Cores/Originals

[hungryghosts]

Sparked by a post on Tumblr: do or did you at one point have a core/original?

If yes, how do you define core/original, and what are or were your experiences having one?

If you had one and no longer have one, what changed, if you're comfortable sharing?

If you've never had one, how is your system organized instead?

Comments

[hungryghosts]

[Lark] And the Reddit post: https://old.reddit.com/r/plural/comments/1qbeh62/plural_questions_coresoriginals/

[lightning_beast]

If any one person in here is the "original" one, it's either someone who doesn't exist anymore, or it's Stardust. Currently though, I think our theory is that there has always been two of us: Stardust, and Comet. We're the ones of us with the closest ties to our childhood: the only one besides them that might've existed at the time is Sharpwhistle, and even then we're fairly certain they didn't appear until our teenage years. If our theory is correct, we were a duality for the longest time: the dromaeosaur and the dragon. Of course now there's way more than just two of us, but that's how it seems to have started out in here.

[pheonix_system]

Yes, we do have an original. We define "original" as being the one who remembers and identifies with our life before the system. We've become aware that the system has been around longer than we realized by certain members telling us they existed prior to the time we recognize as the start of our system, but she still feels like the first one, the one who was born in this body.

For us, it's not really a big deal. She struggled at syscovery with the idea of sharing a body, but she adjusted remarkably fast and now she has no issue with this. She's our first host, though she's currently on an innerworld vacation as we've discovered that if we don't switch periodically, our mental health starts to deteriorate, and she realized that since she was in front until syscovery, she'd gone years being in front, which had led to her being in a rough place. She's been on vacation for almost a full year at this point, which has been a little odd because when she was fronting, the brain would often push her back into front after a while. Since she's been on vacation, the brain has begun to ease off on pushing hosts back into front, allowing non-hosts to front longer so that now we can pretty much guarantee that whoever switches in will be in front for multiple days, rather than just a few hours.

[beepbird]

Would that post happen to be an ask sent to our Tumblr today?

As far as we can tell, we've never had a core or original. We've talked to someone inside for as long as any of us can remember, and I don't have any reason to think that one of us came first or exists more centrally. We've generally stayed on equal footing with each other (barring any conflicts disrupting that). Our overall fluidity also makes it hard to imagine having anyone that central.

The most influental factor for our internal power structures nowadays is front time. It's like we have to build a tolerance. The more time that we spend in front, the easier it gets to stay in front in the near future (and the inverse- time spent away lowers your tolerance). It's pretty easy for our tolerances to fall out of balance if we're not careful to let other folks have time in control, which can lead to some major power imbalances where one person dominates our life whether they want to or not. We use switch tracking nowadays to help balance ourselves more fairly.

[hungryghosts]

Would that post happen to be an ask sent to our Tumblr today?

[Phosphor] (Yup, haha)

[chameleons3]

We’re not sure. The closest thing we have to “an original” is that our earliest memories have mostly Arini self stuff on them. It says it was born here and has been here from day 1. Working hypothesis is that mine and Brick’s separate (ish) existences came later. That said, we don’t really have a clear line of when that was or how. We have guesses that it has to do with Arini’s intent and needs at the time.

Still, we have less of a core self and more of a shared foundational selfhood.

[foggerss]

Yes! In fact we had 3. Probably more. They kinda like switch out with each other, but they all carry a sense of "I was here before most of you" kind of feeling. There were probably more. Originally they were supposed to disappear when switching out. But recently the last 2 just kinda re-introjected despite the current cores presence

[seraphikiss]

alva
we have a core, which we call mike (or fleur).

for us, a "core" is the dominant identity that is neither host nor co-host, the one that you typically see writing and sharing things on our journal. it's essentially a "default" identity that we might take on during specific situations where we do not want to reveal ourselves.

it could also default to a "persona".