Somebodys-somebodies - The Dunedain System

I’m the host of our system. For those who may not know, that means I front the most and am generally in charge of day-to-day activities and responsibilities.

I am also a front bound host. Or front locked, front stuck, front sticky, whatever other terms you may know. This means, more or less, that I cannot leave front, at least not fully. I’m always aware of the outside to some extent and I have extremely little access to our headspace/innerworld.

For me and our system, this means a lot of things. It means that I’m the person most people outside know. It means that I make most of our decisions and generally get more authority over our life (for better or for worse). It means that I don’t get breaks. It means that majority of the time, the other members of our system can’t really front without going through me, blending with me, being covered by me.

I believe it’s unfair to live like this. The rest of my system doesn’t really get to fully be themselves on the outside. They don’t get to have their own lives, their own friends, their own body.

And for me, I can’t experience the inside. I’m cut off from the inner world/headspace, I’m cut off from anyone who isn’t also in/near front, our memories get all weird while fronting in order to keep things from me.

I have so much responsibility and yet all I really feel like is “the default”.

My headmates feel so special to me. So unique. Like they have purpose. And I know I do too, but half the time, all I feel like is another mask.

I don’t really get to know myself outside of the body. I don’t get to experience the inner world. I cannot physically interact with my headmates the same way they can with each other and it’s honestly isolating.

My job is to be the default, the mask, the “normal”. I’m not normal. Not generally speaking at least. Im neurodivergent, im queer, im weird. I’m still traumatized, I just experience it through frosted glass and ear muffs. But I still feel like the most “normal” person in this system

I feel like the most boring, the most unimportant, because I don’t even have a choice. None of us do. I have to be like this, I have to be in charge of everything, and I’m not even good at it. I don’t get it. I don’t get why I was placed in this role but there doesn’t seem to be any way to change it.

So I try my best at least.

I feel weird even talking about my experience being plural because being a frontbound host it feels like every aspect of me being plural is just the times that I’m not me. I feel like I’m telling other peoples stories, even when I’m involved.

I hate feeling like this is my system or my life because it’s not. I’m not the only one here. Me being the default doesn’t make me any more real or important than the others yet I’m practically forced to act that way cause that’s how everyone sees it.

But when I’m not saying everything is mine, it almost feels like nothing is, especially when it comes to being plural.

If it weren’t for my headmates existing, my life wouldn’t be different from any other singlet because Im always out. All of my plurality is tied to what the other people in my head do or experience and I wouldn’t experience any of that without them. It feels like the only thing that’s special about my plurality is my headmates.

They’re their own people, and they only get to express themselves openly on rare occasions. It almost feels like me talking about myself the same way they do is taking away from that because I already do that on my non-system accounts all the time. I’m the only one who ever gets to not be plural all the time, I’m the only one who gets to present as “normal” if I choose to

But it sucks feeling like I have to. It sucks feeling like this is all I am. I’m plural too. I’m part of this system, but because I’m frontbound, it doesn’t really feel like it. It feels like I’m a singlet who just watches the rest of my headmates do whatever without really being part of that plural experience or when they’re not fronting I’m just alone entirely and it’s weirdly isolating.

Frankly I’m not sure if there’s a point to this, I was just struggling to come up with ideas of what to make a comic about and it turned into this ramble. I figured some people could relate at the very least so I decided to turn it into a post anyways.

-🦩 (Jameson/Jamie, he/they/it)

a reminder that the host isn’t the only person in the system who should be respected and made to feel comfortable.

the host is not ‘the important part’, we are all completely conscious and capable of our own thoughts, feelings and our own boundaries. our brain created us because it decided that we are all important and needed.

the host is not the only member of a system you should care about.

Note: this includes "Cores" or "The Original"

Shoutout to singlets that accept systems for who they are. Singlets who ask respectful questions and try to understand us. Singlets who do their best to accommodate different headmates and make them feel included. Singlets who listen to what systems have to say. You're so important. Please keep doing what you do.

Y'all being friends w/ plurals is so fucking funny /pos

Bc tell me why I can be talking to the host, and then out of fucking nowhere Vanny from FNAF pops out and goes "Lmao the children emerge from the holes" and then just fucking dips

I sit down w/ my friend and then they turn into a completely DIFFERENT person right before my eyes and we just continue talking like nothing happens

For fucks sake, I get a front row seat to hosts complaining abt the other people inhabiting their brain like they're annoying roommates in a cramped air BNB

Shout-out to my plural friends. I know if no one's got me, Junko Enoshima from Danganronpa's got me. /Ref /silly

(Positive/affectionate post made by a singlet who loves its plural friends very much /p)

shoutout to introjects who are so far from their source that they’re barely recognizable. you do not owe anyone “canon-like behavior”

It's all fun and games until a system mate comes to Co-con while you're showering.

He wolf whistled at me and called me a "Tumblr sexyman"...

Goddamn it, Toya. /aff

it/its pronouns are not inherently dehumanizing, unless the user wants them to be. it/its pronouns aren't weird. it/its pronouns aren't too hard to use. people who only use it/its pronouns need to have this be respected no matter what your beliefs are. you don't get to single out people with "weird" pronouns and misgender us and use incorrect pronouns. accept someone who uses it/its as you support someone who uses they/them. there's nothing wrong with it/its pronouns. respect its users.

Personal experiences of Ones Plurality

For years now we've considered ourselves a system, and this is a long post rambling about who we are, and why we are.

We're multiple, plural, a system, a collective, so many different terms we enjoy using interchangeably because they all feel they fit. We are multiple entities as much as we are parts of what is one whole in this world; internally we are many, externally we are one. We live one life, but each of us are pieces to living it, so we are plural. Our system formed from trauma, we were neglected and abused as a child, we've been around horrible people since we were little, our life has been unstable for a long time. There is no arguing that trauma is not part of why we're a system, or that it wasn't the catalyst for the dissociation that caused us to become parts; so we are a system with roots of a dissociative disorder. But we don't only exist because of it. We use the label adaptive, because that is the initial cause of us, to adapt to our life, our adversities, our trauma, our disorders... but we also use created as a label; we're mixed origin. Our system especially nowadays tends to linger in fragments, sometimes those fragments take upon their own identity. Sometimes we purposefully influence them, we create the alters we want, we need, out of their existence. We create within ourselves, we form naturally, and we split from our pain... so we are a mixed origin, adaptive and created, OSDD system. And that fits quite well for all we need it to. If it were up to some of us, we wouldn't bother with these labels at all, but for others within who we are these labels are a comfort; an easy telling that "this is me, this is who I am and I want to say it and be heard." We don't like -genic labels, they're narrow, and make you decide between having to identify with trauma itself or disregarding what part it could play even if it didn't form your system. For awhile we used them because it was all we really had, it was the easier option because people knew; but in the same breath it came with peoples assumptions that we hated having upon ourselves. We mentioned prior our initial origins, having a dissociative disorder. We don't particularly view our plurality or systemhood itself as disordered, we've plenty that affects us being multiple in negative ways though though... CPTSD, OCD, BPD, NPD, Various physical disabilities, Etc, They all make things harder. They are what disorders us, causes discord and pain. Our system makes it easier, better for us, at least nowadays. In the past, years ago, I think we would've said our systemhood is inherently disordered; it caused our host then stress, unbearably. it was a painful experience, scary, anxiety inducing for more reasons than one. But we've grown, we've changed, we've overcome a lot and our views have changed. I think it's fair to hope we'd have changed from when we were 13 years old... We've spoken before that the spaces we'd used to be in helped us all but none, when we were staunchly anti-endo because it was the "right" option (and the option that, at the time, made us feel safe while we were in the company of those who felt it right to harass people outside of those views.) We were scared of ourselves, scared of the people around us. Scared of being wrong. Existing wrong.

When the information we were given was that we were broken, we were so horribly abused (which, frankly, remains true in our case because we were), that we were broken by it. And if we hadn't been horribly broken, it was wrong to claim we were this way... which of course is hardly the truth. When we stepped out of that bubble, realizing how tired and awful it made us felt... how much worse and harder it made things for us. We began to get more information, we had people tell us we were wrong (and we hated it at first honestly), we had people who directed us to others who had resources. And we learned. And we learned more about ourselves because of it. We learned more about dissociative disorders, about plural history, about the experiences of others outside of it, about how other aspects of ourselves intertwine with the rest of it... We learned a lot of things we disregarded or didn't think was necessary to know prior. Because we thought we knew everything we needed to already, that it was a trauma disorder, and the only way to be this way was to be traumatized. And we were very quickly challenged in our at-the-time narrow views. Sometimes those old spaces still linger even as we've come to accept more views, more various systems and the way they exist too. Existing in spaces where others are so open, sometimes it still feels odd, and we feel isolated, the strange and weird one of the bunch because of how we simply are in our life. We don't understand or grasp the experiences of those with elaborate innerworlds, or who retain memories within them. We never had that. We don't understand the people who will openly text as various alters talking to one another, responding to each other. We've always been so internal with ourselves, that seeing communication in those ways felt... strange? Even down to people who make a big deal of new alters, who fuss and whine about even considering the idea of it. We don't get it.

It's hard sometimes not to think to ourselves "wow, that's cringe/stupid" or that "they should just roleplay" sometimes when presented with these sorts of situations. But we know that the way we think sometimes is cruel or overly mean and judgemental; and while we know it comes from a place of our own insecurity, and retaining some of the things from spaces we'd used to be in as a kid... it's still awful, and our place to challenge it when we think this way. These people don't hurt me. Their experiences do not change mine. I am still me. They are them. And that's okay. And that is what I will always remind myself of.

The various pieces of our story, the ones that made us, are exactly why we've landed on the labels we use now. They are what have made us syscourse neutral, an endo safe system, someone who wants to seek our more information and enjoys learning about this side of life.

This is an apparently hot take but like… can we stop normalizing the idea that all littles / syskids are genuinely all going to be mentally children or “innocent” and in need of sanitized spaces.

Systems are gonna have littles who are nothing more than kids in headspace, yet act and function like anyone else.

Systems are gonna have littles who are traumatized.

Systems are gonna have littles who are persecutors.

Systems are gonna have littles who are sexual alters.

Systems are gonna have littles who otherwise have no choice in the adult topics they have to live with.

and the list goes on and on like it could in any other case; Whether or not you like it.

It’s up to a system to deem what they want and think is appropriate for THEIR own system, not for someone outside to decide. Just like every other type of alter you can’t just blanket they’re all going to be some sort of way?

(Obviously, littles who ARE basically just normal children that exist, but this post isn’t about that.)

I cannot stress enough how freeing it is, as a system, to become chill with not knowing who you are.

There have been multi-week periods where we don’t know who we are, unsure if we’re somebody new or just one of the established people having a Weird Time. Usually it’s the latter.

We tend to front for extended periods of time (like, normally a minimum of three days, sometimes up to several months), and the confusing Unknown times can be just as long.

Like, I have no idea who the hell I am right now. I know a couple of people I’m not, and a few I might be, but that’s it. And that’s chill. I don’t need to know my name, I’m just sippin my cranberry juice and minding my own business. This is normal for us.

I see so many systems on here worried about somehow faking or fundamentally misunderstanding their experiences, because nobody else has talked about it, so it must not be real, right?

Just a reminder to systems with their own Weird Times: it’s ok to have experiences you’ve never seen in anyone else’s journey.

Being plural isn’t something easily categorized or broken down. If anything counts as wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff, it’s the experience of being multiple entities in one brain.

Your plurality is inherently unique, and there is no mold it could possibly fit. Don’t try to make it fit.