Add a Story to the list!

[lb_lee]

If you have a story you want to add to the list, leave it in the comments below! Anyone can do this; you don't need an account!

This catalog purposely takes a very broad, ambiguous view of what constitutes "plural." Make our day! Story types that have been accepted in the past include:
* Spirit possession
* Imaginary friends
* Spirit marriage
* Exploring geographies of the mind, imagination, and fiction
* Bodysharing symbiotes
* MPD/DID
* Plural stories
* Telepathic bodyhopping shenanigans

Rules for submission (changed 5/17/2024):

• Only submit stories. We're willing to play with what defines a story, especially for personal experience accounts and experimental work, but self-help, philosophy, 101 and such do not belong here.
• Don't submit your own work. Boost your fellows!
• Please do not submit more than four titles by the same creator/s. When this archive gets bigger, we'll expand how many entries one creator/s can have.
• The story must be made by an adult (or at least not easily identified as made by a minor). This is to prevent malicious submissions and harassment of kids.
• The story must be publicly available. No unrecorded LARPS, rare books, or stuff on account-locked websites.
• If incomplete, the story must at least have a decent stop point. No just-started webcomics, please! They may not endure!
• You must have taken in the whole story (or at least all that's available at the time of submission). This is for complete content warnings and stuff.
• Spirited/many-selvedness must be core to story or main character/s. If you can remove it from the work without the whole thing falling apart, then please do not recommend it. (If you're not sure, ask! Make our day!)
• You must say why it's worth plurals' time. It doesn't have to be good, exactly, but it's gotta be worth it. This is to avoid completionist spam.

Does the story qualify? Then submit it using the form below! (Feel free to use the tags page for pointers.)

[Title] by [Creator/s] ([genre] [medium], [year released])

"[insert a cool quote from the work here]"

Blurb:

Why is it worth your time?:

Plural/1+ Tags: Choose from the ones on the tag list, or add your own!

Content Warnings: please include spoilers! I have this comm set up so that individual posts have only plural tag spoilers (because that's what folks are here for!), while content warnings will be in the comments. That way, people who want to remain spoiler-free can read the post itself and be fine, and the people who want all the warnings can scroll down.

Accessibility Notes: See the tag list for examples. Also note how you can get it. Is it an easy library book? Has someone digitized it and put it elsewhere? Is it backed up anywhere?

Misc. Notes (if any):

Is it long, medium, or short?: I wrote the standards here.

It is for kids, teens, adults, or everybody?

Comments

[erinptah]

My Life as a Dissociated Personality by B.C.A. (written memoir, 1909)

"As B, I felt very grateful to you for treating me as if I were a "real" person and allowing me to express my own personality. With every one else I had to pretend to be A, and my feeling of gratitude and the fact that you asked for my co-operation -- put me on my honor as it were -- was the underlying motive in telling you so much."

Blurb: An account of the various phases of dissociated personality, written by the patient, after recovery and restoration of memory for all the different phases. Such an account could only be given by a person who has had the experience, and who has the introspective and literary capacity to describe them.

Why is it worth your time?: Possibly the earliest medical-multi memoir! Clear and engaging writing, it makes for a quick, fun read. A reader from the 2020s can regularly recognize "hey, if they were around today they'd call that [term that hadn't been coined in 1909]." The first half is written by an integrated "C" who can remember the experiences of both "A" and "B", though those two struggled with severe amnesia barriers for a long time. The second half is by B, who recounts her own experiences, including co-consciousness (in that word!) with both A and C.

The first half is formatted as a series of letters to their psychiatrist, who requested that they write it all up for a scientific journal. The psychiatrist contributes some prefaces and footnotes, but he largely gets out of the way and lets the system tell their story. When he brings in his own perspective, it's usually to say "this is how my observations corroborate the experience my patient has described."

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, cofronting, creator speaks from experience, fusion/integration, relationships: teamwork, type: median, type: medical

Content Warnings: none. The authors talk about difficult experiences in very general terms (e.g. a "shock" of "an intensely emotional nature"), but say plainly that they aren't interested in going into detail.

Accessibility Notes: Digitized on archive.org. Text version was auto-generated from the scanned pages, so it has some errors, but is overall readable/searchable.

Misc. Notes (if any): Fusion/integration was a therapeutic goal for this system, and they were relieved and satisfied with the results. The "median" tag seems appropriate for both their early experiences (where they describe a "B complex", which was identifiably separate, but hadn't yet "flowered" into "a distinct personality"), and their post-integration ones (where B experiences herself as still existing, just fully co-conscious with C).

Is it long, medium, or short?: Short (under 50 pages of actual text)

It is for kids, teens, adults, or everybody?: Everybody

[lb_lee]

Thank you for sparing me the effort of rereading this myself! It has been added to the catalog! ^_^