One Of Our System Symbols Is The Rat King

Long system ask game!

Because it's been ages since we made one and we felt like it.

What type of system are you?

How many people are there in your system?

Do you have more introjects or non-introjects?

How much control do you have over your headspace (if you have one)?

Do you have any subsystems?

Do you have any in-system couples?

How did you discover your systemhood? Or did you become one on purpose?

How do you feel about system roles, and do you use them?

What are your thoughts on Pluralpedia?

Do you use anything to keep track of switching?

Have you ever had a change in hosts?

Do you have a system name? How did you pick it?

Do you have any nonhuman members? Feel free to list their species!

Do you have any headspace pets?

Current fronter/fronters, share some random info about you!

Do you have a partner system? How did you meet?

Have you ever mistaken a character of yours for a headmate? What about the other way around?

Does anyone have any skills that the others don't?

What's something y'all tend to agree on?

What about something you tend to disagree on?

Do symptoms of neurodivergencies/mental illness tend to manifest the same way or differently among headmates?

Do you have any syskids?

Share an in-system joke!

Has how you view your plurality changed?

If you have fictives, do they participate in their source fandom? If yes, are they open about who they are in fandom spaces?

How do you handle headmates having different spiritual beliefs?

How do you decide on major life decisions (where to live, what to study, what work to have, etc)?

Do you have any system traditons?

Current fronter, do you have your own playlist? Feel free to share it!

Do you have any art of anyone in the system? Feel free to show it off!

How do you handle it when people in the system don't get along?

Current fronter, is there anything that makes it obvious you're the one fronting? (Voice, accent, body language, typing style, etc)

If you have syskids, how do they feel about stereotypical "babby tawk"?

Share something about your newest member!

Do you tend to have collective or separate interests and hobbies?

If you have introjects, what source do you have the most from?

Are you out as plural to anyone irl?

Do you know any systems irl?

Which headmate was the biggest surprise?

Do you have a singletsona?

Do you have any collective labels?

What's the most common gender in your system?

What's the most common sexuality in your system?

What's your favorite app/website/etc for plural stuff?

Do you tend to have the same taste in food or not?

Is it hard or easy for you to switch?

Do you experience system-related amnesia?

Share something weird a headmate has done!

Current fronter, what's your favorite ice cream flavor?

Share a silly fear someone in the system has!

Current fronter, describe your aesthetic!

If you have outworld pets, do they tend to act differently around different headmates?

Has anyone ever figured out you were a system without you telling them?

When it comes to syskids, is there anyone in particular that takes care of them?

Does anyone in the system identify as otherkin, therian, or fictionkin?

Have you ever switched in an awkward moment? What happened?

Do you ever switch without realizing it?

Are you ever blurry? How do you handle it?

Has anyone ever treated an introject badly because of who their source is?

Current fronter, share a pic of your "face claim!"

I’m the host of our system. For those who may not know, that means I front the most and am generally in charge of day-to-day activities and responsibilities.

I am also a front bound host. Or front locked, front stuck, front sticky, whatever other terms you may know. This means, more or less, that I cannot leave front, at least not fully. I’m always aware of the outside to some extent and I have extremely little access to our headspace/innerworld.

For me and our system, this means a lot of things. It means that I’m the person most people outside know. It means that I make most of our decisions and generally get more authority over our life (for better or for worse). It means that I don’t get breaks. It means that majority of the time, the other members of our system can’t really front without going through me, blending with me, being covered by me.

I believe it’s unfair to live like this. The rest of my system doesn’t really get to fully be themselves on the outside. They don’t get to have their own lives, their own friends, their own body.

And for me, I can’t experience the inside. I’m cut off from the inner world/headspace, I’m cut off from anyone who isn’t also in/near front, our memories get all weird while fronting in order to keep things from me.

I have so much responsibility and yet all I really feel like is “the default”.

My headmates feel so special to me. So unique. Like they have purpose. And I know I do too, but half the time, all I feel like is another mask.

I don’t really get to know myself outside of the body. I don’t get to experience the inner world. I cannot physically interact with my headmates the same way they can with each other and it’s honestly isolating.

My job is to be the default, the mask, the “normal”. I’m not normal. Not generally speaking at least. Im neurodivergent, im queer, im weird. I’m still traumatized, I just experience it through frosted glass and ear muffs. But I still feel like the most “normal” person in this system

I feel like the most boring, the most unimportant, because I don’t even have a choice. None of us do. I have to be like this, I have to be in charge of everything, and I’m not even good at it. I don’t get it. I don’t get why I was placed in this role but there doesn’t seem to be any way to change it.

So I try my best at least.

I feel weird even talking about my experience being plural because being a frontbound host it feels like every aspect of me being plural is just the times that I’m not me. I feel like I’m telling other peoples stories, even when I’m involved.

I hate feeling like this is my system or my life because it’s not. I’m not the only one here. Me being the default doesn’t make me any more real or important than the others yet I’m practically forced to act that way cause that’s how everyone sees it.

But when I’m not saying everything is mine, it almost feels like nothing is, especially when it comes to being plural.

If it weren’t for my headmates existing, my life wouldn’t be different from any other singlet because Im always out. All of my plurality is tied to what the other people in my head do or experience and I wouldn’t experience any of that without them. It feels like the only thing that’s special about my plurality is my headmates.

They’re their own people, and they only get to express themselves openly on rare occasions. It almost feels like me talking about myself the same way they do is taking away from that because I already do that on my non-system accounts all the time. I’m the only one who ever gets to not be plural all the time, I’m the only one who gets to present as “normal” if I choose to

But it sucks feeling like I have to. It sucks feeling like this is all I am. I’m plural too. I’m part of this system, but because I’m frontbound, it doesn’t really feel like it. It feels like I’m a singlet who just watches the rest of my headmates do whatever without really being part of that plural experience or when they’re not fronting I’m just alone entirely and it’s weirdly isolating.

Frankly I’m not sure if there’s a point to this, I was just struggling to come up with ideas of what to make a comic about and it turned into this ramble. I figured some people could relate at the very least so I decided to turn it into a post anyways.

-🦩 (Jameson/Jamie, he/they/it)

I wanted a bio, so I'm making a bio.

Name: Travis Role: Council member, (mostly) ex-persecutor Pronouns: he/him

I'm the resident black magic enthusiast, and I've got a "mad scientist vibe going on." My job as a persecutor was to keep us from relying on anyone by manipulating the host away from people. These days I mostly keep an eye on the other "darker" system members.

I like silk shirts, dramatic aesthetics, spooky music, and gold jewelry.

Embrace evil alters. Yes, the antagonistic, destructive, angry ones. The ones with horrible fantasies about revenge, the ones who want to powertrip. The ones with manipulative tendencies. There’s a reason they split and exist in the system.

For me communication got easier when I stopped being so paranoid about whether I was faking or not, but if that doesn’t apply to you, disregard.

If possible, find a headmate you like who gives you permission to use positive triggers to pull to front sometimes (though discuss boundaries around when and how that’s done), and focus on communication with that one specific headmate. That’s how I became friends with Shekel - he has an incredibly vivid presence, so I can really tell when he’s nearby/co-con/fronting, and I’ve learned how to positive trigger him forward. I don’t do it often, because he’s busy on the inside and gets tired when too close to front for too long, but he told me that he’d rather me pull him to front than put the body through a panic attack, so I tend to reach out to him first. Once you learn good communication with one you can both work on communication with others.

I don’t know if you can hear your headmates on the inside, but if you can, try talking with them about things they like when they’re around - they’ll be more likely to have a genuine conversation that way in my experience, and it’ll open up communication.

I also recommend physical touch on the inside if that’s something you’re capable of and comfortable with. 90% of my interactions with the others are them coming up behind me when I’m fronting and ruffling my hair, rubbing my shoulders, slapping my ass, hugging me, etc because they know it helps comfort me and keep me calm. We find that the more we can touch in headspace the more we can communicate by… handing each other thoughts? It’s hard to explain, and it is different from communicating on the inside with words, but when Shekel and I were building the Council and debating who should be on it we were so co-conscious and overlapped on the inside it almost felt like we were having two trains of thought but we kept using our brains and each other’s to think with. I couldn’t tell if he was having a thought with my brain or if I was having a thought with his brain, but we were having ideas and discussing them without needing to say a word.

Lastly, written conversations are super helpful, but I’ve found some tricks. When co-con I like to still use discord or simply plural to write out a chat partially for posterity and partially because it’s easier to think when you’re not trying to think into someone’s brain. It really helps communication, but it can be hard to have a genuine conversation, especially if you don’t know each other well. It’s helpful to leave messages around for other headmates (ie a sticky note that says “you are safe” for any headmates that find themselves in front and are confused, or writing your shopping/to-do list on the body’s arm so everyone knows what’s supposed to be happening if they end up in front) but it’s hard to communicate through notes alone from our experience. That’s why I like to try and get them talking about themselves and their interests, it’s just a deeper bonding activity. We’re trying to pair our known headmates up into ones that specifically practice communicating with each other to better improve group cohesion, and I saw that Tamm was asking Lysander about his exomemories. They’ve never spoken directly that I know of, but they’re going to leave each other messages on simply plural until they become friends enough to communicate on the inside/more directly, and then if I want to talk to Lysander I can reach out to Tamm, who I tend to see more often.

Sorry this is so long, but good luck with communication and I hope this helps some! As always feel free to ignore any advice that doesn’t apply to or help you.

-Jay

Need to start working on getting better communication with the other's cause I'm getting anxious about not being able to have a full conversation with them and having a hard time contacting them.

I don't quite know where to start so any advice would be nice :)

It’s so much work to front when you haven’t in a while

Like, I’m glad to be back around, but Jay built up Bureaucracy (wow I didn’t know how to spell that) and I had to navigate like four things 😭

Idk man I’m just here to miss goats and wear tank tops I don’t wanna spend all my time formally joining and running The Council

But heyyyy if having a Council keeps us communicating it’s a good thing, so I can’t really complain

Shoutout to singlets that accept systems for who they are. Singlets who ask respectful questions and try to understand us. Singlets who do their best to accommodate different headmates and make them feel included. Singlets who listen to what systems have to say. You're so important. Please keep doing what you do.

I figured out how to have sex with a couple of my headmates recently and I’m still super fascinated by it. I can’t really explain how it works, especially since I tend to be frontstuck and can barely go into the inner world, but I tend to overlap a lot with the ones who cofront, and me feeling sensations while also feeling their sensations while they were feeling my sensations was kinda insane. It’s also nice that in that level of cofronting our thoughts overlap some so we didn’t have to put things into words to discuss what we wanted, we just mutually agreed on what the dynamics were/what we were doing.

REBLOG IF YOU LOVE YOUR HEADMATES!!!!