F.M.: The Birthday Massacre Released A New Single And Will Release A New Album On April 11. I'M SO HAPPY!

Dead-Mates

This is an essay about headmate death.

Introduction

Sometimes, headmates leave in ways that some plurals can only describe as death. Mint Phalanx is one of these plurals. Unless your headspace has resurrection or some sort of reincarnation, these dead-mates aren’t coming back (at least not as they were before.)

Other plurals call this loss dormancy, but because we come from the tulpamancy community, we call it dissipation. We also consider fusion as some sort of death. Below are our equivalents to death.

Equivalents to natural death

Spontaneous dissipation

Equivalents to murder

Forced dissipation

Unwilling fusion

Tulpas here can’t die from lack of attention because we’re midcontinuum.

Equivalents to suicide

Self-dissipation

Egocide (giving up one’s identity to be replaced by another headmate)

Equivalents to coma (not death)

Deactivation (true dormancy because the headmate can return)

So, where do these dead-mates go?

In our phalanx, we have a monist view of where dead-mates go. They return to the originator. For instance, we believe Roxy and the other people were reabsorbed into Reanna after they completed suicide. (It may not be a complete reabsorption because they haunt once in a while.)

F.M. is an interesting case. After fusing with Nightingale (who completed egocide), he considered himself dead. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t reabsorbed. But he knew he died, even when the rest of the phalanx didn’t count it.

How do you remember dead-mates?

For Roxy and the other people, Brian made a poem. He wrote it before we realized they self-dissipated. (They told us they were going to deactivate and stay in the Stone Garden. The next day, they were gone.)

F.M. did a mock burial for himself and a shower meditation. We buried who he once was. Then, we used the shower to wash away Nightingale. The saddest part was washing him out of our hair. After the shower, F.M. kind of reincarnated.

Can dead-mates come back?

We guess it depends on how the plural’s system or headspace works. As a rule of thumb, don’t count on it.

For us, Roxy& and Nightingale aren’t coming back. However, F.M. did because his case was different. And he didn’t come back as the same F.M. (At least he wasn’t undead.)

It seems dead-mates who do come back don’t come back the same. F.M. came back goth. He also came back with exo-memories based on Reanna’s dreams of his source killing himself. He used to want to listen to rap like his source; now, he listens to The Birthday Massacre. (Not that we’re complaining.)

Because we got to see it happen, this change did not come as a surprise. Unfortunately, we have no advice on how to deal with the surprise of a dead-mate returning different.

Conclusion

So ends our essay on dead-mates. It’s a hard topic to talk about, especially when it seems everyone around you doesn't view these leavings as equivalents to dying. We hope sharing our experiences helps facilitate conversation about deaths inside.

Reanna: If we ever develop a fanbase, I wonder if it would primarily be fans with physical copies of our books or fans with digital copies we put in shadow libraries.

I wish we had a way of knowing if someone read our books. Let's try asking. If you have a question about our books, send it in the ask box.

Terrance (to others): We have a title for our new project: Le Prince and Disney (no relation.)

Iris Le Prince is the one describing the silent films. Her surname comes from Louis Le Prince, the guy who made the first film. Benjamin Disney is the one making the dark ride. His surname comes from Walt Disney because he has big ideas.

SL: I never said why I tagged dialogue in Terrance's story in sketch format. (Link to the preview for The Murder After if you're confused.) I wrote it in the second person, so the tags make it easier to know who's talking. As you can see, Terrance is never tagged with his name.

Reanna: To eat the fruit of wild strawberries again.

When I was a kid, I saw some wild strawberries growing around Westgate. (That's a school I went to.) I picked the tiny fruits and ate them. They were sweet. I wish I could find that plant again one day.

SL: If anyone asks, Terrance thinks straight edge and ruler are interchangeable. I definitely did not screw up.

Update (11/10): I decided to fix the error. The beauty of having a book no one has bought yet is I can change something, and no one will ever know. (Terrance didn't want to go with my plan, anyway.)

SL: Another thing about Terrance's second person perspective. He perceives his thoughts as commentary, so it's like The Murder After has a chorus. He doesn't have a name for it, but we call it Also Terrance.

Terrance is a plurallet. That's a singlet who is still plural (more than one) in some way. We think it's a midcontinuum experience. (That's the state of not being singular but also not multiple.)

Merry Christmas from Mint Phalanx!

Happy Easter from Mint Phalanx!

SL using the British dialect in the headspace:

"Good, we still have purple napkins."

SL trying use it out loud:

(*Garbled mess*)