writing plural systems

this is inspired by @writingwithcolor and @rainbowwriting!

plural systems generally have very bad representation so we thought we'd make this blog to help writers finally give us some good representation!

so if you have any questions about a plural character you're writing, whether you're a singlet or a system, feel free to come into our inbox and ask!

this blog is pro-endo

mods:

Mod Mountain - adaptive monoconscious OSDD-1b system who's pretty much always writing (he/they collectively)

Mod Tick Tock - quoigenic system whose host is a writer and digital artist (fae/faer collectively)

Mod Birdie - mixed-basis DID system who write, roleplay, program, and do pixel art, to varying degrees (they/she/aer/it colllectively, in order of preference)

Mod Galaxy - mixed origin, medically recognized polyfrag DID system who has been writing before they were a teenager and is passionate about creating diverse, nuanced portrayals of multiplicity! (they/them collectively)

Retired Mods:

I think that's a great premise!

We actually used a naming scheme like that for ourselves sort of as a way to explain our "alter egos" before we realised we're plural, so it could be realistic. That said, yes it might be demeaning because it could come off as reducing these characters to their roles rather than them being their own people. If you focus on writing these headmates as fleshed-out people though, I think that would be alright

There are plurals that don't switch so it's not strictly necessary. What your fronter character could do, though, is talk to the other headmates and treat them as equals. Even if only one headmate fronts, the other headmates are important for internal reasons, so if you lean into that, how they're helpful and important and such, you could avoid the idea that just because one headmate has control of the body doesn't mean they're the main or most important one in the system. If you wanted to include switches, though, but you don't feel comfortable writing the process of a switch, maybe you could do a time skip to another headmate fronting and write from their perspective. Up to you though, as I said, switching isn't necessary and it's always nice to have a diverse range of plural experiences represented in fiction

Overall, my experience with plurals are on this blog and from seeing Split Trailers in the past. Could I have a basic rundown of what kind of plurals there are and how to write them respectfully, including the above idea?

Sorry for the rambling, I'm not sure how to go about this.

For your first question, are you asking what system members are called? They're called system members, headmates, alters, etc., depending on the system's preference ("alter" being a more clinical term)

I think headmates having different magical abilities is fine, because real systems can have headmates with different skills sets

As for your last question, there is far too many "kinds of plurals" for me to sum up in a post, in fact there's an infinite amount of plural experiences. I highly recommend you do more research on plurality (you might already know but Split is one of the worst depictions of plurality and not an accurate source for learning about plurality), as well as get to know plurals and learn about their experiences

And I realized it reads as plural just slightly, like different alters fronting, so I was wondering if you have any thoughts or advice on how to portray that as NOT plural, or how to lean into it if that might work? or if you might have any advice on how the whole growing/melding together might work? Is that a thing systems do or am I way off-track here? Also her twin sister is going through the same thing but I'm not writing from her PoV quite yet.

Additionally, the IRL!Tiffany is seventeen and the Game!Tiffany is twenty-four, so IRL!Tiffany is sort of going to rapidly age up during the melding process (which will take a few months to a year, so she's just going to slowly get more and mature as the story progresses, which works because I'm writing it while growing up myself and this explains why the quality and maturity goes up too).

But it also means that while IRL!Tiffany is sort of the main perspective for the story currently (i.e. isekai'd girl with in-universe memories to help her blend in / make decisions / roleplay essentially), Game!Tiffany has way more experiences/memories, plus it's her world they're living in, so the end result is going to look a lot more like "Game!Tiffany with extra memories from this other world that happen to include some knowledge of the future" since she has seven years more of memories. Although ultimately it likely won't matter at all.

Anyway yeah any thoughts welcome! It's not exactly plural, but I wrote Game!Tiffany taking over yesterday and realized you might have some insights.

I wouldn't know how you could write this as not plural because it sounds inherently plural to me. In some ways, it's a little like soulbonding, which is when someone from another universe joins your system

Looking at this from a plural perspective, however, the issue is with the melding. The reason that's an issue is because in a lot of plural stories, the plurality is seen as a problem which is fixed in the end by merging and becoming a singlet. Ending with final fusion isn't always bad, because some systems do want to achieve final fusion and would benefit from it, but those kinds of stories often ignore the option of healthy multiplicity and its benefits

So, my question is, do you need your characters to meld together, or could they happily remain plural? If it is necessary, maybe lean into the fact that melding means they'll lose each other and no longer be able to switch out and such. Even if they might be looking forward to having each other's memories and skills and being a singular person, there would still be some amount of grief there

Final fusion is also usually not something that happens naturally, but rather through a lot of work. Although, depending on how the system formed it could maybe be possible, and in that case you could lean into how maybe they don't want to meld together and lose their individual personhoods, that it's out of their control

I think you would have to make it clear that his alter ego is still him, specifically him choosing to act in those ways, rather than someone he shares a body with or actions he has no control over. If it's from his point of view it should be easy to express that, otherwise he could maybe admit it to someone at some point or compare it to a plural character

the desperate main characters cave in and ask a Mysterious Organisation (scary and not to be trusted) for help. only one person shows up at their door.

stranded character (on an island, in space, in a jungle/forest, etc) who survives the isolation surprisingly well because they simply willed some friends into existence. the people who find them think they've gone mad. meanwhile the character et al. are just marveling over getting to use flushable toilets or order Uber Eats or whatever

plural mad scientist. many directions you could take this one. in all their papers, they put et al. after their name — indicating others have contributed in some way. they are the only ones working on the paper.

system who collects jobs, skills, and degrees like Pokemon. they bring these up very casually. (bonus points if they're visibly old. you're never too old to be plural.) "Oh, yeah — I went to law school. I trained as an army medic before I realised the military kinda sucks. And I'm a VTuber. And a Michelin-starred chef. I do standup comedy on the weekends. I used to work at NASA. Also, I'm forklift certified,"

campy supervillain whose whole system is evil, they just argue on their methods. their intrasystem relationships are perfectly healthy and happy.

immortal whose headmates come and go, each of their "lives" before faking their death belonging to someone who once knew them at the deepest level. in a way, they did die. just... not in a way that people could see.

would forced isolation on several occurrences cause someone to fragment? I’m not entirely sure how people fragment besides repetitive childhood trauma. would that include neglect? I don’t know how severe the traumatic experiences would be to make someone need to split, nor if that’s a stupid thing to say lol

Yes it's possible for a traumagenic system to be created because of neglect. In fact, it makes sense that someone would form a system in isolation because they need someone with them. And there's no set "severity" of trauma that causes traumagenic plurality because trauma is subjective and it all depends on what the brain thinks it needs to do to cope

Also, going by the current main theory of how dissociative traumagenic systems are formed in childhood, if that is the kind of system you're writing, it's not so much someone fragmenting as never integrating. The theory is that no one is born with an integrated personality, and without trauma this would integrate into one coherent self, but in some cases trauma will prevent these parts from integrating and instead will form dissociative barriers around them, as in become a dissociative system

I have a protagonist who is plural, and in one of the longer stories they are in, each alter has a different appearance. This is exclusively from the point of the viewer, and both she and others are completely unaware of this, and everyone has a different appearance in this specific story from their actual bodies (specifically, they all have animal heads, except the protagonist who only sometimes has animal head alters. Most of the time she is a human headed animal)

This is inspired by Trapeze / Irabu's office, however I was wondering if this could fall into stereotypes and/or harmful writing. Any thoughts are appreciated, thank you!

To be clear, your plural character physically changes the appearance of their head when they switch? Or is it not a physical change if you said it's different from their actual bodies and their unaware of it? If it is a physical change, this does unfortunately fall into harmful stereotypes that systems physically change when they switch, so I would leave it out if I were you

Yes! Sometimes headmates are non-speaking even if others in the system can speak when fronting. They may also have varying levels of verbality, but a headmate being completely non-speaking all the time is also possible

Some other ways of communicating that you didn't mention (though I think the others are fine), are writing if the headmate can manage words/sentences, or an AAC board (Augmentative and Alternative Communication), which depending on where/when your story is set, they might have one digitally or they might make their own on paper. They might even be able to communicate with others in the system and get them to say what they want to say for them (in some cases they might be able to put words to their thoughts, but in other cases they may find it easier to communicate with their headmates through feelings or images and such). Just as some other options if you'd like them, the headmate might even use all of them at different times depending on what they can manage/what works best

~Red Anon

There are RAMCOA survivors who are DID systems so it's perfectly plausible! And since your magic is unrelated to the plurality, I don't see a problem there

My only advice is if you haven't already, learn about the experiences of RAMCOA survivors, including those with DID, talk to them, so you can make sure your writing is sensitive

I also had the idea of having a third plural relative (the parent's sibling), but now knowing plurality can't be genetic, I'm considering either merging them into the parent's system or just getting rid of them from the story entirely.

Any advice?

Even if you can't inherit plurality, it's entirely possible for multiple family members to be plural

In the case of traumagenic systems, sometimes siblings will be plural because they were raised in similar ways and their brains used similar coping mechanisms. And considering cycles of abuse, it's possible the parent could have also been raised in a similar way and formed a system for similar reasons

Even with non-traumagenic plurality, family members can be plural. Plurality isn't as rare as some people think. And I don't see how it could be harmful for you to write multiple plural family members. It's great to have diversity and show the different ways of being plural! Plus, the family dynamics sound like an interesting exploration

Of course, it's up to you how you decide to write your story. All the best with it!

Like this story is set in the fantasy 1930s and my OCs get hospitalised (unrelated to them being plural). The system's main nurse picks up on the system's "strange'' behaviour (memory issues, talking and behaving like different people ect.). Naturally she assumes the system is possessed by demons and does not talk to the system or her colleagues any further, because she thinks she's always right.

In this world, one of the substances used in exorcisms can also be used as a medical drug, so she explains to the system that if the demons "keep taking over the body" she's going to keep upping the dose of the medicine. Basically if the system acts in a way she doesn't like she ups their dose. One time she gets enraged at them (for speaking too much about her mistreatment of them) and tries to inject a lethal amount of medicine at which point the host kills her and covers it up with magic.

And I had written it so the only person who cared was another alter in the system. None of the other good guys had any major issues with the murder (not even the nurse's family). They were more concerned about how the system was dealing with it.

(If the ages matter: the host is around the same age as the body, so 14 at the time of the murder and 25-27 when people start finding out about it)

I really don't know what my 14yo self was thinking with this, but I'm kinda emotionally attached to my OCs, SO I wanna ask if there's anything worth keeping here?

so while there is the issue of plurals being depicted as murderers in fiction, it doesn't seem so bad in this example because the system did it out of self-defense rather than having an evil alter who kills people for no reason. plus, you have mixed feelings about it in the system which is always good to show that they're individuals

one point you mentioned was that they were concerned about how the system was dealing with it. do you mean for example psychologically? if so i think that's a really good point to tackle. if you spend some time with the system recovering from the trauma they went through in hospital as well as the trauma of killing someone, such as feeling guilty but also glad to be free (maybe different alters are holding different emotions), then that shows the system more as people who did something out of fear, rather than out of cruelty or "because they're a system". it might be helpful to also in some way point out that a singlet might do the same in the same situation

but of course it's always safer to include another system (or a few more systems) who haven't killed anybody so it doesn't seem like you're saying all systems do this

I want to pretend that my own experiences aren’t real and I’m a singlet writing a system so that I can have an excuse to write it. But even then I don’t know how to start the story in my head. I just want to write ordinary domestic sys4sys shit. But why do I want to write that when I would hate both characters?

first of all, our blog is here to help everyone, including singlets, write plural characters. so whether or not you're a "real" system, you have a right to write about them, what's important is writing them respectfully

also, yeah sometimes being plural can be a struggle and it can feel scary and like a curse and all those things you mentioned, and maybe by writing about that, you can help others feel seen. there are benefits to writing about plurals who love being plural because it can help others see the positive side of (their) plurality, and there are benefits to depicting the struggles too. i think that if you wanna write, you should go for it because personally i think writing is one of the best ways of processing things, but yknow i can't tell you what to do

writers don't have to like their characters, in fact i& write a lot of shitty characters, probably my favourite thing to write about. what matters is that you enjoy writing it. so while i don't know why you might hate those characters, i don't think that there would be anything wrong with writing it if that's something you would enjoy, but ofc going back to the first point, try to write them respectfully so it doesn't turn into bad representation. also i don't know if this was quite what you were getting at, but there's the blog @/pluralprompts if you want some ideas for plural stories to write

It may warrant a trigger warning somewhere if, for example, your story leans to the darker side and explores psychiatry as an oppressor profession the way The Hybrid Chronicles by Kat Zhang does, and you have systems or headmates who are also murdered against their will.

For a lighter story we'd still be careful using/putting ANY trust in psychiatric contexts trying to differentiate disordered plurality from a ghost issue, and you'd need some extremely obvious tells that the possession was not voluntary. And like, that other alternatives have not been tried for the possession (examples: is the ghost just lonely and is mot aware of the MANY people who want to be a system? if exorcism destroys the ghost, was it triple-checked it is just an accident and ghost needs to just leave body instead?). What about disordered CDD systems who are ALSO endogenic, and then ALSO happen to have a ghost? People conveniently forget endogenic systems can be traumatized too and subsequently can get fucked up with their internal communication and such.

(Side note wrt Hybrid Chronicles: we're actually kind of shocked even with the first book that it's considered YA but we consider that a side effect of plurmisia, and endogenimisia specifically as the whole series is about endogenic systems, even if that's not the word used. Non-spiritual, but we still at least highly reccomend the first book we if you are writing some darker stuff and need to know how to do it in a way we feel, as an endogenic, handles it "well enough" of you happen to be singlet and-or not an endogenic system.)

My only reference to systems is my friends, Mr. Robot and Moon Knight, and whatever the internet says.

Isit be okay to have a more violent alter in a character who acts upon those actions?

Well there are actual systems who do have alters like that, so it's not necessarily inaccurate. Although, do you need a violent alter? What are they bringing to the story? Are they a villain (which would shine more of a bad light on systems) or are they someone who's struggling with themselves or their system? There are ways to frame it so that it's more respectful of systems and compelling to the story, but if you just threw in the violent alter or something like that then I would say you don't need it, and if you want someone violent, you could make a violent singlet

If you are going to go ahead with a violent alter, here's some ideas for making it more respectful towards systems (you don't have to do them all, they're just suggestions):

Have that alter be trying to recover, and maybe the whole system is helping and learning to love that alter (which makes it about recovery and system-love instead of just about the violence)

Give that alter a reason for the violence (are they trying to keep their system safe? Do they have internalised issues/trauma that hasn't been addressed?) so they're not just chaotic for the sake of being chaotic, and that's something interesting you could explore

Have the system have ways of keeping those in the outerworld safe from that alter (like a gatekeeper who stops them from fronting if they're going to do something particularly bad, although there could be some autonomy issues if that gatekeeper is too strict. Many angles to explore if you want)

Have one or more other systems who don't have a violent alter so it's clear that this isn't how all systems work

To be clear I am pro-endo and the rivalry is making fun of syscourse, not supporting it.

Both doctors have an enemies-to-lovers arc and end up dating.

I am not aiming for medical accuracy with the syscourse parallels. This story is purely self/ves-indulgent and will probably never be posted.

They're technically both singlets (at the moment), they just represent two sides of discourse.

That sounds brilliant and personally I would love to read it :]

(Edit: check the notes though!)