[kingslayer]

I don’t think we, as a poly-fragmented system, could ever imagine living not as a system. Alters don’t come out one at a time for us, so we help each other with every activity big and small. And not switching actually usually feels more harmful than helpful for us because we switch a lot and we have multiple alters co-con and co-fronting at any given time. None of us would know how to exist without others helping us with something. If one of us was forced to be the only one in the body forever, I think they wouldn’t be able to do it on their own. The reason why we can exist and why we have been doing so much better now that we’ve accepted this is because we work together now.

I think it also depends on if the trauma would still happen in our past. Because without DID, I don’t think we’d be alive. My system has saved itself so many times. If they didn’t have anyone (even just alters to talk to in their head), I don’t think we would even be here.

I think our system is a little strange because even when we didn’t know what was going on, we knew we got “possessed” sometimes and had people living in our head. And sometimes it was hell, but sometimes, it was the only people we had to talk to at all even if we thought we were losing it. And while we do have amnesia and all the shitty PTSD symptoms and we do struggle a lot still every single day, I don’t think I’d be anywhere without my system to help me manage everything from memories, to life events, to just making sure I eat every day. So, I don’t think I would take that pill personally.

[kingslayer]

For us, on a chill self-care/rainy day we usually don’t do a whole lot, but the activities we do can vary between a few things. We will listen to music (though we do that most days anyway), watch YouTube videos about either a tv show/movie we like, watch a let’s play, or watch something historical/craft/information related. We also journal and write poetry or stories if we feel up to it. And we like to make digital collages/photo edit sort of things for fun sometimes if we have an idea for something!

[kingslayer]

Our organization is a mess. We still don’t want most people irl to know, so we try to avoid physical forms of communication when possible. Sometimes it’s not avoidable, especially if our gatekeepers have shutdown co-con communication, so we do use it in those cases.

But for general everyday communication, we might use different apps for different sorts of information we need to communicate or talk mentally in like that co-con state. We’re still not very good at figuring things out, but slowly and surely, we’re making progress on knowing what each alter feels like and establishing times for them to come out that would be safe and comfortable for them.

Which we’re basically playing telephone to some degree at times. Information gets transferred around the inner world by alters who know each other, telling them if they know something the other might not.

Overall, we’re disorganized, lol. But we do try.

– Rigby

[kingslayer]

I believe ASL would be beneficial for our system as well since certain alters are or can become selectively mute in certain circumstances. Both the hosts and I are hoping to learn at the very least some signs that may be helpful. Our main difficulty is finding others in our life who would be willing to learn with us so they could understand us (Most do not know the entirety of how difficult it can be to speak or be functional in other ways, let alone us being a system). But I still believe it would be valuable to learn for future use with people willing to learn as a way to support us. – H

[kingslayer]

Our whole system (as far as we know) does not identify with our legal name. A previous host changed it (also for transition), but now none of us really identify with it since that host has since gone fractured a couple of times and is dormant. And most people know us by our unofficial “preferred” name which was the host after that who fractured later into me (Shadow) and Alien.

For us, I would love to have a “body” name that is comfy or tolerable for most of the system when we’re being covert (which is most of the time). Because hosts are very inconsistent with our system and I don’t think it would be best for the system to change the name to either mine or Alien’s. Plus, we have strange names, lol. But finding that name sounds like a very difficult task so don’t know if we’ll ever do it.

[kingslayer]

Hi! Shadow & Alien here,

We both were sort of “born” with our names. We’re both introjects of music-related things. Shadow’s full name is Shadow Moses (a song that a previous host had an OC based on) and Alien’s is Hesitant Alien (an album that the same host also had an OC based on). The same goes for Tyler and Hannibal. The character they’re sourced from has that name so they kinda just took on that name.

Melody is named Melody because she’s a fictive of Babydoll from Suckerpunch but didn’t want to keep that as her name after going by that for a while and she really identified with the line from a My Chemical Romance song, “I’m not the singer that you wanted, but a dancer.” And she wanted a music-related name and it fit.

Rigby chose his name after going through lists of baby names. For him, it just felt like it fit.

And I think Lizzie is named that because it was similar to the body’s name at one point.

Others kinds just knew or had come to the conclusion of their name before I met them/realized they were there. I should ask them sometime about that.

But yeah, that’s some of the backstories behind our names.

[kingslayer]

We’re from the US (like the western part).

[kingslayer]

Hi, I’m Shadow (they/them, 20, host) and some Lizzie (she/her, 20, protector) co-con.

In general, we love to listen to music and make playlists. We also like a lot of tv shows and we’re currently watching Lucifer, but some others we really like are Being Human, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Hannibal (which we have a fictive of Hannibal and sort of fictive of Will who goes by Rigby in our system). Also Star Trek, Star Wars, and space operas in general!! Those are usually fun too.

We also like comic books/comic-based stuff, especially the old Vertigo comics from DC. We’re super slow at getting through them. Reading is also just fun in general, but again, very slow at getting through anything.

A lot of our time gets filled with trying to do homework for college though, lol.

[kingslayer]

We usually use Pluralkit on discord or an app called Antar, though we definitely seem to prefer Pluralkit because it’s a lot easier for us personally to organize in our experience. We also try to track who’s out with the Simply Plural app too.

For general information, we’ll leave a note in the notes app on our phone and just hope for the best, lol.

– Uncertain, very fuzzy.

[kingslayer]

Usually, we make playlists on Spotify. I hadn’t ever heard of that one before now. And we’re studying anthropology, though we’re early on enough that we might change our major if we can decide on one we like a little better.