#this is about the experience of plurality itself after all

[syscest]

Hope you don't mind more "but am I plural" asks, but....

I feel like, I *do* want to be plural, but. Idk, I don't feel anything? Like, I think it sounds so neat to have other people in here with me, but.... I look inward, and I really don't feel anyone else here

I sometimes wish I could just, make myself plural? But it feels, disingenuous somehow. Disrespectful. And I wouldn't really know how to go about it anyway....

Look we're not gonna sit here and be like "go do tulpamancy" or do pop therapy on what's got you feeling that way or something something - but we can talk about a personal experience.

Half a decade ago, we were both a singlet and also desperate to jam ourselves into some kind of romantic polyamorous queer commune (hilarious as a loud aro I know). The experience was pretty suffocating, we didn't always really understand why we felt that way, and we made a lot of dumb decisions as a result.

Soon after we realised we were a system, we also realised that that desperation had gone away? And the funny thing about that is, years prior to this, we'd kind of internally ruled out being plural? Plurality was something we'd seen in other people - dramatic switches and isolated memory. People we liked, but experiences we knew we did not have. Because we knew we weren't plural, we couldn't want it either.

So we always wonder if the unhinged sense of romance we had for purely a brief period of our life - that presented itself almost exclusively as a desire to be permanently surrounded by people we were close with and felt safe around - was in some ways, along with general (less ravenous) desire for good relationships, a desire for our own eventual systemhood?

We can't know, obviously - but I think that adage that strong desires have to come from somewhere rings true. Is it possible to want to be plural when you do not, on some level, have plural experiences waiting to be embraced somehow? At first I want to say no, because it's just no fun to deny someone a desire to conceptualise themselves in a certain way. But then I think - wasn't it possible for us to want to be surrounded in romantic relationships so so badly when we did not, in retrospect, possess a genuine desire for romance as we now understand it?

Wanting to be plural is definitely a symptom of being plural, but also god sometimes we as people are completely wrong in ways that we do not at all understand. Just do your best for yourself.

[eric-r-malice]

Yo, I've not got a snappy hook for this, uh. Seen people theorizing that the end of the prophecy- the inevitability nobody wants to see happen- the panel Susie destroyed- was that Castle Town's dark fountain would have to be sealed.

I disagree. Lemme tell ya why, and also a little bit more, too.

First off, I may as well get the obvious point outta the way- read carefully. "TO SAVE THE WORLDS, THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY." The worlds. Worlds, plural. If we were sealing away all the dark worlds, wouldn't this be singular? After all, I wouldn't exactly refer to sealing an entire world away into nothing as "saving" it... we'd only really be saving the light world in that case, wouldn't we?

And that's usually the one counterpoint everyone uses to argue against this theory. But I think there's a lot more to it than just that. But we gotta look into the game's themes and metaphors.

So, what is a dark fountain? What are the dark worlds? Of course, in an in-universe sense, dark fountains are, well- fountains of darkness, negative light, created by stabbing into the earth with determination- and dark worlds are a different view of reality. The other side of pitch-black darkness.

But what are they? As in, what do they represent- what is their thematic purpose? Well- I suppose that might already be clear, right? They're metaphors for escapism. After all, every dark world thus far is themed after a different form of escapism-

Card Kingdom is themed around card games and board games- is there an umbrella term for that?

Cyber City is themed around the internet and computers

TV World is themed around television, and to an extent, videogames

Dark Sanctuary (all 3 of them) are themed around religion

(Flower King) is most likely going to be themed around one or several of gardening, anime/manga, and superheroes

Now, with this metaphor in mind, you can take another look at the game's story and lore, and make sense of it in a new light- too much darkness births a Titan. Too many dark fountains bring the roaring. What's the metaphor here? What's the game trying to tell us?

Too much escapism is detrimental.

And this makes sense! Too much of anything can be detrimental, even basic necessities such as food, water, and sleep- it's a good message to send. But now, let's think about what the game would be saying if we had to seal Castle Town's dark fountain- and thus, the dark world as a whole.

To me, that would be the game telling us... "all escapism is bad, and you should never do any of it." Which... well, why did we play the game, then, if it's just going to tell us that playing it at all was bad, and that we shouldn't have done it? It's just not a good or strong message to send, and I don't think it's one Toby would want to put in his game.

After all, escapism itself is not a bad thing. It's healthy to take a moment to engage in something that makes you feel good if life or the world is bringing you stress. Just don't overdo it.

Additionally, let's consider Ralsei for a moment. Ralsei- very obviously- does not hold himself, or the dark worlds in general- in very high regard, seeing them as "less real" than the light world. He tells Kris and Susie to make "real friends". He tells Tenna that Darkners aren't real, that they'll all become obselete, and that that's okay.

...and the game makes a big point that Ralsei is wrong about these things- particularly, through Susie. Susie insists that Ralsei is real- that he's one of her real friends. That he matters. And when Ralsei's words only serve to make Tenna feel worse, Susie steps up and gives a pep talk. Tells him that he doesn't have to take being thrown away. That he matters, and that he just needs to find the right people. And that's what cheers him right back up and gets him on your side.

Now, let's think about what these moments are saying to us, the player. What message is the game trying to convey here? Personally, I think this is the game telling us that these experiences- the stories we love, the characters we grow attached to- these all matter. They might not be "as real" as we are, but they can be real to us. And they can matter.

...don't you think that idea is incongruent with the idea of sealing Castle Town's grand fountain, when you consider the thematic implications? What- the game tells us in one moment that the fiction we love, while not real, still matters- and in the next, it's telling us that escapism is bad? It don't add up, chief.

And, for one last point, I'd like to quote user redactedtimes on Discord, as they made quite the compelling point about this themself that I didn't think of until he mentioned it.

To me the grand fountain kinda embodies everything about these stories that we take with us after we finish them. Our joy, what we learned about ourselves, that kinda thing. To seal it is to say that none of those actually mattered to you.

This is another really good point- and it has merit within the game's actual story, too! After all, you quite literally take everything back with you to Castle Town from all the other dark worlds. You bring back all the friends you made, and in a sense, all the experiences you had.

Thusly, to seal Castle Town's fountain would be to forsake all of this- to forsake everything you did, all the joy you had, all you learned, all the friends you made- all of it. To say that none of it mattered. To say that those friends, those games, those shows, those learning experiences... none of it mattered. None of it was real to you.

...however! redactedtimes did have a bit more to say that I think is quite interesting.

In other words: we 100% seal [the grand fountain] in the weird route

I think this is a really intriguing theory- and honestly, I believe it. After all, you're going far out of your way to do horrible things to these characters- traumatising them, abusing them, forcing them to grievously injure their friends- and for what? Because you can? To see what happens? To see if anything changes?

In a way, I think the weird route is a retake of the ideas behind Undertale's murder route. A commentary on completionism, and how far you're willing to push and tear apart this game's world just to see what'll happen. Just because you can. And because you "can", you "have to". Hope I quoted that line right...

Anyway- TL;DR: I don't think we're gonna seal the Castle Town fountain in the main route, because it'd go against the themes of the game, and when considering the game's themes, it would send a bad message. However, I could see it happening as a weird route exclusive thing.

[interstellarsystem]

psychologists have confirmed multiple times that you can only have DID / OSDD / be a system WITH TRAUMA so being neutral or pro on the subject means you are okay with people faking a serious disorder interacting with your content and you are okay with people taking away resources for people who genuinely need the help.

https://psychcentral.com/disorders/dissociative-identity-disorder/dissociative-identity-disorder-causes#what-is-it

hope this helps.

Look, we don't normally answer anon hate but we've been meaning to post about this anyway. So your ask is going to be my podium for a moment.

Firstly, we're literally diagnosed, so if you're hoping to change our mind and send us packing our bags because we're "hurting real systems", you're literally only going to make us laugh. Diagnosis isn't a factor in someone's reality, sure, but... We're literally professionally diagnosed. You, anon, can't change that, no matter what you think of us being quoigenic. So I'm not even sure why you're here or what you hope to achieve.

Anyway.

"Psychologists have confirmed multiple times that you can only have DID / OSDD / be a system WITH TRAUMA"

I'd like to see these "multiple times" psychologists have confirmed that you CAN ONLY have DID/OSDD/be a system with trauma. In fact, the one source you linked? It says "is usually associated with adverse experiences and traumatic memories". Usually being they key word here.

Do they go into the reasoning behind traumagenic plurality after that? Yes. But they specified usually in the beginning. That's not "occurs only from". It's not "is usually caused by". It's "is usually associated with".

That quick nitpick aside!

Endogenics do not have to have DID, and many don't claim to have it. Being disordered (aka, having symptoms that fit the criteria for a disorder or are disordered in general) and being endogenic (aka having a system origin not based in trauma) are separate things. Origin is a self-defined trait! It's something you label yourself/selves with, based on what you know/feel about the beginning of your system. Being disordered, aka having DID/OSDD/Other CDDs is a separate thing entirely. Those are medical conditions. They're conditions with a symptom that is being plural, sure! But they have so many other symptoms that define them--which you need to fill a certain number of to qualify for a diagnosis.

A lot of endogenics are nondisordered. They don't claim to have any sort of CDD, because they simply don't! They usually don't experience disordered symptoms, they don't experience the levels of dissociation tied with CDDs, they don't claim to have any (or many) other symptoms associated with CDDs. You know why? Because they're literally nondisordered. They aren't claiming to have DID, because they just... don't fit the symptoms for it, and they know that. They're plural--which is a symptom of DID, sure! But saying they claim to have DID based on being multiple alone is like claiming that everyone who says they cough is claiming to have asthma. Plurality, in medicalised terms, is a single symptom (though we'd prefer not to define it that way, for the sake of this post I'm medicalising it) of some CDDs--it's not the whole thing itself.

In short, nondisordered endogenics don't claim to have DID. At all.

"But you say you have quoigenic DID, and you advocate for people with endogenic DID! So endos do claim to have DID!" Note: Not in the original ask, just a predicted response.

Yes, we do. Because regardless of your origin, you can still have disordered symptoms. Origin, in our personal opinion, only defines the start of your journey as plural, and is almost entirely useless otherwise. It doesn't define anything about your functioning, or your structure, or life experiences. It's just the starting point of your system. An endogenic system who fits all the diagnostic criteria for DID still has DID--regardless of their origin. DID is about the symptoms, as any other disorder is. If you match the symptoms? You should be able to access resources that you need to heal.

How does that work? Some systems could experience trauma that causes disordered symptoms later in life, after they were already plural. You could end up with disordered symptoms from other disorders that intertwine with your plurality. You could've made a tulpa as a kid and then started experiencing symptoms closer to DID as you got older. Some systems could just not care about labelling their origin based around trauma--they don't want it to define them. It doesn't matter in the end--once again, if someone experiences disordered symptoms, and matches the criteria? They have the disorder.

"Being neutral or pro on the subject means you are okay with people faking a serious disorder interacting with your content..."

Way to put words in our mouth? For the record, we don't care to try to hunt down "fakers" interacting with us. It's not worth the effort in the slightest. People will likely fake shit about themselves sometimes, and then they'll grow up. People we disagree with probably see our posts all the time. Who cares? Our blog is public, shit's bound to happen--we're an adult and we have a life that takes up enough energy for us to stop giving a shit about who's in our notes. We have a block button, we can use it if we need to. It's literally that simple.

That aside!

We see a lot of "endos are either faking or mistaken traumagenic systems" going around, so I'm going to include a bit of that topic in here too because they go hand in hand.

Genuinely, who cares what someone says their origin is? As we said earlier, endogenics don't claim to have DID/OSDD if they're nondisordered. So... There's clearly no disorder to even fake there? What would they gain out of pretending to be a nondisordered system aside from... Harrassment from people like you, anon? Doesn't seem like a fun pastime. If people want to fake being nondisordered and endogenic, honestly they're putting themselves more in harms way than they're actually harming others around them, most of the time.

As for disordered endogenic systems... Sure, you're of the opinion that CDDs can only come from trauma. You think they're wrong about their origin. But people with CDDs, regardless of what they beleive their origin is, still have CDDs. You can't decide their beliefs for them, or how disordered they are based on that. I'm sure some endogenics are "secretly traumagenic" and don't know about it. But does it really, actually matter what labels people use? If someone is struggling and experiencing disordered symptoms, why does it matter if they define their origin as something other than the commonly accepted explanation? Why should people have to always define themselves by their own suffering to be seen as "valid"?

Disordered endogenics are people who need help, they don't need to be harrassed online about what labels they use to describe their own lives. Even if it were true that every endogenic system was faking or was traumagenic but mistaken, the "fake systems" would eventually grow up and stop, and the "secret traumagenics" would still need help anyway, no matter what they call themselves. Calling them out and harrassing them over their personal choice of labels is stupid. They have the disorder you claim to protect. Why does it matter to you what they call themselves? Someone could say their origin is them sneezing so hard one time that it split their brain in two, we literally wouldn't care about that. If they're disordered, they deserve resources to help them. Anyone with a disability deserves access to help, regardless of if they're someone you personally agree with or not.

"...and you are okay with people taking away resources for people who genuinely need the help."

Putting words in my mouth again, but, anyway...

I'd like to extend to you, anon, if you care to respond--and any other person out there who wants to actually answer me--what resources are being taken away by endogenics here?

Is it DID specialists? Are nondisordered endogenics taking those? Why would they need access to medical care for DID if they're not experiencing DID? They wouldn't, usually. They might need help to manage internal system relationships, or they might need help for other mental or physical health issues--which.. Are absolutely valid reasons to seek medical help anyway. So why should they not see professionals if they have a reason to see them?

Are disordered endogenics taking them from you? I think the key word here is "disordered". They have a disorder. Why wouldn't they be able to see one? What is someone with DID taking away from... other people with DID?

If it's not DID specialists, what other resource is being taken? Self-help books and/or PDFs aren't limited or finite most of the time... Doctors and general psychologists can have the same logic as above applied to them... Support spaces are there for people who need them, so if endogenics need support from other systems then they deserve those spaces.... What else could endogenic systems possibly be taking from you?

Literally, we have never received an answer for this that makes sense. What are they taking away? And why do they not deserve it if they feel they require that resource? What is "resources" here?

[sophie-frm-mars]

I'm gonna plural discourse for a bit

There's a video that I saw that proposed changing the diagnosis of DID/OSDD to either Dissociative type PTSD or BPD with dissociative amnesia. I think this is not a wholly sensible suggestion and I get into why in the first half of The Mad & The Mentally Ill (text up on my patreon video out in a few months probably) but without getting into a deep critique of the diagnostic model itself I wanna talk about the merits and problems with that suggestion

So on the one hand, PTSD and BPD are already both dissociative in their lived experience. With PTSD you have both the dissociation of feeling like your trauma happened to someone else and the dissociation of feeling like you aren't where and when you really are when you're experiencing a flashback. BPD is dissociative in all its core mechanisms, and there is a sort of emotional "dissociative amnesia" at play when someone with BPD moves from one extreme emotional state to another, because they shift emotional reality so fast it can give them and people around them whiplash. This is a part of what gets people with BPD called manipulative - they change emotional states so fast people assume they must be faking how they're feeling to get what they want.

Therefore it makes some sense to some degree to say that someone whose dissociative identities are formed out of intense trauma has PTSD and that a system of alters that resemble different "personality states" of one core identity is BPD. Or at least it's a somewhat internally consistent model

On the other hand, the lived experience of plurality isn't like that and the best way to explain the difference is to say "it's like you are several different people". In other words I think that there's something potentially useful in this suggestion for helping plural people understand themselves but the suggestion itself is coming from a strictly singular perspective that wants to insist that the ontological nature of the self is singular and in reality the self is simply plural in all cases. "Singular self" people are radically different people who experience radically different thoughts and feelings at work, at home, with friends, with family, when stressed, when tired, when reminded of childhood. As Richard Schwartz says "parts work is for everyone" and I think this attempt to legislate plurality out of the DSM is philosophically an acknowledgement that in effect everyone is at least a little bit plural and an attempt to reconcile that by saying "therefore no one is" instead of opening up your conception of the self to a little more possibility than previously allowed.

Besides all of this, and now I am getting a bit into my critique of the diagnostic model, trauma works differently for different people, and for some people the minor traumas of simply being alive are enough to have profound psychological effects. In the plural community I've seen discussion of "endogenic systems", i.e systems where "they're just like that" rather than there being a specific root trauma. The trauma that forms something like BPD is everyday and commonplace - an environment of traumatic invalidation - just kinda being gaslit by life. Also I think there's a popular understanding that the way people heal from wounds is not their "natural" state and is therefore wrong, but you just have to accept that you are the shape you are and you have no choice but to love yourself. I guess after writing that sentence I should probably acknowledge that I'm plural and that I've known since I was a teenager but was too scared to tell anyone until about two years ago. Where was i. Okay you need to accept that every experience shapes and affects you some amount and lose the idea that trauma is a unique kind of experience which is bad and makes you somehow bad or less or deformed.

Just because someone is some kind of way because of experiences they had doesn't mean they need fixing. Everyone who will ever live is ways they are because of stuff that happened. My point is that I don't see a distinction between systems being "born this way" or formed through specific trauma as long as they are comfortable and happy existing as themselves in the world, and it's stupid and reductive to try and redefine plurality in singular terms when no one is truly singular anyway

[the-ribombee-constellation]

How did you discover your plurality, and do you have any tips for someone looking to become an endo?

This ask is phrased in a way where it makes us think you are either misinformed or an anti-endo asking in bad faith. We're going to assume it's the first one. We're going to answer the second part first. (Edit after writing: it turned out way longer than we thought so we're putting a cut here)

First of all: you can't become an endo. You're probably thinking of willo, or willogenic. These are systems that create themselves, whether through imaginary friends or characters accidentally becoming sentient, or through tulpamancy, paromancy or willomancy, all methods of creating a willomate. Tulpamancy as a term is more controversial than the others, as the process was adapted from a Buddhist practice, but we're neither Buddhist nor a tulpamancer so we don't think we really get a say :] while we don't have much experience with that, we do know a few things:

Firstly, there is active and passive forcing. Active forcing is sitting down (or lying down) and visualising your willomate's form, working out the details and such, while passive forcing is more like talking to your willomate while doing other things, like washing the dishes and explaining the process you go through.

Find a guide! Tulpamancy's the most common form of forcing a willomate so you'll find the most guides under that, even if you personally think it's cultural appropriation.

Be consistent in your forcing. Try to do it at least once a day. If you miss a day that's fine, but try to get into the habit. You can even set timers to remind yourself

Be patient. Every willomate takes a different amount of time to develop, and for a beginner it's typically longer. Don't get frustrated when it takes weeks, months, or even years for them to develop.

Understand what it means to have a headmate. It is not like having a roommate, or a pet, or a toy. They are sentient. Your willomate can take on attributes you imagine them with, but most likely they will develop their own personality. If you are not ready to live with another sentient being in your mind 24/7, do not go through this process.

That's all the tips we have, really. So, to answer your first question:

We discovered our plurality through a few things. At the beginning, we actually thought we weren't a system, and were interested in becoming one, so we began the process of creating a willomate! That's how we know those tips :]

While we were scrolling Tumblr looking for more tips, we came across a post of a system answering an ask from someone looking to be a willogenic system. The answer was quite helpful, but then they went on to say that "if you are so interested in becoming a system, it might be you're plural already, and willomancy/tulpamancy is your system's way of subconsciously trying to recognise itself" (paraphrased).

This kind of "got the ball rolling" for us. We started looking into the past and noticing things about ourself that was explained by plurality. It was a slow process at first and we were struggling to identify headmates: at first we thought we were a proxy system, with one frontstuck host and other headmates trying to front, with "me" unconsciously blocking them everytime. As it turned out, we all just had such weak identities that we blended together and couldn't tell each other apart.

We made a post complaining about it and asking if any other systems had any tips we could use to tell ourselves apart, and a very lovely system by the name of exorsysm gave us the tip: "assign each headmate a colour, and see what colour you feel the most strongly" as that pertains to the fronter.

So, we did that, and started off with just 6: Red, Orange, Green, Blue, Purple, and Grey. We added more later, with first Pink, then Yellow and White, then we started adding fictives.

Eventually, after a long time of differentiating ourselves and tracking our fronts and switches (if you want to know how long, probably multiple months), we could identify ourselves well enough to start naming ourselves, doing some picrews and working out appearances, and start filling in Simply Plural's info.

Red became Alizarin, a protector and anger holder, Blue Crescent, our most common fronter (but not the host), Purple Mika, Grey Nimbus, a cassmate. Orange stayed unnamed for longer but we eventually identified Orange as Alpenglow, another protector. Green Pradera, Yellow Helios, a mood booster, and White Inziel, a caretaker.

After that we started either forming or discovering new people, most of them fictives at first, but then we went through a bit of a hard time and formed a couple trauma-holders and protectors, Whimsy and Tazbel. (Neither of them had colour names, although Tazbel started off named "Haha traumaboy" in SP)

Anyway yeah that's a bit more info than just "how did you discover your plurality" but eh. In terms of origin we started off as quoigenic (unknown), then constelgenic (originating from being constelic), then nebugenic (not quite coalescing into one whole personality as a child, sort of drifting and nebulous instead), then just endogenic bc we had no idea, then back to quoigenic, and now we're pretty much sure of adaptive! Though we are looking through origin terms under Adaptive and seeing if one fits. So far there's a couple options but we'll keep them private for now.

Anyway, hope this helps and answers your questions! We also hope you're not an anti-endo making fun of us! :D

~ Whimsy 🔮🌟 (shy/zie/it) and Indigo 🌊⛓️ (ae/he/it)

[systematic-breakdown]

It’s almost as if plurality is a very broad spectrum and not all endogenic systems will have the same experiences or fit into the same box. It’s almost as if plurality is merely one symptom of dissociative disorders and it’s actually quite possible to exhibit a single symptom of a disorder without actually having the disorder itself.

Just because someone has an intense interest or passion, would you call them autistic? Of course not, because autism presents with a wide range of symptoms. Just like dissociative disorders. Just like any mental disorder. You need multiple qualifying symptoms in order to be diagnosed. And a lot of plural people (endogenic or otherwise) just don’t have the other symptoms necessary for a dissociative disorder diagnosis.

not that I'm obligated to entertain someone who doesn't have the balls to do this off-anon, but I feel like talking to a brick wall today. lucky you.

I want to let you know off the bat that nothing you or anyone says without linking at least one actual, proper research article (e.g. reliably sourced, no COI, no baseless claims, researchers cite their sources if they aren't directly referencing the study, unbiased, ecological validity, etc) will have any impact. I tell you this now to give you the opportunity to stop here and save yourself the time and effort of developing a counter-argument that won't be responded to productively or (potentially) at all.

I am of the belief that it is of great importance to be critical of everything you read, even if it supports your claim. a lot of y'all tend to just take these papers at face value without actually thinking critically about it or what it says because you're too focused on "this supports the thing I think!" to properly examine and analyze it for flaws.

I understand that non-dissociative plurality is fairly new to the medical field, but that does not negate the fact that classic AND contemporary research supports the idea that being a system is rooted in trauma. that does not negate the fact that most classic and contemporary research papers emphasize the fact that “plurality” is heavily tied to ACEs, lack of support, and the child's inclination towards creativity and use of imagination. your brain, like everyones, does not want to form barriers. it is forced into forming barriers. it wants to be as whole as it can get because that is how we have survived as a species. that's why integration occurs during childhood/before the start of puberty in the first place. the only reason some people have barriers and others don't is because their brain (our brain) recognized that it would be incapable of function and, in that, survival if it had integrated like it is biologically predisposed to do.

obviously older research papers have their own issues, but those are typically resolved after being re-examined and reframed contemporarily. even so, it's important to critique these older pieces in natural and regular settings to prevent a setback in the current understanding of research as a whole (not just in the context of systems). this same process needs to occur with newer pieces on "multiplicity" outside of OSDDID for the exact reason that it is a new field of study greatly impacted by the accessibility of the internet and the inescapable online influence that is present in most participants as a result.

you don't have to convince anyone that your point is the correct one, just as I don't have to convince anyone of that either. I just enjoy expressing my opinions and find it nice that there is direct feedback when posting publicly. it just so happens that my opinions are heavily based in research and medical fact, whereas the extent of "research" for many endogenics (and most people looking into online system communities) won’t go beyond blog posts and the 5-10 articles (all of which have their own issues) that are floating around your spaces. not unlike what you are exhibiting here. it is very easy to find proper articles on OSDDID, trauma, and dissociation, hence why I'm not including any here - you could fact check me all day long and still have things to read (I encourage you to do so). not so much for "plurality" outside of that. where are your sources? where is your evidence? making claims like this without having anything to back it up is a surefire way of spreading misinformation which, as I’m sure I’ve said before, is something I would much rather avoid.

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but “plurality” is not a spectrum. yes, it is possible to exhibit symptoms without having a disorder, but that's just not how it works with trauma-based disorders like OSDDID. comparing the symptoms of a trauma-based disorder to the symptoms of a neurodevelopmental disorder isn't the "gotcha" you think it is. and before you say "well, endos aren't trauma based disorders!" the suffix "-genic" implies a correlation between the two, there isn't a single source I've seen that proves beyond a reasonable scientific doubt that "plurality" the way it's described by endogenics outside of trauma is possible, and there are plenty of endogenics who do claim to have trauma but that their "system" occurred outside of that. given the current understanding of how “plurality” and it's direct correlation to trauma works, that simply isn't possible.

a lot of endogenics do actually qualify for dissociative disorders without realizing it. and the ones who don't just aren't "plural". there are a ton of disorder cocktails that mimic the symptoms of OSDDID (including feeling "plural") almost to a tee. and to address the “non-disordered” claim: it’s okay to have a big imagination and to find comfort in that. that doesn’t make someone a system. or “plural”, if we’re going with that concept.

recently, I saw a post talking about "median systems" and the "midcontinuum". I ended up going down a rabbit hole of sorts and found, unsurprisingly, that the "midcontinuum" was based in very old, very undeveloped research relating to DID (or MPD, as it was referred to more often than not in the MANY first person accounts I read through). I went through about 80-90 different links, most of them being blog/social media posts as there was very little research done into this, and every single one could be linked to some form of OSDD, P-DID, or a mix of trauma, autism, OCD, ADHD, etc. (all connected by their - need I remind you - self reported imaginative abilities and propensity for creative outlets) and that was just from the symptoms that they themselves claimed to have.

you're not required to educate people on something you so strongly believe in, but if that's what you want to do, it's considered good practice if you provide valid sources instead of varying first person accounts. even more so in this new age of internet, where anyone can be anything and theres really no way of knowing the truth.

in all honestly - if you want my opinion - none of these labels matter. in microlabeling every experience, every symptom, every presentation; in giving name to everything pathological outside of our personal experiences with healthcare, I think we’ve all ended up doing a lot more harm than good.

I had something in our drafts already talking about this but I guess I can put it here: everyone seems to have forgotten that the whole point of putting a name to these experiences was for classification and insurance. it's helped create community, of course, but whatever the name it has is unimportant as long as it's dealt with healthily. splitting is not healthy. dissociating is not healthy. forcing alters to form is not healthy. these things aren’t necessarily “bad”, but they aren’t “good” either. the existence of alters is not what is tended to in therapy, the underlying trauma and the "why" of their formation is. that is where the focus needs to be. "why".

sure, it can be fun coming up with new terms, playing with the concept of "plurality", or exploring adverse reactions to trauma - we as people are naturally curious, so of course we want to understand ourselves and our relationship with the world around us - but please do not let this discourse or the community take the attention away from that "why". this is about self exploration, right? then don’t let the ideas and opinions of others inhibit you from delving into yourself. don’t let the pathologising of every experience take you away from yourself. let it be about self-exploration.

[sophieinwonderland]

A Roadmap and Why Anti-Endos Are Getting Left Behind

A recent post of mine was controversial and has been making waves. That post was the short un-nuanced version of a pro-endo future that's coming. It was phrased to sound threatening and inflammatory because it feels like that's all anti-endos will listen to anymore. But now that I've successfully gotten your attention, let's talk seriously about what's been set into motion, why it's bad for anti-endos, and why there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

Positions on endogenic plurality in psychiatry

The nature of DID has been the subject of much debate within the psychiatric community for a long time. Most experts have agreed that the cause of DID is virtually always trauma. (Although many doctors are hesitant to assert this cause 100% of the time because edge cases can exist with anything.) But there's a smaller group that views it as sociogenic or iatrogenic, being caused by suggestion or doctors themselves.

I tend to agree with the majority.

But that majority group that believes DID itself is caused by trauma has also consistently acknowledged that there are, or at least could be, other forms of plurality beyond DID. This includes Dr. Colin Ross, who in the 90s speculated that there could be a non-pathological endogenous form of multiplicity. This was also echoed by Kluft, another DID expert who holds the traumagenic view of DID.

In the early 2010s, the creators of the theory of structural dissociation mentioned in a paper that mediumship and hypnosis may involve self-conscious dissociative parts of the personality.

By 2019, the World Health Organization's ICD-11's DID entry stated that you can experience multiple distinct personality states without a disorder.

Every source you can find about endogenic and non-disordered plurality either affirms it as a real thing or is at least neutral on it.

There is no hard anti-endo papers in psychiatry or psychology.

You can look through peer reviewed sources if you want for a single one that supports the idea that all plurality is traumagenic, and I promise that you won't find one.

A growing trend in research.

Like I said, in the 90s, there were a couple doctors talking about non-pathological multiplicity as something that may or may not exist. But this was largely un-studied. Later, this phenomenon got more attention, but there were no studies into non-pathological multiplicity, outside of spiritual possession, until 2016 with Varieties of Tulpa Experiences.

That was only 8 years ago.

The year after, in 2017, came a small interview study into online multiples that concluded this:

2018 saw the publication of Transgender Mental Health by The American Psychiatric Association, which asserted plurality could be non-traumagenic.

And again, 2019 saw the ICD-11 worded to say that one could experience the presence of multiple distinct personality states without a disorder.

There have been so many studies conducted in the intervening years that this post would go on forever were I to list them all.

If you want to see more, you can look at Guardians Systems' doc. Progress is happening at a rapid pace with new studies published every year.

This leads us to the next big milestone... actual fMRI research and brain scans. Because THAT'S HAPPENING.

Stanford University conducted a massive $50k study (not including the payment to researchers themselves) into tulpa systems, and the people running those studies recently did an AMA about it on Reddit.

The results are promising, showing neurological changes during possession. (Possession is a tulpamancy term for a headmate taking control over a single part of the body without fronting.)

Once this is published, it's only going to further pique interest in tulpamancy and endogenic plurality in psychology.

Are you scared yet? Because Rod Dreher is...

Rod Dreher is a transphobic conservative pundit and reactionary. I'll preface this by saying it's unclear how much of his fear is legitimate and how much is playing to a transphobic base as a way of saying "look what these liberals are doing now." Personally, I think it's probably a bit of both.

I'll be linking the archived version to avoid giving him clicks.

What conservative pundit Rod Dreher believes is that tulpamancy and plurality are going to be the next frontier of identity politics, as he makes the case for here.

He's of course NOT in support of this, but he's afraid of it.

And he's not wrong either.

In another quote from the AMA, Dr. Lifshitz mentions how much interest he gets from colleagues when he discusses tulpamancy.

The awareness of plurality and interest in it in medical spaces is rapidly spreading, and current studies do show tulpamancy improves mental health.

While it would be easy to dismiss Dreher's predictions as typical conservative fearmongering, the current trends clearly support what he's predicting.

He may be on the wrong side of the debate, but he can see the same signs and trends I do.

Plural Acceptance In Therapy

As said above, studies have shown thus far that tulpamancy is healthy, as are other forms of plurality. Plural awareness and interest is spreading quickly through academic circles.

And in one interview, Lifshitz mentions that they're interested in using research into tulpamancy to develop better DID treatment.

This will take a while to apply, and I don't know when they'll start using knowledge from tulpamancy in clinical settings, but there's a good chance that within the next decade, this research into tulpamancy may start to influence the treatment of DID systems.

How this will manifest is still unclear. Perhaps it won't go further than the advanced inner world exercises tulpamancers use to immerse themselves in inner worlds to communicate with tulpas.

But... a number of DID systems with tulpas have reported positive benefits from creating tulpas to help their systems. So maybe we'll see studies into using tulpamancy to intentionally make alters for DID systems and see how that benefits their mental health. If results are positive, this could be used in treatment.

Speaking of which, we're probably also going to see studies into having singlets create tulpas intentionally.

They're already having children make imagined companions, and have recorded these imagined companions are able to act seemingly autonomously, possessing their own thoughts and feelings.

This research cited research into tulpamancy, and suggested future studies should be carried out on adults to see if there are benefits.

I can already see the path from having adult singlets make tulpas to test for benefits of plurality, and then to testing on DID systems to see if this could be used to help strengthen communication in those systems.

And if these studies are done and the methods are proven effective and put into practice, anti-endos won't even know that the methods that are being used to treat them were derived from tulpamancy studies.

But as more anti-endos are being treated by therapists who are working to get them into healthier mindsets, it's likely you'll see a trickle down from the opinions of therapists to their patients, helping dismantle their bigotry towards endogenic systems and internalized pluralphobia.

If you're anti-endo and have seen other anti-endos complaining that their therapists seem pro-endo, know that it only gets worse from here.

Plural Acceptance and Gender

Plurality is also likely to become an increasingly big thing in topics around gender.

Just last year in 2023, we saw a study into the intersection of living as plural and transgender.

This study also marked a major milestone for plurals, being the first time ever that a system name (The Redwoods) was used as an author on an academic paper. Authors in this study worked across multiple universities, a hospital, and a gender wellness center.

This will almost definitely not be the last.

Additionally, we've lately been seeing live gender conferences with plural speakers speaking about plurality and this intersection. No longer is this community based entirely online.

Plural acceptance is going to quickly spread within the LGBT community. And anti-endos will be tolerated in those spaces less and less.

A Stranglehold on Resources

Another reason anti-endos are going to lose is because most resources are already pro-endo. Simply Plural and Pluralkit both support endogenic systems, with Simply Plural having links discussing endogenic plurality, linking young systems to the information.

There have been anti-endo attempts at breaking this stranglehold, but it always comes down to copying a more popular pro-endo thing and making it more hateful and exclusive, and it never gets close to enough traction.

Anti-endos contribute nothing to the community and are reliant on pro-endo resources, and every person they suggest Simply Plural to brings them closer to those pro-endo articles from The Plural Association.

Confidence in Being Out as Plural Means Plural Role Models

I don't know who these role models will be. Aimkid came out as a DID system and is pro-endo. Unfortunately, anti-endos have had success in bullying Aimkid off of social media.

But some studies have shown about 3% of the population is plural, only about half of which have DID, and I believe the real numbers are actually much higher.

As plural acceptance increases, it's only a matter of time before you start seeing some of your favorite celebrities come out as plural.

It's only a matter of time before plurals have their equivalent of "The Puppy Episode" where Ellen came out as lesbian on television.

I can't predict when this will happen. Things like that tend to come out of the blue. But I do believe it will happen and when it does, plurality will suddenly be pushed to the mainstream conversation.

This is Going to Quickly Become a Left-Right Issue

When plurality hits the mainstream, conservatives will fiercely oppose it. Because of the way reactions tend to work, that means liberals are going to fiercely defend it. Each side feeds into the other and results in more support in liberal spaces and more opposition in conservatives ones.

I'm not going to sugarcoat this. If you stand by bigotry in these liberal spaces, especially queer spaces, you're going to find your social circle shrinking unless you keep that bigotry to yourself. When this is part of the national conversation, you will find yourself cutoff by people you care about and spaces you previously would be accepted.

Intolerance to plural systems of any kind will no longer be tolerated. There will be no safe space for hate in those communities.

And with the overwhelming science and doctors supporting the existence of non-disordered and endogenic systems, with the support of the psych community, anti-endos will soon find themselves regarded the same way we regard anti-vaxxers and flat-Earthers in liberal spaces.

A Choice to Make

You're not doomed. This isn't hopeless. You can make a change.

System medicalism is The Titanic but you have life rafts you can hop on before it goes down.

Plenty of anti-endos have changed their ways. But if you stay on your current course, this is where it ends. You either maintain your bigotry, as you're cast out of queer communities, watching endogenic plurality infiltrate your favorite media, and with therapists who are pro-endo, all while your own hate and isolation destroy you...

Or you can choose to be better before it's too late. Because the longer you maintain your hate, the more people you hurt along the way, the more guilt you'll carry with you after you break away.

Or... I guess there's a secret third thing. A worse choice. You could join with the Rod Drehers of the world, because the Alt-Right will probably accept you gladly if you're willing to toe the party line, and turn against both fellow systems and the queer community.

I'm sure they would love systems with internalized pluralphobia who speak out against a plural future that they can hold up as examples, the same way they love homophobic gay people like Milo Yiannopoulos.

If that's what you want to be, I suppose that's an option too. 🤷‍♀️

If you do make right choice...

You can find acceptance. Your past mistakes won't be held against you.

Admitting that you're wrong and choosing to be better can be scary. But that's no excuse to continue down a path of hate.

If you do choose to make a change, we can build a plural future together. One where we won't have to hide or fear discrimination for being plural.

One where future plural children won't have to grow up feeling crazy and hating themselves and their headmates for being different, and they'll have real people to look up to who have been where they are.

My Part...

For myself, I'm going to do everything I can to push this future forward, to help bring it about. This future is an inevitability. But the more of us that spread awareness of the science and what's happening, the sooner it gets here.

But with or without my involvement... anti-endos... you're losing. Bit by bit, every single day, and you don't even realize it because you're surrounded by an echo chamber that refuses to see the reality of what's happening.

But We see it. Dr. Lifshitz sees it. Even conservative Rod Dreher sees it.

And you are so far behind in this battle that there's no way you can possibly prevent what is coming. Maybe you could have stopped it had you started paying attention half a decade ago. But you've walled yourselves off from anything that contradicted your worldview and that willful ignorance has left you playing catch-up.

Your echo chamber will tell you that you're safe to keep being who you are, to keep spreading hate and hurting innocent people because of what we are. That the future I promise won't happen. They'll tell you to ignore all the signs.

But the reality is that the world is changing and the future is plural, and you are going to have to make a choice.

I sincerely hope you will choose the right thing. But for those who don't...

Well, like I said, it's up to you. I can't stop you from choosing hate. I'm not going to try to make you into a better person either. That's up to you.

But I think you at least deserve to know what's happening and how it will end up affecting you if you don't make a change.

[lgbtransgirl]

we're all big fans of warframe in here (got properly hooked with umbra's story and been hooked ever since). rhino is one of our go-to frames too ;)

what drew you to warframe? what keeps you coming back?

What drew me to Warframe was "Ooo new free game" when I was 13 and poor lol. Strap in because this is a long one

TLDR, the love and effort the Devs put into the game and how F2P friendly the game is is what kept drawing me back in.

Every time since those first few days though, I've looked at Warframe and thought "Wow, an almost completely customizable free game experience with no pay-to-win and the ability to play with your friends!"

I ended up taking a few big breaks from the game for one reason or another, I've been playing since 2014. Every time I come back to see the amount of love DE puts into the game and how much more there is to do, how much more fun the game becomes, I could go on.

A free game that offers the power fantasy of being a cool space ninja warrior thing and mowing down armies representing the exact injustices we see mirrored in the real world was something that 13 year old me really, really needed.

And it felt infinitely repeatable. I had no competitive meta to keep up with, so the "grind" wasn't a challenge or a chore. I just liked seeing how far I could go in defense and survival (my record is 3 hours on V Prime). I've spent nearly 400 just mining and fishing alone in the open worlds because something about it is just so engaging and entertaining. I loved the challenge, and I loved the progression cycle.

And the characters! Ordis is hilarious, Lotus is a broken, plural, and caring mother figure. Eudico and the rest of Fortuna, the Hex, they're all so three dimensional and the writing is master class! The lore reveals itself from a tangled web of confusion into a genuine story of loss, pain, and a big ol bag of injustices that you end up facing and conquering head on. Not alone, but with the people around you. The Lotus to guide you, Little Duck to help you commit theft, Cy to help you pilot, and Teshin to guide you through the paradox, and Entrati to confuse the hell out of you.

When I finally discovered how to get new Warframes about a year into playing I kept testing a lot of frames to see who I could go the farthest with because I kept dying. I finally settled on Rhino, the tankiest tank to ever tank. That's when I REALLY got into the game. There is a Warframe for every play style, same for weapons. I just hit +8mil damage on my Kuva Tonkor.

Eventually, around the time I started having a disposable income, I realized the real monetization model of the game. One so good that you *want* to put money into it to support the devs. So I did. I've spent probably ~$500 on the game in total. And yes, I bought the Rhino Heirloom Pack the day it came out.

I could go on, but it anyone who plays knows what I'm talking about. Anyone who doesn't, well I encourage you to give it a try. After all, it's free! What's the worst that could happen?

However, for the love of god DE can we change Rhinos passive or let us scale with Warframe mods???

[miscling]

The way you refer to yourself, are yall plural? (DID, OSDD, etc) cause we're plural and thats pretty friggin cool if one of our favorite blogs is too

the short answer is yeah. the miscellany is how we refer to us all. 'we' are a distinct member from 'it'. a lot of folks we have got to know are plural too, and we found ourselves after some questioning and realisations about 9 months ago.

the long answer under the readmore:

we didn't know when we started this blog a couple of years back. we had a vague sense of being a miscellaneous changeling type, which gives the blog its name, but overall our many forms were all pulling in roughly the same direction. when we started getting into ageplay and our little-self started expressing itself, we were taken by surprise at how different fae was compared to the identity we had as miscling, and a not too pleasant set of experiences at the time drew some big ass lines around our various impulses which made it clear that the way we talked to ourselves was more of a talking amongst ourselves.

we don't really make a big deal about being plural, and we don't really like using the diagnostic terms to describe ourselves. when we talk about ourselves with 'we' that's actually a different part of ourselves than 'this thing' and 'itself', that handles non-horny questions like these. we've occasionally considered splitting our more serious and less horny stuff onto a sideblog, but we still like being available to be supportive and informative, and folks have come to expect it from the miscling blog, so it would be a hard transition to make. we've also considered folding other miscellany blogs back into here, especially Jackie's. faefae is far too little to be around these topics, and while we do sometimes want to introduce some folks to the owner of one of our sideblogs, we don't want to muddy the waters around the miscling blog.

[dn-838]

In defence of Undertale Yellow, how it can work with Undertale’s canon

So, I have seen a lot of debating recently on Undertale Yellow and whether or not it fits what we know already about the lore in Undertale. Of course Flowey’s presence in the mod is the primary thing that has sparked this debate, with many believing that he can’t have existed at the same time as the Justice Soul and that it is a major hole that breaks the continuity of Undertale. I however, as someone who has spent way too much time with Undertale and has vast knowledge about even the most obscure of details in the game, disagree. I believe that Undertale Yellow fits the original games canon well… maybe a bit too well, and I am here to give my own arguments against the things that I commonly see people say doesn’t fit the original game’s continuity. This may contain a few spoilers for Undertale Yellow, so unless you’ve already seen all 3 routes or for whatever reason don’t care about having the game spoiled, don’t read further until you are done.

Argument 1: all the Souls were already collected by the creation of Flowey and the amalgamates

Okay so this one I don’t really have much to say about. Yes Flowey and the Amalgamates were created using the SOULs of some of the collected humans, however it’s never specified that it was from 6 humans, all that’s made clear is that Asgore did have human SOULs (in plural) that were used in the experiment.

Argument 2: the timeline doesn’t match up

The timeline has always been a confusing topic among the Undertale community. While the most likely estimate of the gap between Chara and Frisk falling is 100 years due to what Sans tells us during his date.

There are a few reasons for us to believe that the gap is much smaller, especially considering the weird nature of the Deltarune timeline and the supposed grudge Chara seems to have against Snowdrake in Genocide (who is stated to only be a teenager).

However, no matter how you view the timeline, unless you have specific dates in mind for things like when Gaster was the Royal Scientist and when the fall of Integrity-Justice happened, or think the gap was REALLY short, Undertale Yellow doesn’t really contradict it too much. The game itself is meant to take place just a year before Undertale, with all the same characters existing in similar positions to how they do by the time of Undertale, however we never encounter them due to being on a completely different path that takes us to very different parts of the underground, being why they don’t behave like they encountered a human before in Undertale.

Integrity is a bit more interesting, because it can vary massively depending on how you view the lifespans of the Ketsukane’s, Starlo (Starlo won’t be important to this, but I mention him since he was childhood friends with Ceroba) and Dalv. It is strongly implied that as a kid, Dalv was best friends with Kanako, and was attacked by the Integrity human some point before the games events. At first you’d assume that this was all not meant to be long before the events of the game, however, Integrity was killed by Axis in UTY, a robot that was being worked on by Chujin back when the Steamworks were still in operation, which we can assume was long before the events of the game due to the state of the Steamworks itself and the fact it is stated to have been used as the source of all power in the underground, which would mean it would likely have shut down around the period that the CORE was first put into operation, so all the way back when Gaster was still the Royal Scientist, whenever you think that was (Axis wasn’t sent to kill the human until after Chujin was fired from his position, however due to the way Axis is locked up and deactivated before we wake up the Steamworks, we can assume he was shut down with the rest of the facility). On top of all this Dalv is shown to be a lot older than he presumably would have been when he was attacked by Integrity, and with him being a Vampire, you could say that he aged that much at a slower rate than a human would, with the Ketsukane’s also aging slow, 2 of them being Boss Monsters and one of them being a 9 tailed fox. We know that some monsters do likely age at very different rates due to monsters like Gerson who lived through the war.

So to give the whole timeline, basically, Chujin worked in the Steamworks and made Axis back before or during Gaster’s time as the royal scientist. After several failed prototypes that eventually got Chujin fired, Axis was sent to chase down and kill Integrity. He managed and Chujin kept the Soul hidden and over the span of years recorded a few tapes for what he had planning, meanwhile Dalv, who was previously attacked by Integrity, went into hiding, locking himself into a mostly dark and unknown part of the ruins. At some point when Alphy’s became the Royal Scientist, Chujin started to mentor Martlet, which led Martlet to enter the True Lab and get some strange serum. Eventually Chujin died around a year or two before UTY, revealing his hidden tapes to Ceroba, which Kanako overheard. This led to Ceroba attempting to inject Kanako with the Integrity soul, leading to Kanako falling and being donated to Alphy’s, and her of course then becoming an amalgamate.

Argument 3: Asgore killed all 6 of the other humans

Okay so this one is interesting, because Undyne does imply that humans before Frisk did make it to Asgore, with her saying that “no human has ever made it PAST Asgore” rather than “no human has ever made it TO Asgore”

The thing is, that other humans reached Asgore is all this really does imply, it doesn’t necessarily mean all humans made it to Asgore. You could argue that most of them died to Asgore, with Integrity and Justice being the only exceptions. If you really want to stretch you could even say that this line was actually just another attempt from Undyne to make Asgore sound like a powerful and threatening force (since she tries to make him out like that quite a bit in her fight, such as by saying that killing us is an act of mercy right after this), although I find this unlikely.

There is another line of dialogue that I sometimes see used to try and prove that Asgore killed all 6, and while it’s not used close to as much, I’ll still just quickly clear it up.

This doesn’t really mean that much, all it’s saying is that all the humans that leave the ruins inevitably die. She likely wouldn’t know any details on their deaths do to her isolation, and even if she had some knowledge she would probably still place the blame on Asgore due to his part in waging war and coming up with the plan to kill 7 humans in the first place.

Argument 4: The introduction of new incredibly powerful characters makes no sense

Okay, so this is a weird one, however the explanation for it is fairly simple. Nobody in UTY compares to the original Undertale cast when it comes to how “powerful” they are. We struggle so much against the opponents we face as Clover because well… Clover is much weaker than Frisk, bosses like Ceroba and Axis pale in comparison to Undyne and Mettaton, they just seem much harder since we are playing as a human with much less determination than Frisk. In Pacifist Clover fights a depressed fox lady, meanwhile Frisk fights a literal god; in Neutral Clover goes through a struggle fighting through Flowey’s mind after having his Soul absorbed, meanwhile Frisk holds on against Flowey with 6 Souls until those Souls rebel; and in Genocide Clover takes some time to finally destroy Axis, the failed prototype that got Chujin fired, meanwhile Frisk atomised Mettaton NEO, The greatest invention of the Scientist who was selected to replace Gaster, in a single blow.

The only Undertale Yellow character that I’d say surpasses any character in Undertale would of course be Zenith Martlet, but even then LV 19 Frisk would mop the floor with her, while LV 19 Clover had to go through a lot of effort to beat her, only ever managing to surpass Flowey in Determination after doing so. At LV 20 both Clover and Frisk have massive boosts from LV 19, however Frisk is far stronger, having awakened Chara and caused the destruction of everything, while Clover just destroys Asgore with a super laser blast directly from their Soul and leaves.

Argument 5: miscellaneous

Just to clear up any further confusion, I’ll give quick explanations for some more minor points that I have encountered

Nobody in the original Undertale apart from Flowey, Toriel and Asgore meets Clover, so the other monsters in Undertale acting like they had never met one makes sense.

Flowey not just stealing Clovers Soul is explained well by the game itself. He plans to, however he doesn’t get the chance in Pacifist; sees that we couldn’t surpass Asgore in Flawed Pacifist; steals our soul but is unsatisfied with the outcome and resets in Neutral, and gets gunned down in Genocide.

Toriel believing that it’s been a long time since a previous human fell when she sees Frisk in Undertale doesn’t mean much, she mostly lives isolated in the Ruins, with the other monsters being too afraid to speak with her, considering this and just generally how much seemed to have happened within that year, time could have felt much slower. Alternatively you could argue that the 6 humans all fell within months of each other, and that a years gap is a long time in comparison to the rate the first 6 fell (or 5, since she says the exact same thing to Clover).

Both Flowey and Clover using file 1 at the end of Genocide doesn’t fit what we know about save files no, however I feel it is a little nit-picky to use it as a definitive reason to discredit how well UTY fits into canon, after all the only thing you’d need to do is change the numbers and this would be fixed.

The Gunsmith having been born a week before the Human Vs Monster war doesn’t go against anything we already know. As stated before, we know that at least some monsters like Gerson do live for a very long time.

Flowey having more determination than Clover also doesn’t break anything. Flowey was injected with DT from 5 human Souls. The thing is that Frisk was special when it came to the amount of determination they had.

Unlike with most of the other cast, nobody in Undertale actually indicates that Flowey never met a human prior to Frisk.

Chujin being a boss Monster doesn’t contradict what we know about Boss Monsters. We know that the Dreemurrs are boss monsters, but nothing tells us that they are the only boss monsters.

Argument 6: the nature of the SAVE files contradicts Undertale Yellow

Here we go, the penultimate argument I shall argue against. Never did I expect for this obscure piece of Undertale lore to be the bane of my existence but here we are. For a short time I thought that this could not be countered, only after I had walked away from a discussion completely defeated did the pieces finally start to come together, and now finally… I have an explanation.

First things first, let’s look at the 10 save files. The files go from file 0 to file 9. We know that File 0 likely belongs to Chara due to it being the one that we save with in Undertale, and that file 9 belongs to Frisk since it works as the games Autosave/Checkpoint system. File 8 would then of course belong to Flowey, not just because it’s the one just before Frisks but because File 8 appears in your files after you beat Omega Flowey to mark your completion of a Neutral run, likely implying that his previous SAVE was of course when he was Omega Flowey. Flowey also uses files 2, 3 and 6 throughout the Omega Flowey battle, and since Toriel implies that other humans who fell were also able to save and reset, we can assume that 2-6 likely belonged to previously fallen humans.

Now the only files that need an explanation are file 1 and file 7, and I’ve seen 2 interesting theories for this. The first is that file 1 belongs to Asriel after he took Chara’s Soul, and the other is that file 7 belongs to Lemon Bread since they know what a SAVE point looks like and tries to trick us with it; but the thing is, which one of these are true? Surely it can’t be both since we know one needs to belong to the 6th… okay I’ll cut that out you already know I’m going to say they are both true.

So for Asriel having file 1, he absorbed Chara’s Soul so should have all of their determination and therefore should also have overtaken their ability to SAVE. Of course it’s unlikely that Asriel would have made anything out of it since the idea of saving and loading was fairly alien to Flowey, however that doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that Asriel didn’t SAVE or at least have a file created.

Lemon Bread is a bit more complicated, and we are gonna need to look into the order of events within the True Lab to try and work this out. Firstly, we need to look at some of the true lab entries.

ASGORE asked everyone outside the city for monsters that had "fallen down."

Their bodies came in today.

They're still comatose... And soon, they'll all turn into dust.

But what happens if I inject "determination" into them?

If their SOULS persist after they perish, then...

Freedom might be closer than we all thought.

This is entry 6, when the fallen down monsters are given to Alphy’s and have Determination injected into them.

I've chosen a candidate.

I haven't told ASGORE yet, because I want to surprise him with it...

In the center of his garden, there's something special.

The first golden flower, that grew before all the others.

The flower from the outside world.

It appeared just before the queen left.

I wonder...

What happens when something without a SOUL gains the will to live?

This is entry 8, Alphy’s gets a hold of a golden flower that she injects Determination into.

“One of the bodies opened its eyes.

This is entry 13, when the fallen monsters started to regain consciousness, 7 entries after they were first delivered.

Seems like this research was a dead end...

But at least we got a happy ending out of it...?

I sent the SOULS back to ASGORE, returned the vessel to his garden....

And I called all of the families and told them everyone's alive.

I'll send everyone back tomorrow. :)

This is entry 15, by this point all the monsters that had fallen down were awake, and the still not conscious Golden Flower was still just a Flower, being returned alongside the human Souls.

no No NO NO NO NO NO

This is entry 16, the fallen down monsters started to melt together and create the amalgamates.

the flower's gone.

Finally, we have entry 18, when Alphy’s noticed that the Flower seems to have disappeared from the garden, 10 entries after she first selected it.

So, why are these entries so important? Well we know that to have ever held the ability to SAVE, Lemon Bread would have to had held the right amount of Determination before Flowey first became conscious in the garden, and did they? Yes, yes they did. Flowey could have awakened anywhere in the timeframe between entry 15 when he was returned to entry 18 when Alphy’s noticed him gone, however all the fallen down monsters that were injected with Determination were already awake by this point, and therefore prior to Flowey waking up, they would have been the most determined beings in the underground, perhaps with enough determination that whichever monster happened to have the most was able to SAVE. The time that they would have had with the ability would also have at least been for longer than Asriel had it since Flowey can’t have awoken until after a couple entries later at the bare minimum. Of course since this follows the idea that Lemon Bread had the SAVE ability since they knew what a SAVE point looks like, we can assume that the monster in question would have been Shyren’s sister, since I doubt that the Moldbygg and Aaron that also make up Lemon Bread would hold such a role.

Argument 7: Flowey’s backstory

I really thought I was done with this infuriating Flower, but it appears not. For there is a single hole I need to clear up… Flowey’s Genocide speech. Of course this should be fairly simple to clear up-

Ah… well okay this makes things interesting. If Flowey didn’t know where the Souls were stored then that would make it very hard to believe that Flowey ever encountered a human before Frisk since if that were the case then Flowey would definitely have an opportunity to sneak by and see where they are hiding, however this is not what the dialogue actually means. Flowey knew where the Souls were, he sneaks in to steal them in Neutral while we are talking to a defeated Asgore, his only issue was that he wasn’t able to get them out without Asgore. In repeated Neutral runs he still just waits until we are distracted with Asgore to take the Souls, and in Pacifist he takes them while the main cast are all distracted which again is when the canisters are open and available.

On a last note, here’s some dialogue that actually helps the idea that Flowey encountered another human.

It’s made clear all throughout the underground that humans have far greater Determination than monsters, and while you could argue that Flowey was just overconfident in his abilities, it’s still fairly strange that Flowey would still find a human having the DT to overwrite his abilities something special, unless of course he’d encountered a human previously who wasn’t able to do as much.

Conclusion

So, that’s about all I have to say, honestly I’m just glad to be done with it. This was a lot of work, and I’m excited to see this post which I’ve been working on for 3 days get completely dismantled almost immediately. Anyways, wish everyone reading a good day and goodbye!

[botanical-garden-system]

Are you pro/neutral Endo?

Short answer:

People would say I am most likely neutral. I don’t care what someone labels themselves as, and I don’t think it is important to obsess over this so much. It makes me uncomfortable when people keep trying to push whether I should be pro or anti anything when I don’t even experience it. I think we should let people be until they are actually inflicting harm/pain onto others.

I used to be huge in discourse communities on Insta in 2018-2019 and I never want to be in them again. I just want to educate people and provide resources otherwise inaccessible. This will probably be my last post on this because this debate has driven me away from ever using tumblr, and I have nearly deleted my profile because of it.

If you wanted the short one, then there you go. However, this answer will never suffice to me. It doesn’t represent the complicated feelings I have across so many different parts of myself. I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this, and I plan on being more in depth with my process through these feelings below the cut. (I got tired writing it and like just started half assing and not correcting stuff, but I’ve wanted to get this out and away from me. Just comment if you need more clarification)

My feelings: Neutral or Pro?

I will always support people in figuring out things for themselves and finding ways to describe themselves. Even though I cannot begin to understand non-disordered plurality, I do understand that endo does NOT mean without trauma. Trauma in itself is extremely complicated, and things we don’t think are trauma tend to be very traumatic (i.e. neglect, systems of oppression, emotional abuse, etc.). Even then, I am not in someone’s head nor have I lived their experience.

If someone says this is their experience, I am not going to disagree and argue with them over it. That’s stupid and pushy. I would rather learn of someone’s experience so that I can understand it, which is ultimately what we NEED to be doing. Frankly, there isn’t enough research or information about non-disordered plurality for me to make any claims, and even then I wouldn’t jump to say it could NEVER happen. There’s a big reason I have no DNI: my account is all about accessing free resources and making people feel seen in their symptoms.

Additionally, it’s no one else’s job but my own to curate my page. I see something I feel uncomfortable with or heavily disagree with? I will block them. Until they are INTENTIONALLY causing malicious pain or damage that CAN BE CONFIRMED, I am not going to publicly “denounce” or “shame” someone. I am an adult and can just block freely if I don’t feel comfortable with something, but that’s not even the point of why I made this blog. While it sounds hypocritical for me to say this after positing a few vents about this discourse, I want to be clear that no matter WHAT tag I look at, it always has something to do with a “-genic” label. It’s literally inescapable atp and I am thoroughly tired of it.

Just let people be is what I will always say.

The Complications: My thoughts

When it comes to these topics, it makes me feel really alienated to only see the most discussed symptom be the “alters” or identity states. It also feels extremely alienating to see people trying to rename this disorder to focus on the “multiple identities” part, ignoring the OTHER symptoms and the history of CALLING this disorder that. I think it’s a big reason we see some traumagenic systems becoming so aggressive about this: our identities are not stable and it can cause heavy denial to see the focus shift only onto one aspect of the disorder.

“Dissociative identity” is a great name for those with disorderly symptoms because it IS a dissociation from one identity to another. Additionally, this is NOT only about identity dissociation, this can be dissociation from one’s motor skills, cognitive abilities, sensations and perceptions, behaviors, emotions, memories, and literally ANYTHING related to cognition in general. I do agree that we need to recognize the spectrum of dissociation, but that ALREADY exists in things like DPDR, OSDD-1, P-DID, and DID.

The lexicon surrounding DID vs plurality DEFINITELY calls for more defined edges, and I think people have already been working towards that (many with non-disordered plurality use “plural” or “multiple”). However, it becomes confusing and muddled when people are constantly fighting about who “coined what label” or “whether someone should use this label” when experiences are very fluid and different.

Traumagenic systems also need to recognize extreme anger and emotional attacks on non-disordered plurality gets us no where. If someone is willing to be hateful towards the smallest community with high vulnerability, their support was only conditional to begin with. It is clear that many of the reddits making fun of systems do NOT care about the “legitimacy” of your diagnosis. They do not care whether or not what you’re experiencing is real, they just want something to make fun of.

Conclusions

I will never be able to experience non-disorder plurality as “plurality” is not my own or full experience. I have had many people make jokes about my life being, “A shitty wattpad fanfic some kid shoved every single trauma into” because of how gruesome and fucked my childhood was. I cannot begin to understand how plurality is shaped outside of trauma, and that is why I will never engage or force myself to debate to legitimacy of someone’s experience.

Regardless of the labels someone chooses, I made this blog with the intent to make other systems like me feel seen. I want to discuss the intricate symptoms and severities in my own conditions that I never saw publicly discussed. My entire goal is to try and bring awareness and education to the community so they can better understand how something like DID impacts them. I didn’t come out about my disorder to engage in discourse, I came out so other people like me would be able to parse through everything and find themselves.

I WANT to make people happy with themselves, and I WANT to bring meaning to my own life. Academic research was one of the first times I had actually felt seen and heart through a diagnosis.

[olderthannetfic]

This week has been a perfect example of why im never fucking coming out about being plural in fandom spaces. All you heartless fakeclaiming sanist chucklefucks coming out of the woodwork to attack children who dare be a little cringe and too honest about their neurodiversity and blame the actions of a couple assholes who ignore community mandates about system responsibility to be examples of the whole community have just proved you can't trust fucking singlets with any authentic bit of yourself oh my god.

You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Where is the 'cringe culture is dead' now? Where is 'believe people about their experiences'? Wheres the mad pride allies?

Because this? This is not allyship. This is not ~defending real DID havers~ from those yucky roleplaying kids who report large fictive-heavy systems with frequent restructuring who are too dumb to know what they are talking about. This is attacking the most vulnerable members of our community like rabid kiwifarm cringe subreddit losers because they are an acceptable target for your ire.

Disappointed but not surprised. The only people who can be trusted to look after the plural community and support us is the community itself- a fact proven time and time again.

At least these posts are a free blocklist.

--

[forceplural]

i want to forceplural this guy im into, any tips and tricks? -🚬

In my experience, most of the work kinda does itself if the guy is also into You. All of the people ive successfully plural'd, the process ideally (usually for me) kinda goes like this:

-establish that we are mutually into each other, they Care about my opinion and perception of them

-identify traits and behaviors in them that Could be plural, and mention them every time they come up ("wait, but you said something totally different about this topic last time lol", whatever. This is one of the things that might not happen every time)

-talk abt plurality! Tell them abt how fucking fun and awesome your system is! Get them familiar with it!

-and then, get them to Like it. Its really easy if you get them to subconsciously Want to be plural now (my partner and i achieved this a few times by doing a ""peer pressuring"" sort of thing, we're both systems and pluraled our kid by getting them to want to fit in with us)

-from here, it depends on how strong you want to come on. If youre close enough, theyre reliant enough on you or are cool with it in some way, you can literally use programming type strategies to try and make them form specific headmates. Using my kid as an example again, we're pretty gentle with them. So i would just Push them here and there. "You did [thing]/said [thing]; do you think you have a [character] introject lol?", and then bring it up a few more times. Ask them to think about it.

-and after a bit, you can start treating them specifically like certain headmates. My partner does this with me, even. When i wake up in the morning, all blurry and weird, he'll just. Decide who he wants me to be, and start talking to me like i Am that headmate. It usually works

-again, my success with pluraling ppl has relied on them Caring about my opinions. Ideally, they will trust you and think youre smart and well meaning. Im pretty hands off after i get the initial split out of someone, and let their system do its thing after that. I just like having other systems around. Convincing them they Want to be/already are a system is key to it going well in the long run

Sorry if this is all scrambled or too long. Just kinda my stream of consciousness abt the concept. I wish you luck! And hoped this helped in some way?

[liondrakes]

Autocosm: Finding Plurality Through Me, Myself, and My Other Selves

by Sivaan of Candlekeep

Blurb: A personal essay that discusses my discoveries on my plurality, particularly through my headmates who’re alternate versions of me from parallel lives.

I’ve considered writing about this during my run of the Alterhuman Writing Challenge, but I forgot to do so after going off the beaten path. The beaten path being my own list of prompts, funny enough. Since we’re growing more accustomed to each other, I’ve decided that it’s time to re-introduce myself… and my other selves.

While looking into communal resources, I’ve been easing into the reality that I am plural. I’m specifically a part of an autocosm, which is a network of selves who share the same soul or self-awareness across various realms and worlds. With me are three aliens, two people who should be dead but aren't, a sharpshooting demigod, a flying horse, and an anti-capitalist spacefarer. Each took root within my fictionhood. They are also my headmates.

So far, there’s nine of us:

Ade, a zonai

Solai, a Roman half-blood

Quinn, an undead plush amalgam

Ink, a monster without a canon who took up being a wandering, interdimensional creative

Calvin or “Cap”, a human mutant who pilots The Unreliable

“Bea” or The Beyonder, a reality-warping cosmic entity

Makame, a dream traveler from Phantomile

The Grassland Hunter, a yautja who also goes by their cultural name Sa’ya’la

And of course— yours truly, who is a whole lot of things, including everyone listed above.

Most of my headmates are versions of me from parallel lives. The only cases where this isn’t applicable are Quinn and Sa’ya’la. Rather than be one of my parallel lives, Quinn is a sentient copinglink. Sa’ya’la, on the other hand, is a sentient fictionflicker. Yet, since I still identify as them (or at least the concept of them), they are counted among us.

Not every fictomere is a part of our autocosm, though. I may harbor the memories and thoughts of other versions of me, but not all of them connect with the autocosm. I suspect some don’t even know that we exist.

Furthermore, I know for certain that none of my core identities are potential headmates. Those identities exclusively belong to me, as in the me who is writing this and goes by Sivaan. While we agreed on “autocosmic” as a descriptor, the terminology surrounding autocosm (the noun) tripped me up since I would technically fall in between being a metasoul and a lunan.

For autocosms, a metasoul is the central self that connects us all. In simpler terms, it is our point of origin. A lunan is an individual whose existence stems from the metasoul and shares a sense of selfhood with both the metasoul and others connected to it.

In our case, the metasoul is one of my core species: the gold dragonne. Since we’re parallel lives of the gold dragonne, or me, *dragonsight informs us of each other. Even so, I feel like I’m neither the “center” of our group nor a fragment of myself in the way that my headmates are. The metasoul is one of my core species, but I’m not always that species. It’s an awkward spot that makes me feel a little alienated from the proposed framework of an autocosm. Because of this, we also agreed to avoid using those terms when describing our connection to each other.

*In Dungeons & Dragons, dragonsight is a dragon’s ability to perceive alternate versions of itself from different realities.

Besides autocosmic identity, our experience is closest to a gateway system. I’d say it’s the main label for our plurality, whereas autocosm specifically refers to those of us are, well, me. My selves can depart to and fro from their realms. I’ve had soulbonds who’ve done the same. Early into my personal explorations, I recall referring to the body as a vessel of sorts. Around then, it was in regards to the fact that much of our memories and noemata seemed to pour into this body. However, that was solely from my perspective. In retrospect, it’s possible that this body is a vessel in the literal sense in which it serves as a waypoint between my headmates’ world(s) and our headspace.

There are members who don’t leave, though. Ade and Quinn stick around since they theoretically should be dead in their worlds. On the flip side, the only member who doesn’t leave their realm is Cap. He’s the leader of a whole space crew, so he rarely stops by in our inner world. Instead, he talks to me and whoever else is present through his radio. For a connection so far away, his alternative is surprisingly efficient.

It’s not just us here, either. We’re accompanied by habitans, which is the only autocosm-based term we use. A habitan simply means someone who isn’t one of us. They aren’t someone or something I identify as nor are they a parallel life that I have. Nonetheless, they still live alongside the autocosm.

How habitans exist in our headspace can differ. For example: there’s my dæmon, Maxwell. As a dæ, Max is a thoughtform segmented from my subconscious. He takes the form of a raggiana bird-of-paradise; previously, he was a rainbow boa. His position as a habitan isn’t the same as say, Rina and Hachi, who both entered our headspace as accidental soulbonds. Since many of our daytrippers have left permanently to attend to their own matters, we have a total of four habitans. Our Scrivener Construct is the fourth and final habitan of our collective thus far.

Regarding those of us within the autocosm, we don’t have roles. Although Quinn, Ade, and Bea motioned in favor of having roles and offered to take up roles of their own, we came to the conclusion that collectively establishing roles would be inconsiderate of our selves who’re more active within their own realms. Ultimately, if someone wanted to perform a specific duty within our headspace, then they’re free to do so on their own accord. However, no one is required to do the same.

Recently, Quinn took up the role of being our protector. Although he has a rough history with guarding, he decided to take up this role anyway because he was actually given a choice unlike his past experiences.

Despite being such a wild card, Bea took up the role of a protector as well. While Quinn protects the interior of our headspace, Bea oversees travel to and fro from the headspace, making sure folks reach their destinations safely. They also keep an eye out for any beings from outside of our collective, allowing or denying access to the headspace if need be. No one gets in and out without Bea knowing. Makes sense since The Beyonder, in-source or otherwise, is as far-reaching as it gets, metaphysically speaking. I guess that’d also make them a gatekeeper, but they’re admittedly not fond of that title.

In Ade’s case, he took up the role of being our internal self helper. He helps me keep in touch with everyone and support the structure of our inner world. He and I often share this role by comparing notes and conversing extensively on what we know so far. Scrivener assists us from time to time too. Based on my suspicions last year, there were already signs of them doing that before I came to terms with being plural.

As for me, you could kind of say I’m the “host” since I’m the main one operating the body. To be fair, it’s not exactly a job anyone else wants. Last year, I once thought I stress-shifted into a zonai at my job. However, according to Ade, that “stress shift” was actually him fronting for the first time. It at least explained why “I” suddenly didn’t know how to work the machinery at my job. That’s because Ade’s never worked with earthen technology before! He’s loathed the idea of fronting ever since.

Rina, Hachi, Quinn and Ink are the ones who’re the most interested in joining me while I front. They're like passengers while I drive the car. However, only Quinn and Solai have expressed interest in co-fronting with me. In Quinn's case, he wants to know what it feels like to have a human body again. In Solai's case, it's because it just wants to see the world again without being bothered by quests or otherworldly interruptions.

Occasionally, Cap will ask me to describe things on my end out of curiosity. Although he’s made peace with his Earth going dark, and the fact that our Earth is different from his Earth, he still misses what he once knew. He likes to hear about the mountains I grew up around and the places I’d visit while in college.

Otherwise, everyone else couldn’t care less. Bea has allegedly seen better and is content with the role they currently have. They don’t care to operate the body, despite matching its appearance internally. Makame and Sa'ya'la are disinterested since they’re already familiar with this world as interdimensional travelers, similar to Beyonder.

That then leaves me. Not much of a role when I hold the position that no one else cares to have. I do appreciate Quinn and Solai’s interest, though. I'll take them up on that in the future.

That’s all we have noted for now. Although I’ve had experiences related to plurality since last year, particularly through dæmonism and soulbonding, the reality of being plural is still new to me. We’re not even bothering with -genic labels since it adds nothing of substance to any of us. Our origin is entirely metaphysical. That’s what matters.

All in all, we’re an autocosmic gateway system. Although we technically could label our experience as median, we stick to autocosmic since its terminology acknowledges headmates who aren’t one of us (i.e. alternate versions of me).

[inbabylontheywept]

The Mormon Heretic Casts a Curse

So, this is a sequel piece to The Mormon Heretic and the Leviathan. @apolloendymion requested that I write some more of the stories, and this is another one. I'm going to put a trigger warning here that the story does involve partner abuse. Not from the heretic, but just... as a detail. Also, I guess, some medical stuff that involves death. It's Old Testament shit. Take it as you will.

Mormon seminary has four separate courses about the four separate parts of their canon. It’s on a constant rotation, and my particular ordering was Old Testament, then New Testament, then Book of Mormon, then Doctrine and Covenants. 

I got the Mormon Heretic for my OT year, which is 100% the best year I could have possibly got him for. And, also, absolutely the worst, because at that time I was a very orthodox Mormon, and this guy couldn’t have fucked with my brain worse if JFK’s dad gave him an icepick and a waiver. 

At that time I had an abysmal understanding of the OT, and to call my experience with it jarring would be an understatement. I learned that Elohim is a plural word. I learned that OT God itself doesn’t deny the existence of other Gods, and in fact relished challenging them to contests. The whole experience was so insane to me that I stayed after class one day to ask the teacher how he managed to bridge the divide between the OT and the NT. They're insanely different theologies, and he really refused to mince words about it.

He listened to my concerns, and I cried a little because I was fourteen and beginning to realize that there was something fundamentally wrong with the religion I was born into, and when it was all said and done he said that tomorrow he would teach the story of how he squared away the differences between OT God and NT God. 

And he did. 

I can remember having a sense that something was strange when we arrived at the building. There was a crosswalk where the exiting teenagers would pass the entering teenagers, and normally people would discuss the lesson as they passed. The group we passed just looked shell shocked. 

I sat down. The class arrived. Heretic stood up, and went to the front of the class, and he began his tale: 

He had a little sister that got married at nineteen. She then started making visits to the hospital. 

He, like his family, assumed that she was just clumsy. He was clumsy. He’d had multiple surgeries on his shoulders and his elbows and his knees because he kept doing dumb things to himself.

She was not clumsy. Her husband was beating her. 

She got a divorce. Heretic was old when the story was being told - I think in his early sixties? - and the divorce went shockingly well for the time. Sister was not blamed, husband was ostracized from both families, and life found a way to continue in its slow way. 

Heretic was, at that point, a new teacher in the Church Education System (CES). He was trying to be a spiritual guy, and teach spiritual lessons, but he just wasn’t doing a very good job because he was really, really, murderously angry with the guy that had hurt his sister. 

Sister had moved on. Or, he thought she had, he was hardly telepathic, but he felt like she’d let go and started her life anew, and her parents had supported her, and even her in laws had supported her, and things should have been easy to let go of, but they weren’t. And every day that he tried to let go, he got more and more angry, and every day he tried to pretend he was fine he ripped the wound wider, and one day he taught a spectacularly bad lesson and came home and wanted nothing more than to kill the man that had beat his sister. He instead said a prayer. I cannot quote it verbatim, but this is very, very close to what was said. “God, I know that I must forgive to be forgiven, but I want nothing more than to see that animal choke to death on his own shit.”(I know for a fact that the choke on shit part was in it. It is not a common thing to hear a seminary teacher say “shit” in the middle of class. It is also integral to the rest of the story) If this was a book, there would’ve been an immediate result, but instead Heretic felt a strange peace, grabbed ahold of it like a lifeline, and resolved to go to therapy. Which is how he got into Jungian analysis. Finding therapy in the deep South in 1980 was pretty wild. Jump cut forward to the early 2000s. Heretic has moved on. Sister is remarried. He is at peace with the world, but he gets a call from his sisters old in-laws. 

And the in-laws say that yes, they have ostracized the abuser for the last twenty years, but they got a call from him a few hours ago to please, meet him at the hospital, because he was sick. 

And the abuser was, in fact, very sick. He’d been vomiting for days. The doctors couldn’t figure out why, but they knew that at the present rate, they were running out of time. He was going to have some kind of exploratory surgery as a hail Mary, and the guy wanted a blessing first. 

And so the family had gone to Heretic, to ask him if he would be willing to bless the man that had beat his sister. It is one thing, to feel like you have forgiven someone enough to move on, and another to wish good things upon them. But Heretic had spent years and years in therapy, and he developed on an incredibly spiritual path, and he said that yes, he would bless the man before the surgery. 

And he did. 

The surgery found that the man had a benign mass in his colon. It wasn’t spreading, but it had grown large enough to prevent food from going around it. Without an exit, things had built up back to the entrance. The man was throwing up because there was nowhere else for the shit to go. Worse, during the surgery he thrown up and some of the mix had managed to drain back into the man’s lungs. He survived the knife, but the combination of fecal matter and acid inside his lungs had created an infection that he failed to survive. He drowned in his own fluids. 

He drowned in his own shit. 

Now, at that point, the class had no idea where this was going. We were a bunch of children, hearing a story about this insane divine retribution, but the Heretic continued. 

And with tears in his eyes, he told us that God had answered his original prayer only after he had fully and truly forgiven that man. That if he’d wished death on another human being in anger, in rage, and then received it, it would have damned his soul, but that as soon as he was at peace, as soon as he could wish life and love upon the man that had wronged his kin, justice could be brought down. And be believed it, with his entire heart. He spoke about how God wants to give us what we want, but that he loves us so much that we will not give it to us until we have reached the point where it is not poison to us. We will have our revenge, but only when it is meaningless to us. When the only lesson that could be grabbed from it is that God heard us the first time, and held back out of love. Then, we will see those who had wronged us choke on their shit.  

The bell rang after that, and we left the class in a daze. When we went across the crosswalk, no one spoke a word to the students crossing the opposite way. We were all too busy thinking. 

[multiplicity-positivity]

Hello, it’s been a few months and I’ve felt very connected to an original character I made for roleplaying. But I’ve recently felt as though she is simply a part of me and started to enjoy her presence. Like asking for their opinions etc. And I truly don’t know if I can call her a headmate or not. I don’t want to say “oh yeah I’m a system” because it doesn’t feel right since I essentially “made” them. I guess what I’m asking is I don’t know how to continue from here in terms of what to call her.

you call her whatever term works best for both of you. it is totally valid to create a headmate or system member. if you (collective you) feel multiple, and feel like you are existing as more than one, you absolutely can call yourself a system if you want. you could even try calling yourself plural, referring to this oc as a headmate, and identifying as a system for a while and see how it feels. that’s a normal part of the questioning process, and if it turns out she’s not a headmate and you’re not plural after all, it’s no big deal. you’re not hurting anyone by experimenting with plural labels and trying to figure out whether or not you’re a system.

our partner system is made up of a paromancer and her thoughtform. the host of our partner sys put time and energy into creating nev (the thoughtform in question). they are still a valid system, even though nev was created. created systems are a crucial part of the plural community, and created headmates are not only real, but intrinsic and special members of the systems they belong to.

as far as terms this oc could use, thoughtform could work, as you formed her with your thoughts. also headmate is a classic term used to describe system members of all sorts. and system member in itself is a term she could use. if your imagination played a role in her creation, she could also call herself an imagimate or something similar. there are countless terms out there than can describe a system member, so y’all can work together to find a term that would work well for her.

both of y’all should feel free to experiment and try out labels that seem appealing to you. definitely consult with your oc and see how she feels about all this. hopefully together y’all can come into your own identity in a way that feels natural for both of you :)