[Chatter] Updates and such

[monsterqueers]

Aaaaaaa this took forever to happen. Life got in the way and such but lots of updates:

Website updates:

• RSS feed has been enabled on the website! Now you can get notifications as we update!
• Document  "Should I Tell My Friends/Doctors/Parents/etc about being Plural?" posted
• Essay An Open Letter To The Rest Of The Inclusive Plural Community posted
• Essay Xeno As In Nonhuman - Gender Essay posted
• Fawn's Werecard posted
• Added a bunch more sites and reorganized the essays and papers pages a bit

General updates:

• Currently playing SMTV, that will be the next thing for the plural media blog its just slow going because Actually Playing it and not watching a cutscene movie and running x_x  Its VERY fun though. Good vibes.
• Still working on a driving license hhhh
• Maybe this time is the trick and will be more active here.

Fandom Updates:

• Uuuuuh nothing much really? Dont remember lol.

Comments

[monsterqueers]

Its probably pretty common for plural creators to do! That would be in interesting survey, now that we think about it; how many systems have unknowingly written/drawn/etc things about their preexisting headmates or are unsure if the headmate or the character came first.


hehehehe yeah that sounds about right!

[lb_lee]

Agreed, a lot of our earliest records of our alter headmates are the results of us presuming we were characters and trying to shoehorn each other into stories. It was about always a failure. That would indeed make for an interesting survey! Heh, we've got a paid account, we could make a silly informal poll...

Then again, some outsourced fictives seem to have a very different relationship to their media than we do. It sounds really unpleasant to have to watch an episode of a show to get your life story back, or to feel it or the fandom IS your life, rather than stories about it. Our fictives mostly view the stories about them with feelings ranging from embarassment to scientific fascination, but the stories are just stories to them... Maybe reminders of emotional times, but no more. (Though one of us gets way more ontologically uncomfortable when we're reading about the INSPIRATIONS for his fictional self; that woogs him out more than the stories themselves.)

[monsterqueers]

We just uncovered an old forum we were on like 10 years ago where we were talking about our ocs and found a post where we said as a quote (pronouns replaced with the headmates current pronouns) "and I can sort of "summon" up [his] conciousness and get [his] advice on the situation", completely clueless about the plurality and thinking thats just what you do with some characters lol.


Yeah our outsourced fictives are more in line with your experiences- the kind of 'this is just fiction even if I and my experiences are not' relationship to the source. Its always so awkward when we encounter outsource fictives that dont/cant do this.

Weve seen an upkick in the number of fictives (both insourced and outsourced) having this 'the source is 1:1 with reality and everyone around me must treat it as 1:1 reality not not even a little like someones creation they made up' attitude and dont really think its the most healthiest thing to deliberately encourage like some of the plural community likes doing, to be honest.

Some people cant help having the feeling/belief that their source isnt a story in any way but is instead 100% actual reality no one made the canon up as a story its fully real, and thats fine if they can manage it without causing others or their system trouble/distress/harm and it shouldnt be vilified or aggressively reality checked even if its not consensus reality compliant, but to be honest we dont see very many systems who believe this about their source actually have a healthy relationship to said source.

Being in pure outsource fictive spaces you see a lot more of that then spaces that are for both fictionkin and fictives, interestingly!
Something about the culture of examining *why* you identify as a character and offering theories to help make sense of things in an analytical way that fictionkin often bring to the table seems to help curb this kind of thinking into a more manageable state.

[lb_lee]

LOL WE TOTALLY DID THAT TOO! Soulbonding and "muse" stuff totally gave us cover to sidestep the whole "your misery dick must be THIS BIG to ride the multi train" problem.

Man, apparently at least onesourced fictive a friend knew came from an animated source and found non-2D visuals really weird. That just sounds like Uncanny Valley hell! (And god, imagine if you came from a super stylized or bad '90s CGI source and felt that way! That sounds like a horror story premise! Were I in that position, I'd find that suuuuper upsetting!)

We aren't really in fictive space, since being insourced kinda weeded us, but we definitely remember plenty of soulbonders who seemed to have intensely ambivalent relationships to the media--they would hate it, watching/reading it would always seem to deeply fuck with their heads, but they couldn't stop, because it was their only connection to themselves. It was always sad to see, like they couldn't build their lives forward so kept trying to crawl back into their pasts, when everything made sense to them.

And yeah, I feel like if you're a creator yourself, you quickly realize that "canon" is kinda bullshit, influenced by deadlines, pagecount limits, budget, and stupid shit like, "okay, by law we can't show red blood without censoring, so blood's hot pink now." We pretend it's some pure unsullied artistic vision, but material constraints always apply. Indeed, those limits often DEFINE the art!

Like, we have fictives from different drafts of the same source, and that's fascinating! Most of the time, they agree on how things went, and then they run into a glaring contradiction and suddenly the seams show! But we don't really have a place to discuss this, because it seems like everything falls into the false binary of, "it is exactly 1:1 like consensus reality in all ways, otherwise it's existential despairing unreal." It's like there's pressure to never discuss those seams, even though I think that shit is important and interesting!

[monsterqueers]

Yeah we used to take those little sections in older fanfiction where the writer talks to the characters as a funny bit as 'everyone totally just has ''characters'' that live in their head'. Not the first time we totally misinterpreted something and led us to believe an experience was normal. We watched a documentary on philosophy when really young that said something like 'its the nature of being sentient to question one's existence' and took this as 'its totally normal to be depersonalized and doubt 'I' as a concept is a concrete thing, thats just what being sentient is like' for YEARS.

We know a few folks who do find it legit upsetting/dysphoria inducing to exist in realistic 3d graphics and are always pretty glad none of us have that trouble. Seems pretty rough!


Yeah our canon-character fictive is 'divorced' from her source specifically because we realized interacting with the fandom or the canon was actively upsetting her and us to such a heavy degree any benefit of engaging outweighed the consequences. It was hard to quit it but ultimately necessary and heavily improved all of our mental states. We are a huge proponent of dropping canon sources if it starts harming you and trying to find any sort of identity at all outside of consuming the source and being Ultra Canon Compliant for that reason. It was so helpful and freeing and unfortunately there doesnt seem to be resources around to help others also dig themselves out of that hole.
Hmmm...
Might have to write one. Thats something we sure could have used to have realized it was severely tanking all of our mental health sooner and we think others might find something like that useful.

Yep! Its like people think theres no executive meddling or authors compromising to make a better or more marketable story.

Yeah, nothing is on a binary! Theres consensus reality and there is personal reality and both are important and it would be nice if there were more plural spaces that had attitudes that existed between the two extremes of 'your source memories or identity is all ~substitute beliefs~ and therefore Not Valid' and 'everything is 1:1 with consensus reality, every story is 100% true and not fiction At All in any possible way'. Its like its taboo to take a third option or middle ground.

[lb_lee]

I mean, I suspect many of those muse gags really were the writers dealing with soulbonding feelings. The best way to make something less scary is to make silly jokes about it, right?

God, that's so horrible. I feel like having an intense big fandom of you would be the WORST. Talk about a head trip! Especially if it's like movie fandom, which seem short-lived but INTENSE. It seems like that could be really rough on a fictive, but if people have ever discussed it outside of, "ugh my fandom sucks," I haven't seen it, and it's not really something we could write about, since we've only had one instance of a fan faving two headmates before they came back, and said fan has been polite about it.

[monsterqueers]

You know, it probably really was. Its a shame its gone out completely out of fashion because that seemed like it was helping people ease their toes into accepting and interacting with their headmates.


Im the headmate that was mentioned before re:Divorcing The Source, and yeah my source's fandom was relatively big (its died down since) and Intense Fandom is part of why I changed my name to be unlike my source name. People expect you to act like the canon character or be 1:1 canon compliant if they are familiar with fictives and in the fandom and. Well im really not. Having my source name be my public use name gave people the expectation that I would behave like the character or be some level of canon compliant to the newest material or *like* the most recent material and want to talk about it with them, even other fictives would assume that.


It really ought to be discussed more- the ways a source can be awkward or uncomfortable or harmful to interact with as a fictive and what solutions/coping mechanisms/etc are available for that. We suppose its probably something that makes a fictive feel less 'valid' in their existence- to not enjoy their source anymore, or to not be up-to-date on the content, and that discourages people from discussing that sort of thing.
A 'what to do when your source is hurting you' essay is for sure going on our to-write list at this point. We have really seen one 'the source is giving me panic attacks what do I do?' post too many where we are the only people saying 'maybe stop watching your source and interacting with the fandom at large if you can' and that being some kind of revelation so its time for us to pull out the keyboards.

[lb_lee]

People expect you to act like the canon character or be 1:1 canon compliant if they are familiar with fictives and in the fandom

That sounds horrible! What the hell happens if, I dunno, a sequel comes out years later? Are you expected to just... instantaneously update yourself accordingly? What if, for whatever reason, you CAN'T get the sequel (or plain don't want to)? Is there a grace period where it's okay, because the book is sold out or something, but if you aren't updated by X time, you're doomed? Are there rules if it's a self-owned work coming out regularly vs. a franchise owned by some giant conglomerate that constantly changes the creative team?

This sounds like it would very easily become a source of anguish and awfulness for everybody.

We have really seen one 'the source is giving me panic attacks what do I do?' post too many where we are the only people saying 'maybe stop watching your source and interacting with the fandom at large if you can' and that being some kind of revelation so its time for us to pull out the keyboards.

I mean, that you are saying this makes me sad, because oh god, this seems like such a source of totally preventable existential agony, but on the other hand, that does sound like a super useful resource that we'd love to see, even if it isn't something we ourself deal with.

(Also, wow am I even happier that all our fictives are like twenty years older and thus the fiction is all a long time ago for them.)

[monsterqueers]

According to some places, yeah you are supposed to care about sequels/new material and be compliant to them about as soon as things drop! To others they take having traits change/be gained to match new material as a sign of 'faking'. Youd think people would have realized by now both options are terrible, but nope! Its not everywhere, but its enough places that it gets exhausting.

Fictives are treated pretty poorly basically everywhere honestly, *including* in fictive specific spaces and arent really given tools to manage the Existential Situation they find themselves in.

Yeah, it makes US sad too! Its truly preventable, and its wild no one has made anything for this already- weve looked around enough times hoping we didnt have to put out yet another resource/advice document because no one else has done it, but it looks like its necessary lol. It will be awhile before we finish it obviously, but its coming.

[lb_lee]

Wow, that sounds... really, really awful, and you're not making us feel any worse about dropping off that side of the plural planet, even though most of our plural friends have fictive members. I'm really sorry y'all've had to put up with that.

Fictives are treated pretty poorly basically everywhere honestly

IT'S TRUUUUUUUUE. D:<

its wild no one has made anything for this already

I know, right? Maybe we'll talk more about insourced stuff, even though it's out of style these days...

[monsterqueers]

Yeah, its very much a good thing to stay out of it. We appreciate the sympathy very much. Only reason we havent washed our hands of the mess is that we still want to put out resources into the cesspool in hopes that it helps someone and keep abreast about what is generally going on. As it is, we dont join new closed plural communities for a reason unless they have been Heavily vouched for by someone we know.


Any talking on experiences is valuable!

[lb_lee]

Yeah, I feel lucky that I was able to pull out and sorta become my own thing. I did join fictionkind, but it moves so fast and has so many young people that I'm like an old lurky fogey who mostly doesn't talk because I feel like I have to learn the community norms first.

[monsterqueers]

Yeah, we joined that too. Its nice and all but theres quite a lot of activity so we tend to filter them off our reading page so its not so overwhelming and just check in periodically instead. We keep forgetting to post there as a result of making it out of sight out of mind, though and mostly just lurk.