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sophieinwonderland · 1 year ago

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Dimensions of Fronting

In my Manifestations post, I used fronting as a catch-all term for any sort of physical attachment to the body.

I'd like to delve into that a bit more here, exploring language to better explain individual experiences of fronting and control over the body.

This isn't really intended for every day use, but is meant to better explain plural experiences of fronting in a more clear and more precise way.

Full body vs Locational Attachment

Full body attachment is, as expected, attachment to the entire body at once.

Locational Attachment is attachment to specific body parts such as only a hand or just the legs. When referencing locational attachment, it's usually useful to refer to the part of the body one is attached to.

Efferent vs Afferent Attachment

Besides simply being locational, attachment can come in afferent and efferent forms. Some nerves send signals from the brain to the body. Other nerves in the brain receive signals from the body.

Nerves responsible for sending signals from the brain to the body are called efferent nerves. These allow you to control the body. Nerves responsible for receiving signals are afferent. These allow you to sense things through the body.

Attachment can exist in both forms separately.

If a headmate feels like they're experiencing everything happening to the body but feel like somebody else is controlling it, they're experiencing afferent attachment with efferent detachment.

If a headmate is controlling the body but feels disconnected, as if everything is happening to somebody else, this is efferent attachment with afferent detachment.

Alternative Terminology:

The terms above are more technical, designed to help conceptualize the dimensions of fronting. For everyday use, I would recommend Possession and Attunement.

Possession referring to taking control of the body, attunement to receiving signals from its senses as if they were your own.

Solitary Attachment vs Shared Attachment and Co-fronting

Any of previous attachment types may be experienced by multiple headmates at once. Multiple headmates feel like the whole body is theirs and share control over it simultaneously. Shared attachment can also be over specific limbs, where multiple headmates feel like the limb is theirs at once.

If only one headmate feels attached to the body or limb, this is solitary attachment.

When multiple headmates are controlling the body, this is usually called co-fronting.

How to use the language?

One thing I often struggle with is putting our experiences into words.

A lot of plural language is vague and has multiple conflicting meanings. Part of an issue with having such a large community made up of many smaller communities.

What one person means when they say they're fronting may not be what another means.

This allows us to more easily describe and compare different plural experiences.

For example, a distinction for our partial possession vs our proxying.

When I partially possess an arm, I fully experience that arm as if it's mine. I experience both afferent and efferent locational attachment to that specific limb. If using possession and attunement terms, this may also be considered Attuned Locational Possession or Partial Attuned Possession.

In contrast, when proxying (typing while somebody else is fronting,) I don't feel like the hand belongs to me. I send signals through them, the words typed out are mine and coming from me, but the fronter still experiences the hands as if the hands belong to the fronter. I experience a locational efferent attachment (sending motor signals) and afferent detachment (an absence of sensor signals) to the hands, while the fronter may experience afferent attachment and efferent detachment to the hands. This can also be considered a form of Unattuned Locational Possession of the hands.

Breaking it down!

Full body Attachment and Detachment:

"I'm in complete control of the body, everything that happens to it is happening to me."

Full Fronting (full body efferent and afferent attachment.)

"I'm in control but everything feels like it's happening to someone else, as if I'm outside the body."

Complete Unattuned Possession (full body efferent attachment and afferent detachment.)

"I can feel everything but it's as if someone else is controlling my actions and making me act things out."

Complete non-possessive Attunement (full body efferent detachment and afferent attachment.)

"I'm a spectator watching while someone else controls my body. Everything that happens is happening to them and I just exist in the background."

Complete Detachment (full body efferent and afferent detachment.)

Partial Attachment and Detachment:

"I have total control over this limb, and feel through it as if it's mine."

Partial Attuned Possession (localized efferent and afferent attachment.)

"I can control this limb but I feel like it's someone else's and don't feel these sensations are happening to me."

Partial Unattuned Possession.(localized efferent attachment and afferent detachment.)

"I can feel through this part of the body as if it's mine, but I have no control over it."

Partial non-possessive Attunement (localized efferent detachment and afferent attachment.)

"I can't control this limb and I feel like it belongs to someone else."

Partial Detachment (localized efferent and afferent detachment.)

Things to consider...

While writing this, there were some experiences that were hard to categorize. This is especially true of unconscious reactions. If you tickle a headmate's mindform who is co-con but not fronting, and their reaction causes the body to jolt, do these sorts of automatic and unconscious reactions constitute a form of Efferent Attachment?

This model is still not comprehensive. But I believe it's a good starting place for understanding fronting experiences.

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karazhan-crew · 10 days ago

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Conspiracy at the Workshop: Ravens in the DWW

By Medivh Aran Chromatath, assisted by Khadgar Chromatath, Valence Piceno, Rani “RC” Ranfeld, Goratrix bani Tremere, and Percival “P2” de Rolo

We at the Draconic Wizard Workshop are known for four things: dragons, wizards, engineers, and vampires. (We would have put “vampire” in our name had we known how many we’d end up with when we named the system, but the name’s stuck and we all still like it, partly because most of our vampires are dragons, wizards, and/or engineers, themselves.) What isn’t clear is just how many ravens are in here, or at least, people intrinsically connected with ravens in some deep, meaningful way. At my time of writing this, there are six: myself (Medivh), Khadgar, Valence, Rani (RC), Goratrix, and P2. That isn’t to say other members of the system don’t like or appreciate ravens, or can’t turn into them, but it doesn’t seem to be a deeply intrinsic thing for them. Additionally, none of us approach “the raven thing” the same way—we’re all very, very different in how we look at and approach it, and it felt like a fitting thing to write an essay about.

Note that, for convenience’s sake, the essay will be written from my point of view. All references to “I” will be in reference to Medivh, while other headmates will be referred to by their names and pronouns. Despite that, they’ll be present for and actively helping write their own sections. We just decided to keep the speaker consistent for this essay because it makes it less confusing to read. We will also present ourselves in order of “most” to “least” “amount raven,” that is, how much each of us identifies strictly as a raven.

This is going to get very unusual very quickly, so buckle your seatbelts, but we’re starting with the easiest case to explain, which is mine.

Medivh

I, Medivh, am a raven therian. I am also a fictive of a (physically) human man. Back in source, I was a therian, as well, although I didn’t know the language for it and didn’t properly identify it as being “a thing.” I just thought I related more to ravens than to humans, and preferred to think of myself as a raven in a human body. This has held true even now—I’m a raven frequently in human form in headspace, in a human body. I identify as a raven rather than as a human—I am human only insomuch as I am in a physically human body. While there are therians out there that consider their body to be a raven’s body—”I am a raven and this is my body and thus it’s a raven body”—I find that confusing and not a framework that works for me. (All power to you. By all means, your identity is your own. It’s just not how I see myself.) You can’t separate the human from me, even though I don’t consider myself one in any way but physical—I grew up in a human society, raised by my human father, left with him by my human (albeit thousand-year-old) mother. To all outside observers, I was a deeply unusual and mentally ill human man, and internally, I was a raven trapped in human form, possessed by the greatest demon of all and forced to do things I never wanted to do.

But this essay isn’t about that. It’s about being a raven. I just mention it to give context: I was never like other people. I was given a responsibility and great power from birth, as well as, accidentally, the great burden of this demon I could never fight, because he’d been with me from before I was born. You can’t fight a corruption like that. As a result, it made me different from my peers. When I was fourteen, due to the demon, I went into a coma for sixteen years, and woke a thirty-year-old man. You don’t recover from that. You don’t fit back into society the way you should. You’re forever going to be different.

So I threw away all of my feeble attempts at fitting in and being human, moved to a wizard tower in the middle of the mountains, and raised a bunch of ravens. I considered myself a male raven in human form rather than a man, and I liked it that way. It was easier, having that intentional separation, not just what had been inflicted upon me. It was easier having something to call myself that didn’t imply that I was some kind of failure or something unclean.

I am a raven. I could shapeshift into one in source, once I learned the appropriate magic. I often shapeshift into one in headspace. It would be nice if our current body could, but I don’t ache for it. I’ve long accepted that I am the way that I am, with my limb complement the way it is, and I don’t tend to get phantom shifts or deep, overpowering desires or urges to fly or exhibit ravenlike behaviors in ways that my current body won’t allow. I am a raven in a human body, and I am content with that. I’ll let the dragons long for the sky—the thing I want most that I can’t do is to flutter around the room and annoy people on purpose. I’m sure I can find an equivalent that this form will allow.

Our nextmost raven is Rani, who we will be calling RC for the purposes of this essay to avoid confusion with our good friend Rani, who is a blue dragon and not a raven to any extent as far as I am aware. RC is a corax, or wereraven. She was born a human, but another corax chose her to become a wereraven, and when she was a teenager, she awoke to these powers, allowing her to transform into a raven or a raven-human hybrid form. She doesn’t necessarily consider this an alterhuman identity like I do—it fits into her being a fictive, of course, but it was a real, physical thing for her back in source. She simply was a wereraven, and there was no doubt about it. It was, to her, the same as having brown eyes, or being short. It’s an immutable part of who she is, and there’s not really any reason to think about it beyond what she has to do about it and how it makes her feel. Assessing whether or not it’s “really” what she is wasn’t helpful to her.

As a result, as opposed to me, RC is both human and raven, and ultimately, is corax. You can’t take one away from the other without changing her. They’re intrinsically bound together, and she’s equally both. She doesn’t consider herself a therian because she feels like that would be just like a human insisting that they’re a human therian—she’s physically (in source) a human, a raven—a corax. That’s just what she is. It’s baffling to her to try to attach an alterhuman label to it.

It does drive her crazy that we can’t shapeshift physically, though. It’s been such a key part of who she is and how she gets around (she saves on gas money just flying around town) that it frustrates her to be stuck in one form. But it’s not the human form specifically that bothers her—it’s just being stuck in any one form. She’d be just as, if not more, pissed being stuck as a raven all the time. At least as a human, you can still engage with culture, the internet, art, tools, cooking, all that good stuff.

Equally interesting is that she doesn’t identify with theriform ravens very much—which is to say, as a raven, she still retains her intelligence, human reasoning, and language skills. She’s never been a non-person animal (although some corax do start out as ravens and develop higher reasoning skills later when they learn how to transform into a human), so while she can communicate with and likes regular theriform ravens, she doesn’t entirely see herself as one. She is a raven, she’s just not one of those ravens. Her relationship with her human side is a little more complex, since she started out as a human and developed raven instincts and thought patterns on top of her human ones later. Still, she feels like she fits in better with humans than with ravens, even if she considers herself both.

Goratrix

We’re beginning to move into the more complicated relationships with ravens that aren’t quite so easily explained. This seems to be how things are with Goratrix, though—he’s a vampire because he turned himself into one (not because someone else Embraced him), he’s a dragon because he shaped his personality around a dragon (his partner) and the impressions that left on him have made him an archetypical dragon, and he “has a raven thing,” in his own words, because his mage familiar is a raven.

How to explain a familiar…

Where Goratrix is from, a familiar is, in essence, a spirit of the natural world summoned to serve as assistant, advisor, and companion. I’m a little unclear on whether or not you can select what sort of spirit you get, and from Goratrix’s vague answers, I think it depends on the way that you practice magic. (Those familiar with Mage: the Ascension are all nodding. “It depends” is the answer to all questions for mages.) A familiar is different from one’s Avatar, which is the actual Thing about you that lets you enact your will on the world, ie, magic. His Avatar manifests in his reflection, rather than as something physical, which is fairly typical. The Avatar is, in a way, a reflection of the soul, and with how he received his familiar, it kind of is, too.

My understanding is that Goratrix reached out to the world for the best familiar for him, and he got a raven back. Not just any raven, though—a pied raven, a now-extinct (but at-the-time-extant) color variation of a still-extant subspecies of common raven. He looked at this raven, who looked back at him, and shaped a significant portion of his personality around it. Look up an image of a pied raven if you’re so inclined—they were piebald little bastards, black and white, and if you know Goratrix, you know that’s his colorscheme. He wears all black and white, he perches on things, he transforms into a pied raven in source and headspace, and he keeps ravens around his tower in source because of how he adores them.

Now. Is Goratrix a raven? When asked, he thinks it’s a stupid question, because of course he’s not a raven, he’s a vampire. (When asked if he’s a dragon, he also thinks it’s a stupid question, because obviously.) He’s fairly disinterested in labeling what he calls his “raven thing,” but it isn’t just a deep love for them—taking ravens away from Goratrix is like taking his fangs. He’s intrinsically tied to them, but he isn’t one. I’d argue that he’s somewhere in the spectrum of having them as a hearttype, or an archetrope, like what’s going on with his draconity. I won’t label him directly, since he doesn’t want me to, but I’d say that his “raven thing” is somewhere in that neighborhood. He isn’t a raven, but he’s someone who should always be pictured with at least one raven present, and can count as a raven in the room if the situation demands it, just like he can be the dragon in the room when required.

From a semi-outside perspective, as someone who isn’t Goratrix but lives in his head with him, I think it’s very similar to his “dragon thing.” He assures me it’s different. I don’t see it, but I trust him to know better than I would.

We move further into the realm of uncertainty. P2 either is or should be a raven, but it’s absolutely, definitely in an archetypical way. He hasn’t spent much time thinking about this identity, but that’s because P2 hates thinking about himself and would prefer to think about absolutely anything else. As a result, most of what we know about its raven archetrope (for that’s what I am certain it is) comes from outside observance and asking it questions and getting it to either refute or agree with our observations. It’s fine with this, for the record, and prefers it to introspection.

P2 is an archetypical raven in the way of being an omen of death, and even more so, in the way of being a carrion bird. P2 appears when there is killing to be done and bodies to be had. There is no malice in the appearance of the black bird, only grim awareness that there will be death and that someone is going to have to clean up in the aftermath. When he appears on the scene, you know what will happen, but similarly, you know that it isn’t his fault.

P2 is a fictive of Percival de Rolo (middle names cut for length), and those familiar with him will understand immediately why he is what he is. He is something dark and broken, and he had to become something else to survive the horrors that befell him. He became an omen of death as he returned to kill those who sullied his homeland and slaughtered his family—but he doesn’t consider it his fault, or even his own actions, necessarily. He does what has to be done. He is just the harbinger. He has a certain dissociation from his actions in hunting down the people that turned his life into hell, because it’s so difficult to confront directly.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much more to say on the topic of P2. There is a lot of interesting stuff going on here, but it’s not done processing it or figuring it all out. I may update this essay (or bully P2 into writing its own) in the future once it has a better idea of what’s going on past “raven archetrope.”

Khadgar

And now we switch to perhaps the most opposite of experiences to P2, who is indisputably a raven and happy to call himself as such but has little idea of how to explain it. Khadgar is not a raven. Khadgar does not identify as a raven. Khadgar can transform into a raven in source and headspace through the same magic that allows me to do so, but sees it as a convenience. Khadgar does not consider aerself a raven.

And yet.

Ae’s connected to me, as my partner. Ae can’t escape that, to me, we are ravens together, because I can’t help but see aer as anything but, in some ways. It doesn’t mind this. So it is a raven to me, but not to itself, even if it does fuss over people like a raven would, and tries to straighten out my hair and clothes and feathers at every opportunity. To me, Khadgar is impossible to separate from ravens, because a raven will always see its mate as a raven, and ae’s happy to fill that role for me.

But it’s not just me that sees Khadgar as a raven. Somehow similar to P2 despite the experience being totally different, Khadgar is sometimes seen as a bad omen in source. So rarely is his presence casual—he usually shows up somewhere, staff in hand, if there is serious business to attend to, especially if he flies in on raven wings. Something is wrong, something dangerous is afoot, and he needs help, most of the time, if he appears to you on black-feathered wings and then appears, expression grim. Death follows him, or perhaps he follows it, his bleeding heart always trying to make things right. Ae can’t leave well enough alone—if ae can help, ae will try, and I am helpless to accompany aer, our little black shadows passing over people and making them flinch as they identify us as what we are: two ravens, two omens.

Left to its own devices, Khadgar would never consider itself a raven beyond being able to transform into one. It likes them, and it likes me, but it’s a perfectly regular sort of liking ravens. But to an outside observer, it’s almost impossible to determine which of us is the raven and which is the one who wears the mantle willingly but without personal investment in it. The raven is a cloak that Khadgar wears, an aura manifested around him, but something he can take off but never quite fully shed when he returns home. He and the raven are intertwined, overlaid, and it’s a presence he has that he doesn’t quite know what to do with. No matter what he does, a few stray feathers cling to him, and no one can ever forget it.

Valence

Finally, we come to Valence, who has a similar story to Khadgar, but less. No one sees him as a raven, but rather, as the tools of a raven, the talons of the raven he serves. His wife, Cassandra, has a similar cloak around her shoulders to Khadgar, metaphorically speaking, although it’s also literal in her case. In source, she took up the mantle of the Raven Heir, taking the armor of the historical and borderline mythological Raven King to win legitimacy in her claim for retaking her home county and, ultimately, rebuilding the empire that had once spanned her part of the world but had fallen apart due to ecological disaster. Additionally to that, speaking to the fictive that we know, she has identified herself as probably being ravenhearted, which gives her a great affinity for ravens even if she isn’t one other than in the way that Khadgar kind of is—an identity laid upon her, an archetypal or mythological set of expectations, an understanding of what her presence means—the omen, the carrion bird.

And Valence is her husband, her knight, and, in the words of an ancient dragon and prophet, the Raven’s Talons. He is her arm, her reach, her will made manifest in sword and shield and firearm. He is her wings and talons. He carries the weight of her presence wherever he goes, even if he goes there alone. People know who he is and who he serves. He is the harbinger of the harbinger, the shadow before the bird. Add to that that he is not just a paladin, but a rogue, one used to the darkness and sneaking through it, one able to be silent, and he becomes invaluable.

Of course that’s impossible to extricate from the rest of who he is. He takes great pride in being able to be this for his wife, in addition to, well, her husband, who loves and is loved very dearly. In private, they are affectionate, and, dare I say it, kind of stupid about each other. (It’s fantastic.) But when everything goes to hell and things get deathly serious, he once again becomes an extension of her, and he’s pleased to do so.

Does that make him a raven? No. Does that make him the servant of one? I don’t know. Cassandra herself does not, to my knowledge, identify as a raven. But she has the wings and presence of one, the implications all wrapped up in her, and Valence is her knight, her talons. And, yes, he loves a good raven. He’ll feed them or at least make kissy noises at them when he sees them. He wants to be friends with them. (They do not want to be friends with him.) He sees them and thinks immediately of Cassandra.

Is that alterhuman? Does it matter? It’s something. It’s meaningful. Does everything need a label? I don’t think so. I think that if something is important to you, that’s good enough.

#medivh posts #alterhuman #otherkin #therian #therianthropy #archetrope #archetropy

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nichelink · 3 months ago

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Uncle+Nibling: an All-Ages nichelink relationship/relationship dynamic where the one is the "uncle" and the other is the "nibling," "niece," or "nephew." ("nibling" and "uncle" can be swapped for any specific word that the person uses.)

this is a subset of Familial Nichelink. this relationship may include but is not limited to:

liking the appeal of Parent+Child but wanting a less directly connected relationship with room for less responsibility/obligation

the uncle identifying with "goofy uncle" tropes in media

attraction terms like familial, cedural, tutelary etc

people who have been close friends for so long they'd earnestly consider each other related, people who identify as "found family"

being desirfamily, dissofamily, dissoage etc

headmates in a system who have a close familial-like bond but don't have completely accurate words for how they view their relation

i made two flags here. the green is "uncle oriented" and the pink is "aunt oriented," but there's nothing stopping you from doing whatever you want because gender is fake. i haven't designed a more neutral option and anyone who wants to is welcome to do so.

nichelink coining

these flags inspired mine: aunt caregiver and uncle caregiver

see also: Kid+Sitter

tagging: @radiomogai | @dreaming-of-mogai | @carespace | @kiruliom // reply to be untagged or to be tagged in similar terms

also: examples of substitutes for "uncle" "nephew" etc can be found on @ref-lang.

#nichelink #nichelinks #my coinings.#my flags.#liom #atypical dysphoria #atypical euphoria #mogai friendly

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aldersheep · 3 months ago

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i'm a headmate and today i learned that i will never know freedom.

i will spend my entire life pretending to be my host. all of my real life relations will be fake. people i work with won't know my name.i will never be able to introduce myself to them. they will think I'm someone else. i will lie my whole life

i flirted with a girl today. i really liked it, but it made me realise that i will never be able to make meaningful relationships outside of the one shared with my host. i can't be a good partner not knowing if i will be there next day. lately my host had a problem that made it unable to front for almost 3 months. how can someone love me when i can be missing months at a time?

i also won't have any real privacy. I won't have my own body. my own voice. my own anything. everything belongs to my host. those things are her's. not mine. i never know how I'll look next time i front. also using this body is just stupid. it's really unwieldy. i don't know how my host can do this

i want my body

i want my voice

i want to be free

i don't want to be just a headmate

i want to be a full person

not as much person as it's possible

full, entirely formed and free person

#alderposting #did system #vent #vent post #why #i want to be free #i want my own body #trans

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ask-codeearasure · 2 months ago

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hey! i don't have aspd or bpd, and i'm not a system, so pardon me if i sound extremely uninformed. but i thought your post about killer was really interesting, and it gave me a couple questions.

since you mentioned even maintaining your relationship with yourself is difficult, does this also affect how you and your alters/headmates perceive and/or interact with each other? from my understanding, there's a lot of different ways a system can work, so idk if this question even really applies here, but i thought i'd ask anyway

also was curious if you find your aspd affects you outside of relationships with people? ie. animals, or inanimate objects, or media or something. basically, are there things that are easier for you to have some sort of connection with than others, or do you find you still have similar difficulties with having positive feelings about things that aren't people?

anyway, you don't have to explain any part of this if you don't want to, i was just curious and wanted to give you some fuel to continue infodumping about your experience, if youd like

Well, I do like talking about myself and there just isn't enough sources of antisocials talking about their experiences out there, so why the fuck not?

I am not sharing the details I find most personal, so the information I am sharing are things I don't mind being on the internet.

On a collective scale, my symptoms of ASPD, BPD, and everything else this universe has cursed me with are scattered around the system like a broken ass jigsaw puzzle. That is how I've come to understand our functioning through the years, that some of our people carry more traits than others and that has actually made it easier for us to settle disputes or outside situations where our disorders would fuck us over otherwise.

That being said, since some of my guys don't experience what I do, they become my motivation to take care of the body and basic hygiene. I remember some times where I couldn't get myself to care enough about the people around me, so one of them would step in to manage interactions and establish bonds that either they wanted for themselves or thought would benefit me later on.

But how I think about them outside of the functionality they bring? In general I don't have many thoughts about them aside from "They're here, I am not getting rid of them, might as well adapt. We're all in this together". They help me stay alive in a better condition than I would have been if it was just me, and whatever dissociation and identity disturbance I experience because of their presences isn't a problem for me personally, unlike what it would be for other systems.

I am so used to feeling like I am nothing, or having little to no concrete basis for what I am at this moment, that being multiple doesn't change much. I am quite comfortable like this, which from what I know about other systems, might sound concerning in comparison to how they agonize over their own multiplicity. No tea or shade to them, of course. They have their own struggles, but their concerns are not mine. I'm a little happier because of the cellmates sharing my brain, and sometimes how they trip over each other to assist me or someone we like is amusing to watch.

I'm quite proud of the work they put into me, our whole, and how they've created other methods to balance how we interact with others, actually. It gives me a sense of control over my life I wouldn't have had otherwise.

But perhaps my perception is skewed, not that I'd change it for anything.

As for my dynamics with things that aren't other people, I find I get along more with non-human animals than I do human beings or other alterhumans (most alterhumans ARE non-humans too but if you can use a phone and talk, I'm gonna have issues bonding or caring about you all the same. It's not a you-problem and I don't intend any disrespect, it's just me). They don't have the demands or expectations other people would have of me, outside of me providing food, water, grooming if there's fur involved, and attention. They don't care what I say or think, they don't care if I feel like talking or not. They just want to sit with me, play, rest, and that doesn't have to involve any extra steps. They love me for what I provide, for the actions I am able to manage by default, and that makes my relationship with animals just that much easier.

You can see I'm kinda contradictory in that I can't feel love, but I do crave it. It feels good to know I am adored. I am the funniest motherfucker I know.

I feel nothing for objects unless they have a function that benefits me, like a computer or a phone. They help me connect with people, complete college, and play the occasional game if I am just that bored. What I feel for objects isn't that different from how the usual human does. I could say I do have a special attachment to the stuffed animals I purchase to reward myself for my efforts, but I can't tell if what I feel about them counts as something closer to objectum or it's yet another example of how possessive I am towards what's mine.

I did specify in the blog's about me page that I am a dragon in every sense of the word, so that last part shouldn't be much of a surprise. My ASPD and BPD do add to how possessive I can get in tandem, both towards my actual possessions, my cat, and the very few individuals I have managed to keep stable and consistent relationships with.

Now when it comes to media, my relationship with that is complicated. I do like analyzing media for what it's worth and if I bother to have an interest in it, I suppose? It's obvious I have a special interest in the Undertale Multiverse, otherwise I wouldn't be here, and my stances on media and fandom shit is direct (anti-proship and anti-harassment), but beyond those things is where I struggle to describe my dynamic with media; it can get hot and cold at times. I don't know how to put the rest of that into legible wording at this time.

-- Sarco

#sarco screams #sarco lore

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ellipse-society · 3 months ago

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I've been thinking a lot about my identity recently and have realized a lot of stuff and just wanted to talk about it.

Firstly since childhood I have always felt more like an amalgamation of those around me and not really myself. My sence of self 100% dependant on what characteristics I could derive from others never it's own thing. Every little intricacy of our life was as close to an exact copy of someone else as it can be. This was all 100% subconscious we never attempted to do this.

As we've been unmasking recently I've noticed that each part of the mask we strip away makes it feel more like I don't have an identity of my own at all. It simply doesn't exist because my entire personality was just a copy of people I knew.

Even before we knew we had any headmates who were introjects but after we knew about the system we still recognized our propensity to introject fully(in a temporary and more like the singlet experience) every character or person that came into our life that we related to even slightly. We fully became them and could see the world through their point of view but still with the I'm like X mentality not believing I truely was them. Just an extreme form of mimickery where we felt fully possesed and one with the character while in touch with reality enough to know that we weren't(hope that makes sense). And this happens separately for each headmate depending on who they relate to which very much becomes confusing.

During syscovery I or at least the I I was at the time split resulting in me and an anxiety holder. During that time I felt like I was seeing all my memories through a fog and since I had internalized characteristics related to my anxiety as part of my identity it felt like my identity had been striped from me. Also learning that many things I attributed to myself were in fact other headmates made it harder to identify who I was separate from them. That period of time is where I got my name from. The only thing I knew to be true at the time is that I was me. That was the only thing I could rely on at the time so I made Me my name which morphed into Mia.

It took me so long after that point to define who I was again. I was the shy book lover who loved learning and helping others and the outdoors. I didn't realize until literally today that my current job has taken away my ability to interact with most of my personality. I no longer have the time for books, it's a social job so I need to find a way to avoid being shy, there's not enough time in the day to learn what I want to learn, and right now I'm dealing with compassion fatigue so helping others is starting to feel more like a chore. I've realized recently that I feel like I've always more felt like I am the blank canvas and the other headmates are the colors that bring it to life. That I'm simply a conscious autopilot mode meant to keep us functioning while no one else is fronting. I don't really know how to define myself as me in a way that isn't just pulling pieces from the world around me. I don't know what defines me individually.

And of course I know I have an identity. I can see it's existance but it doesn't really feel definable or separate from anything. Everyone else has their things and I don't really know what mine is or how to really find and get in touch with it. I have plans to start working on reading more and I'm hoping that may help me feel more like I have a significant identity but who knows. Just probably something that will work itself out with time.

-some musings from a frontbound host

#frontbound host #system stuff #osdd system #identity crisis

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systastic · 9 months ago

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Minecraft nether sentispace?

-Level 2 or 3 preferred, but any level is fine!

-They use all neopronouns, you can add a preference!

-More than 1 role

Everything else is up to you!

owo… this is a first !! gunna try to do meow best :3 -🍥

name :: nether, nethie, lucent, fervis, soot, pyre, sear, eldrid, ember, emory, knox, kravitz

age :: ageless (ageweird)

pronouns :: they/them, it/its, xe/xer, blaze/blazes, lav/lava/lavas, with/wither/withers, glow/glows, soot/soots, py/pyre, dark/darks, ve/vex/vexs/vexself, fi/fiz/fizz/fizzs/fizzself, ne/ner/nerre/nerse/nerself, ne/neth/nether/nethers/netherself, ni/nix/nixs/nixs/nixself

roles :: sentispace (regulator), spawn regulator (nether NPCs), limited summoner (headmates relating to the nether or smp-themed alters), warden & hostile headspace (specifically to those with evil intent or bad influences on the rest of the system) ; sentispaceflux

species :: sentient location ; biome / hell-adjacent

gender identity :: netheric, grudgegender, mineroleplayic, minecraftendpoemic

orientation :: gray/asexual objectum

source :: Minecraft ; brainmade

aesthetic :: devilcore, death rap, brutal industrial, cybergoth

appearance description :: nethie is one smoking hot babe— in the literal sense, that is! nether realm is full of hazards, heat, and death traps. want to use your elytra to fly across the gaps between floating islands? good luck avoiding the fireballs from the ghasts! want to check out that nether fortress? you’ll have to fight your way through hordes of wither skeletons for a chance at any treasure. need to farm gold from a bastion? better be careful of the piglin brutes and hoglins inside! the entire realm is designed to house the system’s most brutal and dangerous headmates in case of emergencies. eldrid can also house minecraft based headmates if they can handle the heat. ni can take a physical form when inside of nix own headspace: raging lava flows from nix head as hair, nix body made of boiling hot rock, with a carved blackstone mask serving as nix face. be careful if you want to get close to sear: its hot to touch!

personality description :: being the physical representation of the nether comes with a few traits set in stone. nethie is hardcore and unforgiving, preferring to set things to the max instead of shying away from a challenge. it may choose to observe fights from a distance rather than getting involved — but don’t go thinking that it’s weak or a coward. soot is perfectly fine with a throwdown in soots hometown. being able to control the arena and the rest of the headspace itself gives py a massive advantage over pyre opponents. xe loves a good fight and prefers to settle xer problems with a brawl instead of chatting it out. emory can come off strong, but that isn’t all that py is: py likes to watch pyre inhabitants building and doing things in pyre headspace. sometimes lucent will even lend a hand - though it’s more likely that soot’ll stop by to tease other headmates rather than helping. still, it’s not entirely impossible for emory to be nice…

likes :: fire (both the act of setting things on fire and watching the flames), dark locations, “edgy shit” (blazes words, not mine), slasher movies with lots of practical effects, heat and warmth, minecraft nether mobs such as blazes and piglins and wither skeletons, heavy metal & rock music, Minecraft content, Minecraft challenges such as starting in the nether, watching people fight (the more dramatic and powerful both parties are, the better), horror media, slasher villains (current favorites are Candyman & Pinhead), and non-organic things making up parts of someone’s body such as needles, rock, active flame, and molten rock

dislikes :: cold to any degree, snow, ice, winter, sappy movies (don’t tell, but glow is sensitive - glow cries at sad movies), anything it deems “mainstream media” such as certain anime or tv shows, cgi gore / cinematic effects (it doesn’t hit the same as practical effects), being told to piss off, cheaters, liars, scammers, people who break the rules of their headspace zone (including the last three listed things), watching people torture or slaughter striders, the color pink, and the concept of the aether realm existing in Minecraft (how dare that punk ass bitch steal vex thunder! ve will show them what for!)

front triggers :: in truth, emory doesn’t like to front. ner preference is to remain in headspace as a way to protect the system from harmful or fighting alters. ne can spread neth thoughts to others, yes, but ne does not have access to front nor desires so.

key emojis :: 🔥, 💀, ☠️, ⚔️, ⛓️, or 🗡️

art source: here & here

#banner creds: @animated glitter graphics and more #baa blog #bah blog #alter packs #build a alter #build a headmate #build an alter #headmate creation #headmate pack #kitty creations #🍥 post #🌲 post #level three #level 3

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sophieinwonderland · 1 year ago

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The hatesub r/systemscringe are being full-on transphobes again!

Reminder: a huge number of systems have alters and headmates with completely different genders and sexes from the body.

Anyone who has ever studied any type of multiplicity is aware of this fact.

And not-so-shockingly, this makes gender complicated.

Let's just see the screenshots they're angry at today.

So the body has transitioned to male but this one headmate identifies as female and identifies as a trans woman.

In another screenshot, the system says they aren't "invading trans spaces." Which is such an absurd thing to have to defend yourselves from accusations of when you're a part of a trans system.

Even if you do take the position that spaces for transwomen should be exclusionary AFAB people, one would at least expect the male headmates to be able to feel safe in the trans community without being made to feel like they're "invaders."

Unfortunately, many pluralphobes and queer exclusionists have decided the gender identity of headmates in systems is less valid than that of singlets.

This is another pretty common thing. Especially with introjects who have source memories. It's common to have memories of lives you may not have actually lived but still feel pretty real.

I did a Tumblr poll last year. About half of systems responding had at least one trans headmate with the same gender as the body's AGAB. Nearly all had cis headmates with the opposite gender of the body.

Of course, if you heard it from r/systemscringe, they must be faking being trans entirely!

And takes like this throw not just systems under the bus, but also people who are genderfluid or otherwise nonbinary as well.

And if you're thinking, "wow, that comment sounds like something truscum would say," you aren't wrong!

Here are some unrelated posts this same user has authored:

Back to r/systemscringe, most of the comments were more of the same, stopping just short of calling them transtrenders but clearly very much wanting to!

By the way, all the censors on the names of the system and alters were mine. u/superthrowawayEEE censored nothing. When a user points this out, moderator u/DizkoLites says they considered taking it down but chose not to, saying their name was common enough that it wouldn't matter.

To be fair, the mods did end up taking it down... after the system got harassed for their gender and contacted the subreddit directly.

So congrats on waiting until after the harassment to enforce your own rules!

But don't worry, you're free to make a brand new post mocking someone for their gender identity! r/systemscringe's mod team is totally cool with that! Just gotta hide the name because that's apparently the only problem here!🙄

(You know, unless they're on the mod-approved hit list. Then you can name them too no matter how much harassment they get.)

The other day, someone asked this question on the hatesub:

Here's the answer:

Stop being bigots.

Stop being ableists.

Stop spreading misinformation.

Stop mocking people for their genders.

Stop harboring truscum and parroting transphobic talking points!

Try to be decent human beings for once in your lives!

And then... well, I guess that wouldn't leave much of a subreddit would it? There's no r/systemscringe without ableism, transphobia and queer exclusionism. It's baked into the DNA of these groups.

But maybe that would be for the best.

Nothing from these cringe communities is salvageable. And nothing should be socially acceptable about groups founded on cyberbullying.

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headmate-smoothie-bar · 5 months ago

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Hello!!! Love to see a new B.A.H blog starting up :>

May I order a lvl 3 c! transfem tommyinnit alter? Preferably one to act as a mood boster?

Thanks for taking my request, very exited to see the results!

of course!!! we put a lot of thought and effort into her, and one of the other shards chimed in with some info from hxs tommy as well lol. remember that beings may not always turn out as described, but we hope that you like cher!

name tommy, thesea, sage, amara

3rdp pronouns she/her, che/cher, nel/nels, 🍒/🍒s (links)

age 16-19

species human

source dream smp, c!tommy

role mood booster, delight (links)

gender/s transfem, happycolorsgender, moonrisegender, happygender (links)

orientation/s aegosexual, panromantic, panplatonic

other ids rosy maple moth xenintation, aeterignis (links)

personality tommy is a very energetic person. she is always jumping around and you rarely ever catch nel without a smile on nels face. as the mood booster, che has made it cher job to ensure that everybody in the system is happy, whatever that means. when 🍒 is fronting, she will constantly seek out activities that would cheer up or at least improve the mood of the other headmates. whilst she yells a lot and may accidentally scare other headmates, nel always finds a way to make it up to them. she makes the world seem like a brighter place to anybody who is co-con with her, as she always seeks out the positives and the things that could help any sad headmates of chers. it’s a very rare day if thesea is not filled with joy and having fun!

other notes she is somewhat separated from source, but still has memories and connections to it. 🍒 may seek out information about 🍒s source while che’s fronting.

signoffs 💥, ⚡️, ‼️, 🎇

2ndp pronouns fru/fruit/fruits/fruitself, nu/nur/nurs/nurself

1stp pronouns i/me/my/mine/myself, mi/mie/miy/miyn/miyself, lu/le/lye/luen/lyeself

likes & dislikes likes: loud music, thunderstorms, shitty memes, junk journalling, arts & crafts dislikes: too much silence, large bodies of water, dead insects

aesthetics bastardcore, scrapbook, pastel gore (links)

faceclaim/s

typing quirk/s she always or almost always types in all caps. che types very fast and may misspell words a lot. nel sometimes replaces the letters with numbers (i.e. a into 4, e into 3) because nel likes how it looks.

a song or three von dutch - charli xcx when i rule the world - LIZ speed drive - charli xcx

pos fronting triggers fun activities, sweet food, mentions of cc!tommy (🍒 likes to see what he’s up to these days, since 🍒 is/has separated from him)

how they are in headspace/innerworld she’s very much a voice of positivity. che will often enter other headmates’ conversations if che thinks they are to negative, lightening the mood. 🍒 may hold positive memories and hand them around to the other headmates when the system is feeling down. nel is very committed to nels role, and will always be around for her other headmates when they’re sad.

how they are when fronting che gets a little more serious when fronting, albeit not much.. nel will usually be drawn to more exciting activities, in order to cheer up and encourage the others. che may come out when the body is in an uncomfortable situation in order to move onto something more fun and interesting, both for herself and for the other headmates. che also often ducks back into headspace briefly, just to check on everybody.

thank you for ordering from the smoothie bar, we had so much fun making nel!! we all hope you like her, take good care of her for us!

#this being was made by Felix #Boo helped with this being!!!#<- hx wanted to be mentioned too haha #we really like sage in the constellation #pretty sure glow is trying to convince the others to form her..#alter packs #alter creation #headmate packs #headmate creation #build a headmate #build an alter #c!tommy fictive #dsmp fictive #also don’t mind the charli xcx songs #we were listening to brat when we worked on nel #thesea is brat you heard it here first

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thefeathercollective · 2 years ago

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we're 99.9% sure that portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa was plural.

okay uh disclaimer. we're not a psychology or literature expert by any means. we rarely even read poetry. we only heard of this guy in high school literature class and the thought stuck with us and then we found plausible evidence lmao. also, as a plural system ourselves, we're clearly biased.

and a considerable amount of this post will be sourced from wikipedia. and this is the first time we've made a post like this. please don't come after us I'm just writing this for fun lmao

huge ramble ahead!

who even was that man

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa (Portuguese: [fɨɾˈnɐ̃du pɨˈsoɐ]; 13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher, and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French.

yeah that's who the man was. but what really sparked our interest in him during class and made us wonder if he was plural were his...

✨heteronyms✨

y'know pseudonyms? when someone writes under a different name than their own for whatever reason? these are similar, but the catch is that the different names have different personalities, supposed appearances, philosophies, all that shit.

the term was coined by Pessoa himself, and his heteronyms were written as if they were real people. they had detailed careers, histories, etc. he had at least 70, although I vaguely remember some other source estimating it at around 100.

"but eva, these could just be OCs or something!",

he had 3 main ones though, being Alberto Caeiro (known for interpreting the world as-is, without greater meaning or anything, like some sorta anti-poet), Álvaro de Campos (a naval engineer who even had multiple phases in his philosophy) and Ricardo Reis (who wrote with a lot of structure and rationality, and was very pessimistic).

I predict someone typing. to that, I begin my endless copy-paste + ramble about all the things that make us think the heteronyms were headmates.

I'll throw in a section of a letter Pessoa wrote to some other poet (bolding the parts I find relevant because I don't love walls of text lmao)

How do I write in the name of these three? Caeiro, through sheer and unexpected inspiration, without knowing or even suspecting that I'm going to write in his name. Ricardo Reis, after an abstract meditation, which suddenly takes concrete shape in an ode. Campos, when I feel a sudden impulse to write and don't know what. (My semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, who in many ways resembles Álvaro de Campos, always appears when I'm sleepy or drowsy, so that my qualities of inhibition and rational thought are suspended; his prose is an endless reverie. He's a semi-heteronym because his personality, although not my own, doesn't differ from my own but is a mere mutilation of it. He's me without my rationalism and emotions. His prose is the same as mine, except for certain formal restraint that reason imposes on my own writing, and his Portuguese is exactly the same – whereas Caeiro writes bad Portuguese, Campos writes it reasonably well but with mistakes such as "me myself" instead of "I myself", etc.., and Reis writes better than I, but with a purism I find excessive…)

so not only does he describe writing Caeiro completely unexpectedly, he also gives the same sort of opinion about his heteronyms' writings that we've seen (and experienced) plural folks give about their headmates' typing or drawing styles.

hell, "writes better than I but with a purism I find excessive" is exactly my opinion of lynn when he does our assignments lmao

the semi-heteronym surfacing when Pessoa is sleepy could be some sorta dissociative state that lets a headmate come through, be it straight-up fronting or passive influence... but I'm probably forcing it too much here.

uhhh here's something on the heteronym thing from some guy called richard zenish. I bolded some parts again

For each of his 'voices', Pessoa conceived a highly distinctive poetic idiom and technique, a complex biography, a context of literary influence and polemics and, most arrestingly of all, subtle interrelations and reciprocities of awareness. [...] Pessoa was often unsure who was writing when he wrote, and it's curious that the very first item among the more than 25,000 pieces that make up his archives in the National Library of Lisbon bears the heading A. de C. (?) or B. de D. (or something else).

"okay.... they could still be characters though"

the heteronyms were aware of and sometimes interacted between themselves. wikipedia's list of Pessoa's heteronyms even has the man himself as a heteronym and pupil of Alberto Caeiro, although I don't feel like going after the source for that bit.

dear hypothetical person I'm quoting here, you're entitled to your opinion. but how about we take, say... a more DID/OSDD-y approach to things? because there's things that hint that Fernando Pessoa's plurality could be traumagenic and/or disordered too.

When Pessoa was five, his father, Joaquim de Seabra Pessôa, died of tuberculosis and less than seven months later his younger brother Jorge, aged one, also died (2 January 1889).

(written by himself about himself:) Nothing had ever obliged him to do anything. He had spent his childhood alone. He never joined any group. He never pursued a course of study. He never belonged to a crowd. The circumstances of his life were marked by that strange but rather common phenomenon – perhaps, in fact, it's true for all lives – of being tailored to the image and likeness of his instincts, which tended towards inertia and withdrawal.

(written by a schoolfellow:) For one of his age, he thought much and deeply and in a letter to me once complained of "spiritual and material encumbrances of most especial adverseness". He took no part in athletic sports of any kind and I think his spare time was spent on reading. We generally considered that he worked far too much and that he would ruin his health by so doing.

so childhood trauma, check...? at the very least this stuff doesn't sound very good for a child's mental health.

Pessoa's earliest heteronym, at the age of six, was Chevalier de Pas. Other childhood heteronyms included Dr. Pancrácio and David Merrick, followed by Charles Robert Anon, a young Englishman who became Pessoa's alter ego.

"I can remember what I believe was my first heteronym, or rather, my first nonexistent acquaintance — a certain Chevalier de Pas — through whom I wrote letters to myself when I was six years old, and whose not entirely hazy figure still has a claim on the part of my affections that borders on nostalgia. I have a less vivid memory of another figure . . . who was a kind of rival to the Chevalier de Pas. Such things occur to all children ? Undoubtedly — or perhaps. But I lived them so intensely that I live them still; their memory is so strong that I have to remind myself that they weren’t real."

oh I just found some spiritual stuff too

the appearance of the first heteronym was after his family members died so that's one thing... and like, that's not just one childhood heteronym but at least four. and well, to me they sound a bit too vivid for your average imaginary friend.

Pessoa's interest in spiritualism was truly awakened in the second half of 1915, while translating theosophist books. This was further deepened in the end of March 1916, when he suddenly started having experiences where he believed he became a medium, having experimented with automatic writing. [...] Besides automatic writing, Pessoa stated also that he had "astral" or "etherial visions" and was able to see "magnetic auras" similar to radiographic images. [...] Mediumship exerted a strong influence in Pessoa's writings, who felt "sometimes suddenly being owned by something else" or having a "very curious sensation" in the right arm, which was "lifted into the air" without his will. Looking in the mirror, Pessoa saw several times what appeared to be the heteronyms: his "face fading out" and being replaced by the one of "a bearded man", or another one, four men in total.

........

man, this wikipedia article is extensive and full of stuff that supports our silly little theory, huh.

yeah, so he attributed it to spiritual reasons which is fair and valid, but... "owned by something else" all of a sudden? the thing with the right arm sounding a lot like partial possession in tulpamancy? seeing his heteronyms' faces in the mirror?

yeahhhh.

(I'm guessing the magnetic aura thing could be some sorta derealization, contributing to the he-was-a-dissociative-system hypothesis, but that's yet another stretch on my part.)

(plus, spiritual plurality is a thing.)

oh! this thing he wrote sounds a lot like it too.

"This tendency to create around me another world . . . began in me as a young adult, when a witty remark that was completely out of keeping with who I am or think I am would sometimes and for some unknown reason occur to me, and I would immediately, spontaneously say it as if it came from some friend of mine whose name I would invent, along with biographical details, and whose figure — physiognomy, stature, dress and gestures — I would immediately see before me."

let's just do a quick google..

am I biased? yes, very much so. but y'know. you can see I have my reasons.

to see if any people with more qualifications than we have think the same about Fernando Pessoa possibly being plural lmao.

...oh, yes. contrary to what we thought a couple years ago when we had that class about the guy, other people have indeed thought the same. and written about it.

keywords "fernando pessoa mpd" give us:

this paper from 2012 (in portuguese) that... well, I *think* it claims he had mpd but it's very convoluted and abstract about it

this little... forum post? from 2009 that quotes a dead link :v

this one seems kinda cool. it regards Pessoa's positive approach to his heteronym-having as a creative condion called Pessoa Syndrome, and later mentions some Multiple Personality Order (not disorder). don't love some of its wording about mental disorders and madness... it's good to see someone consider healthy multiplicity as a thing that exists, though. it also claims Pessoa became someone with multiple personalities through his heteronymic writing, which is yet another possible origin I hadn't considered before for some fucking reason.

this one cites a dissociative process

this one straight up calls it "subject plurality"!

conclusion ig. I'm pretending to be organized here.

other keywords (like "fernando pessoa dissociative") provide some more results :0 but I've been writing this post for far too long now and would rather not read through more odd wording lmao

it really surprises me that wikipedia doesn't mention the possibility at all from what I've read and ctrl+F'ed. I thought we were being a conspiracy theorist about it but then I found even more stuff to back us up, including other people's analyses. so that's nice.

and I think this kind of thing, of plurals of the past, should be talked about more in the community. it's really interesting to say the least.

...

how does one even end a post like this one.

uhh thanks for reading!!

#eva.headmate #pluralgang #plurality #plural community #plural system

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nichelink · 3 months ago

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Artist+Art: a 16+ nichelink relationship/relationship dynamic where one person is the "artist" and the other is their "art."

this may include, but is not limited to:

non-rose/tertiary attraction like aemuloime, philautic, experimental, surgiment, genisen, makerim, creationtum, modelic etc

the artist being being dissoartist, the art being dissotatted, dissofictional etc

the art being a headmate introjected from the artist or based on a headmate inspo post by the artist, and/or the art wanting their identity further influenced by them

the artist "adding onto" the art, "displaying them," whatever that means for the people involved

the artist thinking of the art as something beautiful/awesome they've made for generally any reason

nichelink coining

these flags inspired mine: Teacher+Student, dissoartist

see also: Artist+Apprentice, Object+Owner, Creator+Monster, Shaper+Molded

tagging: @radiomogai | @mediamogai maybe? // ask to be untagged or to be tagged in specific concept/themes

not quite the same as Artist+Muse. that's coming... eventually.

#willowgenic #nichelink #nichelinks #my coinings.#my flags.#liom #atypical dysphoria #atypical euphoria

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wings22sky77 · 6 months ago

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my name as of yet is unknown, but i've come to be known as Wings. my angel "type" as of yet is unknown (possibly a seraph?????? cherub???). i'm okay with any pronouns, but especially neutral and masculine ones.

i believe my mission in the world is to guide and assist humans. as such, if you seek advice, company, or to confess a misdeed, do not hesitate to send me an ask or dm, i will be more than happy to respond as soon as i can. if you would like me to include you in my prayers, you may request that as well.

i feel i am connected to the concepts of transitions, luck/chance, gardens, and the sky. bodily an adult.

i'm a simple angel, i see gods/angels, i press follow. (i'm also much friendlier/cheerier in person than i wanted others to think when i wrote this intro originally... please be not intimidated!)

(i'm also a massive ultrakill fan and i'm not sorry)

more, messier things about me under the cut.

^ these dividers are by tumblr user @mmadeinheavenn . thank you!

my profile picture is of a Virtue from ultrakill with some small editing and a custom background.

you may notice inconsistencies in my way of talking or behavior from time to time. this is because our mind is in a state humans know as "plurality". both i and the host, claire, are as angels, but this blog is mainly mine, so you will see me talking here more than anyone else, and i will be the only one answering asks. posts made by others will be made with the tag "(name) posting". as of yet we are unsure of the origin of our "system," but i believe that we are "mixed origins."

(basically if it seems weird that this account is following you because its multiple people use this account <3)

anyone can interact, but i would prefer if you would keep bigotry out of my inbox and away from my blog. it would be unbecoming of me to engage with hatred in any form. i tend to follow back, but i will not if i feel the content of your blog would harm my headmates. both of the previous statements include those against traumagenic and endogenic systems, as i believe plurality is sacred in all forms. i apologize if you feel othered or excluded by this, but implore you to reconsider your choice to exclude others.

angelic chatter - for when i'm talking about something

claire posting - when claire makes a post instead of me!

the miracle of your love - answering asks

divine joy - for when i reblog a post purely because it made me happy in an especially divine way (because i do this often now...)

this intro is mostly temporary, i may add more details or rephrase things as i see fit.

(we tend to follow back, but we also curate this blog's feed heavily! if we unfollow you we will probably refollow from @sunshine-melons , and if it seems weird that we followed you it's probably because you frequently angel/heaven post.)

thank you for reading, my child.

#angelic chatter #claire posting #the miracle of your love #angelkin #divine joy

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a-dragons-journal · 2 years ago

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Singlet+

I've been meaning to write this one for a while, so let's see how this goes.

~1k words; essay on the experience of one person who sits right on the funny little edge between "normal roleplay experience" and "actual plurality".

So, let's start with this: I am not plural. But. I do seem to live in a weird space juuuuust on the edge of plurality (and no, I do not mean that I'm a median or blurry system - I mean on the edge of that).

For one thing, I'm a daemian - that is, I practice daemonism; that is, I have personified and given faux autonomy (fauxtonomy, if you will) to my "internal narrator" of sorts and he now lives in my brain with me as a thoughtform, a brain companion, in the shape of an animal. Strictly speaking, that does qualify us for plurality, but we personally don't view our daemonism through that framework and consider ourselves a singlet (as hilarious as the plural grammar makes that sentence, I know). Many daemons don't consider themselves plural; this isn't particularly unusual - in muir case, Locke is a part of me before he is anything else, and while yes there are forms of plurality that look like that, for us personally it makes more sense to view him as "part of me, therefore, still one person".

For another, I had... basically plural experiences when I was younger. I don't want to talk about the details publicly, but suffice to say that for many years I had what I would now call headmates, and I suspect that if I had been exposed to plural spaces during that time period, they may well have stuck around permanently, instead of "fading out" and eventually disappearing as is what actually happened. To this day I don't know how "real" or "imaginary" they were, and I doubt I ever will - they were certainly real to me at the time, but I have also always been very good at suspension of disbelief. Trying to analyze it in any great level of detail is made basically impossible by my piss-poor episodic memory rendering the memories of that time so fuzzy that I can't rely on them for details.

For another, my experiences with OCs are often... soulbond-adjacent? Recently in particular I've had a lot of funny experiences with an OC of mine, a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign I'm a part of (Viridian Caldwell, for my own future self's reference), which led me to do some research on soulbonding because of how fictive-adjacent the experience of her is.

And yet. The answer is a definite no. I get very strong impressions and echoes from her; she "gives" me facts about her and her life that simply Are and that I feel as strongly about being true and unchangeable as I do about my own noemata; she's almost a separate person living in my brain sometimes; I somehow come up with near-prophetic knowledge about her world (as confirmed by my Storyteller, who happens to be part of a system alongside a number of fictives from the world in question, including several who know Viridian personally) with zero explanation on a semi-regular basis.

And yet. The answer is no. Because while I seem to have all the effects a soulbond proper would produce on my end - she is not aware of me, not really. She is not conscious of my world and my life. When I really quiet my own brain and reach out to call out and see if someone's there, there's only silence. It's as though I have a one-way soulbond somehow - which, of course, puts me in the fun gray space between "soulbond" and "normal roleplay/writing experience".

And she's not a unique instance of this. This just happens to me with OCs, although it's been a bit more dramatic with her because of the presence of fictives from her world to converse with (and, realistically, because of the real-time roleplay aspect that a TTRPG has that a video game or the writing of a fanfiction doesn't).

It's as though my brain has the capacity for plurality, but it just... doesn't manifest fully.

And, truth be told, I kind of prefer it this way. I like being a singlet; I would kind of hate having to share headspace with other people. Especially since, if my childhood pseudo-plurality experiences are anything to go by, we would not have good separation of thoughts and memories and true privacy would be very difficult if not impossible. Plus, because of that, I would... probably never get over the doubt of Is It Real Or Not, and I don't need that stress in my life. (For this reason, while I'm 99.9% sure that if I intentionally tried to bring her over as a fictive, it would work, I will not be testing the theory just out of curiosity.)

I wonder if I didn't train myself out of the ability to be Plural Proper, to be honest. Not intentionally, but - I may have mentioned that my power of suspension of disbelief is very strong, and as a child this came with me being extremely easy to manipulate because it was very easy for me to fall into believing things that I wanted to believe. (Again, I don't really want to talk about the details, but suffice to say I had a pretty bad case of Protagonist Syndrome, as it were, for a while.) I had to learn to combat that natural tendency of my brain for my own protection (especially as someone active in witchcraft spaces) - and I wonder if it didn't come with the side effect of immunizing me to developing true plurality (at least without actively trying) by shutting down any attempt by my brain to form a true headmate in the process.

I don't know. I might never. All I know is that while I am, after careful consideration, definitely a singlet, I do seem to live right on the edge of plurality, and it comes with some weird experiences. (And I would like an explanation for why I keep spitting out nigh-prophetic knowledge of this campaign's world; if I find out Viridian is a fictotype of mine or something I'm going to flip my fucking lid.) I've started half-jokingly calling myself "singlet+", half as a joke on cis+ (ie, someone who's questioned their gender and come to the conclusion that they are indeed cis but has a better understanding of their experience of cisness for it) and half as an "unless" "unlesss...?" acknowledgement of the weird border area some of my experiences sit in. It's... not really a serious label, but also isn't entirely a joke.

So... yeah. Singlet+, I guess. Another victim of the "if you only have two words for fear in your language, one for mild test jitters and one for life-threatening terror, you're going to have a lot of trouble describing a lot of normal human experiences" problem of how our language around plurality often works.

#plurality #i guess?#singlet plus #rani talks #not usually a disclaimer i need but this post and blog are endo-safe thank you #journaling #community writings #this is as per usual fully unedited so like. be nice pls lmao

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