Loony-Brain Hive

[lb_lee]

Realized we may well have never outright said this, so we might as well make it clear: over the past few years, some of the LB alter family has grown more hivemind-y, and at times with less differentiation, in a way that doesn't bother us.

There are a few demographics in here, and the ones we call the "alters" are all people who split off the original girl who inhabited this vessel (Mori, Rawlin, Gigi, Rogan, Sneak, and Miranda), rather than folks who had their own lives and came here from elsewhere (Biff, Falcon, Grey, Bob, and Mac). The alters are like threads of a greater rope, and we unravel and rebraid ourselves sometimes to achieve our goals, though only while working on corporeal tasks that engross us, such as working on a story. When engrossed in making group art, it can sometimes be hard for us to tell who's doing what! (Other times it is not. Coming In or Staying Out was very much Rogan drawing, while the Rawlin comics are all Mori drawing.) And constantly interrupting ourselves from the work to ask, "who am I?" is pointless and annoying, because in that moment, it doesn't matter.

This has also been happening sometimes while chatting with people or posting. We sometimes don't tag our entries because we don't know who's talking or care so much, or we share enough of an opinion that it no longer matters being like, "all the alters agree on this paragraph though Sneak questions Sentence 6."

Mori, Rogan, Sneak, and Miranda can braid like this without too much trouble, but Rawlin especially and also Gigi are still pretty separate, presumably because they still have a lot of memories and history that remain buried and lost to us. As we deal with that, perhaps they'll be able to rebraid with us easier in the future.

The braiding happens without our conscious effort, and we unravel just as fluidly. We don't think of it or call it fusion or integration, because neither have the right feel or connotations. We were threads ripped from a greater cloth, which can never be remade again. Now we are braiding ourselves in a new way that suits us, when it suits us, a cord and not a cloth.

Comments

[frozenstatures]

I appreciate you sharing this. What’s best for you is best for you. It’s really nice to read about this internal experience and how fluid it is.

[lb_lee]

No problem! It can be hard to talk about, when there's a sorta polarized to "you must all be the most separately separate people ever!" or "you must all behave as much like So-and-So as possible!"

[kossai]

hehe ... this is kind of funny , in sense that sort of relate but with different reasons ! origin is not factor here , so much as just how front work - body OS things , which kossai call eira . in that way , sometimes remember who did which things , but not always actually important to know that - can remember some of these details 10+ years back , while others very quickly get lost . but almost everyone here prefer anonymity in public posts , so eira usually work in favour .

[lb_lee]

Yeah, while we don't seem to have a body OS or front filter the way other folks do! A lot of people have that thing you describe, while our inability to homogenize at front has kinda been our downfall!

[kossai]

ha , honestly sometimes not sure others would know plural at all if not for fact kossai explicitly say so - that is strength of eira here !
sometimes lament that lack of filter might feel better , but ups and downs to everything , for sure :D

[numb3r_5ev3n]

One of the Multiples I used to follow on LJ used to refer to this as being "Blendy."

[lb_lee]

Yeah, we've used the term, but it more referred to being blurry and blurgh for us, so doesn't quite fit for this circumstance.

[starfallhaven]

We say we have telepathy though what that usually ends up being is more like a hive mind. We can separate ourselves from the gestalt when we want but oftentimes, especially when it's just a general overall feeling we don't feel the need to differentiate between I or we. People have different relationships with the gestalt, some people really dislike it and some people don't mind, but a lot of the time it's just easier to act like that when we don't have the energy to explain.

Usually we have someone in front doing the thing but it is really difficult sometimes to figure out where a thought or idea is coming from. We normally don't mind this a lot. We still feel separate, we just happen to share a brain and neural connections and that makes us a bit of a hive mind.

(Re-labelling ourselves as a collective did us no favors with the Borg imagery, though.) -Frieren

[lb_lee]

Yeah, to us the gestalt would be the whole kit and kaboodle of ghosts, waters, landscape, and fronters, so a bit too oversprawling, but it sure sounds applicable to you guys! And we still totally remain individual internally, no Steven Universe-style fusions (as cool as that sounds).

[erinptah]

Never heard this described as "braiding" before, but now that you say it, I'm surprised I haven't! It's such a clear, easy-to-understand tactile metaphor to use.

[lb_lee]

Yeah, there are a lot of non-linguistic terms in here that translate awkwardly into English, and braiding is one of them. There is SURELY an existing term in English for how you braid cords together to make rope, but we haven't been able to find it.