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.

[cheliceri]

Hey, yep. We've heard of it called that too, and it fits. Sometimes, when my fuzzy spider ass isn't locked in front, we're like a sack of cats. Sometimes, we're like a soup. Never know which it's gonna be.
[Angel

[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).

[starfallhaven]

Oh, we are totally separate in-world. I think it's more of a perception thing when at front than anything else. Despite the mild telepathic mind meld in-world, it seems like getting to use the body just does that for some reason.

[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.

[pantha]

Some ropes are actually braided!

That said, the reason you're probably struggling to find the word is not lack of specificity but too much specificity. In English to make rope you:
- spin (twist loose fibres together to make a thread/yarn)
- ply (twist two or more spun threads together, to add strength, stability or other effects)
- cable (twist two or more plied threads together, to add further strength and other effects)

When making thread or yarn you almost always stop after the first or second step. With rope, you almost always do all three. There is no single word for a combination of those steps, though.

Another associated (though much less specific) term that you might find useful is twining. Can be used to describe thread/yarn/rope-making steps but also loads of other unrelated things.

[lb_lee]

THANK YOU! Cabling is definitely the most accurate term for this! I should’ve known it’d be something you knew! ;p

[pantha]

Interestingly, the reason rope is cabled is it generally gives a rounder cross-section as well as the additional strength. This makes it run through the workers' hands more easily when being hauled but also run over and through other equipment and/or obstacles more easily without getting caught up.

I'm sensing an analogy...

[lb_lee]

That makes so much sense! And only further supports the term as what we want to use.

[stealthsystem]

yo. we do that too. us stealth specifically. like we can’t braid with a rhymer, but i could totally do it with like say Julie or Tanna maybe.
nice to see somebody talk about it.
-Kindle

[lb_lee]

Mori/Sneak: yeah, talking with Janusz made me realize that “blending” can describe a lot of different things. There’s the “urrgh I dunno who I am” feeling usually associated with crisis for us, there’s braiding, there’s permanently joining together like Mir and Lolly did to become our current Miranda, and there’s dancing which is more like getting a marching band, sports team, or army to act as one. Many different ways!

[beepbird]

Very much appreciate you sharing this- wish it was more talked about that sometimes folks don't know or care who's around doing what (or that this can change). That you don't have to know all the time. There's so much obsession over that in plural spaces (I'm no exception- working on it) that I feel like more exposure to it would help a lot of folks realize it's okay to just exist and let things happen.

[lb_lee]

I mean, admittedly, this is part of a twenty-year flow of how we do things. Twenty years ago, we didn’t pay hardly any attention to any of it for fear of “feeding the delusion” and a friend had to tell me, “dude how are you going to get anything done if you don’t know who’s on your team?!” Because we would just do things and hope nobody cared enough to undo it (which could lead to pointless cycles of redoing/undoing each other’s actions). Then we got very specific so we could negotiate with and nurture each other. But now that our heart flowers are well watered, and our identities are well-supported by ourselves and others, and we are in the habit of negotiating with each other and respecting each other’s wants, it’s less necessary.

It is miles different from our LALALA DOESN’T MATTER of twenty years ago.

[beepbird]

Because we would just do things and hope nobody cared enough to undo it (which could lead to pointless cycles of redoing/undoing each other’s actions).

I feel that. Glad things have improved for you.

[lb_lee]

Rogan: one day I will make and finish that comic about the person in high school who ranked highly in teamwork and after clocking us went all-in on WHAT ARE YOU DOING HOW DO YOU GET ANYTHING DONE?! And taught us to actually negotiate with each other.

[beepbird]

I would absolutely want to see that comic (or at least hear their insights)!

[lb_lee]

Sent!

[pilotsofanewsky]

We're only a few years in and we've gone through a cycle like this a few times:

"We don't have to constantly know who we are, we just get to exist and do what we want/feel and that's unmasking",
vs.
"I NEED to understand who all is here so I can create order in here (on a rational level)".

The middle ground, where we can think about the whole system *and* actually experience individual selfhood&feelings, has been really hard to find. And impossible to constantly keep.

When we read things by other systems, it sounds like they're constantly, easily in that zone, and for us that's just not realistic (yet?). We're glad that we've been encouraged that being individual people is an option, but we'd also love to see more information about those other phases out there.

[mackerelgray]

oh it's cool to hear that other people get this! we tend to braid together when doing things that don't require anyone's specific attention, like watching a movie or doing chores, and then when we go to talk to people we tend to differentiate again, and can each have our own take on what we did earlier! it's neat!

[lb_lee]

Yeah, for us it seems to happen most with engrossing tasks!

[pantha]

<3

[pilotsofanewsky]

We've known about our system for a few years now, and we're not quite as internally consistent as you all (as far as we understand, this braiding/cabling thing is about how you interact on the outside, while you're still separate on the inside).

When we think we've understood someone in the system, a few months later we'll notice that a trait/memory/interest/opinion that they exclusively had is now someone else's. Like, we thought this was an integral part of who they were and now it's not theirs anymore.

Now you could say "you just didn't understand yourselves right the first time", but it happens so often that we think we're just a bit fluid. We *are* individual people, but also, we've shared this whole life. We can have shared custody of a few things. It's interesting though, because most of these things aren't community-shared, it's more like a chain: A and B have something in common, B and C have something else in common, etc...

(And we have had a handful of fusions, those are different! Although maybe the chain-links fuse occasionally and then unfuse in a slightly different spot? Who knows.)

All this to say, we relate. Do treat us as separate people. But also, people who live in the same head. There's just no good analogy, you can't exactly map our life experiences onto singlets, because we aren't singlets. We don't have to work like them, and we're still people anyway.