#mod mountain

[writing-plurals]

Hello! I don't want to fully unpack myself randomly, but I feel like some personal context is important for my question. I've only been introduced to plurality for about a year, and I'm still trying to figure out if/how much I identify with it. I'm certain I have headmates, as I can identify "not-me" personalities and talk to them, but I don't really have any names for those headmates and I'm still trying to wrap my head around switching as I don't feel like I ever have switched. I've been writing a new Project Moon/Limbus Company OC recently. Because most characters there are directly inspired by famous novels/myths, I want my OC to be based off of Geoffrey Chaucer's works (The Canterbury Tales, The House of Fame, etc). The Canterbury Tales doesn't have many named characters, with most of them being only "The Knight" or "The Cook" or "The Miller". And if you're not familiar with the Canterbury Tales, the story is mostly about all these characters telling each other fun stories from their lives to keep themselves entertained on a pilgrimage. There's a lot of creative liberties that come with adapting literature into a Limbus OC. I think taking these characters and adapting them to be headmates in a single system falls into those creative liberties and could be very interesting, in that they're all independent people who are travelling together. This is all a very long-winded context to ask: does the premise work? Do you see any traps here? Also, how important is naming a headmate? I can see how calling a headmate just "The Cook" can be demeaning to the individual, but it is grounded in a literary allusion. And how important is it for switching to occur in a plural character? I am not entirely confident in my ability to write switching considering I don't feel I do myself, but if there's only one fronter in a system how do I avoid host-centrism? I know that's a lot of questions, but I really want to get this right and see if this character is a good avenue for self-exploration as well.

I think that's a great premise!

We actually used a naming scheme like that for ourselves sort of as a way to explain our "alter egos" before we realised we're plural, so it could be realistic. That said, yes it might be demeaning because it could come off as reducing these characters to their roles rather than them being their own people. If you focus on writing these headmates as fleshed-out people though, I think that would be alright

There are plurals that don't switch so it's not strictly necessary. What your fronter character could do, though, is talk to the other headmates and treat them as equals. Even if only one headmate fronts, the other headmates are important for internal reasons, so if you lean into that, how they're helpful and important and such, you could avoid the idea that just because one headmate has control of the body doesn't mean they're the main or most important one in the system. If you wanted to include switches, though, but you don't feel comfortable writing the process of a switch, maybe you could do a time skip to another headmate fronting and write from their perspective. Up to you though, as I said, switching isn't necessary and it's always nice to have a diverse range of plural experiences represented in fiction

-Mod Mountain

[writing-plurals]

I have this idea for an Arknights fanfiction where an entire group of people are born plural with systems of three... That's my first question, is there a term for a single equivalent of a personality in a system? Anyways, three individuals in a system and that each individual, along with having a separate personality, can also have a different magical ability when that personality has control over the body. Or is that a crass assumption of how systems work? For my second question.

Overall, my experience with plurals are on this blog and from seeing Split Trailers in the past. Could I have a basic rundown of what kind of plurals there are and how to write them respectfully, including the above idea?

Sorry for the rambling, I'm not sure how to go about this.

For your first question, are you asking what system members are called? They're called system members, headmates, alters, etc., depending on the system's preference ("alter" being a more clinical term)

I think headmates having different magical abilities is fine, because real systems can have headmates with different skills sets

As for your last question, there is far too many "kinds of plurals" for me to sum up in a post, in fact there's an infinite amount of plural experiences. I highly recommend you do more research on plurality (you might already know but Split is one of the worst depictions of plurality and not an accurate source for learning about plurality), as well as get to know plurals and learn about their experiences

-Mod Mountain

[writing-plurals]

I'm writing an isekai story where a girl pops into a video game, but she sort of takes over the body and mind of a very conveniently-placed pre-existing person in that world. They have similar if not identical personalities (like I said, very convenient) but different memories and experiences. Over time, these two different "perspectives," if you will, sort of meld and grow together seamlessly. Right at the start though, IRL!Tiffany sort of "takes over" since she understands whats going on so much better and has a framework to understand and contain Game!Tiffany's perspective. I also have at least one occurrence of IRL!Tiffany having a panic attack about having to do something that Game!Tiffany is very familiar with, so Game!Tiffany takes over and sort of conveniently pushes aside all of IRL! Tiffany's memories to take charge.

And I realized it reads as plural just slightly, like different alters fronting, so I was wondering if you have any thoughts or advice on how to portray that as NOT plural, or how to lean into it if that might work? or if you might have any advice on how the whole growing/melding together might work? Is that a thing systems do or am I way off-track here? Also her twin sister is going through the same thing but I'm not writing from her PoV quite yet.

Additionally, the IRL!Tiffany is seventeen and the Game!Tiffany is twenty-four, so IRL!Tiffany is sort of going to rapidly age up during the melding process (which will take a few months to a year, so she's just going to slowly get more and mature as the story progresses, which works because I'm writing it while growing up myself and this explains why the quality and maturity goes up too).

But it also means that while IRL!Tiffany is sort of the main perspective for the story currently (i.e. isekai'd girl with in-universe memories to help her blend in / make decisions / roleplay essentially), Game!Tiffany has way more experiences/memories, plus it's her world they're living in, so the end result is going to look a lot more like "Game!Tiffany with extra memories from this other world that happen to include some knowledge of the future" since she has seven years more of memories. Although ultimately it likely won't matter at all.

Anyway yeah any thoughts welcome! It's not exactly plural, but I wrote Game!Tiffany taking over yesterday and realized you might have some insights.

I wouldn't know how you could write this as not plural because it sounds inherently plural to me. In some ways, it's a little like soulbonding, which is when someone from another universe joins your system

Looking at this from a plural perspective, however, the issue is with the melding. The reason that's an issue is because in a lot of plural stories, the plurality is seen as a problem which is fixed in the end by merging and becoming a singlet. Ending with final fusion isn't always bad, because some systems do want to achieve final fusion and would benefit from it, but those kinds of stories often ignore the option of healthy multiplicity and its benefits

So, my question is, do you need your characters to meld together, or could they happily remain plural? If it is necessary, maybe lean into the fact that melding means they'll lose each other and no longer be able to switch out and such. Even if they might be looking forward to having each other's memories and skills and being a singular person, there would still be some amount of grief there

Final fusion is also usually not something that happens naturally, but rather through a lot of work. Although, depending on how the system formed it could maybe be possible, and in that case you could lean into how maybe they don't want to meld together and lose their individual personhoods, that it's out of their control

-Mod Mountain

[writing-plurals]

There are ways to syscode a character, but are there good ways to anti syscode a character that could otherwise be seen as such? I have a character who takes up an alter ego to hide from consequences and express bad parts of his personality, which would be bad to read as a system. I have another character who isn’t doing anything system like but that I don’t want to be read as such. Thanks in advance

I think you would have to make it clear that his alter ego is still him, specifically him choosing to act in those ways, rather than someone he shares a body with or actions he has no control over. If it's from his point of view it should be easy to express that, otherwise he could maybe admit it to someone at some point or compare it to a plural character

-Mod Mountain

[writing-plurals]

hi this blog is Cool. very helpful and informative! I am desperately trying to write while not making a harmful representation of the disorder

would forced isolation on several occurrences cause someone to fragment? I’m not entirely sure how people fragment besides repetitive childhood trauma. would that include neglect? I don’t know how severe the traumatic experiences would be to make someone need to split, nor if that’s a stupid thing to say lol

Yes it's possible for a traumagenic system to be created because of neglect. In fact, it makes sense that someone would form a system in isolation because they need someone with them. And there's no set "severity" of trauma that causes traumagenic plurality because trauma is subjective and it all depends on what the brain thinks it needs to do to cope

Also, going by the current main theory of how dissociative traumagenic systems are formed in childhood, if that is the kind of system you're writing, it's not so much someone fragmenting as never integrating. The theory is that no one is born with an integrated personality, and without trauma this would integrate into one coherent self, but in some cases trauma will prevent these parts from integrating and instead will form dissociative barriers around them, as in become a dissociative system

-Mod Mountain

[writing-plurals]

Hello, I come bearing a question

I have a protagonist who is plural, and in one of the longer stories they are in, each alter has a different appearance. This is exclusively from the point of the viewer, and both she and others are completely unaware of this, and everyone has a different appearance in this specific story from their actual bodies (specifically, they all have animal heads, except the protagonist who only sometimes has animal head alters. Most of the time she is a human headed animal)

This is inspired by Trapeze / Irabu's office, however I was wondering if this could fall into stereotypes and/or harmful writing. Any thoughts are appreciated, thank you!

To be clear, your plural character physically changes the appearance of their head when they switch? Or is it not a physical change if you said it's different from their actual bodies and their unaware of it? If it is a physical change, this does unfortunately fall into harmful stereotypes that systems physically change when they switch, so I would leave it out if I were you

-Mod Mountain

[writing-plurals]

Question as a singlet writer trying her best: would an alter who fronts/cofronts with some regularity but either cant or wont actually speak using the body's voice be believable? The idea I have in mind is this alter prefers to communicate with people outside the system using a musical instrument (specifically a lyre) to varying degrees of success, and will otherwise resort to gestures if that option isnt available (they maybe learn sign language at some point? at the very least they are aware that doing so would probably be Very Helpful since they don't vocalize)

Yes! Sometimes headmates are non-speaking even if others in the system can speak when fronting. They may also have varying levels of verbality, but a headmate being completely non-speaking all the time is also possible

Some other ways of communicating that you didn't mention (though I think the others are fine), are writing if the headmate can manage words/sentences, or an AAC board (Augmentative and Alternative Communication), which depending on where/when your story is set, they might have one digitally or they might make their own on paper. They might even be able to communicate with others in the system and get them to say what they want to say for them (in some cases they might be able to put words to their thoughts, but in other cases they may find it easier to communicate with their headmates through feelings or images and such). Just as some other options if you'd like them, the headmate might even use all of them at different times depending on what they can manage/what works best

-Mod Mountain

[writing-plurals]

hello, hello! So uhhh I mostly just wanted to ask here if it’s rude to make a character with DID a RAMCOA survivor it wasn’t really my original intention when I first started making the story (it’s not exactly written out because of how big it’s going to be) but I realized that I had accidentally made their abusers a cult and what they were going through in the story was a pretty uhh big? I don’t remember the word topic for people who are survivors and I’m just not sure anymore. Uhhh other context is that this is like a fantasy world so magic and stuff it’s a fan fiction as well the whole magic stuff isn’t what causes the DID or anything like that but the cult whole thing is about a higher being and the character just unfortunately has magic that to some people is representative of this being (it’s not) and I’m anyways I’m yapping do you and other people who see this question think it would be wrong of me to do so RAMCOA part

~Red Anon

There are RAMCOA survivors who are DID systems so it's perfectly plausible! And since your magic is unrelated to the plurality, I don't see a problem there

My only advice is if you haven't already, learn about the experiences of RAMCOA survivors, including those with DID, talk to them, so you can make sure your writing is sensitive

-Mod Mountain