[UA] The Demon No Subject

[Timothy Ferguson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu [mailto:ua-admin at lists.uchicago.edu]On
> Behalf Of Chris Cooper
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2002 12:29 AM
> To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
> Subject: [UA] The Demon No Subject
>
>
> I think everyone should try and read up a bit on
> DID/MPD and tailor demons on Multiple Personalities.

How does what you describe below make use of the idea of a single, shattered
personality?  Your primary doesn't look like a primary at all.  There is no
possibility of integration, you have no partial fusing...what's the point?

> They are real and incredibly freaky in the High
> Weirdness/UA kind of way.

...and some of them might have friends reading the list.

They are not "freaky", they are doing precisely what you do when you go into
a job interview and consciously try to be more witty, charming and have
better posture.  They are doing exactly what you do when you discuss things
with yourself in your head.  High weirdness would be a person who was
completely non-dissociative.  They'd be like a golem.  That they seem
"freaky" is based on a misunderstanding of what the illness is actually
like.

> The best from this is the demon rides the host only
> forcing itself into the riding seat and controlling
> the body when a specific set of criteria or stimuli
> are sensed; ie. when the demon of a murdered man
> senses his murderer walking on the road, it shoves
> itself into control and a perfect stranger suddenly
> raves incoherently, grabs a pipe and beats the
> murderer to death.
>
> Just weird funky stuff.

What?  Your -best- is this?  This is meant to be an alter with situational
control?  How blunt a use is this?  Where's the precision?  Where's the
finesse?  A guy beating another guy with a stick is a good example of how to
use a real illness so complicated and interesting?

No, my lad, a better use would be a demon possessing one of these guys and
asking a PC to help it out, because it had been sectioned off from motor
control and was being terrorised by the person's "shadow troops".  Remember
alters don't need to be realistic, so in the microcosm that the demon is
stuck in, an alter that looks like Salvador Dali with a burning whip could
beat it every so often.  Maybe this person only allows their violent side
situational control when they are laying computer games, so the demon needs
to send for help using the diplomacy chats in an online wargame.

See, the thing is you are assuming the demon can control the body.  The
whole point of dissociation is to protect bits of the self from the control
of an outside force.  The mind of a person with DID might be a labyrinthine
death-trap for demons.  At the far other extreme, I can see a guy
deliberately getting possessed so that he can use an integrator alter to
digest the demons, like a soul sipper.  I can see an epideromancer's alters
walking off on their own...


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