Identity on the System

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The nature of the System invites playing around with identity. With few caveats, it is a place for joyously celebrating the myriad ways that individuals lean into identity rather than prescriptivist approaches.

Queer normativity

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Plurality and forking

Note: in this section, as with elsewhere on the wiki and in canon, plural systems use a lowercase 's', while the System as a computer housing uploaded consciousnesses uses a capital 'S'.

Post-Self as a setting has found much traction with plural folks, however unintentionally. The concept of individuation leading to vastly different personalities and approaches to the world feels good to a great many systems.

Within the System, though, the conceptual scale of plurality and medianity still exists. The majority of clades, even those who are highly individuated, do still consider themselves as a group of related singular individuals, leaning on a conceptualization closer to family than system.

This is not to say that cladistics is unappealing to plural systems, and there have been several approaches that have fallen out of this over the history of the System.

Plural clade

By far the most common approach is a plural clade. This situation crops up when all cladists within the clade maintain their plural identity. This is particularly common in taskers and trackers, though even dispersionistas will keep this attachment to their plural/median identity, though they are more likely to allow their systems to change and grow over time.

Front-focused forks

Within dispersionista and tracker clades, it is also somewhat common to see instances of forks for those who front. For instance, in a system with three individuals, there are likely to be at least three cladists within the clade at any given time, where each cladist is more likely (though far from guaranteed), to have a more consistent identity at front. Within tracker clades, these cladists are likely to reconcile at regular intervals, or at least maintain regular communication, to allow the system to maintain some coherency.

Reinforced individuality

In some instances, particularly where there are in-system relationships (romantic, adversarial, etc), some clades will fork with the intent for a cladist to individuate toward a certain system member/headmate as a primary fronter to allow those members to step away from each other. With intent playing a role in forking as well as the reinforcing nature of repeated forking, this is feasible with a bit of work, though the individual cladists still often remain plural.

Splitting

Some plural systems may wind up splitting. That is, the individual system members will, intentionally or otherwise, wind up as singular individuals within a clade. In these cases, other system members/headmates do not disappear so much as go dormant. It is important to recognize that this is not the de facto approach to plurality sys-side, and remains relatively rare. Stories such as "Cowboy" remain outside the norm, though they are absolutely still valid.

Merge-induced plurality

In the case of trackers or dispersionistas merging up-tree instances/cladists who have diverged over time, some cladists may find that they wind up in situations where two or more identities exist within them due to that level of individuation. This is more likely in taskers than dispersionistas due to the latter's focus on individuation and the joy of letting identity drift, leading to the relative protectiveness of what one has become. An example of this would be Sasha née True Name merging E.W. and May Then My Name in Mitzvot leading to the various identities coming to and fading from front over time.

Species

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