miscellaneous askbox responses

[prismaticbleed]

Do your alter colors mean anything? If so, what?
Alter colors are most obviously tied to function. For example, all Red voices deal with creativity, and independence, and passion. All Violet voices deal with truth, and integrity, and self-knowledge. All Pink voices deal with innocence, graciousness, and affection. So on and so forth.
Every alter must “anchor” into a color in order to manifest internally (gaining a name, face, etc.). You can’t force a color switch after one anchors, but it can happen, especially if an alter’s inner “purpose” doesn’t truly match the color they’re currently in (this happened with Josephina, Lynne, and Nathaniel in the past).

That’s the most I can tell you for sure, though! The colors in our System have immense meaning, both by themselves and when applied to alters, but we haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact extent of those meanings. It may not even be possible; things shift constantly in here.

Do any of your meatspace friends know about your multiplicity/DID/MPD? If so do they address your alters as different people?
We've had a rather isolated life, as we live in the country and have never had much of a need to socialize even online. However, yes, our closest friends (at least 5) do know we have D.I.D., although only three of them have ever spoken to different System members (two of them even spoke to several of us in person). Regardless they all acknowledge and address us all as our own people, which we are very grateful for.

If/when your body was in school, what subjects attracted which alters?
We were just starting to become aware of our condition when college started (we had to drop out as a result), and high school was almost entirely lost to dissociation, so unfortunately we can't answer this question.

What kind of skills do your alters have on the inside that don’t manifest on the outside? Does this frustrate them?
All of the Retributors and Centralites have skills with weaponry, but for the most part that doesn't manifest outwards at all. The Centralites aren't bothered by it (their weapon usage is only for the inner world), but the Retributors can get notably shaken if they find the body is clumsy or otherwise unwieldy with their signature armaments.
Then of course you have the few members that have elemental or energy-based abilities, such as Javier (fire) and Leon (ice). This of course does not manifest on the outside, but the fact that such abilities are rarely used even upstairs keeps much dissonance from occurring.


Do system members ever play games outworld with each other?
Very rarely. We used to play Rock Band 3 and Soul Calbur 4 with each other, due to the extensive avatar customization, but we no longer have free access to an XBox so that's not really an option as of late.
To say a little more, though, we're really not 'game' people in general? Like the idea of playing games for recreation was always foreign, even to the child cores. Maybe that was because of context, whenever the downstairs family played games it was forced or stressful. So we never enjoyed it. For our earliest cores, 'fun' was being alone and often in our own head, and/or lost in the woods. Still is really.
Nevertheless, now that we're trying to find a safer environment in the external world, we may start trying to interact with each other within it. 'Outworld' stuff is still mostly alien to us.

What does your inner world look like?
Our inner world was dealt a massive blow back in December from which it is still recovering. Since we are rebuilding at the moment, I will answer this according to what it was like up until that event.
In short, how it looks depends on where you are. The main area is a coastal city like New York, except rather small in size (the entire city is compact into about the space of a small town), and it is surrounded by forests-- to the west are deciduous forests, while to the east are more tropical forests, as far as we can tell. Admittedly we didn't get to explore much of those areas before the December incident.


Do any of your alters play musical instruments?
Some of us do, but it's mostly internal. We have highly limited access to instruments downstairs, and the body is only schooled in piano and violin. All cores have access to that information (Jay, Jewel, etc.), as do all music voices (Zwei, Einsatz, etc.). Some music alters also sing, but that is tied to body dysphoria and some traumatic situations so it is becoming rare nowadays.
Internally, though, for the most part people just "channel" sounds through themselves in the form of resonant instruments. So that obviously doesn't translate into the physical.
In that sense, Lynne plays violin & cello, Javier plays piano, Laurie plays electric guitar, Waldorf likes synthesizers, and Spine is our percussionist. Everyone else isn't as specific and/or strongly tied to music.

How do you and your other parts communicate? Do you have an inner world or "brain dumps"?
We have a very complex inner world, and have since the very beginning. It's also tied, by distant extension, to a network of other "inner worlds" that Jewel and Jay write for.
"Brain dumps" are relatively new, as for us they are managed by alters-- there are four Archivists who have access to memory/data continuity and therefore they help prevent total confusion in new, or sudden, fronters.

What are your favorite and least favorite parts of having multiple people in your head?
We are all grateful for the knowledge that, through hard-won experience and constant growth, we can always deal with what life throws at us, one way or another. However, the best aspect of this 'condition' is definitely the deep friendships and equally deep love (on both personal and community levels) within the System.
The worst bit is when the "bad" voices appear (which we are strongly suspecting are not part of our inner world at all, and may even be external), or when System people are badly triggered (esp. the children). Some of us also dislike the fact that it's not 'safe or appropriate' for us to switch out most of the time, although most of our members are perfectly fine with that fact.


What is the age range between all of your parts?
Age is something none of us really understand, as we base our 'ages' on the dates we first appeared in the System-- none of us are older than 17 in that respect.
We see human age as four chunks of appearance-based variety: childhood, young adulthood, adulthood, and old age (with the third part being the most baffling). We have at least three children and teens, and the rest of us are 'adults' although none of us could give you an age if you asked.
Nonhuman members, such as Infinitii and CZ, eschew the concept of age altogether.

Do any of the parts do better in some areas of daily life than others? What are they?
Absolutely. Most of us are built for internal living, so for such individuals physical life can be confusing at best and disturbing at worst.
We all fail at communication, for various reasons, outside of the therapist's office-- and even there many of us cannot figure out how to speak aloud.

What different religions are present in your system? How does everyone practice their own beliefs?
The vast majority of us do not have any 'religion' to speak of. Christina Marie is the marked exception, and she is a Roman Catholic, the religion the body was raised as. Unfortunately our initial experiences with those teachings were brutal and rather negative, and that sort of "fire and brimstone" mindset is what Christina holds on to as well as the brighter things we all still treasure in our own right. We're currently helping both her and the other traumatized members of our System rise above that ancient self-damning mindset, but morally-based pain is the hardest to alleviate. It's a process.
As a long-term result of that-- we spent years "soul-searching" and dabbling in many different religions-- none of us really currently 'practice' any beliefs in a religious sense. Dogma, creed and ritual are alien to us. However the very function of our System requires that, for everything to work as it should, we all must live according to our best qualities, and for the good of the all, however that may individually be expressed.
Our System was created in order to protect, to heal, and to survive. Trauma may indeed have been our starting point, but by our very definition, we were never supposed to promote or prolong that negativity. Therefore, virtues such as forgiveness, compassion, courage, respect, responsibility, community, charity, and love, are what our System survives on. Without them, we lose coherence and health both, and begin to fracture.
We don't subscribe or affiliate with any specific religion, but we can see the same roots of our System in every religion we've yet encountered, and so we feel no need to label and limit our constantly evolving perspective concerning those roots as a result.


What's a sure way to cheer up the five last fronters?
Let's see, according to our notes from therapy this week, that would be… Jay, Laurie, Algorith, Wreckage, and Sherlock. Nice bunch.
Jay is our current Core. He's sparkly-eyed by nature, so it's rather easy to cheer him up, but he struggles with self-identity so he doesn't have many concrete interests. However, the creative work he shares with Jewel will have him grinning in an instant.
Laurie is the Protector of our System. She's very chill and doesn't dwell on negatives unnecessarily.
Algorith and Wreckage are both Retributors, which means they're frequently non-cheery by definition of their job. Algorith likes hiphop music though. Wreckage is trickier; she only calms down when she is 100% sure that those under her care are safe, so if you show concretely that you are not a threat and offer to help with such safety, she'll be happy.
Sherlock, our main Archivist, is an analytical fellow who spends all his time in a gigantic techno-library of sorts. Despite this he is very approachable. I'm sure if you showed any interest in the archives, especially as a question, he'd immediately start on an info-dump for that topic-- rather enthusiastically, I might add.


What genders are represented in your system? How does the body present? Does this create any problems for the system members of different genders?
As stated here, due to early trauma, only two or three of our members are biologically sexual, and even those who are humanoid don't quite understand the application of gender as a solid concept. For us, "male" and "female" pertain to pronouns and presentation alone, for the most part, and all of us are fine with at least being referred to as one or the other, for simplicity's sake.
General identifications are as follows (roughly= gender markers indicate binary pronoun preferences only):
Female♀: Aimee, Jewel, Lynne, Amara, Bridget, Missy, Christina, "the singer"
Male♂: Jayce, Garrison, Sergei, the GMQ trio, Markus, Leon
Bigender: Josephina♂, Xenophon♀, Amara
Pangender: Julie♀, Infinitii♂
Genderqueer: Kalisha♀, Javier♂, Waldorf♀, CZ♂, Knife♂, Isadora♀, Jeremiah♂, Pinstripe♂, Mr. Sandman♂
Androgyne: Nathaniel♂, Kyanos♂, Rio♂, Genesis♂
Agender: Jay♂, Laurie♀, Zwei♀, Einsatz♂, Spice♀, Cannon♀, Hyakin♂, Overload♀, Sugar♀, Mulberry♀, Sherlock♂, "airport"♂
Nongendered species: Spine♀, Algorith♀, Wreckage♀, Emmett♂, Cel♀, "the bear," ♂ "the destroyer," ♀ "mermaid"♀
Too young to bother: Minty♀, Razor♀, Simeon♂, Marigold♀, David♂
Unknown: "honeybee," ♀ "dead red," ♂ "victorian pink," ♀ "oni girl"♀, etc.


Are there any nonhumans in your system? If so what kind?
Technically, we're all "nonhuman." Our term of "headvoice" also works as a species name, for lack of a better term, and applies to all of us, both humanoid and beastly, as we all function similarly at heart. However, yes, most of us still pass for humans at a glance, albeit painted in technicolor hues of course.
As for those who are obviously not humanoid, we have a decent amount, although again they are not the majority-- which is admittedly a shock, as our original hosts had almost exclusively internal lives and therefore associated constantly with nonhumans. However said nonhumans were tied to an entirely different sort of inner world than ours, and therefore that massive split in function likely contributed to us appearing far more human than those non-traumatized individuals.

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@ 11:53 pm

3. tattoos i have
8. top 5 (insert subject)
9. tattoos i want
13. life goal(s)
16. favorite movie
17. a fact about my life
20. anything you want to ask

etothefifth asked: 16!

Aha this is the toughest question.
I don’t watch many movies, and I even tend to only remember them if they have some sort of creative impact on me— if not, I’ll probably forget it entirely.
On such film that has stayed with me for years is Metropolis— specifically the one based off the manga by Osamu Tezuka.
Of course I loved the artwork, setting, and characters, but the plot is what caught me the most strongly. It deals with a future society in which robots are commonplace, but are basically seen as cheap mechanical labor. However, many ‘bots display a sort of rudimentary but obvious awareness of their existence. Thus many ethical questions arise, around politics and morality mostly. Then a political figurehead tries to put a robot in power! Tensions rise and explode into revolution, and ultimately the fate of the entire world hangs in the balance.
It’s fascinating really. I have a real soft spot for that sort of thing (at least two of my personal creative series deal with similar concepts) so of course I was immediately hooked.
Honestly though I LOVE Tima, she is really dear to me as a character. I won’t tell you about her because spoilers, but she’s fantastic. (Duke Red is also ridiculously pretty and despite his flaws I like him a lot.)
This is also the first movie that made me weep openly at the ending, both from shock and emotional impact. So that’s notable.
Other movies I remember fondly are Inception, Rise of the Guardians, A.I.,
and Pokemon 3: Spell of the Unown (really).

celestriakle asked: 3/9 (idk if you have or want any tattoos; if no, top 5 shapes) 16 17

I don’t have any tattoos, but I’ve been wanting to get at least one since I started high school! What I’d get is still undecided, although these have been the longest-running ideas:
1. The personal symbols for all our System’s “Outspacers” up the inside of my left arm.
2. The personal symbols for the Guardians in Dream World up the inside of my right arm.
3. "Chaos is power, enriched by the heart" right in the middle of my chest. (No one is surprised)
4. Laurie once wanted me to get “Vigilance” on my right hand and “Compassion” on my left, I think.
5. FROST* lyrics, somewhere. Cliche, maybe, but Black Light Machine did have a massive impact on my life progression so I kind of feel indebted.
6. If I ever feel like being daring as hell, I’d get that weird “lotus mark” on my lower abdomen (that I have in headspace) tattooed. Infi would be proud.
Mainly, any and all tattoos I’d get would have to do with either headspace, or the Leagueworlds. They’re the only things in my life that have proved to be ‘permanent’ enough to merit a similar physical representation.
Top 5 shapes though, you know me too well! For whatever reason I am completely enamored with geometric shapes.
Unsurprisingly the simplest answer to this question is to Google “sacred geometry.” All that stuff is like liquid gold to my eyes; I could stare at it for hours and I know that because I have, haha.
As for more general shapes:
Hearts(❤) and stars(★) are up top, as they are my personal motif. Symbolically they’re both fascinating as well.
I actually really like diamonds(♦). They’re very elegant, but they have a feeling of authority or respect to them. Triangles are also awesome but diamonds are less ‘harsh’ in essence. (Synesthetically, for me triangles are usually lime green and diamonds are dodger blue.)
Crosses are also super cool (+). They’re perfectly balanced, but almost iconic. My favorite thing about them is their symmetry, and the fact that they feel mathematical instead of just visual. It’s hard to explain but I really like it.
Lastly I’m just going to say SPHERES, if they count. I especially like holding spherical things; their surface area feels almost infinite, how it just flows nonstop. It’s super cool.
I just answered 16 for etothefifth, so lastly here’s a fact (or three) about my life.
First off, most basic: I live in Pennsylvania. (I don’t know if that was ever said here.) It’s pretty great; there are trees everywhere and we virtually never have severe weather. Plus we get LOTS of snow in the winter.
I lived in Utah for about 6 months total, right on the edge of SLC, and although I loved that too I could never last very long in a city environment. I need solitude, rolling hills, and green things; the desert does not mesh well with me.
I don’t remember most of my life prior to age 18 (thanks DID) so I can’t answer this question very well. But I guess that’s a fact too.
And now I’m going to give you facts about my parents because why not! (They basically define my ‘external life’ anyway, so.)
My dad is a really boss auto restoration mechanic. His work is meticulous. He used to draw pinstripe flames all over my tablets in elementary school; I loved it. He loves classic and blues rock, and introduced me to Todd Rundgren, Jeff Beck, and Queen, as well as many other fantastic artists. He has a ridiculously good memory for musical data, often around the histories of his favorite artists, which is always interesting to listen to. He’s also INCREDIBLE at building things. Honestly this guy will completely reupholster and refurnish his apartment for fun. He will build his own furniture AND do the floors/ walls/ electricity by hand, all with professional quality and precision. He has the patience of a saint. He’s a super cool and chill dude overall; I have a ton of respect for him.
My mom is a wannabe movie star but she’s worked at a hospital for 20 years (respiratory; she literally saves lives weekly). She’s a fairy princess at heart (dead serious) and I admire the fact that she has never lost that sparkly-eyed wonder and enthusiasm for life. She used to paint, but she still writes poetry and song lyrics, sometimes even for my music (which is really awesome). She’s a major foodie; she is always cooking and trying new recipes. She loves to travel too, just to see what’s out there. Most of all she has got one hell of an eye for design, in both art and fashion. She does tons of crafts in her spare time, from scratch, because “I just had an idea and wanted to see if I could do it.” And she always does! She has no fear of expressing herself and she has boundless care for those dear to her.


pojoisnowit asked: 8. top 5 happiest/most inspiring moments of your life 13. life goal(s)16. favorite movie 17. a fact about my life and 20. who do you look up to and why?

16 and 17 were already answered, so let me answer 20 first.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever really “looked up to” anyone. Even as a child, I never had any role models, and the concept was foreign to me. Sure, there were people I admired for various reasons— notably my grandmother, for her care and unfailing determination, and my favorite creative minds, for the sort of work they were able to produce— but I didn’t aspire to any of them.

Hm. Honestly if I “look up to” anyone, it would be my theoretical “future self.” Who I could be if I continue to try my hardest. I look at everything I admire in others, and instead of holding that above my own head, I always think: "with enough time and effort, I could accomplish that same thing. I could be that same way. If I truly want it, all I have to do is genuinely pursue it, and I will reach that goal." So I look up to myself. I want to be myself. I love and admire everything I am, and so I do not regret what I am not. I can always change that if I wish.
13, life goal(s). This is another question I’ve never quite been able to answer, because I’ve never really given much concrete thought as to the “future.” It was a foreign concept for much of my childhood, and when I got older I was always so focused on the here-and-now that it remained as such.
However, it’s been a constant that I do want to “complete and publicize” my creative works someday, however that manifests. I want to get them out there, in the hands of other people. Simple as that.
In the bigger picture though, I want to heal all this internal nonsense I’ve been ‘struggling with’ for years. Headspace has made massive progress on that recently, but the oldest roots are the toughest. However we won’t give up. That’s really my only goal… continue to grow, continue to shine brighter, continue to open up and love more. I want to be a warrior of the spirit, essentially. I want to be a powerful but compassionate example of everything the System and I work towards accepting more fully, all that good stuff. Really it’s more about “realizing” than “becoming;” it’s just getting out of my own way, taking the blinders off, letting go of all the excess nonsense that just holds me back. It just ‘takes time,’ as it were. So if that counts as a life ‘goal,’ then there it is!

Now for my top 5 happiest and/or most inspiring moments, not events. Hm.

1. I have to mention July 7th 2011, even if it’s the ‘obvious answer’ and even if it was more than just one moment. It just had such incredible, far-reaching aftereffects, because of how inspiring and joyful it ultimately was.
2. Similarly, October 2nd 2012. The “if you were waiting for a sign” moment, specifically the look of incredulous joy in response to it. You personally know all about that one, as it happened right in your apartment and thank you both for allowing us that opportunity. Honestly even though I don’t remember that entire year, there is this crushingly tangible bliss tied to that memory bank nonetheless and I cannot ever deny that.
3. The moment I first saw a certain completed art commission back in October 2009, which basically knocked my heart right out of the ballpark, good Lord. Honestly I still can’t look at it without smiling like a lovestruck idiot; it’s great.
4. Summer 2011, logging into my old Facebook account and seeing a message that I had dreamed of but never expected. Her exact words still glow in my heart, and I smile every time I think of that one tiny but astronomical communication between us.
5. The exact look on Laurie’s face at the end of this conversation. It was the first time I ever saw her smile like that, and I’ll never forget it.
Now it is 3AM and I am falling asleep standing up, so that’s it for tonight.

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@ 11:58 pm

*AGGRESSIVELY TRIES TO FIGURE OUT HIS FAN GEN DETAILS*
Really though I'm probably trying too hard, you know me.
It's just that I want to dive headfirst into this community at long last (it's been a decade already) and all the lovely art and updates in the Engelbaum tag are a clarion call at this point, haha.

Anyway. I've always felt a powerful pull towards White, with Pink a close second and Amber following. However, if my Gen is effectively "the chaotic part of yourself that is normally suppressed," they are going to end up being quite a handful, if our previous System Cores are any indication. So I'm not sure what color that collective attitude would 'canonically' mesh with? There's a lot of wiggle room, so to speak. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
In any case it gives me an excuse to do more soul-searching, which is arguably my favorite pastime. my therapist will be proud