my heart beats in seismic waves, by Sara Makiya and Sara Paige (poetry, 2018)

[lb_lee]

"I am a universe contained, varied and diverse
thoughts and perceptions orbit around
my consciousness; so when it seems
I am not all here,
my mind is probably somewhere
caught up in
the stratosphere"

Blurb: A meditative poetry zine about the fluid, celestial nature of the self, its ebb and flow and ambiguity.

Why is it worth your time?: It's good. I bought this short zine from someone in my neighborhood a few years back, and the mix of handmade care (the string binding, the silver that was clearly penned in by hand for each individual copy) and quiet simplicity has kept it on my shelf this whole time.

Plural Tags: abuse low focus

Content Warnings: none. The slightest implication of a past unhealthy relationship.

Accessibility Notes: This zine is, as far as I can tell, impossible to find anywhere anymore. Sara Makiya has redone a couple of the illustrations since, in full color (rather than the stripped-down black, white, and silver), but that's it. Since one of my rules for this comm is that the work has to be something you can actually get, I textually transcribed the zine here for posterity, and since emailing Makiya and Paige got no response, I finally scanned and uploaded the thing in its entirety (though the silver isn't done justice digitally). It's a beautiful little thing and I'd hate for it to be lost.

Sacrifice, by Andrew Vachss (crime prose, 1991)

[lb_lee]

“When you hunt predators, the best camouflage is weakness.”

Blurb: Burke, a merc/PI living on the seamiest side of New York City, gets involved in a case involving an abused nine-year-old multiple who has murdered two of his baby foster brothers. Burke has to negotiate a truce between the cops and child welfare groups coming to blows over him... and also get revenge for the multiple's sake.

Why is it worth your time?: It's a pretty good grim-n-gritty crime novel. However, it's probably the only of its like that will be in this catalog, and it comes with caveats. It is very, very much a book from 1991: the memory wars, ritual abuse, and Satanic trappings of group child abuse are all plot points, and the multiple has a murderer headmate. However, and the reason this book is in the catalog, is that it's the only one I've seen that takes a murderer multiple and treats them with sympathy and compassion--it takes the tack not of "multiples don't murder people" but "even if a multiple does murder someone, they still deserve compassion and care." Chosen family and the welfare of children, even "bad" children, are core themes. This is definitely not a book for everybody, but it is a book for SOMEBODY. (Also, it's nice to see someone discuss ritual abuse with the air of, "yeah, the trappings are to scare the victims; Satanism is not itself the problem.")

Plural Tags: MPD, fusion, switching, abuse high-focus

Content Warnings: include spoilers; see comments

Accessibility Notes: Available on paper, ebook, and audiobook.

Counterfeit Monkey, by Emily Short (adventure puzzle game, 2012)

[lb_lee]

submitted by yolcatzin !

“Okay. We're both here, neither of us lost our minds in the synthesis process. As far as I can tell, the operation was a success. We're meant to be one person now, unrecognizable to anyone who knew us before.”

Blurb: The rebel Andra and her partner-in-crime Alex live in a world where words are reality. There are tools that can change the names of things to transform the things themselves. These even work on people — Alex and Andra have disguised themselves from the police of the oppressive island nation Anglophone Atlantis by portmanteauing themselves into a single being named Alexandra. Now, armed with only a letter-remover, they must escape from Atlantis before the day is over.

Why is it worth your time?: The way Counterfeit Monkey uses plurality as a narrative device is interesting to us. The player character's headmate is the narrator of the game. He often expresses his own opinions on the situations you find yourselves in and suggests things for you to do, and the game is sprinkled with scenes where he takes control to deal with things on his own. He's repeatedly acknowledged as a separate person from the player character by others who know of their predicament. It's a surprisingly good depiction of plurality despite the fantastical circumstances, and even though the author is (as far as we are aware) a singleton.

Also, the player character and their headmate remain in the same body for the whole game (aside from one bad ending that the game immediately lets you undo).

Plural Tags: on purpose, switching

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; in comments

Accessibility Notes: Free. Can be played in a web browser. Only requires you to read and write. There is an ingame tutorial. There is also a walkthrough (or "Invisiclues"). There are visuals (in the form of a map on the side of the screen), but you don't need to be able to see them in order to complete the game.

Can be found here: https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=aearuuxv83plclpl.