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

[monsterqueers]

Title: Xenogears

Creator/s: Square, Directed by Tetsuya Takahashi

Medium, Genre, and Format: game, sci-fi fantasy, digital, analog, and bootleg.

Year Released: 1998

Is it long, medium, or short?: long. (56 hours average, ~80 hours completionist, the lets play linked is approx. 88 hours)

It is for kids, teens, or adults only? Teens and adults.

A cool quote from the work: "It's okay not to feel `whole'. Even if you feel only partly complete, if you repeat that enough, it'll eventually be `whole'. A part... is better than zero."

Blurb: A cult-classic extremely plotty JRPG about a amnesiac guy named Fei Fong Wong, who journeys across the world with some other folks to overthrow the fascist government, and in the process uncovers the secrets of their world and things about his past. Also there are giant robots.

Why is it worth your time?: Ok so this is a bit of a spoiler but Fei has DID canonically. Really not sure how to sell it as a plural game without saying this. Now its portrayal is deeply DEEPLY dated to 1998 Japan's understanding of it, but for its time its startlingly accurate and sympathetic. The depiction in the game matches the understanding of the time quite well, its just that time was 1998.

They really made an attempt at depicting dissociation through a visual medium, and the dynamic between Fei's alters is well developed. Its not amazing, its got SO many flaws in accuracy and unfortunate tropes, and its definitely not aged the best in many ways, but we did enjoy it quite a bit.

If you want a historical look at something that has a Very Robust plot -by that we mean lots and lots of lore-heavy cutscenes- and a plural character that has their plurality focused on, its beloved for a reason. One just has to keep in mind its from 1998 and everything about it is incredibly dated to that; from the gameplay to the portrayal of plurality and mental illness to the tackling of a variety of other subjects.

Please note this game is well known for being wildly dark and having a complicated and often confusing plot. The plot requires your full attention to make sense, and even then it can be confusing to many people. Its not for everyone but we personally enjoyed it and thought it wasnt as confusing as a lot of people find it.

Plural Tags: memory work, fusion/integration, otherworld, children, mpd/did, enmity

Content Warnings: This includes spoilers. There are so many content warnings and they dont play around.
Strobing and flashing lights even in unskippable cutscenes, mass death including that of named characters and children on multiple occasions, genocide (both threatened and carried out), heavy focus given to child abuse (physical, medical, and emotional, includes gaslighting) as well as a brief mention of CSA by priests, emotional domestic abuse and manipulation towards a man by a woman, stalking and government surveillance, fascism and everything that brings- there are very strong allusions to nazis with the antagonists and its not an accident, medical experimentation(on children and adults), torture(of children and adults), caste system, alcohol(some important characters are very heavy drinkers), nonconsensual drug use (and consensual drug use), gore and body horror, mind control, cannibalism (both unknowing and intentional, institutional), references to a past nuclear war, crucifixion and LOTS of religious symbolism, aftermath of a church shooting is shown, several off-camera sex scenes, mental breakdowns on screen, dissociation shown on screen and described, violent superpowered alter, integration treated as inherently necessary (but wanted by the system), fictional racism, a character mentions having considered underage sex work in the past, neutral to bittersweet ending.

Accessibility Notes: Physical copies for the ps1 are rare and expensive due to being out of print, but it may be bought on the ps vita/ps3 eshop and there are lets plays available on youtube. Linked lets play is a no commentary run: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMHR2xnx8VCrRvNrgh10j0eq5UQFvM_WC It isnt a completionist run, but shows the full main plot.
A lets play is the recommended option as the gameplay has aged considerably and its on an old system.

Misc. Notes (if any): Its also worth noting that some of the director's later works also feature plurality, and are more accurate to the experience indicating that the portrayals flaws were more due to the times than views towards plurals.

[lb_lee]

Added! Thank you for submitting, you've mentioned it but though we were PS1 kids, we never ran across this one! (We were never big into RPGs.)

--Sneak

[monsterqueers]

Stuff in the rpg circuit tends to only really be known in the rpg circuit unless it gets popular outside of that niche, so 100% not surprised you havent heard of it if yall dont play much rpgs!
Its content warnings are basically 'Yes'(to the point we arent sure we even got all the reasonable warnings despite it being a solid WALL of CWs because there is So Much Happening), which didnt help its marketing or production- the entire localization team except for one guy infamously quit because it was too dark and religious.

We only heard of it because we liked the other things the creator has worked on and went down the rabbit hole.

[lb_lee]

Mori: And JPRGs are kinda their own thing, and it's a genre with conventions we've never quite understood, no lie.

Also, Sneak is one of our biggest gamers and ze gets really :( over having to choose party members or having friends killed off, so any RPG with more party characters than can fit in your party is just no fun for zer. (See also: why we will NEVER play Lisa: the Painful.)

the entire localization team except for one guy infamously quit because it was too dark and religious.

Who was this mysterious last man standing???

[monsterqueers]

Yeah, JRPGS have quite a few things they do that are particular to them. We like anime and tabletops quite a bit so a lot of their conventions (numbers weighted, anime aesthetic, The Part Where A Protagonist Group Character Betrays You Or Dies, resource management, etc) feel Normalish, but it can be very jarring to people who are neither used to nor enjoy that sort of gameplay.

And yeah that knocks out most JRPGs right there, most have some kind of party system where even if they are with you, they arent all in the main battling party. And Many kill at least one party member- if only the tutorial ones, if not named characters you meet on the way.

His name is Richard Honeywood and he regards the translation of that game as one of the hardest in his career. He was essentially handed the project by square and left alone to do all the work after everyone else quit. There were times he was apparently sleeping in his office because of it according to various interviews, the poor man.
As a result of this, he was part of the push to get square to change their policy on how they do translations, so now they have assistants and editors.

[lb_lee]

Sneak: That would totally make me sad! I feel like my pet dog in hack103 is the extent to how much I can handle resource/party management in an RPG. :p And it can die too (and WILL, unless you leave it behind and come back for it) so that's my peak amount of manageable video game sadness! (At least, if you have enough food on you, you can adopt any feral dog you come across, meaning you can become KING OF THE PUPPIES!)

Mori: Let us light a candle for Richard Honeywood, the man with the thankless job who did it anyway. Blessings be upon thee, Mr. Honeywood.

[monsterqueers]

Yeah, then most RPG are for sure off the table then!

And aw cute! Feeding wild animals to make them your friends in video games is a wonderful mechanic! It was something we really enjoyed in okami- that you could feed the other animals and theyd run up to greet you after.

Yes! Hes truly a hero, not just for doing the impossible and translating a HUGE jrpg with a lot of heavy dialogue after being left alone with it(it has 300k words of dialogue in it according to some wiki we found, which sounds right), but for getting squares policies changed so *no one else* would ever have to do what he did.