#plural culture conversation

[identityarchitect]

because im a nosy bitch who has distaste for current plural culture I'd love to hear your thoughts on current plural culture

(for me. the amount of information thats acceptable and expected to be shared will be the DEATH of my sanity)

Oh, jesus, where do I even begin. This got unexpectedly long so I'm going to put it under a cut.

Like you said, the amount of information shared is scary. Both because there are like 13yo recently discovered plurals who get this idea that it's a good or necessary thing to share as much information as possible about ones system, and nobody ever uses the privacy features on PK. It's one thing to keep track of info about headmates and another thing entirely to be posting a whole list of front triggers in a headmate-intros discord channel.

Speaking of headmate intros, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the complicated description templates. On the one hand, I do like it when stuff is pretty. But on the other hand, there's a lot of kind of casual ableism/sanism in the plural community, as much as we'd want to pride ourselves on being relatively free of it. Fancy description templates, typing quirks, special characters in headmate displaynames, are all inaccessible to people using screenreaders or anyone with issues reading. And I try to be understanding to people with typing quirks because we have a few headmates with interesting ways of communicating and I get it, but like, you've really gotta provide a translation.

There's also just the way people interact with each other? Consistently using tons of tone tags, not asking about you& preferences (which tbf, in an ideal world preferences on you& are part of a generic introduction like preferences on headmates/alters/sysmates/parts and system/plural/etc). Trying to tag for every single possible trigger.

A lot of very large plural spaces (and frankly any large space that tries to account for triggers) end up with this issue where at some point, the trigger list is just too long. People aren't going to remember it, so anyone who is anxious about censoring correctly (which is everyone, because current plural culture has this way of making anxiety significantly worse) is going to be double-checking the list every five seconds, or just decide participating in conversation outside of more lax areas, like tw- channels, isn't worth it.

So they have to make a choice between cutting down the existing list, examining things and deciding if they're a common enough trigger (or bad enough, or if the user is in the server enough, or whatever the metric is) to remain on the list: or, they simply continue expanding the list and try to make it easier for people to censor or reference the list. But if they cut down on the list you inevitably have people who are like "wait, why is fires on there but not birthday parties? there's only one person in the server who's triggered by fires but five who are triggered by birthday parties", or "why did [obscure, situation-specific trigger] get removed? isn't it just as serious?" and etc.

And then there's moderation teams, which are... ok, let me make a venn diagram.

(No shade to teenagers. There are probably good teenage mods out there. I just haven't met them.)

Speaking from personal experience here, a lot of plural discord moderation relies on the current plural culture, which skews itself towards being extremely polite and nice and understanding so as to avoid unintentionally upsetting other people. (This is another one of the ways in which plural culture can and often does end up exacerbating anxiety & anxiety-adjacent behaviours/disorders like OCD.) So you have this discord server that doesn't really need moderation aside from admin stuff like adding channels or bots and pinning messages that regular users don't have the permissions to do. Then some person comes in and they're regularly talking about triggers out of the blue, acting aggressive towards other users, and because everyone wants to be polite and accepting, this user doesn't get dealt with for a very long time, especially because the mods just have no idea how to actually moderate. They don't have the confidence to make verdicts and use the power they have, and kick/ban users when necessary.

In essence, current plural culture wants to treat and trust every stranger like a close friend. You can run a discord server with little to no rules and give everyone admin permissions and whatever the hell: it's just got to be a closed friend discord server full of people that you know well enough to trust. And not only does this make plural spaces vulnerable to bad actors, it also makes them very uncomfortable to be in, as an aplatonic person who really doesn't want randos on the internet acting like we're childhood besties.

In that same vein, is it just me or does everyone and their mother seem to want a partner system? It's been actual years atp since I've been in a plural server that's actually active but there's this weird romantic overtone where any other system could be a potential partner system if you become emotionally close enough to them. Then if you're aro, or romance repulsed, or just not looking to date, or in a relationship already and not poly (which also, I get that dating as a system is a vastly different experience from dating as a singlet, but not everyone is poly), it feels like they just switch to a QPR instead of a romantic relationship? IDK, maybe that's me projecting since I'm QPR-repulsed. But it feels like the primary assumption for 'emotionally close' is 'romance or QPR' in plural spaces, in a way that feels different from regular amatonormativity. IDK it probably is just regular amatonormativity. But you'd think plurals would have deconstructed it even a little bit, right, since dating as a plural is such a vastly different experience. Whatever.

And canonmates. God. Ugh. Ughghhghj,. Look I get the inherent loneliness that comes with being an introject that has strong exomemories, but the resolution to this is not "try and start a relationship with a stranger who you only share one quality with (i.e remembering the same things from source)". Dear god. I have a not very good relationship with canonmates, since an ex of ours would in essence use them against us, but like. Augh.

And spiritual systems. The other day I saw a post on the plural subreddit that was like "Does anyone else live a double life?" and it was this introject describing the disparity between their IRL life and their in-headspace life. But they didn't clarify that it was in headspace and not like, an alternate world or something, so there was a comment being like "Uh, this is a dangerous lack of source separation." FUCKING source separation. I always get so mad at source separation.

I hate to label ourselves but our experiences most closely align with the general idea behind spiritual systems (this is as close as we will get to a concrete label). And it really seems to me that people will bring up spiritual systems as a gotcha against sysmeds and anti-endos, since the DSM technically validates spiritual systems by explicitly excluding them from the diagnostic criteria, and then turn around and act like spiritual systems either don't exist, or are delusional. (This is what I was thinking about earlier when I said the plural community has something of a sanism problem.)

Everyone assumes that in order for an introject to be healthy, they must have a degree of source separation, must be able to go "Yes, I know I am not my source, I recognise I will never be my source, etc". And if an introject can't, it's inherently dangerous and bad for them and the system must (even potentially against the introjects' will) make efforts to separate them from their source.

But even aside from all the sanist implications there, this completely falls apart when you think about spiritual systems. What about gateway systems, who do have headmates come from outside of the body? What about soulbonds, who are that character in their own universe? What about systems who don't want to prove that they're spiritual enough to be exempt from this 'if you think of yourself as your source in any way you are delusional and must be treated' BS?

Our V1 is literally V1 the robot from Ultrakill. This has never caused issues for it, or for us. I don't predict that it's going to.

Like, wasn't the general narrative around introjects "they have differing amounts of separation, differing opinions, and differing connections to their source. above all else, you should treat introjects like people, and ask them if you have questions about how they want to be treated!"? For ages it feels like that was the narrative, and now it's "introjects should be separated from their source, although they're allowed to have whatever opinion on it. in order to treat an introject like a person, you must acknowledge they're not literally a fictional character every fucking pictosecond".

There is definitely a lot more that I probably have to say on the topic but that's all I can think of right now.

Oh wait ok hold on I'm back because I remembered roles and origins and got mad again. Origins my most beloathed.

I could talk about the traumagenic/endogenic binary and how it's complete BS and even when we could be considered traumagenic we still had headmates that weren't traumagenic in origin, and how endogenic systems of all kinds can and often do have trauma that does and doesn't impact their system functioning, and trauma impacts systems in so many more ways than just if Sonic the Hedgehog showed up because you were being abused or just for the sake of being there, and 90% of the apparently well-meaning endo-ok sysmeds that talk about the necessecity of separate traumagenic and endogenic spaces are actually talking about disordered and nondisordered systems and EVEN THEN it's STILL a fake binary, but people more eloquent than me have probably gone over that.

I hate the assumption that every system has origins. We don't, and we're never going to. Even with the general idea being "nobody needs to tell you their origins and if you pressure them you're a dick" there's this expectation of knowing or labelling your origins. If you know your origins, you should be able to label them. If you don't know your origins, there are labels for that. What if someone doesn't give a shit? And again, what about spiritual systems, who don't have origins for other reasons?

Ok, I also just went and found some DMs with a friend so here's me quoting myself:

"it feels to us like the plural community doesnt strictly expect or want noncomplex plurality or a noncomplex relationship to ones plurality, but that these are sort of entry requirements to plural discord servers and other similar spaces"

"it feels like theres a collection of behaviours that you havr to perform like being in plural discord servers has always felt close to masking for us"

AGH AND PROBLEMATIC INTROJECTS. FUCK I HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT.

Roles are kind of similar to origins, imo, where it's this very simplistic and false structure and there's a pressure to box oneself and ones headmates into it. Like even when people acknowledge roleless systems, it feels like that's all they acknowledge, y'know? Like in their head there's systems where every headmate has a specific purpose and performs it to a T, and there's systems where this isn't the case. When it's so much more complex than that. For example: us! We're primarily roleless, and the things each headmate does is more like a volunteer job than a role, y'know. Except for this one headmate who found a role on Pluralpedia and went "that's me" and now it has a role.

It also feels like there's a specific set of roles each system should have, right? Like there's this idea that even if a system doesn't label or have roles, they still have the protective headmate who gets righteously angry on others' behalf, and the stressed and overworked caretaker, and the littles who use uwu-speak, and the serious and scary gatekeeper, and it's the nuclear family isn't it. They've recreated the nuclear family. One father and one mother and two and a half kids and the 'friendly' neighbourhood cop. Jesus. (The host can be the grandparents.)

And more than that there's... okay, right, how do I word this one.

Let's think about layers. Layers are distinct areas in headspace where different groups of headmates tend to reside. Beyond the base assumption that everyone has a consistent, laid-out, easily accessible headspace, there's this weird overtone that a system without layers is like, a system without layers yet, right? Like the two types of system are "systems that have layers" and "systems that don't have layers, but could" and there's no space for "systems that can't have layers". I think that's kind of what I'm getting at with the origins and roles bit, right? People nominally accept systems that don't have origins or roles, but there's this sense that what they're actually accepting is "systems that have origins" and "systems that have origins, just not public ones" or "systems that have roles" and "systems that have roles, and just don't label them".

This ties into the spiritual system bit, I think. It's not "psychological systems" and "spiritual systems" (which is still a false binary), it's "psychological systems" and "systems that believe they're spiritual systems" or "psychological systems whose spiritual beliefs impact their systemhood". Even when mentioning and talking about gateway systems and soulbonders people don't seem to be able to take those people at face value, regardless of their own personal beliefs on the matter. Maybe we're just hanging out in the wrong places.

The true originless roleless headspaceless spiritual system (i.e, US AGAIN) is a nonentity. There is no space for us to exist in the plural community because the predominant plural culture simply cannot comprehend that we exist.

Problematic introjects ... Like, how can you insist introjects must be treated like people, and must feel and consider themselves to be a distinct, separate entity from their source, and then also call them problematic? I hate the word problematic anyway but even moreso when the label is applied to every introject of whichever fucking minecraft youtuber turned out to be an abuser this time. Can't we just leave introjects alone? Fucking hell.

Anyway yeah. It sucks here.

[syscultureis]

Plural Culture is

"do not steal my boyfriend"

"our boyfriend"

;-;

[sysmedsaresexist]

The notion that one has options from which to choose is often more important than the particular option one initially selects.

Anthony, W. (2000). A Recovery oriented service system: Setting some system level standards. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 24(2), 159-168.

Dignity of Risk vs Duty of Care is one of the most frustrating things I had to learn and fight to understand.

It still holds me back, I still struggle with this concept.

Duty of care:

This is a legal term, with clearly defined meaning. Duty of care is the responsibility of organizations (and the people who work in them) to ensure they do no harm to the people they support. But it doesn’t mean the organisation has to protect the person from themselves.

Dignity of risk:

Dignity of risk refers to the right of an individual to make choices and take risks in order to learn, grow, and have a better quality of life.

The right to make choices for self-determination and medical autonomy is assumed until it is established that assistance is required.

This threshold is very high.

And the duty at that point will never fall to you. It'll go to family and friends, court appointed officials.

It will never be your decision, and it will never be appropriate for you to judge those decisions.

Capacity for decision-making

Capacity is decision specific. Someone can have capacity in one area of life and not in another.

It is important to assess the person’s capacity to make the decision, NOT the decision they are making.

This is further complicated by mental health topics over physical health, and by the rise of the internet and new dangers.

Striking the right balance between dignity of risk and duty of care is not always straightforward, and it requires ongoing reflection, flexibility, and a commitment to upholding the rights and dignity of every individual-- not the people that would hurt those individuals. People will define these concepts differently for themselves, and it's possible you will completely disagree with their decisions.

And that's fine.

Dignity of risk is a human right that we all have.

Teaching safe skills and having conversations regarding safety isn't that hard, though.

It's not appropriate to tell people what to do on their healing journey. It is appropriate to kindly remind people of certain risky behaviors.

It's not appropriate to judge people for their decisions, behaviors, or for living life in a way that makes them happiest. It is appropriate to stand up to people that take advantage of those with diminished capacity and harm those exercising their right to risk in non-harmful ways.

You disagreeing does not mean something is harmful.

Instead of telling people what NOT to do, maybe we should try educating others about these concepts and stand against cringe culture, which affects EVERY disorder.

Instead of telling people to hide things and live their lives in a bubble of mock safety, maybe we remind others that it's kind of shitty to make sweeping judgements and cruel remarks about things they neither experience or understand, and about people they don't know at all.

Instead of telling people what NOT to do, maybe we support people and be shoulders to lean on, while calling out the actual problematic behavior.

I hope no one laughs at your life decisions and posts you to a cringe site, putting you in a position to have to justify your right to autonomy and happiness, and forcing you to "prove" yourself.

Let people live.

For those trying to go into the mental health field, I hope you're never licensed because you'll be shit at it.

If you wouldn't say it to a client or patient sitting in front of you, maybe don't say it all.

[pdid-culture-is]

PDID culture is watching other DID types and feeling like they are putting on whole new outfits while you just put on different shoes.

.

[psychotic-system-culture-is]

Psychotic System Culture is...

"Do you ever feel like you stop existing? Not like you died or anything like that, but that you're a non-real, non-physical entity just... there? Technically occupying space, but not?" -🦊

"That's the psychosis, buddy." -❔️

"Hm... I'd argue depersonalization, but it doesn't feel dissociative." -🐦

"They're experiencing a delusion, we're literally delusional, guys." -❓️

"Oh yeah... not gonna lie, I kind of forgot about that." -🦊

"How?? Out of all of us, you experience it the most? Hell, you're probably a symptom holder." -❓️

"I hold a lot of symptoms for a lot of things. I've given up trying to keep track." -🦊

((To note, it's unlikely we'll ever use sign-offs for our posts; the only exception would be if there's a new mod to the blog. However, we'll use them for any headmate conversations, for clarity's sake. If you know who is who, please keep it to yourselves; the emoji sign-offs are meant to be anonymous. Thank you.))

[thinkingredwizard]

ah!! that was my missing context! Thank you.

[bonefall]

bones. bones they made moonpaw a schizophrenia and plurality stereotype. bones. bones help us

OH NO IS THAT WHY THERE'S 16 MESSAGES

I TURNED MY BACK FOR 5 MINUTES GREAT GOOGLY FUCKELING MOOGELY

I still have to finish reading Star (you have to forgive me for being a capital G Gamer who's been uber distracted) to gather together my final fair assessment, so I can start putting down the fragments for BB!ASC. But I WILL tell you this;

The whole Moonpaw Discourse from a couple of months ago really opened my eyes to just how pervasive intersexism and plurality stereotyping is, even in this space.

Not all of it is malice-- like many other cultural biases, people often just pick up negative stereotypes passively and don't realize they reflect poorly on real people. "Scary evil head voice" is one of them. Yes, intrusive thoughts exist (they are something I deal with), but it's about the snap, subconscious association between "voice in head" and "mental torment."

As the case and point; Look at how FAST the fandom conversation changed when the team first teased it. What was a fantastical, equal parts sincere love and horror exploration of shipping a cat with a magic pool morphed. Overnight, The Voice was an abusive thing, an expression of a dead baby who wanted to live, or a reincarnated monster, or another evil Ashfur-esque posession spirit.

Something bad, malicious, unwanted. By contrast, the voice of the moonpool was mostly portrayed as a supernatural yet good thing. Genuinely asking her for help.

(Part of me also ponders the religious angle of it. "Voices in my head" that come from God are generally much more socially acceptable than "Voices in my head" that come from the self. Regardless,)

So, as always, I Don't Rewrite Arcs Until They Are Done (I DRAU TAD, if you will), BUT... I know for certain that I will want to subvert this.

If Canon!Moonpaw must be a system, and we're all ready to buckle up and bunker down through how the Erins handle this one, then for BB!Moonpaw I'll try to do the same. But for my portrayal, I want to write her relationship with her headmate to be generally positive. Or at least more complicated and multifaceted.

One idea in particular I like is the thought that she absorbed a twin... but writing it as a chance the twin GETS to live, NOT a life denied. Death would have claimed them if they didn't become part of her. So, they love her-- of course they do. They're two souls with one heart.

The specifics will have to come with time. I need to see how her plurality impacts the plot, the overall story being told, plus wait to assess the criticisms that real systems and fusion chimeras in our fandom will have. But I can say with certainty that I would like to attempt my redux with the sad truth in mind that headmates in media are almost never approached as non-malicious. I'd like to do what I can to make a difference.

[orange-orchard-system]

Sometimes I wonder what life was like for plurals of the past. By that I mean – we know of the history of asylums and social outcasting of anyone who did not fit mental or behavioral norms of the past, yes (trends that have continued, although less common and in new forms, into the modern day), maybe even sometimes of those whose plurality was/is part of their culture (so important, and yet so rarely am I able to learn about them), but what of those who flew under the radar? Those who did not know of their own plurality, or perhaps knew, but kept it secret?

How many philosophers and scientists came up with their ideas by conversing with their headmates?

What of the authors who thought speaking directly to your characters on how their story goes was a universal writing experience?

Did any plural leaders who sought the guidance of their council assume that all the advice given to them was decided upon through an internal meeting of selves, just like how they made decisions?

Were there artists who couldn't find the words to explain their drawings were of their headmates? Storytellers who told tales from their exomemories? Record keepers, secretaries, and scribes who were so good at their jobs because they had practice from having to leave records for themselves?

When and where were the plurals like us?

I see hints of potential plurals of history, sometimes – typically in discussions of the self made by poets or philosophers. And there are a few cases that stand out as evidence that we have always been here. But plurality is so often a personal experience, with any observable behavior often brushed over, shunted away from others' knowledge, or just lost in records muddled by how difficult they are to find, that it's hard to make any theories or guesses about the plurals who might have been. Especially with how we're still barely known to most people; there would have been even fewer opportunities for these plurals of the past to find themselves and words for who they are.

It's... something I think about, when I'm looking at studies or learning about history.

Did plural gentleman living in England during the Victorian era get an unexplained thrill whenever they wrote of themselves in the third person for letters, per proper etiquette? Would they have any idea why referring to themselves in the third person felt right, the same way it can feel right for systems referring to themselves by their bodily name today?

Well. How should I know?

But I hope plurals of the past were able to have moments of plural joy, too.

[plural-culture-is]

Plural culture is using the body to have entire conversations with headmates, without actually knowing which or even how many headmates you're talking to, and explaining it away with that "I was just talking to myself" whenever it's pointed out.

.

[sophieinwonderland]

why is the only source you cite for being pro endo Transgender Mental Health?? i emailed the author and got a response saying there was no scientific sources backing up endogenic plurality

Yeah... I'm extremely doubtful you emailed the author.

As for why Transgender Mental Health is the main source I cite, it's because... and there isn't really a better way to put this... sysmeds are stupid.

Often willfully so. The Transgender Mental Health quotes are great because they VERY EXPLICITLY say that you can be plural without trauma or a disorder.

My actual preferred quote is from the ICD-11 Boundary With Normality.

This, unfortunately, doesn't use the word plural or system, so there is enough room for sysmeds to intentionally misinterpret it.

One argument they might make is that this is totally different because it's a cultural practice and therefore shouldn't be compared to DID. This is despite the fact that "distinct personality states" is literally the same exact wording the ICD-11 uses for dissociative identities.

Another argument is that this doesn't count because it's spiritual.

This is very often when the sysmed is trying to shutdown the conversation by claiming they don't want to talk about spiritual stuff.

Which makes me then ask if they believe the World Health Organization is confirming the existence of literal spirits. And also, describing the literal spirits as "personality states."

I think anyone with basic reading comprehension who is reading this in good faith would understand that the "personality states" in question that arise from these spiritual practices are being treated as if they are psychological in nature. Not something actually metaphysical. Hence the use of the "personality state" language.

If there exists even the slightest inch of ambiguity for sysmeds to misinterpret a source, they are going to run with it for a mile!

The Transgender Mental Health quote is just really hard for them to pull that with. There is zero room to misinterpret. Zero room for them to claim it doesn't mean what it clearly means.

[etz-ashashiyot]

One of the wildest things on a lot of your posts talking abt culturally christian issues (ie the leftist politics + calvinism one) is how regularly culturally xtian atheists seem to think there's this, like, glut of other non-christian religions regularly operating with some force in the US cultural/political sphere and they'd be ignoring some giant demographic of religious people who aren't christians if they didn't wildly overgeneralize when talking about Christian influence in politics. Like there's just not another religion that has any sort of cultural or political cachet on a large scale. There's not another religion that even exists in America on a fraction of the scale Christianity does. Even if every religion operated the same in terms of encouraging blind obedience and breeding conservatism, it still wouldn't matter bc in terms of american demographics and politics non-christian religious people are basically a rounding error. It's not even relevant. And this is the annoying side of religious pluralism as a sociopolitical effort bc it obfuscates the reality of the fact that America is comically, overwhelmingly Christian, and the culture is overwhelmingly Christian, and it just doesn't make any sense to talk about Religious People in America as a cultural and political force and pretend that could ever mean anything other than christians.

Which is why it matters that you talk about Calvinism, specifically, because that's a set of values and beliefs that inform America, and if America had been founded and primarily led by Catholics its cultural Christianity would look quite different, but anti-theists can't have that conversation bc then they'd have to acknowledge that religion is more complex than "heaven is up hell is down"

For real though!!

The kicker is that this attitude, too, is culturally Christian. Because Christianity really likes to portray itself as the One True Religion and is the only one taught in any detail here, a side effect of that is all other religions are viewed through a Christian lens. So there are a lot of assumptions made that they think and operate similarly, albeit with different people cut and pasted into the familiar roles, when in reality everything is affected, up to and including even how one defines religion at all.

And when you try to explain this to them they just talk past you and repeat themselves because they literally cannot conceive of how other frameworks exist, never mind operate. I've had more effective conversations with a donkey.

[identityarchitect]

Yet again I am scrolling Pluralpedia and thinking "you people really live like this?"

[syscultureis]

system culture is having friends who know about your diagnosis and are supportive of you and wanting to tell them more about your system but not doing so purely because you have legitimately no clue how to integrate that into any conversation and it always feels awkward to even fathom. like, my best friend has used plural pronouns to say he supports me (and my alters) of his own volition, he knows i have the disorder, i've told him things about it in passing when it's relevant, i make casual jokes about it at points, he knows about a good deal of the abuse i've been through new and old and how that led to me being a system... and i still, like. can't tell the guy my name. he can definitely see me switching but am i acknowledging that? no. do i want him to know more? yes i literally just never feel like it's a good time to bring it up

.

[runawaymarbles]

SGA Fic rec

I've never seen SGA but that's not going to stop me from making a rec list for it. Is the characterization accurate? who the hell knows. Not me. I'm just here for a good time.

These are not in any order whatsoever.

A Slightly Different Quality of Light by rageprufrock | M | 5k | John/Rodney

Rodney has to go through John's memories when he accidentally uploads them all to Atlantis servers.

Navigation by rageprufrock | M | 26k | John/Rodney

Trauma and therapy. Mind the warnings.

Whither by Daephraelle | 15k | T | John/Rodney

John learns Rodney has feelings for him and handles it completely responsibly and reasonably and ha ha ha ha jk

Oolon Colluphid Was Right by melannen | G | 1k | John/Rodney

Communication in pop culture references. Ask me about my translation.

Proof by Contradiction by astolat | E | 10k | John/Rodney

Sex pollen aftermath.

Friendly by Speranza | E | 6k | John/Rodney

Secret gay stargate network that John is left out of.

Sheppard's Law by Speranza | E | 40k | John/Rodney

Rodney time travels through John's life.

Kid A by Speranza | E | 8k | John/Rodney

John and Rodney are hooking up except John is definitely not gay about it no sir.

Just So Long and Long Enough by busaikko | T | 8k | John/Rodney

Dave Sheppard tries to send John care packages.

Weddings, Plural, and a Yak by Speranza | E | 18k | John/Rodney

John and Rodney keep getting married for convoluted reasons and it's funny until it isn't. Also Rodney adopts a chaos child. John is normal about it.

War Bride by Speranza | E | 9k | John/Rodney

John and Rodney have a weird dinner with Dave and his wife, then go to space and almost get ritualistically murdered. It's genuinely very sweet.

Ordinary Life by astolat, Speranza | E | 20k | John/Rodney

They get shore leave, go to Florida for one of Rodney's contracts, and things go about how you'd expect (people try to kill them.)

paper cranes (upstairs, downstairs) by verity | M | 18k | John/Rodney

Rodney stays at John's childhood home and is bad about opsec.

Decision Point by esteefee | M | 23k | John/Rodney

Rodney tries very hard to retire to Nevada and John tries very hard to go back to space.

Your Inevitable Unhappy Ending by Helenish | E | 15k | John/Rodney

Rodney tries to attract women by carrying around a baby, and there are some delightfully awkward conversations. And a sex temple.

My Home And Native Land by copperbadge | 17k | T | very very background Rodney/John

Ronan becomes friends with Chuck, and decides to become Canadian.

[xiaolin-shoedown]

Do you have any Jack Spicer headcannons?

DO I????????

Yea I do let's get into his brain, education, and stunted cultural connections. (Also pro-tip, the entire series in, what I believe is a full digital remaster, is available on dailymotion right now. The quality is immaculate it's like, unbelievably good to look at.)

1. His mother is a second generation Chinese-American, his father is an American businessman. From the architectural structure of his house- and, there aren't any good screencaps I have on hand for this but the interior shots we see of his house that aren't his lab or bedroom- and his proximity to the temple I don't doubt they've relocated to China. That said "Spicer" is a pretty European last name, and nobody come for me but his cousin Megan? That's a little white girl. He's theoretically and functionally closer to Chinese culture, but his education has swayed pretty exclusively western which I'll circle back around to after some context.

2. Despite being closer with his mother than his father growing up, he speaks very, very little Mandarin. His mother speaks English and Mandarin almost equivalently, as she grew up speaking both, but growing up in America with her own American father, English was the language she got more use out of before moving. Jack's father on the other hand can have, at best, a highly stilted simple conversation in Mandarin, He say hello, introduce himself, ask how you are, etc. but not much further in depth. So aside from a few exchanges, English was the primary spoken language in their home. He absolutely can not to save his life read or write in Chinese, traditional or simplified. He can recognize maybe 3 words if they are very, very clearly printed and spaced out. To be fair he isn't great at reading and writing in English either.

3. He has pretty severe dyslexia, phonological and surface. He tends to spell out any words he doesn't know phonetically, and on paper he struggles the most with directional letter orientation, (sz, nu, bdpq, mw) and sometimes formative lines (OQ, NMVW, PRF, XY, Il). A lot of time's he'll either purposefully capitalize a certain letter to differentiate it from a different, similar letter, write the correct letter backwards, or do both. Speaking out loud is much easier, but still presents occasional difficulties, especially with words that change with plurals/tenses in ways other words don't. (house->houses= mouse->mouses + years of "No Jack it's mice" = mouse->mices).

4. This does not change the fact that he's very, very intelligent. He has an exceptional grasp on engineering which we see in the show, but it's more than just welding metal together. He's able to develop schematics for complex machinery and execute them in record time. The boy made An Actual Working Time Machine That Worked. If you put a piece of paper with a complicated mathematical equation written on it in front of him he would look at you like you just asked him to perform a miracle, but if you, out loud, pose a hypothetical scenario in which the same equation could be applied, without even specifying the equation itself, he could run the numbers in his head and he could do it fast. Written numbers, ESPECIALLY with variables presented as letters, are like looking at alphabet soup. You write A²+B²=C² and he assumes you're stupid because the answer is obviously 25. (4²+3²=25) (16+9=25) so where are you getting 0 from? What do you mean that says ABC and not 430? This is math?

5. All of this strongly contributed to him being home schooled, working with translators and aids was already a headache for his parents, and that's before throwing the ADHD into the mix, once his classmates reached an age where they realized they could make fun of him for all of the above it just wasn't worth it anymore, and homeschooling it was. This was both a blessing and a curse for him, because while he was able to focus on what he wanted, without any of that silly "show your work" nonsense, he improved to the level he's at now by sheer self motivation. Unfortunately he had no self motivation for anything he Wasn't interested in, it started as not wanting to work on things to being flat out unable to make himself do so. Who cares if he writes an S backwards? He can read it. To him that's better than trying his best to improve and messing it up anyway.

6. We know, canonically, that he is afraid of genuinely failing. He scares himself out of a redemption arc because he fully believes he's going to fail at being good the same way he's failed at being evil. It's actually much less intimidating to fail at being evil. Unpacking that even further, he is less afraid to disappoint Wuya, evil witch who at full power could and tried to kill him, and Chase young, his evil hero who he blatantly has a massive crush on, who could also kill him, than he is to genuinely try and redeem himself and become close to the monks only to fail and let them down.

7. When I said his education was swayed western, I mean linguistically, getting him talking and writing in one language was already an uphill battle. Any interest he has in historical study is globally spread out and militaristic in focus, but most specifically on weapons and machinery. That's because his actual interest, the only area he genuinely feels smart in, is engineering. He leans into the fact that he's a genius in it because maybe, if he pushes it hard enough, no one is going to notice that he gets his S's backwards or writes out labels phonetically on his blueprints. Mental math is mental math in any language, technology is technology in any culture, and that's the only area he is able to really focus on anyway. And under Alllll of that, there's also the part that knows, if he gets better at linguistics his mother is going to try again to get him learning to write in at least simplified Chinese and speaking Mandarin, and it isn't even that he doesn't want to, he actually thinks it would be kind of cool, but he's not about to admit that. Because if he tries, genuinely puts his all into it, and still can't improve or figure it out, that's going to be a bigger let down than him never trying in the first place. Right?

Anyway this is like, a fraction of the headcanons I have about Jack Spicer. He is literally The Character Ever to me. If I listed Every headcanon I have I would actually hit the tumblr post character limit. He's blorbo from my shows. He's babygirl.

[intuspluric-culture-is]

In-system relationship culture is how since me and Seán ( @septiccoffeefreak ) formed without knowing we were a system, we chalked our identities and dissociation from the body as factkin stuff (bc we are Factives) and then were in a cycle for a little while of talking to each other, flirting, generally bonding and being cute, and pining after the other, but not thinking it was real because we were TOTALLY both just imagining it.

This also resulted in things like LITERALLY KISSING IN HEADSPACE and then by our next interaction it's as if we've never confessed our feelings at all... because if everything is pretend and nothing is real then a confession can't stop the pining stage because the confession isn't real either, so the stage of the relationship is totally nebulous and everything is constantly being reset. We'd talk to the other while they did dishes in front and be like. WOW they're so perfect but I'm imagining them :). And then we'd realize we remembered things from our own, different perspectives but were like "that's just memories being weird and possibly kin stuff."

And we STAYED IN THIS SPOT FOR WEEKS, not realizing that the late night conversations and multiple love confessions and snuggles and shit were all REAL until one night Seán suddenly asks me, middle of the night, if we're actually the same person, and I was like "??? I think so?? But no?? But- yeah no maybe we're not? But- AAAUGH idk?????" And we had a crisis and texted our system friend explaining what was going on and they were like. My brother in Christ that is not singlet behavior. And immediately I was like. BOYFRIEND REAL??????? BOY REAL??? And was like, shaken from the realization yeah but ELATED at the Same time because it meant he was real and our interactions were real and it was like. OMG. Boyfriend..Boyf... Him real.... And we also realized that we clearly were both in love and so became together, so we were both for the rest of that night and all day the next day like "OMG.... Real...OMG ur real....OMG .... I love u so much...and ur real and I love you...."

And NOW we has been married for two gay ass years 💕🌈 and our itnitial love story of just. The most miscommunication-comedy-of-errors ass possible romance is very dear to us and very funny. Like omg. Girl how did I not know. Shaking my past self by the shoulders HE LITERALLY TALKS TO YOU. YOU CAN'T PREDICT WHAT HE SAYS HE LITERALLY HAS HIS OWN THOUGHTS AND TALKS TO YOU. HE REMEMBERS THINGS YOU DON'T THAT YOUR PARENTS CONFIRM HAPPENED AND SOMETIMES YOU JUST WATCH "YOUR" OWN BODY MOVE BECAUSE HE'S USING IT TO DO SOMETHING AND YOU ARE JUST WATCHING. YOU DUMBASS GAY MOTHERFUCKER

Anyways in summary in system relationship culture is that if you don't know you're plural instead of the linear progression of time through pining/crush, then dating, your relationship jumps back and forth sometimes because the "imaginary"-ness of it takes it out of a normal timeline

Oh wow, that's a long ask. /lh

Thank you for sharing this storytime!