acacia-shade

[acacia-shade]

Median culture is connecting to questioning systems so much more than systems who have known for a while

(and feeling guilty for feeling upset when others figure their systems out)

.

[acacia-shade]

Shoutout to the plurals with less distinct headmates!

Shoutout to the systems made up of fragments!

Shoutout to the plurals whose headmates are fluid in elaboration!

Shoutout to the plurals who never fully switch!

Shoutout to the systems with only one or no elaborated headmates!

Shoutout to the collectives who “are functionally” or “can pass” as an inconsistent/fluid one!

Shoutout to the disordered systems who have neither amnesia nor elaborated/distinct headmates! 

Shoutout to the plurals who call themselves plural due to doing IFS therapy or using a parts model to describe themselves!

Shoutout to the those who feel they’re on the fence between plural and singlet!

Shoutout to the median systems!  

Shoutout to the plurallets!

Shoutout to those who are perpetually questioning!

Shoutout to all those who are too plural to fit in with the singlets, but not enough to fit in with multiple systems!

You are all welcome in this community. You are not stealing from fully multiple systems and you are not imposters. I love you and you belong!

[acacia-shade]

One of the interesting things about hindsight as a system is that we can keep having "ohhhh" realizations about the same discovery in different ways

For example, Headmate A might have been "aware" of switches in the sense that "sometimes I get a feeling like my perspective has changed and I feel like a different person", and decided to name these feelings "shifts". Meanwhile, Headmate B might not have been aware of these "shifts" at all... but they were aware of conversations between very specific "feelings" or "aesthetics" in their own head, and could recall specific attributes that each party had. So, both get to have "ohhhh" realizations now, when looking back on things.

[acacia-shade]

Hi I’m a newly discovered system and its been causing me a little stress that I (the host?) don’t experience blackouts or full amnesia, but then I read some of your old posts about feeling like everything’s in grayscale and emotional amnesia and was like “:0 that’s like me!”

I was wondering if you would be okay describing what it feels like when someone else fronts? That’s something I’m trying figure out for myself and maybe hearing other people’s experiences would help ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Also all the comics are amazing keep up the good work 👍)

so the uhhh. so the person fronting never really feels like they "disappear" or get pushed away it just feels like they Change Into A Different Person . but we still Exist while not fronting but nobody remembers what that's like because w. yeah no i don't get the technicalities of how this works i'm not worrying about it too hard

[acacia-shade]

yk sometimes being plural isnt always "this is kyle, a newer member, Im Weempus rn, I also have beebo near front"

sometimes you dont always have names for ur headmates, esp if ur monocon.

like we have the one thats afraid of the dark, and the one that doesnt like ketchup

theyre consistent fronters, but I dont know anything else about them, they dont care to choose themselves a seperate name or gender or aesthetics, and that is okay.

and it took us like 6 years to find out a certain headmate even existed because he only distinguished himself after hearing about the fnaf movie. gee thanks Vince /sarc

and Im never sure if certain stuff is a kintype or facet, sometimes I use kintype because theyre similar enough to the blanketself in terms of aesthetics, personality, etc.

nothing has to be put into clear cut boxes. yes, it helps, especially when its a core function of your brain that may distress you if left unchecked, but not everything is gonna be sorted neatly, unfortunately.

may be active on this small blog again since Im no longer frontstuck (it took us splitting a second DBD char to realize)

[acacia-shade]

Writing on being Plurallet, touching on themes of Neurodivergence, Nonhumanity and Transness

This was written sometime time December 23/January 24 but typed up now. Some of my feelings and the way I would describe things has changed but I'm just going to write it up as it is

I'm not multiple people per se, just not one. I'm more like 3 rats in a trench coat who are also part of a hive mind. One brain bleeds into the next. Just enough of different people that me from 2 weeks ago feels like a close friend and me from five years ago like someone I once knew but not me. Just enough different people that me 'us' feels correct but not because there are multiple of us just because there are multiple of me.

Like a mirror fractured in the middle but the cracks never reach the edges. So you can see your reflection many times but it's still one mirror.

Like I was filled up with too much consciousness so now I am also us. Us is me passed through a kaleidoscope. There are no voices. only mine. but a lot of mine. No separate people but several names for one entity. My consciousness is both distinctly not human and more human than those who use that name. The humans fascinate and terrify us. Maybe all of them feel like their brains are leaking, spilling unbidden into the world outside. Maybe most wrestle their thoughts back into their head. Maybe most humans long to be stardust and moss.

I'm multiple in the way many animals stuck in a flesh vessel cannot help but be. All screaming with different instincts but never at the same time. There are iterations of me. Echos. A different person for every person I know. A squirming when two meet each other and I must recalibrate. Is me now the same me as this morning? I cannot say. My gender shifts with us or maybe we shift with our gender. We are never to be regarded internally in the third person for we are not distinct enough to earn that right.

So we flow. Gender shifting, echoing the world around us, many creatures trying to keep our thoughts inside, regarding ourselves as different people. So we float. A fractured, fragmented thing, with too many reflections to be alone but not enough to be many.

[acacia-shade]

Plegg culture is having your inner monologue be conversations (a la “Okay, let’s do this. To recap, we’re gonna do DISHES and then WRITE, got it? Okay, good, let’s do this.”) and when trying to discern if you ARE plural, you just assume that’s everyone natural inner monologue and totally nothing to think about!

.

[acacia-shade]

stuck between disliking the idea of a system name for us, and desperately chasing one. like. I don't want to give people another way to not refer to me, I don't want to pretend we're more singular then we are, I don't want to just choose something that half of us don't like just for the sake of having one, but also I want to be able to point to a name and go "that's us!", I want to have something for us to be called when we don't have a name that works, I want something to put on our stuff that we don't just keep there because we mutually kind of dislike it, or have half of us that don't care about it.

[acacia-shade]

having no online friends in the same general timezone as me that i can talk to all day everyday about plurality and mental illness and our interests is really humbling. i used to have so many online friends/mutuals who i could talk to. now i have one...and they're 12 hours ahead of me and i cant talk to them often anyway :(

im so lonely all of the time

[acacia-shade]

i have a soft spot for systems that don’t fit the current mold of what people think systems are.

systems with no fictives. systems with all violent alters. systems who don’t fit any labels/refuse to label the parts within themselves. systems who are various splits of the same guy. systems who deal with inner-system abuse. systems who are all animals. systems who don’t communicate enough to have distinct names and pronouns.

you are still very much valid.

[acacia-shade]

we dont really like the whole "parts of a whole or multiple people" thing. we're a system, we're alters. what more do you want? we're both and neither. it changes from alter to alter. its kind of dependant on the situation. but also we're dont fit into whatever this is. and i cant stand the idea that every system must pick one. we're a system and thats good enough.

[acacia-shade]

[acacia-shade]

probably could call us a hybrid system but idk, it's not a label we've ever properly picked us for a couple reasons that don't matter here. We're mostly answering just for our experiences that are on the more singlet end here.

I'm going to be honest one of the reasons I don't really tell people in my life about my system stuff is I never know how to describe my own experience that well, especially to someone who doesn't know what plurality is to begin with. I don't really like a bunch of the common metaphors people use for myself but I don't really have anything better either so I just don't explain at all. I can describe a bunch of other stuff about ourselves but what and how we are as a whole just escapes me.

Yeah we do. we've got a bunch of differences between the lot of us but most of those differences are small, and it's not that many differences each I guess? it's like. one might like a different name more, another might like different pronouns, another might feel a bit older, but all the rest of the details about each of those guys are roughly the same, you know? There aren't actually a bunch of hard lines but it's like if you look as a gradient with one end that's red, and one that's blue. It's kind of hard to say when it stops being red exactly but there is a section that is clearly not red, and vice versa for blue.

I guess we do. A lot of it is existing in the same place but we do interact some. I'm not going to say anything else about it because the more I think about this, the more I have a hard time deciding who "counts" as part of the more median-y singlet-y bit and who doesn't. Communication abilities and levels differ between everyone here, not just the parts relevant to this.

Yes, that's actually how we know that most parts (relevant to this) exist at all. We notice some difference and go "oh, I'm a thing, ok then". We don't notice a lot of switches fast because it just feels like becoming a bit different, often in was that aren't immediately noticeable. Just like moving down that gradient we mentioned before.

The less median-y guys we have have more significant differences from the median-y folks, and generally have a greater capacity for like existing independently I guess. Like median-y folks exist around one(-ish) identity, and if we try and work them out seperate from the greater whole they just don't really make sense. Like, trying to understand one stroke on a painting doesn't really make sense because it's got other strokes under it and on top of it and to either side, and mixed in with it and it was never meant to exist alone. Alone it's not a picture of anything. More seperate parts are more like whole paintings. they don't (generally) rely on other parts to exist, and even if they're a bit messy or unfinished you can probably at least work out what the painting is supposed to be of. As I kind of mentioned before there are some parts that are kind of hard to classify though because they kind of have traits of being more and less independent simultaneously, or they fluctuate a bit.

our headspace is just a place we imagine when we want to interact in a more "physical" way when multiple folks are in/near front together. parts that aren't near front don't exist there. more median-y parts typically present in the roughly consistent form they tend to share. as in like. as one singular guy even if there are a couple of them hanging around. we can appear separately but in those cases eyes are always averted because it just feels really weird to see. even if we communicate or "physically" interact a bit, looking feels wrong in a way I can't fully describe. something about looking at a copy of yourself but also something about being perceived when you don't know how you're supposed to look, or aren't supposed to be perceived like that at all.

It's really hard to say. We have long since given up trying to work out if a certain identity or two are more like kin shifts or seperate guys. we prefer the kin shift explanation because we like having the identities and don't want to "loose them" if that makes sense? I do think some folks are more connected to them or less connected to them but it's something we avoid thinking about too hard.

Hello, I have some questions for the medians on Tumblr. This is specifically for medians who lean closer to the singlet side of the spectrum than the multiple side. Feel free to answer as many or as little of these questions as you want, I just would like to hear more experiences. (I tried to make the wording be inclusive as possible, but let me know if something is wrong.)

In your own words, how would you describe yourself/selves? As in, if you had to give some kind of metaphor to someone who does not understand medianhood, plurality, etcetera at all, how would you do so?

Do you distinguish yourself/selves at all? Like, are there any lines between one or the other? Such as having different names or different pronouns; or even something like you all like/use the same name(s) or pronoun(s), but some of you prefer one name/pronoun slightly more than the others?

Do you have any communication with each other? Or, is it more like you're simply existing in the same body with each other, like how two co-workers can be aware of each other but never really talk?

Can you/yourself/selves switch or front? What does it feel like, and how does it work? Or can you not switch/front?

If you are/in a chimera/hybrid system (have both multiple and median headmates), can you distinguish between multiple and median members? How so?

(Sort of a continuation of the above) again, if you are/in a chimera/hybrid system, and if you have a headspace of any sort, are there any differences between median and multiple headmates there?

If you/yourself/selves are also another type of alterhuman, does that have any influence? Do certain selves feel more of a connection to a certain alterhuman identity more than others, or are you all equally connected to that identity?

[acacia-shade]

A System of Giving 2025

It's that time of year again!

A System of Giving is a pro-endo gift exchange on AO3 where plurals (and questioning plurals!) can write plural fics for other plurals! When you sign up, you can request plural-related fics from any fandom, and then you'll get assigned someone else's request to write

Sign-ups are open now! You can find out more info here (link) and click the sign-up button to join :]

You can read all of the previous years' fics here (link)

We also have a discord server if you would like to stay more up-to-date and chat with other participants:

Sign-ups close: 5th June AEST

Assignments due: 5th July AEST

Works revealed: 12th July AEST

Let us know if you have any questions!

[acacia-shade]

been tempted to make some goofy little system comics but we have absolutely no idea what they'd be about.

[acacia-shade]

ah! thank you for your rb to our (.. my???????) post! its really really helpful and ill definitely go back to it more as we try and figure ourselves out... its probably gonna be a long and somewhat painful road ahead but im glad we arent the only ones to have gone through this, lol.

cheers!

no problem! I quite enjoy trying to help folks out with this sort of stuff, I like sharing all the random knowledge about this I've accumulated over the years. As we said in that reblog feel free to ask us more stuff, but also if you don't want to hear from us specifically and just want some resources we've probably got some helpful stuff saved somewhere too :].

best of luck with you self/selves discovery lol

[acacia-shade]

saw this and a couple of your other posts so I'm here with some unsolicited advice under the cut. feel free to ignore it, but if you don't I hope it helps a bit.

(I'm also sorry this is so long, I am incapable of shutting up and don't really have time to edit or cut this down right now)

Learning that you might be plural can be overwhelming and exhausting and it can be really difficult and I'm sorry that you're dealing with all that right now. I know a lot of what we saw people saying when we were working ourselves out was wholly unhelpful to us at that time too.

first off, in response to this specific post, you just might not have a headspace (at least not in the sense that the plural community uses that word in these days) and that's ok. You also might not hear each other yet or ever. You'll probably want to communicate somehow eventually but communication can take time and effort to build.

in response to other questions you've posted:

plural people please please please help me. how do you get the alters... head mates... people... to fucking TALK to you instead of vaguely lingering around and coming in at random times to make you forget things???

there are a bunch of ways to start building up communication but how well they work depends on the person/system/whatever (some of these worked for us, some didn't, what works for you might be different from any of these). you might want to start by just writing something down somewhere, just something like a hello and any questions you might have, and waiting for someone to respond. you might want to speak out loud and say the same sort of things. you might want to try say stuff in your mind. just. try reach out a hand somehow to say 'hey, I'm here, I'd like to talk and get to know you.' you might not get clear responses, especially at first. we've had parts, and still do have parts who mostly communicate through vague feelings sent our way, or through drawing, or through mental images, or through random urges and stuff. Sometimes it's hard to notice yk?

how do you get them to talk to you about what happened to you to make you like this???

There is every chance they don't know, or won't want to tell you, especially at first. I don't think it really matters that much early on anyway. (For us it's something that doesn't matter even now after having known we're a system for years). If they do know why, or if they know about some hidden trauma or something, you've probably got to earn their trust though. They probably won't tell you right away, and that's alright. Processing stuff takes time, and digging for stuff and finding it when you're not ready for it is generally pretty damaging.

how do you get them to tell you who they are???????

There is a chance they don't know who they are. We didn't before we found out we were a system, we all thought we were the same guy and it took a long time of untangling things to learn about ourselves. If they have some idea though, it's just more of what I've already mentioned: earning trust, and building communication. (also just trying to get into the habit of journalling can help. it lets you observe the differences and talk about yourself and stuff sometimes).

another post response:

i - i - i- im getting very overwhelmned by all the plurality related advice people have been giving me... i don't... i really dont think treating them like seperate people will help me. they're not, they're just parts of me, i can feel it... i just need to get them to listen to me and tell me what's going on. they are just pieces of my own mind of which i am also a piece...

Yeah treating everyone as 100% different doesn't help or work for everyone. I've met systems where everyone was their own person and was treated as such, I've met system who function mostly like a singular person and don't try to work out differences or individual identities at all, I've met systems who treat a few members somewhat differently from one another but still have other members who they don't bother to tell apart, I've met systems who know some vague stuff but not bother to differentiate much more than that, and I've met a bunch of other systems who work in a million and one more ways.

You don't have to treat everyone as super seperate. My recommendation is to just try and work out what you want to know. Like we like knowing enough to tell who's around at least sometimes because having a more concrete identity can be comfortable sometimes so we've worked out who some of us are. We like knowing what we might like to do when various folks are around so we've tried to work out some hobbies that the parts we have identified like. We like being able to communicate so we do that (don't need to know who's who for that either, some of the best or most helpful conversations we've had have been between several parties who never bothered to identify themselves any further than a pen colour they were using at the time, or an opinion they held right then, or how they were feeling. we've had conversations where we didn't know who was saying what, all that mattered was that that thing had been said at all.) Just work out what you want to work out (and maybe why you want to work that out) and try to get towards that.

I know a lot of this relies on waiting and patience and may not yield any concrete answers and believe me I know how frustrating that can be but there isn't really any other way to do this. You might get lucky and work out a bunch really fast but that doesn't always happen.

uh yeah. that's all for now. I've got to bet back to what I'm supposed to be doing but we're always open to questions if you want (like any questions at all, don't mind if they sound a bit rude or whatever). Good luck figuring yourself out!

i dont relate to any of the plural stuff im seeing round here... i dont have a ... head scape ?? there's nothing in my mind... no voices... just me ... they're not their own people.. they are just parts of me..

idk. confused and miserable.