The VIPs (Very Important Personalities)

I prefer not to talk too much about my plurality in public, particularly the specifics of how my system works and who is in it, but there are a few alters that want to be known through more than brief mentions every so often.

Frey

Name: Frey Landvik

Pronouns: he/him/his

Age: late twenties

Interests: environmentalism, natural sciences, living fossils (especially horseshoe crabs), cats, collecting crystals, antique stores, the beach, Skyrim, funk and pop music

Misc: genderqueer gay man, furry, system dad, my boyfriend of 9+ years and Jasper's of 3+ years

while hardship and trauma influenced a lot of my alters' formations, Frey is the one that I was born with, along with a now-integrated alter named Oske. he was a black cat with purple eyes for a long time, and that impacted how we would act in school, though he did still speak and somewhat understand that his body wasn't exactly like the one he had in his head. as a kid, I viewed Frey as my angry voice, since he was always bitching about something. he once had a rich inner world experience as a pirate, but he doesn't remember much of it now. that drive for adventure is probably the reason he loves Skyrim so much. he plays as a khajiit, of course.

by the time college rolled around, Frey was willing to let go of his identity as a cat, since it was very tied to his connection with Oske, who he had complicated feelings about at the time, and asked me to draw him as a person. we also experienced our first fusion, and it changed my age from permanently fifteen to ageless. we still had a pretty active inner world at this point, so many of our interactions happened there. I realized that I was in love with him when I described what love felt like for me as an aro-spec person to some friends, and then he lightly teased me by doing stuff like not wearing a shirt until I just asked him out. he said yes.

I had to deal with a claims that inner-system relationships stunted my ability to connect with other people from dissociative systems, without them ever really asking what my internal experience was like. I didn't have friends in person for most of college, but it had nothing to do with the fact that Frey and I were dating. in fact, our relationship was what kept me afloat, even when things got really rough, because I knew that no matter what happened, Frey would not abandon me. I wouldn't have learned how to be the boifriend I am now if I did not have someone to grow with like that. I still think fondly of our dates in the city of our college, grabbing little trinkets from the shops downtown, stopping at a crepe place for lunch after every therapy session.

nowadays, instead of having a life in the inner world, Frey just hangs around with me when he's inside and only fronts to either do something he likes or help put together a surprise for another alter's birthday, since he's the only one that can put up a wall of amnesia intentionally. he likes going to nature museums and antique shops with my girlfriend, and when we're on trips with our friends from New Jersey, he's the one that hangs out on the beach with them. kid alters are not super hard to notice when they front, but Frey is the easiest to spot, as his voice is several registers deeper than the rest of us. he likes wearing flowery Hawaiian shirts with the top two buttons undone, walks with a slight swagger, and keeps a collection of trinkets and crystals in two little treasure chests on our bookshelf.

one of the few dissociative system friends that remain in my life told me that some of the dialogue between the main character and his best friend/eventual partner in the first project I showed them reminded them of how Frey and I talk to each other. back when we externalized more of our interactions, we'd always be messing around and playfully bickering. Frey was the voice of reason, and I was the rat bastard that pushed the envelope. now, things are a lot quieter in my head, but he still laughs at my jokes and speaks up when I need guidance. even when he isn't talking, though, I always feel him around, this forever friend by my side. I started feeling that more than ever when Oske and I became the same person. Frey has always been here, and he always will be.

Jasper

Name: Jasper Valentine

Pronouns: he/hym/hys

Age: late twenties

Interests: gentle parenting and working with kids, literary analysis, edibles, being a bisexual lesbian, all music (including country and rap), emo

Misc: agender, butch, my boifriend of the past 2+ years and Frey's of 3+ years

Jasper has always been difficult to describe to other people, in part because he struggles to define hymself and his identity personally. he once had a rich inner world life as a father to hys first internal partner's kids, but our experience with literal internal families has also changed as we became median. my girlfriend says that hys kindness is the core of who he is, and I agree with that. he is kind and gentle with everyone, but especially children and animals.

Jasper has an affinity for all types of music—and when I say all, I mean all. he fell in love with Nickelback after listening to their music without knowing it as he formed, and he often spent hys time listening to all types of rock and music that came from memes or things he finds funny, both good and bad. he stands by the Crazy Bus title screen audio (loud, randomly generated notes) as something that could calm hym down when he was younger by arguing that it's more the musical equivalent to white noise than it is music. he doesn't listen to the Crazy Bus title screen audio anymore, but he'll defend Nickelback until he dies. at this point, I can't deny that some of their songs are at least pretty decent. hys favorite band now is P!ATD, which is a favorite we share.

though our relationship with our girlfriend is more of a blur between the two of us now, we once dated her fully separately, with Jasper being the first to ask her out and me asking her out about six months later. with someone to shop with, Jasper started getting clothes he actually liked to wear, black things with edgy graphics to go with hys spiky accessories and belt chain. nowadays, he leans more emo with graphic tees and less accessories... the belt chain is fine, but we hate the way bracelets and necklaces feel on our body. none of it makes him look intimidating, though, and he's still as gentle as ever.

because our separation as alters used to have a harder cut off, Jasper was the one that got high when we took edibles in the beginning. he discovered the ability to take deep dives into our distorted beliefs head-on, and because of that, we no longer have a majority of the delusions that used to plague our lives. hys literary analysis of my work is what made me realize there was something special to what I do and decide to turn writing into my career. though our dynamic has changed somewhat since that, I feel that his capacity for self-love and healing is also at the core of who he is. the idea of going from multiple to (mostly) median might scare a lot of plurals, I know I couldn't even conceptualized it when I was younger, but I fell so confident and happy knowing that a person like Jasper is a part of me.

Cloud

Name: Cloud Valentine

Pronouns: he/him/his

Age: kid

Interests: bunnies, Easter, sweets, Disney/Pixar, Jenna Marbles, Despicable Me, baking, crafts, Story Land

Misc: xenogender (bunny boy), therian, primary child part

in the times that I did parts work (internal family systems), a former therapist often mentioned the concept of a part that acts as a representative for other parts when there were several that had something to say all at once. I have a good handful of parts that exist just as that, to represent a group, but Cloud is an alter that is both his own person and someone that can represent the other child parts when they are having fun. I think he sees that more as an excuse to make himself the star of the show on a day for all the kids, but when they're aren't any complaints, he's allowed to get away with it :P

even before Cloud's more authenic personality could shine, my girlfriend knew him more as the alter that would wander off towards cute bunny plushies like a Minecraft mob in the store than anything that was adaptive to our survival. he always wants to buy more, even though we are trying to only buy particularly unique plushies now that we have less space for our collection. our plushies are pretty varied, but the largest amount of one specific species we have is definitely bunnies. his love for bunnies extends to his identity, both in a therian sense and a gendered sense.

Cloud has a dry sense of humor that you don't see in most younger kids and will playfully poke fun at our friends. he is also smart and incredibly curious, both about the things close to him and the world beyond him. I still often think about his first birthday when he started aging, when he told Frey, "wow, I'm six years old and I just learned what misogyny is!" after questioning the off-putting treatment of that fluffy white dog in the Secret Life of Pets. If he's is picking the outfit for the day, Cloud almost always going to pick something pastel and/or bunny themed. his cream-colored bunny hoodie hangs over the back of our office chair, which we put on when it gets chilly inside. he walks with a slight heaviness to his step, will skip to speed up, and speaks at a higher register than everyone else.

one of the things that I have found hard since the end of my teenage years was enjoying the holidays that used to bring me a lot of joy, particularly the ones that involved gifts. Easter in particular was one that still came with fond feelings, but none of those feelings could come out when it was the actual day... until Cloud decided that his birthday would be Easter, and it breathed new life into the holiday. his age is no longer quantified by a number that goes up by one every year, but we still celebrate his presence in our life on that day. Cloud is one of the primary examples for why I do not ever want to fully integrate. some things are best experienced as a kid again.

Prizma

Name: Prizma

Pronouns: ne/nym/nis

Age: mid twenties

Interests: cringecore, arcades, pixel art, abstract art, the 80s, J-pop and dance rock, painting, reptiles (especially snakes), uncommon queer identities, webcomics

Misc: genderfluid, xenogender (influenced by colors, music, and 80s aesthetic), artist

even before I recognized that I am a mixed-origin system, I understood that I had alters who formed to help me adapt to things that weren't related to trauma. the time I was starting to get burnt out with a webcomic I was working on happened to coincide with me being a pissbaby about neopronouns and xenogenders, and it seems that my brain's way of trying to resolve this kind of internalized transphobia was to make a xenogender, neopronoun-using person to help me with one of the most boring parts of my webcomic (coloring at the time) so that I'd have to learn to play nice and learn to be normal about it.

Prizma pushed the envelop when it came to making things pop with color and shading long before I knew how to do it myself. ne came in a pair with another alter, Ivan, though Ivan preferred to only come out when necessary to set up 3D models for background reference, and Prizma liked having the spotlight amongst my friends. ne was hyperactive and confident when I forgot how to be, all while being authentic in a way that I hadn't learned yet. ne has a sharp voice that stands out almost as much as Frey's, a slight hop to nis step, and obvious energy in nis eyes. and, man, ne is funny as hell.

when Prizma first showed up, ne considered nymself aporaflux and colorgender—meaning, a fluctuating gender is separate from male, female, or anything in between while still having a strong, specific feeling, with that feeling being a range of colors. in the inner world, nis gender shifted with the colors of nis hair, but in real life, ne would just swap out a specific colored bracelet to mark nimself on a given day. nowadays, ne just calls nymself genderfluid and xenogender rather than trying to put a distinct label on the xenogender side of things, and the only thing distinct about nis style from the mishmash that is the rest of ours is nis choice to wear baggy jeans. nis gender is influenced by colors still, but also music and certain aesthetics, like arcades and some other things that were big in the 80s.

back when we had more of an inner world, Prizma lived on a farm with Alphonse (a fictional introject in the loosest sense of the word) and Ivan. ne could usually be found painting abstract art in the barn loft with the introject of a milksnake that Frey attempted to socialize at an animal care internship either wrapped around nis arm or hanging out in the unused trellis against the wall. even without much of an inner world anymore, Prizma is still close with Alphonse and Ivan, so much so that they chose to share a birthday (April Fool's Day). when we can, we let nym celebrate that day at Funspot in New Hamshire, the largest arcade in the world.

I no longer have a webcomic that I'm slaving away over, and there is no pressure for me to draw anything within a time crunch, so Prizma only comes out when ne wants to. a vast majority of the time, that's when we're at an arcade. I stopped question my validity as a system after I stopped aligning myself with diagnostic labels, but when I did, one of the things that affirmed my experience was how insanely good Prizma is at winning timing-based arcade games. I'm awful at timing things, but Prizma will front at an arcade and instantly win the jackpot for two separate Monster Drop machines in a row. I often half-joke about how more people should become plural if they think it sounds cool and fun, because I can just become another person that is good at arcade games, and that is cool. I say "half-joke" there because I do actually think more people should become plural by choice if that's something they want.