Explaining Monoconscious Plurality
People often say they don't understand monoconscious plurality, and it makes sense if your introduction to plurality was classic multiplicity. It might be hard to conceptualise how multiple separate people could have a single train of thought and honestly, yeah. It doesn't help that many of the explanations here on tumblr don't feel totally encompassing of all our experiences either. Most of what I've seen only touch on a few things, leaving the rest under the surface
Often monoconsciousness gets described as "shapeshifting" or slipping into different psychological coats. That's part of it, but it doesn't address the whole multiple-voices-in-the-head thing that most plurals seem to experience. It also doesn't come close to fully describing our experience either
The simplest way I can put our experience is (and I suspect this will also ring true for a large amount of other monocon plurals): There is one ability to think, and everyone has to share it, as pictured above
We have to be in contact with the metaphorical consciousness orb, otherwise we don't think. For us personally this looks like temporarily falling unconscious when away from the front. Some plurals I'm sure have constant voices, because nobody leaves the consciousness orb vicinity unless they're dormant. So yeah, definitely different people, even if we all have to share an ability to think. Doesn't necessarily mean we all think the same thing, or that there's 0 distinction between our thoughts (although there are monocon plurals that DO experience this, and that is also just as much more-than-one)
Switching still feels like putting on different coats, and it may literally be an overlay you don if you lean more singletish in your plurality, but for those of us that lean more multiple, this is an important piece of the puzzle. I hope that helps polyconscious systems understand monconscious systems a little better!
