Origins of Tupperbox

[hungryghosts]

I'm going slightly bonkers watching people claim things about the Discord proxy bots (like that Tupperbox is only for RP and PluralKit is only for systems) without even knowing the history of these bots, so I went digging.

Tupperbox used to be known as Tupperware, and it was created by a singlet for their tulpamancer friends. It was advertised on /r/Tulpas when it was created, and generally received well, although some people accused it (baselessly) of harboring malicious code. In response, the creator made it open-source.

It was also adopted for a variety of non-plural stuff around the time of its creation, which its creator was and is fine with, but it was originally made for tulpas. Hence the name: "tupper" is slang for "tulpa" in the community.

It was created some months before PluralKit, according to the GitHub API: here's the query for Tupperbox, and here's the query for PluralKit.

The original advertisement thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/8ak9rn/tulpa_discord_bot/
The thread announcing a move to open source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/8aosvn/tupperware_is_now_on_github/

Unfortunately, the creator deleted their comments on the subreddit. I have a few posts by an /r/Tulpas regular that recaps some of the threads' original content, but it's hardly a primary source. I also have archived versions of the threads that contain the original comments and will be posting them in an access-locked post. (There's nothing bad in them, but I don't know why the creator deleted their posts and I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to repost them publicly.)

Comments

[beepbird]

Ah, so our memory IS correct! We remembered it being Tupperware but noticed the name change at some point and thought we must have been misremembering. Good to know it actually had the name way back when!

Thanks for finding the history.

[hungryghosts]

No problem! We kind of want to be more proactive about documenting bits of plural history like this because it's really frustrating when all people have to go off of are secondhand accounts.

[beepbird]

It really is frustrating, glad you're doing this. Don't push yourselves too hard though, take care of yourselves too.

[lb_lee]

Okay, as someone who is hopelessly square: what are Tupperbox and PluralKit FOR? Like, we know they exist, and we know bots on Discord can do many things, but we still don't actually know what they do and we'd love to know!

Thanks for documenting this, since we knew nothing about any of this.

(Also omfg guys stop trying to erase history and retroactively plant your flagpoles to claim random shit for the high glorious nation of [insert plural subgroup here], wtf is this, the 1700s?)

--Mori/Rogan

[hungryghosts]

"(Also omfg guys stop trying to erase history and retroactively plant your flagpoles to claim random shit for the high glorious nation of [insert plural subgroup here], wtf is this, the 1700s?)" LMAO, my feelings exactly.

The bots basically let you spoof accounts, so you can have pseudo-accounts, complete with name and avatar, for every headmate. Kind of like having different Dreamwidth icons for everyone. A lot of plurals like them because they feel more individual and self-affirming than just signing.

Here's a GIF of PluralKit in action.

They also come with other features (PluralKit comes with tools for logging your fronters and keeping track of system information, for example) but the proxy account stuff is the biggest feature. They've even been picked up by non-plural folks for stuff like roleplay, and they've apparently gotten so much traction that Discord took notice and developed some tools to make the bot developers' lives easier? Although that last part is mostly hearsay.

It's a pretty neat example of plural stuff crossing over into the singlet world that isn't medical/trauma-centric!

[lb_lee]

Holy shit that's so cool! I thought it was something like that, but we'd never seen it in action, what a cool thing!

Back when we were in a groupchat on MSN Messenger (LOL), people would use custom icons to make headmates' faces to use in lieu of tags, so this feels like taking it even further. How cool!