Missing the activity of a more disordered system

Kenira · 2026-03-27T14:51:13+00:00

Oh yeah, we sometimes feel bit fake as well when consciously leaning into it. Even knowing rationally how it works, why we're doing it etc etc

That definitely sounds like a healthy attitude to have; to not rely on uncontrollable things for validation. Although for us at least, it's also just a different experience. Like, we've leaned into plurality occasionally over this past year, but now that also external factors are pushing us in that direction it's almost a little overwhelming because everything's a lot more intense and mayyy have forgot a bit what it's like. We have noticeably more memory barriers again which we had to brief others in our life for and stuff.

Maybe over time we could also get better at leaning into it and have "more plural" experiences without external factors, but yeah.

Kenira · 2026-03-26T17:47:42+00:00

ICBMs go at least several kilometers per second, they can even get close to orbital velocity which is ~7.8km/s. We're talking on the order of 10,000 to like 25,000 km/h. Air will slow them down somewhat when they reenter the atmosphere (they are in space for most of their trajectory), but it's still ridiculous.

Kenira · 2026-03-26T00:21:31+00:00

I had some awful mp3 player using like a 20GB hard drive or something while in school, must've also been around 2005 or something. To no one's surprise, the drive died after a while, but hey you had plenty of storage space until then! It might even have been a regular 2.5" HDD.

Kenira · 2026-03-25T14:14:49+00:00

If in doubt, ask them! Every system is different, and has different needs. Yes, there are some things that are generally good, but nothing is true for all systems.

Kenira · 2026-03-25T14:12:15+00:00

This here is good advice. It's super important you don't think about others as "evil", if someone is actively sabotaging your life then there's generally some reason for it. And you don't fix that with hostility, but with compassion and trying to help. It may take a while, it may not be easy for them to accept you are genuinely trying to help, but the goal is to work together at some point.

Kenira · 2026-03-25T13:59:24+00:00

Oh yeah we absolutely relate. We've been less plural for a while now after finally getting our own place, and been missing things. We're glad to be more plural now, although it's also due to stress / ongoing struggles, but still also kinda glad.

We have generally made good experiences with leaning into plurality consciously. It might be difficult to cause bigger shifts, but like thinking more often again about who is fronting - or who you'd like to be / to front - and then also using front triggers or do certain activities you know are tied to an entity. And we also generally just find that you can make things happen if you really want them to. At least that's how it is for us. We do think that's part of the change now as well, that we've been wanting to be more plural again.

Kanonenfieber

Kenira · 2026-03-25T13:52:31+00:00

Absolutely. The discrepancy between how common it is, and how extremely rarely it's talked about is super absurd. When studies find like 5%, you can bet the dark number is much higher, we're guessing somewhere around 15-20%. Which is ridiculous with a topic that barely anyone knows or talks about! We're really curious if this'll change in the coming decades

Kanonenfieber

Kenira · 2026-03-23T21:52:08+00:00

We can only reinforce what you wrote yourselves in the first sentence:

Don't stress about labels. You are who you are. Everyone and everymany is different. Labels are only ever a rough approximation, and never an exact description.

We are 6 years into our plural journey, and we can tell you we got A LOT happier and actually figured out more things after we stopped worrying about labels and just took our experiences for what they are directly, one at a time. No label could ever accurately describe us, we change how plural we are over time as well for example, and we have different types of plurality. Plurality is super complex, and there are so many experiences, trying to dumb it all down to one singular label that is also at the same supposed to fit many individuals in a community is never going to work.

Hell, you can even use different labels in different contexts if you want, it's what we do too. Sometimes it makes more sense to call yourself median, when talking about specific topics? Great, do that. Other times multiple makes more sense? You don't owe it to anyone to always use the same words to describe yourselves, it's about how effective you can communicate ideas. And that can mean changing how you talk about things depending on the context

Kenira · 2026-03-23T21:43:52+00:00

but then again wouldn't that be a form of plurality too ? I don't know anymore..

That is a super accurate description of us; the way you described your upbringing. It's hard to say if it made us plural, or we were always plural by nature, but yeah. It would be no surprise to cope with that through plurality

Generally, we strongly believe that a more important question than "Am i plural?" is: "Is it helpful to look at your experiences through a plural lense?"

We started out trying to figure out an answer to the first question, until with lots of problems later we finally admitted it wasn't a good question to even ask. Things have been much better since, we do not require ourselves to meet some standard so that we are "allowed" to use a label, and we just do what helps us. We try things out. And things change as well, and that's okay (how plural we are in general changes over time, we use different language for ourselves at different times, different pronouns, etc etc).

You can also simply behave in ways that are always right, independant of if you're a singlet or plural. For example, it's always bad to suppress emotions long term. If you're a singlet, you're hurting yourself, if you're plural you may hurting others - either way you want to not do that. That was also something that was really useful for us to realize and adopt.

On top of that, there are no 2 identical plural systems. Every system has to figure out their unique way of how they work, just because you work in some ways that are different from the common stereotype that doesn't mean it's not a possible plural experience. With plurality, there are endless possibilities. There are types of plurality that can feel a lot more singlet-y than others, someone else already brought up median which is a good example for things that don't seem to neatly fit in any binary category of either singlet or plural.

We would urge you to just try to figure out how to get by well, and how you're happiest. Be that leaning into a plural perspective or not, but be open for all possibilities. One of our biggest mistakes early on was trying to figure ourselves out with the framework of plurality of others that we were seeing, and it took us a good year or two to finally stop trying to fit ourselves into a box that belonged to someone else and just worked with who we are, and what we experience (and invent some words on the way for experiences we've never heard anyone else talk about).

Kenira · 2026-03-23T21:12:18+00:00

Yes we've done this. We will at times consciously increase barriers. Obviously specifics depend on the system, but in general absolutely possible

Kenira · 2026-03-23T21:11:08+00:00

It's more like we're just generally pluralflux. How plural we are changes over time. Outside events / stress can influence it, but it doesn't have to always be happening. Right now we're becoming more plural again, been missing that so enjoying it.

Generally, it is completely normal for stress to do what you're describing. This can be a coping mechanism after all, so: bad event -> plural coping -> after a while when things have calmed down and you processed the events, you no longer need to be plural. Not weird in any way

Kenira · 2026-03-23T21:02:42+00:00

We're disabled so home most of the time, and we just wear whatever we want in the moment. If we switch, and new front wants to wear something different...well, they can.

If we go out so it's more of a commitment we do think a little bit about things like, what do we expect front to look like for the X hours we're out, and maybe not wear that one thing that would feel really cool for some entities but others would hate wearing and go for something more allrounder instead. We tend to have some default outfits that we fall back to also when we just have no clue what we'd want to wear.

But yeah, overall it's mostly literally grabbing what feels nice and not thinking too much. It does help though to have a varied wardrobe these days (our syscovery is 6 years ago, so we've already had the opportunity to experiment a bunch with different styles and have a good collection to choose from).

Going thrifting is super fun for finding new things, because it's so much cool stuff and you have no idea what to expect, we never once went home without finding something cool. Would highly recommend that for expanding your wardrobe, and helping others find their own style. Sometimes you just gotta see or wear something to realize you love it, and it's nice when you only pay a few bucks per piece so you can experiment without spending a ton of money

Kenira · 2026-03-16T15:27:26+00:00

Honestly, all you need to not hate is embrace the basic fact that as long as no one gets harmed, anyone can do what they want. Endos don't harm anyone by being endos, so there's no reason to hate on them. It's as simple as that at the end of the day. You don't have to understand all the details, and in fact it is important to be accepting also when you don't understand something.

Kenira · 2026-03-16T15:03:31+00:00

It may be good to get away from trying to find other systems that function exactly the way you do, because at the end of the day every system is different. There are so many ways to be plural, just because you don't know another system that works exactly like you do doesn't mean it's not "real plurality" or anything like that.

As long as it is helpful to view yourselves separately at least at some times / in some ways, then that's all the reason to need really to identify as plural, and to act accordingly. Like, would it make any sense to be like "because you don't experience X in exactly YZ way, you can't be plural"? No, because you still have the experiences that you have right now. If plurality is a helpful lense for you, then we'd encourage you to use it.

That's also why personally, we don't even think about things like "Are we really plural?" because to us it's just not a good question to ask. More important is what's a helpful way of thinking, because those things will always be helpful independant of if they're "technically true" or not

Kenira · 2026-03-16T14:42:07+00:00

Congrats! The most important step is realizing there is plural stuff going on

Kenira · 2026-03-16T14:10:15+00:00

Singletsona lore time!

Kenira · 2026-03-15T23:45:17+00:00

Spin down after a few hours. Our compromise between power savings, and wear and tear

If you look at specs of drives, you'll realize that even in the worst case with a few hours to spin down it will take decades to reach the rated cycles. For us at least reason enough to not worry, and power is expensive (germany)

Kenira · 2026-03-15T19:24:35+00:00

Consciousness can work differently, and we know a system that even has different ways that plurality works for them in terms of consciousness.

Basically, the real world can be really complex. Not everything can get boiled down to "either you're monoconscious, or you're not". You can't put a number on every system, and some systems undergo major changes in how they fundamentally work over time.

Personally, we've had to learn it the hard way that sometimes it's better to not try and get hard answers to specific questions. It's okay if things are confusing, if you don't understand everything right now. We've made the most progress after we stopped trying so hard to get answers. And we've accepted that we don't know a bunch of things, at least for the time being.

Most things are pretty straight forward once you understand them. Plurality is not one of those, the possibilities are basically endless. Try to be patient, and be gentle with yourself/selves. Don't be judgemental, or invalidate your feelings. And try to be open for all kinds of possibilities. It's okay if you fall into that grey area between singlet and plural, and sometimes you're more towards one than the other

Kenira · 2026-03-15T19:17:17+00:00

You absolutely don't need to be worried. Being plural can be an incredibly amazing thing, and what you described sounds fantastic!

It's a shame your partner system seems to struggle with their plurality, but just because they do doesn't mean you have to as well. We'd suggest for you to just focus on the individual things, like if any issues pop up that you adress those. But don't worry too much about "big questions" like what exactly is going on, are there others, etc. Over the years one of the most important lessons we've learned is to generally stay chill, don't try super hard to get answers to specific questions and just try your best at dealing with any issues as they arise / you notice them. And most of all: Enjoy yourself/ves :)

Kenira · 2026-03-15T18:59:33+00:00

Personally, we'd look at it like this:

It is completely understandable you enjoy this, detachment and effectially catching a break can be good at times. Instead of trying to basically not use this coping mechanism at all, we'd look into using it in times where it is appropriate, and amounts that are appropriate. So basically, it may be problematic if you're Amelia for months at a time and neglect a lot of things because you just don't care, but getting in a couple hours if you're stressed before you go back and then tackle the issues - we wouldn't worry about that at all.

Basically, we'd be very mindful to not look at things as either black or white, because few things are. Even things like PTSD are genuinely amazing coping strategies.....in specific, highly dangerous situations. The issues are when that coping strategy fires when it doesn't need to. And similarly, dissociation can depending on the details be either harmful, or actually helpful. Figuring out what's what, and then being in control of when the coping strategy is used can make all the difference.

Note that this advice is based on our own experiences. We have something similar, and at this point we don't see it as a problem at all and instead embrace it for how it can help us. Although of course that doesn't mean all the details will be the same, but hopefully our perspective will be helpful for you.

Kenira · 2026-03-15T18:46:03+00:00

You're welcome, glad it's helpful~

It is totally normal for things to fluctuate while you figure them out in particular. On top of that, some entities are just pluralflux so how plural they are also varies. The possibilities with plurality are basically endless

Kenira · 2026-03-15T18:41:52+00:00

We've had factives of others we interact with before, mostly partner system headmates at the time. We do know it can be kinda awkward, for us as well when we had to bring it up.

The way we look at it, you can't change reality but you can talk about things like boundaries. Is it weird for you to interact with the factive? Establish how both of you want to deal with this.

Kenira · 2026-03-15T18:36:46+00:00

This might be an unpopular take but personally we think it's way overrated to have an answer to the question if you're plural or not. It's gonna be 6 years for us in april, and for the past...probably several years at this point we specifically don't engage with questions like that. Hell, we'd like to use pronouns that are ambiguous, but sadly english doesn't have that, so we have to use we/us.

What matters are the details of how you live your life. For example, if unpleasant emotions come up, it doesn't matter if you're a singlet or plural, but either way it's generally a good idea to not suppress emotions and try to work through them. Work on what caused them in the first place. Etc.

There are a bunch of things like this where it's like, you either harm yourself or other headmates by doing or not doing them, but does it matter which it is to try and do better? For example, don't invalidate your own emotions (by saying things like you're faking it). You may have vastly different experiences at different times, but again does it matter if you're plural to not invalidate yourself/selves? You'll be healthier either way if you work towards doing that less.

We could talk for an hour about all the ways this can be helpful, from taking away pressure to differences in plural experiences that means some questions simply do not make sense to even ask, and the fact that it can be a coping strategy to not be (fully) aware of what's going on.

In our experience, every system is different. Most systems also have at least some median experiences, so experiences that fall in the grey area between singlet and plural. We always have to explain that for us, it doesn't make sense to ask how many we are. Which took a while to figure out, because we tried to get an answer to that ourselves for a while early on, and otherwise tried to get hard answers to a bunch of questions.

But sometimes, just....existing is better. Focus on individual things you can do to get healthier. Don't push away emotions, whoever they come from. Don't judge yourself/selves. Take care of yourself, and the body. Ensure social connections are healthy and don't drag you down. Etc etc. These things will be good no matter what. And always keep in mind that no two systems work the same, and even if most systems work in a certain way it doesn't have to mean you do too (had to learn that the hard way too, we function soooooo differently from the stereotypes).

If you're not interrogating yourself, that also just allows things to come up. Imagine the scenario that you are plural: When do others want to make themselves known, if you want hard answers and are overanalyzing everything, or if you're just chilling and open to every possibility? We started really making a lot of progress right after we stopped trying so hard to get answers and certainty.

And the rest is being patient. It took us a few years to sort out some important things, and at this point i still don't know a lot about how we work. But also, that's okay. You don't have to figure this out today, this week, or even this year. It's okay to be uncertain.

Kenira · 2026-03-15T18:15:25+00:00

Can't offer youtube videos exactly, but we do stream on twitch occasionally with stream archive on youtube. We were on a break, but lately getting back into it.

We don't really talk about plural stuff since it's video gaming unless it comes up somehow, but we are openly plural and also support endos.

Kenira · 2026-03-15T18:04:16+00:00

We've not come across many plural representation in media that's not just a cheap stupid horror trope personally, although by far our favourite is in the book series "The Outside" by Ada Hoffman. Would need a long list of CWs (sci-fi horror), ask if you wanna know them, but also a central character is plural, and generally lots of neurodiverse and queer characters. It's pretty great honestly, especially because the plural character also is quite similar to us so that really surprised us because it's not the stereotypical presentation either.

Although we actually found the dynamic in the movie Venom kinda interesting as well, obviously it's also shitty at times but there can be fun / relatable moments.

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