Tag Archives: system stuff

so i’m a little apprehensive to say anything about this, because i feel like i’m just appropriating real trauma and real problems, but a couple of years back i had a friend group that gave me the space to like, try functioning as a system (i really can’t think of the proper term for this, apologies), and it really did something for me. it’s hard to figure out the proper words for things, but it sort of did feel like i was shifting alters and actually acknowledging that and communicating with them was really helpful for me, and it was the most mentally healthy that i’ve felt in a really long time. but i stopped doing it once i left that friend group because they then told me i was faking it (none of those friends were systems, none even had any knowledge on mental health beyond adhd tiktok and the like). i genuinely feel a lot of guilt and shame saying this though, because i have a lot of friends who are plural/systems and i feel like i’m doing things that i shouldn’t, that aren’t for me. this was mostly a ramble bc this is really hard for me to talk about but i just wanted you to know that your posts about plurality and talking to people who are new to understanding their systems and everything regarding it are extremely comforting to read even as someone who has no idea if they are plural or not. thank you for your time <3

Anon, I am so sorry that your former friends abused your trust, isolated, exiled, and fakeclaimed you. You did not do anything to deserve that treatment.

I hope you will listen to me when I say this to you.

If living and functioning as a system is constructive and helpful for you, then you are a valid system if you believe you are. You are plural if you believe you are plural.

There is no objective metric for plurality.

Medical diagnoses do not have, or even claim to have, a monopoly on all the plurality that exists, despite some discourse that claims otherwise.

No one outside of your head can tell for sure if you are really plural or not.

Being plural is at its core an entirely internal experience, like emotions or thoughts.

No one outside of your brain can objectively evaluate whether your body contains one person or many people in it.

There is no objective metric for plurality.

If functioning as a plural is what is comfortable for you, then you are plural.

And you are welcome in the plural community. You are not appropriating anything. You belong here.

Wait do you guys have an inner world? What’s it like?
– 🍉💌

Leave a reply

We do have one. Parts of it are fairly amorphous but there are large parts that are consistently structured.

The ‘front’ is a separate area from the full inner world in back. The front is a large, circular room with a couch, standing lamp, round area rug, and a small table. The edges of the room trail off into darkness.

When people are co-fronting they’re on the couch, or, if we’re especially blendy, crowded around it.

As for our full inner world in back, mostly we prefer to keep it private.

Leave a reply

blackheart-biohazards:

Fictionkin, fictives, etc:

Remember there is/was more to your life than canon shows on screen/page.

When people write fiction, it’s common to leave out what the author feels is boring, and to concentrate on the more exciting, dangerous, stressful, and terrifying moments.

There is more to your life than that. Even if canon never shows your downtime. Even if it only shows your worst moments.

There are good moments. There was rest. There is tenderness. Even if no one else gets to see it.

It is in you.

Hey! Sorry if you’ve answered this somewhere before, but I’m curious: I noticed each member of your system has a good number of kintypes. Do you mind sharing a little about how you determine whether you have discovered a new kintype vs a new member of the system? We are definitely getting better at discerning the difference (and as a result, we keep finding out that we have fewer members than we actually thought) but it’s still tough!

Leave a reply

The answer is complicated: basically it used to be hard, but now it’s generally really easy.

So here’s the long, system lore answer.

To begin with, we were awake and active as a plural system before the fictionkin community was a thing. None of us knew that we had experience d multiple lifetimes, or that we existed in more than one aspect (kintype/shift), with the exception of 😼🔪 who was struggling with figuring out his first fictionkin awakening through nightmares with the total absence of community or context.

So for a long time we thought that there was a certain core handful of us system members, and that certain others (fictives generally) came and went on occasion.

What was happening behind the scenes that we weren’t understanding is that we have at least theoretically a fixed system of 25 (fuzzy count) members. Many of these members weren’t awake or active yet, and the ones that were would sometimes ‘disappear’ in one aspect, and reappear in a different aspect.

About a year and a half or two years ago we had a serious system shakeup where we realized for a few reasons what had been happening, and a lot of “system members” turned out to be disconnected aspects of other members and “popped back together” into a more full awareness of themselves.

We spent a long few months going around figuring out who was who, and even found a lot of system members who had been awake longer than they thought, because an aspect of them was one of the people we thought had vanished earlier.

So now that we know who is a distinct person, and how many we have, it’s a matter of each distinct person doing their own kintype questioning, as if they were singlet.

And if we had someone apparently new show up, disconnected from who is already around, we’d do the same and before and see if they were someone’s disconnected kintype shift (expect? Lol), or if they were actually another distinct person!

Please feel free to ask more if there’s more detail you’re interested in.

Leave a reply

ahdjcjebdhdjsndhcif:

A concerning amount of people seem to ship Larry and me. Some even go as far as writing fanfiction of us or even drawing “fanart” (🌽/🟧⬛) of us.

you proshippers need to go turn of your devices, go outside and touch some fucking grass smh

Speaking as a fictionkin and fictive system member you cannot in good conscience try to tell people in fandom what they can and can’t do with the character in your source material that represents you.

You, as a person walking around and existing in this world, are separate from that concept of the character that exists in fiction and fandom– and even if you don’t believe that you must admit that it is extremely rude to try to control the behavior of others.

Saluton! Do you have any information as to when and where “source” started being used to describe the medium one’s identity stems from? There has been a sudden glut of people saying it’s a system-exclusive term, and while I know otherwise, any leads towards concrete proof of its origin in this way would be greatly appreciated!

Leave a reply

fromfiction:

I hate to say this but I think that the way the kin community uses the term ‘source’ these days likely IS strongly influenced by it’s use in the plural community. In the old days on livejournal and early tumblr we used terms like “universe” and “canon” rather than “source.”

I was curious myself, so I went back and checked through my old websites, and through the from_fiction livejournal, and the terminology is absent from discussion.

We said things like “who are you? what’s your kintype? what universe are you from?” when we discussed that type of thing.

That said, its absolutely ridiculous to say that only one specific group is allowed to use a perfectly generic and normal word like “source.” Source is just a word. It means point of origin.

The idea that “source” can somehow be a system exclusive term is like allowing Disney to copyright the word “princess.”