#sapphiretag

[enchanted-system]

New intro!

Basically all of this is in our about, but since we’ll update that as we figure more things out, here’s a condensed version for posterity:

Host subsystem, very blurry, share memories:

Sapphire (ey/em): host, bigenderfluid, gryffinclaw, anxiety, loves system and organization, all the life goals.

barker (he/him): former cohost, closest to Sapphire and often exerts passive influence or cofronts. Pure gryffindor. Very excited and chaotic, some kind of big tricolor doggo. Distractor from distressing things.

Kai/kai (they/them, sometimes ey/em as Kai, sometimes he/him as kai): barker and Sapphire - capitalization indicates whose influence is stronger. Blurry host.

Protector (he/him): protector, former cohost, sometimes exerts passive influence or cofronts with Sapphire/Kai. Slytherdor. Strong PTSD, probably AVPD.

Jet (ne/nem or they/them): blur of Protector and Sapphire. Protector role. Identifies strongly with Bahamut - justice, dragons, platinum.

Jack (he/him): combination of Protector and barker. Rare because Sapphire is frontstuck. Somewhat more relaxed/chaotic version of Protector.

dragon (they/them): collective name, also name of any combination of Sapphire, barker, and Protector. When dragon is in full force (all three fully present and cofronting), most powerful of the system, usually comes out when someone else is threatened in a less serious way.

Cat (she/her): sexual alter, naiad. Never hosted, somewhat younger than dragon because of years inactive since realizing plurality. Hypersexual ace lesbian, kinky, very sweet. Did not have anxiety, dove into the deep end of socializing, now has anxiety. Shares memories with dragon, but much more separate.

Fen (fae/faer or she/her): combination of Cat and Sapphire. Femme, often Sapphire's and Cat's sexualities blending. Fey.

Ella (she/her): indeterminate origins, possible tulpa. Unknown gender. Mostly backtalks Kai as kai talks through their life, really likes star trek. Does not front, has been mostly absent for years.

Possible little?: ~6 years old

There’s also some question of whether Sapphire is a median subsystem. We keep calling things median subsystems for them to turn out to be fairly separate people who share memories, but Maybe This is Really It. There’s a philosophical question of at what point do we consider people to be the same person: are you the same person you were five minutes ago? Five years ago? At work vs at home? In different kinshifts? The last one is what’s relevant to Sapphire. The most distinct by far is eir fey self, and then there’s eir male self, eir Lienid self, and eir femme self. I think that’s all of them that we’ve thought of? We haven’t thought about it a lot.

We don’t have much (or really any) control over fronting, which is an issue we’d like to address but tbh aren’t prioritizing. We do know of certain situations/states of mind that make others more likely to front, though if we attempt a switch using those triggers, it doesn’t work super well. It’s also very hard to differentiate between Sapphire fronting alone, Kai fronting, passive influence from barker and/or Protector, and Protector cofronting, especially since that changes from moment to moment, and there are significant overlaps in personality, preferences, and tone for one thing at a time. We can tell the difference between us for longer lengths of time, and it’s often easier to recognize who was fronting when reading past messages. For the people who know us as plural, we’ll sign our names when people are being particularly distinct, especially when the distinction matters, but for the most part we just go by dragon. Cat rarely fronts, and pretty much only with Sapphire or alone.

We aren’t currently aware of any headspace, though Sapphire has at this point visited somewhere multiple times that may be a dormant headspace or similar. Once was visiting a cave in a catatonic episode, once was accidentally visiting a hiking trail by a waterfall that led up to a beautiful yellow stone and glass building, and once was deliberately visiting the latter place, but incompletely.

Sapphire is currently wrestling with the idea of intimate relationships, and the possibility of sexual trauma. Ey feels drawn towards processing those issues and discovering what happened in our childhood, but is also afraid of potential ensuing mental health crises. Currently, we’re focusing on the possibility that ey was traumatized by rape culture and what incidents we do know of, in combination with eir existing social anxiety and trauma. We don’t think we necessarily repressed any memories from childhood, but we do deliberately avoid thinking about that time period, and trying to line up who was hosting when and/or bringing out the little we believe exists would inherently involve facing the traumatic events that happened in those periods. We still identify as quoigenic, with Sapphire and barker identifying as endogenic twins, though given that Cat identifies more with the body as well as our deadname, we’re wondering if she came before Sapphire and barker.

- Kai

[enchanted-system]

Coming back to this blog after two years, a Lot has changed. I updated tags from [name] to [name]tag so we can tag things without ending up in the, say, steven universe tags, but other than that I didn’t change anything. I also didn’t read everything, especially by Cat, but I’ll be going through and reblogging some things that are still moods or with updates. And then we’ll write a new intro post because Oh Boy.

tl;dr wow can you believe how confused we were about who was who and remember when we didn’t have names

- Sapphire

[enchanted-system]

Watching the L-word as a system

Cat the baby bambi lesbian is minorly crushing on three of the characters

Protector is growling at the abusive crap

Sapphire keeps comparing Tina to Hanna Hart

Barker only came out once to be extremely overenthusiastic at seeing a cat

[enchanted-system]

Sapphire: we should pee and put food away but I think I heard someone in the hall so I don't want to go out

Cat: you haven't showered in weeks so your hair's all messed up and your shirt is covered in rabbit fur, I'm not going out in that

[enchanted-system]

tfw you're thinking thoughts about something and someone else butts in with their own opinions

[enchanted-system]

tfw you’re talking about your business as one facet and then you switch and suddenly you’re talking about someone else’s business as them and you feel physically sick

[enchanted-system]

I haven’t been on here for awhile but we’ve been going through some stuff.

Barker and I are basically twins - we think we were born in this body together and we grew up together acting as a singlet, so we were always a median system and could never really be separated but also were never really the same person (I’ve avoided this reference so far because it’s a little too on the nose, but think garnet in steven universe).

I think I mentioned this before, but Cat has been getting into health and aesthetic stuff more and is basically taking on the role of taking care of the body.

Cat’s been struggling more with her asexuality + hypersexuality combination, but since barker and I are sex repulsed we have no idea where the line is for posting about that stuff and when it’s considered nsfw and where that would go so we’re not sure where we should post about that

Also, we’ve come to the conclusion that we really can’t function as a singlet. We need to work as a system, or we have major problems. I’ve been wondering if the time loss/working memory issues barker and I experience have to do with us rapidly switching who’s fronting, or if it is just ADHD. And we all naturally have different roles, but don’t split up those roles accordingly or schedule who fronts, which creates a lot of problems. When I’m fronting, I forget to eat. I try to fit in so many things I burn out. And then things get done but our health suffers. When barker fronts, he doesn’t do anything but special interests and eat. He refuses to sleep. Nothing gets done, and our health suffers. I feel like there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it, and don’t take the time to take care of myself or get organized enough to improve things, and things fall through the cracks. Barker plays an important role in mentally recharging and enjoying life, but lets a lot of really important things slide. Cat’s basically been shoved in the background but it turns out can be really helpful, and of course deserves to have her own interests represented.

So rather than having us continue to flail all over the place, I’m trying to find a way to coordinate who’s fronting and what they need to do, so people can play to their strengths instead of other people’s, and we can all have a better quality of life.

Of course the flip side of this is that by not acting as a singlet anymore, it’ll be much more frustrating to not talk about being a system, and I’m out to only a few singlets, and none irl. And one I can’t really talk about this stuff to.

Anyway we’ll be using this blog a lot more.

ps Ella’s been kinda absent for awhile, idk why. Maybe she doesn’t have enough to snark about because we finally stopped making obvious mistakes and being in denial? She also kinda lost interest in star trek but we’ll see if we can bring her back

[enchanted-system]

Time to update the about I guess

[enchanted-system]

I’ve found a handy way to tell barker and sapphire apart (they’re like a median system within the median system of kai so it’s hard). Barker’s favorite color is red and sapphire’s is blue, so when I visualize a red square and a blue square, I’ll be drawn to red as barker and blue as sapphire. Or both when cofronting, which happens a lot.

[enchanted-system]

Ask us stuff

I posted this on my main blog too because I actually have followers there and everything I get I’m going to answer as both barker and sapphire because that’s what I’m really interested in but I’m too lazy to answer all of them

1. If you didn’t have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time?

2. What’s your favorite piece of clothing you own / owned?

3. What hobby would you get into if time and money weren’t an issue?

4. What would your perfect room look like?

5. What fictional place would you most like to go?

6. If you had unlimited funds to build a house that you would live in for the rest of your life, what would the finished house be like?

7. What’s your favorite drink?

8. Are you usually early or late?

9. What are some small things that make your day better?

10. What shows are you into?

11. What age do you wish you could permanently be?

12. What would be your ideal way to spend the weekend?

13. What’s your favorite genre of book or movie?

14. What could you give a 40-minute presentation on with absolutely no preparation?

15. What’s worth spending more on to get the best?

16. What is something that a ton of people are obsessed with but you just don’t get the point of?

17. What are you most looking forward to in the next 10 years?

18. What piece of entertainment do you wish you could erase from your mind so that you could experience for the first time again?

19. What’s the best way to start the day?

20. What would you rate 10 / 10?

21. If you suddenly became a master at woodworking, what would you make?

22. What one thing do you really want but can’t afford?

23. Where would you spend all your time if you could?

[enchanted-system]

tfw the chaotic facet is on food duty and they do the dishes wrong, apparently

[enchanted-system]

I was looking back through the blog and holy shit I can’t believe we didn’t realize I wasn’t barker

speaking of which we’ve decided on names:

barker, Sapphire, Cat, protector, smol kai if they’re actually a thing: facets of the median subsystem

Ella

kai=barker+Sapphire

dragon=barker+Sapphire+protector

[enchanted-system]

it’s funny because Cat’s attitude towards nail painting is like a cis girl (cause she is one) and Barker’s is like a cis guy who doesn’t really want to paint his nails but is okay with his female friends painting them for fun and ends up having fun too (the difference being that barker can’t then go to work the next day and still be gendered as a guy)

and then I’m the nonbinary femme who’s super pumped for the day we can paint our nails and braid our hair and wear femme-y clothes not be read as a cis girl because that is so my style

- Sapphire

[enchanted-system]

cat: I want to paint my nails sapphire: that’s not going to go well with barker trying to present as male cat: can I paint my nails on the weekend? sapphire: sure cat: nice!

[enchanted-system]

Apparently some people have a discord server just for their system. I think I’m going to set one up too

[enchanted-system]

I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile, but just started listing all of our identities/neurodivergent traits that don’t fit into a diagnosis in Evernote.

For the queer identities I had to break it up by facet because we do have differences.

And when I got to me and Barker, I realized there were more differences than I thought.

Mainly that I don’t think I identify as transmasculine, and may not even identify as trans? Which is news to me.

And Barker may not identify as genderqueer. Because to us it’s such a political identity, and Barker doesn’t people enough to really be that political. Like I really care about gender stuff, but Barker is just like “yeah, gender’s a thing, let’s play pokemon.”

I really don’t know how I feel about the trans thing. Because I’m really adamant that all non-cis people can use trans, and I am definitely not cis. But idk, it just feels like it’s more Barker’s “thing” than mine.

Okay I stepped away to cook gyoza and have decided that yes, I do identify as trans, but not as strongly as Barker does. Trans is more of his “thing” and mine is genderqueer, but we are both trans. He just identifies primarily as trans and I identify primarily as genderqueer.