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pluralstories2022-07-29 03:52 pm
lb_lee) wrote in pluralstories2022-07-29 03:52 pm
The Third Person, by Emma Grove (memoir comic, 2022)
Info from rax and erinptah !
"There's something else from when I was a kid... something I've done since I was a little kid, and I don't know why... I've always thought of myself in the plural!"
Blurb: 900-page comics memoir about a messed-up therapy relationship and being gatekept out of transitioning due to DID.
Why is it worth your time?: Quoth Rax: "we [...] enjoyed it a lot. [...] it is definitely a trans memoir but the plural aspects are at least more personally interesting. it can be painful in places, and the therapist character is really awful in places, but it's also wickedly funny and does a good job of respecting the author's privacy when she doesn't feel like sharing something. the ending is... it feels a little too neatly wrapped up compared to our experiences or the experiences of people we know, but (a) maybe the author's experience wrapped up! that happens! and (b) maybe it didn't and she reasonably concluded the details of that aren't the world at large's business."
Quoth Erin, "I've read it, and it did turn out to be very good! The 800-page length isn't as overwhelming as it sounds -- it covers long conversations in detail with a new panel every line or two, plus beat panels for the silences, so it doesn't take much reading to whip through a bunch of pages. And the marketing copy taking the therapist's POV was a weird choice -- the book itself is so blatantly from the perspective/s of the author, who's just earnestly trying to get some support."
Plural Tags: DID, switching, abuse high-focus (by a therapist of their adult client), fusion/integration, plural creator
Content Warnings: contain spoilers! In comments below.
Accessibility Notes: This comic is VERY long, 900 pages, though it apparently goes by very quickly! Available in both paper and ebook.
rax and erinptah !"There's something else from when I was a kid... something I've done since I was a little kid, and I don't know why... I've always thought of myself in the plural!"
Blurb: 900-page comics memoir about a messed-up therapy relationship and being gatekept out of transitioning due to DID.
Why is it worth your time?: Quoth Rax: "we [...] enjoyed it a lot. [...] it is definitely a trans memoir but the plural aspects are at least more personally interesting. it can be painful in places, and the therapist character is really awful in places, but it's also wickedly funny and does a good job of respecting the author's privacy when she doesn't feel like sharing something. the ending is... it feels a little too neatly wrapped up compared to our experiences or the experiences of people we know, but (a) maybe the author's experience wrapped up! that happens! and (b) maybe it didn't and she reasonably concluded the details of that aren't the world at large's business."
Quoth Erin, "I've read it, and it did turn out to be very good! The 800-page length isn't as overwhelming as it sounds -- it covers long conversations in detail with a new panel every line or two, plus beat panels for the silences, so it doesn't take much reading to whip through a bunch of pages. And the marketing copy taking the therapist's POV was a weird choice -- the book itself is so blatantly from the perspective/s of the author, who's just earnestly trying to get some support."
Plural Tags: DID, switching, abuse high-focus (by a therapist of their adult client), fusion/integration, plural creator
Content Warnings: contain spoilers! In comments below.
Accessibility Notes: This comic is VERY long, 900 pages, though it apparently goes by very quickly! Available in both paper and ebook.
Content Warnings
"Their childhood trauma doesn't get a lot of page time, and imo it's not graphic, but we do see physical abuse at home and bullying (mostly transphobic bullying) at school."
Quoth Rax: "transition itself isn't 100% the thing that "solves" the plurality but textually, it is solved, one of the three of them makes a point of leaving, and it becomes a thing of the past. however, the final scene calls this into question a little bit by having the main character act like the person who "left" and then notice this and sort of sit wordlessly with it as the book ends.
"it was definitely the most frustrating part for me of a book i otherwise loved, and that we in general really appreciate and recommend.
EDIT: and having read the book ourself now, the therapeutic dickery is REALLY rough to read. We actually had to skip four hundred pages in the middle because we found it so upsetting we just couldn't read that part anymore.
no subject
we just read it (as in, we finished it in one sitting five minutes ago) and just want to re-emphasize how fucking rough the therapeutic abuse is, because even with the TWs we weren't fully prepared.
like, it gets to a point where the therapist says that he *sees why they were beaten as a child* because he's mad at them, and he kicks them out of therapy repeatedly. probably over 50% of what he says is accusing them of lying or faking, including yelling at them for having a panic attack while they were actively having it.
the framing of integration was also pretty upsetting to us, but it's a memoir and if that's how emma grove experienced it, that's obviously totally fine. we just get incredibly sad seeing alters treated like they're less deserving of a life than the 'host,' or like their existence is inherently a detriment.
the TW stuff aside though, some of how they talked about gender really hit home for some of us. ed says he's not a woman but a man who wants to be a woman, who might be one deep down, which fits one of our headmates very well. ed in general is very relatable to that headmate. and riley saw a lot of themself in katrina (which is part of what made the ending so painful for us).
no subject