#imagination based system

[multiplicity-positivity]

Here’s some positivity for those with imagination-based plurality!

Even within different kinds of plurality, individual experiences can be amazingly diverse! Those with imagination-based plurality deserve to be celebrated and understood within the plural community. This post is for every system with imagination-based plurality, and to those whose plurality played a role in their system’s or headmate’s creations!

☁️ Shoutout to systems who use imagenic or imaginagenic labels for their system, or who identify their headmates as imaginatives, imagians, or imaginary friends!

🍀 Shoutout to systems whose imaginary friends from childhood later developed into headmates, or whose imaginary friends always caused them to feel plural!

☀️ Shoutout to mixed origins systems, who may have traumagenic origins or some other origins for their headmates alongside their imagination playing a role!

🌷 Shoutout to systems and headmates who formed via paracosms!

🌙 Shoutout to disordered systems whose plurality was caused or influenced by maladaptive daydreaming, a harmfully overactive imagination, or some other maladaptive, imagination-based coping skill!

🌿 Shoutout to willogenic systems, parogenic systems, paromancers, and thoughtform creators whose imagination played a big role in bringing their headmates to live!

⭐️ Shoutout to gateway systems with walk-ins from imaginary worlds!

🌺 Shoutout to imagination-based systems who worry they won’t be accepted in plural spaces due to being nontraumagenic!

✨ Shoutout to those who have difficulties understanding whether or not their imaginary friends are headmates!

🍃 Shoutout to those with poor or weak imaginations who still strive towards creating an imagination-based system!

🌻 Shoutout to those whose imagined headmates have positively impacted them, saves their life, or helped them change for the better!

Imaginations can play a vital role in a system’s functioning, and this is especially true for those whose plurality was formed through their imaginations! The imagination can be a powerful tool that can aid in or even guide the process of creating systems and headmates.

Imagination-based systems have always been and will always be a crucial and cherished part of the plural community! Your bright and beautiful creative spirit shines brilliantly throughout your system - please don’t ever be ashamed of this fact! Know that there will always be a place for you and your system here, just the way you are! Thanks so much for reading, and have a wonderful day!

(Image ID:) A pale orange userbox with a cluster of multicolored flowers for the userbox image. The border and text are both dark orange, and the text reads “all plurals can interact with this post!” (End ID.)

[starry-bi-sky]

Okay so this is almost a direct copy-paste of my earlier reblog but only the Xin Yuan parts, because its long enough to be its own post and i want to share it! It deserves it's own post <3 typical starry stuff to write a 2k word long reblog, unfortunately.

I say almost because I went through to proof read and ended up adding more stuff.

I've been cooking on this idea for the last two days since I saw the Xin Mo!Shen Yuan post but??? I can't find anything on Xin Mo's backstory or how it came to be -- which means that's free fucking plot right there baby. That's a sandbox and im making LIFE SIZED CASTLES. I'm so excited.

The idea of Shen Yuan transmigrating centuries before the events of PIDW as Xin Mo -- but when he wakes up, he's not the sword. He wakes up in the body of a young boy named Xin Yuan. Now it makes sense for this boy to be a demon, but the drama, the intrigue, the spice of Xin Yuan being a human child.

SY wakes up as a boy below the age of ten, and the System tells him where he is, and SY is excited to meet his favorite protagonist -- only to gradually realize that he's like, a thousand years or so before the events of the novel. The rant he gives the system is legendary.

Bc what's the point of getting dropped into PIDW if he's never going to meet his favorite character??? This is a scam! BUT he settles into his new life, he's like, some orphan street rat or some other tragic airplane-esq backstory.

The system gives Shen Yuan his first mandatory quest: become a righteous cultivator. Which was like, kinda his plan/hopes anyways, except! There's like?? No official cultivator sects anywhere? The Cang Qiong Mountain Sect hasn't even been established yet, and there are pockets of cultivators running around, maybe some groups or schools popping up and then sinking back down, but nothing's really taken root!

If he asks someone how to become a cultivator, there's no straight answer. No "oh you can go to X to do that". He's pissed! How can he become a cultivator if there aren't any schools around to teach him? Deus ex machina, that's how.

Out of sheer luck, SY manages to help save a rogue cultivator, and promptly gets adopted by said rogue cultivator, who gives SY the name 'Xin Yuan'. He is ecstatic. And you know what? It's actually pretty fun!

He's getting to travel the world of PIDW in its early stages, and gets to see the building blocks for the eventual main story. He's discovering all this local flora and fauna that are foreign to his old world and unmentioned in the book, and he's learning cultivation! Granted, its unsafe, newly(ish) discovered cultivation, but it counts!

Wistfully, he thinks about perhaps he'll do something grand and get his name carved into legend. Something that would eventually help the protagonist later down the line in his quest for revenge.

The system remains silent to his thoughts.

But Xin Yuan doesn't take much stock in that daydream anyways. It's nothing more than fantasy to him; wish-fulfillment. He does discover however, that he is positively brimming with spiritual energy. Overwhelmingly so.

It's both a blessing and a curse, as it puts a strain on his meridians if he's not careful, and leaves him prone to qi deviations for the exact same reasons. He already has a heart demon or two from a few traumatic experiences in the past.

(bc hey! angst a day keeps the writer sadism at bay, and all that)

I'll say he's about... eight when he gets picked up by the rogue cultivator, who I'm calling Lin Kai bc he deserves a name. They travel around PIDW up until Xin Yuan is twelve, where he goes through a traumatic experience that results in a heart demon.

It's after that that Lin Kai decides to put a stop to his wandering, and find a place to settle down to raise Xin Yuan in. Coincidentally! They settle down in a nice mountain region that's thriving with spiritual energy. The mountains at the time were called something different, but they will be eventually known as the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect

Coincidentally, the mountain Lin Kai and Xin Yuan end up on is Qing Jing Peak. XY does not realize that the mountain he's on is Qing Jing. The System does not tell him. But he likes it there, more than he was expecting. And as much as he's traveled around, he really does enjoy being in one place.

He has a tendency to go down the mountain and help the village setting up down there, and when he's a teenager he starts venturing out more and more.

Xin Yuan forgets sometimes that he's in a novel, especially after settling down on Qing Jing peak. The system becomes remarkably quiet since there's no quests for him to do and not a ton of opportunities to get B-Points. He cultivates with Lin Kai, helps tend to the garden they're growing, goes down to the village to play with the other kids.

There's one boy he's best friends with, a boy whose not all that good with words, named Liu Zhihao. He's got potential for cultivation though, so Xin Yuan drags him up the mountain when he can so that Liu Zhihao can sit in on lessons with Lin Kai. He drags him all over the forest at the foot of the mountain to go look at bugs and animals.

(One time, when they're fourteen and Liu Zhihao has been learning cultivation for a few years now, Xin Yuan drags him out of bed late one night to go look at the stars. Xin Yuan tells Liu Zhihao about ascension -- something that still feels like a far off dream to many in this time -- that night, while they're sitting on the wet grass.)

("We should ascend together." Xin Yuan tells Liu Zhihao, jade eyes gleaming. Never let it be said that Xin Yuan doesn't love deeply, no matter what kind of love it is. He was always so lonely as Shen Yuan, Liu Zhihao is his best friend. "We'll become immortals, and then we won't ascend until the other is able to.")

(Liu Zhihao stares at him silently, his face unreadable. Then, quietly, he asks; "Promise?")

("Promise.")

When he starts adventuring outwards, further away from the mountain and the village, Liu Zhihao sticks to him like rice. Not that Xin Yuan's complaining, that's his best friend after all, and Liu Zhihao has become a formidable cultivator. He deserves to show off his skills.

He starts making something of a name for himself by the time he's, like, 18 -- although that name is in its baby steps, along with Liu Zhihao. They're slowly growing renown.

Perhaps XY uses his knowledge of PIDW and cultivation in general to help make advancements in the cultivation field. Although the system prevents him from sharing too much, it doesn't mean he can't practice it himself. Perhaps he's one of the first cultivators to develop a golden core. One of the first known immortal cultivators. One of the first to have a spirit sword.

(Although I don't know the logistics of any of this since my knowledge on xanxia/cultivation stuff in general is all still pretty new and google wasn't all that helpful lol.)

Either way, its my excuse to eventually make Xin Yuan come across as ethereal to other people. Peerless beauty SY for the win. Hs wifebeam is too strong, Xin Yuan has a line of suitors following after him and he's completely unaware of it. The rest of history is not.

Demon realm stuff has been stirring up since Xin Yuan was a kid, but at the time it was rare and in the beginning stages. Its been steadily ramping up and the system is sending him on more and more treacherous quests -- some of them mandatory, some optional. SY doesn't often take the optional ones unless it comes with a sufficient B-point reward.

for all intents and purposes though, he's a wandering rogue cultivator with Liu Zhihao, going from place to place to either help a town or village, or to discover more creatures or artifacts (although there aren't that many). Just all around living his life. He participates in a few major quest lines that are sure to get him mentioned in legend, even if it's a background character way.

(Unbeknownst to him, rather than being a side character in these legends, he's named directly. You can't become one of the first immortal cultivators and NOT get name dropped for clout.)

He has a spirit sword named Shā Mó, (杀 shā - to kill/weaken/counteract/reduce) (魔 mó - evil spirit, demon, possession). He routinely goes back to QJP to see Lin Kai, or to rest when traveling has worn down on him and he wants nothing more than to sleep somewhere he knows he'll be safe in. It becomes more frequent as Xin Yuan becomes more famous. Liu Zhihao often comes with him.

it all comes to a head though when the rifts between the demonic realm and the human realm become too great, and the balance between both realms becomes unstable. A demonic emperor's influence, wanting to merge the two realms so he could conquer both to satiate his own greed.

Typical evil king stuff. This comes to a climatic head in a great battle between every cultivator available and the demon emperor's army. Xin Yuan was one of the many who helped lead the charge.

In the end, it was Xin Yuan who ends up defeating the demonic emperor, but the rift that the emperor used to cross between worlds is destabilizing as well. Except instead of trying to close, it's getting bigger and bigger, threatening to swallow the heavens and earth and demonic realm whole.

You know how Yue Qingyuan's soul is bonded to his sword due to a qi deviation? Let's take it a step further >:)

Xin Yuan uses himself and Shā Mó to close the rift. However, it takes all of his spiritual energy to do so, as well as him filtering the demonic qi into his body to redirect it back to the demon realm.

In the end, Xin Yuan and his beloved sword Shā Mó fuse. Xin Yuan's soul becomes trapped in the sword. His physical body is unable to handle the immense amount of power it takes to close the rift, and is destroyed. He is immortalized in legend by his grieving cultivators.

(Liu Zhihao ends up ascending alone. He ascends with the hope that one day he'll see Xin Yuan again, even if it's in the face of someone else. Lin Kai does not ascend, too weighed down by the grief of losing his son.)

Xin Yuan, now Xin Mo, falls into a stasis. He's very confused and disorientated when he regains 'consciousness'. The system has been silent for most of his life, only popping up to give him mandatory quests, hints, points, or to answer any questions.

But once he wakes up, it cheerfully pops up again, congratulating him on completing the origin story of Xin Mo. SY freaks the fuck out. he'd shake the system screen if he could, but he doesn't have arms. or legs. or eyes for that matter.

He can sense his surroundings, but its all like imprints to him. He can sense the energies, but he can't see anything. It's all very disorientating and horrifying after years of being human. Like a sensory deprivation chamber.

The closing of the rift and the cycling demonic qi tainted both Sha Mo and Xin Yuan irreparably, and it did some kind of damage that resulted in SY needing to feed in order to use the spiritual powers. Kinda like how Xuan Su uses YQY's life force for it's spiritual energy, but instead of feeding on his own lifeforce, Xin Mo feeds on others.

The rest is history. Xin Mo is originally tied to the story of Xin Yuan -- believed to be all that remained of the man after he sacrificed himself to keep the realms separate. It's believed that the force of the realms closing permanently infused Sha Mo with demonic energy, turning it into Xin Mo.

But, like many stories do when faced against the tide of time, things get lost; chipped off; changed. Xin Mo is steadily separated from Xin Yuan, especially once it becomes clear how parasitic the sword really is, until they are all but separate entities themselves and the origin of Xin Mo's creation all but forgotten.

The years blur together when Xin Mo is not being wielded, and at first Xin Yuan was agonized by the fact that he stole the lives of all his wielders. He knows it's only a novel, but his decades spent in this life have softened him, and he's grown attached to the world around him.

But time erodes the mind like water erodes stone, and he becomes numb to it, then eventually anticipating of it. He forces himself to remember what he knows of PIDW's plot, and kinda fixates back on his old obsession on Luo Binghe. But while PIDW stays in his mind, his memories as Xin Yuan fall to the wayside.

Not forgotten, per se, but... tucked away. The system prevents him from forgetting fully.

Xin Mo isn't fully a demonic sword either i think, but instead harbors an ugly cocktail of both spiritual and demonic qi. Special circumstances and all that. Everyone just assumes he's a fully demonic sword because that's usually at the forefront, his spiritual qi weakened from the initial fusion and from years of not being fed spiritual qi. It's part of the reason his wielders always end up destroyed by him, other than the whole, yk, 'overwhelming qi' thing.

Nobody would recognize Xin Mo's human form as Xin Yuan other than some truly ancient demons. Of which Meng Mo might. But even that's iffy because there's a lack of surviving paintings of Xin Yuan, but also because of XM's demonic appearance and supposed lack of connection to XY.

Xin Mo has never spoken to his wielders before, not in the same way he does Luo Binghe. He tells Luo Binghe this, and he also tells Luo Binghe down the line that he is both spiritual and demonic -- something he also never told his wielders because there was no point to it.

okay okay i've got to end it here because its already gotten ridiculously long -- of which im both apologetic and unapologetic for -- but i DO think the Shang Qinghua and Shen Yuan meeting (and reveal) would be fucking hilarious. Especially if SY has learned how to pop between sword form and human form by then -- although i guess it doesnt matter either way because SQH's reaction is still the same.

And that reaction is internally screaming and going "hey what the FUCK?? WHY DOES XIN MO HAVE A HUMAN FORM??? WHAT IS THIS??? SYSTEM??? EXPLAIN???"

meanwhile from his place on the sword hilt xin mo is squinting at Shang Qinghua in bewilderment and going "aren't you supposed to be dead" but doesn't pay too much mind to it because its not like its going to change anything.

...up until he catches shang qinghua going "WTF" silently from his little corner while all eyes are off him. One moment SQH is standing beside his king, and the next he's been tackled to the ground by one wild-eyed, human-shaped Xin Mo.

everyone, including SQH, thinks Xin Mo is going to kill him. It is a surprise to everyone when he does not, and instead dissolves into deranged, uncontrollable laughter after spitting out some phrase in some ancient tongue and watching SQH's eyes grow wide in recognition.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

[<==PREV PAGES] [NEXT PAGE==>(not out yet.wait a year.or maybe more.imagine.]

saw alot of comments on prev pages; saying 'i HATE that mean teacher! im gonna FIGHT HIM!!' & i LOVE the energy!! it WOULD be nice. to have that catharsis. but the story of young tidestrider is Not one of catharsis. it is a story of being so small and so special and sucking so bad.

[funeralprocessor]

I feel like the existence of the skirmishers (and everything from Chimera Squad) make XCOM come across as massive pricks wrt the aliens. Like the game goes out of its way to dehumanize the aliens (exclusively referring to them as it, saying their all brainwashed and mind controlled, etc) but then turn around and have ex-Advent be people who were at least aware during their time as drones, vipers and sectoids and mutons being obviously sentient and having their own culture, hell, the Ethereals are clearly people too. And then Chimera Squad shows us a future where they're actually treated as such and nobody makes as big a deal about it as I think they should.

[liquidstar]

i was NOT expecting commentary on capitalist society from this show. im not complaining though- i like how they use the fast food she conjured as a way to frame it too. i wonder what more theyll have to say on the topic though

[butchratchettruther]

I may or may not be compiling a chronological list of nearly every locomotive ever directly because of starlight express

[deermouth]

i have no idea if this is present in the wheel of time books or not, but i think it would have been cool to have an emphasis on textile-craft &c, considering how important the "weaving of the pattern" is, cosmologically, to every society we've encountered on the continent

[multiplicity-positivity]

Hello, I’m trying to figure out how plurality works and if I am plural (if that’s the right phrasing).

I used to have an “imaginary land” when I was really young, and it was sort of a spot where a bunch of my “imaginary friends” would hang out and interact. I also would switch between myself and an “imaginary friend” sometimes.

I’m not really sure if this could mean I am/was(?) plural, or if I just have/had an overactive imagination.

Hey, so it’s really up to you to decide whether or not that experience was a plural thing. Lots of kids have rich, intricate, and bustling imaginary worlds that they spend time and play in. We don’t think that in and of itself is always an indication of plurality.

However, if your imaginary friends stuck around after childhood, if they think you might be plural, or if the plural label feels right for you or seems to fit your experience… then you very well could be plural after all. Not every person with imaginary friends is a system; even some people who can “switch” with their imaginary friends might still feel and function like a singlet. At the same time, lots of people may find that their vivid imaginations are what make them plural or contribute to their multiplicity. It’s up to each individual to choose whether or not plurality suits them.

We’ll include some Pluralpedia links to some community-coined labels for plural experiences that might be of some interest to you:

And we’ve written some positivity posts for imagination-based plurals and systems with active imaginations which we’ll include here in case they might cheer you:

Good luck with figuring this out. Questioning can be a lengthy, difficult process, but we hope that you’re able to reach a conclusion that ultimately makes sense for you and helps you find fulfillment.

💫 Parker and 💚 Ralsei

[smilepuppydotjpeg]

to commemorate me popping off with a sniper rifle in the last round of fortnite ballistic i played (about 6 hrs ago atp) i made this. first drawing back on my main pc and im feelin it

[outeremissary]

break and secret for Balthazar and Kasander?👀

Thanks for the question, and sorry for the delay!! These are things I can go on for ages about for most characters, haha. Personal limits and private experiences are essential in some way to me when thinking through characters. Even though I tried to keep this under control it still got really long... it's under a cut for that and the umm. Content warnings.

CW: mentions of disordered eating, self harm, suicidal ideation, and suicide

[prompt list]

break: What would cause your OC to break down completely? What do they look like when that happens? Has anyone ever seen them at their lowest?

Balthazar

For Balthazar, total breakdown is the result of being completely, inescapably trapped, especially when it shows a harsh limit on what he's able to do or be. As it is, he already sees his bounds in everything. In his mind he's always struggling through them to live the life he wants rather than what he feels the world is fencing him in to. He knows that he's weak and there's a limit to what he can control. He also knows that he's choosing something with his life that destroys his value in the eyes of others. Still, he needs to believe that he can play past the point where he should have to quit, that his cruel and self-isolating exercises in agency will give him control even if there's no other reward.

At his lowest, Balthazar shuts down near completely. He's been shown that there's nothing that can be gained by fighting; thus, the fight leaves him. He's lethargic, unresponsive, and pliant. To point to a specific incident: when his wings developed and shackled him to the inescapable image of his heritage he withdrew into himself for weeks, avoiding being in the public eye and doing nothing more than the minimum to maintain the illusion of control over his domain- and struggling to do even that. But the withdrawal felt like all he could do to assert control over his body and to shield himself from seeing the extent to which the carefully maintained narrative of himself had escaped him. It was a self-pitying, self-punishing period of neglect. He did very little beyond function. Near the beginning he stopped looking after himself more or less completely. He also stopped eating, something common to his deepest lows but made more intense by the awareness of how the wings merely existing had changed his appetite, the way they ate up energy. He interacted with them only to try to find ways to crush them down to be less visible, or to idly pick at neglected feathers. More than anything, he avoided the people who knew and cared for him. It seemed like the ugliest indignity to be seen in that state. The thought of being pitied made him nauseous.

Still, he's never seemed to have the dignity of suffering alone during any breakdown he's had in his life. No matter how he tries to isolate himself his worst moments always seem to be seen, and sometimes they've been taken advantage of as well. There's a nasty spiral to being shown how much further he can fall when he already feels helpless. He was lucky in this one though: for the most part, it was only the concerned and supportive interacting with him (except Lander, as typical for the rat). And Jaethal, who was instrumental in pressing him back into his daily tasks, wasn't one for pity- that abrasive appeal to his pride did a lot to pull him out of the state. Although she did enlist some help in following through on the more menial or overly sensitive tasks: for a time afterwards, Tristian was in charge of making sure he was eating.

Kasander

So: Kasander is an Oath of the Ancients paladin, the oath most focused on love of life and defense of its sanctity. Light, joy, life. Everything that Bhaal exists to destroy, and that Bhaal made them to snuff out. And you have to understand that Kas takes 1) takes this ungodly seriously and 2) has an extremely radical interpretation of what their oath means. Kasander is a reckless savior. Their mercy can easily be as destructive as their violence. Without very immediate threat they hate to destroy even for a greater good, not while there's still some foolish hope that somehow, the situation will turn around. Kasander has lost their oath three times over the course of BG3 and every time it has been because they've strained the concept of mercy to the breaking point: refused to kill what was lethal, refused to destroy what was tormented. And they're not exactly doing a lot of follow-through here. They hate to control others as much as they hate to condemn them. Their mercy is unconditional. They'll turn around and wait until you're gone- do whatever you want after that. To them, this is what it means to shelter life and see value in it. To just keep offering and offering. To hope against hope and against reason. It isn't as if they're naive, not really. But they're stubborn anyway. And on top of that, they don't want to pass judgment that they know would condemn them. Whatever chance they've been given they have no right to withhold.

To me, Kasander is kind of incorruptible, but that's what can destroy them: they're holding themself and the world to a standard that just isn't possible. They believe too fervently, too uncompromisingly. They're trying to be too good for good, too kind to be kind. And when the world pushes back and tells them no, that's not an answer they can accept. It's not about realism. It's about rejection. Breaking their oath over attempted mercy is being told that their best intentions and all their attempts to overcome everything the world has tried to make them still aren't enough. It makes them feel fundamentally broken. Too dirty to be saved. Far too dirty to save others.

Their lowest points are born out of that conflict between their radical idealism and their oath (or reality at large) more than the direct influence of the Urge (or actions of their siblings). In the game itself, their lowest point was probably the first time they lost their oath. In the same short period they'd endured Alfira's death, had accidentally killed innocents for Ethel, had been called a monster by people they wanted to save and accidentally killed some of the victims they tried to rescue, and when they finally thought they could do one good thing for Mayrina by putting control over her future in her hands and letting her choose what to do about her husband, that was the thing that finally shattered their oath. How much crueler could anything get? Even their attempts at atonement were too monstrous to be accepted. And there's no such thing as a private low- not with Bhaal watching, waiting for them to break completely.

In their total breakdown, they backslide more or less completely into despair. They succumb to self-destructive behavior without the hope of repairing a situation, and they're often driven by the influence, passive or active, of parts of their internal system which are already inclined to shame and self-punishment. Bride in particular holds sway in these moments: though Bride doesn't mean it with any ill will, they see suffering in everything, and they want to find accountability through self-harm and release through death. For Bride, hope is unreliable, and the hard reality is that only extreme solutions can work. It was somewhere in the halfway point between Kasander drowning in their own misery and Bride's desires to save them all from pain that they committed suicide by goading Astarion into killing them while feeding. Their death didn't stick- Shadowheart "rescued" them immediately after finding out, and they wallowed in the guilt of knowing that Astarion almost paid the price for their choices.

Though not characteristic of that particular incident, it's also not uncommon for them to withdraw very quickly and instinctually inside themself, causing someone else to switch to front. In response to distress this is usually Bride, who resolves the situation through self-punishment, or Asperia, who resolves it by lashing out. The things that cause Kasander pain don't often get to Asperia. Asperia is good at going beyond Kasander's limits. Whatever the results, withdrawing gives Kas time to calm down and return to something different.

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

Balthazar

There are a lot of things Balthazar hates to have people know about him, but some of his worst moments and deepest weaknesses have been ripped from him against his will and laid bare to the world. It gives him a strange relationship with personal secrets- most of what he doesn't want known is already out there somewhere. He's used to living in a constant state of damage control. Leaving Absalom gave him a blank slate though, and in many ways he doesn't want others to know anything at all about who he was or what his life was like before he crossed the Inner Sea and went north. As much as it makes him feel cut off from a past he mourns, he feels it's best to hide as much of it as possible through avoidance, vague answers, and lies.

In terms of more specific things though... one thing that he managed to keep from spreading too outside his immediate home neighborhood was information about his mother and about his father's relationship with her. Even before his aasimar heritage had manifested, he knew what it was like to have people look right through him, searching for someone else. He never knew much about her himself because of the way she disappeared, but speculation about her hung over his early childhood and haunted his relationship with his father. He never discusses her willingly. When people ask about his mother he tends to say that she died in childbirth, elaborating occasionally some sickly sweet additional details. His father's fiance, you see. She was young and frail, but they were in love, you understand. A beloved presence and a dearly missed one. All lies, but what a wonder a banal family sob story does for shutting down questions. Anything to stop people seizing on the knowledge she could be alive out there somewhere and thinking she ought to be found. There's no one he has less desire to know more about.

But if there was one thing he wishes he could turn into a secret that he'll never be able to, it would be his aasimar heritage.

Kasander

Despite the fact that Kasander is a painfully honest person and a chronic oversharer, there are still many things they don't want anyone to ever know about them, or to not know the extent of. It's the burden of being a Bhaalspawn: the visions, the acts, the private battles, the lapses... And more than anything, I think that Kasander doesn't ever want anyone to know how much they have suffered over the course of their life. Even Kas can't truly grasp it- like Asperia, they had very few memories before around age 9 even prior to the Tadpole Incident. And after that point there were still always long periods of patchiness. Sometimes scraps from those periods drift through when they trance, and there are dark memories they understand are bound up in the others and can't be accessed by them.

What they remember they still don't want to share. They hate for their pain, past or present, to be a burden on others and find the reactions other people have to it distressing. They know that they've experienced terrible things and that few people can understand that, and they don't want to be hurt again by others denying their experiences, downplaying them, or misinterpreting them. With most of the party members distress and pushback seem to be the norm- it's made them reluctant to confide in anyone outside themself. It also feels like they've failed other people when just talking about their past with others seems to hurt them. Jaheira is the only consistently safe person, and they're thankful beyond words for her, especially after many of their memories were restored. It's hard to imagine continuing to just push through without processing, but they couldn't process all of that alone.

There's another element to past hurt as well though: not all of it belongs to them, and that vulnerable part of the other alters is too sacred to violate by sharing even through implication. Concealing their past- their shared past- is an act of protection so natural they don't even think about it.

[reyneluvirith]

every day, my drive to make a fódlan mod for crusader kings grows stronger. it would fit so well and like three people would play it and it'd be the best

[raddestrose]

Dang, those kids got the story mad twisted

[jinghengs]

i wholeheartedly, genuinely, cannot believe my quality of life has been increasing bc of a fucking gacha game

[bigcryptiddies]

When it comes to all the ways in which society needs to change and be dismantled and reformed and transformed and rehabilitated and made over, I almost never want to hear from a white person I just feel like they have a fundamental disconnect from some of the life experiences needed to fully understand what needs to change

[risingsunresistance]

i think more worldbuilding should include more numbering systems. like obviously when creating a fake world or language our first thought is to take the basic 0-9 and make a representation of those, but does it actually make sense for your people here to be using base 10? what about base 2, base 16, other systems we use and systems we dont commonly use? what would make the most sense in the context?

[deathinfeathers-a]

//Reminder that all threads will be purged on February 1st, after which I will be taking a new approach to IC interactions since I simply cannot stay on top of things over here anymore.