#itll be fun once im there but jfc

[sparklev0id]

ooouuugghggh my head is full of bees

[patchdotexe]

So, I have a character who is a system, and I wanted to know before I develop them further, how does DID work, from a personal account? I really really really don't want to accidentally create yet another TOXIC misinterpretation of a real condition (because I know how horrible that can feel), and I hope I'm not saying anything wrong even now. (P.S. I love your blog, but I'm too shy to come off anon.)

hey anon!! it means a LOT to me that you sent this message :D theres a lot of really messy-bad potrayals of DID in the media so seeing people actually going to the effort of asking systems abt their experiences is really heartwarming for us. (plus the fact that ppl keep asking us in specific abt system stuff omg,,)

im gonna preface this by saying that, in the end, i can only really talk about my own experiences with full confidence. systems can work pretty differently from each other, but this is how we function and also some details ive noticed from system friends + general discussion over the years

so, to start off: Dissociative Identity Disorder is, at its core, your brain trying to respond to trauma in a pretty severe way. that being said there ARE systems that didnt experience severe trauma and still developed, and im not really sure about the mechanics behind that but i find it really cool and it totally exists. im gonna focus on trauma-based systems bc that’s our ~tragic backstory~ and also tends to be what most people opt for when creating system characters anyway, but the only real difference from what i can tell is, uh, a lack of trauma.

I HOPE YOU’RE READY FOR ME TO SAY THE WORD “TRAUMA” A WHOLE LOT JFC

(system friends are welcome to reblog with corrections or added info!!)

anyway. the way your brain responds to things is really weird. if something happens where you’re just, like, completely unable to handle it, like you dissociate yourself so hard because there’s no way you can manage this, your brain has a chance of going “uh… well, fuck, uh” and generating somebody who can manage it. or it might decide to be a dick and take all of the fucky internalized garbage and turn it into a person whose sole existence is to be an asshole. (they have the potential to get better, i think… ours didnt.) honestly theres a bunch of reasons and a bunch of “roles” that could lead to an alter/headmate* forming.

* we use the terms interchangeably depending on mood and whos fronting. i think its supposed to be “alter” is DID, “headmate” is implication that theyre non-traumatic? we like using “headmate” because it brings this fun mental image of us being a bunch of roommates constantly starting shit with each other and goofing off which is pretty accurate about 75% of the time

i keep getting distracted bc my cat is here. this is gonna be fun to go back and edit.

whatever the original situation is, you’re suddenly not alone in your own brain. and it’s REALLY WEIRD. communication was VERY hard. Icarus, our system original, used to do a very “cliche” thing of sharing a journal with their early headmates, where theyd write a sentence and then theyd write a reply (although back then they didnt realize that was a system-related thing and just thought they were having a fun conversation with their ocs. which… they were, just. Actually Talking.) they didnt have any inward perception of themself or their headmates either, so that kinda built up over time (with some help) along with the appearance of our headspace so that there was… actually a location for people to interact in. once they had a better awareness of things, mental communication got a bit easier– its sort of like background chatter really, when everybody’s awake. sometimes i get weird out of context things from Mae yelling at somebody, or sometimes ill be talking to a friend and someone’ll butt in.

when talking out loud, this usually leads to us suddenly stopping and then laughing or going “no!!!”. when on discord and around people who know who we are… well.

speaking of Mae, she’s pretty much my sister. not like… biologically? because i don’t think thats possible for me, but shes kinda literally my “other half” which ill get into later. headmates can have strong attachments to other alters! friends, best friends, family, dating, whatever. they can also do that with people outside the system, and itll be different for each headmate. there’s like 4 people dating Jorb but i just see him as one of my best friends. we’re people and we have complex social interactions that can get to be kind of a nightmare when you’re around a bunch of people who don’t know that you’re Not Leo and that youre suddenly not super up to existing around people in general.

plus even if like… so Jorb’s dating 4 of us like i said, but his relationship w/ each of them is different? Ica is very clingy and likes rambling to him, Summer’s pretty much just always happy to hang out, Mae makes fun of him a lot but in a loving way, and Leo is… kinda “all of the above” because that’s his gimmick. plus even tho a few other alters have a sibling-ish relationship with Mae like i do, usually its just me and Mae that do the “chaos siblings” bit.

the basic system.. thing… is that there’s “front”, which is being in control of the body– so, like, i’m currently fronting/in front, because im the one currently active and using our computer and staring at our cat.– and then theres the headspace, where everybody hangs out when theyre not in front. the headspace itself can differ in style & functionality for each system, and i think theres some systems that dont really have a location at all? but for us its like a full on location where we have individual rooms, places to visit if we get bored while away from front, etc.

theres also like, being at/near/away from front? so currently im in front, but Leo is pretty much always lurking nearby if he’s awake (we have individual sleep schedules that dont always sync up to the “irl” one, Trust is almost always sleeping), Ica’s somewhat in the back talking to Rookie so i cant really make out what theyre saying (its probably about either a youtube thing they both like or about a comic they want to do), and everyone else is either asleep (in which case they could be nearby but i cant currently “ping” them, so id have to actually take a sec to ground myself in headspace more) or in a different room. communication is easier if im in front and somebody is nearby, or it can be like with Ica rn where im like “well, theyre talking, but i have no idea what theyre saying and am making a guess based off their usual interactions”, or i could pass off front to go talk to Ica and come back (in which case my memory would be kind of vague and weird because information doesnt always properly translate), oooor i could actually go bug them while still in front. which.. im not gonna do rn bc then id get super distracted.

switching front differs between systems a lot! and even varies from day to day. like there are days where we wake up and we have absolutely no idea who we are bc we went to bed as one person and woke up as another. or we could be talking to somebody and then realize “wait, i stopped being Leo a bit ago, who am i”. or we could pass off front to somebody, like if Summer really wanted to front sie’d run up to me and let me know and we’d swap. or if something critical happens (usually a breakdown), Leo or one of the other headmates that’re more built to handle stressful situations will literally drag somebody out of front to make sure they dont hurt themself. or sometimes we throw front at people unexpectedly, like either mid-breakdown where we go “okay i dont wanna be here anymore, tag youre it” or sometimes because we think its funny because its the metaphysical equivalent of getting clonked in the head with a dodgeball, except the dodgeball is “being in control of our shared physical form”. usually mae’s the one that does that lmao

there’s a couple major categories of how alters come about. there’s “walk-ins”, where they kinda just… appear externally? like they just show up. sometimes we get a feeling of “huh. i think somebody might be here? or somebody might be showing up soon.” and have to rummage around for a while until they approach us or we find them. our walk-ins aren’t like, inherently aware of system stuff at first, so they usually get a crash course before they first front (if they choose to front at all) and it can be kinda entertaining. Rookie’s a walk-in! also Hiro, from a couple years ago. most of our walk-ins are fictives (fictional characters, usually appearing in response to us getting extremely attached to something or somebody) but a couple of our trauma splits are also fictives so that’s not like, a Rule or anything. i think these are mostly associated with non-traumatic systems but we get em fairly often so man idk

theres also… uh, i dunno what theyre actually called? we used to call them “constructs” but that sounds kind of mean. these alters exist to fill a specific role! and we usually dont talk about them on here with the exception of one major one, they just kinda hang out. Dhe exists to keep the system stable and manages the “backend” so to speak. Imp is kind of a mix of our intrusive & impulsive thoughts that came about from us trying to separate ourself from them so that we had an imaginary entity to go “nope!” at, which… stopped being imaginary, and is now a gremlin that lives in my brain. they can show up in response to trauma but arent split off of somebody, they kinda just pop into existence to help manage things.

the more… well-known, i guess? alter origin is “trauma splits”. rather than “just showing up one day with no real connection to the system origins”, trauma splits are formed when somebody in-system, uh, splits. it could be in response to a single situation or something built up over a long time, but somebody just kinda breaks and somebody new that has a bit of the original alter’s identity (if kinda influenced by the situation) shows up.

this can vary. All is a trauma split off of Leo himself, who got saddled with all of our brain hell about our ex and their insystem appearance is influenced more by eir than by leo which is… something they struggle with. Mae has a trauma split from a similar situation that is “Mae but from 2 years ago”, so basically her old identity before she reworked herself after getting put through total hell. and then uh… then there’s me and Mae! Icarus quite literally exploded into several people, with Pat (me) and Mae being the most distinct ones. we’re STILL finding out alters used to originally be a part of them that later evolved into their own people, like Summer and Toby. my identity is shaped pretty heavily not just by who Ica was at time of splitting, but also what they wanted to be jumbled together with trying to rationalize what was happening to them (they’re a pretty big fan of megaman star force, which has a media-typical system in it, so they leaned into hard “its like pat and rey from mmsf! i like pat, i wouldnt mind being like pat, its scary but im like one of my current favourite characters” and so i ended up being like, half-weird shapeshifter, half-green-haired prettyboy. and yeah thats where my name comes from!)

(Ica got put back together w/o anybody needing to integrate, which we were all very scared about, and it’s still kind of surreal to me because… me and Mae used to be able to stick ourself back together and thats how we found out about what happened to Ica in the first place? and we havent tried that since bc we have no idea what would happen. Ica 2: Ica Harder?)

despite their origins, trauma splits can be way more than… being a split. :V;; Toby’s not just a tiny splinter of Ica, he’s a quiet guy that gets stressed out and isn’t totally sure how to interact with people. i’ve existed for like 7 years at minimum and im a totally different person than i was when i thought i was still Ica, ‘cause ive had time to grow and change (and a problem Ica keeps running into now that theyre back is… they kinda Didn’t change because they were MIA for 6 years.) like everything else though this is variable– there can be “temporary” splits that dont develop properly and might get integrated back in, which has only happened to us when we were at the lowest point in our life where we were stuck constantly splitting to try and cope with whatever the hell was going on.

so Ica was gone for 6 years, which meant our system was without an original or main– there wasn’t anybody to be head of the system, basically. for a while i was operating under the assumption that i was Ica, so i filled in that role for a few years before i made the realization. eventually i kinda… stopped being able to, though, bc of stability issues, and then we were back to not really having a proper main anymore. to make up for it, we started going by Leo collectively and kinda… trying to pretend to be a single person? and so that ended up creating a construct to fill the role of “system main and the person we pretend to be when passing as singlet/not a system”: Leo himself! he’s kinda the most prominent traits we all have in common rolled into a single guy, which means that not only is he a pretty good system representative but we can also pretend to be him pretty easily (unless it’s someone like Toby who acts totally different). i dont know how common this situation is, i think normally it’s just “if system original is gone, another alter steps up” like originally happened to us before i had a severe case of problems disorder.

uhhh this is very rambley bc there’s a Lot to cover and now im trying to figure out how much of it i HAVE covered. systems are complicated and weird! OH WAIT okay i have one last bit.

so like, for us, first realizing we were a system was total hell. we fought a lot. as more alters showed up through various means, there were times where Ica felt like they were completely out of control of their own life bc of having to manage everything. there were a lot of panic attacks of people fronting and not being sure they were even REAL, despite… being in front. but we still felt like we were deluding ourself. this was in, like, late 2011, so systems weren’t a THING. they were a very fringe community that everyone hated. we got constantly harassed, which only fed into Ica’s panic hell and our identity issues. interpersonal relationships became a nightmare, especially because we have BPD as well which varies in severity for each of us but… for me it’s pretty bad! there were times early on where every day was another fun new breakdown from us arguing with each other or our friends or not being understood or… etc.

so… how are we holding up ~7 and a half years later? pretty well, actually! we talk to each other. we do things for each other, like buy food or games we know specific headmates like. Ica is back and way happier than they were in 2011, and is thrilled to get to hang out with everybody that’s showed up since. we help each other through problems, because at the end of the day our system ended up being a support network. Ica couldnt function on their own, so we’re like… 10+ people working together to try and be a single functional person. and we feel pretty okay with that! we still fight, and we still start shit, but we’re not in constant crisis anymore. we’re still working through all of our trauma, especially the more “recent” stuff that kinda broke our system for a while until we were able to start rebuilding, but we’re doing it together. :D

so… yeah, it can start out as a stereotypical “nightmare system”, with constant infighting and toxicity and self-sabotage and etc. but we worked through it! it took a while, but we’re overall more stable than we were before. we got out of the bad environment that was fucking us up, we got mental help for our other brain hell (we havent been able to bring up the system to our therapists bc its literally a non-issue now and we focus more on other things like our depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc), we found people that support us for being us, and we were able to like… figure things out. and it was a mess! i still have issues about my own identity because of literally thinking i was someone else for two years. Ica’s still trying to figure out how to adjust to things, especially bc they missed our entire “cringe culture” phase so they came back to find that i’d dismantled a lot of their middle-school settings. and, uh, some of their friendships as well.

systems are fuckin weird

[possibilistfanfiction]

hiya! i notice you tag a lot of your posts with 'nora, sloane, etc.' i understand these are characters for a story you're doing. i'm curious: what's the story about?

ok ! well @turnandchasethewind (olivia) & i have been working on the sketches for this show for like. a Long time lmao it has as most projects do grown & changed & become something entirely its own & i think it’s really awesome & lovely & am rly rly jazzed for it to move forward one day

anyway the working title for it is called views, & it basically follows sloane & nora, best friends who live & work in toronto. they met when they were 18/19 at a catering gig (terrible) & theyre the kind of love that is this epic soft quiet fun powerful love between female friends. they’re young & they’re a little lost always, & the world hurts, but like. they’re Good. the current storyline begins when they’re in their early/mid-twenties & nora meets ridley, who becomes her girlfriend. ridley is rly rly lovely & beautiful & whip smart & v kind & sloane hates her which is altogether mostly funny but a little sad

sloane ideally would be played by maia mitchell just for a visual but like. a grungier cooler hot mess version of maia bc like. sloane is a trash kid she’s our absolute fav she has tons of stick n pokes & her hair is a mess or buzzed (or both) & she will wear vans until they r literally falling off. she shops mostly at black market & she got this bike off kijiji that’s like 800% terrifying. she was diagnosed with bipolar I when she was 18 & shes on meds but its obviously still smth she deals with every day. shes from vancouver & she dropped out of mcgill after An Episode but mostly bc she hated it & she moved to toronto a few months after that (which is p much immediately when she met nora). shes like our token white character shes funny everyone drags her constantly abt so many things but they Love sloane. she eats Shit food unless nora’s parents buy her groceries & she drinks a lot & sometimes she has lil spirals but she has a dog named carly rae who helps a lot. she also has a big brother named whit he’s trans & he lives in brooklyn & she Adores him. shes a tremendously talented musician but ofc being a musician is v difficult so she also works a bunch of weird jobs between music gigs. she lives in a funky apartment in kensington w like six rotating roommates. she plays sets at the beaver all the time. if sloane was gonna write a song it would be ‘young’ by vallis alps but if sloane had a themesong its a tie between i wanna get better by bleachers & control by halsey & buzzcut season by lorde & then a rly rly sad cover of i rly like you by carly rae

nora is laura harrier bc like Hot & also biracial so thats dope. shes a baker & she works at a rly cute lil bakery on queen west & she always looks so pretty & put together & she rides this beautiful linus bike everywhere w a fucking basket & everything she wears so much birds of north america & oak + fort & rly just anything from victoire & she has like 12 pairs of blundstones. shes from etobicoke & her parents are both immigrants so nora is first generation canadian shes v v invested in how that all interacts shes a smart cool kid. she’s bisexual she came out when she was 16 bc she Literally got drunk in a closet & she has a history of dating Truly shitty ppl so sloane is like v v Hesitant when she falls for ridley. she has some beautiful tattoos & some silly stick n pokes, mostly w sloane. she has a rly cool little sister named kennedy who goes to ryerson & nora went to george brown. shes rly passionate abt intersectional feminism & she volunteers w a few different organizations around the city that help lgbtq+ youth shes like. a Good person & also sloane ADORES her & nora is in a v real kinda love w sloane theyre the v best pals. also girl can Drink. once a month regardless of how cold it is she & sloane make rly good pot brownies & go to trinity bellwoods & eat them & they end up Laughing a lot. nora also fosters w save our scruff bc she & sloane adopted carly rae together but carly rae is like an emotional support animal for sloane so she spends most of her time at sloane’s apartment so bc of that nora likes to foster dogs its rly cute. she has a beautiful lil tiny studio off euclid & queen. if nora had a themesong its like some dope gay (bi) ass mix of company by tinashe & feelin myself by nicki but then she meets ridley so shes like all night by bey

pls know that nora & sloane sometimes get Rly drunk at the greenroom in the annex mostly bc they love smoking in the lil alleyway its like. their trash special place. & their songs r like. california by grimes & love gang by whethan ft charli xcx & ribs by lorde 

ok in our heads ridley is played by aj but mostly bc its hot & we love her lol, ideally ridley is quebecois metis. she has a degree in physics but her parents just both died so shes kinda taking a break from everything & rn shes a florist in the shop next to noras bakery on queen west. shes from montreal but she went to school in the states & she has a longtime ex named ash. theyre non binary & ridley & ash are still rly good friends which sloane is like Suspicious abt but nora is like sloane jfc. ridley is rly smart she wears a Lot of stay home club & j brands & she & nora have a lot of shoes n boots that look almost identical. shes queer & shes kinda just been queer forever? her parents were scientists so it was always a v inclusive educated lil home she grew up in. she was named after ridley scott & everyone always jokes that she was conceived during alien lol & honestly she probably was. shes rly funny & she has beautiful tattoos & pretty pretty eyes & nora falls for her rly fast. she has a lil quebecois accent & sometimes she forgets words in english when shes drunk or tired. she & nora first kiss outside of the beaver in the snow theyre in the alley behind the gladstone w rly beautiful street art they were smoking cigarettes & its just. soft. so queer. ridleys lil songs r hold by vera blue & 21 moon water by bon iver & Mostly corbeau by coeur de pirate

sloane has a plot twist & falls in love w jack who is half-japanese & hes rly good friends w ridley which is the plot twist part a little but the BIG plot twist part is that she falls in love at all bc she is Convinced no one can handle her & she isnt stable enough for romantic love etc etc. but jack is so good hes so smart & hes a music therapist for kids on the spectrum its like Absurd how good a person he is. hes trans & hes abt to have top surgery like a few months after he meets sloane & she goes for a while & is like blah blah im not in love w him whatever its just sex but then shes So worried abt him being ok during & after surgery & she cares abt him so much & she gets Rly drunk & cries abt it to nora its funny. one day sloane is having a rly rly bad lil depressive episode & nora has been outta town all weekend w her parents & kennedy at their cottage in muskoka & so nora texts jack like. yo sloane has bipolar i she shouldve told u this but like i gotta tell u now bc shes havin a meltdown so pls go over & bring her food from fresh get the falafel tacos & like all the pressed juice ill venmo you & Pls make her shower if she buzzed her hair try to find the scalp treatment i got her from lush its in her dresser top drawer. also shes gonna wanna drink just let her do that & make sure she takes her meds she’ll be ok itll take a day or two & hes like ok. a lot but ok. & he goes & he brings sloane food & a tshirt of his & he gets her into the shower & out to the couch & puts on superstore & she curls up into him on one side & carly rae on the other & she cries a little but honestly its not so bad & like. hes so in love w her its wild she never thought that would happen its a fun plot twist even olivia & i didnt plan on

so anyway the whole show is kinda an ode to toronto & an ode to being young & in love w your friends in a rly profound way & also what its like to fall in love w ppl u might wanna spend ur life with, a kinda love thats v new. its abt queerness & gender & race in a way thats v much present but all of the main characters r rly informed & rly like passionate abt intersectional feminism & thats a cool aspect we r both v excited abt. also sloane deals v realistically w a balance between being stable w bipolar I & also being v creative & v connected to making music which is smth thats v important to me esp. nora was sexually assaulted before she met ridley (HATE!) but we delve into that as well. 

mostly like. its just ‘we’re never done w killing time/ can i kill it w you/ i’d like it if you stayed’