a collection of our written plural experiences

as english effectively requires distinction between plural and singular, “we” is chosen as the first person pronoun here, for reasons explained shortly. unsure if really plural though. okay after having gotten to the end of writing this, well… yeah :)

we already found some stuff, but the more the better in our regard hehe

fyi this post is SUPER scatterbrained, feel free to comment even if you don’t wanna read through this!!

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heres what happened. warning: LOTS of yapping

so, late last night (as anything good goes), we were considering the possibility of us being plural. for that conversation, we chose to use “we” as it just, well, felt the most correct.

we also note that when we do something, the “main” voice of our head at that time (but especially when doing physical, hands-on tasks), or sometimes our actual, physical voice, never says “time to get this wheel off” or “where did i put my notebook”. its always like “okayy lets get this door fixed for once” or “how do we get these plastic clips off intact”.

sometimes, the mind feels like a group of partners, in the coworker/friend working on something sense. but we have never experienced multiples of us “talking” over one another, although we do outwardly express much orderliness. in general, we take refuge in proceduralization and clarity.

we don’t struggle with fuzzy concepts really at all either, though. we get the meaning of metaphors, we can “read between the lines” (sometimes frighteningly well, sometimes not at all), but we also love putting things in checklists.

we feel like there is an “i” that feels much of the emotions, and interprets much everything in general, but at the same time the thoughts themselves are thought out a little more separately, albeit not independently. at this point in time we would not consider ourselves to be composed of, well, “selves”—of course we can’t know if that will change in the future.

we feel quite unified, but there are “regions” of us that absolutely do differ. much opinion and feeling is shared, but lots of varying thought processes seem to go “about the room”. we continue to note that “i” frequently perceives this as, in a very rapid but orderly flow. being like

1 (the engineer) how hard should we draw this line?

2 (the reminder) well, we are going for a softer image

3 (the flamboyant) but, there is value to be had in contrast [flamboyant means “value” and “contrast” as in “worth” and “juxtaposition”]

4 (the tester) is this what we want though? not sure it works so well…

5 (the engineer, who does talk a lot) yeah, maybe that was not a great idea oops… but what if we avoid drawing this line, how does that implicate? that would have to cause issues though…

6 (the tester) how does that implicate? [we actually do repeat like this in our head sometimes] visually, we observe a TON that needs not be so precise, you can get away with so much.

7 (the flamboyant) the lack of regularity absolutely would soften it up your suggestion is WONDERFUL please do go ahead :3 [we don’t know how this is translated to speech, but :3 is a real word in our head…]

8 (the chemist) well, if we can pattern the surroundings [the engineer interjects respectfully with a smile: “or shade around it a little”] so it is perceived by the viewer something is right here, that really does work! humans are so wacky, they are able to notice minute fluctuations in like whatever, but they almost never keep their minds open to noticing them…

9 (the reminder) then shading it is!

10 (the flamboyant) oh my goodness this is gonna be so pretty uwaaa

11 (the chemist) on behalf of all, it is our pleasure hehe

on second thought we see the “selves” thing a little more. honestly we just gave ourselves titles based on kinda whatever. of course, we may have parted one into multiple, or (more likely) vice-versa. “i” would be here just observing and then doing.

referring to that “i” using she/her feels right, so we’ll do that (and using those air quotes feels super demeaning, we’re super sorry girl…). she would perhaps feel a little uneasiness about not knowing what do to after lines 4 and 5, maybe a little relief at line 6, and adorement for chemist and flamboyant at lines 7 thru 11 at how cute they are together.

she also loves attention and being called a girl, and if you talk verbally with us, she has been the proxy between you and us. when we are tired and don’t have the mental resources to go around to all of us, she takes over. she is not a great thinker at all when on her own, but she can manage. she can’t go forever like that though, so soon enough she’ll bring us all to sleep when we are tired.

(reflecting on all this, this was probably us writing for ourselves just to figure out who we even are hehe)

again though, us being referred to with she/her feels the best. while we have much distinction between ourselves, we love to work together, and the unity implied with singular pronouns we think has at least sometimes in the past made us feel better; at least in our imagination, “all of you” just sounds like an accusation… mostly. but when we speak, we’ve pretty much just now realized we would much rather say “we”.

we all love learning, its a shared passion. the change that may come with this holds a little anxiety, but we also feel ease in knowing that it will help us so much in the long term. like, whats cooler than carrying around with our head an entire (and very capable) group of uhh… hmm…

well we’re not sure of a good word for this, but you understand. we are happy. we wanna read more is all!!!

addendum

we wrote this in the morning. but after thinking about it even more while cleaning and fixing some stuff, we have realized that a lot of the time, “we” feels better, but sometimes “i” is preferred. i do not feel we have the energy to explain our train of thought right now, but maybe another day!! :D

interjection after the fact:

“the engineer” is miele

“the reminder” is khemehli

“the flamboyant” is rena

“the tester” is sämme

“the chemist” is cela

and i (the one writing here) am tani!

figured we’d let y’all know since we’re a little active around here, plus it sorta fits the theme at least a little. uh if you are more curious see here. but we like just came to this realization fyi

honestly it does not seem so life changing. our personality will likely not change drastically hehe. this was mostly a realization amongst us, but nonetheless we’ll definitely make use of “we”. note we still may use “i” to accomplish specific things; our conclusions thus far have been uh COMPLICATED and in short its nowhere near as simple as “multiple people in the head”.

now for the main part as to why we post this here: we feel though it has already given us a lot of insight on what gender identity transition is like, even with having figured ourselves out as a system very not long ago. it is again complicated, but the main takeaway we came up with was it can take a certain, very persistent train of thought to come to the realization of either being trans or plural. of course this is merely our view, and not always accurate, but we have known others who have realized their trans-ness through elaborate “what-if” scenarios too! in addition, there was also the simpler realization that using “we” just felt right, giving a similar feeling as when we were referred to as a daughter or girl pre-transition.

it may be the scientificness amongst us talking, but we want to take this as an opportunity to learn more (and possibly view in a different light) the experiences of those realizing their true gender identity(ies). we believe this will also help us figure out what we are, so do ask away, and we may or may not be able to answer :D

plural, and may use both “we” and “i”. it’s complicated, but “i” is most often by the girl amongst us who does a lot of the feeling emotions and other stuff, as she is most often “at front”.

that girl (we will call her tani) runs much of the show, and does a lot of the feeling and perception, but a lot less thinking. while most thoughts posted are contributed to by multiple of us, tani’s thoughts in particular are again, more emotional. examples: “we love the pretty views” and “i wanna snuggle our plushies so badly”. the former could be shared across many of us, but for the latter, many of us do not do that direct decision making to begin with; really only tani does.

still, others of us may use “i” too!

how confusing some of this is [the other user was referring to our plurality]

we don’t really understand it either but we’ll try to explain a little more xD

now, featuring ~proper grammar~ and not terrible readability, is another member’s thoughts about plurality! (it is not AI we promise)

The meaning when we say we are plural is as so…

This brain behaves in such a way that applying plurality as a model and deriving perspectives from there leads to the most useful conclusions. Put simply, it “explains stuff” about us.

For instance, if our outward behavior were to be interpreted in the context of us being a single entity, then some stuff would still make sense. Perhaps that this person enjoys biking, perhaps that she likes girls—and it has mostly worked.

But, some stuff would not make sense when taking that approach! Why does she have verbal conversations with herself when alone? How come different activities bring up different accents or languages entirely? And how about her wildly fluctuating romantic and sexual preferences?

Assuming the existence of multiple entities within the head permits these questions to be met with far more useful answers than prior; with regards to those first examples that did make sense, the same applies too. Put shortly, it is far easier to think about our brain if you get into the mindset of it being comprised of multiple beings!

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that just covers what plurality is of course, not really who we are or how you interact with us, both as a group and individually. truthfully when it comes to conversation, its typically one member at a time, frequently me—my name is tani. actually, given how often it is me, you could describe it as primarily my writing with other parts woven in occasionally. but not always!

in the meantime between now and next time, here is a list of names cuz why not lol:

• Tani
• Miele
• Khemehli
• Rena
• Cela
• Sämme (or Saemme or Samme)

thats all of us. possibly maybe. or maybe not we aren’t 100% sure. but that is all we seem to be aware of!

other thoughts:

• perhaps we’ll make a post out of this or something
• much of this “scatterbrain” as it were is how we write longer texts (or big slideshows). lots of just writing and writing and picking what we think will be best. and there being six members in this plural system means that agreement between us can take a while.
• usually we revise stuff like this. we did not do that here, expect errors lol (both above and below)
• we might continue this writing with further aspects. maybe who each of us are, how we interact, sexuality, and so forth.

it is our hope that this answers some questions.