☕ and 🪐for the system ask game!
☕ - what is switching like for you?
Switching happens either one of two ways.
The alter in question seems to "fade in" a little like introducing another component of a mashup song and joins the rest of the front and synchronizes with the rest of us (hard to explain what I mean by that, it's a mental process by which we assess commonalities between the new fronter and other alters currently fronting and it helps them figure out what actions/speech to contribute to whatever we're doing at the time). Them leaving is like the song component fading out OR like noticing the song had stopped some time ago and you didn't realize it.
A feeling of pressure builds up in my head and it feels like my consciousness rolls around until it pulls another alter to the front. This is especially the case if the switch is to replace someone else and have them not front anymore.
🪐 - what is headspace like for you?
We actually have three headspaces! Blue Canaries (the mainsystem) has the main headspace, but Silent Hedges and Hourglass Meadow (the sidesystems) have their own headspaces! We were able to connect Silent Hedges' headspace with our own so members of that sidesystem can "physically" (for lack of a better word) interact with members of the mainsystem. We haven't done that with Hourglass Meadow yet but we plan to after they've been here for a little longer.
The mainsystem has the largest headspace and the main part of it consists of a fronting room with various 90s aesthetics (arcade carpet, inflatable or Memphis Design furniture, neon lights). You can go through doors in the fronting room to a house based off of one I used to live in (a lot of our alters who split while we were living in that house hang out there) as well as a space based on a rock-n-roll themed bar I used to see tribute shows at before it closed. The one in my system is goth themed and it's for my system's goths (and bridges Silent Hedges' headspace with Blue Canaries').
One feature of our headspace is "nesting rooms", which are basically rooms where the entire floor is soft and mattress-like and you sleep on it. They're based on this one picture I saw online once of a room that was described as "entirely bed" and are something our Betelgeusian aliens had on their home planet in their timeline. The first room we ever found in our headspace when the system came back last year was a nesting room that was originally beige and pretty small but grew larger as the system did and that we redesigned into having a Memphis Design pattern on the floor.
Silent Hedges' headspace is a house in the middle of an empty void where their equivalent of the fronting room is a garage that has been set up as a practice space for a band (the sidesystem were involved in bands in their timeline). I personally haven't seen the entirety of Silent Hedges' headspace (you can look into other sidesystems' headspaces like looking at something through a screen, hard to explain) but there's apparently at least one room dedicated to kink activities. It is mostly utilized by Mori and Ransom together. Strangelove and Stigmata also have a room in the mainsystem where they do kink together!
Hourglass Meadow's headspace also centers around a house, but one that looks like a house from the 90s or 2000s that you would see in a weirdcore/dreamcore/nostalgiacore edit (since those are the aesthetics the sidesys is sourced from). There are nesting rooms in that one too (which is an object head trait as well as an alien one - I used to draw object head characters and they had bedrooms that were basically like nesting rooms). There's also a forest of mushrooms where Daisy and Bernie like taking walks together.
There are some other facts about our headspace but those are its main features and structure!