#this is definitely um. Influenced. by ocd.

[altschmerzes]

i need to stop shadowboxing the concept of romance when i write. i need to make my brain go to a world where romance doesn’t exist when i write because feeling its constant presence and people’s expectations of its presence and reading in of its presence is making me a worse writer.

like. thinking a lot about that post that’s going around rn about Books That Are Clearly Afraid Of The Reader. been thinking about how fear of being interpreted or perceived or whatever permeates a Lot of what i do and always has, creatively, and frankly compromises it, especially in terms of fear of people reading romance into my stuff because of how much i write about interpersonal relationships and intimacy and reliance and vulnerability and intense emotional situations.

i need to stop trying to build a boat with my main priority being ‘i dont want people to insist to me that this is a car or make people feel tricked into seeing a car etc etc’ when there is actually no part of this boat that needs to be made with cars in mind at all i could just Build The Damn Boat. this metaphor got lost.

point is i need to stop letting romance take up space in my stories at all. even if it's just as something i'm doing backflips over and around. i need to just start writing about platonic relationships - friendships, queerplatonic relationships, familial relationships, etc - without feeling like i need to first disprove romance as an automated and inherent assumption. romance should have no quarter here, even in feeling forced to deny it.

[the-prophesied-disco-gay]

What a beautiful wonderful post! Oh my gosh I'm so happy to have seen this!

I don't talk much about being a system because 1) I'm terrified of real world repercussions if this blog is ever linked back to my real name because the general population is NOT chill *at all* about plurals and 2) because I've dealt with this on my own as long as I can remember and I don't know all the terminology and politics of the community and don't want to accidentally step in it or hurt somebody

So I'm gonna go ahead and throw all that out the window and just be real with y'all on this here tag for a minute. Defenestrate your doubts babes <3

I usually use singular first person pronouns (I/me/my) for the most part, for safety. I don't want to slip in regular conversation and drop a "we" with the wrong person and create a safety issue for myself. However I will use we/us/our for clarity sometimes when specifically discussing this topic.

I have no idea what my system origin is! There is...um...lots of trauma in my background. Including things that go back to before my actual memory (nonconsensual operation to "normalize" my genital configuration as an intersex baby as well as continued supression of those traits and questions as I grew, as well as sexual abuse by a relative when I was very young). In addition to the stuff when I was little there are also several traumas that happened when I could remember them. However! I don't know when my system formed so I don't know if any of that was the cause or if there was a singular cause. I know I have never been able to intentionally create so much as an imaginary friend so probably traumagenic?

But much like snowglobe-system said, the existence of endogenic systems is extremely comforting to me. My headmates exist, that I am very sure of, so it doesn't really matter how they came to be! Love that for us tbh.

Also my mom is also a system! Definitely traumagenic and it didn't manifest until much later in life for her. But it makes me wonder if there is a hereditary element to this. Neither of us knew the other was a system until we had been years established, so it definitely wasn't something influenced by talking to each other about it.

I have no idea what my headmates names are, so I've given them names from characters in media that seemed to fit the closest. They're not those characters made manifest in my psyche, though from what I have read that can happen? Very cool. But for me it's more like that scene in The Last Samuri where the American dude is talking to the Japanese dude despite neither of them speaking each others language, and he goes "how about Bob, can I call you Bob?" because he can't actually ask for the guys name lol. I'm still learning how to directly communicate with my headmates on purpose, so I don't know what to call them other than names I've assigned 😅

There is an assortment of genders among us and at least one anthro in here. That took some serious getting used to because I, the one who fronts the most, used to hate furries and anthros in a very "I am legit afraid of them" sort of irrational way, which I think was me just desperately trying to be what I considered normal at the time.

I also have OCD, which shows up in every single headmate in the same way, very consistently. This is, ironically, very soothing to my OCD. It helps me keep a cohesive sense of self even when someone is fronting who isn't aware they are part of a system. We still know our routines and what we consider the "correct" way of doing things.

I get memory loss/gaps when someone else is fronting, but not when cofronting.

The easiest way to tell when I've switched (is that the right term?) is the change to my word choice and the way I speak. Apparently if you know me well, the shift in mannerisms and expressions is also a clear indicator.

So that's me! I consider the brain an incredible thing, capable of so many things we don't fully understand, and I think that's really cool! I think hating on other systems for how they came to be or how they function as systems is both arrogant to the extreme and morally wrong. I think there are many, many more plurals out there than we are aware of. I think greater acceptance and understanding will go a long way toward making the world a better place.

Thanks @snowglobe-system for starting this conversation!

Hello sysconversation! I'm a massive fan of this tag being coined, I think there's a lot of room for some really great discussion here, so I'm gonna try to kickstart a conversation myself!

I'm a traumagenic DID system. I experience a lot of denial. But you know what really really helps me? The existence of endo systems. No I'm not kidding.

Because I can say oh I must be faking this disorder. It must not be real. But I also believe that intentional systems are 100% real and that they exist, so... even if I don't have DID, I'm still creating my system right now. I'm real. My parts are real. No matter what disorders we do or don't have.

If you're traumagenic you ever been helped in some way by endo systems and/or their resources? If you're endogenic, have you ever been helped in some ways by traumagenic systems and/or their resources? We talk all the time about how we're different, I think it'd be great to have a chat about how we can be alike and how the intersection of our communities can help each other!