Every System is unique and has it's own members and ways of working together. This page is not an exhaustive list of all of our System members, but only contains the members are are comfortable and interested being involved.
Katie [She/Her]
Role: Social Protector
Hii! I'm Katie! I am one of the oldest formed parts of the Patchwork Collective. I work as our primary social protector, meaning I front in stressful social situations. That doesn't mean that is all I do though! Alters/Parts are multi-faceted just like everyone else!
Most of my time is spent helping with our daily life, almost like a Co-Host. Often throughout the day the Patchwork Collective will need assistance in dealing with daily tasks like speaking to bank tellers, making appoints, or handling work meetings that are more than a one-to-one. During these times I will either Co-Con meaning I front with the other Part, or I switch in and take over entirely. During these times I can act either overtly or covertly depending on what the situation calls for.
When I am not putting out social fires for the rest of the Collective, I often enjoy reading and researching. Aster and I have a shared interest in programming, but what specifically interests us is different. I enjoy researching new idea's, learning new and difficult concepts, and playing with the newest programming technologies. My biggest weakness in this regard is that I often forget to take notes and explain my idea's to the others.
Besides programming I also love spending time with mine and Aster's wife, Ruby. We spend our free-time going on socially distanced walks around our neighborhood with our two dogs Iris and Fen. Many of our nights are spent together on the couch watching silly youtube videos.
*Aster [They/Them/Theirs]
Role: Host Apparently Normal Part
hey, im aster, i primarily function as the host and apparently normal part (anp) for the patchwork collective.
before around august of 2020 i thought i was an average twenties something adult struggling to get by. growing up things like therapy and mental health professionals were talked about in an only negative way. they were used as threats, medication was talked about as a forced option, "behave or we will put you on something that will make you a zombie so you will listen." given these issues no adult in my life was educated enough about mental health to help get any treatment.
throughout much of my childhood i can remember experiencing issues that now make much more sense re-contextualized as did/osdd. i learned to hide most of the deficiencies that ASD and OSDD are usually noticeable and warning signs via rigid organizational systems, tasking and calendars. this is something that has lasted and been very beneficial even with our current diagnosis.
after a few years of trying to continue hiding my struggles i decided to try and seek therapy. i had done extensive reading and research on all of the disorders previously. while learning more about autism, i came across the concept of autistic masking for many months this is what i thought was happening to me. perhaps to a degree it even is, but i would soon learn that it was not the only thing happening. initially i sought a therapist for help thinking i was just somewhere on the asd spectrum and possibly having adhd and ocd. i contacted a roughly 12 therapists and had my first consultations. i explained my issues in detail, 9 of the therapists replied that i was to "advanced" of a case for their staff to work with, 2 said that the distance would be sub-optimal for how much care i would need, but i finally found one and started therapy immediately.
about 3-4 months into therapy i started remembering some trauma that happened during my childhood. at the same time therapy was happening, my life continued as normal, and through the official game theory discord i met a person with did/osdd. as the server owner i always try to learn about active members and be accommodating, so i began learning more about did/osdd. i began seeing a lot of similarities between my experiences and what many hosts went through before realizing their plurality. there was a lot of losing time, having memories of doing things i had no want or desire to do, feeling sudden lack of attachment to people and things. many things i thought simply made me a "bad person" were explained by this.
i talked to my therapist about this extensively and they confided they had already thought i had c-ptsd. at this point i started actively trying to communicate with the others in any way i could. it took many weeks of work, but eventually many of our internal walls came down.
in my free time i still enjoy programming a lot, even though i do it for a day job. i mostly work with python and web programming. i have published a book and video series or two on python too. i love teaching if that wasn't given away by the books and videos stuff. though i have a very difficult time with confrontation, i do thoroughly enjoy debate. i also love working with dogs, both iris and fen have been trained by myself through a professional trainer to work as service dogs.
+Aster [They/It]
Role: Host Apparently Normal Part
en/greene [they/them]
Role: Caretaker Soother Fictive
hello my name is greene or en, thank you for taking the time to read this page and learn about plurality and our collective.
it seems the norm is to explain our roles. i am not sure entirely what my role is, but right now i believe i work as a soother and caretaker. i believe this because i am naturally drawn to Viv and the littles in our collective when they need help. viv working as a persecutor and protector both occasionally goes to excesses when trying to protect our collective, at these times i am often triggered to mediate and help viv settle down.
i am also a fictive. we plan on writing more about fictives in the future, but i want to provide a few low entry resources for understanding fictives and introjects here as well:
- BetterTogether has a 3 part seiries, the first of which explains how parts form beliefs about themselves without physical bodies.
- the second part talks about introjects fictives are a sort of subset of introjects, so this is an important foundation.
- the last part details substitute belief in parts and what that can mean to the part.
understanding that, introject would be an umbrella term with fictive being a sub-label. just like with introjects, the brain sees something is deems valuable in a fictional character. this value could be that the character is very brave and unafraid of an abuser, that the character would be strong enough to resist a traumatic situation, etc. the brain then incorporates that character into the system to provide that value. fictives wholeheartedly believe they are the characters and people they present as. they have memories that feel and are experienced as very real from what is called their "source," or the media they are from.
not every fictive is one-to-one of their source. fictives can and often do diverge from their source characters and material, some may even be combinations of many versions of the same character.
Gold [He/Him]
Viv [It/They]
Role: Protector Persecutor Non-Verbal [NV]
Note: Katie and en have helped write this part for Viv. Viv is non-verbal and we are planning on making sure the site will be accessible for it via emoji, but that is not complete enough for this section... yet!
Viv's primary role in the Patchwork Collective is a Protector/Persecutor. While that may sound counter intuitive to some, it actually is not! Persecutor's have gotten a bad name in some communities, but it is important to remember that all parts of a System are formed to protect and help the System. Viv can sometimes go to extremes when trying to protect our System, but it always means for the best outcome. Viv often seems to house a lot of our paranoia and was often mistaken for "intrusive thoughts" before diagnosis.
Viv loves playing video games and playing with Iris and Fen. Viv loves totally min-maxing games and strategies. They spend a lot of time playing Terraria and Minecraft with friends and Ruby. They often enjoy playing highly technical games or speed-running games with Aster, though that is about all they can stand doing together.
Although Viv is a protector, it is not always the most responsible part. It often has a difficult time staying on our agreed upon schedule or meeting our bed time. Viv generally has less patiences for social problems than most of our Collective. Though this could be because Viv is primarily non-verbal. Viv is able to speak to some degree while co-coning with other parts. Though the parts have described this as feeling as if they were being used as a "puppet" to speak though and not a pleasant experience. Even with this co-conning full sentences are still not possible and communication is mostly single words.
Red [Ae/Em]
Role: Little Emotional Part
Note: Red's section is moderated and reviewed by Katie and Aster before it is posted.
hiya i'm red! i'm pretty new i think. newer than everyone else at least! everyone says i split on july 19th, so i guess that's gonna be my birthday!
in our system i'm a little and an emotional part or ep. i don't really like talking about that stuff, but Aster and Katie are gonna write a lot about all of it!
uhm for stuff i like, i really like playing with lego's and our stim toys! iris and fen are the best too! i play with them a lot! i mostly want to meet new nice people and make friends!