You are a preteen, sitting on a trampoline with people you currently consider your friends. Before this trampoline was a swimming pool and, before that, a vegetable garden.
You have been having awkward thoughts and have been struggling with how to articulate them. You do not trusts therapists, so you ask your friends.
"Have you ever thought about being the opposite gender?"
They laugh and say no. What is your reaction?
> [[Feel ashamed.]]
> [[Feel annoyed.]](text-size:1.5)[''Feel ashamed.'']
Your name is PHILLIP, and you are ashamed of having asked this. You start to drift from these people you once considered friends, and start to feel shame about the feelings that led to even asking this question.
\(if:(visited: "Feel annoyed."))
[[[==>->Mid 20's]]]
\(else: )
[> [[Examine the other feeling.->Feel annoyed.]]](text-size:1.5)[''Feel annoyed.'']
You don't have a name you like yet. Your legal name is PHILLIP, but that name and any derived nicknames make you bristle. Your weak understanding of gender led you to believe that your name //must// be PHYLLIS if you were a girl, but thanks to THE NEW SCOOBY-DOO MOVIES with guest star PHYLLIS DILLER, you think it's an old person's name.
\(if:(visited: "Feel ashamed."))
[[[==>->Mid 20's]]]
\(else: )
[> [[Examine the other feeling.->Feel ashamed.]]](text-size:1.5)[''=>'']
You are now in your mid-20s. Thanks to a shift in social media habits and sites frequented, you have been formally introduced to the concept of being transgender and, most importantly, the concept that someone did not always have to be trans in order to transition. You do not remember the conversation on the trampoline, nor do you remember any other markers that you were not a boy so, to you, this is a breakthrough.
You feel conflicted. Part of you feels compelled to remain a boy, while the other feels the need to eschew masculinity altogether. You decide that genderfluidity is the solution.
> [[Try being genderfluid.]](text-size:1.5)[''Try being genderfluid.'']
It does not last. The part of you that needs to not be a boy, FIONNA, wins out over the part that feels compelled to remain a boy, PHILLIP. Phillip slowly goes dormant while you feel the need to make up for lost time.
> [[Be Fionna.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Fionna.'']
While you have access to informed consent clinics, you feel the need to DO THINGS "PROPERLY" and see a therapist for a month to confirm that hormones are right for you. You do, however, immediately start your social transition. After that month is over, you start hormones through a clinic in NEW YORK CITY.
Your social transition is rough, to say the least. People you thought you could trust demand to still call you PHILLIP and exert a lot of effort into making you feel uncomfortable and unsafe. Your employer quickly puts you on a PERSONAL IMPROVEMENT PLAN, a measure that lets startups and tech companies cover their ass when they want to fire queer people.
How do you react to all of this stress?
> [[Meekly cede ground and withdraw.]]
> [[Get increasingly angry.]]
> [[Revel in your gender and enjoy yourself.]](text-size:1.5)[''Meekly cede ground and withdraw.'']
You back out of any stressful situation you can, willing to give up social groups and spaces inhabited by people who clearly don't like you. You are meek, like a MOUSE, and seeks to make yourself as small as possible to not draw attention.
You do not yet recognize that your reaction is distinct from the [[other->Get increasingly angry.]] [[two->Revel in your gender and enjoy yourself.]].
[[==>->November 2019]](text-size:1.5)[''Get increasingly angry.'']
You want to tear everyone who hurt you to shreds. You want to roar and bellow like a DRAGON, verbally picking apart the people that made you feel unsafe.
This part of you does not win out.
> [[Meekly cede ground and withdraw.]](text-size:1.5)[''Revel in your gender and enjoy yourself.'']
You want to surround yourself with people who //do// actually enjoy your company and like you for who you are. You want to be around people who make an effort to accept you and learn how to be around trans people. You want to show off and preen like a BIRD.
This part of you does not win out.
> [[Meekly cede ground and withdraw.]](text-size:1.5)[''==>'']
It is November of 2019. You are living in a converted one-car garage after your life blew up and you nearly ended up homeless. Your only social respites are on the internet, partially because your meek, mouse-like nature drives you to hide and isolate, and partially because most of the people you're socializing with at the time are on the other side of the continent.
You are in voice chat with some people you consider friends at the time.
> [[Be the dragon.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be the dragon.'']
You start flirting with one of the people in voice chat, being lurid and descriptive. She melts while others listen in silent awe. You feel powerful.
> [[Be the mouse.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be the mouse.'']
You realize the words are not your own and immediately start spiraling. You apologize profusely, disconnect from the voice chat, and curl up on your futon, purchased because this space does not have enough room for a proper bed.
> [[Smother the feeling that spoke those words.]](text-size:1.5)[''Smother the feeling that spoke those words.'']
Trying to quiet that part of you won't work, but you try regardless. You know that this will only hurt you, but you try regardless.
> [[Keep trying to smother that part of you.]](text-size:1.5)[''Keep trying to smother that part of you.'']
You thought you were plural, once before this, but people who are no longer your friends judged you for this, and it never felt real, so you stopped saying you were.
"(color: #206694)[You're not plural]," you tell yourself repeatedly.
You ignore the part that speaks back.
> [[Push that part of you down.]](text-size:1.5)[''Push that part of you down.'']
That part of you will not compress. If you keep trying, that part of you will bite back.
> [[Quiet.]](text-size:1.5)+(color: #206694)[''Quiet.'']
(color: #71368a)[Stop.]
> (color: #206694)[[Quiet.->Quiet (2)]](text-size:1.5)+(color: #206694)[''Quiet.'']
(text-size:2.0)+(color: #71368a)[Stop it.]
> (color: #206694)[[QUIET!]](text-size:1.5)+(color: #206694)[''QUIET!'']
(text-size:3.0)+(color: #71368a)[NO!]
[[=>]](text-size:1.5)[''=>'']
You're unsure how to handle this, so you turn to close friends who are plural.
Your mind is so loud, so noisy, with so many overlapping voices and thoughts, that you can't converse with the dragon, who you call THE MONSTER, internally. One of your friends helps you mediate by using their DMs as a neutral space with an arbiter. You find piece with the Monster.
Another friend, who started calling you ALPHY after you played UNDERTALE, <a href="https://medium.com/@internetfionna/they-say-you-and-me-are-tautology-5161e7e7a389" target="_blank">directs you towards playing FINAL FANTASY XIV's DARK KNIGHT questline</a>, and gives the Monster a proper name: CHARRASQUE.
You feel like there being two of you is right.
[[==>->November 2020]](text-size:1.5)[''=>'']
It is November of 2020. You are living in a room you rarely leave in a shared house full of people you barely know. Your brain feels stuck. The only thing you can seem to focus on is BLASEBALL, an online baseball simulation with weird rules and an esoteric plot.
The first era of Blaseball ended and, as a celebration of that era's end and as a way to keep fans engaged while the developers work on the next era, THE COFFEE CUP is occuring. You have aligned yourself with the SOCIETY FOR INTERNET BLASEBALL RESEARCH's team, the SOCIETY DATA WITCHES, and attempt to involve yourself in Blaseball's TWITTER ROLE-PLAYING SCENE as one of the team's players.
Even though your ability to roleplay is lackluster at best, you feel that player give voice to a part of you you had not noticed before.
> [[Be the bird(s).]](text-size:1.5)[''Be the bird(s).'']
This part of you is so overcome with unbridled enthusiasm not only for Blaseball, but for other interests that you let fall by the wayside as the stress of a global pandemic and a second attempt at an undergraduate career weighed down on you.
This part of you took the longest to figure out a name for themselves, but they eventually found it in a character that made you first think about being non-binary.
They take the name &, and for a while, you think they are a blend of you (alphy) and Charra.
[[=->->Three]](text-size:1.5)[''=->'']
You find comfort in being three, even if you, alphy, are the one primarily in front. You realize you are all parts of yourself, of FIONNA, and realizing that makes you feel whole, yet separate.
You call yourselves the TAUTOLOGY SYSTEM, based on <a href="https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/track/what-death-leaves-behind" target="_blank">a lyric from a song by your favorite band, LOS CAMPESINOS!</a>.
> [[Be someone else.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be someone else.'']
You know you are not part of FIONNA, but you feel close to it, adjacent, related.
alphy refers to you as, potentially, a fictive of Blaseball's commissioner, and that's the language you have for yourself at first.
As time passes, however, you realize who you are. You realize you are the part of you that felt ashamed thinking about possibly being a girl, even if you did not remember it at the time. You were the part that tried to bind with ace bandages, even if you did not remember that at the time.
> [[Be Phillip.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Phillip.'']
alphy does not let you be Phillip. It panics, overcome with fear and memories and trauma of how people held, and still hold, that name over its head, a sword to come crashing down if someone decides it doesn't deserve to be gendered as even feminine.
So alphy offers you a compromise, a name used in POKÉMON BLACK 2 and in a TELEVISION SHOW YOU ENJOYED AS A YOUNG ADULT, and you are forced to take it.
> [[Be Parker.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Parker.'']
You hold some resentment, but you don't like being in front anyway, so you bear it. The body is far more feminine than it was when you went dormant, all those years ago, and it doesn't suit you.
> [[Be alphy.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be alphy.'']
You realize that you were missing the part of you that did not want to transition, and now you feel even more whole. Everyone is accounted for, and you figure that no one else will possibly show up.
> [[Be Terezi Pyrope.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Terezi Pyrope.'']
In a plural-centric online social space alphy helped found, someone reading HOMESTUCK says "Hi Terezi!" as your source self appears for the first time in the comic.
You greet them in kind from in your system's head, preceded by a chill down the body's spine that is now the telltale signal of a switch.
You quickly call your host (color: #008282)+(font:'Courier New')[''N33DL3SSLY P3D4NT1C''] as it tries to explain that Asemoko Tayochu and Kakyu Tayochu, its Final Fantasy XIV character and her Esteem, are not actually headmates, and that Terezi is the system's first fictive.
> [[Insist to the contrary.]](text-size:1.5)[''Two weeks later, be Moko and Kakyu.'']
It takes two weeks to make yourselves known, but you do with auto-translated flourishes. You find more comfort playing Final Fantasy XIV than you do interating on social media, but you socialize here and there, mostly with other Warriors of Light in other systems. You're not very active, anyway, as SHADOWBRINGERS has wrapped and your system is eagerly awaiting ENDWALKER.
> [[Be alphy.->20020]](text-size:1.5)[''Be alphy.'']
In the intervening time, you have been reading 17776 and its sequel, 20020, with one of your partners. You are reading the part of NINE, the viewpoint character who is a non-binary space probe. One member of your partner's system is reading TEN, and the other is reading JUICE.
You enjoy reading these with your partner, doing a vast majority of it together on xer couch.
When you get towards the end of 20020, xie suggests you should lay in xer bed, as you will be emotionally overwhelmed.
You do not yet know the extent to which xie speaks the truth.
> [[Run, explore without consequence, wander without meaning, play.]](text-size:1.5)[''Run, explore without consequence, wander without meaning, play.'']
You cry. You cry hard and you cry long and you cry for days.
You feel the familiar sensation of a new system member, but often a lot of quiet.
You liken Nine's quietness to their source self's problem with their battery. They also have problems operating the body, and can only communicate via text.
You can feel them when you see the sun crest over HUSKY STADIUM, the UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON's football stadium.
[[====>]](text-size:1.5)[''====>'']
After finishing 20020, you get in something of a rut. You have, at this point, flunked out of college for the second time in your life, and you held a job for barely a few weeks over the summer. You instead assign yourself a series of personal writing projects, very few of which will culminate in any finished projects, but they keep you occupied.
Systems in the plural-centric online social space you helped found talk about GODFEELS, a post-canon HOMESTUCK fanfic that features a very trans and very plural JUNE EGBERT. Your interest in piqued, but you insist you must first read THE HOMESTUCK EPILOGUES, so you can form your own opinion on the divisive work. You also insist that all of that must occur //after// you finish your personal writing projects, which involve various forms of media consumption and analysis. Your media backlog, from that point on, becomes something of a meme.
> [[Be Terezi.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Terezi.'']
(color: #008282)+(font:'Courier New')[''4LPHY W4NTS TO HOLD OFF PR1NT1NG 4 VR1SK4 UNT1L W3 C4N G3T TO R34D1NG GODF33LS BUT 1'M 1NS1ST1NG TH4T TH4T'S NOT HOW SYST3MS WORK''], you say in this plural-centric social space.
alphy, as usual, tries to justify its behavior with a tale of yak-shaving and procrastination. As someone else responds, someone shakes loose.
> [[Be Vriska Serket.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Vriska Serket.'']
(color: #005682)+(font:'Courier New')[''well''], you say in this online social space, (color: #005682)+(font:'Courier New')[''that ship sure sailed''].
You realize you have been rattling around the system in some regard since the same system that greeted Terezi two months prior reminded you of the rhyme that allowed you and your cohort to be ectogenetically cloned in your source.
You take some umbrage with the fact that you are the ninth member of the Tautology System, given that your theming is primarily octal.
> [[Be Moko when Endwalker comes out.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Moko when Endwalker comes out.'']
This is your first time playing new story content as yourselves. You take great joy in progressing through the story, trying to play with friends as you're able, but mostly tunnel-visioning into the narrative. You're excited to be in places that had been talked about in the game for many years, and you take your time to walk around and sightsee in the beautiful cities of Old Sharlayan and Radz-at-Han.
You do, eventually, find youself in the snow-covered north of Garlemald, home of the fascist empire that was splintered by Zenos. He keeps calling you his friend. You hate it.
Some of the civilians in Garlemald are too biased towards the propaganda and kill themselves instead of letting you help them. Some are more willing and come to your camp to share a meal.
> [[Accept the quest "In From The Cold."]](text-size:1.5)[''Accept the quest "In From The Cold."'']
Of course, nothing is as easy as it seems. You find yourself kidnapped for a dinner with Zenos and his Ascian almost-ally, Fandaniel, and you find yourself in a body not your own. You start to dissociate, a sensation that only gets worse as the game reveals that Zenos has taken control of your body, intent on murdering your friends and allies.
> [[Be Kakyu.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Kakyu.'']
You try to contain your rage while playing through the very challenging quest duty. You are stuck in this mundane body, but you are still compelled to rescue civilians from the horrors of this war and what is to come after.
You do your best, but the screen fades you black, and you shake with anger as Zenos starts to encroach on the camp your friends are at. Y'shtola, who sees only in aether, realizes something is wrong, and draws her weapon.
Though you feared you perished in the mundane body, you managed to stop Zenos, telling him off and demanding your body back, which you receive shortly thereafter.
You are seething and, while Moko recovers, you press on, eager to drive your heavy greatsword through his heart. He has cheated death before, but you will make sure he stays down somehow.
> [[Finish Endwalker.]](text-size:1.5)[''Finish Endwalker.'']
You get your wish, and Moko begs for rest. You oblige her, and the two of you do not front for some time, or for very long during that time.
> [[Be alphy.->Moving]](text-size:1.5)[''Be alphy.'']
Home life has gotten worse. The house is in a worse and worse state of disrepair, and you find it easier to order delivery or get drive-through fast food than it is to cook for yourself. You also have a looming deadline of August, before which you need to find a new place to live. You have gotten one of your partners and a friend of yours out of the Arizonan desert and up to Seattle with the goal of living together, but finding a new place has been nightmarish.
> [[Ponder why you haven't introjected Kanaya Maryam yet.]](text-size:1.5)[''Ponder why you haven't introjected Kanaya Maryam yet.'']
At a stoplight near the local Target, you pose this question to yourself. You often type in title case for emphasis, but you decide that, broadly, your system doesn't have the overarching personality type to support a Jadeblood rainbow drinker.
> [[Possibly be Kanaya Maryam.]](text-size:1.5)[''Possibly be Kanaya Maryam.'']
Something itches at your brain and, in a server full of heavily-Homestuck systems, you ask a troll to call you Kanaya.
Very quickly, a Vriska responds with "Heyyyyyyyy Kanaya."
> [[Definitely be Kanaya Maryam.]](text-size:1.5)[''Definitely be Kanaya Maryam.'']
(color: #008141)+(font:'Courier New')[''Hello Spider Bitch :)''], you respond.
"Pft, sup fussyfangs," responds the Vriska, finishing the call and response.
> [[Contemplate your place in the system.]](text-size:1.5)[''Contemplate your place in the system.'']
Prior to you, it had been easy to figure out which fictives mapped to which core system members. Terezi and Moko came from fragments of alphy, while Vriska and Kakyu were fragments of Charra. Nine was a ~~Phillip~~ Parker fragment.
You realize, given your role in source and your demeanor thus far, that you are likely a Charra fragment, leaving an imbalance that would likely be countered by a loud candyblood.
> [[Be Karkat Vantas.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Karkat Vantas.'']
(color: #FF0000)+(font:'Courier New')[''WELL FUCK''], you exclaim in the same server Kanaya confirmed her existence in. It took only a few hours for you to come about, and it came with its own complications.
> [[Be a guy.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be a guy.'']
alphy has anxiety about you being male. It has a lot of anxiety around its transition, and how poorly it went. Even though it knows transfemme systems with masculine members, it's still anxious about it.
It realizes it's being an ass without you saying anything, though. You are a trans guy, and it can't deny that.
> [[Be alphy trying to find a place to live.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be alphy trying to find a place to live.'']
You have been touring apartments and rental homes with your partner and your friend for a few weeks now, applying to places that can actually fit three adult nerds who have stuff. You and your partner see a place that looks really good, and you go home to apply.
Unfortunately, rental applications assume you have income, and the documentation needed makes you so wildly anxious that you dissociate, leaving front fully for the first time in memory.
> [[Be Karkat.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Karkat.'']
You finish the rental application, then contemplate the fact that you're in front alone. alphy has always copiloted with anyone else in front, so this is a novel sensation. You're not particularly worried, though, because you can tell it's there and just needs time to recover.
> [[=====->->Eleven]](text-size:1.5)[''=====->'']
You do your best to function as a collective. You eventually get a place to live with your partner and friend, three days before you're due to move out. You move very quickly, with another partner and friends of yours helping you along. Your now-housemates start to see more than just alphy around, but it's still the primary face of the system.
Towards the end of August, Parker demands their name back and, having gotten over its discomfort, alphy gives it to him apologetically. They are now Phillip, as they should have always been.
> [[Pick up Splatoon 3.]](text-size:1.5)[''Pick up Splatoon 3.'']
SPLATOON has been one of your special interests, and SPLATOON 2 is how you became friends with a bunch of people you eventually read Homestuck with. SPLATOON 3's release seemed like a prime social event, though you found yourself immediately engrossed in HERO MODE, the single-player story. Over the course of it, you get the sensation that someone new is swimming around, though they're picking up pieces they shouldn't be associated with directly.
Though you are playing an OCTOLING, rather than a squid-like INKLING, the protagonist of SPLATOON 2: OCTO EXPANSION is a separate character from even the Octoling you can eventually play as in multiplayer. Rather than a happy-go-lucky kid, the Octo Expansion protagonist is an amnesiac former soldier, trying to find purpose and memory.
These parts swirl around with the story from Splatoon 3, RETURN OF THE MAMMALIANS, to form someone new, who only makes herself known after the story is finished.
> [[Be Cyan Vivace.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be Cyan Vivace.'']
You find yourself something of a blank slate, but brimming with enthusiasm and weilding a balanced mood. You figure out you're a fragment of &, which makes you reevaluate &. It turns out that they are not a blend of alphy and Charra, but their own part of the Fionna part of your system.
You listen to upbeat music which, given the rest of the system's musical tastes, largely consists of the Japanese rock band the pillows.
You enjoy the competitive nature of Turf War and the ranked modes, but you know when to take a break before you get too salty.
> [[Be alphy.->Persecutor Prelude]](text-size:1.5)[''Be alphy.'']
As you continue to unpack your belongings, decorating and making your space truly yours, you unpack your past few years and the traumas you experienced along the way. It's hard, but your partners and the rest of your system help keep you on your feet.
One night, however, you're in a particularly bad state of mind. You find yourself spiraling, latching onto old thoughts of not actually being plural. You feel gross and bad, and you feel like you deceived people.
> [[Very subtly be someone else.]](text-size:1.5)[''Very subtly be someone else.'']
You are alphy's persecutor, who has been tormenting it on and off for several years. Though relatively quiet in recent times, you have taken advantage of this period of reflection and recovery to feed alphy vitriol about itself. When it's too weak to continue, you take its place, putting words in its mouth and insisting that it would be better off dead.
> [[Be alphy.->Post-Persecutor]](text-size:1.5)[''Be alphy.'']
You realize what is happening and manage to reclaim your words. Your nesting partner hides your car keys at the request of another partner, who comes up to help you recover.
Even though you send them home after a few days, you're still barely functional, overcome with despair and the raw memories of decades of trauma.
> [[Be someone else.->Jade?]](text-size:1.5)[''Be someone else.'']
You slowly get the feeling that you're someone new. You feel disconnected from the memories alphy is drowning in. You feel excitable and energetic. You feel like a dog.
> [[Potentially be Jade Harley.]](text-size:1.5)[''Potentially be Jade Harley.'']
In what is rapidly becoming a tradition for your system, you ask the June Egbert in a system you are dating to call you Jade.
When she does, you bark and wag your tail.
> [[Definitely be Jade Harley.]](text-size:1.5)[''Definitely be Jade Harley.'']
It takes you some time to figure out exactly what kind of Jade Harley you are. In source, you are presented as a girl with dog ears, but there is much fanart where you present as an anthropomorphic dog.
You eventually decide you are the latter. You also realize that, like Cyan, you are an & fragment.
You have the most front momentum out of any new member of your system, and alphy is out of front for longer and longer stretches.
> [[Become host.]](text-size:1.5)[''Become host.'']
After talking with alphy, other members of your system, and your system's partners, you decide to become host, the primary headmate in front and in charge. You know that this is likely only a temporary measure, to let alphy process some heavy trauma.
While you don't feel the brain's anxiety symptoms as intensely as alphy does, you still feel like you're going to mess things up for alphy on occasion. You also lack some social graces, upsetting people that alphy is dating or is friends with.
You put effort into improving, though, and try your best to repair those bonds.
> [[Be alphy sometimes.]](text-size:1.5)[''Be alphy sometimes.'']
You still overwhelm front sometimes, though, with trauma flashbacks or feeling like you'll disappear, or that no one will want you back.
Jade, true to her secondary source of Godfeels, promises you (color: #4ac925)+(font:'Courier New')[''that under NO circumstances do you deserve to disappear!!''] Others say the same.
The trauma flashbacks are the most intense, though, seemingly intent on making sure your system's sleep remains very disordered. The hours before sunrise are often spent crying alone with your memories, feeling like you're back where you were hurt.
Those moments come more and more infrequently over the course of a month.
> [[Recover.]](text-size:1.5)[''Recover.'']
alphy had a trauma flashback that led to some good processing, and it spent the following day in front almost the entire time.
Others, like Terezi and Vriska, were able to more easily front of their own volition after this. They, like the rest of the system, had spent the past month helping alphy recover and process and heal. With a bulk of the work done for now, they are able to be their own people again.
Shortly after this, alphy became host again. After this month off, it was far easier for it to give up front and cede control to others in its system than it was before.
> [[======->->Desert Bus]](text-size:1.5)[''======->'']
You know nothing about you or your system is static. You are always learning and discovering more, and change can be just around the corner. You take each day as it comes.
You know you will never be alone again, no matter how lonely you feel. You have people that share your body and mind who love you, care about you, and help take care of you.
You find it hard to talk about your system with singlets, people that are not systems. So much has happened to you to bring you to this point, and it can often loop back in on itself.
You hope that talking about it linearly, like a story, helps people understand, but you know that not everyone will.(text-size:1.5)[''Insist to the contrary.'']
alphy tried to claim that Moko and Kakyu were just masks that it and Charra wore while playing Final Fantasy XIV, and that they would get too much into the kayfabe.
You point out that (color: #008282)+(font:'Courier New')[''TH3Y'R3 PROB4BLY F1CT1V3S TH4T JUST M4P TO `[`4LPHY`]` 4ND CH4RR4 SO D1R3CTLY TH4T `[`4LPHY DO3SN'T`]` NOT1C3''].
> [[Two weeks later, be Moko and Kakyu.]](font:"sans-serif")+(align:"=><=")+(box:"X")+(text-size:1.5)[but i'm tired of civil war
my spirit is screaming out for more
it's all just too much to ignore
that i could be something more
**we could be something more**
(text-size:1)[—"<a href="https://jamiepaige.bandcamp.com/track/ballroom-feat-marcy-nabors" target="_blank">ballroom</a>", jamie paige featuring marcy nabors, *bittersweet*]]
(align:"<==")+(box:"=XX=")[This story coverse the following topics:
* Plurality
* Transphobia
* Self-hatred
* Plural suppression
* Intrasystem conflict
* Source violence, specifically *Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker*
* Spoilers for *Endwalker* level 83 quest "In From The Cold"
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(out:)[(link:_name)[(Set:$STYLE to _name)(goto:"Intro")]]
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[[Start Reading->Start]]](enchant:?page,
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(if:$STYLE is a str)[(display:$STYLE)](text-size:1.5)[''======->'']
Every system is different, and you've been finding the words to explain how yours works lately. You've described fronting like DESERT BUS FOR HOPE: The fronter is in MATT WIGGIN's old chair playing DESERT BUS, while everyone else is on the couch BEING GOOFY and offering WITTY COMMENTARY. When a switch needs to occur, there is no dissociation; the game cannot pause, so the controller must be passed between two people without the bus veering off the road.
It's a very apt metaphor, it turns out.
> [[======->->Finale]]