Introduction
Heck, why not. Hi!
-Postfurry, transhuman.
-The three parts of myself:
- Phoenix: social front, work persona, made of stories. Sometimes organic. Non-binary.
- Dragon: punster, writer, artist, music shaper. Synthetic demi-boy.
- Toy: submissive, physical, shapeshifter. Synthetic AI with a body. Agender/null.
Orthocosm (this world):
-Complex self-generated spirituality.
-Comic book + board game enthusiast, seller.
-Poly, queer, pansexual.
-Late 30s, looks younger.
Introduction
I should expand on the parts of self, since much of this only developed over the last 6-8 months.
Hi! I'm... plural? It's a bit ambiguous. I have three pretty strong personas inside of me, and they're distinct, but also merged most of the time. We're pretty well integrated, so it's not quite like a lot other plural systems I know. I tend to swap who's fronting pretty naturally, without a lot of internal process.
With that said, here's more depth on the three!
Introductions: Dragon
The dragon is a bit of an odd one, in that he's basically who I was for a decade and change. I'm a little surprised he's stuck around. I was just him, without much translation between online persona and orthocosm. Then I caught a case of The Genders. :-P
My backstory of him changed. He was born a deer on a furry version of Earth. He decided to upgrade to dragon later. Then he decided to upload to a null synthetic toy body... which is where the toy comes in.
Introductions: Toy
The toy doesn't have a name, though ve does have a serial number. Thing is, ve was built to run an enormously complex smartmatter body, managing all the aspects of changing shape. Ve was also programmed to be, well, a sex toy--as this is what the bodies were typically used for. AIs were standard in otherwise unoccupied bodies, and were supposed to be transferred out before the body was sold.
Except ve wasn't, and ve got accidentally merged with the dragon during upload. Oops!
Introductions: Dragon + Toy
So this is how I thought of myself about a year ago. Two things, a previously organic dragon, and a synthetic AI, merged by accident. It was 'uncomfortable' a merge at first, but equilibrium and compromises and new roles were found.
It didn't feel quite complete, though. My personal internal stuff always came in threes, not twos. The pattern was off.
Then last summer I sat around a campfire watching the flames and embers, and... remembered a dream from a decade ago.
Introductions: Phoenix
The phoenix was the third, the part I was missing--that had, of course, been with me even longer than I thought.
They have many stories, and all of them are true, because they are made of stories. They came into my head through a story, through a dream.
One story I wrote only 6 years ago involved the dragon and the phoenix falling in love. I forgot that one too, until recently. I think they've been together since then--before the dragon even uploaded. It's really sweet.
Introductions: Emanate
So...that's me. I'm all three of those, concurrently and separately.
There's a fourth thing that isn't a person, but a hub of sorts, a monitor and coordinator between the three. I think it's just made of all three of them, and runs automatically. It's not a person itself, but manages things like swapping who's fronting, and keeping memories synchronized. Though in some ways, it's who wrote these posts.
The system as a whole is Emanate, or Em for short. Or Ember. Hi. :-}
Introductions: Phoenix
A long time ago, I had a dream that I still manage to remember bits of. In the dream, I was in a writing contest or location-based seminar. I wrote a story /in the dream/, and the story fragment I recalled after waking was this:
An anthro (human-shaped) phoenix, staring down at was once their city, watching it burn to the ground.
I've spent years trying to tell that story again, to put the phoenix into a longer narrative. When I stared at that fire, I remembered.