We're the Olivia Set
Who we are
We're a buncha people who share a brain and body (and in some ways, a mind). That means that we're a plural system. Collectively we're aroace lesbians. Some of headmates have spiritual beliefs about our plurality. Some psychological ones. Others are agnostic. We're anarchists and carry that into how we run our system. There's about 3-5 frontrunners at any given time, but our total count is 🤷
What do those words mean?
Plural: The experience of having more than one self, identity, or person in a single body.
System: The common parlance for a group of people sharing one body (i.e. system of headmates).
Headmate: Like roommate, except instead of sharing a house, we share a brain.
Front/Frontrunner: The act of running the body (i.e. not the "voice in the back of the mind) and those who regularly do that.
Members
Frontrunners
Usual Suspects
These are the folks you're most likely to interact with.
Faye
(she/they/fae)
Faye's our primary frontrunner or host. There's an indeterminate number of Fayes in our system. They're all the same person, but they each have their quirks and tendencies that the quantum super position Faye takes the shape of. She likes writing fiction in the form of TTRPG games along with Foxy and Nyroka.
Foxy
(she/her)
Foxy is an amalgam. Part fictional entity, soul cast from a world we found through our imagination, suggestion, tulpa, and angry thoughts not allowed to be expressed all wrapped up into one. We don't know when she first arrived, but she has fairly clear memories of her past life. We blame these memories for the first D&D game we ran set in her home, which has become a beloved place to tell stories. She's become one of our frontrunners since arriving and is fiercely committed to the well being of this set.
Nyroka
(she/her)
Foxy's wife from their life before. She arrived after a homesick call to the void. Soulbonding, introjecting, or some dangerous crossing of a void, we're just glad she's here regardless of how. She's taken huge steps in recording the world she came from. Her social skills and general demeanor helps all of us out greatly with the rest of our social anxieties and trauma.
Eeveelyn
(she/her)
She's our little one (think literal inner child). She doesn't talk much. But she intensely focuses on her interests (usually survival crafting games). Which helps us out so much by de-stressing our brain and body, giving everyone a much needed rest from heavy thoughts.
Eris
(she/her)
Eris isn't her "real" name, but she wants some distance from her source. Her passions are yuri and being a bitch. She's been so helpful to our system with her take-no-shit attitude. Fun fact: she has exomemories from times where we were bodily with the person she's based upon, but the memories are from her perspective, not the body's.
Moxie
(she/her any/all)
Moxie is the member who discovered our system. One morning she said from the back "Hey, what if we're a system?" And since Faye couldn't let go of the thought, she asked Moxie to introduce herself. Because of her love of philosophy (specifically metaphysics) we're pretty sure she was around front a lot during college. We're working on her automatic/reflexive protective instinct to keep us safe from social faux pas by working the body like a puppet, much to the horror and dismay of whoever else was trying to front.
Jack
(any/all)
Jack just showed up after Moxie discovered our plurality. It's relatively chill. None of us are terribly sure if they've been around a while, or if xe formed recently, but we're happy he's here.
Calamity
(she/her)
One day we thought "Wonder what it would be like if we had a southern accent?" From the back of our head responded a voice saying "Howdy..." And so Calamity just showed up. She's maybe based upon a character from a show we started watching? We don't know but she's a testament to how the human brain can do weird stuff. Weirdest thing is that she likes country music, while most of the rest of us hate it.
Octavia
(she/her?)
Octavia doesn't come forward much, let alone front, but when she does its... weird. She's a self-proclaimed "placebomancer" using her will working to trick our minds into accomplishing our goals. Honestly, in spite of all of the dressings of magic and the occult she likes to use, she's managed to do things others can't, so hey, placebomance away!
The Others
There are more people one could call headmates. Maybe they're imaginary friends, maybe they're fragments, maybe they're characters that took on a life of their own, maybe they're psychonauts of some kind or another that managed to tune into our brain. It's probably a mix of all of that and other stuff, but none of them are around enough to introduce right now.
Etiquette
Questions from here.
What do you go by collectively?
--The Olivia Set, Liv, or they/them.How should people refer to you?
--Individually. If we didn't want to be treated as ourselves, we would just pretend to be 'Liv'What terms do you prefer for referring to yourselves as individuals...
--Headmates, systemmates, and membersor as a group?
--System and set are good. We also have a fondness for 'household'.Is there any other terminology for yourselves or aspects of your experience that you use and want people to know, or that you dislike and want people to avoid when talking about you?
--Do not call us "alters" or "parts". It's worse than misgendering us.Who in your system are people most likely to interact with?
--Our frontrunners: Faye, Moxie, Foxy, Jack. Nyroka spend enough time at front that you might run into her too.Will people be interacting with any child members?
--Almost certainly not. If Eeveelyn is around, she's being supervised by one of our frontrunners.Are there any system members who are nonverbal or otherwise have difficulty communicating?
--Eeveelyn has trouble with words. Faye sometimes loses her ability to speak.What should people do if they don't know who's at front?
--Please ask!! Asking us who's front is a sign that you actually see us individually, instead of as different moods/parts/aspects of one person. (E.g. "Who's in charge?")Is it okay for people to ask if they can talk to someone who isn't at front at the moment?
--Absolutely. We can usually either switch on command, or pass information along from the back.If someone talks to one of you, will other system members be aware of the conversation?
--We don't have inter-identity amnesia. So everyone can remember things equally. Those that are awake might be actively watching what we're doing.Adding onto the above – if multiple system members will be aware of a conversation, will they want to chime in? If someone wants to speak to a system member one-on-one, what expectations can they have and how should they communicate this?
--Yeah, we often times chime in on each others conversations. If you want to talk to someone one-on-one, you can just ask politely. We won't be able to keep them from watching the conversation, but we can filter out their input.How out are you? What should people do when talking to people who don't know you're plural?
--Online, we are out and proud of being plural. Offline, we are out to our friends only. So when talking to family or co-workers, refer to us as Liv or by our deadname.Do you have any internal communication difficulties, memory issues, switch triggers, etc that others should be mindful of?
--We can communicate internally just fine. No idea what "beyond normal forgetting" means, though we've managed well enough so far. But if one of us asks you to change subjects from a conversation, that might very well be because they can't handle it, and if you don't respect that, they'll probably leave front.Your stance on being asked questions?
--We get curiosity. So feel free to ask any kinda question you feel comfortable asking. Do so politely, and don't expect an answer if it's something you wouldn't ask your grandma.Is there anything else others should know?
--We're still trying to figure this out ourselves. We really like being plural, but it's got its challenges (and always has). Please take the opinions and beliefs of individual members of this set to be that of their own. We might share a lot of them, but part of our healing involves letting each other be themselves.
Philosophy Behind our Name
We went by Olivia collectively for years before discovering we were gender fluid, and then realizing those weren't just genders. So we feel a nice connection to that name (which is why all of us will answer to Liv still).The "Set" part comes from a few places. First, it's the same kinda convention as the Julia Set or the Mandelbrot Set. And we view ourselves as somewhat fractal. We as a collective pretend to be one person, and as individuals are many faceted.We also like the idea of viewing ourselves as a set (as in Set Theory). We are a set of sets. Some of our elements can be shared or passed between the subsets. Some of us overlap like a Venn diagram.There's also some philosophical aspects to this. One argument for the existence of sets as real things comes from their usefulness. David Lewis (in his book On a Plurality of Worlds funnily enough) says of possibles:By what right do we call possible worlds and their inhabitants disreputable entities, unfit for philosophical services unless they can beg redemption from philosophy of language? I know of no accusation against possibles that cannot be made with equal justice against sets. Yet few philosophical consciences scruple at set theory. Sets and possibles alike make for a crowded ontology. Sets and possibles alike raise questions we have no way to answer. [...] I propose to be equally undisturbed by these equally mysterious mysteries.We really like how this thought applies so well to our view of plurality. The experience of multiplicity is an internal one. It can be proven no more than any experience of singlehood. It has hard problems to deal with as does singlehood. It is extremely useful as a framework for us (and others) to view ourselves. And by that usefulness, we are justified in asserting the ontological status of our individual personhood of 'real'.If you're willing to presume that bodies you meet in the world are in fact thinking beings, then it's no more implausible to believe that we are many thinking beings sharing a body.-{O}