The Vickis: The Wonderful World of the MidContinuum

[lb_lee]

Digging around in Ye Olde Plural Sites, figured I'd toss some stuff up here before I forget it all.

I found the Vickis' old site from ~1998.  As far as I understand right now, they may have propagated the term "midcontinuum," before "median" was in use. (And it turns out that "median" was apparently associated with Pavilion Hall, a multi "activist" group that was a rolling trash fire and had their own bizarro quasi-metaphysical explanation for what being in-between multi and singlet was.  It made no fucking sense.) The Vickis might also have helped start the idea of "plural" as an umbrella term, more expansive than "multiple," a term they were using by 1/15/1998.  I'll probably have to dig through the alt.support.dissociation archives to test this for sure.

Their site has some really good stuff on it!  I especially want to bring attention to the following three essays:

Does it work? -- An essay that tackles the question of "I am multiple?" and fears of faking better than anything else I've seen.
The Power of Naming -- Who gets to decide what a "real" multiple is, and why?
Building Safety and Trust -- a post by BigVicki (and a couple of other ASDers) on how to build safety, trust, and communication within your system/household, especially if you've gotten off on the wrong foot.

All of these essays are highly relevant to plurals today, twenty years later, and the Vickis are one of the few systems I see talking about the in-between spaces, which I feel is much-needed.  I have no idea if they're around anymore, or how to contact them, so I can't get their permission, but I plan to have these linked on the healthymultiplicity.com home page, since I feel their utility can't be denied and mustn't be lost.

Comments

[lithophiles]

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.

-Anselmus

[lb_lee]

The fires thing was just... mondo confusing.

I don't suppose you know what ever became of the Vickis? I just realized, it's been so long, they very well may not even be alive anymore... that's a sad thought. But I'm glad their old site is archived, and these essays now rehosted so other people can learn and enjoy them.