The Book of Autonomancy, by One Faraday and Ronin Ellis of the Desired Constellation (horror prose,

[lb_lee]

“It’s important to recognize that the actual cards themselves don’t matter,” she said plainly, as though trying to calmly drop a bombshell.

“How do you mean?”

“The cards are a vehicle for understanding. But any vehicle will get you from point A to point B. We could reshuffle these cards and lay out a different spread, and I could tell you the same fortune, and it would still be your fortune. The fortune is told through the conversation we have together, not through a bunch of paper and plastic and ink spread out on the table. "
 

Blurb: Practicing the art of autonomancy, a multiple works as a pseudo-exorcist, ousting noncorporeal entities masquerading as ghosts. The story dips back and forth between their coming to selves-awareness and magic in the past, and their present-day battle of wills with a "ghost," who is pulling out all the stops and maybe more than they bargained for...

Why is it worth your time?: It is so engrossing! I totally got sucked in and read the whole thing in one sitting. Just reading this system working together, despite lack of co-consciousness, and using their DID to fight asshole entities is so satisfying. (And how this story MAKES their DID specifically a load-bearing plot element. This is one of those rare stories where pretty much no other type of plurality would work for the purposes of the story.) The spooky moments are truly spooky, the jokes are truly funny. Also, it's free!

Plural Tags: mpd/did, inner children, community, switching, realitymashing, plural creator, abuse high-focus

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available for free reading on Reddit. Start reading it here! (EDIT: some chapters are locked behind an 18+ filter, which apparently makes some chapters inaccessible under the new www.reddit URLs. Following is the full listing of chapters under old.reddit URLs, which are less accessible on mobile but can at least all be read:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9
• Part 10
• Part 11
• Part 12
• Part 13
• Part 14
• Part 15
• Part 16
• Part 17
• Part 18
• Part 19
• Part 20
• Part 21
• Part 22
• Part 23
• Part 24
• (Authors' Note)

Misc Notes: There is a short story in the same world as this, The Autonomancer's Homunculus - Recipe Not Included, but it involves different characters and doesn't fulfill the plural requirement. Ian Night of the Desired Constellation was also posting about autonomancy (the use of personal symbols to find meaning and self-actualization) back on tumblr in 2017, and he influenced parts of this series. You can read his posts about it here and here.

CATALOGER NOTE 2024/10/6: emailed DC about back-up rehosting the story in one file on healthymultiplicity.com because oh god if I have to back-up all 24 chapters manually I will cry.

CATALOGER NOTE 2025/1/23: One of DC has requested no back-up be made; they got Book of Autonomancy stolen and resold by some jerk on Amazon without recourse and are removing all their fiction from the Internet. :(

Comments

Re: Content Warnings

[lb_lee]

Sneak: Dreamwidth's icon slots were one of its selling points, back when it first started! ^_^ Now a lot of people are so used to only having one, they are surprised. Plenty of people just stick with one, though; it's not weird to!

Re: Content Warnings

[acorn_squash]

Good to know!