ghost-of-a-system

[ghost-of-a-system]

Hi!! Genuine-trying-to-learn question, do you or any systems that you know have alters that have different races then you / they are bodily? /genq

hi! this is sometimes a debated topic in the system community. i'm not going to get into it too much just because we aren't a person of color and we don't want to speak over anyone who is.

i wanted to find a tumblr post to explain it better but, i could hardly find any. maybe i wasn't searching with the right words? but i did find a reddit post asking for systems who are people of color to share their thoughts. i'd recommend checking it out!

what i can answer is that alters can always inwardly appear to have different skin colors, features, etc. just because there's not really restrictions to how alters can present themselves, in general.

we have personally had many alters who have different skin colors/complexions in comparison to our body! but they have never claimed to actually be said race or understand the experiences of someone who is. ^^'

-octavia

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[ghost-of-a-system]

I personally am not part of a system but my girlfriend is the primary fronter of one and I have to say, thank you for your comics. She's used them to explain plural/system stuff to me, and they've been very helpful :3 (it's a wonder how little official research has been done on plurality, I'm a psych major in college and I learned more from her than any class I took, smh)

hey, thank ya! its sorta an honor to hear that, glad our stuff is helpful enough to be shown to others to explain things haha. thats really cool, hope were able to keep it up in the future. but yeah, the research bit is strange. tryin to work with what we got, though.

-s

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[ghost-of-a-system]

think your comics are really awesome and really describe well some experiences i may have never experience due to our lack of openness with being a system expect for our closest friends who had dealt with similar things and helps me understand such pov.

thank you! it's good to hear the comics do their job well!! i'm glad that they can help you understand more experiences of those around you, even if you might not be able to relate to everything yourself! everyone that's able to get something out of our comics is welcome here, so thank you for being here! :D

-martlet (i hope you have a nice day!)

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[ghost-of-a-system]

Hey sorry if this is weird or anything but I wanted to say your comics are super super awesome and your drawings are so good and conveying emotion and stuff and you kind of inspire us as an artist also to make comics/drawings about our experience as a system (even if we haven’t gotten to it yet), so, thank you for doing what you do and I hope y’all have a great day/night!

~Shen

it isn't weird at all, thank you so much!

we try our best haha. making comics and art can be really rewarding and healing, at least it has been for us. if youre ever up to it / able to, id recommend it. glad were able to get our thoughts out well through our comics. we are not the best at doing so in regular conversations, so its ironic, but a good thing. thank you, hope you have a good day/night as well

-s and martlet

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[ghost-of-a-system]

… Man. I feel the “least shocking introject-heavy experience” post on so many levels.

(<- we only have 2 brainmades out of 22+ sysmates. We have such low split tolerance oh my god)

haha yeah. eight of us right now, but only one of us is not an introject of some degree. weve had more of 'em in the past, but it's still funny to joke about now!

-s and martlet

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[ghost-of-a-system]

the comic with S hit a bit close to home, as a introject from a popular game. but In the sense I can't even say what/which source/character I'm "from" despite my name change because people will talk about me as if I'm their interpretation and its been like it for a year and I've never gotten to tell anybody how i feel about it? so thank you S..we are more then our source :) - a fellow S

thanks for sharin your thoughts, its nice to hear from anyone who gets it. i dont know if i could have the patience to deal with that for a year haha, props to you /lh

but yeah, we are more than our source. its really healing to meet people who can see that. so thanks for that

-s

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[ghost-of-a-system]

how do you link to your public pk list? :0 also i love your comics! <3

firstly, thank you, were really glad you like 'em. :)

there's two options, as far as we know. the one we use is through https://pluralkit.xyz/s . the other is https://dash.pluralkit.me/profile . on both sites, you just type in your system tag, and link the page that comes up. we personally just like the formatting of the first one better, but weve seen people use either.

-s

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[ghost-of-a-system]

I love seeing your guys comics and (especially) the one posted a few minutes ago by S hit home for a few of us but especially me. I'm an introject as well and I DREAD becoming public to even our close friends cause I don't want to be treated like a character, I want to be treated as a stranger at first, and even though I identify as my source name I use a nickname for privacy reasons (which I don't mind much). But Seeing others have the same issue makes me feel a little better and I'm sorry that you even have to feel that way

- Coffee

hey, its nice to meet someone who can relate so much. especially down to the close friends bit, hah, those are the main people im afraid of seein me, honestly.

ive been here for a little over a month, and im long past our systems usual wait-time for telling people about the new guy. i sorta took on the name s and have been wanting to just have our friends get to know me as that and that only first. 'cause i want them to know me for me before they see me. cant make assumptions about someone you know enough about already, yknow? that was my logic, at least. unfortunately we dont get to talk to 'em much anymore.

so i guess the frustrations about the fact i have to make a plan just to be respected got to me after a good four weeks of being chill about it.

-s

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[ghost-of-a-system]

put this together in like 40mins with no script so sorry if theres mistakes.

-s

#vent #traumagenic system #endo neutral #osdd system #actually dissociative #osddid #actually plural #did osdd #did community #other specified dissociative disorder #system #system comic #system blog #system stuff #introject #fictives #system vent #osdd #id in alt text #ghost of a sys comics

[ghost-of-a-system]

we really love all your comics abt systemhood but susie's ones in particular always make us giggle, they have such a fantastic sense for comedic timing and it makes her comics so much fun to read :3

hey hey thank you! i happened to be fronting when this popped up, it was destined to be. i try my best 🔥

-susie

#ghost of a sys asks

[ghost-of-a-system]

do you ever mask when your alone?, like you've gotten so caught up in pretending that it's hard not too

we absolutely do! it just isn't as guaranteed as when we're around other people. it continues to cause us to feel very blurry and unsure of who we are. or it often happens for up to a couple hours after we get home/stop being around others, like it has to "wear off" or something, lol.

it's pretty weird and sometimes disorienting. often makes us feel like we're somehow faking, but it's a minor occurrence compared to the plethora of symptoms and experiences that indicate otherwise, so we move on pretty quick.

-susie and martlet

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[ghost-of-a-system]

hi, we are autistic and also have aphantasia and alexithymia.

and we where wondering what you guys do when you don't know who's fronting, like that limbo of bodily autopilot where nothings going on inside the head and we all just blend together into an incoherent mess

we can't tell if someone new is fronting or if we think we are faking it again.

thanks

hey, thanks for reaching out! im not sure if we have alexithymia; we dont know much about it. but we do have aphantasia and autism, so ill try my best.

i think its an autism thing, but we mask a whole heck of a lot around basically... everyone but each other. if you or someone else is unsure what i mean by "masking", its basically just altering (no pun intended...) your behavior in order to outwardly appear "normal" to other people. pretty sure it can be both manually done or subconsciously. its usually subconscious for us personally. but for us, this "persona" we mask as is kinda hard and unnecessary to describe, but the point would be that it isnt really similar to any of our alters. we also do a lot of mirroring others, as in, involuntarily copying their personalities, speech patterns, etc., which plays into our masking.

when we are blurry or more "on autopilot" as you described, we tend to revert to this even more. since there isnt a distinct enough alter around to, at the very least, hog our train of thought, our brain just defaults to that masking persona. but this still happens a lot when we do know whos fronting; they subconsciously mask/mirror so much so that their identity becomes indistinguishable to even them. in all honesty, this usually doesnt go away until we either are alone again or something triggers someone specific out (sorta snapping us out of the masking for a bit). sometimes the someone specific is even who was fronting before good ol masking took over; it just kind of grounds them to their actual self instead.

overall it just makes it impossible for us to tell when we are just genuinely blurry or just masking to the max. we usually just default to assuming that were blurry until enough clarity kicks in to say otherwise.

as far as the "thinking it could be a new alter" thing, we definitely relate to that too. we kinda have a whole, system in place (no pun intended...?) to help with that. when it comes to masking, particularly mirroring, we typically mirror other people/characters/etc. to the point that we genuinely feel like a new person. oftentimes to the point that we feel like we are them. many times in the past its so intense that it puts us under the impression that theres a new person to add to the bunch.

i think one of us has talked about it in the past here, but im too lazy to go fishing for it. basically, we might log it, like in our simply plural, usually. keeping the profile on private and just logging that this potential new guy is fronting. we usually give it a week or two to see if they ever front again or if we can still 'feel their presence' later on, in simple terms. for us, majority of the time theyre gone, 'cause they never existed to begin with. but thats just because we mirror so much and so intensely, not sure if thats something other systems can relate to. we also just arent a large system, and while it isnt uncommon for us to split, its even less common that they stick around past a week or two.

its a weird cycle. but it doesnt mean youre faking or anything. just one of the weird ways things mix, especially being a system and having something like autism. they dont always function separately, at least in our experience.

-s

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[ghost-of-a-system]

least shocking introject-heavy experience

this is embarrassing now why in our system of eight alters do we have to have three undertale-related introjects ...??

#traumagenic system #endo neutral #id in alt text #actually dissociative #osdd system #osddid #actually plural #did osdd #other specified dissociative disorder #did community #osdd #osdd 1b #system stuff #system comic #system things #system memes #introject #fictives #ghost of a sys comics

[ghost-of-a-system]

As a fictive of a popular media, what has been your alters experiences with that fact?

it is pretty annoying to be treated differently by others if they recognize your source more. like, there has been a major difference in how comfortable our introjects feel being open about themselves, depending on how well-known our source is. it's unfortunately the case that those who are lesser-known often get taken more seriously or treated as more individual compared to those with familiar faces :(

in our system, we introjects like to be able to start from scratch with people when we get here! we aren't always clear copies of our source and often have some personality differences and such. so it can be awkward and hurtful when people automatically generate this picture and expectation of how you're supposed to be just because they "recognize" you. but they never do that to those of us they don't recognize ! (whether it be non-introjects or just introjects of lesser-known sources) it's very disheartening-

as far as reading discussions online, or seeing reception of our sources, in all honesty, it's never really caused much for us :') and the experiences, if any, have been the same regardless of media popularity. we completely see ourselves as our own people and not as our sources, and it's been that way for some time now (otherwise i would try to remember what it was like before...)

the only really awkward thing is sometimes seeing/reading some uhh.. strange or mildly inappropriate content about your source self ^^'' it doesn't affect us too much since people on the internet will be, well, people on the internet. and we still know it is just content of the source, not of us,, but it's sometimes a little uncomfortable to see someone with your face or people with the faces of people you used to know doing some,, concerning things !! 😭

but like i kinda described there we mostly just see things and think of them as discussions or content about something fictional. we don't ever really see it and think, "hey, that's me, what the heck!?" because, well, it isn't, x')

-octavia

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[ghost-of-a-system]

another thing we didn't really address here that really irks us is that it feels like nobody believes alters (aside from the host) can have relationships outside of the system. everywhere we look it's "the host's friends", "the host's partner", etc.. while we're sure it's just a common occurrence, it sometimes makes us feel even more like not-people, and just extensions of a host. like we have to compensate and work with the relationships they want to have and never be allowed to have any of our own.

we've always struggled to relate to most systems that do this since the only out-of-system romantic relationship we've had was between our former gatekeeper and an alter from another system. we still don't have a host, and didn't then, but my point is that said gatekeeper was far from anything a host could be defined as. all of our friendships have either been people (if aware of our system) being friends with us as a collective, or specific (non-host) alters being closer friends with specific alters from another system.

like, yes... we have had romantic relationships & close friendships or familial bonds between our alters, and that's definitely something we see talked about. but we shouldn't be treated as if we're confined to that? sorry for the bit of a rant but i wanted to get our thoughts out.

-octavia

if i had a nickel for every time an anthropomorphic wolf made a comic about the system term "host"...

we previously thought we were hostless because we all fronted fairly equally. we realized this was just because we, personally, were in a toxic environment/mindset that had us under constant distress. when we tried to work through this more, we found that one of us, me, does front majority of the time, now that things are better.

our old host comic is still very important to us, regardless of whether or not we are a "hostless" system. it still resonated with many and brought some attention to a lesser-known experience in systems. for that reason, we are still very glad we shared it.

#osdd #traumagenic system #endo neutral #osdd system #osddid #actually dissociative #actually plural #other specified dissociative disorder #did osdd #did community #alters #system #system blog #system things #dissociative system

[ghost-of-a-system]

sorry if this is kind of crossing a line, but how do you guys deal with thinking you're faking? ive been having more issues with it recently and its affecting my system,, i dont mean to but its an unfortunately common intrusive thought

no worries, it's definitely a common thought a lot of systems seem to get from time to time (at least from what we've seen)! i know we have, though for us it was usually less of an "i'm faking", and more of an "i'm gaslighting myself into thinking i have this, by acknowledging symptoms". we mostly got these thoughts in the first year or so of for-sure knowing about our system. while we met the criteria and general experiences of someone who has OSDD1, we found ourselves obsessively comparing our system to others we'd see online, or others that we knew. we saw systems who had things like inner worlds or extreme differences in skills & knowledge per alter. things that aren't specifically required to be one, but seemed so awfully common that we just thought they were unspoken guidelines we were missing. so, we were afraid we were "faking".

i don't know how much this can apply to others, but we can remember a good deal of indicators about having OSDD1 when we were younger, especially from the ages of 11-15 or so. (mainly, dissociative episodes, the presence of potential alters.) we obviously didn't know what it was then, nor did we really think it too out of the ordinary. but they were things that we were able to start connecting the dots with the more we learned about systems and ourselves later on.

looking back, our concerns kind of fizzled out with the more dots we connected. kinda hard to be gaslighting yourself into symptoms you don't even know are symptoms, right? the fact that we experienced these things for a long time prior to even learning about OSDD1 was usually enough to help us. but i can understand if it might not be safe for others to try to delve into their pasts like that. isn't really for me to say or speak much on.

this may also not apply to many others, but here's another way. ever since creating this account, actually, we've started to stop holding ourselves to these ridiculous standards in order to be a "normal system". we're learning to respect ourselves for the way we are, and we have noticed that since then, our life has gotten, clearer, almost? whereas before, i think our anxiety and paranoia about the way we functioned clouded a lot of our symptoms. we were always over-analyzing and overthinking everything, so much so that nothing felt genuine. and, like i stated at the beginning... basically all of our concerns over faking stemmed from comparing ourselves to others, personally.

i don't know if that makes sense, but we just stopped caring so much and acknowledged our symptoms as more of a passing thought rather than one we need to grab and study as soon as it occurs. i'm not too sure of the correlation, but i think our experiences/symptoms just. stopped feeling like something we were 'secretly, actively inducing', if that makes it any clearer? and, these things were happening on their own, and to degrees that simply could not be explained by anything other than OSDD1 or something similar. it's really hard to put into words so i'm sorry if that makes zero sense hah, but that's just what we've done. we haven't really had such thoughts ever since.

-skye

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[ghost-of-a-system]

Amnesia anon and wow, I relate to a big chunk of that, thank you, I may have to rethink some things

i'm glad anything that we said was helpful ! amnesia is definitely kinda confusing for us, but i wish you luck with wherever you go!

like i think you mentioned in the original ask, we've also been weary/reluctant to seek out more professional help because of the way our amnesia works. the first time we ever saw a therapist who "had experience with" DID, they completely disregarded us the second we said we didn't experience complete memory gaps. 💀 we didn't really want to bring up OSDD1 because we already weren't having the best experience there regardless. never went back but, hopefully we just got unlucky and all therapists aren't like that.

-skye

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