Anonymous User asked: Tell us a bit about your system!
With pleasure!
We are the CERES system, although these days thanks in part to @makyo we prefer to think of ourselves collectively as a Clade, and we'll use that term instead of system from here on.
Although we can trace headmates existing back literal decades, we only really came to understand what plurality is or that we are in 2019, after a friend became an advocate of some note. The clade has varied wildly in number, but currently as of this post (7/31/23) has stabilized around 9 distinct personalities/alters/people in here.
If'n you're not sure who's fronting, you can:
A) just call us Ceres. We always respond to it, and collectively They/them pronouns work for us.
B) just call us Andréa. Some of the system prickles at that but it's our meat name and we respond to it.
C) ask us to look at our hands with our eyes closed. This entire system is therian, so don't ask it just works.
A list of all of us, with things like species and pronouns, after the break!
Here's the rundown! Each member has associated emojis that they use to identify themselves, and these descriptions will include species and pronouns as well. There are in addition some headmates that either integrated or disappeared, but that's a subject for another chost, we think.
💚🐺⚙️Hewwo, I'm Andréa C Mason, central "primary" for the CERES Clade. My pronouns are she/they/it, I am bisexual, and I am an unholy mix of flesh and metal in a vaguely coyote shell. In some ways I am the most continuous version of "us" that has existed, although post [REDACTED] in 2015 I became much more "me". I am the most social and promiscuous of the Clade by far. The wolf emoji is largely a holdover from the wolf days, back when my species was generic "wolf" or mexican gray wolf. Unless otherwise specified, it's usually me fronting here or at the very least a blend with someone else. Somewhere along the line I picked up the title of "girl dad", which is a loooong story.
The Clade includes three other "primary" fronters:
💜🦝🗡Jane Gloria Wick. She/Her. Raccoon. Bisexual, but tends to heavily favor men. In-fiction Assistant and then eventually Chief Director at KDARC. Also known as The Matron Saint of Blades and Little Miss Machiavelli. Jane split from Andréa at the peak of our grief over losing our maternal grandmother and our father 5 months later. She is as central to the system as Andréa is, despite efforts in the past attempting to cease existing or integrate. There was a long time we were known as Jane in our offline lives, and our mother still calls us that. Cold, calculating, and sly as hell, but she has the capacity for great tenderness and compassion and despite her blunt manner and endless plotting, she does not consider her deep emotional register a weakness. She is to a fault the most "femme" in the Clade by a mile.
💖🐉⚡️Karinne Rose Ceprano. She/They. Ahamkara but also sometimes a rat, Shamo chicken, monitor lizard, etc. Pansexual. Supervillain and reality-distorting dragon. Fond of Hockey, minivans, and donuts. Technically she began as a karenclone, which is to say to those less familiar with the korps that she began her life as some horny twinning bullshit with a friend of ours' hivemind of dragons. She quickly evolved into much MORE than that, and claims she is an Ahamkara from Destiny 2 that did the impossible and burrowed into reality. Prone to excess and grandioseness, her secret thrill is projecting suburban mom energy, for some reason. Also into macro. Currently going through a vore arc. Lot going on there.
💛🐈⚔️Miranda "Mia" Blackstar. She/her. Mostly goes by Mia. Lesbian, Lynx, Knight, occasional necromancer. Also, pure chaos gremlin. When she showed originally, she was VERY different than her current iteration. She used a 🛰 emoji, started out as an ocelot, and was very scatterbrained. She shifted to lynx and suddenly had a much stronger sense of self, became more coherent (to a fault). Still, she spent a lot of time as not much more than a shitposty gremlin, just barely above a feral lynx. Eventually, tired of being treated as a joke, last summer she decided to lean fully into personhood. She changed her appearance, ditching the horns and synthetic metal left arm of the other three primaries, and developed a huge affinity for knights and huge swords. She's become the Clade's drive for self-improvement, and is not ever one to hold back.
Mia gets two paragraphs because she truly is an anomaly. No other cat headmates have persisted. Our body is VERY allergic to cats. Our core representation has always leaned canid or draconic, and "cat" is in some ways contradictory to us on a fundamental level. Yet, she persists, and has evolved into a rock solid part of our being, as firm as the muscles she dreams of and the armor she dons herself in.
Other headmates are:
🖤🦡🗞Jack Haveck. He/him. Badger. Mostly goes by chosen last name. Asexual. Journalist. Pacifist. Biggest "dad" energy in the clade behind Andréa. Haveck chooses in any fictional context to represent himself as transmasc. Apt, given that when he showed up, he used she/they pronouns. One of the earlier headmates to make themselves known after we came to understand plurality. No joke, formed after we reread TRANSMETROPOLITAN. Our sense of justice and morality, our endless curiosity, and a manifestation of a version of us that came out as gay and purused journalism as a career. His taste is almost exclusively in men, but in largely romantic and cuddling senses. Bordering on egregious NYC sterotype. Huge baseball fans. Love da mets, baby let's go mets
💙🦘📼Alexandra "Lex" Stone. She/her. Kangaroo. Metafictional archivist. Aromantic. Technically the oldest headmate, but it's complicated. In many ways a snapshot of us at 17. Originally a character named Alyce Wildwood, she was a version of us that we so desperately wanted to be, at a time when we thought transitioning wasn't a thing that was even possible, due to basically no queer friends or education. Alyce was a dragon, then a sea serpent, and a gunslinger, cool and edgy in the way only a young furry teen who just finished reading the Dark Tower series could make them. Alyce surfaced as a headmate proper in 2019ish, but caved under my expectations for her and fled, something I still beat myself up about. Eventually, she resurfaced, and decided to go back to being ourselves at 17, what a version of us transitioning at the time we first understood we weren't a boy and never really wanted to be. Eventually also settled on kangaroo as a better fit for herself. She's currently set her age at 19, because being a minor in a clade full of horny adults was too awkward a situation.
❤️🔥🎱Chase Cassidy Laine. They/Them. Not a boy. Not a girl. Not a cat. Fisher for species, fond of synthesizers, bikes and exploring. Often lumped in with the "guys" in the system and very much closer to them than the feminine, but largely identifies as agender. Mustelid all the way through, and also identifies a lot with Pine Martens. Along with Jane wishes that the body was a lot shorter than it is. Technically Chase has been around a very long time, tied up inexplicably and inextricably in our dissociation and disconnects, but only became a true headmate in early 2022. They can and will "kick" headmates out into a weightless space if need be, and pictures themselves often floating in headpsace with climbing rope to keep themselves tethered. Has lately become very fond of Seras, our newest headmate. Good bean. Perenially stressed. Not. A. Cat.
🩶🐐Harvey Addler, he/they. Goat. Gay as fuck, only really interested in men. Presents himself as transmasc in fiction for personal reasons, much like Haveck. Began existence as a tabletop character in a LancerRPG game, but through the way things get muddy sometimes and a bunch of goading from our wife, became a full-blown headmate. Cocky as hell. Our love of digital spaces and the concept of AI (at least as it was before the current state of shit ruined everything), very much trans/posthumanist as well. Best buds with Mia, both in the tabletop and the headpsace, although half the time it's her looking out for him. Knew how to code once. Forgot most of it.
🧡🦨🛩Seras Frame-Gestalt. She/her. Skunk. Pansexual. The newest member of the CERES clade, who coalesced after finishing @Makyo's post-self cycle. Bubbly, outgoing, very outdoorsy and adventurous. In many ways a summation of the rest of the clade, and condensed version of us, despite appearing in many ways to be an inverse of us. Not too long after her formation Seras became obsessed with mecha, boats, submarines, and planes. Very much into search and rescue stuff. Andréa is the car girl, Seras covers everything else "driver" or "pilot" related. Considers Harvey close as kin, and has very strong feelings for Chase. Loves orange, both as a color and as a flavor. Easily bought off with orange creamsicles. Still getting her bearings, but happy to be here.
And that's everyone! If you have any questions about art we have of us, previous clade/system members, or other plural related things, feel free to ask!
