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realized a little bit ago that this isn't something i usually see artistic systems discuss ; the fluctuations of art styles due to different fronters is an actual thing (at least for us). i said in my intro / pinned post that i draw sometimes, but i wanna say it now? the extent of what i can do is basically these.

it's not horrible, right? but i'm more-so just a plant / features artist than an actual character artist or anything compared to the more active people in the system who take on our commissions and deal with those. i'm a bit self conscious about what i draw because it's not nearly as good as some of the other things we produce.

this being said, i think artistic motivation and ideas also fluctuate based on who fronts because you're telling me... gloom can draw 4-5 pieces of art in one sitting in the span of 6-7 hours? like a psychopath? (/lh, /hj) all i can do in an hour is sketch a vaguely human shape and fight with the proportions on it then give up 10 minutes later because it "doesn't look right at all".

like she had started on the first one, and designed the second character as an adopt? these are FIRE. and i turn to look at my sketchbook in front awkwardly and just stare at my plant drawings. it makes me feel a little embarrassed sometimes because i just need more practice on it with stuff i'm comfortable doing, but... not nearly something that's discussed enough.

gloom finished the 1st one for one of her friends, and jackie drew the second one of herself and wow... i won't lie though, it's so cool to see the drastic differences between how people do certain things in their art pieces. gloom barely needs sketches to set her things up, jackie needs guidelines and tons of reference images to be able to do hers, etc. it's pretty unique of a concept to think about, what about everyone else? do you guys have anything like this going on with you as well or is it more of a consistent art style throughout the entire system? i'm genuinely kinda curious at this point.

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god, i love diamond paintings to bits but they're so time consuming since i'm the fool who wants to do it by individual diamonds for more control over the layout. i love just dissociating while doing stuff like this though, it feels therapeutic in a weird way. i think it's important to just space out sometimes and lose focus for a little while then reconvene with your friends.

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Was there anything about system discovery that just... made sense? and was there anything that scared you at all? I hear that sometimes newly discovered systems become anxious about certain parts of being a system.

see, the problem i've had with discovering being a system at a young age was that, well... nothing made sense. for the first 5 years it was all of us fumbling around as we were perceived and acknowledged for the first time. it felt overwhelming to have individual spotlights on everyone like we were a spectacle to behold in public spaces... unfortunately, that's the only thing we realized had made sense. system's are usually perceived as "rare" in person, and it's a bit unfortunate that there's so many that have to figure it out the hard way through online platforms and things like that.

all of it was scary because all of it was new. every time someone new split we were scared to address the elephant in the room. "who's this supposed to be?", "should we make a new profile for them?", "do they even want to be perceived in this light?", and things like that. it was constantly (and still is) a tug of war battle with our own brain to determine what's for the best at every interval.

though uh, i will say! there's some nice parts about being a system, of course... helping one another cope with certain aspects of day to day life is one of the major pros. especially if something i can't handle comes up, someone else usually comes in to help me out with handling it. grounding has gotten easier especially if a soother comes into front to help work me through the issues or severe dissociation. usually they leave afterwards, but it's gotten easier to process things.

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The Soul selects her own Society —

Then — shuts the Door —

To her divine Majority —

Present no more —

by Emily Dickinson

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started looking up topic starters online so i can write more miscellaneous things to queue up in the mean time?

some of the ones i saw were about "home life" and i thought it'd be cool if i detailed some of my fronting experiences dealing with our home life and stuff kind of mundane? maybe go into stuff that i enjoy doing bodily, etc.

i know some of it's listed in the pinned post, but i like doing a lot of physical puzzles. sudoku, crossword puzzles, word searches, jigsaw puzzles... you name it, i probably have tried to play it before! but i do wanna say i enjoy books. i don't necessarily read them, no... i do the thing where you go through books and find sentences that resound with you, so i guess skimming is more-so the word?

like, lemme pick up a book right now and flip to a random page.

The voice was right. Different incidences of her own rudeness and ingratitude played in her head like scenes from a movie she didn't want to see. "Guilty as charged," Millie said. "But why are those crimes I have to die for? Those are crimes everybody's guilty of from time to time."

this is from the FNAF into the pit book, the first volume of the little series scott cawthon did. have i fully read it? not yet. am i going to? who knows. we have so many books we still have yet to read in our bedroom but i really just like touching the pages. i like looking at the sentences and accents they set up, i like seeing how authors write certain concepts, etc.

i'm not a major fan of actually sitting down and spending hours on reading, but i'm also not really much of a computer alter. i just recently got into the whole uh, blogging business here. not to mention using the computer set-up we have a bit more frequently. i mean, i guess part of why we haven't read very much either is due to work, chores, other things in our life going on, etc.

there's just a lot of factors with reading, but i digress.

something i'd like to do in the future is start a windowsill garden? currently just do little bootleg lego builds and little bootleg lego contraptions you can use. i found plant related ones, sanrio related ones, and little bug guys that move with a crank when you set them up properly. i'll probably take some pictures of them to put into a post at some point, but i love trinkets. a lot of us love trinkets, we literally have a cubby container of stress toys and stuff we've collected over the years.

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i've been thinking most of the morning about "body dysmorphia" and how it works with systems, cause it's pretty much a common occurrence for us to deal with as an adult system with varying people in the system as a whole.

amab trans people insys are thrilled when they find out we're afab, and not all of us fully understand the struggle but it's nice to know some people are excited to find out. afab trans people insys are usually upset when they find out, but since it's something they have either dealt with for a while and know they have no major say over altering the body for themselves... they usually just complain about it. it's upsetting, especially if you had transitioned in source and find out you front in a body that isn't yours and you're right back at feeling that gross sensation of dysphoria.

inhuman (animal/furry) alters feel weird about it regardless, i can speak on this one the most and put in my own experience here. i'm a super old introject of our childhood stuffed animal, the one panda plush we couldn't sleep without for the longest time. it was our anchor item, any bad experience had us clutching that silly little plush as hard as possible. we had it through a majority of our trauma and it was hard to let it go. i held that identity for a while and when i finally took front for the first time? it was bizarre. i had normal hands, legs, no fur (unless you count hair as fur, then y'know... maybe fur)... i used to fumble over my feet a lot, i'm used to having larger feet due to the paws. i know i'm still a bipedal though, it's just weird to have all that weight distributed over different parts that aren't exactly mine or what i'm used to. then the dysmorphia would hit, looking in the mirror. "that's not me," is what i'd think a lot. but, y'know? it kind of is.

new alters typically don't know how to handle taking front for the first time, and someone else usually has to be there with them in case something serious ends up happening with them there. some people enjoy it, some people hate it, others are neutral to it especially if they don't have any sort of form of their own (like, think "fragments", the blank slate alters out there with nothing). sometimes it's nice to be perceived, other times it's nice to just curl up in a corner and hide for a while.

it's a strange feeling, for sure. i wanted to make this post to highlight some parts of body dysmorphia going hand in hand with systemhood? it's a struggle everyone has, though. if y'all have any questions about how our other "brands" of alters deal with dysmorphia or other things, feel free to ask.

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hearts in trees ♡

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if anyone was curious, yes! i do in fact have a spotify playlist on our spotify account, if you ever have recommendations feel free to send some in my inbox and i can give my honest opinion on the song. :)

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💜?

i had to sit here and think what "pre-syscovery" meant and it kinda just clicked -- pre system discovery... duh... /lh

so, growing up we had always thought having poor memory was just... normal. we made no active effort to work on it and even if we had tried, it wouldn't have helped much anyway.

well, for a short period of time during the whole denial thing, we were homeschooled by our dad. it didn't last very long, us and our sister didn't really take to it very well so we wound up back in public schools later anyway. year 1 or whatnot we'd been doing the science lessons? when we finished our dad was asking us some questions on the lesson for the mini quiz and we had to sit there for a hot minute (not super certain who was fronting at the time, but some of it's just core memories for all of us).

"what science lesson?" or something like that was what we'd asked and he thought we were fucking with him. we were not. so it turned into a lot of the lessons were like that where we'd do them, answer maybe 2 questions and forget bits and pieces. played it off like we were just playing a practical joke on him. we were not.

this was pretty common for a lot of things, we'd forget miscellaneous things from school, forget to bring back books to the library, forget to grab something from lunch, etc. kind of harmless stuff but we'd sit there and watch a lot of people have perfect memory for the most part? they'd keep notes in places they could find but if i put a note up anywhere? boom, it's gone the next minute and we have no idea where it up and left to.

it's still something we struggle with now, i'll set a cup down right in front of me and sometimes someone else could come into co-front with me, maybe the host shows up and shimmies their way into main front and look around. i didn't know the amnesia barriers were so 50/50 sometimes, but i still think it's pretty funny to find a bottled caprisun and go "oh, i guess this is my drink?" when it's on my desk and realize it's been sitting there for a while and the other people who came into front just ignored it or forgot it was even there.

thanks for the ask! hope y'all get a kick out of this.

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original ask game linked here

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The moss garden at Tofukuji Temple, Kyoto, Japan.

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i did end up giving up on making myself a roblox avatar because

i'm not human? i'm a plant + red panda hybrid, but specifically like... a blonde red panda? it's hard to explain but y'know how there's blonde tigers and stuff? yeah, it's kind of like that.

there's not enough things in the catalogue that go with yellow for bears or red pandas, so it was hard to even try finding a head that worked for me.

the color limitations on the avatars skin tone is kind of hard, i kind of wish they'd let us just pop in color codes and stuff specifically.

it'd be nice if i had the right things to make myself on roblox but i'm pretty content with just being a random person with plant features in a farmer get-up.

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let's see if i get any of these but sure!

🌈🌈🌈NON-INVASIVE SYSTEM ASK GAME YIPPEEEEE 🌈🌈🌈

❤️ - What is your system name? How did you choose it?

🧡 - Do different alters have different favorite games? What would you say is the most popular game among your system?

💛- Pick one (or more) alter(s). If they were a cereal, which one would they be and why?

💚 - Do you associate your system with any colors? Why those colors?

🩵 - What’s one thing your grateful to your system for?

💙 - If you had a million dollars, how would each alter spend it?

💜 - what’s something you thought was normal pre-syscovery that you have since realized does not happen to most people? (Can be as silly or deep as you want)

🩷 - Does your system play any sports? Are any alters better at that sport than others?

🌈 Bonus, non system related: Do you have any pets? What’s their name? Show a picture!!

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is it obvious my favorite color is green because i feel like it's really not obvious at all... /j

i do really like a lot of colors though, it mostly pairs up with the plants i like. i like purple because of crocus flowers and one of my best friends favorite colors is purple. i like white because of lilies of the valley, they're our collective best friends favorite plant.

i (personally) am obsessed with the bleeding heart flower though, it's one of my favorites and the white going into red-pink is really pretty. if i can find some good pictures of it i'll probably post some sometime.

tldr; i like green, purple, white, red, and pink.

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i think it's important to say for other systems & newer systems out there:

never tell a younger friend (forcibly) that they could be a system, i feel like if people hadn't shoved it down my throat as a 13 year old online, i would've gradually worked into it a bit more smoothly and accepted it a little bit easier. the host had been in denial about it for 2-3 years after this had happened, this is just a shortened version of it.

though experiences range, yeah. i think it's essential that if you think someone could overlap with symptoms of it? just politely bring it up as a cool topic to look into or something. not anything serious? not a thing to sit down and hash out all the details of and tell them they are one because they act like it.

i'm not a doctor, obviously... but a lot of the disorder overlays with other ones and i think it'd be healthier to just encourage them to do research so they can get help if they need it. if they don't want the help immediately? that's okay, too. maybe they just don't have access to the resources, maybe the household isn't the best, etc.

just be there for them while they figure it out. it's the least we can do as friends.

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i drew my hands for our sysfriends and some of the singles i talk to. it's kind of hard to explain to them that you literally just have a green thumb... i'm just a little plant cultivator i cannot change this. </3

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“Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair.” – Susan Polis Schutz

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i'm a bit of a hoarder in system, i have tons of plants and decorated pots they're usually in... i have stickers on some of them, too. i used to do scrapbooking for a while, same with putting flowers inside the pages of books and squish them for decoration purposes? i don't remember what that's called, it's been so long since i did it last.

best stickers are those water proof ones since i have to water the plants and stuff still, makes the most sense. plushies are cool, too! i like those little scraggly feeling ones even if i get dirt on them a lot cause of my hands, lol.