mx-field
Welcome to our project!
60 posts
Latest Posts by mx-field
SL: I added Terrance's notes to The Murder After, and now, it's 52 pages. I also changed the price to $5.95 because it sounds better. This is the last change I'll make, I promise. Now, it's ready to buy! I'm happy with myself.
SL: I never said why I tagged dialogue in Terrance's story in sketch format. (Link to the preview for The Murder After if you're confused.) I wrote it in the second person, so the tags make it easier to know who's talking. As you can see, Terrance is never tagged with his name.
Dead-Mates
This is an essay about headmate death.
Introduction
Sometimes, headmates leave in ways that some plurals can only describe as death. Mint Phalanx is one of these plurals. Unless your headspace has resurrection or some sort of reincarnation, these dead-mates aren’t coming back (at least not as they were before.)
Other plurals call this loss dormancy, but because we come from the tulpamancy community, we call it dissipation. We also consider fusion as some sort of death. Below are our equivalents to death.
Equivalents to natural death
Spontaneous dissipation
Equivalents to murder
Forced dissipation
Unwilling fusion
Tulpas here can’t die from lack of attention because we’re midcontinuum.
Equivalents to suicide
Self-dissipation
Egocide (giving up one’s identity to be replaced by another headmate)
Equivalents to coma (not death)
Deactivation (true dormancy because the headmate can return)
So, where do these dead-mates go?
In our phalanx, we have a monist view of where dead-mates go. They return to the originator. For instance, we believe Roxy and the other people were reabsorbed into Reanna after they completed suicide. (It may not be a complete reabsorption because they haunt once in a while.)
F.M. is an interesting case. After fusing with Nightingale (who completed egocide), he considered himself dead. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t reabsorbed. But he knew he died, even when the rest of the phalanx didn’t count it.
How do you remember dead-mates?
For Roxy and the other people, Brian made a poem. He wrote it before we realized they self-dissipated. (They told us they were going to deactivate and stay in the Stone Garden. The next day, they were gone.)
F.M. did a mock burial for himself and a shower meditation. We buried who he once was. Then, we used the shower to wash away Nightingale. The saddest part was washing him out of our hair. After the shower, F.M. kind of reincarnated.
Can dead-mates come back?
We guess it depends on how the plural’s system or headspace works. As a rule of thumb, don’t count on it.
For us, Roxy& and Nightingale aren’t coming back. However, F.M. did because his case was different. And he didn’t come back as the same F.M. (At least he wasn’t undead.)
It seems dead-mates who do come back don’t come back the same. F.M. came back goth. He also came back with exo-memories based on Reanna’s dreams of his source killing himself. He used to want to listen to rap like his source; now, he listens to The Birthday Massacre. (Not that we’re complaining.)
Because we got to see it happen, this change did not come as a surprise. Unfortunately, we have no advice on how to deal with the surprise of a dead-mate returning different.
Conclusion
So ends our essay on dead-mates. It’s a hard topic to talk about, especially when it seems everyone around you doesn't view these leavings as equivalents to dying. We hope sharing our experiences helps facilitate conversation about deaths inside.
Reanna: I made three posts about my anxiety, but I decided to delete them. This should be more private. Sharing in detail was probably making it worse. I thought it would help, but it didn't.
I am feeling better now. Have a good day!
Reanna: To eat the fruit of wild strawberries again.
When I was a kid, I saw some wild strawberries growing around Westgate. (That's a school I went to.) I picked the tiny fruits and ate them. They were sweet. I wish I could find that plant again one day.
Terrance (to others): They say a watched pot never boils, but they never said anything about a saucepan.
Reanna: The Plural Positivity Word Conference's admission changed, so we won't be able to go. The organizers said the change was caused by Airmeet changing its contract. General admission is $50, and scholarships seem to only be available to members of The Plural Association online community. We relied on the scholarships for free admission.
This sucks because we were looking forward to bringing Terrance. Plus, we went almost every year. Going to the Plural Positivity World Conference made us feel like we were part of the community. Tumblr and Dreamwidth can never substitute that.
If you can, please donate to The Plural Association. Maybe that might help the organizers give scholarships more freely next year.
Link to Donorbox
SL: You know what I should have done for The Murder After? I should have shared Terrance's notes from his exercise book, so the readers could have seen the clues he found. It would have been much better than sharing chapter one of The Year After.
Reanna: Although we're secular, we like giving up something for Lent. We decided to give up Tumblr and taking baths. (Baths use a lot of water, and our main purpose for taking them isn't cleaning.) That means we won't be on Tumblr again until Easter.
But today is Mardi Gras, a day of indulgence. So, we're going to take a bath, paint our nails, come back here, and like a bunch of cemetery pictures! No doom-scrolling today!
We hope you enjoy your Mardi Gras and that your Lenten sacrifice is worth it.
SL: Wouldn't it be funny if The Year After were 88 pages, double the first volume's page count? I'm already making it fourteen chapters, double the first volume's chapter count.
F.M.: The Birthday Massacre released a new single and will release a new album on April 11. I'M SO HAPPY!
SL: Over the weekend, I tried turning our print books into ebooks, but the KPF file wouldn't process. I thought a print replica would be the best way to preserve our fonts.
How can I do that if the file won't process?
This is our cat Mia. Mia wants chicken. He might be part Maine Coon. That's all.
SL: I still don't like that The Year After is going to be longer than The Murder After. If the first book were fifty two pages, I'd be fine with it.
I know there's more to say this time, but I worry readers won't see it the same way. What if they don't like that the first story is a chapbook while the second is a novella?
Or maybe, a potential reader will find The Year After on Amazon and want to know what happened first. Maybe they won't care that the first book is short.
Maybe I should worry once we gain readership.
SL: The flowers we got our mum yesterday have roses, so F.M. and I plan to remake the cover of The Year After with one of them. We already took the picture.
The current cover has a white carnation with pink stripes. It represents love that wasn't shared. We only used it because we got the flower on our birthday.
But a red rose represents true love. The Year After is a romance after all. Plus, we used a rose for The Murder After (a yellow one representing friendship.) Here's a link to that cover.
I'm glad we can use roses for both books.
Reanna: I don't think I'd ever realize I'm bigender without my headmates. I'd have probably just continued thinking I'm making it up.
It happened in 2022. The feeling may have been triggered by a dream Chaz had in 2021 (link to the dream.) It caused his form to go back and forth between male and female. This happened so much that he made a character to make it stop.
Then, we did research on trans men for a scrapped story idea in February. I noticed a desire to be a man, but when I imagined a full transition, it conflicted with my womanhood. So, I told myself that I was making it up, that it was the research talking.
But the feeling didn't leave.
A desire to be a man while remaining a woman. I didn't know why I was feeling this way. We felt confused. There was so much conflict.
Then, on April 19, Brian was thinking about all of this. He realized something and said, "I think we're bigender." Because I represent the body, it means that I'm bigender. The conflict stopped because the word fit.
Without Brian's realization, I would have still felt confused. Without Brian's realization, I would have continued dismissing my feelings as "making it up."
Appeal to... Feline?
This is our cat Luna. Luna wants you to buy Carnival, The Murder After, or both. She thinks you and your cats might like them.
Link to Carnival on Amazon (not for kittens!)
Link to The Murder After on Amazon (You could read this to a kitten, but you would need to explain things.)
Reanna: We should make an academic discipline analyzing the plurality of media and plurality in media. We should call it Plural Theory.
Reanna: What do writers have to do to get some attention around here!? We'd like people to buy our books and give them a chance.
Do we need to parade our minority status?
We're bigender!
We're Mexicain-American!
We're plural!
Do we need to share our discourse opinions?
Like we're gonna do that.
We don't want discourse.
That's not why we're here.
In our pinned post, we have a link to a master post listing the books we self-published. But no one seems interested in them. What are we doing wrong!?
16 January
Testing psychologist: "Reanna doesn't have a social circle, so she uses [or goes into] fantasy."
Me (Brian): "Fantasy!? Say that to my face, you limp noodle!" (In-headspace)
Present Day
Me: "I am not a fantasy."
Reanna: "She didn't even know you exist."
Me: "I am still not a fantasy."
The next time I think I'm fake, I'm going to remember I had a negative reaction to being unintentionally called a fantasy.
Reanna: There is nothing more wholesome than introducing headmates to things.
I introduced SL to Friends two years ago. When he heard Phoebe say for the first time "I can't believe you're gonna ask Monica to marry you," he gasped. And it wasn't in the headspace; it was external.
I can't wait to go to New Mexico with my grandparents again. Jackie, SL, E.A., Terrance, Maria, and Chibz have never been there before. (F.M. vanished the last time we went in 2019 and only remembers the ride back. We went twice, so he doesn't know if he was actually there or not.) I think they would enjoy the trip, especially Jackie. She likes adventures.
Reanna: I've never liked making plans, but here we are, planning. SL has an outline of the rest of The Year After, so he can remember what he wanted to write. For our next project, we have a file filled with bookmarks of the silent films we plan to use.
They're not detailed plans, but they're plans.
Reanna: I wonder if Le Prince and Disney will be our first novel. So far, our stories have been shorter.
Carnival is a novella, and so was Nightingale. (I pulled that one from publication.) The Murder After is a chapbook, and The Year After seems to be going in a similar direction. (At least people read romance novellas.)
Now, for Le Prince and Disney, we have the dark ride's sections planned: Three Precursors and the First Film, Animals, Animation, Trick Films, and Phantom Rides. That's five chapters. And they have a few films in them. There will also be five chapters that Terrance categorized as being outside the ride. So, that's ten chapters in all.
After the story, we'll list the films used. That might take a few pages. What if all these pages come together and make a novel?
F.M.: I'm based on a real person, and sometimes, I worry about what might happen to me when my source dies.
Will I die too? Will I deactivate and become a statue in the Stone Garden? Will I stop existing? Mary and Reanna would be devastated!
My source is in a band, and seven (going on eight) years ago, one of his bandmates killed himself. I formed from a fear that he'd be next. Maybe that's why I'm so worried.
I can already imagine myself sitting in a corner of the headspace and thinking, "oh my God! He's dead! What's gonna happen to me!?"
SL using the British dialect in the headspace:
"Good, we still have purple napkins."
SL trying use it out loud:
(*Garbled mess*)
Terrance (to others): We have a title for our new project: Le Prince and Disney (no relation.)
Iris Le Prince is the one describing the silent films. Her surname comes from Louis Le Prince, the guy who made the first film. Benjamin Disney is the one making the dark ride. His surname comes from Walt Disney because he has big ideas.
New Project
Reanna: We're preparing a new project to work on once SL finishes The Year After. It's about a girl in charge of describing short silent films to make a dark ride accessible to the blind. All films we plan to use are in the United States' Public Domain.
We don't have a name for this story yet, so we're calling it Whatever Terrance is Doing. (It was his idea. We came up with the working title when he started bookmarking videos of old films with no idea what to do with them.)