In-System Relationships

In-System Relationships

Sorry this took so long. We’ve been really excited about this one. Next comic will be about signs that were missed. Bonus points if you can guess the sources of any of our fictives (I think one is pretty obvious if you know the source).

Unrelated to DID: My Very Good Friend @petticoatedmouse made a Discord server for people who like sewing. No particular level of experience required.

Here is the link:

[Image description:

Note: Their identities are listed because they are holding their flags in the comic.

First image, panel 1: A grey background with two people, Jenny (she/her), a fictive, who is demisexual and pansexual, and Omara (ze/zir), who isn’t an introject, but based parts of their appearance on a video game character. Omara is sapphic and has an unlabeled gender. The caption reads “In-system relationships… …quite a complex phenomenon.”

Panel 2: A pink background with the outline of a red heart and the captions, “So complex, in fact, that we can even feel the attraction on the outside. But only if the alter experiencing attraction is fronting or co-conscious.”

Panel 3: A grey background showing Worlds (she/they), a lesbian introject (who is also a vampire), and Kelly (she/her), a bisexual factive, holding hands. The caption says, “Sometimes, there are very much like out-of-system relationships.”

Panel 4: Worlds, whose bat wings are now visible, is flying through space with Kelly on their back. The captions are in white boxes and they read, “Other times, not so much” and “Yeah, I don’t think singlets typically fly through space (our innerworld is in space) on their partner’s back.”

Second image, panel 1: A sea foam green background with the words, “Of course, not every headmate wants this. We just have a lot of in-system relationships.”

Panel 2: A stage with a keyboard, microphone, and part of a drum set visible with a grey background is shown. Two alters are standing on it, Bay (she/her), a fictive who is ambiamorous and omnisexual, is standing by the piano looking at Sodium, and Sodium (she/her), an ambiamorous lesbian, is standing by the mic looking at Bay. The caption says: “They can be just as complex as out of system relationships… (yes, we have a stage in headspace where we perform whatever we’re listening to IRL).”

Panel 3: Captions say, “…and just as full of love.” and “While we have several polyamorous and ambiamorous headmatss, we don’t have any throuples or other with more than two partners. Systems that do have these are absolutely valid though.” Sodium is shown sitting on a grey bench on a grey background with another factive, Radium (she/her), who is demiromantic, demisexual, and trixensexual.

Panel 4: A sea foam green background with the caption, “They are very important in our system. When partners spend time together, it improves our overall mental health.”

Third image, panel 1: A sea foam green background with the caption, “This gets more complicated with introjects. Sodium and Radium are factives from the same source, but they aren’t dating IRL, which is a bit awkward. And yes, it’s valid to have factives who are dating IRL. We just don’t have any.”

Panel 2: Caption: “With fictives, it’s a little different. You may be fan favorites or even canon. Or you may be an unpopular ship or not canon (valid as long as there are no problematic elements) (no, they’re not getting married, this is how they dress in source).” It shows Jules (he/they), a bi demiboy, and Alicia (she/they), a pan girl (both fictives) on a grey background, looking at each other.

Panel 3: Caption: “And yes, it’s also valid to have fictives who aren’t dating their source-partner. Whether that’s because you don’t have an introject of them…” Cristina (she/they), who is pan, is shown on a grey background, saying, “If we had an introject of him, and he asked me out, I’d say yes.”

Panel 4: Caption: “…or because they’re simply not attracted to them (although in this case, we don’t have an introject of him either- thank goodness).” Eugenia (she/any), who is pan, and Mercedes (she/they/he), who is non-binary and straight (we chose to include that because they aren’t cis), are shown on a gray background saying, “Ewwwwww!”

Fourth image, panel 1: A sea foam green background with the caption: “Of course, in-system relationships aren’t for everyone.”

Panel 2: Rhombus (they/them), who is gendervoid, agender, and aroace, is shown on a grey background, with a caption and arrow next to them that reads, “Not interested in any kind of relationship.”

Panel 3: Three alters, Inflexible (they/them) (introject), who is lesbian, oriented aroace, and bellusaroace, Grey (they/he) (introject), who is non-binary and aroace, and Jayde (they/them), who is oriented aroace, pomosexual, and liagender, are shown on a grey background. Caption: “All three are interested in QPRs, and all three have experienced tertiary attraction towards people in the outerworld, but they are not interested in each other.”

Panel 4: A sea foam green background with the caption, “Especially when what you want is on the outside.”

Panel 5: The hosts, Ao (ey/eir) and Ruby (she/her) (captions say to check our first comic for their labels because there are a lot of them)!are shown on a grey background. The caption next to Ao has an arrow and says, “Has feelings for a singlet.” The caption next to Ruby has an arrow and says, “Has feelings for a different singlet.”

End image description]

New comic! This is a collaboration with the wonderful @sketchbook-stars!

Our story is on the left, and theirs is on the right.

Some notable people on my side of the comic include:

@milady-mothman - the best friend in the first panel!

@gagtodeath - the cousin in the third panel!

@andrewjacksondestroyer - our very close friend from the fourth panel!

We’ve been trying to publish more of these, but we keep wanting to start new comics instead of finishing old ones (yes, we have ADHD, lol).

Uhhh so anyway, hope you enjoy!

[Image ID: Note: There are two stories told simultaneously in this comic. The story on the left will be described first, and then the story on the right.

Begin ID: Panel 1: The background is sea foam green. There is some text near the top that reads, “Coming out to our best friend as a system was a huge deal for us. They’re super supportive and we love them very much (platonically). Underneath that, there is a gray text message bubble coming from the left that reads, “who am I speaking to?” Beneath that, there is a blue text message bubble that reads, “Ao and Ruby, thanks for asking.”

Panel 2: The background is sea foam green. There is one block of text near the top that reads, “We came out to another friend using memes and a comic we made on Super Storyboarder.” Beneath that, there is another block of text that reads, “She thought the memes were funny and seemed to really appreciate them.”

Panel 3: The background is sea foam green. There is a block of text at the top of the page that reads, “Coming out to our cousin was a pretty big deal. We came out to her after the concert of an artist we both love. We had brought up DID before, but we would always talk about our ‘friends,’ who were a system (hint: it was us). She’s always been super understanding and even follows us on Simply Plural now.” Beneath that is a drawing of two people on a dock across from some land with trees and houses. The water around the dock is reflecting an orange color, like the sunset. The person on the right has short black hair, peach skin, and is wearing a white shirt with long sleeves and white pants. There is a white box next to them that says, “Coltun (they/them), one of two alters who has a super deep voice while fronting (the only one of the two that we knew about at the time). They are saying, “Did you hear the change in my voice before?” The person on the left has long red hair, peach skin, a black shirt with long sleeves, and blue pants. She is saying, “Yeah, I was wondering if that was you.”

Panel 4: The background is sea foam green. There are two blocks of text at the top. The first one says, “One of our biggest system coming outs was the first time we ever told anyone. Ao knew of 8 alters at the time (including eirself), but thought ey was imagining them (spoiler alert: ey wasn’t). The block of text beneath it says, “We had heard of DID before, but knew almost nothing about it.” Beneath that, there are two people sitting on a gray ledge with their feet on a sidewalk. The one on the right has long brown hair, peach skin, a neutral facial expression, light brown eyes, thick black square glasses, a red flannel jacket with long sleeves, blue pants, and red shoes. There is some text next to him that says, “Corey (he/him), co-host of our friend’s system at the time.” He is saying, “I’m a system, which means I am many people in one body.” The person on the left, Ao, has peach skin, reddish-brown hair, a shocked facial expression, blue eyes, a gray hoodie with a darker gray pocket and hood, black shorts and black shoes. Ey is saying, “That sounds like what I’ve been experiencing!”

Begin second story ID:

First panel: The background is a warm shade of pink. There is a block of text near the middle that says, “we never planned to come out to any of our friends initially, being afraid of being judged or misunderstood. yet it turned out to not be so bad.” Beneath that, there is a smiling person who is the same color as the background with shoulder-length messy hair.

Second panel: The background is a warm shade of pink. At the top of the panel, there is some text that says, “Yet after a while, one of our hosts was tired of hiding it all, and told some of our friends.” A block of text below that on the right side of the panel reads, “They were extremely accepting.” There are two people in the panel. Both are the same color as the background. The first has completely black eyes, shoulder-length somewhat messy hair, two antlers, a smile, a bit of sweat on their face, a pointy tail, a turtleneck sweater under an open jacket with cuffed sleeves, and pants. “Lucid” is written above their head. There is a tiny speech bubble next to them with an ampersand in it. The person on the right has short hair with bangs that cover their eyes, a slightly open mouth, lines next to their face indicating emotion, and a hoodie with long drawstrings. Next to them is a small speech bubble with a check mark and an exclamation point.

Panel 3: The background is a warm shade of pink. At the top of the panel, there is a block of text that says, “and on the inverse, we helped our partner realize that they were also a system.” Beneath that, there is more text that says, “it warmed our hearts to know that they trusted us with this concept and we helped them come to terms and realize it.” There are two people below that. Both are the same color as the background. The one on the left is looking at the one on the right. They are winking. They have shoulder-length hair, a smile, a braided band in their hair, and two pairs of wings- one on their head and one on their back. The word above their head is Civ. There is some text above their head that says, “y’know, how did you NOT realize??” The person on the right is looking at the person on the left. Their mouth is open. They have chin-length hair, a hoodie, horns, and a pointy tail. The word above their head is Colix. There is some text above them that says, “..IM A LITTLE STUPID-“

Panel 4: The background is a warm shade of pink. The text at the top says, “We don’t regret being open about our system one bit.” The text beneath it says, “It might have caused us some pain, but we have made so many more good memories since that day.” Beneath that, there are two people holding hands. They are sitting on green grass and the background behind them (underneath the text) is crimson. The person on the left has peach skin, shoulder-length dark crimson hair, black eyes, a smile with a fang in it, a red shirt with long sleeves and a white collar and cuff, crimson pants, a dark crimson bat wing on the left side, black shoes, and a red rose on the right side of their hair. There are three small speech bubbles on the left side of them. The top one has a red heart, the middle one has an orange flower, and the bottom one has a yellow star. The person on the right is looking at them. They have thin black square glasses, light blue-green skin, light blue-green hair that sticks out more and is a little longer than the hair of the other person, a smile, a darker blue-green shirt with a frill on the front under a darker blue-green jacket buttoned at the bottom with a collar, darker blue green pants, and a furry tail the same color as their skin. On the right side of their face is a dark blue-green patch. They do not have an eye there.

End ID]

Delay

Hey y'all, We have family visiting, so it will likely take us a while to post our next comic. Fear not, it has been started, but the subject matter alone means it will take a while. So yeah. Expect that eventually. - Ao

Tie-Breaker

And the winner was... actually a tie...

Yeah, now we're going to do a run off. Though we will probably do the runner-up after this one.

So...

Trick or treat!!

-🦝

TREAT!

(Image description: A very messy grey raccoon paw holding a candy in an orange wrapper. The candy is wrapped like a Tootsie Roll, but square. The background is a light sea foam green. End ID).

About Us

Hey y'all! We're HeadOfSeaFoam, and we have DID! As we mentioned in our bio, we are going to be making comics about our experiences as a system and posting them here. We're also going to be posting some general DID/OSDD stuff. Here's some stuff about us and our page:

Asks: - If you have any questions about our comics or DID/OSDD in general, feel free to ask! We actually enjoy answering questions about this stuff. - Please remember that we cannot diagnose anyone and we are not medical professionals, though we have read the DID section of the DSM-V and have had to do... too much research on this to get people to listen to us. So we do know what we’re talking about, but we are still not comfortable diagnosing anyone. - The only DID/OSDD related stuff we are not okay with being messaged about are trauma stuff, unless we specifically say we're okay with talking about a particular part of our trauma (this is for obvious reasons), and syscourse (because it is everywhere and we are so tired of hearing about it). We do have a syscourse stance, we just don’t want to talk about it.

Other Stuff: - We might have the name of a random piece of media as a tag in a post. If we do, it's probably the source of the person who made the post or someone mentioned in the post. - We do have factives, some of whom have the same name as their sources. Unless said factive is a deceased historical figure, has a super common first name (in that case, we just won't say the source/last name), or something like that, we will not be using their name if it is the same as their source's. We will likely use a periodic table element that is somewhat connected to them. Example: if we had an introject of someone named Theophania Indigo (just a random super uncommon name), we could go with Thorium (Th), Titanium (Ti), or Indium (In).

-Singlets (people who are not systems) can absolutely interact/follow.

We hope you enjoy our comics! :D