Pandora
From Tymestl Wiki
Contents |
Introduction
This is the page for the multiple system that goes by the name of "Pandora" online. We first found acceptance of the fact of our plurality on the summer solstice of 2008. This is a very new discovery for us, and as such, we are still working towards acceptance and understanding of ourselves. Similar to the wiki of Tymestl, this wiki is in place to help us record information about who we are, how we relate to one another, and that sort of thing.
But first, a few notes about how we function as a system.
About the System
We've been multiple for many many years, but only recently have come to acknowledge that fact. Some of us are still struggling to accept what's going on and are refusing to work with the rest of us. We're all reeling from the realization that we're separate people and trying to make sense of how we interact. We seem to be very very heavy on collaborative efforts. Generally, one or two people front while others provide support from "the back." We have shared short-term memory, but we do not share long-term memory. Things will get filed away into a single person's memory and not the memory of any one of us.
Because we spent so long pretending to be singular, we have a lot of behaviors that we do to maintain that illusion both to ourselves and to those that are external to us. We have been very very devoted to consistency between all of us. If one of us shows interest in something, we'll often pop up to show interest in that thing if someone else is fronting. We do this as discretely as possible to avoid being noticed as a separate entity. For example, Holly is very interested in art, poetry, music... anything creative. Dana is not. She's more into board games, tv shows, etc. Angie is the one that handles most, if not all, of our magickal work. The others aren't as interested in such things.
Inhabitants
One thing to note is that, given how recent all of this is, we don't have a clear or definite sense of who we all are. The following chart records those of us that we know about so far.
Major identities
The first chart lists those that we've clearly identified as discrete and separate beings from the rest of us.
| Name | Age | Gender | Brief Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dana | 27 | F | Probably the original personality of the system, and as such, shares the system's age. Appears to be very emotional and resistant to change. Leads the Fractures. Loves board games, geeky tv shows, and some video games. |
| Sarah | 23 | F | Resident book nerd and bookkeeper. Manages a lot of long-term memory and information sharing. The first to accept that we were "us." She is often either calmly happy or emotionless. |
| Willia | 35 | F | Effectively our "Mama-bear." Takes care of business for us by handling things like school, work, bills, etc. Steps in when one of us is getting out of line. Prevents us from ignoring responsibilities. |
| Holly | 15 | F | Holly is an energetic teenager. Used to be one of the primary fronters. Wild and adventurous. Likes BDSM. Loves writing poetry, trying to draw, and learning music. |
Minor identities
These individuals have strong beliefs about themselves and others, and have very distinct patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior. However, they only come out in very specific circumstances and do not appear to be functional outside of those circumstances. In that regard, they do not seem to be full individuals on their own, instead representing specific qualities of ourself. This may change, however, as we get to know them better. For now, though, they have come to front so rarely that we don't have a strong sense of them as individuals in their own right.
| Name | Age | Gender | Brief Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Casey | ?? | M | The boy toy. Thinks of himself as cool and suave. Handles meeting new people, making sexual advances, and many other social things. Used as an escape personality when things get too social. |
| Lily | 8 | F | Meek. Quiet. Likes to sit and stare at our partner Elly. Afraid of people, adventure, everything. Likes to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible. Another escape personality from social situations, this one works in the opposite direction of Casey. Probably a major fronter in grade school. |
| Angie | apple | ~F | Created when we realized that we had angelic properties. She took over all of our magickal work and brought it into herself. She's one of the few non-humans in the group. |
| D'ni | pancake | N/A | Angie's mirror twin. Possibly just another side of the same person. We called it the dark one, initially. It frightens us and is very likely one of the oldest entities in here. |
The Fractures
Dana has a habit of running away from many situations that trouble her. To do so, she will often create fracture personalities to deal with things. We would often call this "writing programs" in the past, but what she would create were fully realized sentient programs capable of independent thought, emotion, and memory. Many of those programs are no longer important, yet they stay around, popping up every now and then. We label that group "The Fractures."
The Fractures are an indistinct group of mind patterns that have varying degrees of sentience, emotion, and individuality. They often blur between one another rapidly and constantly, rarely having any strong sense of identity. They may confuse themselves for other stronger personalities or may experience no identity at all. They are inconsistent and transient. Many of them are are scared and in pain. Dana perceives them as a sea of lost souls floating just beneath her mind all the time. I suspect that may be part of why she is always.... afraid of everything.
Possible Timeline
We think we can work out a rough timeline of many bits of this.
D'ni was the first split. We were terrified of the anger and hatred that was D'ni and thus cut it off from ourselves. At that time, our core was mostly a mixture of Dana, Lily, Angie, and Holly. I wouldn't be surprised to find that Holly was split off during grade school because we were taught to be ashamed of how hyperactive we were. She was fronting a LOT of the time until December of 2007.
Sarah was around during high school to help us deal with emotions by basically not experiencing them. She developed some sort of relationship with Holly during that time. Holly possibly being the repository for all of Sarah's emotions. Holly wrote tons of emo poetry during that time.
I think that Dana and Sarah got into lots of fights during that time, because Sarah couldn't understand what Dana believed and kept trying to get the world to make more sense. Dana finally assented to Sarah's arguments in college when it became clear that she didn't have a good reason to believe in Christianity. She still likes her rules and order and hates change, though.
In late high school, when my parents got divorced, Willia came in to replace my mother, since she was no longer around to tell us what to do.
I believe that Casey appeared during either high school or college as an attempt to be the man that we thought we had to be. He also was our protector, being suave and cool when we couldn't be. When we started to date people after our divorce, he became the one that attracted other people by flirting with them. He had started to do that in late high school with our girlfriend Kristen, but would not get much of a chance to do more until after college.
Angie appeared 3 years ago when... Dana, I think... couldn't deal with the fact that she was an angel. She constructed Angie to handle that for her, along with all of our magick. It's interesting, because Angie basically became the antithesis of D'ni.
Questions to be answered: When did Lily split off? Is Lily what's left of the core, or is that Dana? How were we affected by denial of transition and homosexuality, among other things? I'm fairly certain that there were others created to deal with those things, and that the core wasn't dealing with them. But... who was it? I know that Dana was the one that really fought against those ideas, trying to push them away. What happened during high school? There was some interesting stuff going on then. We repressed our interest in playing pretend or playing video games and focused on other pursuits, like school work and playing more mature board games. We became more involved in writing poetry and playing music during that time as well. What happened with our religious stuff? Dana was obsessed with religion back in those days. What became of that. Did she grow, or did something else happen?
Note: All of this is an attempt by Sarah and Dana to explain everything that is going on. It assigns order to the network of people in here. It makes a lot of sense, but is still just theoretical at this time.
