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@fireboltsystem
☄️🎪 Welcome to the Firebolt Circus System's Blog! 🎪☄️
You can call us Bolts or Firebolts (They/them). Bodily 25, Collectively aroace and genderfluid. We're pro-endo and traumaendo ourselves - we prefer anti-endos to not interact.
Interacts from @sonicaspeed123, but our art/personal blog is @jax-ass.
Stim blog: @fireboltstims
Plural Sexuality blog: @system-sexuality
[Divider by @pixopix!]
Non-comprehensive member list below! (Updated 3/25/26)
Intentionality does not equal faking. Is an autistic person learning to unmask "faking autism" by forcing themself to act differently from usual? Is a trans person "faking their gender" by modifying their presentation to give themself gender euphoria, and not just naturally exuding it without any transition? Is putting therapeutic skills into practice to heal from trauma "fake thinking," because it takes effort to break from those patterns? Does any friction during any process indicate being on the wrong path?
Choosing is a vital part of accepting yourself. Choose yourself. You'll rarely just stumble into yourself. Do it on purpose.
I love seeing posts from long-dormant alters of ours still getting notes. You were here. Someone read what you had to say. Thank you for leaving your mark on our life. We remember you.
metadata is part of your message. your name, your avatar, all communicate things about you. if your message was sent by a different user it would often be interpreted differently.
this is even more true for plural systems, who, with tools like PluralKit (or even just emoji signifying), have to decide for each message who to indicate said a thing, or whether to indicate such information at all.
with an established rapport, a lot of meaning can be conveyed with the use of a proxy. something that would be rude out of one headmates mouth may seem friendly from another (see: calibration). but less positive associations can be built too. "oh god you're in front is everything ok?" is not necessarily a nice association to have with your existence (although perhaps useful for some).
tightly built rapports with other systems can convey a lot. "oh you immediately fronted when i talked about this fantasy, is that good for you~?". "you two are in front together a lot, do you like each other or something~?". there is space to build very intimate understandings of a system's inner workings.
but this creates a dilemma with more distant relationships. if someone doesn't know your system well enough to pick up on the extra information provided by a choice of proxy, how much do they need that? oftentimes systems will end up offering headmate explanations, system diagrams, simplyplural accounts, etc. early on in a relationship to frontload this information and open up those communicative potentials right away, rather than letting someone learn over time. but for large systems this can also be overwhelming, a lot of information for someone to internalise at once.
a tension is created, between plurality as a model for understanding yourself, and as a tool for communicating with other people.
do you show a full system diagram? or only a simplified version with the headmates you think someone is likely to meet. how much do you elide variations between similar headmates to simplify yourself for other people. it's often a terrible plural anxiety, to think you're too big or complicated for many people to care to understand. but these are also decisions made every time someone "lies" about a proxy, choosing to hide the fact a more vulnerable headmate is in front, or when someone chooses a less accurate but more socially appropriate avatar for public spaces.
models of plurality as a socially realised identity, and as a form of internal self understanding will probably always be in tension. but it's worth thinking about their interactions
Adonis Blue (Lysandra bellargus) butterflies basking in the sun.
PLURALS: do you consider your collective transgender? Why if yes?
Yes; because the body is
Yes; because the host is
Yes; because the majority of headmates don't align with the body's sex
yes; some other reason
No
How can I learn more about this disorder?
Depends! As far as the medical perspective goes, my understanding is that the DSM-5 and ICD-11 are the primary diagnostic tools used. They've got lists of criteria and symptoms in a very medical context. I know there's studies out there about complex dissociative disorders (CDDs) as well, but we haven't really read any of them.
We mostly hear from other plurals and systems here on tumblr for other perspectives.
Resources about dissociation in general can also be quite helpful, whether you're disordered or not.
I'd steer clear of insular places like discord servers or subreddits - at least as a single source of information. Take in lots of information, not just from a single place! Remember that systems (as a whole Or just CDD systems) are not a monolith, and there's exceptions to every "rule" people try to put in place.
Honestly, looking at the tag #plural comic might be a good place to start if you want to know what it's like to be a system! Lots of folks use art to express and explain their experiences over there.
We're far from an authority on the subject to be honest - so feel free to ask around!
I feel like the system community treats "how similar are your system members/how much do you share with your system members" as one clean, whole thing when like. It'd probably be easier to talk about if you broke it down into different categories.
Maybe your skill sharing is high, like 80%. Meanwhile, your speech patterns vary wildly, so you say they're only about 30% shared. Maybe your episodic memory sharing is at 65%, your semantic memory sharing is at 95%, and your procedural memory sharing is at 75%. Maybe your values are 85% shared, maybe your life goals are 20% shared, maybe your identity is 90% shared. There's a lot of different variables and things you can share, you know? I could go on.
Trying to turn all of that into one average of "how alike are all of you" doesn't seem very helpful, but for some reason, we expect it of so many systems. So, if you struggle with answering "How similar are you all?", maybe try this out and see if it's a more useful framework for you.
Whatever you do don't forget to get stuck in front while missing your wife or other beloved sourcemates
Outside of situations where masking plurality is necessary (e.g. where someone may use known memory problems as an abuse tool), you probably need to mask yourselves less than you think.
Very, very few people will notice overt plurality without being directly told about it. The few that might notice tend to be plural themselves or have plural friends, and they tend to be safe to be spotted by anyway because they're familiar with plurality and how to handle it respectfully.
The average person doesn't have plurality on their radar in the first place. Heck, they barely know what DID is, assuming that they live somewhere it's a diagnosis option, and they've never heard of anything beyond that. Most people will see overt plurality and think "oh, they're moody, or genderfluid, or just use a lot of names, or do a lot of things, or..." if they notice anything different at all.
Seriously, people are oblivious. You can introduce yourself by three different names, have wildly different preferences and modes of expression, and even toss in an accent. The most you might get in response is "are you okay?" (to which the non-disclosure answer is something like "yeah, just feeling different today" or "yeah, I'm just like this sometimes, it's normal". They'll usually let it go if you don't make a fuss about it).
In any case, people are probably not looking for signs of plurality when talking to you- they're more focused on the conversation. The odds of them noticing something different in the first place and bringing it up are low. They have other things to talk about.
common occurrence
What does trauma endo/mixed origin mean? Endo means non traumagenic so how can you be trauma endo. Also how can you be mixed origins
Gen q
What does "being multigender" mean How can u be a boy And a girl being a boy means youre not a girl.......... -🪷
But fr our system's origin is mainly traumagenic, but most of our alters are endogenic (born from fiction or intentionally created, rather than as a direct response to trauma). Both traumagenic and endogenic suit us, and we need both lenses to fully understand and live with our plurality in a way that makes us happiest. Just saying we're traumagenic ignores all of us who are not, and just saying we're endogenic ignores the trauma that we definitely experienced and the effects we deal with to this day.
Being traumaendo is one kind of mixed origin - it's just having multiple factors for the formation of your system. If someone feels like their neglect and their bullying contributed to their system's formation in distinct ways they could also claim to be mixed origins if they wanted to. If someone has soulbonds and traumagenic alters, or created headmates and dream-born headmates, headmates that have been around since they were born and headmates that are the literal children of those headmates, or any combination you can think of. It's a much broader category than just traumaendo systems. -🫖
One big final onceover for our simplyplural to export it and have all our info completely consistent across it, ampersand, and our big google doc of profiles... honestly keeping 3 separate databases up to date was lofty expectations to begin with wodnskao
Good luck gleaning any useful information from this one chat
Seasonal hobbies are so difficult when your frequent fronters shift around often. Even just activities you can't do if the weather is bad outside. Balancing adult responsibilities with having fun is hard enough when you're just one person. When I want to bike it's raining and freezing, when it's a beautiful day outside Someone else is fronting. URGH
One big final onceover for our simplyplural to export it and have all our info completely consistent across it, ampersand, and our big google doc of profiles... honestly keeping 3 separate databases up to date was lofty expectations to begin with wodnskao
I feel like some folks put too much weight on whether a part of your identity is "voluntary" or "involuntary".
Every single part of me, I had to choose to accept it and practice it before it felt right. Every facet, every system member, every interest and hobby, every step of growth towards a happier life, I had to look at it and decide "Yes, I will let this flourish within me. I will do the work it takes to let it exist". Being queer, being alterhuman, being plural, being an artist, transitioning, healing from trauma, accepting my autism, making progress with my anxiety, EVERYTHING.
Whether or not these things were intrinsically a part of me before I intentionally recognized and validated them is only relevant in the sense that ignoring them made me completely miserable. And I suppose that's the difference between "voluntary" and "involuntary" - whether or not you can live happily without it. But who the hell am I to deny someone else happiness just because it's supplementary for them?? Why put a cap on someone else's enrichment? If you are not starving, are you not allowed to eat?
In my case, I probably COULD live without having recognized any of these involuntary identities - I would not be happy, I would not be ME, but I could live as that person, technically. I just don't want to. And I think that choice is a great one. I don't like watering that choice down by calling everything I experience "involuntary". Is deviation only acceptable when the abnormal simply can't help being strange? Can we only allow people to live outside of these boxes if they literally cannot fit inside?
I am who I am on purpose - not from the start, but certainly now, on purpose.
