Plural-ish

Resources:

Plurality 101

Understanding Multiplicity: A quick 101 primer on plurality/multiplicity from the Manchester Metropolitan University.

What Is Plurality?: Our own working definitions of plurality.

Hydra May 2025: A short zine introducing plurality to those unfamiliar with it.

Am I Plural?

Common Plural Experiences: A fairly well-rounded list of common plural experiences. Some of these experiences are common in non-plural folks, but if you're checking a lot of boxes or these things happen to you more intensely than seems typical, then it may be worth questioning further.

Plurality is not a checklist. You may have a lot of the experiences in the above resource, but that doesn't inherently mean that you are plural. There's no sharp line in the sand between plural and singular experiences.

Am I Plural?: Plurality is not a specific diagnosis or absolute thing, but a chosen framework for understanding your mind. If it works, then you get to use it.

On the topic of "is this a headmate or [something else]?": It's not necessarily about what it is, but what helps you live with and understand it.

Help, I'm Plural!

Advice from Those Who Came Before: for New Systems (pdf): Compiled advice for those who've recently realized that they may be plural.

We accidentally wrote a book (PDF, EPUB) covering most of what we've learned to work with ourselves. It's free, written in plain language, and broken up into very short sections for easier reading. Hopefully it helps.

A list of tools for plural folks.

Assorted links and books about plurality.

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Tags:

Tags by Post Type

Plural Comic: All of our comics.

High Effort Art: Some comics, some drawings, all work that took more time than a 5 minute scribble.

Asks: Responses to inbox messages.

Essays: Long posts, usually not associated with a comic.

Metaposting: Posting about posting.

Tags by Topic

Amnesia: Memory problems and lost time.

Basics: Information about plurality for those unfamiliar with the concept.

Communication: Talking to each other and how to do it better.

Cooperation: Getting along with each other and building trust.

Denial: "I'm not plural, I just (textbook description of DID)"

Dissociation: Disconnection from identity, self, the world, feelings, sensations, etc.

Experiences: What's it like to be plural?

Getting to Know You: Learning about your system.

Labels: Words and their uses.

Masking: Hiding your system or coming out of hiding.

Passive Influence: Affecting behavior without taking full control.

Persecutors: When system members hurt you.

Questioning: "Am I plural?"

Relationships: Dealing with outside people (and occasionally each other).

Switching: Changing who's in control of your body.

Other

If you'd like to print some zines, then take a look at our itch.io page.

Follows back from @namesnotapplicable.

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Focus on building bridges and trust. Get to know the folks in your head. Find ways to talk and just get to know them. Listen as much as you talk, if not more.

Learn to lean on each other for support, if you can. Trust is one of the most valuable things that you can have in a system. Trust gets you through a lot of tough situations. Give your system members every reason to trust you, and try to learn to trust them in turn.

If someone is hostile, then ask what's driving the hostility. Do they feel under-represented in your life? Does peace make them feel unsafe because they don't know where the threats are? Are they bored, scared, frustrated, or routinely unhappy?

What can you do to support them? What do they need to feel comfortable?

Don't worry about knowing everything. You're just figuring this out- give yourselves some grace for not knowing as much as everyone else seems to. (Besides, they know less than you think. I've yet to meet a system without a single mystery left in it, including folks who've known for decades, and many systems are forever figuring things out in one way or another.)

Ask for information when you need it and let your system explain itself over time; let your system set the pace. You'll get better information that way, and your system will learn that they can trust you to respect them when they say "no, don't touch that yet."

Screw plural community labels for now. Seriously. Screw figuring out origins or consciousness or whatever the linguistic dividing line of the month is. Don't worry about it. These words come and go. Get to know yourselves first.

Why am I suggesting this? Community labels will still be there when you've figured out how to work with each other in a practical sense, and your stronger understanding of each other will make it much easier to find whatever words you wind up needing. Hunting for words now is likely to get you stuck trying to cram a bunch of shifting unknowns into someone else's categorization system, and it might cloud your situation more than it clears it.

Given that you're still settling into the idea of sharing a head at all, getting into the nitty-gritty of labels is probably going to be less helpful than figuring out how to handle doubt and denial issues (or getting communication going, or learning to manage switching, or...), hence the recommendation not to worry about it.

That said: do use labels if you need them. Just remember that labels are tools. Don't let the tools use you.

Also, screw the discourse. If you listen to any one item on this list, make it this one.

Plural community discourse tends to be a little bit rancid in the "debating whether your experiences exist meaningfully in our spaces" way, and it will fuck you up as a new system. Get past the worst of your denial or doubt issues first to avoid worsening the "oh my god, am I faking without knowing it" hell brainworms. Please. I am actually begging you. Avoid the discourse until you've dealt with your own existential doubts.

A laugh lights her face as she spins off my arm and through the grass in a flurry of blooming flowers. She beckons. I consider, then yield / hold firm, bifuricated as one of me takes her hand with a laugh and another stands apart, arms folded, brows drawn, sternum heavy.

I'm warm in her arms, surrounded by magnolia and daffodils, sun bright and dancing in her eyes / I watch myself fall so easily to temptation and wonder why I persist in trying / I stand beside someone else who watches like a storm watches the hill it crests over, and she looks at me without ever looking away and asks,

"Why are you here? This is mine."

"This?"

Her head swoops a fraction of a centimeter towards the dance in the grass, features rearranging. "This."

I'm too distracted by the implications of her face reshuffling itself to process her answer, and I just stare at her while her face shifts in tiny swooping twitches in my periphery, never quite straight on, the impression of cloud-formed cheekbones bleeding off into nothing. The train of thought is gone.

I feel yin meeting yin while yang meets yang off to the right, in the land where there is no weight and water cheers along in fountains and streams and sprinklers in the summertime, and I feel the weight of a still pond of fog in my chest.

"I think it's theirs, not yours," I say, and I shrug. They are still dancing. There is no pain because the pain is somewhere else, somewhere away where the dirt and grit and itches live. Unimportant, inconvenient killjoys, they might say, these realities.

I get to my knees and I'm somewhere away in a creekbed, rocks and pebbles burrowed in the dirt beneath my legs, digging into my skin where my boots don't cover me, and I couldn't care less because I'm touching more tadpoles than I've ever seen in my life. They feel firm, like raw peas covered in mucus, and their bodies slip through my fingers by the dozens.

There must be hundreds here in this little creek, hundreds of tiny bodies in the mountains halfway through a road trip- it's always been my solace, that with every haul to somewhere unpleasant, I'd get to see something precious. One year it was tadpoles.

Another two years, we saw a cabin by a little mountain lake at Christmas, one of those rare places with the genuine sort of magic, somewhere I'd never find again if I tried. All away, somewhere else, on the way to or from having my arm pried open and skewered whether I wanted it or not. Some comfort.

But still, in this moment, there are my tadpoles, and she is back and crouching over my shoulder to look at their bodies in my hand.

"Whose is this?" she asks.

"I don't know," we say, bifuricated, waiting. "Both of us. All three. I don't know." They nod. It doesn't matter. We drop it and then I see bark chips in the woods, smell the pine needles, and suddenly I'm underneath the little tree in the front yard of the Last House our parents loved each other in, hiding.

I've hidden here before, a lot. It's a good hiding place for hide and seek, at least until the other kids learn that it exists. Yet again, I wonder in retrospect whether the other kids not finding us when we sat on a rock in plain sight was because they weren't looking for the obvious or because they just wanted an excuse to ignore us for an hour or two. My fingers clench around dirt.

I see people speculate about what a hivemind might be like, and as the tree's leaves shrouding my head begin to spin and peel and bleed color through me, I see someone looking back at me in a raincoat, plushie arm slack and bear body heavy in her hand.

A moment later, I am in the hallway of the Last House looking around a corner as my sister persuades my mom to do something that I convinced my sister she wanted. For the first time, I wonder if I am a bad person. I can't be older than ten years old, small and smooth with that awful bowl cut that we used to have. I've been thinking about growing it out again. It just gets in the way.

She leans out of the scene trailing globs of midnight, a lava lamp for the void. "Did you ever want to cease to exist?" she asks.

I blink. She laughs.

"I don't want to make any plans," she reassures me, "I'm not talking about that kind of death. Did you ever want to just... be someone else?" Another laugh. "Sorry, stupid question."

She's so close. I take a step back. She drips on me, and I try to flick it off without touching the droplet on my shirt. It's thick like oil. It stays. My spine crawls until she notices my discomfort and sucks it back.

"Who are you?" she asks. "Are you people, or not? I need an answer."

"I'm a person," I say.

"I know," she asks, "but what kind?"

"The kind who's not in the mood to be questioned by the drug woman," I snap / a wolf's maw snaps shut, narrowly missing her hand, a warning shot fired. Keep away, stay away, leave me alone. I don't want to hurt you but don't test your luck. She flinches. I back down, shrivel smaller, apologize for my physicality.

"You really don't have to do that for me," she says. An eyebrow raises. I'm not sure whose.

People wonder what a hivemind would be like, and I see them fear it or crave it, and I didn't understand the former until recently but we've always been the latter. Sometimes I'm less sure of that now that we've learned what existential terror feels like.

I'm standing at the kitchen sink, my fingers smoothly carving divots into the metal beneath them as the world wavers around me, my periphery drowned in psychedelic green and my central vision full of sweat and nausea. I retch once and nothing comes, and then the impulse is gone and I am repeating in my head, "I am at the kitchen sink" to carve this single moment back into reality and out of the hell that is everything and nothing all at once, blazing fractals stretched across the floor.

"Did you ever wish you could die?" she asks again. I pause. I nod, once, lick my lips, glance over my shoulder.

"Sometimes, I think it would be easier," I say slowly, "if we didn't bother with all the people business. And sometimes all I want is to vanish into myself and cease to exist. Implode into a naked singularity (physics)."

"Apparently we can say parentheses," laughs a third person, and in a flash I know who everyone is: the third, Echo; the goo, Gwen; myself, Red; with traces of Blue darting through the cracks and Hawthorne left home to answer the phone. But then the moment passes, and I am seated at two bars at once, and a pillar of goo serves me overlaid with the memory's bartender. Brass mug, Moscow Mule, sat on the corner of both counters to watch the room, never quite sure how a tab works but too exposed to ask.

I consider frowning in disapproval, and Echo actually does frown as I decide instead to shrug and chug my drink, not that it'll do much. It's placebo, every time.

"I can't believe you're still drinking in here," says Echo, looking down into its own swirling mug. Even then, it considers the offer before pushing the mug away, and it's left to sit on the tender's side of the bar in one place and further down our side of the bar in another. The memory-places bleed together, sometimes.

Two more bars edge in: a pizza place our mom went to as a child and a steakhouse where people threw peanut shells on the floor, the floor they left unswept all day. I don't envy whoever had to clean it to stop the shells from piling up past our ankles.

I wonder again why all our deepest memory-places involve liquid, and then I'm by the sea- not The Sea, but the Pacific ocean, Oregon coast, fingers in the sand. We found a crab, once. Large, glorious, alive. We watched and poked it for a while and then let it go in the way children sometimes do. Another time, we found jellyfish. We stayed well away.

In another moment, I am beside the river and lake near our campsite in the mountains, the one we visit most years in the summer until our parents divorce. Our mom can never afford it after that, and our dad stays busy traveling to Peru and rennovating his bathroom while our sister tries to find a second job to survive. Our mom calls him selfish. Sometimes we agree. The rest of the time, we remember how hard he worked to try to get us to be more independent, how he forced us to learn to drive, how it was always his way of trying to say he cared: he tried so hard to give the gift of success whether or not his kid actually wanted it. He won his kids both choosing to live with someone else.

I am by water, and my hands are in the ground, and water laps between my fingers as the night air cools my skin. I hear frogs, smell moss and river, remember the sound of the earth underfoot. We have never seen a firefly in person, but they flicker in the distance here, the idea of breathing lights.

People wonder what a hivemind would be like. Her hand is on my shoulder, and we look at the night. A lone car drives by in the dark.

"I really want to get this done, but I just can't get past XYZ today for some reason- do you think you could do XYZ for me really quick? It would make it way easier for me to finish this. I might have to finish it tomorrow if not."

"I'm really struggling with this task today, and it's frustrating me. It's easier sometimes and harder other times, you know? And I wish it were an easy day, but it's not. Actually, do you think I could flag you down when I'm struggling so I can get some support?"

Someone is annoyed that you keep "changing your mind" about decisions:

"I get kind of annoyed at myself too- I don't like making people change their plans like that. I've been trying (describe a plausible thing you might be doing to prevent or reduce "changing your mind"; follow through afterwards if needed), but it might also help if you warned me about big decisions ahead of time so I have more time to make the decision. That way, I can just give you the final answer instead of giving you like five different answers first."

"Sorry- I've just got a lot of different feelings about this and it's kind of hard to reconcile them. Part of me thinks (opinion one), but I've also got concerns about (opinion one) because (opinion two), and then I've also got (opinion three) rattling around in here... do you have a few minutes to sit and talk it out? I might need help figuring out this decision."

(No one will clock "part of me". It's a common phrase for a reason- internal conflict happens just as much to singlets, just a little differently. People phrase their conflicts of opinion like this all the time.)

Someone is confused about changing preferences and doesn't know how to handle it:

"I like a lot of different things at different times- you know, like how people get in the mood for a favorite movie or type of food? Or how people sometimes really aren't in the mood for something, even if they usually like it? Yeah, I do that a lot. I know it can be tricky to predict sometimes- if it's an issue, then maybe we can come up with a way to flag what kind of mood I'm in so that you don't have to try to predict me."

(Seriously: "I'm in a weird mood right now" works as an explanation in so many cases that it's worth remembering. If you're really lucky, then the other person will nickname one or more of your "moods" and you'll be able to talk about them in a very plural way without ever mentioning plurality. In most cases, people just shrug and move on.)

Someone notices that your voice sounds different:

"Huh, I guess it does! Weird."

"Yeah, I didn't sleep too well."

"It does? How is it different? (Listen.) Huh. Does it just do this sometimes and I never noticed? (Listen, respond from here like it's mildly interesting but not that important. Works best if you can convince them that you actually didn't notice the change yourself.)

"I don't know, I guess I'm British now." (Very important: say this as a joke. The joke makes it clear that you're not concerned or bothered, which a specific subset of people might wonder about.)

Someone notices that you forgot something while working on a task they asked you to do:

"Oh shit, you're right! I totally blanked on that."

"I don't really remember it that well- can you remind me?"

"fake", verb: - tamper, with the purpose of deception (source) - "counterfeit", to imitate or feign especially with intent to deceive (source, source) - one does not fake without intent.

If someone is faking something, then by definition, they know. It's an active and intentional effort, something that they have to put energy and work into sustaining, something that's a relief to turn off. They can turn it off, and they know this because they are intentionally choosing to pretend to have an experience they do not actually, "objectively" have.

And here are the two important points:

Faking is an intentional act. If someone is faking something, then they know for absolute certain that they are faking something. Intent is required to fake something.

The concept of "fake" plurality relies on the idea of an objective state of the self/selves: some existential, absolute truth about whether someone is plural or not.

On point two:

We have no metrics to determine an absolute reality of the self for absolute certain. There are some physical characteristics that have been noticed in brain scans comparing DID systems against controls, but regardless of whether you believe in inherent differences in brain structure, most of us can't get a brain scan on a whim, and we don't have much of this kind of data yet for most other plural experiences. (Tulpamancy brain scan study when? Has that come out yet?)

We also have no idea why consciousness exists or where it's located, if anywhere. It's enough of a slippery issue for the concept of the philosophical zombie to exist: how do we know that anyone else is conscious? We don't. How do we know that plurality is an inherent or objective property of a body? We don't.

Do I believe that faking plurality is possible at all?

Sure. I think it could be done and I've seen it confessed to. I don't think that hunting for "fakes" or accusing strangers of faking their experiences is going to help anyone, though.

I do think sometimes that if someone were to fake this in the long run, then they would have to be very careful that none of it took on a life of its own. I've met a few accidental tulpamancers. It happens.

Do I think it's common to fake plurality?

No. It's a lot of effort for fairly little reward given that some people still think Split is basically a documentary.

Do I think that faking plurality can be done without knowing it?

About "Rules"

There are no rules for journaling, only guidelines and preferences. What do you want your journal to do for you? What structures would allow it to do that?

There are so, so, so many different styles of journaling out there, and no two people have quite the same setup. Some people swear by elaborate formatting that takes them an hour to set up before they can write the entry itself. Some people journal with a Bic ballpoint on looseleaf paper that they staple together sometimes. Some people prefer to write for an imaginary audience. Some people burn their finished journals. Some people do best with set journaling times, while others stick to an "if we think about it, we do it" tactic. I could go on.

If you keep individual journals, then your personal setup is going to be unique to you, but a big part of having a shared System Journal is finding ways to coexist despite different formatting preferences and/or journaling goals. The challenge comes in allowing your journal to change with you or in compromising on a shared format.

That's where Rule Two comes in: at any time, you all may agree to do something a certain way. That agreement might help keep the peace, make conversation easier, or otherwise help you get along in the journal, but it should help you journal in some way.

A rule isn't working? Remember Rule One: there are no rules. You can always try something else. Rules should help you share the space, not get in the way of using that space in the first place.

As for starting: As soon as you've gotten a thought out of your head somewhere vaguely reflective, you've successfully journaled. Keep going.

Our Journaling Setup

Your journal is probably going to look very different from our current setup, but I'm hoping that ours gives you ideas about what your own system journal(s) could be like.

We keep four journals right now:

One lined A5 journal that acts as a catch-all for thoughts and communication. We call it the "main journal" for a reason, and it was our only journal for a long time. When in doubt, check this one. (See footnote 1)

One blank A6 journal that lives in our pocket. Useful for work, going out, etc. Also great for brainstorming in. We added this journal when the main journal became impractical to carry in some situations, but we still wanted something to capture our thoughts with.

One chunky, specialized A5 journal designed to capture one four-line entry per day for ten years. Extremely useful for figuring out when something happened in the semi-recent past (or what happened at all). It's also proven its worth by making seasonal patterns in our mood obvious.

One orange three-ring binder that we leave on our desk when actively debating major or long-term decisions. Used to keep the debate somewhere that we can actually find it. Also contains printed copies of system agreements for archival/reference, brain-fixing documents in case of emergency, etc.

This setup is something that we've figured out by trial and error- if something snags, then we change our journaling habits to fix the snag and keep improving upon it as we go.

Our rules for our main and mini journals:

There are no rules. If a rule stops helping or being fun, then suggest changing or removing the rule.

No thought is too small, ridiculous, absurd, or out of context. If you think, "I should write that down," then write it down.

Do not write for future historians, potential snoopers, etc. Write for yourself or our system. Do not self-censor. (See footnote 2)

You are not required to identify yourself in entries, but it is appreciated if you're comfortable doing so. (See footnote 3)

Avoid censoring each other, but respect it when it happens. If we see something crossed out or blotted over, then we will assume that it would be destabilizing or dangerous to know, and we will not attempt to read it anyway.

You don't have to be nice, but you do need to be respectful. Insult someone all you want, but don't rip up the drawing that they spent four hours on, and don't deny their right to share the space. Let them speak.

Mark the first entry of each day with the date in YYYY-MM-DD format (see footnote 4). Days start at 00:00.

If two entries are separated by time or topic within the same day, then leave a blank line between them.

You do not have to use timestamps, but you may note the time if you would like to. 24-hour timestamps are preferred for clarity.

Doodling in the journal counts as journaling.

Taping things into the journal counts as journaling.

Sticking things into the journal's inside pocket for safekeeping counts as journaling.

Completed journals are archived for safe-keeping and future reference.

Our journaling setup might be pretty personal to us because everyone likes to journal for different reasons and in different ways. We journal to process the contents of our head, talk to each other, brainstorm, problem-solve, and keep a grasp on time passing.

Many of our rules are compromises that allow us to accomplish our goals while sharing pages with each other. Sharing space means that we have to respect that shared space. Someone else's entry can be written over or destroyed, for example. The physicality of the journal entries was something we had to account for.

I'd honestly say that sharing physical space in our earliest journals taught us the basics of getting along with each other. Crossing out someone else's entry tends to upset them, and we each eventually learned that leaving a snarky comment in the margin was given a lot more tolerance than crossing out someone else's entry. That opened space for snarky margin conversations where we could try to understand each other a little better, albeit in a slightly hostile way. Nowadays, we're talking in the center of the page, and the snark is considerably more good-natured.

I hope some of this helps you all figure out what you want your system journal to be like, Anons.

Footnotes

1: We put a lot of effort into making this journal feel like a consistent place or home. We use a journal cover to make it look mostly the same, we buy multiple of the same journal so it's not jarringly different, and we write a phrase on the first and last pages when starting and finishing the journal to pass the metaphorical torch. It really is the main journal because of this, the one that feels like relief to sit with.

You don't need a journal cover or luxury supplies to pull that sort of consistent journaling environment off, though. Many people swear by journaling in ordinary composition books or spiral notebooks. They're consistent, easy to find, and cheap. You reliably get the same thing every time. If you want a journal that stays essentially the same even when you replace it (especially one that's not likely to go out of production in the future), then you might want to consider your local generic school notebook.

2: The trouble with self-censoring yourself to look good for the imaginary future historians is that you might wind up avoiding any topic with much depth or roughness to it, tinting the whole thing to avoid judgement. This has a way of skirting around all of the things you'd get the most benefit from journaling about.

When we introduced this rule, we wrote everything that we wouldn't want a future historian to see on the front page of the next journal to ensure that we'd have no reason to self-censor. It was very effective. Why hide anything if you've put your personal brain garbage in the front for whoever reads it?

3: Various ways to mark who wrote an entry:

Writing utensil type (pencil, pen, crayon, marker...)

Color

Signatures and printed names

Name symbols, sigils, emblems

Doodles of your faces

Speech bubbles

Position on the page

Handwriting quirks (voluntary or involuntary)

Indexing it in the back or front

Marking entries is absolutely not required, and we actually don't do it too often at the moment. That said, if you like marking entries by using different ink colors, multi-color pens have gotten a lot better and some of them feel glorious to use. We like the Pilot Dr. Grip 4+1 personally. This isn't an ad, we genuinely just like the pen.