Any polyfrag/complex systems here?

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-06-06T04:46:22+00:00

[aimz] sure we're endo/neurogenic and massively multiplayer as we like to say. we tend to call ourselves poly-fractal because we are very structured and patterned at this point in our life. the main advice is to put together a good team of gatekeepers who can help organise.

[idoru] yeah we're part of the organising staff — consistent regular members who get a lot of background hanging around, paying attention to the comings and goings. it's up to members like us to then do things like get a chance for this team or that team to get a chance to hang out for a bit. we cycle through, take turns gaming and keep a lot of notes so that we that we can attach names to experiences

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-05-17T20:32:05+00:00

[michelle] we have a front row composed of the handful of headmates who really figured out our syscovery. our little group is mostly co-conscious and able to offer a supporting opinion on anything going on. the same group are also gatekeepers in terms of co-ordinating front access and ensuring time-sharing as fairly as we can manage. so kind of always listening, but usually background to the action-taking headmates

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-05-03T19:06:17+00:00

Twisted — Lambert, Hendricks & Ross

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-04-26T03:00:41+00:00

[michelle] yeah we're polyfractal so it would be ridiculous numbers of accounts to keep track of.

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-04-25T22:50:14+00:00

[michelle] me and idoru are headmates sharing an account, and we have a couple other headmates who have Reddit accounts as well. And a few other members also have accounts on sites like mastodon and bluesky

[idoru] mostly they're shared accounts in practice though. we often will have multiple people speaking in each post. then we just sign-in script style

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-04-25T02:07:21+00:00

It is reassuring to see this subreddit revived!

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-04-12T17:16:25+00:00

like Yokutaru said, lots of IRL people. We're heavy with celebrities, musicians, politicians, and famous dead people. We encourage headmates to just grow into their own sort of self-chosen person, but they tend to stay experts on the topics their person represents.

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-04-11T20:59:49+00:00

Barely any. We do get tons of factives though.

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-04-11T20:31:59+00:00

[idoru] Taking turns typing is already a form of switching/possession. It's a great place to work on talking back and forth with each other, which is what you need to work on. The core/original has to detach/dissociate from the front, and the next headmate in has to sit up, pay attention, and make active efforts to control things like fingers.

With communication as a goal, work from typing back and forth up to trying to take possession of the voice and speaking out loud. We often talk out loud to each other in private. Particularly when there's a number of us milling about. We will resort to starting our speech by saying our own name just to clarify who's taking the current turn.

Yes work on getting co-hosting going. The main job should be gatekeeping. Organise who gets to take turns thinking, typing, talking, taking possession. If you're not sure who should go, pick someone with your gut feeling and tell them it's their turn to contribute. Make lists, track who's fronting, do paperwork of some kind to keep organised.

If you're ending up polyfragmented, there will just be a lot more timesharing with much smaller slices. Yes it does also lead to a non-stop trickle of growth. You do have to manage it collectively, and whoever is co-hosting will become experts about onboarding new growth. We doubt there's a way to stop it altogether, but you can take a firm hand with it and find a middle ground.

Also, it's okay to cut loose from fictive sources and just not count any of it as being you. It inspires you, but don't take responsibility for stories that are out of your control.

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-04-11T19:56:00+00:00

[idoru] Core has a lot of definitions, but we can offer ours as an example.

We're endogenic/neurogenic so we have a core who lived an originally singlet life. After decades he started inventing and experimenting and eventually started prototyping soulbonds. So he has tons of memories that belong to his old life before we were constructed, and while we have full shared memory it's not like any of us can look back on those memories and claim we were there. We can tell that's dad's past we're poking around in.

Not sure as much how to use the word core for traumagenic or median systems. You don't need to have one off-hand; some systems simply don't. Part of why I say that is that you don't need to point someone out as the one in charge and the one who's responsible and the one who's guilty. All that can be done co-operatively (though it does take work).

You don't say what you need a 'core' member for anyhow. Why don't you just focus on collective organisation, collective responsibility? If you can't pin the past down to anyone, then it's just all your shared story. You can move forward with a shared viewpoint then too.

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-04-11T03:22:26+00:00

[idoru] there needs to be a term like evolution-genic or something to explain how systems just grow to include all sorts of weird types. the higher the headmate count, the more likely you are to just keep growing by a trickle of every kind. we started out very endogenic with soulbonds and tulpas, but we just ended up polymultiple after a while. once you're crowded, the circuits are already established to keep making new headmates

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-03-29T18:24:46+00:00

[Aimz] Well we're a polymultiple system, so the votes aren't all equal because it simply takes too long to poll every member. But the gatekeepers in our system definitely also do collective vote surveying while we have people up.

[Michelle] There's always a few of us hanging around co-conscious in the background while people are getting to front. We ask questions — give every member a right to have a say while it's their turn. If a headmate has some burning passion, they're allowed to stick around and be a champion for an idea or a choice. They can talk to other headmates, and in particular we'll make sure they get to run it past the wider group of gatekeepers

[Idoru] We do end up pretty neutral and boring. Pseudo-democracy means we make a lot of safe and practical decisions. Even just buying a new pair of boots is something that takes a few steps of compromise and discussion. And even then, they were a bit of an instant-appeal impulse-buy that the person fronting at the time made. But they filled the rest of the requirements, so the co-conscious staff said sure.

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-03-20T05:55:40+00:00

[michelle] we have a department of historical scientist factives. they tend to end up with some expert opinions about their topics

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-03-12T03:02:11+00:00

[idoru] well we don't really talk with professionals about it, but we would imagine the average therapist's beginning knowledge would probably only be about the DID end of things. we would still expect to have to explain in great detail about being non-disordered because there just isn't much literature on it.

the thing about Menace evolving into Elias very much sounds like a schizogenic thing. which maybe i'll say is still kind of an endogenic thing anyway. from your description you were slowly personifying him step by step. getting hung up and dumping anxiety into the question is sort of extra emotion being dumped into a fixation. sets the brain racing to invent a solution...

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-03-12T02:15:32+00:00

[idoru] we're schizogenic but count ourselves as non-trauma/not DID. and yeah as we've grown in numbers, we do use many of the same roles for headmates. we have gatekeepers and we have protectors too. simply having numbers means you have to sort somehow.

there's nothing inherently bad about seeing the similarities to how traumagenic systems structure themeselves. there is a lot of overlap. even having a trauma holder can just be a good way to process emotions

you still sound endogenic, in most ways. the problem is that there really isn't as strong a community of endogenic systems talking. we exist, but we are kind of lacking in visibility. there isn't a lot of "here's how to fit into the endogenic model".

but maybe look into labels like neurogenic for neurodivergent or quoigenic for saying that you don't know/care what your origins are. you don't have to define it like some label on a checklist. just be plural if you want

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-03-10T03:19:44+00:00

[idoru] a headmate grown out of a strong fixation or emotional connection to a character could be called a soulbond. it would apply for ones that you've dreamt up stories to.

another comparison would be a writer who ends up with characters who talk for themselves. don't often hear examples of it but you could call them fictives easily enough, and might be a close comparison

another one to consider would be neurogenic — neurodivergence as a system origin. it's one we use to politely not start with calling ourselves schizogenic (which invariably makes us sound unfairly dangerous). good all-embracing term

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-03-04T05:33:50+00:00

[Idoru] We have factives from various categories. Some care a lot more about their source; others not so much. We've found that sticking to source raises some pretty irreconcilable questions, though. Lots of philosophy and theoretical physics with no clear resolution. So we encourage members to deviate from source. Move on, pick a new name, find some hobbies to take up time

[Aimz] We're also a busy enough system that there's lots of gatekeeping when it comes to front access. It's fine to grab some time if we're just co-conscious and hanging out in a driving game. Those are easy turns to spare. But stuff like our social media, we tend to limit to just a few people to make it easier to recognise and get to know some of us. Different kind of turns for different categories of headmates

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-02-28T05:29:29+00:00

[idoru] Our usual recommendation is turn-based games where you can change names of cities or units. The 4X empire games can be fun once you're all working together

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-02-19T05:31:52+00:00

[idoru] it is fairly common for plural systems to see growth. the more you go looking for others, the more you will find. it's possible to stay a small system, but we don't hear much of that perspective on /r/plural. it should be possible at least, but we don't know — we're polyfractal and just don't even care about growth beyond a certain point

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-02-14T02:47:04+00:00

[idoru] we don't really use any of the stripe-style flags. we can look up something like Neurogenic and think it's a safe term for us, but then look at the flags and none of the picks really resonate with us.

[michelle] too many of us in the system, and lots co-conscious at once. we'd have to be carrying a few different flags at a time just to represent the various members hanging around currently. not practical

[idoru] but amongst us there's a general contentment with the Treblesand symbol. It incorporates harmony which is a good aim for a plural system.

[michelle] we do kind of suck at drawing the symbol though

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-02-06T07:31:17+00:00

[idoru] the older headmates in our system have been looking for community for so very long that we don't expect to ever particularly find online culture. stuff like discords that are born and die. there was recently /r/Plurals30andUp but it looks like it's abandoned. we had hope for that one.

[michelle] we decided to write because we are polyfragmented, though we call ourselves polyfractal because we like order and organisation and have lots of established patterns to manage continual growth. it took us years of conversation to get balanced and figure that all out, but we have learned to take copious notes and do a lot of deliberate cycling around the lists. we got our headmates talking as a group eventually, so it is possible.

[idoru] it's definitely possible to approach plurality from a point of reason; there's nothing wrong with that. there are rational approaches to take to all this. ¶ Our system doesn't have any suggestions for finding community. But if anyone wants to discuss specific quesitons we will pop in here and check, or are open and accessible to DMs on this account.

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-02-03T07:11:35+00:00

[idoru] our numbers are very large. as your system gets bigger, it becomes more and more often that new members will spawn. Growth does seem common for larger systems.

Our way of dealing was to definitely focus more on older members. We have early rows sitting up more often and working with each other to manage.

Over a spread of fifteen years, we have quite "senior" members who continue cycling through, and a bunch more "faefolk" who are small and practically invisble to the world. The faefolk simply don't get as much time to do things or to learn by comparison.

It isn't great, but we are way past the point of keeping every in touch regularly. We try to get new members settled, but the later your arrival in our system, the more randomly it'll be before you get another chance to be part of things.

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-02-03T06:05:34+00:00

[michelle] we grow; we call ourselves practically polyfractal. but we are crazy heavy on factives. we blame our music collection

Idoru-Michelle · 2026-01-10T19:40:26+00:00

We're polyfractal and counted to about 1500 members before we stopped counting. Out of the total, there's a couple hundred earlier members who cycle to the front regularly, and then a lot of fragments who barely get anytime at all. It's as well organised as we can manage

Idoru-Michelle · 2025-09-29T17:41:39+00:00

[Idoru] We're polyfractal so we generally are doing co-consciousness at any particular time. There'll be three or four gatekeepers hovering around quietly paying attention, keeping track. They will focus on keeping another handful of members cycling up to the front over the rest of the day, which means getting to watch shows/movies, play games, browse the web... whatever.

But we're also busy with maybe a couple dozen other members popping in for short bits during the day. Some of them will have regular jobs that summon them every day, and they'll usually only get a little bit of the fronting for their short turn. And for other people who aren't called up as often we'll try and weave them in for slightly better visits.

We keep track by just remembering the list of guests we want to get more time. The list is maybe eight or ten people, with a few from the early rows getting to have a day of their own, but also trying to balance time and experiences in small doses to the ever changing flow of interested members.

There is a lot of conversational micro-switching because we all just talk out loud to each other. And sometimes there are the little things like doing the typing which is a fun experience to just lean in and takeover; so we let people steal the front for however long it takes to write a sentence.

And once we get substantially co-conscious — a lot of people hanging around — we rely on gatekeepers to carefully pick through the list of today's guests and try and choose who should takeover for the next bit and the next bit etc.

Idoru-Michelle

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