So we've always used Earth years to denote the ages of people in our system. But a lot of the time, that's still really an approximation and I'm not talking about mental age. I mean more like, how do you state the age of someone who spends a good deal of time using portals that take you somewhere and you stay there for however long then you come back through the same portal and return a moment after you left? Or in some cases, before you left?

How do you estimate age when you're talking about a person native to a planet where the years are longer than Earth's? And with time flowing faster on that planet than on Earth, how do you handle it when someone goes back and forth between Earth and that other planet?

Makes me glad our innerworld and the outerworld are more or less connected, timewise. We can stretch it a little - connect with Jas in the innerworld but she's busy so we try again a moment later outerworld time and hours later innerworld time. And sometimes we check in and it's been a few days since we've checked and they're still watching the same movie/doing the same thing they were last time we checked. This goes the other way too - sometimes they'll check in on us and it'll be a bad time and so they check back in a few hours later for us and only a moment later for them. Per tests, the most we can stretch this out in either direction is about a couple Earth months of experienced time, local to the Earth time of the main universe of the paracosm.

And there's one further wrinkle in all of this, relating specifically to portals. When you go through a portal, your body is broken down inside and reformed as you leave based on the pattern of it that exists in the Void. This normally isn't an issue - if you stick to your own universe. Which Jas doesn't, nor does Doc. (Though Doc we don't even try to estimate his age.) When you leave your home universe, a copy of your pattern is placed in the Void of the universe you go to. You use that when you teleport in that universe. But when you come back, you get reformed based on the pattern of you when you left. So if you go and spend months in another universe, as Jas did a lot growing up, you come back into a body that hasn't aged at all. But you still, heart and mind and soul, have the lived experience of being that other age.

Kinda like Narnia - the Pevensies grew up into adults in Narnia before coming back to Earth as children again.

So some of our ages are more just educated guesses than anything else lol.

Kinda makes me glad that at least for me, my inner age is basically just "I feel younger than the body. By how much varies."

*gets an "i miss you" text*

nyx: *replies "i miss you too" to be kind

angel: killer fanservice!

luciel: sometimes i wonder about our ethics and morals..

Nico (yelling): LIFE IS FLEETING, DEATH IS FOREVER! WAAAAAAAA

Nico: *jumps off the balcony.*

Morty, who lives on the 4th story and whose balcony Nico just jumped out of: You okay?!?!?

Nico (from a rose bush): ... yeah!

Two alters trying to have a "date night" in the front: :D

Me, obsessed with the TV series they just turned on: 👁️👄👁️

HI Okay Im not dead

TMI infodump below

OKAY So yall know how we were at the gyno last week and had to get bloodwork and shit done right???

WELL IT TURNS OUT IT WAS A REALLY. REALLY BAD UTI. So they sent over antibiotics to combat it, and hOLY SHIT THE DROWSY SIDE EFFECT??? WE SLEPT THROUGH MOST OF THIS WEEK AND ITS RUDE. Im talking they'd be awake for maybe 2-3ish hours at a time then needed to lay down for another 5-7. It was hellish.

ANYWAY Last night was our last dose, things have been going okay and while we're all still a bit drowsy they actually feel alot better physically.

Miraculously it also fixed our sleep schedule again.

ALL THIS TO SAY HI IM BACK BITCHES <3

🥀We're in a little town that the innerworld connects to. Eddie says that he needs to go somewhere. I follow him out of curiosity and simpage.

🥀He notices that I'm following him and reiterates that he needs to go somewhere. I follow him out of curiosity and simpage.

🥀He notices again, and decides to fly away this time. At first I walked, then I ran. Because I'm a fucking simp-- I MEAN. ERM. I was curious.

🥀And, because he knew damn well what was going on and we were mostly just playing around with each other, he giggles and promises that we'll cuddle once we get back home.

🥀I love him so much <3

i love getting random cursed knowledge from the plural brain while sitting doing absolutely nothing- like the one bit i just got is that our x is 6’7-

i be in Situations

could stress perhaps limit innerworld control/access? I started getting more access to view my innerworld freely and interact and while sometimes I can it seems limited again and communication suffered as well. Im not even sure what I did to improve it in the first place tbh haha. I kinda wish I could send the memes alters made when innerworld shenanigans were easy to see on anon lol.

Absolutely. Running the inner world takes processing power just like anything else. If all of your brain power is focused on things that are stressing you out, then that's going to make it harder to access the inner world. This might also be why communication is giving you trouble too.

Finding inner peace and calming your mind can help you a lot with both of these things.

Sorry you're going through this right now. Hopefully, you'll be able to get things figured out and more under control soon.

Terms I would like coined:

transpolyplex:

a transplural identity related to wanting to be a polyplex (I.e, multiple sidesystems)

Transhydraconsious:

a transplural term related to becoming a hydraconsious system

TransSisasystem:

a transplural umbrella term related to developing, expanding, shrinking or becoming a sisasystem of any kind

TransServitor:

a transplural identity related to wanting to be or develop a servitor

Permayoungadult:

a trans age identity related to feeling like always being a young adult as if one is just stepping into maturity and identity.

Multiseer and transmultiseer:

A multiseer is a headmate with the ability to multisee, meaning they can see through the perspective of multiple headmates at the same time. Transmultiseer is an identity related to wanting to be or develop a multiseer.

Transsystemstructure:

A transplural identity related to wanting a different system structure (governance structure, headmate organization, system functions, etc.)

Transhyperinnerworld

A term related to feeling as if your innerworld should be on a higher level of complexity from outerworld reality (more colors, hyperdimensional shapes, more physical properties, more stimulation, etc.)

Transhypoinnerworld:

A term related to feeling as if your innerworld should be on a lower level of complexity from the outerworld reality (for example, it could be 2d or 2.5d, less colors, less stimulation, etc)

Transmemeinnerworld:

A transinnerworld identity related to wanting your innerworld to be a massive chaotic shitpost

TransVRinnerworld

A term related to wanting your innerworld to feel like a vr game whatever that means to you.

Transcellshaded:

A term where you feel like your body should be cell shaded like an animation

Transphantomsense:

A term relating to wanting more or less phantom sensations or to acquire new phantom senses

Translore:

An identity related to wanting to acquire lore or have different lore.

Lorenull:

An identity relating to being immune to lore and worldbuilding shenanigans.

Innerworld Sex.

My parts fuck -- and yours can too with these quick and easy steps! Step One: Think about it.

No, seriously, that's basically it for me. Just think about it. (Obviously, my experiences are not universal; lots of systems don't have innerworlds, or struggle to visualize. But I wanna talk about my experiences with innerworld sex.)

I'm one of those "lucky" systems that has always had an incredibly vivid innerworld. As a child and teenager (and okay, yes, some as a young adult too), I spent far more time there than in the real world. I saw everything through a screen in the innerworld, not feeling my own hands as they touched things, but the "body's hands" doing things. It didn't register as me at all.

But what did register as me was what I could imagine, innerworld. Did I know it was fake? Yes, obviously -- I know it's all in my head. Where else would the mental illness be? It makes complete sense why imagining things in my head would feel more real to me when I was actively dissociating so hard from real life that I wasn't even myself anymore. And, it being so vivid, it felt real. There's a reason why my daydreams were maladaptive -- I would spend more time there than in the real world, because the real world felt fake and the fake world felt real.

So obviously, anything you can imagine is real innerworld. We have demons! We have elves! We have a bendy space that couldn't ever possibly exist in real life, because hallways go to places they logically never could, and television sets rest on a cloud layer where an angel part sleeps. And, yes, we have kinky ass sex.

It didn't start that way, of course. When we first became aware of our system, we didn't even know what a system was. We just knew we were all there, in a small circular room with golden runes on the floor. It wasn't until we grew some -- went dormant, came back, panicked, split -- that we began to actively develop our innerworld and create new spaces to be safe in. And, well, not be safe in -- we definitely had some bumps along the way.

Nowadays, we have an incredibly developed innerworld that really helps us. We aren't stuck in it constantly anymore, and it provides a place for us to work through and process our trauma -- or to feel safe. A lot of people who like to fakeclaim DID systems over their innerworld shenanigans like to fall back on the, "But what would be the purpose of things like innerworld sex and relationships? Clearly you're just roleplaying with yourself!"

Imagine, if you will, a completely fucked up child who lived entirely in their own imagination along with, at the time, a seemingly bunch of other people, all there and similarly fucked up. You're trying to hold it all together, but you're starting to realize just how little you can remember about your own life, and you're terrified. You have no idea who these people really are, but you'd always told yourself they were OCs you made to help you out in high school. Only, now it's college, and you just remembered these "characters" after a presentation about DID, and you got your hands on a DSM-III (all you could find at the campus library for the time being) and read about Multiple Personality Disorder, and you're terrified.

You spend all day in your own head, and you're crying because the real world is so, so hard. You sleep through classes -- or, more often than not, you forgot time was passing in the real world and just forgot what day it was, that you even had a class. You're stressed. You're tired.

And then you split a part (No, you don't split, he just Walks In one day, he's just a new character, you don't have trauma, you're not fucked up, you're just imagining things-) who seems to want nothing more than a fun time and his dick in something. (Hi -- I bet you're wondering how I got in this mess!)

When I came into this system, at least consciously for the first time in college, I was struggling with my gender and sexuality. Everyone else could handle the academics and everything -- I would handle the Everything Else. And the issue was, I wasn't allowed to do anything in real life, because I was stuck trying to regulate the other fuckers in my head. So... if all I could do was in my head, then I'd just do the people in my head. Starting with the one stressing me out the most -- the one in charge.

So, we fuck -- wow, what a time! It's dissociative, I genuinely don't remember what we did in real life, but I remember fronting afterward with my body hot, bothered, and surprisingly mostly satisfied with the feeling for once. We likely just... took a break from real life for a bit, and thought about good things. Is that not a good thing for us? Taking a break to relax? So what if the thoughts felt like they occurred innerworld or if they didn't? It's just a bit of fun.

As time went on, it got more intense and we got more creative. More things imagined that couldn't happen in real life. But, better yet, we started to gain more awareness of the real world as we worked through some issues. Wade realizing he was trans and that's okay; me realizing that sex with real people is fine and safe through fucking people safely innerworld... We started fucking our real life partner by then, and realizing how different it felt in real life.

That's when we were living partly innerworld and out of the innerworld. Kind of one foot in, one foot out. And again, we started experimenting with sex. Did you know, getting fucked up the ass by your innerworld husband while your in real life partner jacks you off is a very interesting sensation? It takes it to a new level.

People rage over this, for some fucking reason. "But what purpose does that serve?! It doesn't make sense!! DID is a way to cope with trauma, not have fun!"

It is a way to cope, you're right. My parents touched me in ways that traumatized me up as a kid. I have a lot of sexual trauma from being molested in high school by a peer. I have religious trauma surrounding virginity. My DID absolutely was caused by repeated childhood trauma. But my sexual preferences and the fun I have in-sys are ways to cope with that trauma.

Sometimes, the purpose of those things innerworld are not to reflect the trauma I experienced back then. More often than not, it's to live my life in either safer or more interesting ways. By participating in innerworld sex, it led to me feeling safe to be with my partner. Experimenting with simultaneous sex (where I fuck my insys husband while my IRL partner fucks me) led to me understanding the boundaries between real life and my own world, and helped me step more into the real world while understanding my inner space. Don't even get me started on what I do in my sleep -- that's another post ;)

Having fun is allowed. Having fun is just as healing as processing trauma -- so fuck away in your mind. It's fun and good!

angel: *bursts into front randomly*

nyx: ..what are you drinking?

angel: boba tea

nyx: we've never had boba tea..?

angel: sounds like a you problem

the plural community is so toxic. its also very confusing. its stressful, its mentally draining. (note:this rant is not anti endo, even though it seems like it. i just dont like the black-and-white dogmatic structure of the plural community.)

i dont like how the plural community is so divided. and how theres so many stereotypes in it encouraged and/or created by the plural community itself. the anti endo side is all about negativity and gatekeeping. they dont like when systems love their alters, would miss their alters, are friends with some of their alters, do activities in the innerworld or real world with their alters, have shenanigans with their alters, have plenty of fictives or celeb or friend factives, dont have abuser factives, dont dissociate severely all the time, or anything seen as "cringe" especially according to systemscringe. then you have the pro endos and endos themselves who spread positivity, are for systems loving and being friends with their alters, and realize not every system has dissociation all the time and some DID systems dont even dissociate more than half of the time. but some pro endos have also said DID and osdd can develop without trauma if the person is just naturally dissociative enough and that DID and osdd develop from being naturally highly dissociative instead of trauma (when really DID and osdd develop from disorganized attachment/emotional trauma according to the theory of structural dissociation.) ive been downvoted and called out for saying DID and osdd can only develop from trauma. and i usually dont fakeclaim people but sometimes peoples alters are just cringe I wonder if they're faking and usually its bc of the anti endo standard but i saw a system have an alter that was supposed to cutesey up autism even more, a tbh creature alter with aw/tism pronouns. i got the ick. they are endos btw. i hate how anti endos make it seem like if youre a "real" DID system you dissociate all the time severely. when the average DID system has a DES score of 48 (ill send the link) meaning the average DID system only dissociates a little less than half of the time. sure some dissociate a little more or a lot more than that, but anti endos are openly exaggerating symptoms and making an exclusionist environment based on what makes them feel valid. pro endos, meanwhile, literally go for anything. do you think DID and osdd develop without trauma? most pro endos seem okay with that. do you think its okay to create tulpas/willogenic systems to cope with trauma and call it traumagenic when its endogenic? pro endos are okay with that. do you have an alter that uses pronouns offensive to people with trauma (ive seen someone use rape/rapeself as pronouns in the endo community and murder victims and their families ive seen kill used as pronouns or disabilities like the aw/tism or wtv thing i saw? theyre ok with that too. pro endos are too lenient, theyre too scared to call out misinformation or even fakers because it might make the endogenic community as a whole look bad, when im ngl it already does. because of the whole "anti endo vs pro endo" the plural community looks like a joke or some dumb trend. both sides are toxic. anti endos spread hate and make unrealistic standards, but pro endos support anything and think people have the right to identify however they feel no matter how disrespectful it is to other people (like the "i created my system consciously so it didnt develop from trauma but because i created it to deal with trauma im traumagenic!" thing) im definitely not anti endo, but i also dont like what most of the pro endos ive seen support or let happen. basically the whole online plural community is exhausting and confusing. and it makes me wish i never knew i was plural.

i cant find emojis i dont care. talk about your batshit detailed headspace and also the best quotes one because i know you have. so many. :kissy:

hiiiiii :kissy: uhm well theres a main road that on each side has terraced houses and is slightly modeled after our hometown. one of the houses has been there for years now and is a replica of our family home. everything in the innerworld was built around it. if you follow the road to the south there is the Elden Hole (a giant hole in the ground that leads to Elden Ring) and past that is the gladiator pit. under the gladiator pit is a pub. its good. behind the houses on the west side of the street are a few more houses and beyond that is a woods that opens up into a field! its used as a park a lot and some of the teens play sport there and stuff. theres cookouts too. to the east theres the ocean!!!! its big. theres an ocean god who ive heard is pretty chill. and if you follow the road north it goes. somewhere. i know theres a farmstead up there somewhere. also theres some layer shenanigans where if one of the bleach layer guys opens a senkaimon/portal it leads to. karakura town. from bleach. i have no clue where in the innerworld it actually sits. one of the system admins probably knows. i just live here. our innerworld used to be super tiny and just the family house and a rock by the ocean until saoirse (14 year old god alter) went mega god mode and created a WORLD. so thats fun. a lot of the weird innerworld stuff is bc of god alters. you can blame one of them for the Elden Hole

QUOTES!

looking through our quotes channel for this ask was like 100 consecutive punches to the face. i hope it was worth it

Our innerworld used to be just a huge forest with a little cabin deep inside. Now there’s two cabins, lots of stuff lost in the woods, and also a deep pitch black underwater ocean underneath. I’m also vaguely aware of a temple very far away I’m (the host) not supposed to go near.

We can also ping each other—at least, some of us can. I can shout for our main protector and he’ll hear me 90% of the time.

Also, usually in-head voices are distinct. Like our main protector sounds like a guy. I usually think with the body’s voice. Different alters have different accents. But sometimes I’ll get these really loud,,, what should I call them? I treat them like auditory hallucinations, because the voice sounds like it’s coming from inside my head and outside my head simultaneously. Like I’m blanketed by sound, almost. This has happened a few times that I remember—once I was in class and I got overwhelmed by this strange whispery voice. Another, I was lying in bed and got a blast of a girl’s voice saying unintelligible things (my theory is that she’s a system member I already knew of at the time but didn’t know well and couldn’t communicate with). But that’s the thing that’s weird! It’s just so loud and clear. Like a megaphone. I’m not totally sure that this is system shenanigans, but there’s very little else it could be imo. Kind of freaky.

(also sorry this is super long and a bit rambly)

All of these are so interesting!!

I love descriptions of innerworlds - I've heard of quite a few systems who have innerworlds with forests!

We also have the ability to communicate with each other fairly regularly, unless someone is specifically avoiding hearing us. We like to consider ourselves always co-con, because we're always all aware of the outside world.

The auditory thing is interesting! We've experienced something similar with seeing our alters outside of the body, though that happened maybe twice.

Thank you so much for sharing!

🍎🌆🕸

“🍎: what are y'alls favorite foods?”

Common ground favorite foods are often carb/protein combinations: meat with noodles (with any of a large variety of sauces and seasonings), chicken with rice (with any of a large variety of sauces), pepperoni pizza, etc. Our system’s eating habits are slightly limited due to having IBS and being lactose intolerant. We’re not huge sweets people but we collectively all tend to enjoy ice cream with a favorite being Ben and Jerry's Phish Food.  

We also have our personal special favorites. One of Ocean Watcher’s favorite food is salmon (especially if covered in bourbon sauce). One of Earth Listener’s favorite foods is medium-rare steak. A favorite of Sky Singer’s is any burger that includes bacon and is dripping in BBQ. Kardegray is wings in anything spicy fanatic. Etc.    

“🌆: what does your headspace look like?”

We have our innerworld which takes the form of a whole planet consisting of one major continent and one major ocean (for the most part). The continent includes a number of different biomes ranging from tundra to tropical rainforests to deserts to wetlands. Most of the planet is complete wilderness but some small instances of civilization do exist. The innerworld is home to not only us but also non-system members. Most are “NPCs” as we can’t communicate with them like we can everyone else, they aren’t aware of external reality, and they certainly cannot front. However, we also have residents who we can communicate with and who are aware of outside reality but they cannot really front or cannot front at all (some used to be able to do so, but can’t anymore; but many have never been able to). 

There are also what we call the mindscapes which are specific to each system in our cluster. One takes the form of a spaceship, another an Edwardian era-like two-story house, etc. The mindscapes aren’t in our innerworld, they’re just connected to it in a sort of pocket dimension-like set-up. It’s in the mindscapes that manifestations of “Front” exist.

Finally, there are what we just have taken to call realms. They’re a lot more variable. One is just a giant library that contains books that are manifestations of all our memories. Another is a place that acts a lot like a Star Trek holodeck (it can appear like anything we want) and we use it for group roleplaying campaigns and other kinds of fun-time shenanigans.

“🕸: what’s your oldest memory of being a system?”

Our oldest (clear) memory of being a system was from some time when we were in kindergarten. The teacher had tasked the class with drawing a self-portrait. We drew several animal figures rather than anything like our human child body. When the teacher started to get onto us for playing around and not following instruction, Sweetfur, a dog therian in our system, stated that “we” had. She pointed to a rough drawing of a dog as herself and then pointed to a tiger and stated he had drawn himself too. The teacher reprimanded us again stating we were not a dog or a tiger and that we were a girl. When Sweetfur talked back stating we were not a little girl, the teacher ordered us to go to the front of the classroom telling us for our disobedience we were to receive paddlings (spanking with a ping-pong paddle).

Not the nicest of early memories, but few of our oldest memories are. But the memory is one of the oldest ones we have for both our earliest plural memory as well as our earliest memory of identifying as nonhuman and our earliest memories of being transgender.       

~ various