Hungry Ghosts

(Crosspost from Tumblr)

I want to write a full thing on doubt and plurality another time, but seeing some posts around here has lit a fire under my tail to at least ramble about our experiences with it.

Long story short: we're at the point where we don't really experience doubt anymore, but it wasn't always like that. Over a decade in the making, by this point.

( Read more... )

also to be included in a more polished essay later: old post we made about improving social skills

Well, at the risk of being pedantic, neither I nor anyone else can teach you how to make everyone like you. That's just impossible, and I'd also argue that trying for that just makes it harder to develop real social skills, since an important part of social interaction is accepting that you won't get along with everyone (even if both you and they are decent people! sometimes folks just aren't compatible)

Now that's been said, I've seen these resources recommended for improving your social skills:

• https://www.succeedsocially.com/ (have not read this one myself)
• https://captainawkward.com/ (read it back in the day, seems fairly sensible)

Some posts on Reddit got me compiling a few plurality-related lists, so I thought I'd share them here in case people have suggestions for additions. (Thank you to folks in the Otherconnect server for your contributions!)

Notes on curation: You'll notice that this list doesn't include (micro)label listings (e.g. Pluralpedia). This is intentional - this list was born partly out of a complaint I've seen from a lot of pluralfolk, which is that there are so many microlabel/term coining and definition posts that they bury other resources. Likewise, I've seen complaints that term/origin/etc slapfighting buries all of the other resources that are out there. Besides a brief section on unlearning Western-centric ideas about selfhood (which I think is important beyond the plural community), I'm not going to link resources specifically related to said slapfighting.

Make no mistake, though: this list is for resources that are inclusive of all plural people. Not everyone will find everything on this list applicable to their system, and we can't speak for every opinion that the creators linked here may hold, but we do draw the line at "resources" that disavow others' lived experiences. Please contact us if we link anything like that so it can be removed.

Pragmatic Advice

(improving internal communication, building headspace, etc)

• Healthy Multiplicity - collection of selves-help resources
• LB Lee's plural essays - LOTS OF STUFF. Highly recommended!
• Dragonheart Collective's plural writings - smaller essay collection but still quite good
• Being Many - site full of plural advice
• Sarah K. Reece's multiplicity essays - less guides and more personal writings, but still contain a lot of good observations
• Hungry Ghosts' plural essays - it's us! Some opinioning, some advice
• The Tulpanomicon - site full of Western/internet tulpamancy guides - while they were made in the context of that community, many systems, even disordered ones, have found them useful
• Multiplicity: The Missing Manual + United Front Boot Camp - have not read this one ourselves but often see it recommended
• Healing My Parts' advice blog - disordered plurality focus. Have not read it ourselves, but often see individual articles from it linked.

Things to Consider Writing Down for Your System, Specifically

(not necessarily for sharing with others - in fact, some of these *shouldn't* be shared outside the system for safety reasons)

• A guide for new members of the system: see Dragonheart Collective's guide on making one.
• House rules, complaint boxes, or other internal governance things: see LB Lee's System Governments and Other Order-Keepers
• Crisis plan, good to have even if your crises are "mild": see How to Make a Pocket Crisis Guide + The Psychological Badness Scale + Crisis Planning: The Hit-by-a-Bus Plan
• Notes about things that make internal communication or switching easier: front triggers, useful tools, etc
• List of collective outerworld responsibilities and the things needed to accomplish them
• Individual wishlists and collective budget
• Hobbies, interests, things people want to front for
• Individual or system-wide journals
• Troubleshooting guides: any useful sub-crisis supports for getting through common challenges in your system. E.G. if your system frequently loses internal communications and has to use some specific tricks to re-establish it, or if you use a specific procedure to get around memory gaps, then that might be something that you'd want to write down.
• List of friends/family/etc. and which of them know about the system in cases where disclosure isn't universal and memory for who knows what is lacking. Could help avoid accidental disclosure and/or re-disclosure.
• Printouts/backups of helpful articles and quotes that you wouldn't want to lose to link rot or other factors.
• Sources for ideas and approaches that have worked in case you need to reference them.
• When making system rosters/notes: for folks who don't find names/pronouns/pictures useful because of folks who prefer to remain unidentified, sometimes asking folks to draw a symbol to represent themselves helps because a given image doesn't have to be exclusive to someone. It can give useful information without being uniquely identifying, kind of like how some Tumblr anons will sign with emojis.
• Any internal symbolism that's useful to have written down. Knowing that something in headspace or an aspect of someone's form is likely to have XYZ meanings can be surprisingly handy.

Things to Share with Outerworld People

• Name, pronouns, pictures (use Picrew, not genAI), short Twitter-esque bios
• Etiquette and interaction guidelines for outerworld folks: see the Plural Etiquette Questionnaire
• Frequently asked questions about your system (divided into "okay to ask," "iffy," and "just plain rude" if you feel like it)

Software for Plural Systems

(important note: we have not used all of these and cannot personally endorse each of them)

• Simply Plural (app for tracking fronting and sharing fronting status, plus some tools like in-system chat)
• PluralKit (Discord proxybot for posting with different names/avatars from one account, also contains tools like front tracking)
• Tupperbox (another Discord proxybot)
• Pronouns.cc (site where you can make profiles to share your pronouns and other handy info, but it lets you make subprofiles for headmates)
• fronters.cc (site that displays fronters from PluralKit/Simply Plural)
• Lighthouse (private journals, forum, and other tools for your system)
• Ampersand (local-only front tracking and journaling tool)
• Utter (local-only tool for having ephemeral in-sys chats)
• PluralChat (also a local-only tool for ephemeral in-sys chats)
• MultiChat (ditto, but it's a desktop application)
• Plu/ral/ (PluralKit alternative)
• Octocon (PK/SP alternative - have heard rumors that the creators are medicalist/exclusionary though?)
• Twinote (Android, iOS) (like Twitter but all offline and for your system only)
• Antar (can be used for in-sys chats, local-only but not ephemeral)
• Perfect PK (webapp for managing switches in PluralKit)
• PKswitcher (ditto)
• PluralKit Switch Calendar (webapp for visualizing PluralKit switches)
• Pronoun Dressing Room (site for trying out pronouns and names - could be helpful for new headmates?)
• Syschat (Another offline selves-chat app, for desktop)
• Switchy - Minecraft mod that allows players to create "profiles" that can be switched between. Includes PluralKit-esque chat proxies, separate skins, separate inventories, and more. Highly configurable, so specific features can be enabled or disabled.

"Unlearning Western-Centric Ideas of Selfhood" Copypasta

I recommend reading about plural history and divergent experiences of selfhood across the world. It's extremely important to realize that the concept of a static, singular self being the only "normal" and "healthy" way of being is a Western construct; same with realizing that the experience of being more-than-one transcends both clinical diagnoses and the limited ways the (very Western and very online) plural community presents it.

Here's a few links to get you started.

• LB Lee's essay series on plural history
• The origin of the term "endogenic" (note how its meaning when it was first coined differs from how people use it now) and the history of the use of "system" in plural spaces
• Can the DSM-5 differentiate between nonpathological possession and dissociative identity disorder? A case study from an Afro-Brazilian religion (research paper, what it says on the tin)
• Big Sourcedump of Nonwhite Spirit Marriage, Possession, and Many-Selvedness (1878-2022) (what it says on the tin)
• The Mask As The Truest Thing (essay about the fluidity of self, by a Nigerian writer. my description does not do it justice)
• The Importance of Being Real (essay on questioning the fears behind being "fake", and the maladaptive behaviors they spawn)
• A Cure For Plural Piss-Fight Poisoning (very down-to-earth, concrete advice on how to detox from plural discourse. Can be applied to all kinds of online discourse tbh)
• A catalog of plural stories and notes about its curation

Resources for Allies

• There are many plural 101s out there, but we'd recommend More Than One (simple and has links for reading more) or Manchester Metropolitan University's Understanding Multiplicity for something from a more formal source.
• "So You Want To Write A Plural Character" by Dragonheart Collective
• Allies of Plurals Handbook by Partielles (original French), translated by volunteers at The Plural Association
• The Plurality Playbook by FreyasSpirit and Irenes - "To help employees and managers understand dissociative disorders, as well as plurality as a whole."
• Transgender Mental Health by Eric Yarbrough - clinician handbook with a section on healthcare for trans plural systems

Other Plural Linkdumps

(note: most of these we haven't had the time to go through myself, so take their contents with a grain of salt)

• https://dragonsroost.neocities.org/pluralstuff
• https://rainofthestorm.tumblr.com/post/791727767718887424/our-writing
• https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQbPN-H73NqKfaqW9lRlJ6HGg2AyakxIwr9yZnubKBUJW2Ylu2EwhMYCCyYfnxWBe6P-Lhd16zPNlUs/pub
• https://na.beepbird.net/articles/references/plurality-links.html
• https://bodyetal.dreamwidth.org/13259.html
• https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1UEQWnf2BzW68myosiEr99veglHPpyFqyu6OcZuRATNQ/
• https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1lo0xPDXnGva_ATQzuyf5LAgQayviYXInrIqP-DmPfjY/
• https://jewel-tumbleweed-58b.notion.site/Plurality-Link-Dump-15ff8648807c4662b1488a3e514889bf
• https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1FtYqf6DPyaiAyE0Wqg7-WoUrNVTGOF0RmYIA6uyvt_o/
• https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/12qUQ0YM841Xv_GIBDNYMrcJ1OVrwRUI8m2bUK5Cfcdc/
• https://sites.google.com/view/plural-jumpstart/home
• https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/194r4fqmoyaur0-C_xZldEt-1z59lXsi39cobSp8dQlo/
• https://pluralityresource.org/affiliates/
• https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1SoLIir_edIef9rNQGy6rlvHraW18hvp8pnPpGgxESPk/
• https://www.zotero.org/groups/4956615/altarchive/collections/AKUUMJM7/items/QH2GF2DK/collection
• https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1bLejRXsgJ3NRlHQOeXUe3lPtnBJ8qYj3Ope0-8QTRFY/

[By Lark. Crossposted from /r/Plural.]

In an earlier thread about system roles, it was brought up that much of the history around roles has been buried. There is no reference for who came up with the concept of roles or where the older roles like "protector" originated. My system is in contact with LB Lee, who are an older system with a great dedication to researching and documenting plural history. We reached out to them to ask if they had any knowledge regarding the origins of system roles, and they wrote a post about their findings.

The post itself is extremely well-cited: it delves through medical texts and biographies from as far back as the 1970s. It is worth your time if you have an interest in plural history. But I think the most important takeaways come from these paragraphs:

[...]of all these other terms, all of them come from medical contexts. If they aren't outright, obviously created by therapists themselves (Ralph Allison, Cornelia Wilbur), they're cited in books that they were involved in--like Sybil or the Minds of Billy Milligan. These are terms created by medical personnel to compartmentalize and organize headmates like a stamp collection... and often deny us the right to self-determine or grow. There's an icky historical context there; there's a reason these terms were considered unfashionable tools of the oppressor when we came on the scene in 2007!

These therapists are not little tin gods you should worship. There's a reason Allison, Ross, and Wilbur have controversies about them! [...]

To be clear, I am not sharing this to shame systems for using roles. Nor am I sharing this to claim that roles are for trauma-formed systems only and that it is appropriation for other systems to have roles. Please do not use this post as grounds to start yet another exclusionary slapfight.

What I do want us, as a community, to do instead:

( Read more... )

[Lark]

I made two posts that I would like to flesh out into essays, in the future. For now, I'm going to store the first drafts here, in a place less impermanent than our Reddit comment history.

The first concerns the experience of taking over as primary fronter in a time of crisis; the second concerns a peculiar relationship I have with a specific fictional character.

( Read more... )

(this did severals over on fedi so it's probably worth crossposting here, even if it doesn't quite meet my standards for a "finished" essay)

sometimes while trawling plural spaces, I see folks posting about how they feel "useless" and like they aren't "doing their job," and the framing is always something along the lines of "my role is [protector/caretaker/Some Other Noun], so it's my job to [Do Thing], but I haven't been able to do it for [entirely understandable reasons], so I feel like I'm a bad [protector/caretaker/Some Other Noun] and that my existence in the system is pointless"

and... this is just reminding me of why my headmates and I have a personal vendetta against the concept of system roles as they're so often used in the community. because very often, roles are used in a very prescriptive way, where being a protector/caretaker/Some Other Noun is something that you are rather than something that you do, and thus Doing Your Job is the Reason for your existence.

when, you know, that's kind of a fucked up thing to put on yourself, you know? everyone should be allowed to exist without a Reason and without having to perform some Service to justify their continued existence. (and like, I get that in plurality, so many of us come into existence for some reason, but there's a difference between acknowledging your history and continuing to keep yourself in the box even when it's suffocating you, you know?)

and like. so often the things that folks are expecting themselves to do, 24/7, as their Role In The System are unrealistic and unsustainable. stuff like being The Functional One or The One Who Takes All Of The Pain Away or somesuch while the system is in living situations that are frankly untenable, like living under the thumb of people who tear them down day after day. and like, I get it, sometimes your options are limited because you're just a kid and the abusers who have you under their thumb are your parents and there are no fucking good options anywhere for kids to get out of bad home situations, and you have no choice but to tread water or to take the Devil's boat.

but I think that at the very least, it's worth acknowledging that this is treading water rather than any kind of viable solution, that Being The One Who Takes The Pain Away is an impossible thing to maintain forever, and that when you inevitably are unable to keep up the facade anymore, that is not a problem with you. you did not fail, your existence is not pointless because you couldn't keep up with an impossible demand into perpetuity; it is not you that needs to change, it is your living situation, even if the only change you can make right now is tiny, tiny. even if the only change is forgiving yourself for being a limited being, like all of the rest of us.

'Your Life Is Not Over: A Book Of Apocalypses And How To Survive Them' is a zine for newly sick and disabled people (or people who have been here a while and are struggling), with poetry and practical tips.

The tips are the things I wish I'd known twenty years ago, which disabled people often have to learn on their own through painful experience, about dealing with doctors, rest, building systems to manage your condition, and more.

The poetry centres on the fact that we are told so few stories about what disabled lives look like, and they're almost always from abled people's imaginations. We don't get told the stories of adapting, having a happy life while still sick and sore and tired. I have tried to tell some of our real stories of coping with grief and rage and then getting on with living.'

Beast Breaker is a turn-based, mouse-bouncing adventure. You play as a tiny warrior named Skipper, tasked with defending innocents from giant mosaic beasts that threaten to destroy everything.

The game combines satisfying pinball physics with tactical decision making. Pick a style of attack, line up the best angle, and launch! Watch Skip careen around the screen and break the giant beasts to pieces.

Along the way, you will meet a vibrant cast of characters who will help you craft equipment, master unique new fighting styles, and maybe even discover the origin of the Beasts...