Positively Gateway

A system member that holds or experiences intense dissociation. They may numb the body or cause the body to dissociate upon fronting.

A system whose fronting activity goes through a cycle based on new members forming. The main fronters remain until new members form, then those new members become the main fronters, so on and so forth.

A system formed before the present and/or rest of the current system. For example, formed in a past life or exomemories. Can be also known as an antesystem, antecluster, antesubsystem, etc.

Ante- from the Latin prefix for “before”.

Paichmate

a system member whos primary role/job is to play games for the system (such as for a stress relief, a break from things, etc)

Paich : Paichnídi : Greek

Thymo-: A prefix referring to plurans who found and joined their system via their emotional connections to a pluran who was already in the system.

Derived from the term thymos, used to denote emotions, desire, or an internal urge in Greek philosophy.

Usages can include thymotive, thymonim, etc.

-anim: A suffix for spiritual systems, referring specifically to plurans whose souls entered the body from an outside source (such as another world).

Derived from the Latin root anim, meaning “spirit”.

When paired with a prefix that ends in a vowel, (such as thymo-), the A is dropped (i.e. thymonim, fictonim).

Slightly tweaked OSDD flag by neopronouns! The colors were too dark for us but we really liked the flag!

Plural Flag Wallpapers!

flag by @pluralrights

These r fun to make uwu!!

We see this a lot in the plural community, especially in regard to describing headmates, so let’s talk about it (yes this is our first post here, and it’s kinda not with the theme of our blog, but bare with me here.)

What is ableist language?

Basically, ableist language is language that directly or indirectly contributes to the misinformation and stigmatization of conditions, mental or physical. This language can at first glance, seem harmless or okay, but in reality it’s very harmful.

So.. what are examples of ableist language in the plural community?

The most common one we see is descibing potentially “dangerous” headmates as “psychotic” or “delusional.” This language is very harmful for a variety of reasons. Describing headmates as phychotic or delusional can make it seem like that’s why they’re dangerous. When in fact, it’s the opposite, people with phychosis and delusions are more likely, and often do hurt themselves more than other people. Painting headmates as this way can actually take away from what’s actually wrong with them, and instead making them seem “ins*ne” instead. This is dangerous and unhealthy not only to the headmate, but to the rest of the system.

What’s the big deal?

It spreads misinformation about what phychosis and delusions are like, and actively hurts those who do have disorders with those symptoms. This type of language spreads fear and misinformation about already stigmatized conditions. It’s extremely harmful and damaging, both mentally and emotionally to people with theses conditions.

Addressing the issue.

So, admittedly, not many people in the plural community know much about our history. This includes us- information isn’t exactly readily avaliable anywhere we know of, and it’s not something a lot of people seem to have thought of researching.

So, when we came upon a piece of plural history from nearly 20 years ago, mentioned offhandedly, it was a little bit of an awakening on how long our community has been around and developing, and we figured that’s something it’d be beneficial to share with others.

Codes were a bit of a thing back in the early internet days- Popularized in email and USENET signatures (from what we can tell, information is scarce), they were bits of letters, numbers, and symbols meant to convey a lot of information in relatively small space. Here’s an example, so you know what we’re dealing with.

Not exactly human readable, but that’s the point. Codes were used by a fair few online subcultures, such as goths, geeks, twinks, dragons, and, interestingly enough, systems, to communicate within in-groups. It’s hard to say where they were created, or when they went out of style, but I’d say their prime was late 90’s-early ‘00s. If you were active online at this time, feel free to add info!

I’m not entirely sure how serious these were, as the Multiple Code site describes the effort of fitting so much info into so few characters as “completely impossible and probably amusing”, but regardless, I’m decently sure these were still used as an (admittedly clunky) form of communication.

Looking at the website, which is thankfully still up, you can see that it was originally created in March of 2001, no doubt older than many active participants in modern plural spaces. There are sections on member count, innerworld, degree of coconsciousness, and “outness factor”, as well as non-multiplicity-related things like job, sexuality, diet, and paranormal experiences.

One of our favorite parts of looking through the code was the section on origins, which looks like this.

While this was definitely before modern -genic labels, a lot of these terms are still used in some capacity today, and the inclusivity of all types of systems is wild-in-a-good-way to see.

I have no idea how widely this code was used back in old web days. We’ve done entirely not enough research. But simply knowing that we have always been here, and likely always will be, is extremely comforting.

By the way- there’s an effort to revive the multiple code! It uses updated terminology and streamlines things a lot, while still staying true to the original in terms of appearance and function. It doesn’t have to be your thing, but I think it’d be lovely to see it used in Tumblr bios or places.

There are several symbols for plurality as a whole, but we haven’t seen any specifically for polyfragmented/polymedian/polymultiple systems. So we made some!

Inspired by the alchemical symbol for mercury; associated with communication, travel, acquisition of knowledge; patron of those who present a mask to the world via necessity. Plants under mercury tend to affect the nervous system and have finely divided leaves, much like how nerves divide. 

Find the transparent versions + discord emojis in the reblogs!

Magistien - A term for a body that has multiple systems / sidesystems in it

The term name comes magis, meaning more in Latin

Credit: The Hollow Willow