q&a

This page serves as a sort of explanatory page for us, in the form of a kind of “Q&A”. (We can’t really have “frequently asked” questions if we’re the ones asking them to ourselves, heh.)

what’s with the name?

The name “echo” comes from two main sources:

1. An autistic tic of ours is to mimic sounds and voices, and therefore become an “echo”, and
2. Our “internal monologue”, and therefore any attempts to communicate using mental vocalization, frequently loops back on itself, as if processed through a delay pedal, or echoing around.

When we were starting to question our plurality and wanted to register an account on the plural.cafe Mastodon instance, we remembered the second point and registered @echo. The name stuck.

…and the site name?

The “crystal cave” moniker came from a momentary vision of our host and headspace: a crystalline entity surrounding and distorting the communications of the entities within. As we’d previously fashioned our headspace in the form of a subterranean cave (as a way to “explain” the aforementioned echo), it turned into a “crystal cave” for this edition.

So, taken all together, the “echoes from the crystal cave” are all of us communicating with the world and with one another.

who’s there?

(as soon as you figure it out, let me know, lol. -Vera)

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how did you figure it out?

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why “characters”?

Even though, as far as we can tell, the term “headmates” is the generally-accepted term of art for describing members of a system (notwithstanding individual systems’ preferences, which tend to vary a lot), it never sat right with us. Something about our experience made it difficult for everyone to feel truly separate and use terms that rested on that implication. So as Vera was trying to find out who was around, it was hard to call the ones they found “headmates”, at least not immediately.

The decision to use “characters” seems to be partly Ann’s influence, as she revealed herself to Vera first. It felt rude (or at least awkward) to call everyone “characters”, as if they were making everyone up, but Ann thought it was nice. She enjoyed the idea of making her surroundings a part of the stories she liked to tell.

why do you switch between “i” and “we” on Mastodon?

Vera is the one who speaks for the system the vast majority of the time. They don’t like to use “we” when talking about personal experience because frankly, they’re not sure if everyone was around when something happened. It’s easier to just say “i” for experiences, but “we” for things that everyone is a part of, like our body or this website.