoughts to myself unless I was prompted. I let them tell me who they were, and asked questions about things I was curious about so I could learn more. And I also gave them space to be uncertain, so they could figure things out at their own pace instead of being forced to provide false reassurance or certainty. If they changed their name and pronouns, if they wanted to start presenting differently then they had before, I didn't get in their way. It will be new and will take some getting used to, but the principle is similar to transness. Here are people who have never gotten to develop an independent identity. You gotta let them do it. They will be happier this way.

Build your own support network and knowledge base. This may be difficult if you don't have many people in your life who know about plurality. My partner(s)' syscovery was also the creation of a new closet to maintain, and I needed safe outlets to handle my stress and uncertainty. For the latter, this meant turning to youtube and educational resources to learn things and dispel uncertainties. For the former, this meant hitting up online community spaces which had no connection to my partner(s) and asking folks who were knowledgeable about plurality to help me out. I could be scared, or frustrated, or messy, and return to my partner(s) after releasing that shit so it didn't drive my behavior toward them. You may also end up turning to loads of different people for their experience in completely unrelated things - an AAC user friend helped me a lot with supporting a system member who didn't talk out loud. You truly don't know what new experiences or identity axes each system member will fall along.

Respect everyone in the system. This includes angry or self-destructive folks. They may show up and try to sabotage shit, or say really angry and hateful things toward you or your partner. You don't have to lie down and take it, but you do have to remember that they're still part of the system, and they may likely be a permanent resident. They're also caught up in a situation they cannot control, with people they have to share a brain and body with, and cannot reasonably make any distance from. It would be surprising if no one flipped their lid from time to time. Try to establish trust and understanding - show them that you're willing to respect and listen to them. That is a much better basis for establishing improved relationships once they calm down, and are given the choice to cooperate with the collective.

I hope this was helpful, and thank you for reading. When I originally posted it on cohost, I'd intended it mostly as a chance to talk about my relationships and as an educational guide for singlets. What followed was a lowkey overwhelming amount of positive reception from plural folks, and I'm kind of jazzed as hell that I could write something like this well enough that many of y'all liked it too. So thanks for your cosign, I'm glad I could make something useful and good. Also! I would love to hear from others about their relationships. A lot of this stuff is individual, and I wasn't able to articulate some of the major points from here until coming across folks who experienced it differently. And it is nice hearing people talk about their relationships, and to swap stories with each other. ----------

[1]: For those curious, it was MultiplicityandMe. Very much a textbook DID system, and while I had to move past the DID framework into other forms of plurality (which can function in very different ways), their videos helped me a lot during the early syscovery days. Coincidentally, they achieved their final fusion goal right as I started watching them. [2]: One of the fun ones is that Ace is chronically sleepy as hell, due to being really badly understimulated. He needs a lot of physical activity, so recently I've started just fucking wrestling with him whenever he shows up. It is like night and day, how much happier and energetic he gets afterward. And even though I can't actually beat him, or get tired before he does, it's still just Fun to do. At the old apartment, he'd also sometimes just fuck off for an hour long walk, to basically the same effect. [3]: A particularly affectionate member once had to be "picked up like a puppy dog and dragged 10 ft back" after they stole someone else's designated cuddle time. It was extremely endearing [4]: I knew folks who broke up with partners because their exes couldn't adequately handle their mental health challenges. If you have frequent panic attacks, and your partner tends to spiral out instead of being able to calm you down, that's a major incompatibility even if this person is otherwise perfectly lovely

[eraserheadadult]

ive wondered abt this for years now whether me being a very physical person is just the way that i am or it’s to a degree thats Unhealthy and Weird. but most people ive dated for longer than like. a week .have at some point or another gotten annoyed with me for being too clingy (physically). i now get very self conscious abt it im pushing 30 asking my therapist shit like do i want to hold hands a normal amount

[appleciders]

MMMMMM

[lansangprincess]

the only thing that would piss me off about jere being written as a typical frat boy is that, as a queer person, college is usually where u become 10x gayer 🥹

i need to see belly and jere having dates at drag shows, pride, etc. That could be cute as hell !!!

[kokushibitch]

one thing i will never forgive KNY for is the absolute brutal pacing. im sorry but im a big defender of "filler eps" because that's where we get thee most development for characters and character relationships which can be integral to making people care about the characters. demon slayer fell shoooooort on genuine character moments and definitely relied on sad backstories/memories for like all of its emotional beats and it got old fast