Adventuretimefantic's longer updates

Plurality dictionary!

If you're new to plurality, you'll probably see a bunch of words that make no sense. So behold! My dictionary of plural terms!

Alter roles
**note: you don't have to have a role, these are just some of the most common ones found in systems that do have roles.
-Protector: alter whose job is to protect the safety of the system. Multiple more specific sub types exist (primary, secondary, sexual etc)
-Co-host: the alter whose job is to help and back up the host, help them with their duties
-Introject: alter based on a pre-existing person or being. Can be friends, family, teachers/coaches, celebrities you look up to, fictional characters you like, religious figures, mythical figures etc.
-Caretaker: alter who takes care of younger alters, less capable alters.
-Gatekeeper: alter who blocks certain memories/knowledge from certain alters. Can also block off areas of the headspace.
-Messenger: alter who relays messages from one alter to another, or through the headspace as a whole.
-Overseer: alter who is in charge of running the internal aspects of the system.
-Persecutor: alter who holds negative emotions, reactions and memories. Can cause them to lash out at other alters/the body.
-Memory holder: alter that holds onto a particular memory/set of memories
-Trauma holder: alter that holds onto trauma memories/reactions
-Emotional regulator: alter with the ability to calm, regulate and handle intense emotions. Will front to keep calm in stressful situations or stop another alter from lashing out/melting down.
-Soother: Alter who keeps a de-stressed and calm nature to sooth the body and other alters out of stress/triggers.

Functions
-Split: when a new alter is formed
-Fusion: when two alters fuse into one new one
-Dormancy: when an alter is no longer present and active in the system. They aren't dead, they can potentially come back. But they're inactive for long periods of time.
-Co-fronting: when more than one alter is in control of the body.
-Co-conscious: when alters are viewing/hearing the front but have no control over the body
-Headspace: the way the brain visualises the communication between alters, by making a world/area the alters can see, hear and interact with each other in.
-Bleed: when the emotions/reactions of alters are bleeding into other alters
-Blurry: when it's hard to tell who is fronting/it feels like there's lots of people all blended together
-fragment: an alter that hasn't fully developed
-exomemories: memories of events that didn't physically happen to the body. Can be from an introject remembering their source, or the brain developing a memory to cover up a real one.

Alter types and adjacent
-NPC: being that is more a part of the headspace than the system. They're not an alter, they don't front or operate like one. They fill a role inside the headspace to flesh out the world more as the brains way of visualising certain functions.
-Fragment: alter that isn't fully developed, may just hold onto one or two memories and not front.
-Looping alter: alter who is stuck in a loop inside the headspace, repeating the same actions over and over again. Typically a trauma holder with the memory of a trauma that is stuck repeating that event as a way of holding the memory away from others.
-Frozen alter: alter who is seemingly frozen in time/comatose in the headspace. Also usually an alter that holds a particular memory and is in this state to keep the memory away from the others.
-Fictive: introject based on a fictional character
-Factive: introject based on a real person
-Mixtive: introject that is a mix of more than one character/person.
-OCtive: introject based on an OC
-Little: child alter under age 10
-Middle: preteen alters around 11-12
-Systeen: teenage alters.
-Syskid: any underage alter.

Other terms
-In-sys: short for 'in system'. Refers to things that take place inside the system. E.g. an in-sys relationship means a relationship between two or more alters.
-Outer-world: the real, physical world. Used to differentiate between the headspace world and real world.
-traumagenic: systems/alters formed from trauma
-Endogenic: systems/alters formed for reasons other than trauma. That doesn't mean they aren't traumatised, it just means trauma wasn't the defining factor.
-dissociative system:  DID or OSDD systems, systems with a dissociative disorder
-polyfragmented: systems with hundreds or even thousands of alters.
-subsystem: a system within a system. An alter has their own alters.

That's probably all the most commonly used and basic terms you'll find in system spaces and terminology. You can always just make up your own term to describe something that's unique to your system if you need to, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you want to know more about spiritual systems I'm afraid I'm not the expert on that, since we're an OSDD system and have done the majority of research and have experience with OSDD only. But the information is out there, tulpamancy and spiritual plurality are good keywords to look for.

Other than that, I'll see you guys in the next oneshot or system post, whichever comes first!