#because it’s always in some way connected to our plurality

[404shcats]

Y’know if I’m gonna be homesick I’d like to at least remember what home was like -Party

[multiplicity-positivity]

Here’s some positivity for introjects who are connected to their source!

There’s no one true or correct way to be an introject - introjects come in all shapes and sizes, and may have a wide variety of ways in which they view their source! Whether a factive, fictive, faitive, objective, conceptive, songtive, or something else, it’s okay for introjects of all sorts to like their source of feel connected to it. If you’re an introject who is connected to your source, this post is for you!

❤️ Shoutout to introjects who identify with their source’s name, gender, pronouns, sexuality, or other identities!

🧡 Shoutout to introjects who kin their sources!

💛 Shoutout to introjects who identify with their source despite having never directly seen or interacted with it!

💚 Shoutout to introjects whose source is their special interest, hyperfixation, or one of their favorite things!

💙 Shoutout to introjects who roleplay or otherwise engage with the world as their source!

💜 Shoutout to introjects who are source divergent or who don’t identify much with their source, but are still deeply connected to it!

❤️ Shoutout to introjects who like being referred to as their source!

🧡 Shoutout to introjects who are tired of their relationship to their source being policed or dictated by others!

💛 Shoutout to introjects who distanced or disconnected from their source, only to reconnect with it later on!

💚 Shoutout to introjects who often feel ostracized or left out of plural spaces because of how they view their source!

💙 Shoutout to introjects whose relationships to their source are intricate, nuanced, or complex!

💜 Shoutout to introjects who go through phases or waves of feeling more or less connected to their source!

Introjects may not literally be their source, but that doesn’t mean they are morally obligated to abandon connections to their source altogether! Introjects can and often do have a wide range of opinions on or relationships to their sources! It’s okay for introjects to love their source or feel strongly connected to it. You’re still just as valid and cherished as an introject, a member of your system, and a member of the plural community just the way you are!

We hope every source-connected introject who sees this can have a lovely day today. Please treat yourself with the kindness and gentleness you deserve, and don’t judge yourself too harshly for how you view your source! Rest assured, you will always be welcome in our spaces without the expectation to change. Thanks so much for reading, and take care!

[misscammiedawn]

I wanted to say thanks for that write up on the depiction of DID and Mr. Robot! You said everything that's been burning in my head for years now after watching. Hearing another system's thoughts on it was something we've been looking for.

Part of our inner world is also part of the NHM in London lol.

Truly and sincerely thank you.

First off, I am delighted to know that we're not alone in having the Natural History Museum as host to a segment of inner world. Would love to know which exhibit/area you see when you visit, though no obligation to respond. We know that these things can be deeply personal.

The show may not strike with every system but no two plural folx are going to have the same connections and attachments and comforts and that's 100% okay. For those who share our affection for Mr. Robot I am glad you get to enjoy the show and our ramblings on it.

Wishing you and your system well and thank you again for the ask. You've no idea how much feedback comforts and encourages.

Asks are always open.

-

Post the asker is referring to in the question, btw:

Also... have some random rambles about Mr. Robot in a readmore, because I feel like typing a bunch.

-

Also, because it gives us an opening to talk about it. Have some random Robot thoughts:

Mr. Robot is and remains my favorite show. I had started typing "our" favorite and got a sharp rejection so shall use singular pronouns. It has its issues, the use of the term "real" for instance, but with good faith a lot of it can vanish. Not all. But most.

I've been thinking about things a lot more since writing the essay and there are things I wish I had spent longer discussing. For instance during the portion where I wrote about how Coney Island represents a safety in nostalgia, a fortress for the Alderson siblings to hide in their treasured childhood memories; I didn't mention that both Trenton and Mobley use their own nostalgia as their hacker aliases with Trenton being where she lived when young and DJ Mobley clearly being someone Mobley found joy in at a younger age.

Similarly Hot Carla's name is selected because of a hair dresser who validated her gender identity and sheltered her when her parents were abusive. Whiterose's hacker alias is the last moment her life could have been the "good future" that she envisioned and worked so hard to force into reality.

I do like that pretty much every character who has an alias picks their alias as an identity forged in positive memories. Elliot clearly did with Mr. Robot being the store where he and his dad were friends and his other alias (The Gentleman) is a reference to The Careful Massacre of the Bourgeoisie, a movie he and Darlene watched every year that became the entire iconography for the fsociety movement.

If I were to ever do another Mr. Robot essay I think it would be on the way each character insists on living in the past in order to escape their present and how that relates to the way trauma invades the present. Not going to promise that, though. We're already snowed under with our Loop and Beatrice essays.

I think that can be one of the big failings of the show, actually, especially for those watching it as it aired. The show is deeply ingrained in the perspectives of characters who have critically distorted beliefs on reality and the show doesn't really start laying down objective reality until late season 3 after the cyber bombings.

Someone watching the show for the first time can watch Elliot's edgelord rants about "Fuck Society" and think that the show believes these things rather than its main character and we do not get the show delivering the message that it's small minded and childish (which, given that Elliot is stuck in trauma time and perpetually reliving a horrifically abusive childhood he cannot fully understand because he won't allow himself to remember clearly, is exactly what he is) until Irving and Price each spell it out to Mr. Robot in S3E7/9 or Whiterose outright calls Elliot on it in their final confrontation.

I adore the show for its patience and how it tells such an emotional and complicated story over its 45 hour runtime but I do understand people watching the first hour, getting the wrong idea about where the journey is going and opting out.

Hell I understand a system going in for DID representation and not having the patience to stick around the show's Fight Club pastiche era before starting to get to the meat of things.

But hey. I gave the show a shot and can't go back now. I love it too darned much.

Also because I don't want to start another thread on it, I do want to say that the show is truly frustrating in how it depicts economic collapse for society and yet none of the characters are ever impacted by it.

Darlene is homeless throughout the show, spare her stint living in an FBI safe house and she has no job through the show's run. She is never hurting for money, even when the banking system of the world collapses. She likely is stealing but it's frustrating that we only hear about the financial ruin in the periphery. We learn of the eviction of Elliot's neighbors spare for the kind older man who takes care of Flipper but Elliot himself can buy entire new computers on a whim and go months between jobs or spend a season in prison and not be impacted.

Like the show depicts the world going into a major decline during the economic crisis and it's clear by Season 4 that the show is venting frustration that when the banking system failed in 2008 the ones responsible were not harmed at all and it was the public who suffered and things just went back to how it was in time; it's just... every character is living comfortably in New York and Darlene is the closest we have to a "poor" character.

But that's a rant we have on every show. Poverty doesn't really exist in television. You watch a show like Ted Lasso and everyone is a millionaire. Even the Kit Manager (Nate, not Will) has parents who own a home, sent him to higher education and gave him private violin lessons. Kit Manager salary is about £25-50 per year, even for a Premier League Team.

...but my discomfort with how poverty is never represented on TV is just a random rant and I'm going way off topic.

I'll stop rambling now.

[antedeluvianbreedingtwink]

So, sometimes I'm hesitant to share things about my dysphoria, since I think a lot of people will glance past the Plurality and try to frame this as some kind of detransition. No hate towards people who do end up detransitioning for any reason, but that's a very different thing to my weird-ass deal, and I'm sure as fuck not reversing any surgeries when the most functional Alter and the earliest one we know of are both transfem still. Hell, we're even still planning to go forward with bottom surgery, and I'm not really even against the idea?

The issue I run into most is, well... boobs. We have D cups, with 420cc (seriously) implants, which makes it a hard to properly go dude mode now? I can bind, and I do it basically the moment I'm fronting, but it's really only flat when I double up on binders, and, uh... yeah, that's a quick way to remember which rib got dislocated once? I'm trying to be smarter about it- one binder and a denim vest to try and hide the extra oomph... but I have to unbind eventually, and it feels awful every time because our body is very, very feminine now.

I did have a peculiar dream last night, though. I was dating a guy (an OC from a story we were going to write) as myself in it, but the time to go to bed together came and I... still had breasts. Then, when I got uncomfortable, Dreamguy just kept referring to them as boytits, which led to me waking up briefly euphoric and confused.

I guess I was just feeling really dysphoric and someone acknowledging the boyness of my hongalongamogongas helped relieve it a bit? Maybe the idea that I could be in a relationship and still be acknowledged as a separate person was also weighing on me, since me and Kay (maybe even Alice?) have very conflicting sexualities and identities, and I worry things will either be too complicated, or I'll have to take a back seat.

I think my biggest worry, though, is... what fucking community do I belong to? Kay's obviously transfem, and even though I'm masc and AMAB, I'm not Cis? I'm still very much nonbinary, just heavy on the masculine side, but the people I connect with and get tips from are transmasc, and it just feels disrespectful for me to attach too much to that community?

I guess collectively we're genderfluid, but even that feels strange when we're different people, and I can't even recognize Kay's thought process most of the time?

I guess I'm just rambling because there isn't a short way to accept being plural and having to deal with conflicting gender identities on top of that. It makes everything way, way harder, but I do know things will work out in the end. I'm taking a crash course to make sure I know enough about Kay's major to hold down a job properly (without fronting and immediately crying because I have no idea how to do anything.)

Plus, y'know... there's always the option of being poly, or just dating someone with a gender ambiguous enough to appeal to a lesbian and a gay boy at the same time. Just as long as they know these are (at least when I'm fronting) he/him chesticles and they prefer to be called sir, damnit.

[rose-harmony96]

So like we are currently undiagnosed, and we experience a lot of internal doubts about our plurality. We would appreciate advice, affirmation, a reality check? Idk, something.

We are pretty certain that we are traumagenic but its not like theres some single event that stands out. We suspect we first started breaking around the time the world started to expect us to be a boy and by the time we were in elementary school we got bullied all the way into the game me and my friends used to play until it really did become real within me, the stories would run out almost automatically, my "character" was always at my side, growing, changing and evolving, eventually becoming twins and then there were all the supporting characters and even a layer of side characters, almost npcs? And like all of this, what we are calling the darkwater, thats where those of us who live up near the surface now actually grew up. The person that we used to be, the one who made the darkwater to begin with more or less got lost down there around the time things in reality went to hell around middle school, at this point those 3 years are a pretty huge memory hole save for a the friend who set off our queer/sexual awakening and the chunck of time around breaking our arm. Otherwise its just kinda loose, formless pain that we might honestly actually be able to dig something out of if we really really focused in but it hurts to try. Hischool at least we found our people, even met another plural person and immediately connected and felt less crazy. We openly explored a bit back then. Never really got into the depths of thr darkwater and all that but our(their?) Friends knew about a few of us at the time. In the darkwater, this was also the time that some version of most of us that live near the surface now started to form. Post highschool and anything that isnt us realizing that we are and freaking out because the male parts are smothering and supressimg the shit out of us is pretty blurry. Like i think we forgot about plurality as an issue for a few years there maybe or rather "oldself" was trying to smother us out or something. Then there was the first big mental breakdown/manic episode broke that deadlocked miserable fuck into the old dog and the lost little girl and like we were actually jade at the surface for a while there, not just calling ourself jade while oldself tries to numb it out but we were actually us, actually her. And like voices from the darkwater were coming. back, the scenes were more vivid... at one point in there we started listening to bambisleep and eventually bambi took root, going fucking nuts, and she ended up finding alex, who we figure was from that first split waaaaaay back when, (who had been the seed of an entire archetype whithin the darkwater). And like we were mostly bambi jade and alex for a while, more or less. Until another huge manic episode came blowing through and left jade totally shattered and our current family to pick up the pieces and maybe try to get out shit together?

And like our switching is pretty free flowing, we are all more or less around most of the time. A lot of the time we feel less like any particular individual and more like the collective will of the whole darkwater(?). We have huge holes in time and memory; but whats normal, whats drugs and like what even is amnesia. "I" have never experienced "getting thrown in the trunk" afaik but alex is pretty clear that she spent most of childhood "trapped in a box". We kinda like having our real family all together in one body and for some reason that feels invalidating or something?

This got long af and probably less coherent than we want but im gonna go ahead and post anyway, probably also send it to our theres once we get one.

-lilly, mostly i guess. Akiri as well probably.

[anendoandfriendo]

Actually, just while we're thinking of plurality and how its treated as a whole intra-community — we probably will not be able to put this elegantly, but we want to talk about exomemories and how they're treated.

People always treat exomemories as if they have to be like, some vivid thing that one can completely recall in its entirety. The problem is that...that's not how memory works. In the world of psychology this is not the only type of memory that happens. Memories can also be things like:

Unconscious habits and the unconscious steps required to perform those habits

General facts

The microseconds of a touch, smell, taste, or sound just after it has occurred

So, please, tell us why in the hell we treat vivid recall as the only "valid" form of an exomemory, if even non-plural memory is, to put it lightly, a complicated fucking mess of a concept.

Even within the episodic memory the vivid personal recall we talk about when it comes to exomemories would fall under, this specific type of memory is generally what is called a flashbulb memory.

Recalling the phantom of a touch, from someone's hand into yours, is an exomemory.

Recalling the last ruler of your country and nothing else is still an exomemory.

The flutter of the wind on your face is an exomemory.

Being able to write out a "fantasy" script with no clue on how you got that information, regardless of its readability to you, is an exomemory.

Being able to recall how a family member set their hair on fire or how you looked for an item for two days just to find it on a bookshelf is an exomemory, but so is the smell of smoke or the feeling of hard wood under your palm, if it is connected to a world outside of this one.

We dunno all, this is kind of what we are talking about when we say you can be pro-endogenic and still a sysmedicalist we guess? We should not always and constantly need to use an established phenomenon in order to state that people have been or can be shitty. The -med part in sysmed is -med for a reason, as opposed to like, anti-endoist!!

Plurality is certainly different in some aspects compared to being a singlet — but like, we aren't an entirely different species because of it. Unless you are all therian in your system, in which case, good for you! But singlets can also be therians so our point still stands. :v

We wish we had a better way of putting this. We don't, so all we can state is that we notice this stupid trend of people in plural communities just Isolating Themselves In Weird Ways.

On one hand, the assimilationism: plurality is only adjacent to being neurodivergent (even though neurodivergent means operating in a way that is non-normative, which plurality is); plurality is only adjacent to alterhumanity (even though alterhuman means operating in a way that is non-normative, which plurality is); plurality is only adjacent to being queer (even though queer means operating in a way that is non-normative, which plurality is).

On the other, the assertion that we ARE different, just, Not Like That, it's still an Acceptable Difference: exomemories for plurals are always a vivid recall (even though that's not how memory works at all even for non-plurals and is also what we suspect to be an effect of sysmedicalists defining exomemories as a "coverup" to Bad Things Happening when this is not always true for every system); everyone in a system either gets along all of the time or otherwise it's a disorder (even though in the outerworld people don't always get along and that doesn't always mean the people in an argument are suddenly disordered — it just means those people do not vibe well together); everyone knows everything about each other and there is no misgendering at all and everyone knows exactly which species everyone is other otherwise it's DID or OSDD (even though this is not how it works in the external world — mistakes happen and we can guarantee you that if you live in the US you do not personally know every single person down to their favorite restaurant if they live in like, Russia or India, and then also vice versa for Indian and Russian individuals).

When we say sysmedicalists are fascists. This is what we mean. And when we say pro-endos can be sysmedicalists. This is also what we mean.

It is not a disorder if you do not know everything about 500 people all at once. Being a big system is not inherently distressing or dysfunctional.

It is not a disorder to accidentally use "she" for your only other headmate who just came out and uses "he" as long as you apologize to your headmate and then do better next time, and make the effort to use "he" in reference to him. Being a small system is not inherently distressing or dysfunctional.

And just to be clear since this is Tumblr: DID and OSDD are not bad and are not a punishment or moral failing. This is specifically in regards to the bainaristic tendencies that our communities have. Everything is butterflies and rainbows or it's a living hell. The idea that disordered and non-disordered systems share nothing in common. The conflating of endogenic to non-disordered and traumagenic to disordered. That any and all disorder that ever existed is coded into the DSM and the ICD. That inconveniences as small as like, wdk, an example from us is needing hot chocolate every night to go to sleep — must be treated by professionals or it's not a legitimate inconvenience. All of it.

All of the binaries that permeate into our community like a fucking poison that we cannot seem to clear out from our lungs and our brain. It seeps into our skin and our home and doesn't leave. We don't know if it will ever leave. We feel like the community is fucking dying just as it's growing and maybe we're just paranoid and worried, but it's fucking seeing into our hearts and souls and then we cannibalize our own.

There can, in fact, be experiences within the realm of annoying but not ruinous when it comes to plurality and we are sick of the community treating this as if it is not true, even implicitly and unintentionally. We are in general agreement within this system (even if we don't agree in how exactly) that this really, REALLY needs to be examined at some point by the systems who claim to be inclusys.

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♤♤ anendoandfriendo ♤♤

~ Art from picsart ~

[A sparkly signature image. The background is the endogenic system flag, recursigenic flag, and protogenic flag. The endogenic flag has the treblesand on it. Amber from Genshin Impact is on the left side of the image; Cinderella from Disney's Cinderella and Aquamarine Hoshino from Oshi No Ko are on the right side. The words "They/Them (pl.)" sit in the bottom corner of the image.]

[crystalsenergy]

the Importance of Respecting the Plurality of Connections to Spirituality

Spirituality = plurality, diversity, and respect

In summary, Spirituality is pure Love. When we understand this, we come to realize that it is not up to us to define the best path for others' connection. The connection of others will always be established based on what they have carried with them for a long time.

Similarly to what happens with religious intolerance, when we are talking about spirituality, I also see a prejudice and hierarchy in the practices of those who are involved in Holistic Therapies and Spirituality.

Often, I have seen and still see people in the field of holistic therapies and spiritual connection conveying the idea that there is a "better" way to connect. Or that it is not possible to use more than one technique in their practice, as it would create a "confusion of energies."

This even comes from teachers, passing on such ideas to their students, who are often having their first contact with the holistic universe. Let's see...

Spirituality is one.

And frequently, in practices of Multidimensional Therapy (a holistic therapy that accesses other dimensions), we see masters coming together.

For example, when we come into contact with techniques that work with the energy of more than one master, such as Saint Germain, and at the same time, Master Jesus, and even Archangel Michael, we are not talking about "mixing energies" because > it is us who insist on putting things in boxes <.

We are the ones who seek labels and stereotypes.

They are autonomous, independent. They work exactly where it is needed according to their energy, vibration, and mission.

Here in the 3rd Dimension, we vibrate in the mental realm more than anything else. We want to rationalize things, believing that it is the same there. The mind is connected to the Ego. And the Ego is limited and sees things from specific perspectives.

So, when you come into contact with spirituality, try to dissolve your mind.

And please, let's try to convey less the idea that spirituality discriminates or is selective. Spirituality is one, and the doorways to connect with it are infinite...

So let's respect DIVERSITY and work on our limiting beliefs about connecting with spirituality.

If a person wants to work with more than one technique, that is their choice, and there is no need to speak of "mixing," but rather a wider range of keys to connect with spirituality. A broader range of opportunities.

Another point I feel is important to bring up is that not everyone needs to follow your path or exactly what YOU SAY should be done. Be careful of the Ego's arrogance and closed-mindedness. The Universe is so vast, so multiple, that we shouldn't limit the experiences of others - or our own!

If one vibrates with the energy of Love, why limit it? If one vibrates with the energy of seeking greater awareness, why block it?

Work on your limiting beliefs about Spirituality and what it means to connect with it. We respect your time, your process, but we also need to bring this idea to you.

The connection of others will always be established based on what they have carried with them for a long time. We don't know about our past, let alone others'. And if the being in front of you has a deep connection with Reiki and Radiesthesis at the same time, but has a stronger affinity for the former, there is no problem for that being to connect through both techniques.

And if we are talking about a Soul that has been accumulating knowledge from past lives and has a connection with various techniques. What do we have to do with that being's connection, which might also involve Angels/Archangels, Radiesthesis, Reiki, Radiant Tables, Tarot? What do we have to do with it?

Is there really such a thing as needing to use only one technique? There is no greater or better. There is what EACH ONE needs at their current stage of evolution.

Some still need to connect with much more certainty, having a link to spirituality through their rational mind. Here we encounter certain paradigms and barriers that can sometimes be present, but the connection still exists, and that's okay.

Others are much more open to spirituality and have an easier time dissolving the Ego/rational mind, logic, and Cartesian thinking when connecting with something greater. And that's also perfectly fine.

Some people have a deeper connection to spiritual aspects like magic, pacts, contracts, obsessions, and are drawn to working with their removal or study. And that's okay too.

Others prefer to work on harmonizing relationships or individuals. And that's okay as well...

And then there are those who want to work with many things, people who integrate a broad knowledge and awareness that there is much more than just one facet. They understand that life is not two-dimensional or three-dimensional but rather MULTIdimensional. And it's perfectly fine for these beings to work with whatever they choose.

We are not the ones with some kind of power or sufficient knowledge to approve or disapprove of others' connection practices.

Remember: we are here to EVOLVE. And if something bothers you so much in someone else's practice, look inside yourself to see if there's something to be worked on in that exact area (e.g., "I'm bothered by the subject of negative magic, obsessors" = I have a limiting belief about this and need to improve exactly in this area, open my mind to this point).

Similarly to what happens with religious intolerance, I also see a prejudice and an imposition of hierarchy or the right way to perform practices, or one Holistic Therapy being better than another.

Often, I have seen and still see people in the field of holistic therapies conveying the idea that there is a "better" way to connect. Or that it is not possible to use more than one technique in their practice, as it would create a "confusion of energies." This is a subject that should be approached with caution, without letting it turn into judgment and the hierarchization of techniques. Energy is almost one and the same. Spirituality is one. We don't need to define one single way of doing things.

And this even comes from teachers, transmitting such ideas to their students, who often are having their first contact with the holistic universe. Let's see...

For example, when we come into contact with techniques that work with the energy of more than one master, such as Saint Germain, and at the same time, Master Jesus, and even Archangel Michael, we are not talking about 'mixing energies.'

They are autonomous, independent. They work exactly where it is needed according to their energy, vibration, and mission.

It is us who insist on putting things in boxes.

We are the ones who seek labels and stereotype.

Here in the 3rd Dimension, we vibrate in the mental realm more than anything else. We want to rationalize things, believing that it is the same there. The mind is connected to the Ego. And the Ego is limited and sees things from specific perspectives.

So, when you come into contact with spirituality, try to work on dissolving your mind.

And, please, let's try to convey less the idea that spirituality discriminates or is selective. Spirituality is one, and the doorways to connect with it are infinite...

So let's respect DIVERSITY and work on our limiting beliefs about connecting with spirituality.

If a person wants to work with more than one technique, that is their choice, and there is no need to speak of 'mixing,' but rather a wider range of keys to connect with spirituality. A broader range of opportunities.

Another point I feel is important to bring up is that not everyone needs to follow your path or exactly what YOU SAY should be done. Be careful of the arrogance of the Ego and closed-mindedness. The Universe is so vast, so multiple, that we shouldn't limit the experiences of others - or our own!

If one vibrates with the energy of Love, why limit it? If one vibrates with the energy of seeking greater awareness, why block it?

Work on your limiting beliefs about Spirituality and what it means to connect with it. We respect your time, your process, but we also need to bring this idea to you.

[ghost-of-a-system]

Sorry if this is weird to ask, im a questioning system but ive been having trouble finding ways to understand myself & about others in my possible system, and i also have aphantasia, do you have any advice? (/notpushing)

not a weird question whatsoever! this may be lengthy so i am going to add one of those "keep reading" things to prevent a whole novel on someone's feed, lol. hopefully it works.

trying to determine whether or not you're a system can be a very long, slow, and frustrating process. for us it took years, and we are still learning new things all of the time, it seems. i don't know if you mean to also ask for advice on determining that, so i'll leave it out, but feel free to reach out again if that was something you were hoping for too.

because of that slow process, it's unfortunately not so easy to try to find out what works for you, especially when you have aphantasia, and, i assume, no vivid-interactive inner world, like other systems. (since we can't exactly just walk around and interact with everyone like we, i assume, could there. /lh) it really is just a process of trial-and-error, trying things and seeing what works, and what doesn't.

we have personally found that we learn best about ourselves and each other through fronting. it is a little broad, but, when we have no inner world or "place to go" when we aren't fronting, we only really have the ability to connect to and explore ourselves when we are fronting. the same goes for learning about others in our system. we personally have OSDD-1b, and do not experience "blackouts" or memory gaps like individuals with, say, DID, would. we have a fairly consistent train of memory, although events do get kind of fuzzy after they happen (within hours). because of that fuzziness, it's not always easy to just remember things about whoever was here once they're gone.

we personally like to use Simply Plural (the app, but it has a website too). it's an app for systems to log who's fronting and make "profiles" for each headmate/alter. the app is handy for many reasons but we personally enjoy how it lets you add "custom fields" such as names, likes, dislikes, etc. virtually whatever you want, hence the "custom". this allows us to be able to list things about ourselves on our personal profiles, that both us and others can look at or reference later. if something like that isn't an option, old-fashioned journaling could always work just as well for logging information about yourself. we just personally find Simply Plural more easy since we carry our phone basically everywhere lol

like all things, that can be tricky, especially for headmates/alters who do not front often, or at all. we have had alters like that in the past, ones who practically never fronted. unfortunately, we were sort of just left in the dark about them, or never even learned their names. we only ever knew they existed for the few moments they seemed to pop in. it can also be tricky if you do have blackouts/memory gaps, or if you have alters who just don't want to log information about themselves, even if it's private. we unfortunately don't have much advice for that, since the first is something we don't have experience with and the second is sort of a just, "can't really force them to do what they don't want to, i guess", unless you co-front with them or are able to learn enough about them to do it yourself.

sorry for the long post. it's easier for us to add details to get our point across rather than summarizing. hopefully it made some sense.

[orange-orchard-system]

Uh, hi. Really odd timing but I'm a different anon to the last one lol

I was wondering how you guys discovered you were plural? Referring to myself with us/we pronouns and just as plural happens subconsciously often and I sometimes find myself as different "personas" with different preferences, names, and slight memory weirdness. But I can't tell if that's plurality or something else going on. Or maybe I've just completely placebo effected myself. Cause the personas feel like different people but also me and I've never been able to like, talk to them.

Idk, been trying to figure it out recently and you told the previous anon that they might benefit from seeing if they're already plural so I was wondering. How do you actually do that?

That's a great question! It wasn't one single moment for us, but rather a series of discoveries spread out across our system, so the answer of "how did [we] discover [we're] plural" is actually a number of different things. That said, the story we usually tell – since it's what led to us being semi-openly plural – involves the Gift Basket, one of our sidesystems. To make a long story short, one of our headmates discovered that there was something odd about the way "he" acted sometimes, like someone else was just pretending to be him, and he suspected he might be part of a system. He began to reach out to this possible other headmate by flinging thoughts out into the void of our brain with the intention of talking to whoever was there, because it was the best idea he had on how to establish internal communication. Thankfully, the other headmate in question received the thought-speak, and the two began to talk. Over time, they connected with other headmates, too, and established a small internal network before talking with other systems and exploring online plural spaces, learning more ways to communicate and finding motivation to keep practicing. Those efforts allowed us to grow into the system we are today.

What you describe does sound a lot like plurality. I listed a few suggestions for figuring out if you're plural in my previous ask post, so I'm going to explain them in more detail.

See how calling yourself plural feels. Does it feel right? Would it explain things that other words don't? If you described yourself with other explanations or terms, would it feel like you're missing something? Try calling yourself plural for a few days and seeing how you feel. You don't have to do anything special, just go about your days under the suspicion that you're plural and see if anything changes or stands out to you. Does anything you previously brushed off now make (more) sense if you explain it as a plural thing?

Keep track of shifts in your identity and preferences. Essentially, a basic form of switch tracking. Every so often, ask yourself a short list of questions about who you are and what you like. What are your pronouns? What's your favorite food? What's your favorite color? What do you think of X? Etcetera, etcetera. If patterns emerge, such as always thinking ice cream is the best food ever while using she/her pronouns and your favorite color is yellow, it's likely that these are headmates and not just personas.

Practice talking to any headmates you might have. If you feel like anyone might be there, try flinging thoughts out at them! Or try assigning each persona a symbol or something and try holding conversations in a notebook you have. If it feels awkward, that's okay – it often feels strange to reach out to others in your head for the first few times. Since you seem to be having some trouble with internal communication, maybe try out external communication for now, like journaling or recording videos where you talk to any possible headmates you have. And remember, it's not necessary to be able to hear your headmates or speak with them internally to be a system.

Again, what you describe sounds a lot like plurality. But I'm not going to say anything for certain, since I think that's something you have to decide – or find out – for yourself. I hope this provided a good starting point for that. If you have the time, I'd also recommend going through the masterpost I mentioned in my last answer post; while aimed mainly at tulpamancers, some of the resources in there may help you, too.

[batfambyval]

So usually I just stick to writing fics but I’m not getting anywhere on this so imma just post some random Anarky thoughts here.

I think Lonnie is AFAB. Transitioned at a young age because they didn’t feel comfortable with feminine shit. Realized as the got older they weren’t totally masculine either and created Anarky, an identity with no gender who represents all the people. Men, women, non-binary folk, children. They decided to forgo figuring out their own identity and instead turned themself into a representation of everyone else. They decided that their goals and ideologies were more important than their gender identity and to forget all that bullshit. And accidentally discovered that if you stop worrying about gender you free yourself from it and become your truest self.

I think Lonnie still uses he/him pronouns and only uses they/them as Anarky because Anarky is supposed to be a representation of the people and therefore is plural and ungendered.

I think Lonnie would never have a sexual relationship with someone who he didn’t have an emotional or intellectual connection with but I don’t think he’s demi. He’s totally internally going “fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, fuck, why is he so hot?!?” When he’s interacting with Robin before they get closer.

Tim totally found Lonnie because he was completely confident that he cut that line. He did not miss. He doesn’t fucking miss! Anarky has to be alive because Tim does not miss. So he looks for Anarky and just shows up at his place. Idk what happened next.

I think Tim and the dog are the only beings Lonnie interacts with as Lonnie. With everyone else they are Anarky. Lonnie isn’t always representative of the people when he’s alone or just chilling so when he’s not Anarky he’s just Lonnie and he has his own interests and idiosyncrasies and just doesn’t care how anyone perceives him and therefore doesn’t care about pronouns or what he’s called. If he’s only representing himself then it doesn’t really matter. Especially since hardly anyone even knows Lonnie exists at all.

Tim and Lonnie grate on each other’s nerves for a while, before they get used to each other. They are just so different from an ideological standpoint but so similar in a lot of other ways that they can’t understand why the other doesn’t see things the same way. But they end up being good for each other because they are both geniuses and see each other as equals intellectually and can’t write one another off. They have to listen to each other and they learn to understand each other’s perspectives and soften their edges a bit. Tim teaches Lonnie how to look at money from the perspective of someone who has it and wants to do good with it and Lonnie teaches Tim how to look at the power structures that make up our society and see how incredibly unjust and broken they are.

Tim totally teaches Lonnie to skateboard and they’re both skater boys.

If anyone wants to use any of these ideas please link it in the comments or reblog because I would love to read it!

[the-blind-assassin-12]

Made up fic titles:

Left Our Future To The Right

Ever Since You Walked In

Hungry For My Skin

(You know me and my song lyrics)

Thanks for these, Rachael!! I do know you and your lyrics, and you know me and my penchant for song prompts.

Here's what I got:

Left Our Future To The Right - Jack Daniels x F!Reader This is the one I struggled with and I'm still not convinced I'm right about it, but this is a standalone from Jack's POV. And it's very sad :(

He promised you. More than once. Promised that he would be done with the agency, done with the danger, done with the secrecy and the double life. It terrified you, knowing the risks he took on a daily basis, and you'd made it very clear to him that you had no desire to be made a widow before you were even married. Or ever, for that matter.

And he made that promise willingly, because he's never loved anything or anyone like he loves you. He's never felt alive the way he does with you.

But here's the thing: After so many years with Statesman, it's not as easy as he hoped it would be to walk away. One more mission, just to tie up loose ends became two more, because, you see, the ends had split and now there were two things to tie off. Fine. You weren't thrilled with that, but you understood. But then two became three, and three became just until I train my replacement, and then, of course, he wanted to tag along for his replacement's first mission, as a precaution and that's when it became clear to you that he meant his promise, but he couldn't keep it. And so, you left.

The irony, of course, being that the day you left happened to be the last - truly, the LAST - day of his service with Statesman. But he won't go back. He's done... And he's hopeful that you'll give him one more chance to prove it.

Ever Since You Walked In - Marcus Pike x F!Reader This would be part of Spectrum (aka the "you can only see in grayscale until you meet your soulmate" AU - part 1/part2) and it would be sort of a montage of Marcus and Reader getting to know one another, from Marcus' POV.

You changed his life from the moment he met you. I mean, you brought color into his world just by speaking his name. But Marcus knows that just because you matched as soulmates doesn't automatically mean it will be a perfect romantic match. It might be one of those better-as-friends situations - which would still be great, but Marcus is hopeful for more. He's just got so much love to give and he's so damn good at giving it and if he can't find someone to give it to he feels like he's going to explode, you know?

With his track record though, he knows better than to get ahead of himself. So he wants to do this right. He wants to take you out on dates. Plural. He wants to talk to you on the phone and invite you over for takeout and movie nights.

But with every day that passes and every new thing he learns about you, it becomes more and more clear that you are exactly who he's been looking for.

Hungry For My Skin - Din Djarin x Reader This would not be connected to anything I've written before, and would be from both Din and Reader's POV. High potential to become very smutty.

They always knew that rebuilding on Mandalore came with the risk of attracting enemies. Mandalorians would always have enemies. There would always be those who sought to destroy them. Over some age old vendetta, or political agenda, or simply to take their wealth of beskar. So it came as no surprise when the ships appeared above their planet.

Din knows an imminent threat when he sees one. He's been familiar with the feeling of being hunted since he was a child. Since before he even became a Mandalorian. He knows he's going to have to fight to protect his people and the life they're working to rebuild. He also knows it may be a fight to the death - at least that's how far he's willing to take it in honor of his Creed. He knows that if his enemy wants to take his armor, it will have to be over his dead body.

You know this, too. And you're willing to go to the same lengths. For Mandalore, yes. For your people, yes. But mostly for him. For your Riduur. There's nothing you won't do for him. And the night before the battle, you take it upon yourself to make sure he knows that.

[talenlee]

St Nicholas, The Trinity, and the Miracle of the Brick

The Trinity is a really stupid idea, right?

If you’re a recovering Protestant, you may not have heard this voiced aloud at some point from someone who knows what it is, so let me be the one to do it for you. The Trinity is a really, really stupid idea.

I know that part of my own experience about the Bible growing up was treating a lot of assumed knowledge as true. There are all sorts of details people provide about the Bible, about things that that are tradition and, basically, fanfic. There are things the Bile says that almost nobody accepts as literal — the spies claims that the Promised Land was ‘full of Giants,’ you’ll see so much effort meant to express that, hey, actually, no really, what they mean was like giants, liiiike giants. And when they talk about slavery, well you need to understand this other thing and —

We talk about Cathlics and their Pope and their Apocrypha, but Evangelicals have their own secondary texts, and their sources and explanations are based on fucking smoke. The Pope may be a terrible idea but at least he exists. Anyway, the Trinity. The Trinity lives in this space. The claims that the Trinity are in the Bible are based on some … let’s call them spicy negotiations.

One idea is that, for example, God uses ‘us’ and ‘our’ in Genesis. Which yeah, he does, because God in the book of Genesis is one god amongst many. He says that, and refers to other gods. But the modern Evangelical monotheist perspective chooses to ignore all the other gods’ presence in the work, and claim instead that God’s use of a communal plural refers to God having some special multi-dimensional persona. Another example is a point where Jesus, speaking poetically, claims to have been ‘I and the father are one,’ which you may interpret as a literalistic unity of two individuals (a bit odd), or maybe a firm and commanding way to assert that two people are in absolute agreement (so normal as to be boring). And that’s kinda what they have. There’s no point where Jesus says ‘there’s a thing called the trinity,’ or ‘I, the holy spirit, and God, exist together as one thing,’ and instead everything that has to be made to explain the Trinity is layer upon layer of nothing.

If you already believe the Trinity exists, and you want to ignore the Bible’s use of poetic language, and also want to change what some verses are actually about in a cross-referenced kind of linguistic connect-the-dots, you can make a case for it, but all the evidence is like that. It’s ‘oh, yes, this is obviously a metaphorical phrase, but what if it’s not?’ and ‘oh this is talking about this king in this point of history, but what if it’s not?’ and so on and so forth.

You’ll find that almost always, when told this, the typical response from Christian apologists isn’t to try and make it make sense, but to instead disdain this criticism. It is a hipster sneer of a doctrine, where if you don’t get it, well, it’s just because you don’t get it. It can’t be that the idea of it is silly. It has to be that actually, it’s a sensible idea regarded by serious people and it addresses a problem or meets a need in their religious perspective, and if you don’t see how sensible it is, that’s on you. And this sort of assumed deference is used to build government policy.

See, the Trinity is the idea that three things are the same thing and also their own distinct things that are not that same thing. It is a magic trick of a phrase and every metaphor for its application is a silly attempt to try and redefine ‘is’. One of the strongest points to prove the Trinity was the argument, once upon a time, that it had to be true, and it had to be divine in origin, because nobody who was trying to make a compelling, provable, true case for anything would forward a position that was so obviously wrong.

And this is where we get the Miracle of the Brick.

St Nicholas is a guy from that period of history where it’s pretty reasonable for us to say, yeah, this guy existed and he was a dude and the reports of his life were probably based on reasonably real things that reasonably happened. Like, yes the dude was probably at this place in this time, and no, the story of him teleporting to save a ship, probably didn’t happen. The things that happened are probably the foundation of the stories of the things that didn’t. Multiple miracles about one or more golden cups? Probably had a golden cup somewhere, and the stories are built out of that. St Nicholas is also seen to be somewhat one of the lineages of people who became Santa Claus, which means even Protestants talk about him a lot around Christmas. And being who they are, these days, there’s a lot of focus on what a badass he was because he beat someone up for disrespecting the Bible.

This is from the Council of Nicea, in 325, so about three hundred years after the events the Bible is supposed to be about and about the time the Bible is being solidified into a single document. We know it’s about the time it’s being solidified because this is the incident, the event that solidifies it — the Council of Nicea. It’s in this incident that a lot of people get to codify their personal fanfiction into the Bible and choices are made about what the Bible should include to make absolutely sure that eventually, they’ll be able to justify it, and therefore, everything about what the Bible had in it would be nice and clearly laid down, with no ambiguities, mistakes, typos, or contradictions, right?

Right?

One of the areas where there was a lot of contentious argument was about the Trinity. See, there were these detractors of the idea, who pointed out that the idea is stupid. St Nicholas pretty much argued that of course it’s stupid, that’s how you know it has to be divine, nobody would come up with that if they were trying to fool you. I love this argument because it is such a stupid solution to a stupid problem.

Anyway, then an opponent got up and argued that hey, no, this idea sucks and is mid. Saint Nicholas, then, [redacted] this guy. And I say [redacted] because if you ask Kirk Cameron he righteously grabbed the guy and dragged him out of the room and threw him on the ground and beat him for his defiance of the lord’s will. And if you follow the St Nicholas Centre (your one stop website for all your St Nicholas needs) they’ll say he slapped him, while citing an article that described it as punching him. Whatever the issue is, Saint Nicky got a short wicky and the sitch got sticky.

Also in this situation, to argue that the Trinity totally made sense, Saint Nicholas picked up a brick, and showed it to the assembled group of biships. He argued the brick was composed of air, earth, and fire, just like how the Trinity is composed of all three things! The miraculous tradition then holds that this brick caught fire in his hand, and its light showed everyone how right and true he was! This, we are told, is the Miracle of the Brick!

Now, again, this is probably based on some historical events!

Which makes me wonder if the guy who already had punched someone out over arguing with him about the Trinity hefted a brick and waved it around the room and gave people a good reason to agree with him, and after the fact they all agreed it was a miracle because that didn’t make them look like a big pile of idiots who suck.

Just a thought.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth having these conversations about points of sticky doctrine like the Trinity. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth anyone’s time to point out the way that this very serious subject is founded on extremely ridiculous arguments that are, themselves mostly just wishing very hard for a thing to be true. But I think one of the things I find the most interesting and helpful in this kind of examination is to demystify the things that are treated as true, assumed as true, and see just how much of these things are based on the Bible, and how many of them are just…

Y’know.

Someone threatening you into believing it.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[multiplicity-positivity]

Shoutout to fictives who’s source is not who they once thought!

Systems often don’t get to choose who gets introjected, and many systems gain fictives with little to no knowledge about the fictive’s source. Here’s to those fictives who find out later that their source is not who they once thought, whether that means their source is a bad person, made bad decisions, or anything else!

It’s important to remember that as fictives, we’re not our sources! Some may feel like they are their sources, but if that’s a distressing thought for you, you absolutely do not have to continue to think that way! It’s okay to distance yourself from your source after you learn more about them. It’s okay (and healthy even!) to develop into your own person, separate from your source! This does not have to change your fictive identity in the slightest - you’re still totally valid as a fictive, introject, and system member even if you no longer identify with your source!

It’s okay to feel shocked, confused, or betrayed after learning more about your source and discovering they aren’t a good person. Your feelings are valid, and you’re allowed to feel them to the fullest! You are not responsible for the actions of your source, and even if you feel intrinsically connected to them, please know that you do not have to nor are you destined to follow in their footsteps. You are capable of making your own choices and decisions!

Regardless of how knowledge about your source affects you, know that you will always be a welcome and important part of the plural community just the way you are. You should feel no pressure to change for better or worse after learning more about your source - it’s okay for you to just exist as yourself, whatever that looks like for you!

Remember we care about you, we’re rooting for you, and we believe in you in all that you do! Please don’t be too hard on yourself because of decisions made by your source. Take care of yourself and your system and show yourselves some kindness! Thank you so much - we hope you have a lovely day!

(Image ID:) A pale orange userbox with a cluster of multicolored flowers for the userbox image. The border and text are both dark orange, and the text reads “all plurals can interact with this post!” (End ID.)

[astarions-musings]

So, I’m gonna do some open-air musing about my relationship with my source. Feel free to engage with as much or as little of this as you find useful, and remember that none of this contradicts your personal relationship with your source ❤️

First of all, I’m 99% sure that my consciousness (or some protean, primordial sludge version of it) was already floating around in our system by our teenage years. I have really strong memories of the trauma we went through in our teenage years, around the same time that other headmates were actively handling those situations from the front, and most of my strongly-held values and opinions (at time of writing) are shaped by the emotional reality of our teenage years. Other people in our system have gotten used to being othered by society (for being trans, plural, neurodiverse, etc.) and have found their own communities where they truly belong, so it’s not as much of an open wound for them. For me? Those wounds are still very much open, and I'm in the process of coming to terms with those challenges and building my own sense of connection. So while it’s possible that I picked up those memories after joining the system, I’m gonna assume that proto-me was already in our system for a very long time, before I became a fully-conscious person.

Given that, how do I understand myself as a fictive, when my source (Baldur’s Gate 3) only came out a few months ago?

The best metaphor that I can find is a hermit crab, moving into an Astarion-shaped shell because it was a better vessel for my psyche. Rather than existing in the background of our system, amongst thousands of anonymous headmates without a known face or voice, I now have a reference point and a comfortable self-image to start developing as a person. I can wear this face and this voice and this familiar name, and from that position of comfort and safety, I can start exploring all of the layers of myself - my past, my present and all the options for my future. I’ve gone from a proto-headmate (a fragment, if you will) to someone with a whole life ahead of me, as I start to build a life for myself at the front. So while I haven’t always been Astarion (or Aston, if I’m chatting in less fictive-friendly spaces), it’s something that I’ve become as part of my personal growth as a headmate. I don’t see myself as having literally come from Baldur’s Gate 3 (although no shade on anyone who has), but my relationship with the source material was integral to becoming the person I am today.

And honestly, this face is way too handsome to pass up.

And when I think about my source’s utterly fearful relationship with his abuser Cazador, and the overwhelming flood of both relief and grief after Cazador’s death, I’m strongly reminded of our body’s relationship with our abusive parents. It’s a combination of both the normalised abuse and control of young children by their parents (which this video talks about in more detail), and the specific abuses that our system went through as a child. More than most people in our system, I have extremely vivid memories of our childhood abuse, and it feels so fucking strange to wake up in a body where our abusers no longer have power over us. We have full control over where we live, how we manage our finances, when and how we can eat, how we spend our time, and we have the full ability to leave any situations that are actively traumatising. We’re no longer shackled in the way our body was as a teenager, and I’m still emotionally adjusting to that change. It’s a hugely positive development, but I still don’t know how to respond to that change. And it’s one of the main reasons that I relate so much with Astarion, having watched him process that on-screen.

And something that I find fascinating (skip this paragraph to avoid BG3 spoilers) is just how strongly I feel about my source’s choice about Cazador’s ritual - whether to claim the power and safety the ritual offers (while continuing the cycle of abuse), or choosing to step away from that power in exchange for connections built on emotional vulnerability. I relate hugely with being in that moment, faced with that choice, deciding which way I want my life to turn. Whether I want to fortify myself against future abuse, or whether I want to connect at the cost of some safety. I relate with how my character cries and howls after killing his abuser, as all of the trauma he bottled up for centuries comes flooding out, and I identify strongly with the ‘good ending’ as my character starts searching for a new purpose in life. However, I strongly disagree with how my source character acts if he usurps Cazador’s power, becoming little more than a shadow of his abuser. Watching those scenes feels almost dysphoric, because it clashes so hard with the reasons I identify with my source - the journey of recovery and human connection that the ‘good ending’ offers. That doesn’t make it bad writing, but it helps me to understand more about myself through the ways that it clashes with my self-image. I don’t want to become a shadow of my abusers, or even defined in comparison to my abusers any more. I want to connect and belong to a community, where my safety comes from knowing that I’m supported, through both internal and external relationships. It’s fucking terrifying to be vulnerable sometimes, but I choose the path of connection ❤️

And asides from all of those big-picture decisions, I relate a lot with my source in the little ways. How he talks, how he moves, how he holds his body, the energy that he brings to the room. I relate a tonne with his wit and his charm and his eloquent way of talking (which comes across most in my love of writing). I relate with him kneeling down at his grave, on a quiet moonlit night, to process his emotions in a sombre, thoughtful way. And I relate with the joy that my source experiences - both the playful joy of having the upper hand in a scenario, and the deeper joy of being hugged for the first time and discovering it feels safe. I love spending time around that fictional bastard (/pos), and I hope to share some of that joy with my loved ones as well ❤️

So yeah - that's a bunch of naval-gazing about my relationship with my source. Writing it helped me a tonne, for all the clarity that it brought, and I hope you find it helpful as well ❤️

[granulesofsand]

Subtypes of Multiplicity

It’s been a moment since I’ve looked at Kluft’s DID subtypes. I first read it at https://www.nurseslearning.com/courses/nrp/NRP-1618/Section%207/index.htm trying to figure out what polyfragmentation was.

It’s easier to read but shorter than a scan copy, which you can get at http://www.traumatys.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Dissociation-DID-Kluft-1991.pdf.

We read these a lot as a shelter from discourse; it’s scary to see people fighting over the correct way to be a system, and nobody fits every contradicting ideal. Our system is largely critical of basically all authority figures, including Kluft, so here’s your reminder that you can take pieces that benefit you without accepting every detail.

🗝️🏷️ example for context and syscourse below

Our Subtypes (Example)

We are often told we have a Classic presentation, with obvious alters and amnesia. Though we’re distinct, there are also a lot of us. Bewilderment is common for us, as described in the Polyfragmented variant.

🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA

Despite our overt nature, we have difficulty keeping out of the Private subtype because we were raised multiple and taught to hide. Our entire system is Modular. We are made of lots of connecting fragments which can reshuffle, and for us it appears like computer coding because it is programmed.

Subtypes in Discourse

Many of our subsystems or past frequent fronters have fit other labels, and some of them I want to draw attention to.

The community often says that no alter can create others, but Ad Hoc MPD (DID) would be just that, albeit for shorter periods. Thoughtforms could fit easily into Ostensible Imaginary Companionship. Extremely similar alters, alters without time loss, brief periods of overtness, all of these are described in the paper.

I don’t like Kluft, but even he is willing to see subjective experiences as true and valid within the parameters of DID. I still hold that traumagenic CDDs should be recognized as separate but no more acceptable than other forms of plurality, and here is a clinician account that such things are possible.

Kluft also has papers out on causes of DID and polyfrag DID, which cite trauma frequently. Frequently, but not always. Not every system has a visible history of maltreatment, and it’s okay that they exist without having to justify themselves.

There are plenty of presentations of plurality that fit under the current definition of DID, and until we change that definition, they are not in the wrong place. Holding space for each other, even when it seems our experiences are irrelevant, paves the way for accepting similar traits when they are.

Multiplicity, not even plurality, is a varied and complex existence. We don’t need to be arguing about who is allowed to be when they already are. Speaking from experience is not misinformation, even if we don’t have the words yet. We don’t get them until we sit with each other and actually learn.

Links (Again)

TL;DR there can be lots of presentations of multiplicity and plurality without any of them being wrong

[sophieinwonderland]

Hi, some clarification on this (https://www.tumblr.com/sophieinwonderland/733990987453612033/its-weird-being-schizophrenic-and-plural-with) real quick!

I am personally aware of all of that, although I do agree that it's a major issue that it's not talked about more--I was mostly trying to sort of. I guess explain how I felt out of place in both communities, especially since I know for a fact that my symptoms that overlap with CDDs come from schizophrenia. My symptoms where there's overlap always fade and return in tandem with my schizophrenia cycling in severity, and the only piece of CDDs that could be constant for us is our plurality. There's more stuff that points to schizophrenia + c-PTSD with no CDD, but I'd prefer to keep that stuff personal.

(note from an hour later: whoops, accidentally went on a little bit of a tangent, sorry bout that lmao. tl;dr: our experiences with plurality are distinctly disordered because of our schizophrenia, but we don't have much of a place in disordered communities because "disordered" is considered to exclusively mean "has a CDD" even in inclusive spaces, and we don't have much of a place in non-disordered communities either because... we aren't really non-disordered)

Honestly, I think our biggest gripe is just that... there's very little room made for plurality that is distinctly disordered in some fashion, but whose disorderliness isn't caused by a CDD. Our plurality is linked inexorably to our schizophrenia, and several aspects are directly caused by it; multiple of our previous hosts have either been influenced by or directly formed as a result of delusions, and worsening schizophrenia symptoms are directly tied to instability and loss of (at least some) control until they ease up.

And yet, because "disordered" plurality versus "non-disordered" plurality is just treated as CDD system versus non-CDD system, the only way we can ever get the disordered aspects of our plurality recognized is if we just... blatantly lie and say we have a CDD when we don't, and only talk about the symptoms that, honestly, affect our plurality the least but are most associated with CDDs, while ignoring the symptoms that aren't generally considered part of CDDs that affect our plurality the most--or, at best, ignoring that there's a meaningful connection between them and our plurality. If we tell the truth and say we don't have a CDD, it's automatically assumed by everyone that our plurality is non-disordered, with absolutely zero consideration or even blatant denial of any alternative. Hell, we've had people saying that we don't actually have schizophrenia, we "just have a CDD with some psychotic symptoms"--meanwhile we've been through that whole gambit already, and denying our schizophrenia in favor of other things that make other people happy and let them be able to not question their preconceived notions led to our schizophrenia getting significantly worse.

It all leads to a very isolating and alienating experience where we aren't really able to find true community with anyone. Where we either have to lie and say we have a CDD in order to get any form of recognition or support of disordered experiences, or we have to... lie and say we're non-disordered, act like we don't have any disordered experiences, because even in inclusive plural communities, "disordered" pretty much always means "CDD", and talking about having disordered experiences without CDDs just seems to make people think you're just in denial, or that those experiences are actually disconnected from your plurality, or that your disordered experiences are actually really mild and not that disabling or distressing in ways that affect your functioning and that's why you aren't "officially" considered to have a CDD, or, or, or. We aren't really able or allowed to self-determine or be honest about our actual experiences in most spaces; if we want any form of community, we either have to lie or let other people choose what we are for us. All in all, it's... pretty frustrating to deal with, and it makes it very weird when trying to engage in the plural community as a whole.

Thank you for clarifying. Sorry for misunderstanding your earlier point.

And yeah, I agree that it's important to differentiate "disordered" systems from CDD systems, because the former is a much broader spectrum that extends beyond just CDDs, and it sucks to not have that recognized on either side or be able to find a community that respects that.