#xrdslog

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made these in 2 seconds bc my partner is always finding every damn system in (location redacted)

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That post about huge red flags from exes is going around and I’m like well mine requires some background reading

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Unrelated to the previous post but sometimes you just get startling reminders of plurality. It’s easy to kind of drift towards that thought of “what if I’m making it up?” but then you’re trying to do something and you literally feel someone shouting about it in your head. And it’s like ohhh right. The plurality. Or you read a book and start getting mixed up identity and not really knowing who you are. The plurality....

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[Lio] We’re similar - we have ‘the dark’, which is a sort of primordial ooze - as far as we are aware it seems to be some sort of subconscious or dormancy space but also contain, like, little personality fragments/concepts. Given enough energy/incentive/whatever it needs, new people can coalesce from it.

Our system also has few hard rules beyond ‘don’t be a dick/make our collective life hard’, but our one internal rule is not to enter it after you’ve exited it, because anyone who does so for an extended time gets changed by whatever is in it. (No rules against if this happens involuntarily/without knowing of course, some have formed but not had contact with the rest of us and gone back in for whatever reason and come out months or years later very different.)

More and more lately im feeling like we as a system often don't "split", it's more like... There's a certain amount of raw material here, that could possibly coalesce into a new entity in many ways and for many reasons.

Sometimes it tries out vague forms that might not be permanent - but at the time, they still feel like part of us

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[Lio] Ok. Question for my fellow plurals out here: do you ever get like... I’m not sure what to call it. “External” phantom shift/sensations/dysphoria/etc that aren’t yours and you’re like hmm is this anything

I’m getting some strong “my mental( psychic? phantom? whatever you want to call the like mental-energy-version of yourself that you feel especially in phantom shifts) body is Not matching who I am/who is fronting internally right now” and I’ve felt this before in various cases but I never really paid a lot of attention to it, is this a thing others have experienced and if so did it tend to coincide with anything? I’m trying to figure this one out

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Checking our email to make sure our final fantasy house isn’t being foreclosed see if we had any important messages and one of them was

And. the way Koha was like O_O!? seeing an email addressed to him. He was startled

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[Lio] Haven’t posted too in depth here recently because 1. busy with work and 2. we have been more privately recording things and/or discussing them with our partner. But I want to write this down here, since I’m thinking about it.

For a long time we’ve thought of ourselves as a system that, despite being traumagenic, had almost no littles! Wow! We just considered this to be an immutable fact. We had Rayne and that was it and Rayne despite being a teenager is also ageless, so did fae really count?

A bit less than a year ago (I think?), thanks to our partner system’s help, suddenly... could you believe it? We found some. One is a preteen that has a lot of emotions about us growing up facing bullying for being obviously alterhuman, and another is a younger kid who is often afraid and has memory of some bad early things.

I used to, when I was stressed out or upset in some way I couldn’t really express or handle in the moment (or wasn’t really sure how to), I would feel like I was “screaming and crying internally”. As if my subconscious was just internally expressing my stress. I was hearing disembodied crying and assumed it was me. ....which when I type it out is so extremely obviously someone else I was ignoring going through that, but hindsight 50/50. And what do you know? Suddenly now that we knew about the younger kid I started realizing that they were the one who was crying when we were stressed. I started being able to comfort them and ask them what was wrong. And now it’s a lot better, a lot easier to handle sudden stress, because if they start getting upset we can care for them and process it a lot better.

This is all very obvious to an outside observer who understands plurality. But to us who really did not think we had younger members at all, realizing this is like “oh.. duh!! Why the hell didn’t I notice this?”

Anyways, the point here is: dang, shit improves when you listen to your headmates. Ain’t that crazy

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We are more than one gay dragon 😳 in one package!!

me: *clicks on one of the dragon blogs on this site*

me: ah yes, the gay dragon

me: *clicks another dragon blog*

me: ah yes, the gay dragon

me: *clicks on yet another blog*

me: ah yes, the gay dragon

me: *clicks on own blog*

me: ah yes the gay dra……..

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[Lio] Just when I assume things have quieted down in here we begin again the song and dance of

“Is this a real person or a persistent bit of imagination or a fragmentary/temporary sentience that might fade if not given attention or What”

I have to hand it to Simon though who has been doing.. something behind the scenes, this is at least better than our two previous common modes of getting new people which were 1) experience a sudden intense emotion and summon some poor soul very suddenly to handle it or 2) someone shows up in secret and we find them later

I guess we will just freaking see

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[Lio] We need a tag for this damn polycule already hmmmmmm. Fuck idk what’s a good tag for a

Minor death god dragon guy who is into EDM and making spreadsheets

A depressed angel who sleeps all day and likes alcohol and the history channel

A demigirl with fire and water duality and boho furniture who likes diner food

A mostly normal archaeologist guy who survived the apocalypse and misses his wife

And occasionally a literally salty French guy who hates the church

Like what do we even have in common. Other than that I’m the squad bicycle I guess (JOKE)

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[Lio] For Now, (knocks on wood) it seems our DLC is finished. Now tell me how the fuck the system got five guys (burgers and fries) in one summer

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[Lio] It’s pretty large/complex! I’ll try to go bit by bit.

First is the ‘main’ area, where people will congregate sometimes. It looks like an area from a video game with a lot of couches and nice furniture, and the floor is a big illuminated fish tank. From there, you can go to a few places - rooms, the concrete areas, the elevator, out to the city, or to the darkroom.

Rooms are rooms belonging to some of us. Goro’s bedroom, Josh’s study, Tetsu’s music room, to name a few. The concrete areas also resemble a video game location although that location is based on the real life Tokyo underground water drainage cistern, so basically a large concrete room with imposing tall pillars. There’s some side areas - my altar room where I keep books and tarot cards and stuff, my cylinder which is an offshoot tank from the main cistern down a tunnel that has a hanging ‘nest’ that I spend time in sometimes.

Above this is a hidden door to a corrirdor that is surrounded by dark water. There’s a hatch that goes outside into the water, and Devo lives in this dark water area in a replica of his ship’s captain quarters. The corridor continues to a large circular library that only I can get into. There’s a corridor from there that turns into a basalt cave and leads out to an island with white sand dunes where a house we used to use for meditation is that Fern lives in now.

Back to the paths from the main area - the city. It’s a recreation of the city of Shibuya, and a mix of the version of it from a video game and some real life locations. Some of our apartments are here. You can also wander parts of the train station, and there’s couches in part of it where we used to think new people were likely to show up first although turns out they don’t so we don’t use that part much.

Smack in the city center is a huge tower that takes up the place of where a real skyscraper is; it’s the Hikarie in real life, but in headspace it’s an endlessly tall tower we call Portveil. You can access Portveil through the station, through its doors, or through the elevator in the previously mentioned main room. Portveil is weird. It’s hard to perceive, and its main thing is that its elevator connects otherwise disconnected areas of headspace and maybe to areas we haven’t been yet. 1F is the station/city exit, B1F is the main room, B2F is a parking garage, B3F is a ‘hotel’ hallway. Unlabeled floors include the Castle floor and the Observatory floor.

The parking garage is an empty parking garage. In its center is a solid wall of darkness with glowing runes projected into it from a sword stabbed into the floor, attended by Minerva. She doesn’t move from this spot ever but can appear simultaneously in other places too. The wall is impenetrable but there is a ‘tunnel’ within it that Minerva can allow passage into that leads to an area resembling a suburb/outskirts of Chicago, although in eternal night and completely monotone in color. There is a small park here where Aisling resides, and in one of the park bushes in the style of Pokemon is a ‘secret base’ where they live that does have color where the rest does not. There’s also an old office where a few people live, and it’s very close to the edge of the lake. How far ‘Shadow Chicago’ goes we don’t know.

The “hotel hallway” resembles a fancy hotel hallway with doors and carpeted floors. The doors are numbered, and some people live there; Simon, Red, and Cake/Dog all have rooms here. The doors do not open to their rooms directly, but open to stairs down into their rooms, which can be much larger than seemingly possible for neighboring rooms and can be like small houses it seems. Simon’s has a second ‘upstairs’ which is a record shop that he only visits when he’s temporarily fused with me (and we are Silvan). Red’s opens to the Darkroom which I’ll mention again later.

The Castle is a large sandstone castle. It hasn’t been very explored, but a few people live in areas of it. It appears suspended as if built off of Portveil high in the sky and is surrounded on all sides by a raging thunderstorm/electrical storm. It has an inner courtyard that’s pleasant and unaffected by the storm.

The Observatory is a glass and metal observation deck slash indoor botanical garden where Rayne lives set at the top of a sheer cliff on a mountain, next to a waterfall, overlooking half of the island it’s all on. There is a separate non-Portveil elevator that leads to the ground/sea level and down into a scaffolding area beneath the island where a few shack-like rooms (made of shipping containers) are set up among the scaffolds; Loki and Lith share a place there. There are stairs among the scaffolds as well that go down into the laboratory where 001 is and he rarely lets anyone else get even remotely close to him. Outside, on the island, the southeast beach has Meis’s house, the north jungle/forest has a garden that Koha curates, and the western section has a forest that has both Andy’s trailer and Hunter’s treehouse. This island is part of a chain of islands; most have not been explored, but one is the one where Fern’s house is.

Beneath all of headspace, and surrounding it, is the Darkspace or Darkroom - basically a flat liquify surface of darkness that contains shards of things that could become people. It can be walked on as if solid. It used to be completely dark in all directions, but Red somehow added nebulas and galaxies to the visuals.

There are two locations that we know of that are inaccessible save for by certain people - the Ash corridor, which resembles the area from Pokemon where ash is falling and has another secret base that only Leaf can get to, and then the Campus square and a dorm room that Charz can get to but no one else can that resemble our college.

And that’s it for now. Are there unexplored areas? Almost certainly. But that’s what we know for now!

hey guys

if its no secret what's your innerworld/headspace like????

ours looks mostly like different dreamcore/weirdcore spaces. parts appear/change/disappear there often. its pretty fun :>

-🐛🐣

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(Listens to a song) (starts getting really strong associations to a character it only vaguely fits)

UH OH, BESTIES

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[Lio] ok system patch notes updates b4 bed

Locations added: monochrome weird partially fictional suburb of Chicago I guess

Dudes added: fox-faerie-teenager*, blanket-hiding kid*, government agent, wet horse*, fireworks wizard*

*(probably) already existed for at least a while

We learned some stuff about Minerva (she’s some sort of avatar of mental function which I guess is apt for a gatekeeper)

We made some contact with the new people

We found out about a new TM headspace protector guy (aforementioned fireworks wizard)

Good lord we (...I) need to update our freakin documents

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[Lio] I’m reading some guides written by therapists on dealing with DID (just because I honestly don’t often look for clinical resources, we prefer more freeform and personal type ones, but I wanted to see what’s out there and also because I have like... at least 2 friends who in the past 2 weeks have realized they’re plural and tbh one who is like teetering on it and idk if any of them want these type of resources but I figure I’ll go see what exists And Is Good)

And this one is about setting up meetings with the system. Which is a good idea but like....

1. They want you to make SURE everyone attends, which, uh, good luck with that, even in a system like ours where we’ve had 10+ years of learning how to manage things and how to dissolve barriers, we still have a pile of people who we can’t regularly contact yet, and

2. They want you to have a DAILY meeting with everyone, which if you’re a small system fine, but if you’re a big system, or even a medium sized system... that’s going to take a while out of your day!!

Like damn bro we have approximately 24 people we know of right now. If everyone gets one single minute to say how things are going and what they’d like, that’s like half an hour. If they get two minutes that’s a full on hour. If there’s a discussion to be had that’s going to go for ages.

Also I don’t think our brain could handle 24 people being active at once. We get headaches when more than like 3 or 4 people are around and/or if we switch a lot in a short time period regardless of if only one or two of us front during each switch. We’d have a constant migraine dear lord

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We have something like this! For us it doesn’t have a visual or location representative but it is some sort of mental barrier. It feels to us a bit like the membrane on injectable medication bottles that a needle can pierce but which lets nothing else through - but it’s translucent. It’s the difference for us between cofronting and backseating - someone who is ‘behind’ a fronter can still talk with them and absorb info from outside, but isn’t really aware of what’s happening firsthand.

If they pass through the barrier though, they are affected by front - we do not know how or why, but being in front feels different than backseating out of front. It’s more intense - maybe because that person is taking in direct inputs from the external world, the body, etc. There have been times where someone is concerned that they feel ‘different than usual’ but by testing between fronting and backseating, it turns out this difference is the amplifying effect front has on whoever is in it.

So yes - I guess calling it a sort of dissociative or emotional barrier makes sense. It is like a veil of sorts for us too.

I've seen this concept mentioned a few times on systok (the name for the system side of TikTok), but I've never seen it mentioned here unless we ourselves brought it up, so I'd like to make... less of a coining post, and more of an introduction post, for the whole thing.

The concept is named "the veil" (sometimes capitalized as the Veil), and it refers to the invisible boundary between the front and the innerworld, or wherever else a headmate goes/"goes" (depending on your view of it) when they are not in front. For some, this boundary is unclear or blurry; for others, it's clear; for still others, it's more than one of the above. And there are, of course, systems who would not consider themselves to have a Veil. Nevertheless, for those it applies to, the concept may help explain a phenomenon many systems go through: a disconnect of memory and information between front and elsewhere.

The Veil, as a boundary, may itself serve as a type of amnesiac barrier in a system. For those unaware, an amnesiac barrier is what's considered to cause memory issues in systems with amnesia – it's a disconnect in memory between system members, which results in memory problems like not remembering what happened when someone else was fronting. The Veil, acting as a boundary between the front and elsewhere, also serves as a disconnect between the two, which can – in the case of this disconnect being an amnesiac barrier – result in memory not carrying over from one area to the other. Examples of this include not remembering what happened in the innerworld when fronting, or not being able to recall certain details in one area, but able to recall them in the other (we in particular have a hard time remembering names when we come into front, but a much easier time remembering in the innerworld).

However, I don't think this disconnect can only affect memory. In our innerworld, we have an easier time differentiating between one another and holding onto individual identity than we do in the front – a marked difference between the two areas. Perhaps we are an outlier of a case, but I would not be surprised if others find themselves having certain abilities in one area but not the other, or at least more skill at a particular ability.

So, now that that's explained (to the best of my ability as I understand the term), I'd like to hear the thoughts of other systems and plurals. Does this concept explain some things? Are there any adaptations or additions you would make to make it fit how your system works? Would you say you have a Veil, but not one that serves as an amnesiac barrier? How does that work for you? And are there any other questions or thoughts on the concept?