The most ironic thing is that the Codex writers rejected all metaphysical or spiritual explanations for plurality and essentially told people "if you experience any spiritual aspect to your system, don't talk about it because you won't be a good representative, and you're probably wrong anyway because you just want to be special." But their inability to give any clear definition for what made someone a "fire" as opposed to a "non-fire" made it SOUND like it was, de facto, some kind of spiritual property, and it got more extreme over time as it became increasingly clear that the concept wasn't tenable but the core Codex writers just doubled down on it. Then again, the roleplaying-like terminology they used didn't help. Cults gonna cult, I guess.
The original idea behind changing it from midcontinuum to median was that "we must have a model which doesn't require being on a dissociative continuum or dissociation to be plural" (which we were okay with, supportive of, even), but also "so no one can claim a place as 'further along the continuum' to claim superiority over others." Paraphrased, but that was the gist of it. They were SO FUCKING PARANOID about the idea of people using any aspect of any model to "claim to be above and more powerful than others" and thought the Fires Model would somehow completely prevent anyone being able to claim they were in any way above others. Hilariously ironic because they always implicitly seemed to believe in their own superiority because they were So Humble and Merely Human as opposed to all these Soulbonders Wanting To Be Special, we're special because we accept we're not special! (except we totally are) In one conversation we initially got excluded from, one of them was ranting about "how come you never hear anyone say 'Hi, I'm a Dark Lord, and I like pie.'" Hey, bubby, we would've had an iiiiinteresting surprise for you if you'd still been willing to communicate with us in 2006. (Well, okay, his real big thing was poppyseed roll, not pie. But, like, I'm a dude with actual functional wings in my world and names maps worlds powers and I don't just LIKE pie, I MAKE pie. With fresh picked berries, even. I hate the whole "lord" of anything concept, but THEORETICALLY I could claim some kind of worship-worthy status like others of my species have, in my world anyway because I know all this means jack and shit at the front, but dammit, I'd rather fucking make pie and talk about sex and MST3K.)
But yeah we were legit sad when the Vickis took their page offline because so many of the essays on it made so much sense for noobs. There was a kind of gentle welcoming feel to them that just doesn't seem to exist today, where any legit kindness that isn't uwu ironic or bootcamp-tough-love seems to eventually bring down raging mobs on your head. The world cannot be redeemed through love, only through verbally beating the crap out of each other in the name of ableist word profiles, or something.
no subject
The original idea behind changing it from midcontinuum to median was that "we must have a model which doesn't require being on a dissociative continuum or dissociation to be plural" (which we were okay with, supportive of, even), but also "so no one can claim a place as 'further along the continuum' to claim superiority over others." Paraphrased, but that was the gist of it. They were SO FUCKING PARANOID about the idea of people using any aspect of any model to "claim to be above and more powerful than others" and thought the Fires Model would somehow completely prevent anyone being able to claim they were in any way above others. Hilariously ironic because they always implicitly seemed to believe in their own superiority because they were So Humble and Merely Human as opposed to all these Soulbonders Wanting To Be Special, we're special because we accept we're not special! (except we totally are) In one conversation we initially got excluded from, one of them was ranting about "how come you never hear anyone say 'Hi, I'm a Dark Lord, and I like pie.'" Hey, bubby, we would've had an iiiiinteresting surprise for you if you'd still been willing to communicate with us in 2006. (Well, okay, his real big thing was poppyseed roll, not pie. But, like, I'm a dude with actual functional wings in my world and names maps worlds powers and I don't just LIKE pie, I MAKE pie. With fresh picked berries, even. I hate the whole "lord" of anything concept, but THEORETICALLY I could claim some kind of worship-worthy status like others of my species have, in my world anyway because I know all this means jack and shit at the front, but dammit, I'd rather fucking make pie and talk about sex and MST3K.)
But yeah we were legit sad when the Vickis took their page offline because so many of the essays on it made so much sense for noobs. There was a kind of gentle welcoming feel to them that just doesn't seem to exist today, where any legit kindness that isn't uwu ironic or bootcamp-tough-love seems to eventually bring down raging mobs on your head. The world cannot be redeemed through love, only through verbally beating the crap out of each other in the name of ableist word profiles, or something.
-Anselmus