lb_lee: A clay sculpture of a heart, with a black interior containing little red, brown, white, green, and blue figures. (plural)
[personal profile] 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.

Date: 2025-06-17 03:29 am (UTC)
starfallhaven: A white-haired elf with twin tails looking neutrally at the viewer; in her hands are blue flowers. (Frieren)
From: [personal profile] 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

Date: 2025-06-18 05:57 pm (UTC)
starfallhaven: (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.
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