Three Kids in a Trench Coat

We’ve covered popular media like Severance & Expedition 33: Clair Obscur, from our trenchcoat here on the blog. But here’s one you may not have heard of…

Identiteaze is a 2024, 45-minute drama, written & directed by Jessie Earl. It’s exclusive to the Nebula subscription service, and it’s not a big-budget affair – so I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d never heard of it – but I’d recommend watching it on a free trial, or a month’s £6 subscription – it’s worth it.

If you need a refresher, or don’t want another subscription – we’ve clipped together 6 minutes from the first half that should give you a good idea of the main thrust of what we talk about below.

Touch things

It’s a pretty simple premise – two people wake up in a plain, white room together, with no idea of how they got there, who they are, or who the other is… and apparently, no way out. The story follows the two trying to figure out… well… anything.

Aaron & Erin (as we, and they, soon learn are their names) take very different approaches to their situation.

Aaron is timid, in touch with his feelings, easily startled, and urges caution – it’s an unknown situation, that could be filled with danger.

Erin swears like a drunken sailor, tries anything and everything she can think of to find a way out of her current plight, and “doesn’t like therapy”.

Two different people, with a connection that becomes increasingly clear as they start to realise what they deeply, intuitively, have in common.. They start, “making a list” of what they know, and finding common ground in their feelings – so even here, unable to remember their pasts, they find a way to use their individual strengths to come together, work as a team & move forward.

A simple choice

When Aaron & Erin are told by the surprise VHS orientation tape that they’re avatars in some, “digital corporate hell”, followed by the appearance of a single door out of the room, there’s a realisation: only one of them can leave.

Erin starts to collapse… Aaron feels it too, wants to comfort her. Knowing he can’t reach over & touch her, he holds up his hand. Erin places hers against his.

And then… starkly contrasting green & red lights glitch to blue, darkness, blue, darkness, blue…

…. darkness…

… music…

… a sea of impossible to make out voices, all talking over each other….

… then everything snaps back, bathed in blue light, one final word ringing out clearly & decisively…

“Together”

They look over, and one door has become two. They are able to walk through, together. And on the other side…

… they find themselves in one body.

Together.

Switching in & out of co-consciousness

This is a very individual thing, but that stutter effect, with the escalating voice chatter followed by calm, clarity, and an unambiguous sense of, “who’s here” is what some of our more intense switches feel like. We found the same with Moon Knight & the Jake Lockley switches.

We just find it interesting – sensory & somatic effects during switches can be pretty individual to each system (and parts within a system – although headaches & neck/shoulder tension are common ones), but that that’s two places that specific sensory sequence has memorably shown up.

We are a them

There are some wonderful exchanges after that as Aerin (Aaron & Erin’s, “Us, Together” form) continues trying to make sense of things – stuff that just made us smile, laugh, and generally feel seen.

When the manager running orientation, Michelle, stands up and asks, “Who are you? Are you them?” with a conspiratorial whisper (meaning the mysterious Organizers), they reply:

“Ohhh…. yeah! That works for us! We are a them“

When they lose each other, separated by asshole Executive Anthony, the way they find each other again by tuning into their feelings, and what they know the other must also be feeling… there’s a lot there.

One of the ways we’ve found each other again in the past, when communication has broken down, has been by, “listening to the little feelings”, and having empathy for parts that may not shout the loudest, but if you stop and listen – it turns out they never went away, they were always right there, waiting for you to hear them.

Clouds & night may obscure it from view – but the sun is always there

The silence that Anthony talks about, and that Aaron & Erin also seem to be being deafened by while they’re separated – that can be what it feels like. Mounting panic & loss for something no-one else will ever see or understanding – feeling like you’ve lost a part of yourself.

But we always find each other again. We’ve learnt that over these last couple of years. And it brings us so much joy & comfort to know that anytime we need each other, here we are.

The joy Erin & Aaron feel when they reunite in one Aerin body, with, “I’ve missed you! I mean me! (Ok, add it to the list, figure out pronouns)” is so very relatable. We’ve said it to each other when we’ve reunited after something’s gone sideways, hugging ourself & saying, “Ah, fuck the words – I’m just so happy you’re here…”

So yeah – that’s what this show does so incredibly well, as far as we’re concerned. Plural joy is absolutely a thing, and I love how unashamedly it’s celebrated here.

An executive obsessed with compartmentalisation

So that Executive (functioning), Anthony. The guy who’s obsessed with timing, harmony, conductors, everything in its place…

… yeah, I find him unsettling.

There’s a scene where he starts, essentially, dissociating. Not highway hypnosis or zoning-out – the kind of dissociation you get in DID/OSDD.

In “the space between the beats”, he loses his sense of time, where he is, who he’s talking to, and travels through time & space inside, reliving a painful memory, hearing the call of part of himself he tried to leave behind. That he exiled.

But, like exiled parts that show up in the real world, clearly that part didn’t actually go away – he just put it in a box, locked it behind a door, and thought that, “out of sight” was the same as, “gone”.

That part still clearly exists & has needs that aren’t being met… which is how you get “alter intrusions” – where parts thought to be past show up in the present, crying for attention, and overwhelm the senses & sometimes take control of the body, too.

One of the reasons the representation here hits so hard, is that I (intentionally singular pronoun there – hi, Chance here!) used to be a lot like that. Precise. Methodical. Highly, highly compartmentalising. Obsessed with a prescriptive rhythm of things, looking for someone else to tell me who I am & what my purpose is. Don’t get me wrong – I know, now that it was for a reason, and that I was doing what we needed to “get on with life”. But it was a different way of being – and one that, eventually, proved unsustainable.

I used to be like that. Now, we’re learning a new way of being, a lot more like Aaron, Erin, & Aerin. Trust us – we’ve tried, at times over the last few years, to go back to the old ways. But now, trying to control too tightly – to be all executive functioning… it doesn’t go well. We’re in this together, now – we always were, we just didn’t know it. So now we’re embracing fam life & each other.

One touch we love (given our relationship with colour in our fam) – while he’s getting lost in memory, Anthony’s badge changes from the usual split red & green, to blue – a colour that for Aaron & Erin represents wholeness, joy, & calm. They know & love one another.

For Anthony, it’s clearly impossible for him to hold, and intensely dysregulating – and he soon returns to the split red & green badge. That’s what happens when “worlds collide” inside when parts are still burdened by unspoken & unaddressed trauma – there’s a huge surge of energy, which if unheld, burns hot, briefly, then leads to re-fragmentation. That’s been our experience in the past, at any rate.

In other words, to us, Anthony seems like a remarkably accurate representation of what DID is like before you embrace your system & start working together on healing – and Aaron, Erin & Aerin are a great representation of what happens once you do.

Together

In one of the ending scenes, where Arron, Erin, & Aerin are reunited in an ecstatic club dance scene (seems like as good an inner world representation as any!), you might wonder, “how does that work? Isn’t Aerin just Aaron & Erin combined?” And, well….

… welcome to DID, where questions like that are part of what we’re still working on xD Some people identify with the idea of there being a, “host”, who is just the alter that fronts the most often, and in many cases, can express communications inside from the rest of the system. Some people identify with some variation of, “system anarchy” – we swap in and out as and when, with no one part, “in charge”. Some may use terms like a, “core self”, distinct from parts/alters.

Whichever version seems to be the case for each person (“when you’ve met one system, you’ve met one system” as the system behind Healing Our Parts podcast like to say), gaining a sense of, “Us, Together”, at least a share of the time, really does seem to be key to being able to move with intention, direction, and a certain amount of harmony in life.

So that where we put our focus, rather than getting lost worrying about the words.

Another thing Identiteaze gets so right.

Seriously, there’s so much here to love, and love it we do ❤

So thanks for joining us on this tour of probably the most unapologetically joyful depictions of plurality we’ve seen ^^

Until next time, take care of yourself, kiddos ❤

Riley & fam