multiplicity_archives | Mooooooore skeptism

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Mooooooore skeptism

Please bear with me. My boy, Max, posted here a while ago, in regards to me, and he's trying to push me more into having conversations with others about my own doubts with multiplicity.

When I was young, I began studying other religions, and I really became interested in spirituallity. Along the way, I discovered two others living within. Really, this is just background information, so no know thinks I'm trying to troll or rag on the community. I've been aware of my own multiplicity for a number of years. I also see my multiplicity as a means to my own personal spirituallity. That is, I don't have a set religion, but I see the presence of and communication with my system as being a self-enlightening, holy experience.

I see this huge resurgance of multiples on the internet, and it makes me skeptical. NOT, because of the fact that their multiples. I wouldn't call someone out on being a "fake". But, the way some of these systems carry on, it makes me wonder how they can reasonably function.

I'm going to point the finger at soulbonding, because it seems to be the means of multiplicity that houses the greatest number of loonies. I can accept, per se, that another has entered your system, and is a bad influence, and perhaps is forcing your body and system down a bad path. I can not, however, accept that this entity causing harm is, say, Sephiroth from the Final Fantasy games. That, is insane. Final Fantasy is fiction. It may very well be an entity that projects images OF Sephiroth into your mind, but part of gaining some feasible aspect of functional control over yourselves, is seeing through the bullshit.

I have trouble with people who play INTO that bullshit, by extension. Not only do they seem to be the loudest group of loons, but they're also impossible to have a reasonable discussion with. Everything boils down to "it's different for everyone", which is great for upholding any kind of deluded fantasy that you might have, but really, isn't productive for conversation.

Especially...if you're attempting to learn something, or see if they have a reason to act the way that they do.

Are there any rational, sane soulbonds, here? If so, do they honestly believe that they're fictional characters? This seems to be the most levelheaded community about plurality on LJ that we can find, so I figure it would be the best place to start.

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I do have to agree with you, though I can see someone splitting off into a "like Sephiroth" personality, it makes me twitch slightly when they say that there IS Sephiroth.

And I do have to point out the irony of posting with an Aeris icon... it made me squee with happiness.

We see our own soulbond as someone we know apart from our system. Whether or not he 'is' that person or is 'representative' of that person, we don't know. He hasn't (and won't?) say.

For me, personally, I hate when people say me or Tara are soulbonds, because we're not. First off, we're not fictional characters, secondly, we have NOTHING to do with the charries that we resemble...

I am Faith Alana Alastair, I have a middle and a last name, unlike the fictional character I resemble...big shit, I look like someone else...lots of people get mistaken for other people...I hold no illusions that I'm a slayer, or anything else...I chose the name Faith for myself, because I identified with aspects of the charrie...lots of people choose names for similar reasons...

I didn't mean to rant, but I wanted to say that before anybody else from my system said anything, because someone has brought it up before(someone on this comm, not in my system)and it's like an author's note, y'know?

anyway.
Faith

Rick here: I believe that soulbonds exist...as for them being "fictional characters", I don't believe so. It seems to me to be a bit like writing fan fiction...I take buffy, who Joss Whedon created, and change her around, and make her into someone different. If someone has a Buffy, or a Sulu, or a Rory, or a Draco, or whatever, then imho, it just means that this "basis" or "backround" started someone who now has a life of their own...emotions, thoughts, whathaveyou.

Just my two cents.

Rick and Faith
Pack Collective

I see soulbonding as being like... cloning, I guess. just in the act of taking on the image of someone from fiction, whether that be an outside or inside source... they sort of become their own person. YOUR Sephiroth, if you will, not THE Sephiroth. I don't think you can bond to the one and only character because it doesn't exist... everyone has their own perception... there is no 'true' perception. anyone who claims that just wants to feel special. at least, this is all how I see soulbonding to be. =\ I've never had a bond that was sourced from the outside, so I'm not sure what that's like. that's what I've concluded from my own experiences.

Ichi) To echo another, it's worthwhile to note that one can (in the sense of possibility, not of right/s) [in the beginning in particular] believe oneself to be a certain character/person/thing, even if one has no valid claim to the intellectual property. Certainly, believing another to be the genuine character/person/thing is less reasonable.

Ni) There is or was one person in here whose entire past is/was fictional, with only one bridge to reality in the form of a computer game. While he wasn't necessarily sane, he prided himself on his rationality--for the purposes of the entry though, he wouldn't necessarily count, as Ay) the computer game which defined his prior world was without story or plot (specifically: Creatures 3, which deals with artificial life), and Bee) his identity and his past did not originate in any brain other than this.

In any case, I cannot communicate with him at present.

I tend to disbelieve in soulbonds and the ability for individuals to migrate from system to system mostly because it requires faith in order to understand it. As I do not have any specific faith in these unexplained and unproven concepts, I don't involve myself in them or feel terribly critical of those who purport to have such experiences, but don't believe in them either.

Multiple individuals sharing a single brain and body, obviously, is something I do accept since that's the way that I am. But for me individually to accept that one can travel between bodies, visit, or channel fictional characters, I would need to believe in the concept of a soul, which I do not.

It IS different for everyone. If you don't like that, tough, it is the truth.

You are NOT going to make a great many 'rational sane SoulBonds' particularly eager to help you by calling them bullshit, and a delusion.

Selene IS Selene. It is that simple. I don't care who on this planet says "Oh but Underworld is fiiiictiooooon." I accept that there may be different ways of SoulBonding occuring. I don't think that they invalidate the fact that Selene is who she says she is.

Is she THE Selene? No. There is no such thing as 'The Selene'. There's just Selene(s).

A bit of advice. If you seriously want people to tell you about a subject, don't start off by saying it's insane and bullshit. It will not get you far.

Some while back this actually came up...Hold on, lemme dig through the archives...Well, this (http://www.livejournal.com/community/multiplicity/149246.html) was a never-really-resolved discussion on otherkin, but it wasn't the one I'm looking for. How'ver, after more searching, this is (http://www.livejournal.com/community/multiplicity/167402.html).

Now, that conversation wanders all over the place, but there are some useful links and, I think, some useful information found there, though it doesn't contribute to the main--I don't know if there are any rational, sane soulbonds period.

My rational sane soulBond Thpppppts at you.

A long time ago...a VERY long time ago...when we were not so organized as we are now, we used to get into huge trouble internally by playing AD&D games. Characters would show up, bad things would happen and the like. Were these characters the characters of the game? No, absolutely not, even though they carried around the physical guise of such. We know that now, but back then we didn't. We were perhaps looking for ways to punish ourselves for the memories of the past.

Back then we believed that characters just "came in" because we didn't really understand ourselves, nor did we know better.

Now, after many years of work, we still have characters "come in" so to speak...but it is more the fact that others that were lurking in the shadows (shadowpeople) have decided to take on the guise of those characters. We believe that that is because certain characters are seen as strong or appealing somehow and that makes the shadowpeople more secure with themselves. We don't discourage this practice because it helps with the overall well-being of our system. Occasionally it is a bit disturbing to see a character show up, or an old character morph into a completely different one (throwing off the guise for someone new), but we learn to live with it. It's part of the process that keeps us alive and well and relatively sane.

Fictional characters are fictional...if you choose to look like one, does that make you them? No, it can't. You can act look, act, walk, talk, and eat like the fiction, but in the end only you are the reality, no matter what you call yourself or who you look like.

Just our opinion. ^^

Forgive the twice-post. Also wanted to say that each and every system is different no matter how alike some of them may seem. What works for one, does not work for another.

Also, I think that if "soulbonding" is working for some then who am I to discount it. I mean, some people believe in God...yet I have never seen Him and cannot to a fact PROVE that he exists.

So, if others want to believe that they are so-and-so, who am I to question otherwise...it might be therapeutic for their system selves to believe in "soulbonding". In that case, let them be.

I have my ways of coping and living and so do they...they just aren't the same ways, that's all. ^__~

I do not believe that fictional characters can somehow come to life and enter people's minds ^.^

Soulbonding is a confusing, but interesting topic...

Personally, I think reading/writing/playing games/tv etc can 'trigger' the coming out or the development of a multiple.

Like, my girl Wendy...she is five, and obsessed with Peter Pan. She does not know her real name but picked Wendy for lack of one, and pretends she comes from NeverNeverLand just because she likes it. We have both done some searching however and we have a theory that she might actually be Kiana, a character we wrote in a sci-fi rpg. In her case, even though I did not notice her till after, I think her presence was felt by the subconcious, and we patterned a character after her - not the other way around.

In the same way, I think fictional characters can appeal to multiples that have not announced their presence or feel isolated so have not come out much - the body experiences one life, one set of experiences. Yet all those inside - we know that the body's experiences and life do not necessarily represent our own.

So when we come across a character that matches our feelings, or use our impressions to make up a background, in a sense our personality gains an identity to go along with it.

It does not mean that Cloud has jumped out of a video game, but it could mean that Cloud's pas life experiences make more sense than the body's in the formation of personality.

Which brings up a philosophical question - are fictionally created experiences any less real to a person than memories crafted on physical experience? A memory is a memory. If I remember climbing a mountain, is it any less real than a friend's memory of riding a bike? Both are in the past.

The society we live in is very big on one mind, one body, one personality, one set of experiences. Yet it also holds to a school of thought that our experiences make us who we are, more than any internal factors.

Yet here so many of us are - many identities, one physical body - human memory is a complex entity. If our experiences shape who we are, than it would follow somewhat logically that different people would have different experiences.

I think in the case of 'soulbonding' - people just find another person whose experiences and possibly personality seem to empathize and connect with their own.

We are not going to defend the identities of any of our soulbonded system members (none of whom participate in drama, cause trouble, or even have journals) to you when you insult them off-hand by saying they basically don't exist. You'll have to look elsewhere for your guineau pigs.

What does it matter anyway? Why do you have such a bee in your bonnet about people with identities analogous to fiction - you've been wailing about this on

soulbonding for a while, randomly insulting people by saying they're either delusional or faking it.

I am trying my damn best not to be too insulting here, but I am tired of hearing this. My advice? Don't worry about other people's reality. If you don't 'believe in' soulbonding, don't associate with those who do, and for gods' sake don't try to evangelize to them about the 'delusional nature' of their beleifs. It's as irritating as a Jehovah's Witness at the door before sunrise.

-L.

ZOMG Kiana! lol.

I had a character (in the same RPG) patterned after me. Same name (well, Dat, not Datharin, but who really calls me Datharin apart from Kay, Jessiah and Decimy anyway?), same physical characteristics except his hair was green not blue, and originally the same personality. Obviously we both grew and changed since then, making us quite different sometimes, or more the same. In the end I think he ended up pretty similar to me again. That is, a ruddy great arsehole. haha.

Not that I'd ever blow up a couple of starships in an attempt to escape prison, but, y'nno.

Hey, it was one way to bring you guys out.

Put a less sarcastic way... :) I'm still of the mind that there needs to be a different word for the process. But seeing as how we've both been there and done that, nothing's going to change. I'd also pair in the fact of creative souls--poets, writers, artists, they're not quite mad and they're not quite sane--they straddle the lines, being the middle ground to either/or, so no--for me, IMO, "rational sane soulbonds" cannot exist, because if someone truly believes a character from a book, play or movie is walking around in their head...that's not sanity. That may be creativity, but it's not sanity.

I like the point that someone here (or maybe elsewhere) brought up, though--that sometimes names are appropriated for people who didn't otherwise have an idea of how to construct themselves. F'rinstance, Faith in whomever's system that was--Faith is not a Slayer, is not gifted with mystical powers, has a middle name, a different last name (assuming Faith on BtVS and Angel was ever given a last name), is not the same character as Joss Whedon wrote--but shares somewhat of an appearance and the first name. I kind of like that idea--makes the whole soulbond issue tie up neatly in my head.

Ah. It becomes clear. Not that I'm the original poster, but I'm not subbed to

soulbonding, so I would have no idea the poster's been--how did you put this?--"wailing" for a while. :)

I think my problem with soulbonding--since the only one I can speak of accurately is myself--is that I'm both a slash writer and a member of the real vampire community. And in BOTH communities, we get a lot of people raving about fantastic experiences. The fourteen-year old who claims to be Dracula and wants to "turn" everyone. The fourteen-year-old who wants to cross Harry Potter and Final Fantasy, and uses lots of sexual interaction between Mary Sue characters to do it. They're actually more similar than you think--both tend to be delusional, and really need thwapped with some large blunt object so they will calm the hell down.

Coming from a place where the status quo is nine delusions for one honest process, it's beyond easy for me to be judgemental. I looked up soulbonding pages on the net and everything I saw was written in fractured Japanese with sprinkles of English, had big fluffy graphics, and was generally irritating as hell. I probably gave up long before I should have, but now I have this hotbutton in my head that says "soulbonding=kawaii catgirl" and I really didn't want to reinforce that any further.

I suppose it doesn't help that I view myself as insane, for many, many things that I believe in. I suppose if I came from a place that said, it's normal to be this way, and these behaviors are perfectly acceptable, I might be better off.

Again, not speaking for the original poster, just myself.

Those who may be soulbonds in our group, are as important, loved and respected as anyone else.

What you are talking about is not and never has been limited to groups who have soulbonds. People of the type you describe -- those who make endless excuses for irresponsible behaviour, perhaps manipulating others into constantly "helping" or "rescuing" them -- have always existed. Whether one blames it on demons, entities, aliens, evil alters, soulbonds, or President Bush, it is the behaviour which should concern you; not what type of presences are said to cause it.

I see this huge resurgance of multiples on the internet, and it makes me skeptical.

For me this goes for about anything on the 'net, although I don't know if I'd call it a -re-surgeance per se. I think the internet encourages specific modes of interaction (one being the journal/blog with or without comments enabled, and the other being the alt.* Usenet ethos that's bled over into LJ communities and other corners of the net) where it's a lot easier to find the people who are either newly-emerged whatevers (breastfeeding mums, polyamorists, multiples, Harley lovers) or the radical heavily involved sort-of - elite.

'Cause that tends to be when people are really *really* verbal about things; once one's life settles down to fairly regular every day living, the attraction of arguing about it decreases some. Of course there are a lot of people in the middle simply by virtue of being mouthy and liking that style (like me!) but they don't always set the *tone* of things.

Also the 'net remains skewed somewhat young, demographically - particularly something like a LJ community.

It's one reason I think it's a two-edged sword that people are now learning about multiplicity from the 'net. Yay, that it doesn't always have to go through the survivor/sensational publishing/media mill. Yay that people can interact. But at the same time, if people don't realize that the tone of online communities doesn't always match the reality of multiples within the broader real-world community, it can just create new stereotypes. Sigh. Minorities suck that way, to be in one. :-)

On another tangent - I know there's a lot of crossover between multiplicity and soulbonding, but I know about that >< much about soulbonding. I don't think you were saying they are always together but I thought I'd say so. :)

Anyone who thinks soulbonds are what's putting multiples in danger of not being taken seriously, should have been around during the hysteria and overdiagnoses of a decade ago. The fact is: we're already not taken seriously by the general public. And most of it is due to events and scandals that happened before a great many of us even identified ourselves, publically or privately, as multiple; much more so than to people running around saying anime characters are in their systems. It was stuff like this, (http://www.astraeasweb.net/politics/braun.html) and what Joan Acocella describes in the book "Creating Hysteria."

I mean, you talk about carrying on and being unable to function. Some of it made the melodramatics on

soulbonding look perfectly sane and stable. These were people who weren't just fighting in-system, they were locking themselves in their house 24 hours a day with black curtains over the windows because they were so afraid the cult would get them. People who talked about being multiple without being abused, or multiple before they were abused, were accused of working for the cult. Kids who didn't talk in lilspeak were accused of being child molesters in disguise. As much as I don't think I'd really want to meet Sephiroth up-close and in person, I'd far rather deal with someone who said they were Sephiroth than with that.

Anyway, to return to the original topic. My understanding was that not everyone on

soulbonding is actually multiple-- in fact, only a very few of them say they are. Granted, I haven't read it in some time-- I kind of fell out of the loop with that community because some of it was getting silly in a way I don't have a lot of patience for.

I don't think anyone in here believes that they're a fictional character. I think some people believe they might have come from a parallel universe in which there was someone like that character, or someone experienced events similar to theirs. Some of them think maybe they based themselves off a particular person. Nobody has ever 'forced their way in.'

I'll definitely concede that this is something that one may want to keep under wraps when talking to psychologists, the media, etc., if it's part of one's system. At worst, though, even if someone is just making stuff up, it's a relatively benign fantasy; I haven't seen it ruin anyone's life to the extent that the incompetence and misdiagnoses of the 80s and 90s did with many. I suspect most of the worst instigators in the sort of antics you mention will just eventually outgrow it and move on.

It's worth noting that 'oh noes my character is taking over' games and jokes are pretty pervasive and usually facetious-- a lot of writers and roleplayers throw these around. OTOH, these aren't people who claim to be multiple-- if the person(s) in question really are a system, I agree that they need to get their act together and keep it that way.

"because if someone truly believes a character from a book, play or movie is walking around in their head...that's not sanity. That may be creativity, but it's not sanity."

Rationality and sanity are not the same things. Sanity is a legal term which means the ability to tell right from wrong. Being rational is defined as consistent with or based on or using reason, or having its source in or being guided by the intellect rather than experience or emotion. A mentally ill person can be both sane and rational. Are you saying that in general you feel that there is something wrong with the idea that people might be in touch with "fictional" characters?

Well, as I thought I'd pointed out, I view myself as insane. For being a multiple, for being a real vampire, for watching the walls breathe at night...lots of reasons. That's my starting point. I am these things; I am insane.

It's easy to go downhill from there.

What I'm trying to get across here, is that these are my opinions/precepts/hang-ups/pick-your-term. I'm not saying I speak for the group at large and I'm not saying everyone who is something that I also am is insane.

Though I might be saying that yeah, there maybe be a little bit off about someone who feels Sesshoumaru is walking about in their heads, with the fluffy sheepskin on one side and the cool vengeance on the other. Waybackwhen, we called such folk "touched" and knew they had disassociated from reality. I don't know what to do in a world where these aren't the common switch sets.

A mentally ill person can be both sane and rational.

Well...compared to the median age on LJ at large, I'm old. I've obviously bought into a lot of stuph I was told over the years, getting old. So your statement doesn't make sense to me, but...as I keep pointing out in these conversations...I am trying to learn.

i know what we mean when we use this word, and ive seen other ppl here use it, though i have no idea if were talking about the same thing or not.
here's what we mean when we use the word, and maybe it'll sort some stuff out for you.

everything you need to know about construct building, you can learn in a method acting class. combine it with a multiples natural understanding of space behind the eyes, and viola.

you can read about it in celebrity interviews too. angelina jolie described it in vanity fair two months ago.

our 'constructs' are unawakened non-selfaware collections of personality traits. we used to call them the 'partial people'. some of us used to be these people and at some point, crossed the gap and became self aware.

im sure construct building systems are all different in every way possible, but here, they usually get 'modeled' after someone or something, or perhaps more then one. here, we have enough constructs to triple our population count if we counted them as 'personalities'. some are based on movie or story personas. we have 'morpheus'. (from the matrix, yo) and we know how our 'pervert behind the giant curtain' gets constructs to awaken. 3 of our 4 active responsibles are from this pool, but if 'morpheus' got woken up, he'd probabaly believe he was morpheus, or he might just know his personality is wired to resemble the character's.
in another system, people might be given the belief that they 'are' said person. i have problems with the morality of construct makers who use this tactic. Here, our facers got untrue beliefs when they came to be, and while it worked for them then, alot of em are pretty fubar now. (discovering that everything you know and believe is a lie, is apparently a rattling experience).

So, moving on, confronting 'sephiroth' on his 'unlikely' story. you might as well confront ethiopian orphans on not having parents like normal kids do. they're the way they are.

now about bigotry. im getting to really not even see posts that call all multiplicity faking. but apparently, people that start out as spooge-cocktails, them 'grow' like some tumor-like vegetable in a big water-bag in some other person, then get squeezed out someones pisshole, (with no skull in their head so it can 'smoosh' thru a hole half its size), ripping said pisshole apart, usually leaving permanent scars. out comes a slimey thing that looks more like sigourney weaver's 'aliens' then a person. that said, people who were born like this ACCUSE THE WAY PEOPLE LIKE ME WERE BORN AS BEING WIERD!

its a fucking joke to watch multiples take the same bigotist attitude against other multiples. that system isn't trauma based, so what. this system is walk-ins, so what. this other system produced members consciously and responsibly, big whoopity do.

if a solo act wants to spawn multiple consciousnesses and have headmates of his own, then how is he a faker if he accomplishes it?
And how many 'fakers' are really dissassociative singlets that tried hard to split, and just failed?

and yeah, the internet had spawned a pisstail of multiples to come out. get on the previous logs and see if 7 days in a row have ever passed without someone explaining their system, asking if all us 'multiples' are the same way they are.

internet == multiples are no longer isolated and alone, not knowing why theres noone like them, not knowing why they talk to people who arent there, not knowing anyone else like this, and entertaining accusations of insane if they ever admit themselves to anyone they know, and being forced to 'live in the closet' their entire life.

yeah, id like the ignorant masses to take multiplicity more seriously and drop the 'they're not like us so they're crazy/inferior/not worthy/whatever' attitude they have (which is what makes them bigots), but why should multiples 'hide themselves' any more then they already have to? so please don't blame the walkins, soulbonders, otherkins, cross-genders, or anyone else for the obvious problem you describe, since they didn't create the damn problem.

anyways, i hope i don't sound too bitchy.
-some sort of combo between our cross-gender, our webdemon, and our amphibian

(P.S. sephy can hang out at my place anytime, but only if he lets me touch his cul sword-o-main-character-slaying)

You're part of the real vampire community? Awesome. A couple of us used to post on DDD, Smoke and Mirrors, and a couple other boards frequently.

Right. Fucking. On. :D

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Mooooooore skeptism

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I am hijacking D's journal.

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(mostly) off the soulbond thing...

Perspective is everything.

Sanity

Re: Sanity

constructs 101

RVC

Re: constructs 101