OOC thoughts on understanding gestalts

To understand a gestalt, it helps to remember that all players are gestalts, and members of gestalts.

 [Gestalt] n.
 A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements
 so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.

We are all gestalts of cells working together, so much more so than a bag of brain cells and a bag of blood cells could accomplish independently. Furthermore, within a company or other social group, people form a gestalt. Each fills in gaps in each other's abilities, and the group effort, when done right, far exceeds what could be done by each individual.

So what makes an IC gestalt so special? Why is something like Omni or Blue so different? The intent with the rules and designs underlying them is one where the components are something between the two extremes that we are composed of, or that which we compose. The cells are independant and fully functioning, like a person in a social group. At the same time, they are so organically interconnected, where one cell could not be accussed of sentience, even if the end result is.

Western science provides two theories about how the human mind works with memories and emotions. One is that memory is localized. This is mostly with Pavlovian responses. Make a snip, and a classically-conditioned response no longer happens. The other is that memory is generalized. Less instinctual actions and relations fall into this domain. Remove a portion of brain and the maze is completed slower, but there is no one specific locale that stores the maze. Experiments with memory also explored destruction of entire regions of the brain, and found that destruction of any third of the brain would leave memory largely unimpaired, while any destruction beyond that would result in permanent loss of specific (but not predictable) memories.

Modern theories of consciousness suggest that consciousness is not located in any part of the brain, but is rather distributed over an area of the brain. A good book on theories of consciousness that also explains underlying phenomena in particle physics and molecular biology is "Evolving the Mind" by A G Cairns-Smith. It explains how a brain is a gestalt of regions, which are gestalts of cells, which are gestalts of molecules, which are gestalts of atoms, which are gestalts of protons, neutrons, and electrons. (It doesn't talk about how protons and neutrons are gestalts of quarks. Nor does it mention that the six types of quark are Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Charm and Strange. But no book is perfect.)

The basic point about a gestalt is that it has emergent properties. That is to say that when you put the parts together, you get an extra thing that doesn't exist at all when the parts are not together.

Some gestalt characters

Omni

Omni, and gestalted generalized cell groups like it, store memories, at least the ones relavent to the stories, in the latter style. Each group is a bag with which to store memories, impressions, and personality. The interesting aspects arise because of the fluidity of Omni.

When Omni 'Buds', a (usually small) portion of it is split off from the main mass. Given time and distance, this budding develops a unique set of memories, experiences, and by extension, personality to add to collection. This is the closest Omni has to offspring, and it treats it as such, with its own sentience and individuality.

The more interesting scenario when Omni re-merges with another cellite mass. Given enough mixing, the two sentients become one. The result does remember memories from both gestalts, and the personalities also combine. This is not porportional to weight, neither is it automatically 50-50. Most of the time, the disparate masses haven't had enough time to vary much, as when Omni makes several bodies in a single scene, and remerges them by the end of said scene.

However, in larger instances, where the cellites have had a lot of time to vary, the personalities of the cellites will persist, so much so that they can willingly be sorted, to a degree, back into the origional two masses. Memories will remain crossed over, for the most part, This is a plot device akin to a vulcan mind meld. More importantly, it allows for memory transfer and touching, without the permanent loss of either character.

Blue

Blue is a meta-gestalt. Ve combines a gestalt of blue nanites with (so far, and not really all at once) a colony of Orange nanites, colonies of Purple and Indigo nanites (which have yet to claim an independant existance), and a peice of Omni. As might be expected with such an arrangement, this results in an amount of internal conflict. However, the blue and purple nanites are not capable of conscious intention. This means that Blue is torn between the influences of the blue (pleasure seeking, approval seeking), the orange (forceful, expansive, destructive), the indigo (reflective, preservation seeking) and the cellites (inquisitive, playful).

Blue's shapeshifting abilities have been impaired by the change from her original coposition to this ultra-hybird, and ve has lost the ability to easily reform herself at will. (Unlike Orange, who retains this ability.) Similarly, Blue's previously-displayed ability to split herself into multiple bodies appears to have disappeared. Memory management is another challenge for Blue. Different memories are held in the orange, the purple, and the cellites. When one or the other is disabled (which happens more often than ver player was expecting), large numbers of memories become unavailable.

Therefore, the entity named "Blue" is a gestalt of these sub-gestalts.

Kehari

Kehari? is a gestalt of three personalities that have merged into one; Kelly Blaine, a relatively mundane cybertech vixen, HARI, an analytical sociology AI, and Kiki, a sex-obsessed bodysuit. Since her merging began, she's had ideas and thoughts that would never have occured to any of them alone. The first of these is Kehari's PTA Project, an effort she's undertaken with great enthusiasm.

Kehari's body remains mostly natural (albeit with some cybernetic modifications) but her imilexene bodysuit furthers the gestalt theme. Initially a simple imilexene bodysuit configured for multiple "outfits", it was impregnated with some of Omni's cellites during an encounter in The Heliquary. After that the bodysuit began exhibiting an awareness of its surroundings beyond its wearer and a sense of humor at least at the pre-sentient level. It developed into the Kiki personality and ended up as the third component of Kehari, both mentally and physically.

Charlotte-Sophia

Charlotte-Sophia is a fairly stable gestalt now. Charlotte has drastically changed her life since getting Sophia - first from Sophia's simple programming, then moreso once Sophia had been much-upgraded by artificers about the Mess. While the original Charlotte was a fairly carefree Mess native, Charlotte-Sophia is even more so, bordering on being a Bubble Doll at times. The issue of who's "in control" is fluid; one can be found without the other, but neither is what they were before the symbiosis, nor are they Charlotte-Sophia (or Sophia-Charlotte, when the spine-bug is overtly borrowing its pet's body). Charlotte alone is generally confused and rather sedentary; Sophia alone is often cryptic, really speaking only to other machine-minds, and very emotionally-flat.

Twin

Is Twin a gestalt? Perhaps. Or perhaps (she) is a creature going through deep changes in how (she) defines (her)self. What looks like a merging is more of a masking - the core singularity is perfectly capable of existing on (her) own, and has since long before most of the stars currently burning were born, and the androgynous monster is wholly a creation of the singularity's will - while (she) would not vanish if the singularity drifted, (she) would be stuck in one shape and state of matter, and would need dramatic modification to survive very long, as (she) doesn't bother with simulating little niceties like a digestive system.

But the experiences Twin has had since forming a body of matter, with its own mind, has changed (her) into something very different from a lonely incarnation of entropy...

Far-spire

Far-spire is from an oceanic region (yet to be built) that's recently come into contact with the Mess. In addition to being a diverse ecosystem, the Ocean is a single vast mind comprised of all the lifeforms in it, as well every molecule dissolved in its waters.

Argent

Argent are members of a species, the Volk, that didn't quite reach the complexity and intelligence to create the kind of inner narrative we associate with self-awareness. Instead, they developed their short-range communications to the point where a pack becomes aware of each other even as they share their thoughts at a very deep level. The kinds of specialized subsystems that exist in a single brain in a typical intelligent species are created ad-hoc among the members of the pack. Sometimes one member will take on one aspect of a personality (Argent's otaku-like Del is an example), but more often modern packs design themselves so that kind of dependency on the survival of a single member is avoided.

Modern Volk are relatively fluid gestalts, with packs able to trade members fairly easily thanks to the development of a vocal analog to their internal neural traffic. Their language, Neural Slang, developed from the pidgins that packs who grew close to each other (one might even call them lovers) used. It was a kind of erotic poetry, and a powerful meme that spread rapidly among the packs whose neural traffic it suited while it was nothing but noise (and a perversion) among those that couldn't understand it. There was a period of instability known as the Meme Wars that led to the eventual extinction of those bloodlines that couldn't adapt to Neural languages... they couldn't compete with the new order and interbred or died off. In some cases packs voluntarily fragmented in the hope that some of their members would survive as part of Neural Slang packs.

Mod

Mod takes on the personality of whatever skin he's wearing. Unlike Mel's relationship with the Museum, Mod is not an avatar of the Land of Disguises. It's hard to say where his personality comes from, seeing as he claims he doesn't have a soul. Mod would claim that he shares a bond which allows him to learn from whoever is wearing him, but other theories suggest that it has something to do with the complex order in which his layers of costumes are arranged. There have been cases where several layers have been exposed at the same time and where a blending of personalities toward a murky brown has occurred, which supports the theory.

Nevertheless, Mod seems to stay very seperate in personality from an individual when he is being worn by them, rarely influencing their mind.

Lunaria

Being from Strangemoon it's hard to say exactly what Lunaria really is. To all outward apperances she's an independantly functioning, if somewhat confused and out of place, being. However, given some theories behind the actual rule of Strangemoon, it's entirely possible that Lunaria represents merely one element of a large collection conciousness. But don't ask her. She's the last person to know.

Others

This page is a gestalt of gestalt theories.

Feel free to add in your own theories about gestalts, and details of your character as they pertain. Given the broad definitions of gestalts, plurals fall under this category. Given the schitzophrenic nature of some of our characters, even those with multiple personalities can offer some insight on two beings in one body. Bonus points on how these aspects are different than the normal OOC human being, as well as the finer details, the method behind the madness if you will, that exist because of the nature of that character.

Also, some theories on the Chitin Queens suggest symbiosis - the mind running a dark, chitinous dominatrix may not be wholly the one in her(?) head, it may be the one in a non-motile creature tucked away in a crevice, subsisting off her blood...

Comments

"The changing/deletion of info in the Other section: quite literal. Gestalt is not just different selves/forms. It's a meta concept as well. Go deeper. For example, try looking into your character as an emergent property of YOU." - My player does that, but I'm not supposed to talk about it. The player does, though. -- Blue

Emergent properties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_property

Gestalt, for Real

There are several characters that have several minds in one body, or several bodies and one mind, or even are, simply, a small group. Each, however, is played by one human behind a keyboard.

What if two people played one character? You can have more than one connection to a character active at once. Obviously the players have to be a little more telepathic than usual, for it to be coherent, and sometimes it would just be one player, or the other. But you'd never know!

Two minds, one body, literally.

This may or may not be easier if both players live in the same home.

Once elsemuck I happened upon a rather unique feat of MPI/MUF programming. A character that was controllable by anyone, without resorting to having multiple connections. One would enter a room (linked through the character itself), and the room had a @force command built into an action. Anyone in the room could use the action and make the character do things. It was basically a puppet with an unlocked action, but one would be *inside* the puppet since it would report what it saw to the inner room. The difference was that it was a character, not a puppet or vehicle, but the main problem was that the character was usually asleep, the actual owner not being connected. Thus it was called Sleepwalker. But, an intruiging concept anyway....could be adapted for PB. Multi-user-controllable character, or for a plural being, or someone that is also a place. --Coalesce

And thus, Myriad was born...