Symbiosis

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Symbiosis describes the intrinsic connection between a sentient headspace and a living being (such as a headmate) in a system/sisasystem. The beings that are connected are called symbiotics.

This connection may be described as a mental and emotional link that makes both entities "resonate" with each other as if they were in symbiosis, to the point of feeling like twins or even "made of the same stuff". As such, protective sentispaces are often subject to symbiosis (e.g, if a headmate enters in contact with another headmate who has a malicious intent, the sentispace may take actions like sending an electrical charge to the malicious headmate to keep them away, thus securing their symbiotic).

This term mainly describes a single connection between a sentient headspace and a living being, but multiple connections between multiple beings may potentially happen, ending up in creating a whole network of symbiosis.

A living being may not be aware that a sentispace has created a symbiotic bond with them. (The opposite may be rarely true, as many sentient headspaces rely more on their population to exist than a headmate relies on a headspace to exist, such as a canvaspace for example.)

Causes
Various reasons may underly this phenomenon:
 * the sentient headspace may feel one of its symbiotics being stressed, so it acts as a space-soother to help them relax.
 * the sentient headspace may have brought a living being to life (e.g, an artfulspace creating art could potentially give life to its art; a spawn-regulator may have produced NPCs that became Now-PCs, etc.), thus sharing 'cells' with it;
 * a symbiotic may be a fragment of the sentispace (it could have form as a headmate through an artisan for example);
 * they may be versions of each other from alternate realities/timelines;
 * they may be a reincarnation of the other's past life;
 * etc.

Related Terms
Vivien and viva refer to systems and headmates that may experience symbiosis.

A symbiotic system refers to a system in which there are only symbiotics. This type of system may potentially be also qualified as a network of symbiosis, if there is a lot of symbiotics.

Resonance is the headmate counterpart of symbiosis; the bonded headmates are called resonants.

Synpath is a term that refers to having a similar deep connection/bond with something, such as strongly relating to it, acting like it/understanding it, but not quite being it; typically a fictional character.

History & Etymology
This term has been coined on November 25th, 2023, by Pluralpedia user Oceanic-Lanterns, to describe a connection they experienced. It was created as a sentient headspace counterpart for the Resonance term.

The term Symbiosis has been chosen because it refers to "a relationship of mutual benefit, especially among different species" or "a close, prolonged association between two or more organisms of different species, regardless of benefit to the members", which seemed to describe very well the term.