mint_phalanx | Entries tagged with brian

Leather System on Tumblr made a Plural Checklist. We learned about it from a Dreamwidith post made by a system who took it. So, we decided to take it ourselves.

After Reanna filled in the questions, we got a result of 11/55. (We didn't answer seven questions, so the score is really 11/48 or 22%.) I didn't expect a high score because we're midcontinuum.

We joked that there should be a question that says, "Did you ever discuss how to answer a question with your headmates?"

There was one question that made me think a bit. It asked if the taker has felt sexual or romantic attraction then suddenly didn't. I never really considered the possibility of the asexual headmates affecting the body's sexuality.

Link to the checklist
Link to the post announcing it

I can't believe it's already been seven years since Reanna realized she's plural. (I thought it was in February, but it was actually in March.) She told us how it happened. One day, on this month, she realized Kenji was doing her math work.

I made this on Tumblr, so I thought I'd share it here as an excuse to make at least one post each month. It was unintentional, but I'm still bitter about it.

16 January

Testing psychologist: "Reanna doesn't have a social circle, so she uses [or goes into] fantasy."

Me: "Fantasy!? Say that to my face, you limp noodle!" (In-headspace)

Present Day

Me: "I am not a fantasy."

Reanna: "She didn't even know you exist."

Me: "I am still not a fantasy."

The next time I think I'm fake, I'm going to remember I had a negative reaction to being unintentionally called a fantasy.

Mood: fine

This is an entry from our system journal on 1 September 2024. Brian's extended metaphor was too good to keep to ourselves.

Terrance can cry in the headspace but not when fronting. He's being denied a catharsis. I think he's too focused on his pain being created. I tried to explain that, because he lives in the headspace, his story is real to him. I don't think Terrance has accepted that. If he doesn't accept that, he might not heal.

Terrance's perspective is parallel to Seth's perspective. Their relationship is a portal which runs perpendicular and connects the universes. That portal allows Seth to edit his headspace life, but it doesn't make it any less real. Everyone's headspace life can be edited. We're writing based, after all.

It might be fictional to the outside world, but it's real to us.

Last night, we reached a milestone: We can read syscourse without feeling fake! Sure, we still don't read what sysmeds say, but we can do it! We can get a Tumblr account and promote our stories! Fuck blocking sysmeds, WE DON'T CARE ANYMORE! (Okay, we still get anxious, but at least we don't feel fake.)

When Chibz saw it for the first time, she was unfazed. It amazed us! Before today, Reanna's plan was to "shelter" post-2022 members from syscourse, so they don't get hurt. SL wasn't bothered, either.

It was so cool just to sit there and... And... I don't know how to say it. It was so powerful. Like, we don't need to be scared anymore. We're safe. (Though it would be better to stop reading it altogether, but what's the fun in that?)

We're reading some right now with little reaction, so I think we overcame most of our insecurity. Syscourse is just repeats of the same episodes that go nowhere. Why the hell did it bother us in the first place? We feel empowered to go back on Tumblr and not care about sysmeds.

But if we go back on Tumblr, we might start caring again. I don't want to go back to that. I don't want to go back to doubt and doom-blocking. I want to remain safe in our identities. But we want more visibility for our books.

How's Pillowfort? That might be a great place for story profiles. We just don't know how active it is.

Mood: mixed

This is an entry from our system journal on 25 April 2024. Brian talks about our soft reset. He was not part of the urge we felt. (In the plural community, a system reset is an experience where old headmates are "deleted" and new headmates form to make another system. Our best comparison is doing a hard reset on your phone. This didn't happen to us, hence our use of the word "soft.")

Tulpas leave the phalanx and choose to function as NPCs. Reanna's brain makes tulpas easily, and we feel bad because she doesn't have time to focus on all of us. So, some of us leave to relieve the burden. Luckily, we live in our internal and external world at the same time [excluding in-headspace disorders which are only internal], so people don't dissipate. People can come and go.

Also, headmate activity changes over time. It's okay if some of us leave and become the background. We can't vanish due to lack of attention; we're midcontinuum after all. It's not a hard system reset.

We might be experiencing a soft reset (and for awhile now.) There's an urge for some of us to leave and become unofficial or become the background. Most of it comes from unofficial members wanting to become the background. [Actually, it was only from them.] I think Reanna is afraid to let that happen because it includes some of her first tulpas. (It's just the background. They won't vanish.)

There's also an urge for all the factives to stay official members and maybe become frontrunners. There's an urge to be a small system, and that can't happen unless some of us choose to become the background. A soft reset doesn't remove data. Background people still exist and relieve the burden on our brain. For our mental health, let the system perform a soft reset.

I know this entry is late. We're still getting used to the calm silence. I wanted to share this for context and so that Reanna didn't look like she allowed the soft reset at the expense of other members. It was the unofficial members' choice to leave and become The Background.

Last week, our system went through a soft reset. (It was an urge for about a year until Reanna finally let it happen.) Now, there isn't much pressure on her or our brain. There was no loss of data, just the "deletion" of unofficial members from the RAM. (They're no longer any kind of member.) These members left and became The Background.

At first, I used it figuratively in our journal. The next day, I saw a black ring surrounding us. It took the form of mounds with circles on top. So, I decided The Background is a place. It also made me want to record other places in our headspace.

Background People are inactive, not deactivated like in the Stone Garden. They can come and go as they please. (And so can we. It's like an app running in the background.) Our headspace has been quieter since the soft reset, so I don't think the unofficial members are doing that. I think they chose to force themselves to stop running. (My smartphone comparison is weird, but it's the best I got.)

Hell, I created the "soft reset" term last year to explain why we were being drawn to the concept while not experiencing a system reset proper. Sometimes, we're drawn to things when we're having a similar experience.

Tomorrow, I'll share my journal entry talking about the soft system reset.

Mood: tired

Reanna created a term for herself: demophilic. It describes a multi-spec attraction that can't be properly labelled. ("I'm attracted to different kinds of people, but that's all I know.") In her case, she couldn't label it because she's bigender and because the attraction can be vague sometimes.

For a long time, we thought Reanna didn't care to label her sexuality out of apathy. She said that before we existed, she would brush off her vague attraction to women as "making it up." She kept calling herself straight, even though she didn't feel straight anymore. F.M. got her to at least consider other labels. (He pushed for bisexual.)

And then, Reanna hit a roadblock.

Nothing she tried fit. "I'm not feeling attraction towards men, so I must be a lesbian. Wait! But my crush on Rob [drummer for Linkin Park.] Maybe I am just straight. But I felt both! But it doesn't feel bi. What about the attraction to the trans peeps? But it doesn't feel like everyone." Not even abrosexual fit. And there was also the fear of being wrong.

So, we resorted to making our own terms. F.M. and I created apasexual... Until we learned it already exists. I created demosexual, but Reanna said the attraction didn't always feel sexual. Then, she created demophilic and felt happy.

P.S. Reanna said she would rather have me talk about her than talk about herself.

Update: Reanna realized she's abrisexual. She made a post, but I'd thought I update anyway.

Mood: tired

We just realized the beta testing for Dreamwidth, and now we want to do it. The only thing we aren't testing is the two-factor authentication because it's stupid. We'll just enter our password and log in, thank you.

I think it's weird that, even when we feel like guys, having a uterus doesn't bother us. Using she/her pronouns? Not a problem. But when we have our period, we experience incongruence. We don't have Gender Dysphoria, but it's still uncomfortable.

"Couldn't you& get a hysterectomy?" No, because that would conflict with our womanhood. And we don't think it would be in our best interest.

"The Pill?" What's Reanna gonna say? "My tulpa Brian doesn't like our periods, so I want to lighten them." Our doctor doesn't know we're plural or bigender. Plus, we already take enough pills.

Whatever agrees with our manhood must not conflict with our womanhood. It's tricky because we haven't figured it out yet.

Okay, I feel better. I just really wanted to share that.

Mood: okay
Music: The Birthday Massacre

This is an entry from our system journal on 24 June 2023. I talk about Mary and Reanna.

Is it weird that Reanna and Mary are never in the same room?

(Maybe it's a midcontinuum thing.) We can see them as separate people, but they're never in the same room. Do they share a form? (No, that can't be it.) Are they the same or something? Are they so similar that they alternate? Are they a subsystem? Do they shift? We see them as separate but never together. Maybe I'm over-thinking this.

There are times when we see Mary and Reanna together, but that doesn't happen often. I think it's weird. Maybe it's because Mary's an Author Avatar.

To be fair, we don't differentiate them from each other. Relationship aside, they're different in form only.

F.M. seems more likely to participate in things. We're just like, "we don't feel like going anywhere." And he's like "I WANT TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!"

So this time, I guess we're going to Bishop Castle. There's not much to do except climb to the top via stairs. Boredom does wonders to anyone wanting adventure. We don't know when we will go.

An interesting thing about our system is how one person starts a task, and another ends up finishing it.

Earlier, we made scrambled eggs with apples and tomatoes. SL started by cutting the apples, but by the time we were done, Reanna was fronting.

Mood: silly

The cable was out for the rest of February, so we decided to watch Friends on our mom's DVDs. SL got into it while watching reruns on TBS.

On Monday, we were reading things about Friends on TV Tropes. When Reanna would keep SL out of the room (to prevent spoilers), the door was purple. Everyone else looked around and realized our headspace turned into Monica's apartment. (Mine and Chaz's apartment to be specific.)

Location: Our normal apartment

Wow! It's been four years since Reanna became selves-aware. I can't believe it; it just clicked.

First, she called it "pseudo-multiplicity." Then, she called us controlled hallucinations because she confused the tulpa for imposition skills. Then, she recognized us as headmates, though still calling us OCs. Finally, she recognized us as the tulpas we are. (As a result of our origins, we still have backstories and can affect the canonncity of a headspace event. It's a gift and a curse.)

What an interesting journey.

(22/10/2025): I should point out that Reanna remembered that the discovery happened in March.

Tumblr recommended sysmed posts to us, so I deleted it. On the plus side, I have a story idea.

Well, that didn't take long. The idea of pretending to be a character bothered me too much.

Like I said yesterday, I'm not gonna let sysmed fear get in the way of me making a prompt blog. No blocking, no surrender! Anyway, Reanna called it promptlanx. It's a phalanx writing of prompts. If anyone asks, we're heteronyms.

The hardest part so far is writing in the singular first person even though we're referring to ourselves. I guess it's a sign that we're real. The second hardest part is going to be changing our blog colors every season. The third hardest part is remembering to say we're heteronyms in the event of questioning. (Practicing feels so foreign to us.)

If pretending to be singular gets hard, we'll come out as plural.

Update: Mike (F.M.) gave me permission to look up "block list," so I can block blocklist accounts and remove temptation. Then, I found an entire Tumblr dedicated to blocking sysmeds. It even has an excel spreadsheet as a master list! We can block sysmeds safely! It's amazing!

Mood: hopeful
Music: The Longest Johns

"But didn't you guys make a Dreamwidth account to get away from Tumblr?" Yes, but this time, we're not going to interact with the Multiplicity Community over there because of syscourse.

Instead, we're going to share and use writing prompts. No one will know we're plural, so if anyone asks, we're heteronyms.

Update: We're doing a long time tradition of blocking. It's the first thing we do. We usually feel tired afterwards, but this time, it feels great. We're not going to expose ourselves to syscourse or sysmeds, so it feels less scary. The batch block extension no longer exists, but I'm having a good time manually blocking users by copy-pasting from block lists. Our rule on Tumblr is: safety first, posting second.

Update 2: Fuck it. The blocking was getting to me. I found some sysmed posts while scrolling through the block list tag. It's not worth it. It's not fucking worth it.

Update 3: I'm not gonna let them win. I'll repeat what I did but without blocking. Fuck syscourse, fuck sysmeds. I want to make and use writing prompts. If anyone asks, we're heteronyms.

After a lot of searching, we realized we are stuck with Wattpad. It's not that big of a deal. We'll just post our poems after we post Carnival. (Also, we want to see if Reanna's old shame will be more popular than Carnival.)

Mood: tired

Midcontinuum Spearmint

Entries tagged with brian

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Plural Checklist Results (Brian)

Seven Years (Brian)

Not a Fantasy (Brian)

1 September 2024 (Brian)

Syscourse Milestone (Brian&)

25 April 2024 (Brian)

The Background (Brian)

Demophilic (Brian)

The Beta Test (Brian)

Incongruence (Brian)

24 June 2023 (Brian)

Participation (Brian)

Task Switching (Brian)

Too Much Friends (Brian)

Four Years (Brian)

Not Worth it (Brian)

Out on Tumblr (Brian)

The Tumblr Blog (Brian)

Returning to Tumblr (Brian)

Stuck with Wattpad (Brian)