Poems and writings

Our experience with fictives (while also being fictionkin)

Words: 833

Me? Talking about being plural on main? Wow. Never thought we’d see the day. Title is a work in progress, just roll with it. But it’s something we’ve been wanting to talk about for some time now, as someone who is both fictionkin and has fictive headmates.

We’re part of a plural system, and although we’re not as fictive heavy as many systems here, we have our share of them. For us, fictives usually start forming as a way of coping with stress and/or extreme situations (aka trauma), but usually split quickly as a way to dealing with the situation.

Our first fictive split while we were working at our fast food job in the summer. We were exhausted, angry, anxious, and scared, and we didn’t have any headmates to deal with these emotions. Usually it’s Orion, our primary protector, who dealt with anger, but at that point he had mostly healed from the anger he had split from, and just wanted to move on with our life. So, after days and weeks of exhaustion, we split involuntarily. The day is a bit hazy, but from what I (I don’t remember who was fronting exactly, maybe the host?) remember I got so angry at something I snapped and started dissociating. I guess my mind decided that we needed someone to manage those negative emotions, that anger and that stress, but we didn’t really have “time” to form a new identity from nothing. I was then yanked back, and someone else took control.

We are pretty bad at staying co-con back then, but we realized that none of the headmates accounted was the one piloting the body. We tried taking control again, but he snapped internally, and we weren’t able to argue. From this split came Leo, a Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fictive. Why him? I guess our brain latched into any character that was good at dealing with people, someone confident. Maybe too confident. He’s arrogant, he’s snarky, honestly he can punch where it hurts.

From that moment on, we’ve split more fictives. Most of the time, because I guess whatever part of my brain manages our system and splits, it’s because we need someone to split for a specific reason and we need them to form quickly. Leo for anger management, Angel to take showers, Kinger is more like a parent figure/responsible adult, Vance for social situations, Caine for mood boosting.

When a new fictive splits/arrives/is created, they have the option (is given or they decide for themself) to change their name. Sometimes they take the chance, sometimes they don’t. Most of the time they are content with who they are, but Vance and Leo, for example, wanted to detach from their sources.

Vance was embarrased, and had strong opinions about the creator of the show (Hazbin Hotel), and didn’t want anything to do with it. So he hates when people treat him like he’s nothing more than his source. He’s not really in the fandom, but he’s writing a fanfiction with memories of his source.

Leo, on the other hand, wanted to forget about his source, because to him, his source was real. Its brothers were real, it was all real, and it hated it. It remembered its source trauma as if it really had happened. Because of this, he can’t watch his source, or read about it, without having a panic attack.

Our Kinger fictive (more or less) created Caine. He was his son in his source, and he missed him so much he needed him with him. They only front with eachother, never alone. It’s kind of charming.

From what we’re starting to gather, fictives split, in our system, to manage something stressful or that we’re not familiar with. Something other headmates are not available for. We need someone with a “formed” personality to exist in that moment, and so a fictive splits.

On the other paw, the body, the core, and the host is fictionkin. None of the other headmates mentioned is also a fictionkin, maybe because he’s the host and the core and their fictional identity is only one of many species. Only what shapes their body and mind, not memories. At first, this fictionkin also had memories of a past life, but when Orion, our primary protector, first split, we believe he did so from that fictionkin identity.

That watcher identity took its own mind and consciousness and transformed it into something new, something different.

And that’s what we believe the main difference between our fictionkin identity and fictive’s identities falls. Both the host and the primary protector are fictionkin because they split one from another. The rest are all fictives, taking the form and personality and history from fictional characters. Fictives usually have memories, strong memories, of their own story, their own lore, they had a life before becoming part of our system. But fictionkin headmates? They just are. Usually a species.

So yeah. Being fictional rocks, actually.