How does your median system work?
vagabondsun - 2019-12-04 15:50:41
I don't think I've ever met two medians who work exactly the same way, so I thought it'd be interesting to collect some experiences.
Personally, wei slide around between almost-entirely-singlet and almost-entirely-plural a fair bit. Sometimes, the only thing that makes us the same person is our mutual agreement to consider ourselves such - on the other hand, right now I feel pretty much exactly like a regular singular person.\ But I wouldn't say muir selves-experience is exactly a linear scale of more or less separation.
- Sometimes wei experience it in a very stereotypical person-with-voices-in-their head way, with whoever's not 'front' (wei actually tend to call it 'being on top') providing commentary. Because there's three of us it matches up pretty nicely to the angel/devil on your shoulder trope. Except all of muis are devils. Everyone is terrible.
- Sometimes it's a singular monologue with every sentence coming from a different facet, like literally being in
twothree minds about things. Wei can almost sense the 'color' of each facet's input in a synesthesia-like way. - Sometimes it's what happens when you pour three streams of consciousness into one, creating a slurry that's the sum or average of muir opinions, like some kind of dark neural network producing a person out of three sets of input.
- Sometimes we manifest completely separately inworld. We haven't really tested the limits of this, but I intuit that it'd become physically uncomfortable to move away from each other after a certain distance, kind of like daemons in HDM.
- Speaking of daemons, sometimes it's just like that (well, the other, irl kind). A person making a conscious effort to talk to themselves.
Wei have little to no control over which facet is on top at any given time, except for in certain liminal moments where wei're blendy or mid-transition, and might be able to reach out and push things in a certain direction. This tends to be when wei're just waking up, or spaced out in the shower, or switching with another discreet headmate.
What about y'all? Where do you consider yourself on the singlet/plural axis, if you do at all? How different are your facets from each other, in terms of personality, autonomy, or anything else? What is it that makes you feel connected?
cryptonomica - 2019-12-04 16:45:39
Most of the time it feelts like its just me in here until something happens to get one of my facet's attention (Sanrio things for Robert, lolita things for the Luteces in general, Eddie's girlfriend, Dooku's fond of hearing things about his niece, ect ect ect.)\ We don't have any kind of in-world so its just a void until one of them is able to wrestle the front away, but even then its still Me. I'm like a giant robot piloted by a shitload of people and sometimes one of them controls more than everyone else.\ We used to be a lot more seperate in terms of orientations and certain mental quirks! Jones was the #1 narcissist and Happy was the token AroAce but I've started getting some of those traits back from them since our break-apart moment.\ Phil is also waving hi since I'm talking about facets. Hi Phil
(archive note: post redacted)
Sugarvenom - 2019-12-05 11:33:36
[CW consensual integration]
My median system I feel works a bit weirdly because I originally wasn't median, and then the old host, who is the original we think, Luwana, integrated into me, and now I'm a me-dominant median. Which sounds weird to say. I'm a Selene-dominant median, there.
My primary self-identity is the post-fictive Selene, same as before. But I have a bunch of memories that are mine, but that I actively identify as not mine, despite being mine. Those are Luwana's. As years pass, they become more "mine" but I still feel weird about them.
I'm less… distinctly me than I used to be. I yip, I squeak, I lean in for headscritches. I squee and yammer. All Luwana behaviours, all have become part of the median system that is, for want of a better word, me.
However, wei (first time using that hah) are prone to sliding around towards more me and more Luwana. It feels like switching, honestly. Sometimes I will slide to strongly Selene, sometimes I will slide to strongly Luwana. It feels weird to feel her presence and also know that she's just, me, now, whereas we used to be completely multiple.
I feel wei lean towards singlet, honestly, in this respect? It feels like a very strange experience, and one where my identity is kind of, different and not within my control anymore, but one where I do remain me.
SatuSepiida - 2019-12-05 20:40:05
We're still trying to figure out how this system works. We're now on the multiple side of median, though we've been on the singlet side also. Things are fluid. It's been almost a year since we discovered each other and our plurality. I suppose that's not enough time to have it all figured out. There's probably not enough time in muir life for that, heh. The things we know are kind of convoluted, and many of us have different perspectives. Here are some main points:
- Our median plurality is fluid. We may spend months at a time near-singlet, then swing over to practically multiple just with shared thoughts and memories.
- We're a mixed origin/quoigenic system.
- Aloysius has been default front for five or six years. They aren't the original original, but they were the person we thought we all were before realizing each other. So they're the closest we have to an original. We're used to being them and they're who we feel like most when fused.
- Quasar is our protector and probably emerged around the same time as Aloysius. He has an adaptive origin and tends to take a psychological perspective on things.
- We call it the bodymind. Our system shares a bodymind. We're bodymind-mates. Quasar believes the self/soul is a phenomenon arising from the bodymind. Triinu has a complicated theory of souls based in "soul dualism."
- Triinu is our healer. She has a spiritual origin, but did not come from outside. She's been here since childhood.
- Alo, Quasar, and Triinu all have daemons. We know there are other medians who see each other as daes, but that didn't work for us. When Alo is stuck front and coms go down or the others go dormant, xe still has Mint. Dae and daemian kinda seem to be like intentional subsystems, but on the "singlet" side of the spectrum. Schrodinger's subsystems. Triinu sees daes as a type of soul.
- We have a subsystem of fragments/shards/shadows, probably of adaptive origin. We're working on finding ways to communicate and work with them.
The_Flock - 2019-12-12 19:37:29
It oftentimes feels complicated to explain how wei work, but I'll give it a shot.
Wei're philosophically and by identification one 'person,' but practically work out to being very fluid in how unified/separate wei feel.
- Wei don't necessarily have memory barriers, but wei do 'catch up' on info and memories gathered while another facet was phased in when wei each individually come back around to front, so wei each have our own reactions and time spent processing things. I might say that while wei don't have cognitive memory barriers, wei may have emotional or other sorts of memory barriers.
- Sometimes wei're all very separate in that there's one facet on top, that's the one "I" identify as at the time, and the others are still all "me" but are separate and not present to give an opinion or comment as. Wei have different pronoun preferences, genders, orientations, beliefs, feelings, alterhuman identities, ways of dressing, you name it. It's honestly hard to explain how wei can seem to differ so much and yet function so singularly.
- Other times, wei're very blendy in a way where if you asked which of us wei were, wei'd tell you "yes." All of us. Where we're all present to some degree, usually surfacing and drifting back like bubbles in a lava lamp, each of us speaking as we find it relevant to. It seems like this might be a way wei manifest Inworld, too, judging by how often wei have to decide on a facet to present as when going back in front.
- Other times, wei're very blendy in a way where if you asked which of us wei were, wei'd tell you "no." None of us. Sometimes wei blend until all that's left is the gestalt "me" that wei are, together, and very little of the individual identities that make it up. When it's like this, wei can't communicate across facets because wei aren't working as facets, and it's very uncomfortable and dysfunctional.
- There's also another subsystem within the subsystem, not belonging to any particular facet but just existing separately as part of "me," that wei call the Host Stack, where the identities and memories of previous facets that played "Host" are stored away since they used to change predictably every 2-3 years. Presumably with our lost ability to swim (again). (We've gained and lost the ability to swim many times, we guess, because of the median "splitting" and dissociative barriers.) Now that wei're more plural than before, wei can't be sure how that's going to work from here on out.
Wei seem to have a sort of sub-headspace void, where wei visualize each-other's presences and sometimes feel each-other separately and can speak to each-other. Wei're not sure that there's anything there though.
Switching is something wei can do on purpose, to some degree. It can be triggered by external things that relate to individual facets, or wei can just talk to each-other and sorta … step outta the way and let the other facet walk in. It's honestly such a non-switch both in how it feels and often how it appears, though, that wei tend to call it phasing instead, based on some old terminology I coined on Tumblr.
Most of the time it's not something wei try to influence, though. Wei just naturally drift between each of muis and it feels very much like gender-fluidity in how the brain just does what it wants on any given day and wei'll slowly drift from facet to facet over any random amount of time.
Wei're ultimately not really sure what makes muis all the same person, other than that wei agree to be, and share responsibility for the identity that's been experiencing Outworld life for most of this body's life and has most of the memories, and because of that agreement integrate into a shared identity? It seems there is a degree of actual integration that has to happen in order to function, which is why wei're all here by choice. Folks have both split off from and integrated into this median rodeo in the past, even long before it was configured the way it is now.
It took muis a very long time to figure out the median thing. And then to forget all of it after a major split and confuse later expressions of medianhood for kintypes, new system members, Borderline PD, and more! So wei hope that there's a rise in median narratives, especially in the gross community climate we're in where medians are misrepresented and shunned, will help more folks figure themselves out.
[archive note: post redacted]