Plural Stories

"When you aren't alone in your head
you learn to listen
to the flavored thoughts
of the people behind your eyes."

Blurb: A poem about the intersections between plurality and blindness.

Why is it worth your time?: It's an insightful look into a plural world that is often ignored by the sighted, including the complications of sighted headmates in a blind vessel.

Plural Tags: abuse low focus, fictioneers, nonhumans [Transformer/robot, doll], children, teamwork and friendship, switching

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Free, short, and screenreadable. Read it here! (Back-up link)

"Don't you see? There are areas in which only we are qualified to operate. When the rational world breaks down, we can cope... because we've been there, in ourselves. We have known madness... and delirium... and we are no longer afraid. The world has turned its back on us, but it's time to stop being victims, time to show them we're more than just 'freaks,' more than just 'cripples.' Believe me, they need us. And we need each other."

Blurb: Shunned as freaks and outcasts, tempered by loss and insanity, this superheroic band of disabled misfits faces threats so mystifying in nature and so corrupted in motive that reality itself threatens to fall apart around them--but it's all in a day's work for the Doom Patrol.

Why is it worth your time?: Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol is considered a classic, and deservedly so. The comic follows its own surreal logic but isn't as esoteric as other Morrison works, the heroes often solve their (cosmic reality-breaking) problems with their wits, and while everyone has damage and impairments, watching them work together as a family is enjoyable.

It's also plural out the wazoo. Crazy Jane, the MPD multiple on the team, is based off the Troops for Truddi Chase, and a whole issue deals with Robotman exploring her headspace to help one of the headmates after a traumatic event. Rebis (AKA the Negative Man) is also plural, being composed of two people and the Negative Spirit, smooshed together in a single body. They are basically always cofronting together and talk to themselves aloud in dialogue for the first couple volumes, and are stated to be in a process of fusion, a sort of walking alchemical marriage. And finally, support staff Dorothy is a teenager whose superpower is her imagination becomes real--her imaginary friends are shown to have independent desires from her. Robotman himself gets into an argument with his robot body at one point, which gains independent sentience and decides it doesn't want him around. (He loses the argument.) This is one of the most plural comics I have ever read.

Plural Tags: abuse low-focus, mpd/did, switching, otherworld, children, imaginary friends, introjects, median, realitymashing, plural community, teamwork, enmity, and family; nonhumans [spirits, robots]

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in digital and paper forms, pretty easy to find since it's so well-known. I'll also note that I was very reluctant to attempt reading this book because Morrison is often too much for me, but I was pleased to find that I could follow this story fine!

Misc Notes: Morrison's run is contained within issues #19-63, plus a self-contained special that you can skip. It is omnibused in either three GIANT books, or six paperbacks: "Crawling from the Wreckage," "The Painting That Ate Paris," "Down Paradise Way," "Musclebound," "Magic Bus," and "Planet Love." There has also been a TV show made, still coming out as of 2022, but we haven't watched much of it.

“After the fire was under control and firemen called, I stood outside in shock. Why did the fire start in the first place? How did I know how to stop it so quickly? What do I do now? I was covered in soot, and my lungs hurt. The apartment looked darker, unsafe. I walked back to the kitchen and made dinner. I don't remember much after that...”

Blurb: "Our daily adventures as a DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) system." A diary comic from the system's life in 2013.

Why is it worth your time?: It's a diary comic, so it's a look at the everyday life and feelings of GalaxySystem, without dramatic streamlining. And it's been going off and on for a good few years; there are long hiatuses, but thus far, the creators have always picked it up again.

Plural Tags: plural creator, nonhuman [cat person], plural community, abuse low-focus, MPD/DID,

Content Warnings: Allusions to bad relationships and abuse, at times foul language. Generally not much to worry about.

Accessibility Notes: Free to read online, not transcribed.

Misc. Notes: Incomplete, on hiatus. The nature of the beast kind of insures it.

Read it online here!

"I know what you're thinking. Multiple Personality was once thought of as a psychological disorder. The same used to be thought of homosexuality, you know... but when properly developed, Multiples can be more perceptive, in that we can take different, even opposing viewpoints of the same situation. We discuss problems internally, so we have the advantage of group interaction within one person. Anyway, this is beside the point..."

Blurb: A short story about a multiple, two singlets, and an alien going treasure hunting in space, only to find a mysterious object they can't identify.

Why is it worth your time?: It's all right. And though it doesn't get a lot of narrative attention, we found the multiple's relationship to her alien foster father heartwarming. Who doesn't secretly wish for a sci-fi name badge that changes to say who is fronting?

Plural Tags: switching, abuse low-focus

Content Warnings: very mild, but contain spoilers; in comments below.

Accessibility Notes: short, free to read online, though the hard sci-fi makes it at times dense or challenging to read if you're brainfogged.

Misc. Notes: Originally posted on talk.bizarre, on Usenet.

Read it here!

“We know how to swim in the sea of whiteness.
We don't really want to.

We don't know how to climb.
How to reach a place of connection with blackness.
We haven't figured out if we want to.”

Blurb: A kinetic essay, a venting of complicated feelings about race springing from being both black and white.

Why is it worth your time? Packbat's essay is short, free, and a thoughtful discussion of a challenging topic. Some plurals are making really experimental work, both in genre and medium, and that has value, even if by nature it's hard to fit into the "rules" of how this comm is supposed to work. It may not have a "story," by traditional means, but I want to boost it.

Plural Tags: nonhuman headmates, abuse low-focus

Content Warnings: In comments below; contains spoilers.

Accessibility Notes: Short, free, available in text-only form.

Play it here!

"What I do remember is... 'No one will ever love you!' My mother's words... those words made me believe no one would love me. So I created two new personalities who would love me, 'Kaname' and 'Ryo.'"

Blurb: A very VERY boys love manga about the sexual and romantic misadventures of a small system of three that start as boyfriends, then get their own corporeal boyfriends over time.

Why is it worth your time? I cannot say this book is good. It is the literary equivalent of squirting cheese whiz directly into your mouth from the can. Read this ONLY if you are here for all the goofy BL tropes and are aching for unrealistic cheesy absurdity. I enjoyed it far disproportionately to its quality.

Plural Tags: in-system relationships, MPD/DID, switching, plural community (i.e., there's more than one plural in this book), abuse low-focus

Content Warnings: Explicit sex. Other warnings contain spoilers and are in the comments below.

Accessibility Notes: Available in English paperback, though only secondhand. Apparently the Japanese version is available both in paper and in ebook form, under its original title, 脳内恋愛のススメ (Nōnai Renai no Susume).

Oh! Who are you?”

“ummm… I’m me.”

“Me too! I’m me, too!”

“So we are all ‘me’ then?”

“YES!”

“Obvi.”

Blurb: (from the creators) A comic about a plural system, discovering that they are many people and learning to cope with that fact and work together. It is ultimately a comic about dissociative identity disorder from the perspective of the system itself, not as that singular person the outside world sees, nor as the singular person that the system has been believing themselves to be, but as they actually are: a messy group of people sharing a body and trying to make it work.

Why is it worth your time? It's good, fairly short, and one of the calmer DID stories; bad things happen, but abuse so far (as of strip #31) is only abstractly alluded to, and the focus is on the system building their sense of teamwork and putting their life together. WARNING: ongoing and unfinished!

Plural Tags: switching, DID, headspace, inner children

Content Warnings: In comments below; contains spoilers.

Accessibility Notes: Textually transcribed, web-only. Free!

Read it here!