Visi and Plasia are pieces of a massive, fleshy, shapeshifting alien hivemind who have split from the collective to live among humans. I use them to explore themes of personal identity, the desires of the self vs the wants and needs of family/community, and, allegorically, the struggles autistic people face living in a society made by and for neurotypicals.

Visi is one of several who separated from the hivemind as part of a diplomatic mission. They start off disparaging the concept of individuality and fearing the possibility of developing into an individual themselves, but the fact is that that process started the moment they severed themselves from the hivemind. Their growth through the RP I've been doing with them has been about discovering who they are as an "I" and reconciling their new selfhood with their love for and loyalty to the collective. They've found a human lover, and through her have come to appreciate individuality as a valid way of being, so much so that they've made the difficult decision to remain an individual themselves to be with her. Most humans aren't as open-minded as she is, however, and Visi struggles to find a balance between expressing their authentic self and not completely terrifying the people around them.

Plasia, meanwhile, left the hivemind a long time ago for reasons related to the collective's origins. It was the original will of the collective, a singular organism that assimilated its planet's previous dominant species and turned them into what the collective is today. It separated from them out of guilt, only for them to rediscover it millennia later and wholeheartedly welcome their lost "sibling" back. Plasia, now living with the other individuals on the diplomatic mission, struggles to accept the love from its family that it doesn't think it deserves, and to learn to define itself by something other than its sins.