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the importance of friends
it's easy to lose our way in the world. this year has been particularly tumultuous for us and it continues to be increasingly so. it also follows 2 pretty challenging years before it. the only thing that has kept us consistently grounded has been spending time with our friends. an activity we certainly took for granted, and it will certainly be challenging to spend quality time (out #1 "love language") with us now being on the other side of the world.
it's funny how easy the action of reaching out to someone seems. we still have the ability to do a voice or video chat, or something more elaborate like meeting up in an MMO or VRChat for the sole purpose of hanging out. i think there's this weird illusion that happens when someone moves away, and the distance creates some natural resistance, or obstacle, to schedule good time together. we will have to be more intentional, bothersome, and assume that ppl actually won't be bothered by us lol.
and yet, easy as it may seem to be to just make the initial act of reaching out, we beat ourselves down, and build up social anxiety, insecurities, self doubt. we start to push away the very thing that would help us recenter. to help spark some energy and motivation back into us. it's a downward spiral. me and Ruby are the most social ones in our group, but we've also been burnt out too, by the recent coming of social anxiety.
then there is also the part about moving to a new city. Sydney has changed a lot over the last 12 years since we've been gone, and i would say mostly for the better, but it makes it alien to us again. we're experiencing culture shock yet again. i don't think people realise just how different western countries are to each other. it's easy to assume that because we all speak english, and eat common foods, and people look past all the subtleties that add up. our language can be incredibly different just by nature of growing up with different vocabulary. that's just one aspect. you have to consider that though yes our country is a messed up colonialised place just like yours is, the events that lead to development, the natives who own this land.. they are all vastly different in history and customs.
if you've never visited another western country and have prioritised visiting countries that have considerable difference (like an Asian country. Japan seems to be popular amongst our social circle), and haven't spent a considerable amount of time outside of the tourism and gimmicky stuff to get to know people's everyday lives, you will never understand this little detail. the expectation that we grew up with the same TV shows, the same brands. ugh this is just one tiny slice of the pie that comes to mind and i could write several posts about this topic, before we even get to most radically different things like Filipino culture (guess what, Southeast Asian cultures are also quite different from each other, and on a broader sense, Asian cultures as a whole).
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and i'm mostly talking "very different" as in the vast amount of subtle differences and nuances, vs. the more obvious big ticket items. these tend to be so small that people dismiss them as weird, or wrong. this is especially common from Australians who pride themselves in "honesty", often an excuse to hide subtle casual racism and such. but eh, that's also a bigger topic for another day.
my original point about bringing this up is, we are different people than we were 12 years ago. we literally found out we're a different gender entirely. in fact we discovered we are actually like over a dozen girls in here, lol. we will need to find our people here, all over again.
but to bring things back to the main topic here, considering all of this, i want it to make it a point to reach out to at least one friend every day, and i want to keep the variety, so that we don't burn out any single friend, and so that we are making sure we keep our multitude of connections strong.
i think on a more longer cadence, like weekly, we should aim to reach out to people locally, the people we bookmarked online as "hey this seems like a cool person to hang out with if they'd be down to meet a weird stranger with maybe common interests", perhaps we can pester friends to intro us to ppl. building a support circle for ourselves here is going to be important in the long run.
it will take time. we're eternally healing from a lot. even though there's a bunch of us here, we have limits if we only keep within our own "team", just as any other.
so. if you know any artists(as in, any creatives), queer people, fascism-haters, etc. (bonus if they're plural. we know you're out there.) in Australia, and u think we'd get along, by all means pls intro us! don't be shy and be our matchmaker pretty please.
(and omg, just pls reach out and do stuff with us lol)
💜 Sel~
Site features
Reposts
We're continuing to implement Cohost-like functionality here and something I'd like to implement soon is the ability to repost, and repost with text. This would allow for follow ups between us. Included with the ability to repost would also be the ability to repost from other blogs on this site. Including the main one, my personal one, and the entire archive of cohost posts we have up here (unlisted).
One thing I would like to get right is how this would work with RSS, especially if we go the threaded-style format. Before that, I'll have to work out some internal way to represent the data that won't overcomplicate our Eleventy setup. Maybe we need to build in some redundancy for the time being as a hack, with the plan to move towards more nested data fetching. We've managed to mostly avoid anything too wild like custom/programmatic collections so far, but that will likely have to change for this. Thankfully all that heavy lifting only occurs at build time, since it's a static site generator.
Tags
I think we will also want tags, but we do track those already and it is just a matter of displaying them and exposing them in RSS.
Newsletter
We have a newsletter for the main blog, and it would be cool to have one for this site too. We use Buttondown which does have an RSS import thing as a paid option, but will likely use rss2buttondown, a script I wrote a while ago, since this would be a separate newsletter from the main blog and I don't think we would want to pay the premium for another newsletter. Plus we can customise the import thru code.
We're Plural
We'll start this by saying that we aren't openly plural to many people in our life, nor the greater internet. Not to many of our friends, and not to any of our family.
That said, we aren't doing much to hide our system beyond the most public of spaces (e.g., social media, IRL). We've come out to a few people, and are out in a few Discord servers where either other systems are present, or we feel safe to be out. So if you happen to be reading this and wondering what this plural thing is all about, then hopefully you‘ll find this post as a helpful introduction.
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Simply put, it means there are more of one of us in here! And I think more than one, rather aptly named, summarises this well.
You could think of a plural collective as a group of lifelong roommates, but with a body instead of an apartment.
To go further into detail about plurality and how people identify with it would be beyond the scope of this post but we do invite you to ask us anything.
Maddie, and the Roses 🌹 as a plural collective
We go by the system name of Roses. But referring to us as Maddie, Roses, "The Roses", or one of us individually is fine.
For now, you can find a list of some of us (there are many more) on the sidebar to the left, or at the top of the page on mobile. We haven't done much in the way of introducing ourselves formally and we likely will in the future to people/in spaces we're out to. We also have some individual presences on other parts of the internet, and are able to present as individuals on some Discord servers and in DMs using services like PluralKit or /plu/ral (our preferred service).
Perhaps you might wonder why have decided to present this way to some, that is, as several entities, and using plural pronouns like “we” and “us” (and sometimes "we&" and "us&" to different between "us (Roses)" and "us and you"). It is certainly a choice, and many plural systems decide to present as “singlet” instead, externally, as one being with singular pronouns. They may choose to do this out of safety, fear of rejection, etc. It is not dissimilar to deciding not to come out as trans, and continue to present as the gender people already know you as.
It's a concept that fascinates many, the idea of always sharing your life with others, never being alone no matter where you go. Yet, for all that, there's a lack of understanding and a great deal of stigma surrounding plurality, and many plurals hide as a result.
We do this because when we do, we feel more like ourselves. If you think about how a trans person can get body euphoria as they go through their journey, similarly we collectively get euphoria when we get to exist like this, though it has taken a lot of questioning, doubt, fear of pluralphobia, fear of more spaces that are exclusive to any sort of non-medicalised or only partially-medicalised forms of plurality, to get to where we are today, and that certainly hasn't gone away, and may never will.
Some of you reading have met us on Cohost, which is where we originally came out as plural. For the people outside of that who know us, especially those who have known us for a while, this whole concept might be new to you. We hope that you can be accepting of us. We understand that it might take some getting used to hearing us individually, or as a collective. You don't need to treat us any different than you already have been.
We still go by singular she/her pronouns outside of these safe spaces and present under the name “Maddie” even if someone other than her might actually be fronting (in fact, she hasn't been around lately, not to cause any alarm because there are others here "holding the fort" and it's not like she's gone forever). Just know that who you have been dealing with as one person, has in reality been a few different people sharing the one head, and that's why we use “we” or "we&" pronouns from time to time.
The "she/they&" you see us list in a lot of places is shorthand for "she/her, plural they/them".
That's it for now. Nice to meet y‘all! We all look forward to interacting with you and hope you do as well.
❤️ Glim & Selphie
Our Art is Plural
In the community, we are kind of up against a lot of things, because the art that is out there that is about plurals is not very flattering or accurate. … the way that we are talked about in popular movies is very damaging … it can be internalized in a really negative way for systems on the individual basis, and it's damaging on a community level because I think it keeps us from reaching out to each other, and it keeps us from reaching out to other plurals, and it keeps us from seeking help.
— Love, Art, and the Plural Community (plural events)
Saw a short today that really just speaks to the importance of the direction we have decided for our art going forward. It is very true that the world needs more plural art made by plural systems and this really drives home our newfound sense of purpose that has been growing within ourselves for some time.
Much of our art can already be interpreted in plural framing, even our latest album, intersections. After all, art is an expression of us and our lives. Regardless of how well we know or don't yet know ourselves, themes from our own plurality are still likely to slip in!
And so we would like to lean into this plural connection with more intent from now on. While we may not be able to spell things out as explicitly "plural", given we aren't fully out1, it turns out that our journey in plural discovery and the lives we live as a plural system provide an abundant catalyst of ideas and stories that write themselves from an inner world we're excited to explore. If there's any indication to us that we are any closer to knowing who we are, it's that we're beginning to more naturally express ourselves creatively.
Similarly in the other direction, our relationships to the art of others, we find ourselves building deeper connections and a better understanding of why art might resonate with us. Our connection to art has been developing throughout the evolution of our self discovery, but since coming out plural to ourselves and learning how to embrace living this way, we begin to build an even clearer picture. It's given us a new perspective for connecting the pieces.
What am I excited to see out of this? Well, we have already started work on our next album, and have also dusted off an old and ambitious game/story idea. It feels like a huge chunk of "writers' block" has been cleared away! But yes, I think you can expect some fun new things to come from us in the near future~
💖 Ruby
Reference
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plural events – Love, Art, and the Plural Community
Description
In this clip, Emmengard talks about the importance of art for the plural community. When plurals create and share their art, it helps others understand us better. As Emmengard says, the way we have been portrayed in popular media is damaging, so sharing creations by plurals fights that damage and helps create a more accurate and realistic view of plurality.
Full Transcript
And Rumi has this really amazing thing that he says, which is that, "Love is the bridge between you and everything."
I think that is what art reminds us of. It reminds us of our shared humanity, it gives us perspective, and it gives us an avenue for speaking our truth.
And what does that mean for the plural community in general?
In the community, we are kind of up against a lot of things, because the art that is out there that is about plurals is not very flattering or accurate.
And I do think that the way that we are talked about in popular movies is very damaging. And I think it is damaging on a lot of different levels.
And it's damaging, first on that very personal level, where it can be internalized in a really negative way for systems on the individual basis.
And it's damaging on a community level because I think it keeps us from reaching out to each other, and it keeps us from reaching out to other plurals, and it keeps us from seeking help.