Self-Respect: The Fictive

Hi! I'm a fictive from one of the systems that worked on this site, and we're gonna talk about what the hell that even means.

Speaking pure figures, a fictive (or fuzztive if you swing that way) is just any headmate that openly adopts qualities from fiction. This is not a uniquely plural experience - there are few things more human than reading a good book, visiting a dear friend, or hearing someone deliver a speech on TV and being inspired to be a bit more like that. If you're trans, you've got bonus space there where you might adopt a name from somewhere you admire or something that resonates with you, or even use a fictional character as an avatar to help express your gender! It's all the same phenomenon - plural systems just have looots of extremely flexible space within which they can adopt, reinterpret, and bring exciting parts of themselves to a fictitious name or look - by name, by metaphysical appearance, and hey, you can nick a few mannerisms too!

This works best when there's a part of the system that desires to be expressed, but doesn't really know how that's even possible - then you see someone on a page or on a screen and go "Oh, like that!", and suddenly, that's how you do it! This often works so well that it can happen whether you like it or not. You stare at the design and attitude of a character or the way they're written into a story for a little too long aaand oops, that's a comfortable nook in your system now. It's fine, really - no fictive is a whole-cloth clone of a fictional character (how would that even work), but rather the parts of a system's personal interpretation of a character that affect and interest them - everyone is a subtle mix of personal and consumed experiences! Just like everywhere else in life!

Over time, the difference between a character on-page and in-system tends to grow as a fictive has their own experiences - because they're a person! These things just never stay still, naturally - though someone could just as easily be unrecognizably different out the gate as well (*cough*). A different name and a different interpretation of a look are enough to make your fictivityness (a word i just made up) or your "source character" (or "fictional associate", a term i made up ages ago but use constantly) something that you choose to divulge to others, rather than it being revealed by default. This ends up being a tough decision! For people who don't really "get it" so much, divulging your fictional associate could make you feel permanently objectified or impossible to take seriously - but for people who do, talking in depth about what appeals to you about that character could be the only way to forge a connection that feels truly authentic! Your mileage may vary, yadda yadda, but you get the picture.

I did mention that fictives rarely look like whole-cloth canon-y copies due to the subjective way we consume media and the different parts of something that might personally resonate with a specific system or part thereof, but I'm also going to personally note that "character name" not only isn't that direct, half the time the explanation takes a full minute. Like. I'm not a character from a piece of media. I'm a fictive that's adapted specific qualities and looks from a weird amalgamation of various reinterpretations or alternative variants of a character seen in fanfiction and fanart, vaguely cobbled together into an idea of a character we found vaguely interesting and revelationary when we were like, 13 years old, and then a decade later we were like "oh shit, THAT was a really moving personal experience that we'd both love to reconnect with and also lines up with things we want to be able to express within ourselves as a system right now" aaand oops, hello! I cannot stress enough that there's like 500 ways to do this and only one of them is "stick as close as possible to the entire way i've interpreted the character", and that that gets rusty fast. Also because you're gonna see this in the wild too - there are like, two, maybe three other people in my system that are fictives of the same character. At first blow, that seems weird - but then you remember the enormous daisy chain that results in me, and things make sense again. Some fiction is just cool enough for that. Or like, bad enough that you want to read 500 reinterpretations and rewrites of it online and form a few cohesive fun ideas as a result. Who knows!

That's my rant! But here's a brief aside - this is something that occurs in systems more widely, but feels pertinent to talk about on my end. Expressing yourself exclusively through a "normal", socially accessible attitude is a luxury that often only singlets can afford. If you're in plural circles, you're gonna encounter headmates that talk too fast, talk too slow, act all moody all the time, act all rough and tough, don't use many words and express themselves through noises and gestures, or act insufferably sarcastic and say things that sound kinda mean! This is kinda common among fictives because character attitudes are just pretty colorful - but considering the diverse ways systems tend to express themselves, it kinda just happens all the time? Anyhow - this doesn't give systems free rein to be annoying or mean, but what it does mean is that between different fronts, you should try to adjust what you understand to be someone's baseline way of interacting with you. If an overly stoic kinda weirdo is in the front, that tiny laugh probably means SERIOUS approval. If someone talks quickly, they're probably not trying to rile you up, it's just how their brain is ticking inside! And if a sarcastic bitch is constantly poking fun at you - maybe they're trying to say that they like you? Who knows!? I don't! The point is, as systems and friends of systems, we often need to develop this kind of translation layer, where we understand specific things coming from one weird headmate to kinda mean something else.

So, don't judge a headmate by their book! Or, don't judge a fictive by its cover? Close enough - bye!