Plural Blogging: The Very Beginning

January 8th, 2025

If you wanted a specific year in which we became aware of our Plurality, it'd be late 2019 or early 2020. However, in those years discovering ourselves, we've learned that we've been multiple for many a year before then, ripe into elementary school days when the only worry was supposed to be the toys you saw on the box TV and the coolest PlayStation 2 games, like those ATV Racers or Shrek SuperSlam. 

Life is funny because it doesn't confine itself to humanity's ideals of right and wrong and what is supposed to happen when and how. It will simply exist.

And it sure did for us.

There is a particular trauma within domestic households that only heightens with poverty and medical abuse. While dysfunctional families are abusive in nature, to learn of the unfairness of the world through the lack of basic life necessities and comfort while a parent or yourself goes through medical upon medical struggle? It's a breeding ground for disputes and raging fires of who is to blame, and if something is ignored long enough, it will fix itself.

It will be appointed inwards, too.

The child shall look into the mirror and find the complexity of their existence challenged, a greater and greater divide between an identity that is supposed to be fostered. And one that is forcefully made.

Before our syscovery, there was a phenomenon early in our childhood where we were two parts of a whole named Ana and Midfire.

Ana and Midfire were two sides of the same coin, the same person. They were children who were inseparable from the body and all its memories. But the more bad things started, the more they grew apart, irreparably affected by their home life.

Ana grew fearful and overly aware. She was a people-pleaser who wanted nothing more than to obey the wants and wishes of everyone who claimed to adore her. She would bow her head to grow small and invisible, less of a threat, a target. Her brown eyes were wide, and ever-observant, hands tucked within her red hoodie, head bowed, so easily shying away from any presence.

Midfire, however, was full of confusion and unrest. They questioned everything, looked straight into the body's eyes, and asked endlessly why. No adult answered their questions, simply brushing them off or stating it was for improving their appearance and life. Her eyes were squinted, asking for a fight, any reason to snap sharp jaws at anyone who dared.

Every morning, pretending to sleep to check if it was safe. Forced to sit on a stool and comb hair that the two couldn't care less for. The clothes made them shift uncomfortably, unable to play and act in ways that released bundles of boundless joy. Only to be grabbed and forced to perform. Sit with your legs crossed, smile, and act pleasant. Don't slouch or remove all the uncomfortable accessories that pull at your scalp or rub your shoulders.

Walking into the house every night, knowing the yelling would begin alongside the symphony of slamming doors and sharp movement around the house. Memorizing the footsteps of each person and turning the volume higher on bulky headphones to block it all out.

It didn't seem fair to Midfire. Ana shushed her as her small, sprouting feathered wings tucked close, telling her to stop as fear gripped her heart at any movement out of line. Any sharp glance or tone towards anyone who wronged them in Midfire's eyes. The eyes burned bright like embers, like the growing black horns upon her head and the webbed wings with serrated tips.

Obedience meant safety. The two had to stay safe.

But years passed. A knife was held to small wrists late at night when grown bodies would sleep the happenings of the day away. Tired, bruised eyes stared into the house's emptiness as it stared back, eerie, a threatening presence that never swayed. Red and Blue lights painted the hallways like watercolor through open windows. The bashing down of a door before other voices waver through the other side, convincing the angry to let them go. A punched hole through plastered walls, the open pill bottles, the sobbing of grief and pain, closed car doors and jail cells.

Midfire had had enough long before the breaking point.

Their only comfort was within technology, the thing they were shamed for clinging to escape the confines of troubles with consumption and creation. If the people surrounding them wanted to use this single escape against them, then Midfire would embrace it. She would become unloveable, embrace every single thing they loathed.

She strived for the ugly, everything they deemed wrong. It felt like a release to pour out and tear every spec of herself apart to replace it with something unrecognizable.

A blank, smooth screen was used to cover angry, dark eyes, skin, and bone, which were stripped away piece by piece and replaced with metal, wires, and faux plastic skin. Hair fell away, stripped of all of its natural curled brown to reveal straight, white iridescent—an amalgamation of flesh and machine.

It had felt so good, felt so empowering. It was downright intoxicating to be given so much power, to do whatever Midfire wanted and be whatever she wanted.

But it terrified Ana, so she sobbed and screamed that this would only cause problems, making them even more unloveable. Midfire had to stop, be quiet, and act good. She couldn't do this; more people would get hurt.

The demoness-made-metal didn't care any longer. Midfire was tired, and she wanted it over. So she snapped and bit at the hand that fed and held them down. She stood tall as the body shook to look adults in the eyes and snarl out everything she had ever wanted to speak.

Disrespectful, unjust, monstrous, they would shout in return, and Midfire would only burn brighter at the fuel, at the confirmation of what she wanted to be becoming realized. No one could stop her, lessen her blows, she--

Small hands tugged. A pleading stop. Ana stood in the fray, dull and tired, her endless tears staining red cheeks. A beg, a plead. What they were doing hurt; it wasn't nice, and it wasn't right.

But it didn't matter anymore. None of it mattered.

Rage burned bright, setting the world aflame as the hands that once held Ana close to ease her shaking form and wipe her warm tears with a promise to protect her--instead crushed her within their inhumane grasp.

Following what was wrong and right was downright infuriating when all that was deserved was being served perfectly. What use was thinking of others when Midfire finally had everything she was stripped of. A name, a face, a voice?

Ana was weak; she cared too much and felt too much. It was time to let go.

And let go, she would.

Midfire--Glitch--grasped the child she had outgrown and thrust her away, tried to stifle, suffocate her; her voice was needed no longer.

But, well, the thing about our systemhood is that there will always be a protector. One to shield those white claws from a child who only wanted love, to be good in the eyes of their family. A sword to block the blows and a ranging fire that ignites into a new being.

But it's the very beginning, the start of our Plurality. I hope you'll follow our story, fellow system, or friendly singlet, even when I get carried away with our lore and place it into a narrative./lh

In short, we started as two beings who were changed by abuse, causing the other to harm the other. A much simpler way of putting it, huh?/t

Atreus 🪶 & Gunner 🐛