Questions

Q: What does "don't make me add another rule" mean?

A: The phrase "don't be the reason for a new rule" is common in the codes of conduct of Mastodon servers. It doesn't mean "if the server is inaccessible, you can't ask for rules requiring accommodations" or "if you asked a question that resulted in a new rule being added, that wasn't okay".

It means "don't cause problems that require me to add new rules to prevent behavior like yours".

It's in reference to people who do things that should normally be seen as common sense or adult maturity not to do. For example, the policy against political doomspiraling is influenced by people I've seen in servers who have done that kind of thing and caused problems because of it.

Q: Why do you discourage venting heavily yet still have vent channels?

A: Venting is something where, while I think it can cause problems if done in a certain way or to a certain extent, is still important for people to be able to do to some capacity, and that would naturally come up in a trauma-centric server. After having familiarized myself with what is and isn't considered reasonable in Discord servers, I think I can handle moderating some venting within what is reasonable, so long as there are disclaimers that excessive venting isn't to be encouraged.

Some environments that are very heavy on venting, including trauma-related spaces, can become toxic due to people constantly airing their negative emotions and either never talking about positive ones, being very fragile in terms of their ability to express positive or neutral sentiments, and/or being next-to-impossible to help or calm down.

Furthermore, while it's important to have spaces where you can vent, it's also important to have spaces where you can socialize without venting, or without making venting a big part of your personality. Plural Cove is meant to be the latter kind of place. Talking a lot about your trauma in a trauma-centric space isn't necessarily making venting a major part of your personality.

I also believe venting can be subjective. For example, when people ask questions like "how is everyone doing?" in general chat, my answer is sometimes something like "A little stressed from medical appointments". This is far from a traumadump or a doomspiral, and it is an honest answer to the question, but it could be considered a vent to an extent.

Since this is a server for trauma survivors, some amount of venting is normal to expect and to allow. However, not all discussion of trauma or heavy topics is venting. That's why there are vent channels separate from the trauma channels.

Q: What is this server's policy on non-sharing self-shippers or fictionkin who don't want to be around doubles?

A: I personally don't want to have to moderate problems that are caused by people who can't put a certain layer of distance between themselves and fiction, or who are so jealous of their partners, even their fictional ones, that the very concept that they could be with someone else causes them to dissociate, or who feel the same way about certain aspects of their identity.

Therefore, fictionkin and fictives need to be okay with the possibility of doubles in the server. While I understand that you can feel very, very strongly connected to your source as a fictionkin, you need to be able to think of doubles as AU versions of your source and be able to handle how it makes you feel if someone is a "different" version of you.

The same goes for self-shippers and doubles of their F/Os. While this server isn't specifically geared towards self-ship, there are channels for it, so this policy applies to them.

If you feel excluded by this policy, there are plenty of other servers on Discord that can be found on Disboard that will make the accommodations for you that you desire. This server, however, is not the place for you.

Q: Aren't your policies about accountability impossible for traumagenic systems to follow?

A: Some systems or people with mental illness treat "system accountability" or "take responsibility for your mental health" as meaning "don't have amnesia or mental illness". This is not how I see it. I see it as meaning "learn to manage your amnesia or mental illness".

You are a person in this world who is either an adult or learning to be an adult, and if you're not an adult yet, you shouldn't be considering joining this server. Adults have to manage their lives, even if it's extremely difficult or even unfair (which "difficult" is not always the same as). This includes managing things caused by disability and trauma.

The results of disability and trauma are not your fault, but they are your responsibility, and I moderate my server by this principle. If you consider that harsh, then consider that life is harsh and adulthood is harsh, but yet we are adults who must rise to the occasion of this life, no matter the circumstances, and we are all the only ones responsible for ourselves in the end.

Q: What is willogenic and willomancy?

A: A willogenic system is one that was created on purpose. That is, someone who was not plural decided to become plural. The ways this is achieved may vary, and this is not intended to be a willogenic-centric space (check our other server Plural Dreams for that), but some people who tried to bring imaginary friends to life as a child and found that they became members of their system might consider that a willogenic experience.

Willomancy is the practice of creating headmates or a system on purpose. The term "tulpamancy" is often used for the same thing and it is older. "Tulpamancy" as a term is often criticized for being appropriative, and while it isn't actually a Buddhist practice like some claim, it IS a spiritual practice, and most people who are creating headmates on purpose aren't doing this spiritual practice, they're doing something else. In the current day, that something else is called willomancy.

Q: What is shipcourse and "profiction", and why do you have problems with the whole thing while being profiction-aligned?

A: Shipcourse is, in the simplest terms, a type of fandom discourse that originally was about whether or not it was acceptable to ship certain ships if they contained elements such as abuse or incest. People labeled themselves "anti-shippers" or "antis" if they opposed those ships.

It quickly turned into a politically-charged debate in which ships and shipping were seen as extensions for the entirety of fiction or even of free speech, and "proship" - the side in favor of the ships to which exception was taken - became the side of anti-censorship and anti-harassment views.

Anti-shippers are usually in favor of harassment, hostile to others and each other, given to self-policing, not okay with extreme horror themes or extreme kinks that my system enjoys, and generally unpleasant people, so I would be considered "anti-anti", which is synonymous with "proship". "Profiction" is another synonym for "proship".

However, many people who use the proship label have problems, such as not engaging with fiction outside of fandom media, actively eschewing critical thinking, and thinking literally everything in fiction is okay, including actual Nazi propaganda.

Furthermore, people on both sides have a bad habit of viewing "proship vs anti" as a binary that literally everyone fits into, with some going so far as to say "one of the only binaries that is actually true", with no hint of self-awareness. I do not align myself with this kind of thinking at all, and I therefore dislike that I find it necessary to use shipcourse labels to signal the stances by which I moderate my server.

If you identify as a proshipper, you are more than welcome to join the server, but if you're the kind of person who slots EVERYONE into proship or anti, you may clash a bit with the management's way of thinking. If you don't identify as a proshipper, you should understand that this server considers itself aligned with their beliefs, and if you don't like the "connotations" of a term like "profiction" (a common synonym for "proship"), you won't get along in this server.

While I don't personally have a problem with whatever types of fiction you consume, I restrict discussions on certain types of concent due to legal concerns, namely concerning underage characters. A lot of other types of dark fictional content, however, can be discussed in the server.

Q: What is the policy on discussions of fictional or in-system incest?

A: I don't have a problem with it, but I know not everyone will want to see it, and this isn't meant to be a "dark fiction"-centric server.

Mentions of fictional incest are okay, especially in your personal channels or the darker topics channel, but you're encouraged to also discuss other topics too.

In-system relationships that feature elements such as incest are allowed to be talked about freely in the server, as this server does not equate the type of reality that systems operate on as being the same type of reality as the real world.

Q: What do you mean, "a different type of reality"? Isn't there just fiction and reality?

A: Many people online have constructed a binary of "fiction" and "reality". They believe everything in the entire world fits neatly into one of those two categories, and that those two categories are completely separate all the time.

This is not the way I see it, and you might take issue with me if you adhere too rigidly to this binary. While I don't think writing about committing a crime is the same thing as doing it in the real world, I do think that some things are in gray areas between fiction and reality.

Plurality and alterhumanity are in that gray area to me. While members of a system are real, they are not PHYSICALLY real in the same way that external people are, and their timelines did not happen in this life. They are therefore a different KIND of reality than outerworld reality. The same goes for the reality of somebody being their kintype.

This is the position that is taken by the server, and while you are allowed to agree to disagree, you have to at least understand how I see things, and you have to be okay with the fact that that's how I see them.

Q: What is transID and why do you have problems with it?

A: The most neutral way I can describe transID is that it's an identity community based around labels for people who want to transition to something other than gender.

While some of it is fine (e.g. "transaesthetic" people who want to present with a certain aesthetic but can't), some of it is more questionable (e.g. "transrace", including people who want to physically transition from white to Black) to downright dangerous (e.g. "transabuser", people who genuinely want to abuse others and some of whom plan to "transition" to this identity in real life).

This server considers itself anti-transID, and if you use transID terminology or consider yourself transID, you should either not join the server, or you should understand that the server expects you to use different language to describe your experience, and that it won't take kindly to necessarily everything you might want to transition to. While I understand this might seem like getting hung up over arbitrary terminology, I am firm about this because the transID community tends to have problems that contribute to an atmosphere that is uncomfortable at best and bigoted at worst, and I just don't want to be anywhere near it.

If you would consider yourself transID in terms of your experience but you're not firmly committed to the label and you want to learn about alternatives, you can join this server as long as you don't use transID terminology and are willing to learn and change.

Q: What is desirdae and why are you okay with it?

A: Desirdae is an alternative identity label that is meant to describe people who desire or want to be something that they physically are not.

However, the term, in addition to not co-opting the "trans" prefix from the transgender community, is explicitly against transitioning in ways that would be considered harmful, and the community seems to consider it that, while identities that might be considered harmful (e.g. "desirabused", wishing you had been abused) are worth examining if you are truly experiencing them, they should be discussed with a degree of care and should not be seen as the same as things you can happily transition to with no problem, which is different than large swaths of the transID community.

Q: What is radqueer and why do you want nothing to do with it?

A: Radqueer is a term that has a lot of misinformation surrounding it and where aspects of the community has changed over time. However, it is a discourse-related term (which I already have issues with), and people who are radqueer believe that transIDs and paraphilias are queer and should be respected as queer identities by wider society, which I take issue with, even if I support anti-contact paraphiles.

Furthermore, the radqueer community is commonly associated with pro-contact stances for consent-related ("harmful") paraphilias - that is, believing it is okay for zoophiles to have sex with animals, or that it is okay for pedophiles to look at CSEM. While this is not an inherent part of radqueer ideology, it is/was believed by the founder of radqueer and by many early and current members of the community, and many radqueer beliefs (e.g. that pedophilia is a legitimate sexual orientation) naturally lend themselves to pro-contact beliefs, which is part of why I don't support it.

While I understand that some radqueers label themselves as anti-contact - that is, they do not support paraphiles acting on their attraction if it would hurt somebody in any way - I still disagree with them considering paraphilias and especially transIDs to be queer.

I would seriously not recommend radqueers join this server, and if I ever have to remove anybody from this server, I see radqueer-related conflicts as being a potential reason why.

Q: Do you count transspecies as part of transID?

A: No. While use of the "trans-" prefix is part of my problem with transID, there's context to that that is absent in transspecies.

Transspecies was coined in the 1990s, when the transgender rights movement was not a major talking point in society or culture. Transspecies was the original term for it, and part of it likely had to do with otherkin feeling legitimate kinship with transgender people, since both of them could often only be their real selves online at this time. Meanwhile, transID (which was coined in 2022 by the founder of radqueer) stems from a community originally called diaID, but the prefix was CHANGED to "trans" to deliberately ride off of the transgender rights movement, which had gained heavy traction, was a major talking point in politics by that time, and had progressed so much that trans people transitioning, at least in many countries, was common enough that only being able to be yourself online was no longer as universal a transgender experience was it was in 1994.

Users of the term "transspecies" also do not seem to treat transspecies as the same as transgender, whereas many people who use the term "transID", even ones who are not radqueers, insist that transID and transgender experiences are the same and call you a "transgender exceptionalist" if you treat transgender issues as different from transID issues in any way.

Q: Why are JKR media and Nazi characters the only types of fiction I can't talk positively about?

A: I usually believe that, for every rule that is treated as hard and fast, there is always at least one exception.

Where it comes to the belief I hold that fiction is not a matter of morality, I believe supporting, in any sense, the works of a very rich and politically powerful individual who is using their wealth and fame to destroy transgender rights, who is still alive, and who is famous and influential in ways that very few individual creators are, is one of those exceptions.

I also believe talking positively about Nazis is another one of those exceptions. I also believe it would contribute to an unsafe atmosphere if Nazis were openly praised in the server, even fictional ones.

While there is some media I could ban because of themes that sympathize with Nazis or that contribute to real-life bigotry, I am choosing not to, because I really really don't like long blacklists, meaning I have to limit the blacklist to the worst of the worst of the worst, and I think most media that have themes compatible with fascism are not as egregious as what JKR is doing, nor as discomfort-inducing as directly praising a Nazi character. If you talk about media that isn't blacklisted but that still makes people rightfully uncomfortable and they don't want to be your friend as a result, that's on you.

If you have identities involving those types of media or characters, you are still allowed in the server, but you are required to follow the rules of the server and to be understanding of why your kintypes might make others uncomfortable and contribute to an unsafe atmosphere for the users of this server.

While the rule against discussion of these identities phrased in regards to positive discussion, I'd ideally like as little discussion as possible, including negative discussion, just because that kind of venting could get really uncomfortable and weird really quickly.

Due to the nature of this server in particular, I understand it may come up that you were programmed with Harry Potter or that you were programmed to have Nazi alters. Please take care in discussing these things, and consider spoilering them if they come up.

Q: Is Deep Ocean only for RAMCOA survivors?

A: Deep Ocean is meant for those who have experienced anything that fits under the RAMCOA acronym, OR who are questioning if they have had experiences like that. It is not meant for those who do not have reason to think they are a survivor. This server has plenty of other channels outside of Deep Ocean to discuss non-RAMCOA trauma.

Deep Ocean does have a small glossary section that defines terms related to RAMCOA, and it is available through the opt-in role "deep ocean: preview", which allows you to see the rules and verification process of that part of the server. This is available for anyone in the server to look at and is replicated on page on this site, in the service of providing information.

I understand that sometimes people find out they were programmed without previously suspecting they were, so if you join the server, claim not to be programmed, and later ask for access to Deep Ocean, I will not question you.

Q: What is programming/RAMCOA/OEA, anyway?

A: Before I answer that question, I need to explain that accurate information on these topics is difficult to find, because they are forms of abuse whose practitioners necessarily want knowledge of the abuse to be shrouded in mystery and whose victims' memories are often incomplete.

Programming is a form of abuse in which one is caused to dissociate via abusive methods - including drugging, hypnosis, and intentionally traumatizing people - and then trained to respond to commands that make them easier to abuse. In the past, the word referred to any kind of cult indoctrination, but in the plural sphere, it usually refers to a form of abuse that usually but does not always occur on an organized scale and/or result in a dissociative condition. It is usually referred to as a form of mind control.

Organized abuse is any abuse that is carried out by multiple people in an organized way. The term is comparable to "organized crime". Human trafficking is organized abuse, but so are abusive schools or cults. OEA is a more recent term that stands for "organized extreme abuse" and refers to any kind of organized abuse.

RAMCOA is an acronym that stands for Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and Organized Abuse. Ritual abuse is any abuse that occurs in a ritualistic way, and it is not always religious. It is not be confused with the term Satanic Ritual Abuse, which it sounds similar to and that many people confuse ritual abuse with, but that is part of the Satanic Panic and that almost or literally never actually happens as reported or remembered. Mind control is usually in reference to programming. Some people say the term OEA is interchangeable with RAMCOA, but it is not, because ritual abuse and mind control can be carried out on a non-organized scale.

These things are often associated with certain conspiracies (e.g. Project Monarch), and sometimes conspiratorial information serves as guides for people to replicate these forms of abuse. However, abuse really does occur on a mass scale in real life through things like trafficking and cults, and if you have total control over a child, are abusing that child, and they develop DID, it is not difficult to take advantage of that child's amnesia and headmates to abuse them.

Q: Isn't it dangerous to have a space for programmed systems?

A: In some respects, it is, but there also ways in which it's dangerous to have a Discord server that is open to the public, and there are ways in which it's dangerous to talk about having any kind of trauma at all, or even being a system. If we were going to life our lives according to total safety, we would have to silence trauma victims, forgo public spaces, and abolish the plural community, none of which are good ideas.

Deep Ocean has a rule against sharing information that would put you in danger. However, because all situations are different, the risks look different for different situations. The subserver also cautions that sharing trigger phrases or cues is usually dangerous, too, but even this can be subjective.

If you think you would put yourself in danger if you used Deep Ocean, you don't have to use it, but for people whom it would help, it can help tremendously. Ultimately, everyone in this server is an adult, and they have the right to make all the decisions an adult has the right to make, including sharing or withholding their life story, and including the right to seek community with other adults.

Q: What is this server's stance on self-diagnosis?

A: Firstly, it should be understand that you don't have to diagnose yourself with a disorder to claim you have a traumagenic system. Not all traumagenic systems are disordered, and if you feel like you have multiple people living in your head for trauma reasons, you don't necessarily have DID or OSDD.

That said, this server believes that INFORMED self-diagnosis is valid, and that, while some people CAN be pressured or influenced into determining they have systems or a certain disorder when they don't, everyone who joins this system should be regarded as an actual system and should be believed about any disorder they are confident they have.

If someone is questioning if they have a disorder and you have the disorder and have reason to disagree with them about it, you can politely voice your disagreement, but remember to generally err on the side of believing people about what they say they are, especially if they're sure about it or a professional agrees they have it.

This server is also friendly to questioning plurals, i.e. people who may not know if they have a system yet. It even allows singlets, especially trauma survivors, if they don't mind being in a plural-centric environment. In other words, you do not have to confidently present as plural to be in this server.

Q: What is this server's stance on psychiatry?

A: This server doesn't have an official stance on psychatry, despite being a trauma-centric space, because I sympathize with both the anti-psych and psych-critical viewpoints and believe these two things overlap more than many people think.

I believe that therapy and medication can be helpful for those who need them and want them, but therapy is not the be all and end all of recovery, and most therapists are flawed in some way or another. I especially don't believe in forcing those things on people involuntarily. This server also does not believe that therapy and medication are the only route to recovery, although mental health medications should be treated as just as important as medications used to treat physical conditions.

I don't believe in medicalizing all plurality, but DID and OSDD are dissociative disorders, and that mental illnesses, while being names for clusters of symptoms rather than absolute truth, are more real than not. A lot of people find that acknowledging their mental illness as a disordered condition helps them manage their dysfunctional behaviors.

Criticisms of therapy, medication, and diagnoses are fine in this server, but please don't get TOO ranty or vitriolic, and please be willing to understand and accept someone else's perspective, including the server owner's, if they feel that therapy, medication, and/or diagnosis have been beneficial to them.

Denying the existence of personality disorders, in particular, is a common belief that is not allowed by this server. Likewise, belief in narcissistic abuse or anything similar is not allowed here. I will ban you over these things on grounds of bigotry.