[niceplural]

we're a plural system (18+) that likes drawing. this is a general blog for reblogging or posting whatever we want, as long as it pertains to our system or to plurality in general.

no discourse please and thankies. 🦌 : she/they. deer! has some semblance of influence over our life. lovingly considered "The" Host. 🐺 : he/it. big bad wolf-presenting parasite (hes nice). has a fascination with horror media and rabies.

[niceplural]

march 12th will mark 7 years of us knowing about ourselves. 7 years is a really, really long time. I hope my headmates know I still love them, even if Im not around as much anymore.

[niceplural]

valentines day card from a persecutor. how sweet(?)

[niceplural]

put that system in a situation

[polyfagments]

i call these "system host syndrome"

[niceplural]

Ive GOT to be the freakiest faggot in this head.

[sleepingdragoninn]

A System's Guide

[This website is] our attempt to write an introduction to plurality that also feels like a welcome ... to those for whom it feels like a welcome is long overdue.

We're plural, as are our co-writers, and many of our friends. Their feelings, and the realities of their personal experiences, are what line these pages.

An informal plurality handbook for systems and their aspiring friends.

[forceplural]

[cest-mallory]

Plural Affordances

when reading posts online, we often find ourself imagining the speaker as the avatar they use to represent themself. this varies depending on platform and how representative a particular profile picture is, and we can work against this habit, but it is at least partially an instinctive response for our brain.

im aware this does not hold for everyone - many people make choices with their digital representations that suggest the contrary. but i think for many native digital speakers*, their experiences are similar to mine - you associate people with their avatars, to at least some degree.

the thing about plurality however, perhaps its defining feature, is a distaste for holding a singular stable identity**. while its possible to simply change features of your online presence along with changes in identity, any frequent switching between repeated states gets annoying.

hence, tools like pluralkit (https://pluralkit.me/) emerge, hacking existing communication tools (in this case discord) to represent multiple identity states.

having the ability to directly and easily associate different images and names with messages genuinely provides so much in the way of identity expression, making any platform where this is possible far more appealing to communicate with.

the difference in expressive possibilities here becomes obvious if you spend much time in plural spaces;

- users who proxy as the wrong person will frequently comment on how wrong it feels seeing a message come from someone else's "mouth" especially when it would be out of character for them

- on the other paw, a message being proxied can help cement a weak front, or even pull someone into front (in the case of a misproxy)

- even in person, sometimes switching to communicating over a text chat with proxying can help elucidate fronts, or include a back and forth between headmates in a way that's harder to communicate verbally with the one mouth

altogether being able to see your own name and face with your messages can help with actually feeling plural. making those differences between your selves clearly visible. while there are a number of other tells someone might distinguish fronts by, and the models established by tools like pluralkit won't work for every system. it's an invaluable tool to have at your disposal.

indeed, for someone questioning their plurality, I'd actually recommend experimenting with pluralkit to explore your identity,

plurality, like gender, is social. while there may be underlying experiences and identity (and a closeted transgender person/system is still transgender/plural), a huge part of trans/plural experience is realised socially. asking someone to use a different name or pronoun for you, asking them to use more than one name! these things create a social reality in which you are recognised as your gender/as multiple. trying on these things in private and then with people you trust to affirm this identity is kind of important.

and when a service allows you to naturally present as multiple people, this instinct to treat people as their representations does a lot of heavy lifting. when i first started interacting with systems online i straight up did not think very hard about what plurality meant - i got shown the different avatars, names, pronouns, and interacted accordingly.

we might want to theorise that this simply replaces the tells you'd get speaking to a system in person; different voices, posture, demeanour - the tone missing from text communication replaced with explicit headmate signifying. but i would argue this type of text affordance actually offers up entirely different plural communication possibilities.

for example, it's straightforwardly possible to RP/cyber with someone and tag team them in ways you can't in person:

headmate 1: ooooh im hugging u

headmate 2: ooooh hugging you *from the other side*

while you can obviously do this without proxy support, the affordances of a tool like pluralkit make this much easier and more appealing. it feels more satisfyingly real, at least in our experience. and that makes sense, given each headmate is being put on the same representative footing as a whole separate user, rather than being depicted as the whole system/body first.

i'd actually argue there's an imperative, for those developing chat software, to make this kind of expression possible (if not by default at least with the kind of opt-in bot extensibility discord provides). the same way medical and social technologies expand the possibilities for legible transgender expression, tools enabling smoother performance of plurality like this open up new possibilities for systems.

and while I've kind of sucked off pluralkit here as the best option for this. it's nature as something hacked onto an existing chat app has clear weaknesses. and we can in fact imagine a world where this kind of chat support is better.

a tool like utter (https://utter.y2k.diy/), while not a networked messaging app, can show you the avatar of the person your proxy tag is about to post as. this hedges against accidental misproxying, helps you check if you've remembered the right proxy, and helps address a not uncommon plural problem of "wait im not sure who's writing this, i wish i could test out different options without having to hit send first".

basically what im saying is,

if ur plural friend asks you to use discord because they find it easier to communicate when they can use pluralkit, please give them that chance, it makes a genuine difference.

but we can also do better and build better tools. i think we kinda deserve it.

(*im using this term like "native speaker" gets used in linguistics but for typing online. im aware text isn't spoken, although im literally hearing this as i write it. but I genuinely think im more of a native speaker of online written english than spoken english. i lose verbal competency at times when i can still text someone. i have a literal speech impediment. etc.)

(**median systems who like to present with one shared identity outwardly are totally cool. that's why i said singular. the problems this addresses just apply less in that case. don't come at me, im literally miss "have you considered medianity, your experiences sound kinda median")

[forestofthefelled]

New alters gaining their bearings.

a more serious post compared to our other ones, but an important one. to me. my process of splitting and getting used to existence has been... a rough hour or so. but its a process! and its getting easier. -blue🟦

[niceplural]

evil alters are real, mine does this to me