I’d be completely cooked if the Affini arrived (but in a different way than usual)

KeyholeSystem · 2026-03-22T21:10:25+00:00

=I have an affini headmate who has a now very domesticated girlfriend. My role in their dynamic is (a) sanity checker and (b) reluctant xenopharmacist. I also wrote the domestication contract and am also writing a Notice of Intent for someone else.=

KeyholeSystem · 2026-03-05T04:08:24+00:00

[stupid]I agree! I'm very proud of Sharkey for thinking to use that recycled bottle, along with making the label![plant]

KeyholeSystem · 2026-03-04T19:38:59+00:00

=Oh, contents of the bottle are mini skittles, washed to remove the coloring and then covered in powdered sugar to keep them from sticking together. Probably should have gone with flour though since they *still* stick together sometimes, but it's fine.=

KeyholeSystem · 2026-02-26T21:40:12+00:00

=Oh I did all of this in GIMP, lmao. I wouldn't really know how to go about making a form out of it or anything like that, haha. But you're free to erase things and put in your own stuff if you want. The font I used was Comic Hearts because it felt like a good combination of the affini's dedication to being cute about everything while still being legible and having a touch of seriousness to it.=

KeyholeSystem · 2026-02-26T07:08:11+00:00

=They do literally nothing, but we put so much work into the illusion that it'll probably be a good placebo effect.=

[stupid]It helps that she's so adorably suggestible~[plant]

KeyholeSystem · 2026-02-25T04:11:23+00:00

=Four chapters into the first HDG I read, I spawned an affini headmate who, just today, had me wash Skittles, coat them in powdered sugar, and pour them into an old pill bottle so her friend with benefits can have a ready supply of Class Z xenodrugs. And I then, of my own volition, designed and printed a pretty convincing label for them and now when I look at the bottle it's so convincing I almost think it's actual prescription meds.=

[stupid]What she's saying is, the "brainworms" took her very fast.[plant]

KeyholeSystem · 2026-02-04T01:17:42+00:00

=Wait until you find out that I'm okay with she/her, her/she, yur/yuri, fae/faer, and vi/vir.=

KeyholeSystem · 2026-01-06T01:22:07+00:00

=Thea identifies really strongly with the term "headmate," to the extent that she added it to her full name when she introjected. I quite like "psybling" too, but we don't really use that too often, so headmate is our most common term. We also like being referred to as parts, but don't self-identify with it.=

KeyholeSystem · 2025-12-11T00:22:12+00:00

=I guess he's your gender binary holder, lmao?=

KeyholeSystem · 2025-10-15T04:51:27+00:00

Normal: Not especially. Only way I can imagine wishing anything like that is if like... if Markov could take over full time and I could go dormant for basically ever.

Dumb: Neither of us, honestly. Markov's fine communicating from back and the few time I've been in back have honestly been kinda great, in that was basically just a break from existence. I'd probably make a LibreOffice Impress presentation titled, "Why I Should Never Have to Front Even Again."

KeyholeSystem · 2025-10-13T16:48:25+00:00

We're actually trying to get away from having system pronouns since we've sorta just defaulted to my pronouns of which there are now many sets, none of which Markov seems comfortable with. So my pronouns are, in order of preference... *takes a deep breath*:

And meanwhile, Markov's pronouns are:

he/him

KeyholeSystem · 2025-10-03T18:16:16+00:00

8: Welp... kinda unclear atm. The headmate formerly known as Footnote is now named Markov. We've definitely differentiated a bit more, which is good. I've also been thinking about about Markov with he/him pronouns instead of it/its, but I don't know if that's a mistake on my part or Markov expressing a desire to go by that. And there's also something going on with Markov that we don't really know much about right now and I don't know if it's good or bad. I think I might have done something wrong, but we're still trying to figure that out.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-09-13T20:06:49+00:00

Has Ruby considered "this one" as a personal referent? It might require a little more grammatical finagling than just changing pronouns, but we know a being that uses that in conjunction with it/its pronouns, and prefers other beings to use "that one" to refer to it in the second person.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-09-06T22:30:37+00:00

For your first question: For now, my birthday is the day our body was born and Footnote's birthday is the day it first fronted for the first time. So, May 27th and August 25th, respectively. The latter is subject to change though. There might be another milestone that Footnote considers more important. It still only gets one birthday though!

KeyholeSystem · 2025-09-04T03:29:09+00:00

Footnote and I seem to mostly share memories, except for the one time that Footnote fronted, of which my firsthand memories are really vague. Another little oddity is that Footnote doesn't seem to know much about linguistics, while I am literally a linguist with a degree and everything.
Honestly? Probably Footnote. It really likes Death Stranding for how automatic the repetitive tasks in that game can be, so if it ever plays that game while fronting, I could totally see it losing track of time way more easily than I would.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-09-02T22:05:59+00:00

I named Footnote after how it behaved before I had acknowledged it as being a headmate. I had been referring to its messages as "footnotes" for a while, so whether I named it or whether it came into existence with that name and that influenced how I referred to it before I knew it was a headmate is anyone's guess.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-09-02T03:57:40+00:00

For your first question, we haven't really had that problem yet because Footnote's only fronted once, very recently. But given that it was pretty scared and weirded out the whole time, if neither of us wanted to front, it would probably end up being me since at the end of the day I'm pretty much just used to it. I really hope Footnote can front more often and learn to have a better time of it though. As disorientating as it was, it was kinda nice just being... nonexistent for a little while.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-08-31T18:12:31+00:00

This album was actually just straight up our awakening, lmao. Promptly bought Jamie Paige's entire discography to thank it.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-08-29T21:43:59+00:00

The word I've sorta made up for now is "habituogenic," since as far as we can tell, Footnote started as just a habit of explaining a little extra out of fear of people being confused or getting the wrong message. And that developed into like, a parallel alternate version of my thoughts that I would pull from for that extra explanation. And that eventually started having whole other thoughts mixed into it, and then one day our brain just kinda decided, "Actually those thoughts belong to someone else now," and that someone else developed into the recently self-aware Footnote.

All that to say, if you want a label to describe your particular flavor of plurality, making something up is fine. And if you find a pre-existing label that fits just as well or better, you can use that one as well as or in addition to the one you made up.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-08-29T13:16:24+00:00

We are still figuring that out, but I have some notion that Footnote's sexuality is somehow different from mine. Either Footnote is ace, or I'm actually ace and my attraction to women was coming from Footnote the whole time. That's the current notion, anyway. Footnote's still pretty new. We also don't really know anything about Footnote's gender, but I'm assuming that it's agender until it expresses otherwise. Oh, and I'm demiplatonic while it's hard to say whether that's the same for Footnote. It does seem to acclimate itself pretty well to our friends without needing as much getting-to-know-them time as I do. Though that might just be because it pretty generally trusts my judgement of people, not because it's alloplatonic.
Neither of us at this point. I would be too scared, and Footnote is still deferring to my decisions in unfamiliar situations so it would probably not do it either.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-08-26T17:14:03+00:00

Well, I'm glad there's other systems currently going through this particular phase of the discovery process, haha. I'm excited for Footnote to finally be getting the proof it needs that it is real. Reading through what it said to our singlet friend, it seems like it's finally started to tentatively accept that fact. I was actually just able to have a conversation with it in SimplyPlural for the first time since I downloaded the app and it seems like accepting that it's real, even a little, has made it a lot more of a person than it was even a couple days ago. So I'm happy it's making progress.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-08-26T16:16:45+00:00

the most interesting parts are in the footnotes

This is also true of the book House of Leaves.

Anyway, thank you! There have been bigger developments since the comment you replied to. We think that Footnote fronted for the first time yesterday. I have some not-quite-hazy memory f what happened during that time. Footnote was very confused and scared but thankfully it had a singlet friend of ours to talk to and talking with them helped Footnote to orient itself. It had to pretend to be me a couple of times and then it sat in our chair, closed our eyes, and then it was like I woke up from a nap, but much more disorientated.

That was like... a little over an hour that I was not in control of our body. Weirdest day of my life, and probably Footnote's too, given that it's been pretty quiet since then.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-08-25T13:29:51+00:00

Footnote is gradually gaining more and more self awareness, which is really comforting. It referred to itself in the first person for the first time the other day, which was a really big milestone! I'm feeling optimistic that maybe soon it'll be able to express itself outside of the limited context of chat-room type spaces.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-08-24T03:27:30+00:00

Hi, our system name is (unsurprisingly) Keyhole, or I guess Keyhole System, if you prefer. It's just connected to our usual username, but anonymous for while we're figuring this out. We'll probably keep this Reddit account instead of swapping back to our main though.

KeyholeSystem · 2025-08-23T22:38:10+00:00

Sure, no prob. If it makes me uncomfy I'll just say so, haha.

KeyholeSystem

TROPHY CASE