#headmate: mystery

[interstellarchaosss]

Sometimes you see a little reaction image and you have to draw yourself over the little guy, because it encapsulates An Emotion that you feel works.

Please do not use our art without our permission. Feel free to ask to use for icons and similar things, but we have the right to say no.

Program: IbisPaint X Approx. Time: 30m Original Date: 09.06.24 Commission/Trade/Collab status in bio/pinned! Art Of: Mystery [Headmate] (System Member Artist: Mystery)

[skulltasticc]

loom-is peeper

[tempesttz]

every time an anti endo says "demo systems dni," talks about demo systems like they are some overblown endogenic conspiracy of "trying out headmates" that's going on everywhere, or generally spreads misinformation about the widespread existence of demo systems, another rock gets flung into a river its me. im flinging the rocks. holy shit are anti endos allergic to a basic google search. i know you guys know how to use pluralpedia, you use it to mock us decently often from what i can tell. utilize that skill. come on now theyre not a thing. someone mispelled "endo" on tiktok and it autocorrected to "demo." here's where it got looked into and broken down, so you can't tell me i didn't show proof. man i wish i lacked critical thinking skills like sysmeds do. must be nice

[pluralprompts]

Prompt #988

"Didn't you want to be me, once upon a time?" The reflection tilted its head, a frown tugging at its lips. Its words held a disturbingly earnest tone for something that had taken control of Person A's body, and Person A was sure they'd be shuddering right then if they still had control. "I thought you'd be happier like this. You always said you wanted to disappear. Or at least, to be able to take a break from your life."

'Not like this,' Person A wanted to say, but even unable to speak it, the lie tasted bitter upon their tongue. They had asked for that; even if they never imagined it to happen like this (or to happen at all, realistically), hadn't this been what they meant? To be able to supervise what went on in their life, but not have to do the work themself? Wasn't this bizarre, uncomfortable situation of being a passenger in their own body, in some twisted way, exactly what they wanted? What they'd begged for, for years?

But then... 'Why now?'

"Mm..." The reflection tilted its head the other way. "I don't know. I guess I didn't exist enough before now. But that just raises the same question it answers, doesn't it?"

'... Yeah. It does.'

[nightfallsystem]

i wish i could shapeshift soo bad right now

[theweebsystem]

I think we finally figured out who the blue-haired mystery headmate is

It didn't click until we saw him in a youtube video and then it was like. Oh it's you! Why did it take us months to figure this out again afksjfkd

[nexus-nebulae]

watching a video on the backrooms like yeah this is just how our headspace works

[oblitus-vulpes]

it's so jarring to see people talk abt kurusu (headmate). like wdym you've met him. you're talking???

[schadenfreudich]

Our mystery headmate finally has a name and it's Kuni. Which is technically short for names like Kunibert or Konrad but he doesn't like those

[interstellarsystem]

Little Plural Things

Systems can present in a lot of different ways. Sometimes, being a system can be loud and obvious if you're naturally more overt and/or out about yourselves as plural. Sometimes, it can be quiet and barely noticeable, but still there--just harder to see. Our system is fairly obvious if we're unmasked, but there are still things that escape even our own knowledge when we're masking as hard as we can. Little things that to us, remind us that our system is undeniably real. This is a post about those experiences we've had with barely-noticeable signs of a system.

Not every system will relate to these experiences, some might feel similarly about a few points, some may have others of their own entirely, some might not know or not have anything like the experiences we mention, and that's all part of being plural. No two systems are mirror images of each other. This is a post about our experiences.

1. Handwriting

Recently, we've had it brought to our attention that we have different handwriting. We don't write with a pen/pencil often, but we were asked to fill out a worksheet for our psychologist recently. She told us that whoever in our system wants to contribute to it can, and suggested that we signify who wrote what in some way--to which we chose different pencil colours for different headmates. We took the worksheet home and put things on it depending on who was in the front and if they wanted to.

It turned out, that some of our writing widely differs from each other. Out of the 6 people who wrote on the sheet, most of them were wildly different. Rift and Martin wrote the most tidily, with Rift's writing looking more "proper" and "adult". I (Vince) apparently am not the best at neat writing but I managed to be better than what our "normal" writing is like from what we remember. Merlin wrote messily like he was writing very fast. Mystery wrote with very large letters with sharp angles that overall made it look like it was written by a child new to writing. Which makes absolute sense. It's not a child, but its hands in-headspace are bigger than ours and that was the actual first time it had written anything on paper since it got here.

Somehow, it took until our psychologist pointed it out for us to notice how different it was.

2. Vocabulary Choices

Something we are able to notice sometimes is how our vocabulary and sometimes sentence structure changes based on who is speaking. Some obvious examples are our British headmates substituting "bloody" for other words as an exclamation and the difference between what some of our headmates would call a "chip" or a "fry".

Other times though, it's more subtle. Sometimes there's certain phrases that will just have a word or two swapped out and it does tend to point toward who is fronting even if people do use multiple of these. Some examples are:

"I suppose" vs "I think" vs "I believe"

"Kinda" vs "Kind of" vs "Sort of" vs "Sorta"

"Recently" vs "A bit ago"

"Sleepy" vs "Tired"

"Lol" vs "Haha" vs "Lmao" vs a keysmash (Even though these are text-based they are quite telling.)

"Quite" vs "Very" (Speaking of the above.)

Getting more subtle with them, some other examples are:

"You know" vs "Y'know"

"Uh" vs "Um"

"Uh-Huh" vs "Mhm"

Sometimes typing is influenced too. The amount of em-dahses within the text, the consistency of proper punctuation, how mechanical the text feels, how many run-on sentences there are and even how much tends to be written in one message/post can all point toward different people being in control.

3. Accidental Accents and Inflections

While accents are usually very obvious, we're generally good at masking them. Generally.

Due to us living in Australia, our headmates with accents straight from London don't stick out too bad when they're struggling to mask, but they are still noticeable to those around us who know we're plural. Passerby on the street or people who don't see us often don't think much of it, but certain people we are close to know that a few people in our system find it harder to mask and can tell when they're fronting very easily because of it.

Even if we are masking our accents properly, some parts of the way we speak still come out. Some of us end sentences on a higher-pitch more often due to what our accent generally has us do and some end more on lower-pitch notes when speaking. Some of us put emphasis on certain syllables differently. There's lots of little things that go into language that make it hard to completely mask.

4. Food Choices

More of a noticeable one, but something we tend to brush off as "just a bad batch" when it happens. Some of us like and dislike different foods and drinks, some of us to an extreme degree.

Mystery hates the brand of juice we normally buy and thought that it might've just been past expiry (it was not) or just a bad batch of the juice, but they're consistently the only one who doesn't like it.

Rave likes spicy food much more than the rest of us because they have a harder time tasting it. I on the other hand can't handle spicy food at all and am worse with it than the others in my system.

Some of us favour different brands of food and some of us might like/dislike textures of food differently too.

5. Default Facial Expressions

Different resting facial expressions are something we hardly notice because we don't look in a mirror often due to dysphoria. What we do know though, is that some of us just rest our faces differently.

I look more stern and tired than others. I have a bit of an angrier resting expression.

Martin looks a little bit more anxious due to being an anxiety-holder, but he also looks softer and kinder.

Crowley also looks tired but has less of a stern look and more of an almost blank one.

6. Body Language

This is one we don't know too much about because we can only get knowledge on this from other people, but most of our headmates have a different "vibe" by the way they carry themselves.

I end up seeming to-the-point and business-like.

Martin reads as being very anxious even if he's not always.

Crowley reads as smug.

Mal reads as if he's planning something mischevious and silly.

We've been told that Filigree just reads as "gay".

We're not sure what actions make us seem this way, but some of us can be clocked by others around us as fronting without even talking first. I don't know how people do it, but it's something in our body language.

7. Clothing Choices

A few of us have different clothing choices--Crowley still wears sunglasses everywhere due to light sensitivity and wears dark colours, I prefer to wear button-up shirts as opposed to more casual things, Martin prefers hoodies that are lighter in colour and Merlin prefers to dress in pink and black and more fluffy textures.

We don't have too many clothes overall so to others it does just look like we're cycling through our wardrobe, and sometimes we are, but there's certain styles some of us tend to lean toward more than others.

---

Some of these might seem quite noticeable, and maybe they are if you know we're a system, but people change a lot so once again some of this is much more subtle than it sounds. People who don't know that you're a system hardly ever notice, and if they do they put it to "having an off day" and leave it at that.

We wanted to take some time to appreciate those little things we find it hard to notice, though. And maybe it'll end up helping some other system realise how unique they are as individuals and help fight off the imposter syndrome like these realisations did for us.

[interstellarchaosss]

A little observation I made about the strange men in my brain. Mystery please let Vince focus on anything ever challenge (100% IMPOSSIBLE GONE WRONG).

Please do not use our art without our permission. Feel free to ask to use for icons and similar things, but we have the right to say no.

Program: IbisPaint X Approx. Time: 2h 30m Original Date: 05.06.24 Commission/Trade/Collab status in bio/pinned! Art Of:

Vince [Headmate]

Mystery [Headmate]

(System Member Artist: Merlin)

[funnier-as-a-system]

Any advice for someone who's system has gone uh. Mysteriously largely dormant despite improving conditions? Parts of us think we might be doing it ourselves subconsciously but. Not really sure how that would work or.. how to stop

Unfortunately, no, I can't think of any advice on how to prevent dormancy. However, I do have a suspicion about what is causing it. Since you said that conditions have been improving for you, this may be a "crash" of sorts – the experience of, once you're in a place where you feel safer and more comfortable than you did before, your brain begins unpacking the stress or trauma that you previously repressed to be able to get through less-than-stellar conditions. It feels like a "crash" in mental/emotional health, but it's often a necessary part of healing. There's not much to be done except take care of yourselves and wait for the worst to pass. If this is the cause of your mass dormancy, I expect at least a few of those dormant headmates will return once things begin to stabilize and your improved conditions feel less unfamiliar.

Of course, there could be a different cause, or other causes contributing to the situation – I don't know enough about your life to say for certain. But taking care of yourselves and taking your time to get used to your new conditions can't hurt regardless of what the cause is, I'd say. I wish I had more to suggest, but I think I'll have to turn this over to the masses to see if they have any advice.

[nightpaintersystem]

Systems after one of their headmate eat something they waited the entire day to eat and not leave one single piece of it

- 🌌Clytie and 🏸Mysterious Heroine X

[pluralprompts]

Prompt #707

System A was, perhaps obviously, not Sherlock Holmes. Neither were they Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, nor any other famous or fictional detective. In fact, they'd safely say they had relatively no knowledge on how mysteries were solved, other than that it was satisfying to see a case closed when watching one on TV.

So why the hell were they investigating a missing necklace case, and where the hell was this information on detective proceedings coming from?!

[sslowdeathh]

Didge-ee-lack. Not requested, for a headmate.

A gender related to digital horror and general internet mysteries. Examples could include Petscop, Lavender town, Polybius, Dopefish, and other similar things.

This gender does not always have to be scary or horror like in nature, nor is it connected to only one internet myth; rather, it's connected to all of them.

[multiplicity-positivity]

Have you ever heard of a term for a situation like: You are generally a singlet, but sometimes you can perfectly feel the presence of another person completely different from you in your head, in a way that is indisputable that they are a headmate, but this person has never shown signs of existence before and they mysteriously disappears, never returning. And this happens over and over again, and all these headmates just disappear? I don't really know what it is, and I don't know if there's a name for it or if there's even anyone else who goes through it, but I still needed to tell someone. And I kind of wish I could talk to some of them again :(

Hi! We haven’t heard of this specific sort of experience, but we’re wondering if you could maybe be a gateway system of some kind?

You may be interacting with walk-ins who come and go from your consciousness as they please or are able to. To us, it sounds like this could be what’s happening, but we couldn’t say for sure!

If any gateway system reads this and wants to share some of your experience about being a gateway system with anon, that would be amazing!

Alternatively, you may be some sort of pyro system, with headmates who are rapidly forming and going dormant. If they are indeed dormant that likely doesn’t mean they’ll be gone forever! And you might still be able to interact with them at some point in the future.

If neither of these terms looks or feels right for you, that’s okay! We can keep an eye out for another sort of term that might fit, and would encourage you to do the same! Pluralpedia is a great resource for this - it’s a plural wiki created by and for systems.

We hope you can take your time figuring this out, and don’t feel too bad if you can’t ever find the perfect label. Know that you’re still plural as long as you identify with that label, and you’ll always be welcome in the plural community as long as you want to be here!