SKINSTEALER SYNDROME

[skinstealer]

this comic is rated 18+ for CSA, SA, and child abuse as major topics- there also could be gore and body horror, so watch out!

rin’s been pondering how to do this for weeks now, but they’re not really doing too hot. gonna be a lot of changes around here, probably lots of switching. lots of people showing up and trying to make themselves known, sometimes for the first time. talking to people directly can be kind of intimidating though, you know? 

so i figure, maybe something like this could work. maybe getting this thing off the ground will help give us a platform to express ourselves and help people get to know us a little better. i mean, i know i’m excited for it.

let’s just do it.

my name’s ransom mortis, and i wasn’t exactly expecting to be the one to kick this off. 

the person in our system most responsible for...pretty much everything, is ringor mortis, rin for short. you probably know them by now.

rin works incredibly fucking hard and is the big reason why we’re able to have a safe life at all. they do pretty much all of the fronting, are the big brain behind our creative work, and function as a kind of public representative for the system.

but in the past week or so, they’ve been getting really sick, and they need time off. possibly a lot of time off.

one sec- let’s take a step back for a moment and talk about what the fuck a system is, what fronting even means, all that shit. 

we’re part of what’s called a DID system- that’s dissociative identity disorder. it used to be called MPD, multiple personality disorder, but that definition got changed up to be more accurate to what the condition actually entails. the overall gist is that it’s a coping mechanism that kicks in really early on in childhood when a child is exposed to unimaginable trauma...kind of grim. 

the brain compartmentalizes as a result of this, forming multiple identities to hold different things- be it memories, emotions, reactions, perspectives...a lot of different shit. 
i’m not a scientist or a psychologist or anything like that, so this definition probably isn’t the most accurate, but it’s the best summary i have that doesn’t involve a bunch of people arguing over the condition’s even legit or not. 

having multiple identities (or as we prefer to call it, individual people) in one body, one brain, is often referred to as being multiple. having DID isn’t the only way for people to be multiple, but it’s what lines up best with what we’ve got- a traumagenic system. as the word would imply, it means we came from bad shit, shit that warrants this comic being in the section it is and getting a giant content warning slapped all over it.

we can’t talk about our system candidly without bringing up the fucked up parts. i mean, technically we could- but it isn’t the full picture, and that’s something we want to do here. there’s a lot to cover and it probably won’t be covered in order or anything, just...as it comes up.

getting sidetracked. back to the system.

our system is called The Skinstealer System, and at the time of writing this post, we’ve got 48 people. (i’m not drawing them all at once here, because unlike some people in this brain, i’m not a masochist.) this makes us a pretty large system, but definitely not the largest- some people have hundreds of system members. 

48 is a pretty big number to manage and not everyone fronts- that’s the term for taking control of the body and being present in the physical world, versus flopping around internally. more on that in another entry.

every system functions differently, and has different ways of relating to each other- in our case, we consider ourselves one big family. not too much like blood relations really (there ARE some), but we all share a history and a life together, so it works. we also include our partner B. Comorant in that family label- you probably know him too. he loves us a hell of a lot and considering he lives with us now, you’re gonna see him in entries here too. 

so yeah, that’s a rough intro. feel free to leave comments, questions, whatever- we might even answer some as we get them. anything goes as long as you aren’t horny on main or whatever- just be respectful, got it?