thesaltinstitute | Dusting this old thing again (Reply)

~~Maybe this time it'll stick!~~

We're the Salt Institute, collectively a tiny pile of Salts that create a wide variety of things, play many video games, do lots of crosswords, read tons of books, and listen to plenty of podcasts.

Born in the early-ish 90s, we realised we were more than one (as opposed to one with oddly constant "imaginary friends") in 2013. We first discovered the existence of online plural communities through tumblr in early 2016, which is when we realised we& weren't alone in being plural.

We mainly want to use our Dreamwidth for two things:

for everyone / public : articles about plurality and how we experience it + creative things we're working on;
for our friends / access list: more personal blog content.

If you don’t know what plurality is, we recommend reading More Than One and the Plurality Playbook for the basics. We also like the Layman’s Guide to Multiplicity — it’s a little dated, and we don't necessarily agree with everything in there, but we like the debunks of common myths about plurality.

If you would like to understand more about how our system in particular works, you’re welcome to ask! As long as you’re respectful of two things:
1. How we understand our plurality. Some of us were born or created in this brain, from existing people or from new material. Some of us walked in from other universes and realities. No matter why we’re here, we’re all in this brain together now.
2. Each member’s individuality. We are (by and large separate) individuals who happen to share the same body. Most of us are not “parts” or “personalities”, not all of us come from the same person, and as a whole we have no wish to become a single being.

Quick rundown of the very bare bones basics of our front team -- the folks you're likely to interact with:

bee 🐝 28 (October 22), they/them/theirself
Kay / Karkat 🦀 late 20s (~ June 12), he/him
Envy 🖤 "uuuh", adult (April 19), any pronouns with fae/faer as main set
Jonathan 🖋️ early 30s (February 7), ze/hir, he/him, she/her, e/ym/eir/ymself (alternate between sets)
Martin 🦋 early 30s (September 28), he/him
Aziraphale 📚 millennia old (April 24th), he/they

Anyone else will introduce themselves if necessary.

If you're not sure who's talking to you, please ask! (Sometimes we're blurry, which means we don't really know who's around or who's saying what -- this happens sometimes and isn't a cause for worry.)

We basically never remember to update all of our online platforms, so we centralised all of our more detailed introductions (individual and collective) in our listography, to keep at least one thing more or less up to date, alongside an Etiquette Guide and some more details about how our system works. It's just easier that way!