#i wrote this in a feverish haze past midnight

[elfryona]

Guide to picking up a plural system, for singlets

We've all been there. You're chatting with a cute plural girl and wonder if you have a chance with all of them. Maybe you've found an easily manipulated caretaker. Maybe an endogenic maid stole your clockwork heart. Maybe you met a front-stuck Tsukihime introject. Either way, you've got no better choice than following a guide by someone entirely underqualified to write one.

Before you start

Before you head system-chasing, I need you to hold your horses. You can't just go after a plural girl the way you'd go after a singlet trans girl, faking desperation and empathy. You need to relate to a system, and there's a quick little exercise for that:

Imagine a girl in your head. What does she look like? Don't just think of the broad strokes, like her figure and hair colour. What do her palms feel like to the touch? What kind of socks is she wearing? Is her neck thin enough to wrap your hands around?

This may take a while. Don't worry too much. If you can't come up with a whole new girl, you can borrow a fictional girl you're familiar with, too! Just don't skip any steps.

When you're ready, think of her personality and her voice. What would her most defining traits be? What distinct mannerisms does she carry with her? Is she soft-spoken, loud, or something in-between?

Now give her a name and introduce her to herself. Tell her who she is, what kind of person she is, and let her know that she'll live with you in your head from now on.

How to start talking

You've just invited a girl into your noggin, and you might be wondering why I made you do that. Unfortunately, that's just beyond what a singlet would understand—trust the process, and everything will work out grand.

Before asking out a plural system, you have to practise talking to a headmate. Thankfully, you don't need to look for another system for that—after all, what if you embarrassed yourself in front of their entire community?

No, you're going to practise with the new girl in your head.

I want you to remember the feeling of presence you get when someone you like is in the same room as you. Now try to feel that presence from your new friend. Some find it easier if you materialise her in a place in your head—others would rather feel her presence on the outside, like a ghost or some kind of hat man.

Now talk to her about anything you want. Remember, you need to entertain a lot of headmates to date a system—handling one girl is the least you can do! Ideally you want to give her your full attention for 30 minutes to an hour every day, but in any case, involving her in your daily routines will help a lot too! After all, she might want to front someday. Don't worry about that, though.

Actually getting a system

By now, you might've been doing the previous step for two weeks, maybe even a month. You're probably growing fond of the new girl, and she has definitely replied at least once, even though she's still struggling with language.

Maybe you're feeling ready to ask that cute system out. I'm sorry, but you have to wait a little longer!

Around this point, you might start sensing new, pretty well-developed presences entering your mind. I want you to invite them in and let them stay. Your girl needs more friends, after all!

Maybe these new presences will start talking with the girl in your head. If that's the case, you've developed a self-sustaining system and don't need to put nearly as much effort as before. Or maybe they pick up the slack while your girl is asleep—then talk to them, too! This too will help you score with a system.

How to keep it going

Now you might be thinking: "What the hell? Where's my system? What did you do to me?"

If you're thinking that, I want you to look inside: how many people live in your head? It's at least two, but more likely something like four. You've picked up a system.

Now you'll want to work on letting your headmates take the front. Everyone has their own approach, but it usually involves two steps: letting go of your body, and letting your headmate in.

You can start small. Let go of one hand, and let your most independent headmate move it about. Let go of the whole arm. Continue in the style of a mindfulness session, until it's your whole body getting taken over.

Or if you have experience with dissociation, just let go of your whole body at once! Project yourself into the outside world or retreat into the headspace, while your headmate takes over. It might feel like you're blending with them a little, but that's to be expected near the beginning. You'll get better with practice!

Once you get good enough at giving up front and end up in a sufficiently stressful situation, one of your headmates might end up stuck in front instead while you're locked inside your head. If this ever happens, you need to tell your new fronter to slide into my DMs before the headmates inevitably cannibalise what's left of your identity. No, I can't save you from getting snuffed, but I do know how to pick up a plural girl.

[ryuzatodraws-archive]

I wrote that fic in a feverish haze instead of working on something that i want to be published TOMORROW (TODAY bc it’s past midnight here) because y’all consumed me with the forbidden nihilia. I hope you all like it 💀

sometimes we just gets possessed , and thts normal between creators :-))

[sol1loqu1st]

EYES EMOJI

UHHH this is technically not “unfinished” i just never did anything with it, i think i wrote this whole thing in a feverish haze at like 3am. this is so fucking experimental idk what i’m doing

A failed scientist and an aspiring writer sit down at a cafe. The scientist orders a coffee even though it’s dinnertime and they don’t need the caffeine; the writer orders a tea - he’s so tired it might as well be midnight. They sit opposite one another, not speaking, the drinks in front of them creating a barrier as wide as an ocean.

Each faces an airtight window, looking out at the constellations visible from the spaceship but not from Earth. Generations ago they might’ve viewed constellations such as Orion but now Betelgeuse and Rigel are part of different constellations, unrecognizable to generations of the distant past.

All of the people surrounding them in the cafe seem to disappear as one by one they look up at each other from their drinks. The mundanity of their own human lives dulls in comparison to vivid fantasies of aliens, of robots, of selkies and fae, of gods and of stars, of the monster that each knows the other really is, even if the rest of the world can’t see.

“Think I’d like to be out there.” The writer breaks the silence. “We could write books, you know. Run a bookstore in space.”

“We’d sell our experiences like it’s fiction,” the scientist agrees. They are not a scientist. They are a thing scientists could only dream of studying. “They would never know it’s about us.”

The writer takes a sip of tea. If he focuses his vision on the glass separating him from the void of outer space, if he focuses just right, he sees his own image reflected back at him. He is human, and in theory, he knows this.

The scientist wonders aloud, “Would we die out there? The vacuum of space would crush our bodies, but would we really die?”

“I suppose so. We’re only human, after all.” The writer chuckles into his tea. He can’t help but consider the alternative, anyway.

“Only,” the scientist laughs. They are a failure, but they remember their attempts. They are made from starstuff, same as anyone else, but their atoms remember being of a star. Their atoms yearn, more than anything, to once again be part of a supernova. “We could escape, you know. You and I. We could find others like us in the void of space.”

“What if we’re the only ones? What if we’re wrong, and we would simply die?”

“I don’t think so.” The scientist gestures to the rest of the cafe. “Can you understand them?”

The writer shakes his head. “Since I was a child, all I hear is noise.”

“There has to be someone else out there who can understand us.” The scientist regrets the coffee but sips it anyway. “There has to be.” There’s a desperate edge to their voice. They’ve lived this way too long.

“Then we’ll leave.” The writer stands up from his seat. He is scared but just as determined. “We’ll do what we’re meant to do, whatever that is.”

The itch to go supernova consumes the scientist. They must remember what it feels like. They must feel what their atoms feel.

The same urge overcomes both of them at the same time. The cafe is suddenly empty, quiet except for them. The writer grips one end of a chair and the scientist grips the other and together they use it as a battering ram, pushing it into the airtight window over and over until it breaks. The air is sucked from the room and the two of them clasp hands together as they’re pulled out into the void of space with it.

For a moment, pain, as their bodies collapsed on themselves. For a moment, nothing.

And suddenly… everything.

A common misconception about the universe is that it began in an explosion. In reality, the Big Bang was far quieter, though no less dramatic. There was nothing, for a length of time we cannot conceive of because time didn’t exist, then suddenly, everything at once sprung into existence as space itself expanded rapidly, and continues to expand at an increasing rate. There are whole galaxies we will never see from Earth, that we can only assume exist, because their light hasn’t reached us and never will due to the ever-increasing speed at which the universe expands and will continue to expand, as far as we know, into infinity.

And each of them sees all of it at once, differently. No - they do more than see it. They become the universe.

The scientist becomes the universe in a way that only one who has known what it is like to relentlessly pursue a goal that only continues to move further and further away can become anything. They are not the universe, and will never be, but they are perhaps the only one who fully grasps what it represents. Expansion. Infinite pursuit of a goal always out of reach. Life and death and creation and destruction all at once. A star big enough dies and somebody galaxies away watching the heavens writes about it in a story that will be studied for millennia.

The writer becomes the universe in a way that one who has spent his life in pursuit of symbolism, of metaphor, can become anything. He dives inward into every molecule, witnesses every movement and every still moment, and writes it all down, the epic of the Big Bang.

They witness the beginning and the heat death of the universe at the same time together, not real beings anymore but concepts, as all at once and spaced out over eons more and more people who were, are, and will be the universe join them. Hundreds, from different planets, times, cultures, who understand what it is like to speak and not be heard and to listen and not understand.

Eventually, the whole universe fades to a perfect, uniform darkness so black and so cold it has ceased to exist anymore. And the tens of thousands of universes who have studied and watched and learned-

Tens of thousands of new universes spring into existence. They make no impact on the multiverse; after all, an infinite number of universes spring into existence with every choice someone makes. What’s a hundred thousand more?

But in one of them, an aspiring writer and a failed scientist sit together in a cafe.

“Let’s try again,” says the scientist. A failure. A loser. Unrelenting.

“Try… again?” the writer replies. He’s been the universe and he will write the next one.

“Let’s try being human again.”