Death of an Alter: Spoilers for the Blobbies

[emmengard]

 

In this weeks episode of the Blobbies, Grey killed Red.

Regarding systemmate deaths:

 

Chris Sizemore, the system that the movie “Three Faces of Eve” is based on talks about how one of her alters ran over another one in her book A Mind if My Own. That alter never came back.. but then they also integrated at some point after that.. so perhaps if they hadn’t integrated the other alter would have returned. That is the most well known instance that I have heard of.

 

We never experienced this directly. We do know systems who have. Mostly, people come back, or they come back as more than one person, or different aspects of the system end up shifting as a result of the violence in the system. The consequences of this kind of action are incredibly varied, as varied as systems are themselves.

 

The whole reason we started writing the Blobbies is because a system we know killed one of their members, who never came back, but other things happened. The system was thrown into a lot of chaos.. and shortly thereafter we saw some newbie systems posting about how they were considering trying to kill off some system mates.

 

It was really devastating to us. Sometimes I think people aren’t ready to hear things. So even if you are trying to steer them away from things that are going to harm them, they just might not hear you. But sometimes stories can get through in a way that just talking to people can’t.

 

So we started thinking about how to write a story of a system, where we might be able to talk about some important aspects of the experience of coming to terms with being more than one, and everything that means, all the hard stuff, all the potential major pitfalls.

 

We started consulting a lot with a very good friend who is an older system and who has been an aware system for a very long time. They also went through a very brutal civil war period. So they have been very helpful when it comes to this part of the story in particular.

 

So yeah.. that is how the Blobbies began. We knew from episode one that this was going to happen. We have a very set plan for where the story is going. This story is for other systems and especially for newer systems.

 

The Blob System will be okay. They will make it through. We promise. And for any system out there who is struggling, it does get better.

 

We pull from our own discovery times a lot when we draw these episodes. It is a heavy heavy place to be. We do this work out of love. We do this because we are desperately hoping we can help even just one system out there. We hope this story helps people.

 

We feel heartbroken about Red. We are so sorry. We know Red is a favorite with a lot of people. We cried when we wrote it, we cried when we drew it, cried when we edited it , cried when we posted it. We have been sad all day. It’s like we are mourning this incredibly sad alternate reality we might have very easily lived through. We are sad thinking of losing any of us. For us Red is sort of our Jax. And Grey would actually have been me, Ariadne. The disorientation and depersonalization Grey is struggling with really was my struggle.

 

Could I have killed Jax in a moment of desperation and fury? I don’t know. I think I could have. It didn’t happen. That wasn’t how it went for us. But I know for some systems it does.

 

For those systems, my heart is breaking. We really wanted to try to show how a system would come back from this worst kind of rift... I think all systems could benefit from seeing that.. and maybe some systems really need to see it, really need to see how it could be possible to come back.

 

Next week is a special long episode, too. Normally episodes are 6-10 frames.. 9&10 are both 15 frames long.

 

Anyway... this is the story behind the story of the Blobbies.

Take care of yourself/selves and be safe.

 

💛Ariadne