New intro!
Basically all of this is in our about, but since we’ll update that as we figure more things out, here’s a condensed version for posterity:
Host subsystem, very blurry, share memories:
Sapphire (ey/em): host, bigenderfluid, gryffinclaw, anxiety, loves system and organization, all the life goals.
barker (he/him): former cohost, closest to Sapphire and often exerts passive influence or cofronts. Pure gryffindor. Very excited and chaotic, some kind of big tricolor doggo. Distractor from distressing things.
Kai/kai (they/them, sometimes ey/em as Kai, sometimes he/him as kai): barker and Sapphire - capitalization indicates whose influence is stronger. Blurry host.
Protector (he/him): protector, former cohost, sometimes exerts passive influence or cofronts with Sapphire/Kai. Slytherdor. Strong PTSD, probably AVPD.
Jet (ne/nem or they/them): blur of Protector and Sapphire. Protector role. Identifies strongly with Bahamut - justice, dragons, platinum.
Jack (he/him): combination of Protector and barker. Rare because Sapphire is frontstuck. Somewhat more relaxed/chaotic version of Protector.
dragon (they/them): collective name, also name of any combination of Sapphire, barker, and Protector. When dragon is in full force (all three fully present and cofronting), most powerful of the system, usually comes out when someone else is threatened in a less serious way.
Cat (she/her): sexual alter, naiad. Never hosted, somewhat younger than dragon because of years inactive since realizing plurality. Hypersexual ace lesbian, kinky, very sweet. Did not have anxiety, dove into the deep end of socializing, now has anxiety. Shares memories with dragon, but much more separate.
Fen (fae/faer or she/her): combination of Cat and Sapphire. Femme, often Sapphire's and Cat's sexualities blending. Fey.
Ella (she/her): indeterminate origins, possible tulpa. Unknown gender. Mostly backtalks Kai as kai talks through their life, really likes star trek. Does not front, has been mostly absent for years.
Possible little?: ~6 years old
There’s also some question of whether Sapphire is a median subsystem. We keep calling things median subsystems for them to turn out to be fairly separate people who share memories, but Maybe This is Really It. There’s a philosophical question of at what point do we consider people to be the same person: are you the same person you were five minutes ago? Five years ago? At work vs at home? In different kinshifts? The last one is what’s relevant to Sapphire. The most distinct by far is eir fey self, and then there’s eir male self, eir Lienid self, and eir femme self. I think that’s all of them that we’ve thought of? We haven’t thought about it a lot.
We don’t have much (or really any) control over fronting, which is an issue we’d like to address but tbh aren’t prioritizing. We do know of certain situations/states of mind that make others more likely to front, though if we attempt a switch using those triggers, it doesn’t work super well. It’s also very hard to differentiate between Sapphire fronting alone, Kai fronting, passive influence from barker and/or Protector, and Protector cofronting, especially since that changes from moment to moment, and there are significant overlaps in personality, preferences, and tone for one thing at a time. We can tell the difference between us for longer lengths of time, and it’s often easier to recognize who was fronting when reading past messages. For the people who know us as plural, we’ll sign our names when people are being particularly distinct, especially when the distinction matters, but for the most part we just go by dragon. Cat rarely fronts, and pretty much only with Sapphire or alone.
We aren’t currently aware of any headspace, though Sapphire has at this point visited somewhere multiple times that may be a dormant headspace or similar. Once was visiting a cave in a catatonic episode, once was accidentally visiting a hiking trail by a waterfall that led up to a beautiful yellow stone and glass building, and once was deliberately visiting the latter place, but incompletely.
Sapphire is currently wrestling with the idea of intimate relationships, and the possibility of sexual trauma. Ey feels drawn towards processing those issues and discovering what happened in our childhood, but is also afraid of potential ensuing mental health crises. Currently, we’re focusing on the possibility that ey was traumatized by rape culture and what incidents we do know of, in combination with eir existing social anxiety and trauma. We don’t think we necessarily repressed any memories from childhood, but we do deliberately avoid thinking about that time period, and trying to line up who was hosting when and/or bringing out the little we believe exists would inherently involve facing the traumatic events that happened in those periods. We still identify as quoigenic, with Sapphire and barker identifying as endogenic twins, though given that Cat identifies more with the body as well as our deadname, we’re wondering if she came before Sapphire and barker.
- Kai