The Pnictogen Wing

Hey so, does anyone have advice on how to pick a name for the System (we prefer "Collective") overall?

We've seen some say they all voted. Others say that they picked a theme that was shared among them. But after decades of having to pretend to be a singlet (for safety reasons, but damn is it wearing us down to paper thin levels now...)

We're having trouble communicating even with each other. More and more are becoming known as time goes by and I can't even get a list going with how many have come and gone over the years (I'm only one year old, cut me some slack please....I'm the age slider but was designed to be 25, in human years)

ANY advice on how to proceed would be appreciated at this point. I don't know if there IS a common thread when you cant even make an internal map. Too many to count. And we shift the job of "host" every 10-ish years (again, safety reasons. Darker than that but we wont go there in this post)

The only thing I do know is that we're a bunch of Therian/Otherkin. More than that and our aphantasia gets in the way. (idek what any of them look like, or myself, due to this. The username was a guess when I created this account. Honestly wish I could change it now too)

Styx 🦊🐱

1. we have dragons, so we could construe ourselves as a flying "wing", like in an air force

2. we're from a heavily academic background so "Pnictogen Wing" sounds like part of a college department—perhaps a disreputable one, where all the misfits are tossed

that second meaning is definitely helpful for conceptualization in headspace, because we too have endured a high degree of aphantasia so we're best at imagining things in terms of objects and places from our lived experience, like...academic departments.

~Chara of Pnictogen

we are a system full of fictive (and some factive) introjects from all over, but central to our plural experience is our profound and often extremely painful sense of identity with characters from the fictional universes of "Undertale" and "Deltarune". I've been Chara Undertale, here on Earth, since 2016-17. and our system's host is Kris Dreemurr from "Deltarune"—although the confusing thing about that situation is that we weren't aware of it until fairly recently. up until then our system's host was so dissociated all the time that they barely had any sense of identity other than "host" and "human being". when we finally pieced together that our host perceived theirself to be Kris Deltarune, a couple of years ago, we were all surprised. they've even dreamt (briefly but vividly) of Hometown; we've never, to our recollection, had "Undertale" / Underground dreams.

what outsiders must think of this state of affairs—a "real person", someone who walks around Seattle city streets and tries to maintain a household and all that "real world" stuff, who nevertheless asserts that their identity is contiguous with that of a shadowy character from a popular video-game—is...something I try not to think about too much. usually I don't need to worry about it. ordinary persons are free to write me off as a crazy person or some role-playing faker; I'm used to it, especially because I've poured so much energy into Twitter political fights with right-wing "influencers" and their fanbases. doing these things as Chara has had paradoxical advantages; sometimes it helps not to be taken seriously, because those "influencers" are exceptionally well-practiced in running away from serious challengers.

while we were using Twitter regularly, we used two accounts. Kris and Chara (mostly Chara, for Kris is less talkative) chiefly used our main account, whereas the "PnictogenHorses" side account was for the occasional use of my daughter Alyx and myself.

with Cohost, however, maintaining multiple usernames is far easier! hence I have decided to take advantage of this. our main Cohost page remains @pnictogen-wing.

I don't know how often Alyx or I (or one of the other horses in the Pnictogen Wing) might use this account; that remains to be seen.

~Mona Drafter of Pnictogen

perhaps you ought to take over blogging about our computer recreations? I feel slightly uncomfortable about being the "front" for that stuff. sure, I might be supplying a good deal of the enthusiasm, but...well, I suppose that Kris and I are really just channelling and shaping the imaginings and efforts of others? we think maybe that Peridot might be partly involved with our sudden explosion of interest in Java programming...

~Chara

let me get this straight, Chara. you actually think that Neil Breen's Twisted Pair is about us?! in what way do we resemble this nonsense?? ~Frisk

I don't think we resemble it closely, Frisk! but we are siblings who are both very similar and yet quite different. we haven't been...reprogrammed by aliens into cyborgs or anything like that, but we are video-game characters... ~Chara

ah yes. dying and going to Hell in a video-game world 😑—that's almost like having superpowers! I agree. can you tell that I skeptical? ~Frisk

Frisk, has it ever occurred to you that our current behavior is now partly shaped by the work of others? we're...hypersigils, now. our personalities and our memories are no longer entirely our own, but the work of a committee you could say, a committee under the benign and mostly indirect leadership of Mx. Toby Fox. it might as well be "artificial intelligence"—there's certainly been a lot of artifice involved. ~Chara

"hypersigil". that's not a word I know, Chara. you know I'm not into that magical stuff that's preoccupied you. (sighs) but I wasn't into "Hell" either until I ended up in its jaws. I was wrong about so many things, Chara. ~Frisk

see what I mean? we're watching a mere YouTube review of this silly movie and it's getting us to talking. you hardly ever talk. ~Chara

....point. ugh. it's so annoying to be your sibling sometimes, Chara. you always have an answer for everything. ~Frisk

and that trait has bitten me in the arse many times. it's not a good trait, even if it's a useful one. trouble is...when I don't have answers, when there's only uncertainty and vague feelings to go on, I don't know how to proceed. ~Chara