lb_lee: Sneak smiling (sneak)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"dragons may be make believe -- that doesn't make them fake."

Blurb: A children's song about a young boy and his imaginary dragon friend.

Why is it worth your time?: I mean, if you want a sad song about the abandonment of childhood wonder and dreams, there's the original. If you want the happy ending, you can read Spider Robinson's 3rd verse addendum!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, otherworld, imaginary friends, nonhumans [dragon], friendship

Content Warnings: loss of childhood innocence and wonder

Access Notes: This is a very well-known song and easy to find lyrics and recordings of. It's also on archive.org! Spider Robinson's verse is also freely available online, because the fanzine he put it in (Niekas #30, from 1981) got digitized a while ago. If you are TRULY deadset on owning Robinson's verse on paper with an illustration, it was also printed in Fifty Extremely SF* Stories, edited by Michael Bastraw.

Misc Notes: Since Robinson's verse is so short, I just copy-pasted it into the comments below, because it seems like the kind of ephemera that might disappear. I know he's performed it live, but I haven't found any recordings, sorry!
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[personal profile] lb_lee
Submitted by [personal profile] packbat!

"And indeed, this is what must have happened now, because the next thing I knew was that I was waking suddenly out of sleep.

"A Full Moon stood in the centre of the Single Doorway, flooding the Hall with Light. The Statues on the Walls were all posed as if they had just turned to face the Doorway, their marble Eyes fixed on the Moon. They were different from the Statues in other Halls; they were not isolated individuals, but representations of a Crowd. Here were two with their Arms about each other; here one had his Hand on the Shoulder of one in front, the better to pull himself forward to see the Moon; here a Child held on to its Father's Hand. There was even a Dog that — having no interest in the Moon — stood on its Hind Legs, its Front Paws on its Master's Chest, pleading for attention. The Rear Wall was a mass of Statues — not neatly arranged in Tiers, but a jumbled, chaotic Crowd. Foremost among them was a Young Man, who stood bathed in the Moonlight, elation in his Face, a Banner in his Hand.

"I almost forgot to breathe. For a moment I had an inkling of what it might be like if instead of two people in the World there were thousands."


Blurb: A series of journal entries by a man living in an apparently-infinite House full of Statues, oceans, and clouds, as he comes to learn more about the nature of his world and realize certain truths which were hidden from him.

Why is it worth your time?: Mostly it's a really cool story and we loved reading it? The protagonist's memory issues mean that he is solving a mystery where we know a lot more than he does. But also, the story being structured around a journal lets us see the perspectives of multiple inhabitants of the protagonist's body over the course of the story.

Plural Tags: abuse:high-focus, memory work, visions, closeting,

Content Warnings: gaslighting, animal death (fishing, a monkey offscreen), human death, kidnapping, unsanitary (one character is implied to have soiled himself, another throws up), fatphobia (very brief but intense), violence, drowning. Also, there's a heroic cop character, and the only explicitly LGBTQ+ character out of the dozen or so named characters is a villain.

Accessibility Notes: Available in audiobook, and in MANY languages, including Spanish, Polish, German, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Turkish, French, Bulgarian, Russian and Czech.

Misc. Notes (if any): There is a lot of obvious inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges and similar otherworldly fantasty, but it also draws from the author's experience with ME/CFS in a lot of subtle ways. And it has a good ending, which for us Packbats makes it easier to deal with the heavy stuff.


lb_lee: A skeleton wearing a crown of blooming roses (the bony lady)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"The you that killed Viola Wright was mulched a month later. I found my outlying scrap of consciousness balled up in Gus's pocket, all unbeknownst to him, along with the rest of your magically compressed matter and a great charge of vibrating magic. It was an unsettling vantage, for where I curled infinitesimally in your remains I could hear what I might call my primary self screaming above Gus's head.'"

Blurb: Gus is a sorcerer so obsessed with Catherine that he murders her, and her ghost is stuck haunting him forevermore. Unable to accept that Catherine doesn't love him, Gus then becomes obsessed with finding other girls that remind him of Catherine and making THEM love him... only to kill them when the inevitably don't'. He creates magical duplicates of himself to do that dirty work, forever recycling them into new copies, using Catherine's ghost to follow them. But over the decades, that means a piece of Catherine is embedded in those pieces of Gus. And she still wants her revenge...

Why is it worth your time?: It's pretty good! This is a book covering 150+ years of time, with three major time periods and two (or three, depending how you count) different points of view, and a decently sizable cast, all organized well enough so as not to throw us. Gus is utterly convincing as that special brand of romantic obsessive who sees himself as the most loving person, all the while being an utter horrorshow, and Catherine's revenge is delicious.

Plural Tags: abuse (mostly of a ghost) high-focus, cofronting, copies, the dead, enmity, setting-specific, possession

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in print, ebook, and audiobook
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"These stories were very old, as old as people, and they had survived because they were very powerful indeed. These were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside. They were both an escape from reality and an alternative reality themselves. They were so old, and so strange, that they had found a kind of existence independent of the pages they occupied. The world of the old tales existed parallel to ours, as David's mother had once told him, but sometimes the wall separating the two became so thin and brittle that the two worlds started to blend into each other.

"That was when the trouble started."


Blurb: After the tragic death of his mother, his father's remarriage, and the birth of a baby brother, troubled boy David finds himself sucked into a fantasy world that seems cobbled together from the various books in his room. But those books and stories don't all belong to him, and some of them are very grim...

Why is it worth your time?: It's an enjoyable dark fantasy with truly frightening villains, tragic heroes, all overhung with a backdrop of World War II, which David is too young to fully understand the nature of. Give it a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, otherworld, fictioneers, the dead, visions, voices

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: This book is mainstream and well-liked and has gotten multiple printings, so it's easy to find in libraries. Available in ebook, audiobook, paperback, and hardback formats. Also got translated into French, where it won an award!
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
(Full title: Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr and Madwoman)

"Like her sister Nana, Ida too would have a spirit husband, but unlike Nana's posthumous nuptials, Ida would join her partner on this side of the grave."

Blurb: A biography of Ida C. Craddock, a sex educator who married a spirit in the 1890s and who was hounded to death by Anthony Comstock for it.

Why is it worth your time?: It's well-researched, and one of the only biographies of Craddock. Schmidt doesn't seem to know what to do with her spirit marriage, shoving it into two chapters ("Pastor of the Church of Yoga" and "One Religio-Sexual Maniac") and treating it with bemused incomprehension, but he does an excellent job explaining the cultural context around Craddock's work and harassment. The excerpts of her diary that he quotes regarding her relationship with her spirit husband Soph remain touching and relevant a century later. Recommended, despite its limitations!

Plural Tags: abuse low-focus, otherworld, the dead, family, and romantic relationships, spiritual, voices

Content Warnings: Kidnapping, institutionalization, imprisonment, era-expected ableism, misogyny, racism, and classism, plus religious oppression, parental violence, suicide. Despite this, the book isn't that rough a read; most of that happens in the chapter clearly labeled "Every Inch a Martyr."

Access Notes: Available in paper, audio, and ebook forms. Very easy to get ahold of.

Misc Notes: If you want to read Ida C. Craddock's writings, including Heavenly Bridegrooms and Psychic Wedlock, check out https://www.idacraddock.com/ There's also Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: the Essential Ida Craddock, but we haven't read it and can't say anything about it.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Submitted by my friend Chris!

"A mind in a city. A city in a mind."

Blurb: Murder mystery set in the mind of Elias Hodge, scientist.

Why is it worth your time?: The series is a fun combination of noir murder mystery and themes from Disney's Inside Out.

Plural Tags: otherworld, abuse intermediate focus, children, teamwork

Content Warnings: Specific content warnings are given in the episode blurb (such as misophonia: lip smacking). The series is set in a city in the mind going through Prohibition similar to the experience in the US (Al Capone era), so presume innuendo, violence, and alcohol.

Access Notes: Audio/dubbing, with subtitles and a transcript feature that's searchable (in the streaming service).

Misc Notes: Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9riE94Kkwq4
1st episode for free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pT1OhH3F1Y
Fandom Wiki (may have spoilers): https://dimension20.fandom.com/wiki/Mentopolis
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"This isn't really a story about voices. Or it is, but not in the way you think. It's really about what it's like to breathe life into a character, and whether that character can breathe life back into you."

Blurb: "Mel Blanc was known as 'the man of 1,000 voices,' but the actual number may have been closer to 1,500. Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety, Barney Rubble -- all Mel. And in 1961, when a car crash left him in a coma, these characters may have saved him. Sean [the host], Noel [Blanc, Mel's son], Dr. Conway [Mel's neurosurgeon at the time] and NYU brain scientist Orrin Devinsky weigh over what it might mean to be rescued by a figment of your own imagination, and whether one self can win out over another in a moment of crisis."

Why is it worth your time?: It's good! An interesting exploration of the neurological nature of the characters Mel Blanc portrayed, and their beneficial effects while he was in a coma. It's about 20 minutes long, free to listen, and worth the time, I daresay.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, fictioneers, voices (though not in the usual way this tag is meant!)

Content Warnings: calm, straightforward descriptions of a car accident and Mel Blanc's death.

Access Notes: Not textually transcribed. Free to listen online. Listen to it here!
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"We all need some place to go away to... some place we can be the people we should've been instead of the people we've become. Some safe place where we can escape reality."

Blurb: In our world, the Maxx is a homeless man who sleeps in a box with a hopelessly enmeshed relationship with his social worker, Julie, but in the primordial Outback, he's a superhero fighting for his Jungle Queen! But it turns out the Maxx, Julie, and the Outback are all hopelessly psychologically intertwined, and a killer named Mr. Gone seems to know way more about all of them than he should...

Why is it worth your time?: This is a very edgy '90s story that Sam Keith says tended to strike specific teenagers in just the right way at a specific time, and indeed, that's how we got into it. It is EXTREMELY uneven in quality, but Keith mashes Outback and "real world", realism and cartoonish exaggeration, together in a way that nobody else does, and it's still beautiful to watch. In an unusual twist for us, we will recommend the MTV Liquid Television cartoon over the comic; by virtue of its brevity, it forced the story to cut some of its worst excesses, and its ending is less unsatisfying and, in our opinion, much better placed.

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate focus, realitymashing, memory work, otherworld, children, nonhumans [spirit animals], visions

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: The cartoon has subtitles on Open Subtitles. It was released on VHS, DVD, and someone put it on archive.org. The comics version is available on paper and ebook, and someone may have textually transcribed them for readers with print disabilities on archive.org? That would be a pleasant surprise!

Misc Notes: The comics version of the Maxx came out in six trade paperbacks (and maybe one of side-stories), but vol. 4 starts with a big time-skip and loses William Messner-Loebs as writer, leaving Sam Keith pulling double duty, and it shows. The cartoon, by virtue of being made in 1995 (and thus before the comic ended) was stuck with the first three volumes, and thus it ends there. The cartoon was 13 episodes, each roughly 10 minutes long, so you can smash through the whole thing in less than three hours.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"Whoa, we’re all out in the open! I communicate to
her, pressing the thoughts to her heart like wet hooves
stepping on dry ground. Rain dripping off, sending bits of
love into her soul as water coming into soil."


Blurb: "A short story about trans gender feels, spirituality, and a deer getting eaten alive."

Why is it worth your time?: This is a story about cosmic oneness and mindsharing across animal lives. Some plurals are making really experimental work, and that has value, even if by nature it's hard to fit into the "rules" of how this comm is supposed to work. If you're looking for something ecstatically transcendent and unusual, give this one a shot! It's free, what do you have to lose?

Plural Tags: plural creator, abuse not mentioned, nonhumans [deer], mindsharing, spiritual

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Xenia Numinous have worked really hard to make this accessible! The ebook is plaintext and screenreadable, and it also comes in audio form.

Misc Notes: There's also bonus audio commentary and a print-format PDF, so you can print, fold, and staple it at home.

Read it here!
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"Let's face reality together, no matter how harsh it is."

Blurb: When despair overwhelms certain people in Tokyo, they find themselves whacked upside the head by a middle-school boy with a golden bat and rollerblades. Cops start investigating the case, only to discover that "Lil Slugger" isn't what he seems...

Why is it worth your time?: It's a good show with themes of dealing (or not dealing) with reality, and how things in our mind can grow bigger and bigger until they take on lives of their own (and possibly eat Tokyo.) If you enjoyed Paprika, you will likely enjoy this, especially since you can see Satoshi Kon growing as a filmmaker from Perfect Blue, to Paranoia Agent, to Paprika.

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate focus, otherworld, realitymashing, enmity, visions, voices

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments (VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED)

Access Notes: Available on DVD, with subtitles and dubbing both. There's also a more-literal bootleg fan translation floating around archive.org, which despite its clunkiness I found myself preferring. (What can I say, I like having all the weird puns and references explained to me.)

Misc Notes: The beginning credits and the third-to-last episode of this show will live forever in my memory. I sometimes watch that one episode, all on its own, to inspire myself.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"To live in harmony with all intelligences, we must relinquish our ideas of personhood. Just as we abstracted this concept to include corporations and environmental bodies, so now we must include artificial intelligences. --the Machinehood Manifesto"

Blurb: (from back cover) It's 2095 and humanity is entirely dependent on pills that not only help them stay alive but allow them to compete with artificial intelligence in an increasingly competitive gig economy. All that changes when the Machinehood, a new and mysterious terrorist group whose operatives seem to be part human, part machine, simultaneously attacks several major pill funders. They issue an ultimatum: stop all pill production in one week. Global panic ensues, and Welga Ramirez, executive bodyguard and ex-special forces, is pulled back into intelligence work by the government that once betrayed her. But who are the Machinehood and what do they really want?

Why is it worth your time?: This book was nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula, so it's pretty good! Divya has degrees in computational neuroscience and signal processing, so she knows her stuff, and her AIs act like AIs, not humans in tinfoil suits. This book is also the first time I've read about cybernetic headmates and group mind as neutral or positive things, rather than just the Borg. Throughout the entire book, Welga is accompanied by her body-implanted AI assistant, Por Que, who speaks and suggests and then becomes more self-directed and more present in the final quarter, and the thought-dialogue swaps between plural and singular pronouns. This is a rare case where I'm putting the "median" tag in without the author's statement. Also, this book is about older characters with established, loving relationships with each other, which is refreshing to read; the couples have been together for years, the families love each other, and the conflict follows suit. If you want a nice long sci-fi book with cyborg Buddhists, give this a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, cofronting, median, setting-specific, nonhumans [AI, robots]

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available as paper book, ebook, audiobook, and on CD.

Misc Notes: Nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula, won a couple reader's choice awards. You can read the first three chapters and the full Machinehood Manifesto for free on machinehood.com!
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"For the first time since she'd arrived in Malaysia, Jess was alone in her head."

Blurb: When Jessamyn Teoh starts hearing a voice in her head, it isn't even hers, but the ghost of her estranged grandmother, a deceased spirit medium for the god called Black Water Sister. As Jess gets sucked into a complicated world of lies, attempted murder, spirits, and fights for territory, she'll need to regain control of her body and destiny, before the weight of family secrets kills her.

Why is it worth your time?: It's good! It starts a little slow, but the ending is so deeply satisfying, as is Zen Cho's depiction of spirit mediumship, which is transactional, amoral, and deeply inconvenient. Themes of the book include the complexity of relationships to family, home, history, and self, the cages we make ourselves, and dealing with the past so as to better deal with the present. It's been nominated for multiple awards for good reason. Recommended!

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate content, cofronting, temporary fusion, the dead, enmity and family relationships, community, teamwork, spiritual, visions, voices, possession

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in ebook, paper, and audiobook forms.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Submitted by [personal profile] starfallhaven! Thanks!

"this was your shell, but it was all filled up with me. God, the double entendres were hard to resist."

Blurb: the sequel to Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth follows Harrowhark Nonageismus, who has failed to become a true Lyctor--a necromancer who has absorbed the soul of her cavalier. She is being both haunted by both visions and ghosts as she attempts to survive her time aboard the Mithraeum as one of God's chosen saints.

Why is it worth your time?: this book is extraordinarily good if you know what's going on (that is, body and mind sharing). The entire premise of Lyctorhood, one of the novel's defining world building aspects, is based on the idea of a secondary soul residing in a single body. There's even possession.

Plural Tags: mindsharing, switching, visions, setting-specific, abuse not mentioned, fusion/integration, otherworld, enmity and romantic relationships, the dead

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Accessibility Notes: available in print, ebook, and audiobook.

Misc. Notes: This book is not going to make much sense if you haven't read Gideon the Ninth, and I can't recommend reading one without the other. Although I'm firmly of the opinion that knowing about the bodysharing aspect in advance will only make the reading experience more enjoyable, it is technically a spoiler to know about at least one of the bodysharing relationships in this book.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"I was a child when Haraniel first came to me. They watched over me for years. Just a thought away. I understood what they were eventually and what they hoped I would do for them. And I did. I offered to be their host."

Blurb: A disgraced warlock and her angel-possessed girlfriend get pulled into a serial killing mystery in Chicago, only to discover things are not what they appear.

Why is it worth your time?: It's good! Short, snappy, with a solid bittersweet ending. The angels in this book tend towards the more eldritch side.

Plural Tags: nonhumans [angels], metaphysical, switching, abuse not mentioned, possession

Content Warnings: This is a murder mystery, so people die badly in it! Others involve spoilers; see comments.

Accessibility Notes: Available in paper, ebook, and audio formats.

Misc. Notes: Won a Nebula! Also nominated for a bunch of other awards.

lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"I'm part of your imagination too. I'm you too, Joel."

Blurb: After a painful breakup, Clementine undergoes a procedure to erase memories of her former boyfriend. When he finds out, he undergoes the same procedure and slowly begins to forget the woman that he loved, only to discover that this may not be a good idea. A flight through mindscape ensues, trying to dodge the memory-erasure.

Why is it worth your time?: It's really good! Nowhere else have I seen a story (asides from those about dementia) that is so about the preciousness and pricelessness of memories, even painful ones. The special effects are used subtly to show the differences between memory and reality, with surreal geography, blurred environments representing them not being fully committed to memory, and some looming psychological horror as memories warp before erasure. This is definitely hard on the ish part of pluralish, but seeing as Joel's introject of Clementine comes up with ideas that he himself seems unable to think of, one could argue that his memory of Clementine is somewhat freestanding and has taken on her own life within him. It's also the most relatable movie about amnesia we've ever seen.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, memory work, otherworld, realitymashing, introjects, nonswitching, romantic relationships

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Has subtitles in English, Spanish, and French, dubbing in French--my DVD version, anyway.

Misc Notes: Do not believe the box; this is NOT a romantic comedy, and if you go in expecting that, you will not have a good time.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"When children are playing alone on the green,
In comes the playmate that never was seen."


Blurb: A short poem about imaginary playmates from a century ago.

Why is it worth your time?: It's short, whimsical, and fun.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, imaginary friends, children, friendship

Content Warnings: Frenchmen are losers in it?

Access Notes: Robert Louis Stevenson is famous, so finding a copy of A Children's Garden of Verses shouldn't be too tough. It's also easy to find for free online, since I'm pretty sure it's in the public domain by now. This link has both screenreadable text and an audio reading. (Back-up link; both text and audio work in it)
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Submitted by [personal profile] packbat!

“Not too busy after all, I see,” Esther says when she opens the door.

“No.”

Cat Eleanor stands up on her hind legs, balancing her front paws on his knees, and says hello in cat. Esther smiles.

“She wants you to pick her up.”

REFUSE

Higher likelihood of claw holes from picking up or not picking up.

DANGER

Eleanor makes holes in his kneecaps. He picks her up and drapes her on his shoulder, where she purrs into his neck and presses her cold, wet nose against his ear. Barnes learns that the area around his ear is extremely ticklish.

The mission imperative is a sound in the back of his mind a little like “eeeeeee.”


Blurb: Following on from the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), brainwashed assassin James Buchanan Barnes, his mission imperative, and his mission briefing try to protect Steve Rogers while dealing with assassins, criminals, trauma, memory issues, and becoming a part of a community again.

Why is it worth your time?: This is a story about small victories, supportive friends, and finding your own solutions to problems. Barnes' system configuration is repeatedly affirmed and celebrated as functional and good. It also has a lot of good humor, and the fight scenes are well-integrated into the arc of the plot.

Plural Tags: memory work, nonswitching, relationships: teamwork, voices. fusion/integration is discussed but does not occur.

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments!

Accessibility Notes: screenreadable, audio/dubbing (almost all the stories have at least one linked podfic). Every work in the series has been translated into Русский, although some of the translations are only available to logged-in AO3 users. (An account is free but it might take a day or two to get an invitation.) Some fics in the series have also been translated into Russian, Magyar, Français, 한국어, and/or 中文-普通话 國語. The translations are linked at the top of each fic. Also, at times the HTML is poor so might be a pain on screenreader.

Misc. Notes (if any): The author retcons a number of things over the course of the series and Barnes is an unreliable narrator due to memory issues, so the work is internally contradictory in a number of parts.

Also, URL = https://archiveofourown.org/series/195689 Back-up links:
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"There are people who can never go to Fantastica, and others who can, but who stay there forever. And there are just a few who go to Fantastica and come back. Like you. And they make both worlds well again."

Blurb: A strange book draws a lonely boy named Bastian into the beautiful but doomed world of Fantastica. Only a human can save this enchanted place--by giving its ruler, the Childlike Empress, a new name. But the journey to her tower leads through lands of dragons, giants, monsters, and magic--and once Bastian begins his quest, he may never return. As he is drawn deeper into Fantastica, he must find the courage to face unspeakable foes and the mysteries of his own heart.

Why is it worth your time?: This book was a hit for a long time, and it's not hard to see why. It's a love letter to the power of the imagination, wishes, and story, a mythical fable of exploring the self and desire. Fantastica follows its own rules of reality and does not try to be like the "real" world. It's good, and probably the most famous thing on this catalog.

Plural Tags: fictioneers, otherworld,

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in ebook, audiobook, and dead tree forms, in many languages (including Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, French, Dutch, and Swedish), and an easy library find. The book has also been adapted into movies, radio, and animation, none of which I have seen. Ah, the benefits of an extremely popular bestselling book! Personally, I think the editions with different colored text are best, as long as you aren't colorblind; the text color helps keep you oriented.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
"At any given moment, she is four, they are forty, you are fourteen, it is ancient, we are here and now, he is more and more myself, and I am legion. In tandem, I endure excruciating chronic migraines that sometimes last for weeks, wreaking further havoc on my retention of objective reality. When my mental health isn't good, I become a bewildered, aimless swarm of self, wheeling loosely 'round to roost in a single body."

Blurb: A personal essay on trauma therapy, memory work, and grief as ritual, and on "the daily reality of living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and as-of-yet indeterminate dissociative issues". The Harpy is "that ecstatically furious part of myself," one of those "beastly parts of me that exist solely to protect me at all costs, even if means tearing apart someone who inadvertently trips my reflexive internal alarm system."

Why is it worth your time?: This wasn't my thing, but it may be yours. Yayanos has her own way of describing her experience, separate and distinct from a lot of plural stuff I read. It's poetic, filled with black censor bars; she describes proxies and facets, glitter and rage. It's an intense read, but you might want that.

Plural Tags: creator speaks from personal experience; memory work, abuse intermediate-focus

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: The Harpy is from the anthology Becoming Dangerous: Witchy Femmes, Queer Conjurers, and Magical Rebels, but despite the title, it's more about ritual than anything, and none of the rest of the book qualifies for the catalog. Available as paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Misc Notes: Yayanos is also apparently a musician; Harpy is listed as one of her musical aliases. The coffee, Blood of the Harpy, seems to have been named in her honor.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Submitted by [personal profile] expmachine !

Me:
Is this a dream or is it real?

Reason:
Sometimes the dream becomes reality

Me:
But I don't know what to feel

Reason:
Then I will guide you through this haze

Me:
But who are you, why are you here?

Reason:
I am you and you are all of us

Me:
I can't think, my mind ain't clear


Blurb: (taken from Arjen's website) A man lies comatose in hospital after a terrible car accident. The accident was bizarre: it happened in broad daylight with no other cars in sight. The man’s wife and his best friend are keeping a bedside vigil, trying to understand how the accident happened, and hoping for any sign of recovery. Unable to communicate with the outside world, the man finds himself trapped in a strange realm where his emotions — most of which he’s repressed for a long time — have come to life to confront him with all the choices he has made in his life — and their consequences.

Why is it worth your time?: The majority of the song's go revisit's the main character's memories with his personified emotions talking along the way. While emotions, they'll converse with each other and agree/disagree on what to do and give input on memories. The album is like a radio drama but with flute solos.

Plural Tags: nonswitching, abuse not mentioned, voices

Accessibility Notes: Lyrics can be found online. Available for 8 Euros on Bandcamp!

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pluralstories: James of William Denn leafing through the DSM-III-R (Default)
Many-Selved Stories and Multi Media

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