pluralstories | Entries tagged with access:bootleg

You're viewing

pluralstories
Create a Dreamwidth Account Learn More

Reload page in style: light

"It's not irretrievably lost, you know. You can have it back."
"But--but--the life I've had--the things I've done--you can't just wipe them out, like wiping a slate clean!"
"No. But they can be integrated. Right now they dominate you. They can become only memories, part of the suffering you've known, but suffering from which you've learned, from which you have been tempered--like fine steel. Emotional health doesn't mean reshuffling your memories or selective amnesia. It means integration--wholeness. It means strength. It means becoming your own person."

Blurb: Doc Phoenix, a superpsychologist dream-diver, dives into the headspace of a corrupt politician who wants to change his ways... and maybe assassinate the good doctor afterward.

Why is it worth your time?: This is self-declared pulp, and it embraces that genre. Deep art it is not, but it is entertaining. Weird Heroes was a series with the self-proclaimed central message of "Respect life and enjoy it," and the idea of a hero who works to rescue people's minds from the inside out is a pretty great premise! If you just want a fun, humble psychological adventure, this is worth a shot.

Plural Tags: abuse low-focus, bodyhopping, otherworld, dreamfolk, visions

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: This short story was in the anthology Weird Heroes, vol. 2, edited by Byron Preiss at Pyramid Books. Unlike the sequel, this book has been digitized on Anna's Archive! Uncertain whether it is screenreadable.

Misc Notes: Got a book-length sequel, called the Oz Encounter (or Weird Heroes Vol. 5: Doc Phoenix: the Oz Encounter), which is also worth reading, though apparently that one has never been digitized! Obviously I should fix that.

The two editions have different subtitles. The 1996 edition is Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Erotic Adventure and marketed as cyberpunk, while the 2025 edition is Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run, and marketed as romance.

Karn: Question: ... ::drumroll:: Online, what *is* your "self"?
Leilia: Oh, christ, there's the question of a lifetime.Karn: Uh huh. Why so for you?
Leilia: I really become that person online. That's the scary thing. i really believe my fiction. Used to feel bad about it, but obviously there's truth in those fictions.

Blurb: Genderfucking netizens Scratch and Winc splatter across self and identity in this cyberpunk epistolary novel, accidentally starting a global Internet strike, getting accused of high treason, and falling in love.

Why is it worth your time?: Sullivan and Bornstein are queers who used lots of their own chatlogs for this book, which depending on your feeling will be either a good thing or a bad thing. The 1996 edition especially has a lot of pontificating on the nature of self and personality on the Internet, including an exchange where the hero/ines email with a self-declared MPD multi going by "StLouis7." (They decide that they aren't that kind of multiple, but they DO have multiple genders and are exploring interesting expansions of self!) Scratch's persona of Razorfun is ESPECIALLY separate, to the point that Razorfun outright says that "it is my most primitive persona. It is where I go when in danger" and when Winc has to ask Scratch to break out of the Razorfun persona, it's stated to be both difficult and painful. If you're interested in queer cyberspace of the '90s, check it out!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, creator speaks from experience, otherworld (cyberspace), fictioneers (Lt. Yar and Jadzia Dax from Star Trek), nonhumans (Dax is a Trill, Scratch mentions multiple times wishing ze wa a wolf with a tail), switching, on purpose

Content Warnings: include spoilers; see comments

Accessibility Notes: Okay, so heads up, the 1996 edition and the 2025 editions of this book differ subtly but significantly! The 2025 edition just came out, and it's available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook; it's much easier to find and removed a fair bit, including stuff that really needed removal... but also a lot of the most interesting (to us) ponderings of the nature of self! It also simplified the typefaces and style, but in our opinion to the book's detriment; with all the chats, web diaries, emails, news stories, and announcements flying around, it can be easy to get lost! So the 2025 edition is smoother and simpler.

Meanwhile, the 1996 edition is rough and crunchy in a very '90s way; while the 2025 edition focuses more on gender and romance, the '96 edition pays more attention to self in general. The older edition is expensive and difficult to find these days, though it's been scanned and bootlegged online, and the first chapter is available in clean screenreadable PDF on the Wayback Machine. Take a look, compare and contrast the formatting, and pick the edition you prefer! We are grateful for reading both simultaneously, comparing the drafts side-by-side.

(words by Martha Bonds, music by Marcia McCombe)

Do I know you?
Are you dreaming of tomorrow?
If so, it seems you're a starchild, just like me.
The night's alive,
And we travel 'cross the light years,
TV screens and books of dreams can set us free.

Blurb: A fan (filk) song about how fans find meaning, joy, and other worlds through Star Trek.

Why is it worth your time?: It's an old fandom song about finding home and new worlds in the fictional. Definitely worth a listen to, for any fiction folk around!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, creator speaks from experience, otherworld, fictioneers

Content Warnings: None

Accessibility Notes: I will post the lyrics in the comments! Otherwise, it is only available in The Complete Omicron Ceti III Lyric Book (not screenreadable) and the record album Only Stars Can Last.

(words by Martha Bonds, music by Kathy Burns)

I know a place so far away, a place I long to see,
There's no way to travel there, I must reach it in a dream,
The dreams they are so special, they take me there again,
A thousand conquered dangers, heroes, lovers, friends.

Blurb: A song about "Fans' feelings about [Star] Trek."

Why is it worth your time?: It's an old fandom song about finding home and new worlds in the fictional. Definitely worth a listen to, for any fiction folk around!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, creator speaks from experience, otherworld, dreamfolk, fictioneers

Content Warnings: None

Accessibility Notes: I will post the lyrics in the comments; you can also listen to it on YouTube! Otherwise, it is only available in The Complete Omicron Ceti III Lyric Book (not screenreadable) and on the album Only Stars Can Last.

"As she walked through the door, twin reflections of the firmset of her back moved closer together in the corner of the restaurant window. The images converged in the mirrored panes of glass and vanished inside each other like chips of colored crystal in a kaleidoscope."

Blurb: In a near-future where same-sex relationships are legally sanctioned but surveillance culture is on full-blast, a woman uses intense full-body tattooing to merge with her lover, so as to escape and overcome together.

Why is it worth your time?: This is a very nontraditional fusion story between two singlets who embrace each other and are strong at each other's weaknesses, choosing to become one being. Gomez is a good writer and worth checking out, though mostly well-known in the lesbian and black presses!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned (though high focus is the inevitable grinding effects of surviving in their society), cofronting, fusion/integration, identityblending, memory work, romantic relationships, setting-specific

Content Warnings: dealing with a surveillance society that accepts queerness... well, some of it... and foster care referenced in the past. This is DEFINITELY a story about your job grinding you down slowly to pieces over time, though!

Accessibility Notes: Available in Gomez's collection Don't Explain and MIT Press's re:Skin anthology. Much to my annoyance (and somewhat to my incredulity), both works are out of print (and the decade-older Don't Explain seems cheaper and easier to get!) and neither were officially digitized. If you want a screen-readable copy, you have to go to Anna's Archive.

Misc. Notes: Jewelle Gomez has some neat things to say about this work, but it contains SPOILERS so will be in the comments below!

"You, too, are tainted with the Vampire strain
The same blood surges through us both, like wine.
No wonder that our thoughts and moods combine
And merge beyond the common, earthly plane."

Blurb: One vampire joins with another to walk together through ebon nights.

Why is it worth your time?: It's an old vampire poem from a prominent lesbian about embracing difference together. It's short and free; give it a shot! The lesbianism is all subtextual, due to the time period, but if you're looking for it, it's there!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, identityblending, nonhumans (vampires), intimate relationships

Content Warnings: None.

Accessibility Notes: Unless you can track down an old copy of Acolyte #10, the only place to get this poem in print is in the anthology Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction, edited by Yaszek and Sharp and published by Wesleyan University Press. Some kindly soul has digitized it on archive.org, but the OCR is so poor that I'm just posting the poem in its entirety in the comments for accessibility's sake. Back-up link (with flawed but better OCR) at fanac.com.

Misc. Notes (if any): Tigrina was one of the pseudonyms of prominent lesbian Edythe Eyde, AKA Lisa Ben, who created Vice Versa, the first queer magazine (that we know of) in the USA in the '40s. If you want the outright lesbian stuff (though nothing relevant for this catalog), check Vice Versa out here!

Though I don't think I'll be telling our clients about it any time soon, Lance mused. Somehow I don't think they'd be interested in hiring a man with forty-odd alters and a nanobot hive living inside him.

Blurb: The Company, a cyborg security specialist with MPD and a sentient nanobot hive, has escaped their abusive father and built a productive, if not necessarily happy life for themselves. But when your father is richer than God, sometimes it's not easy to escape the past...

Why is it worth your time?: This one was solidly entertaining! The author alternates chapters between the Company's present as an adult and their past as a child. Each time period merges to climax at the same time, both dealing with their abusive father, who is a kind of terrifying that is hard to write well, but we found the depiction credible and scary. (What if YOUR abuser was as rich as Elon Musk and as spiteful and powerful as Donald Trump?) The climax was especially satisfying. This is very much a '90s MPD book, and the Company is definitely a type we have seen many times before, but there are worse things than to do that well! If you want a cyborg multi revenge fantasy, give it a try!

Plural Tags: abuse high focus (mind the content warnings!), closeting, cofronting, fusion/integration, identityblending, children, nonhumans (AI), family, enmity, and teamwork relationships, medical (MPD) type, switching, voices

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available on paperback and audiobook... and also in Italian, under the name La compagnia della mente! Someone has also bootlegged a digital copy on archive.org, the closest to an ebook you can get.

Misc Notes: Has a sequel, but this book stands alone totally fine.

"Nicholas Paul is you, lad. This lovely lassie found you at once in her head, but she could not find you in person for a long time to come. So you became Nicholas."

Blurb: An adventure writer runs into her protagonist in real life... but how can this be? And what does it even mean to have life-or-death power over this poor bastard? Now they have to work together to figure out what happened.

Why is it worth your time?: This book is like a romance novel version of Stranger Than Fiction, and a lot of attention gets paid to the power dynamics of what it means to be author and character; it really, really sucks, turns out, and this is super relatable for anyone who's had similar concerns! This is a very traditional heterosexual romance, but the characters behave like decent, reasonable people and the idea is neat. If you're into Harlequin romances, this might be for you!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, fusion/integration, identityblending, fictioneers, romantic relationships

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: This book is available on paperback, and some generous soul has bootlegged an OCR PDF of it on piracy websites. It also got a translation in Italian, astonishingly, under the title Stregati dalla luna!

Misc Notes: In the About the Author section: "Regan Forest has, for a long time, fantasized about creating a character--and then meeting him in real life. That spark generated Moonspell."

Submitted by a kindly anonymous! Thank you, Anon!

Why would Teddy put his camera in my backpack? And when? Did he put it there on his way to--what? Meeting someone? But if the meeting was important, he would have wanted to take a picture.

He's but the one who put it there, Luke says.

I almost jump. I told him to go away, but he's come back.
I left it for you.
No! It's one thing for Luke to talk to me, but he can't just take off and do things. The very idea is terrifying. That's impossible, I try to tell him.
I told you--what happened to Teddy has changed everything.

Blurb: A gap in his memory the afternoon that his best friend disappears in a redwood forest has fifteen-year-old amateur photographer Ian Slater wondering about his own role in the mystery, and who he can turn to for help. To make things worse, his childhood imaginary friend, Luke, is back and very insistent that Ian needs to do something about his friend's disappearance.

Why is it worth your time?: This book is a young adult novel with a first-person perspective and plurality at its core. It's a relatively quick read and what caused us to realize that we are, in fact, a system. See content warning for more information.

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse:intermediate-focus, cofronting, type: medical, type: switching

Content Warnings: Ian as the POV character describes both past and present emotional abuse and physical neglect from his father, which he downplays for the first half of the book. His mother is both a fellow victim and an enabler. At the end, it's revealed Ian's father tried to kill his friend Teddy (and at the end tries to attack Luke when he fronts and reveals everything). A major aspect of the novel is Ian experiencing blackouts ("zoning out"), which might be disconcerting. Ian also thinks Luke is an imaginary friend, but over the course of the novel "he" realizes that "Ian" is a subsystem in a DID system, and that Luke is an independent headmate (though those exact terms aren't used. The text also implies but doesn't state that Luke is a Luke Skywalker fictive.) A teacher who helps Ian and Teddy is a former psychologist who was accused of abusing an 11-year-old client, but Ian believes him when he says that he's innocent and he does seem to have good intentions in the story.

Accessibility Notes: Can be found in print at libraries. Multiple screenreadable versions are also available on archive.org.

Ages later, I awoke in my own bed, in my own world... "What an odd dream," I thought. "It was so very... real!"

Blurb: After getting dumped by her sleazebag boyfriend, a hippie girl attempts suicide, only to enter a beautiful dream where a kind man loves her, frees her from sexual shame, and brings her to a new understanding of herself.

Why is it worth your time?: This is an old softcore romance porno comic, cheesy but charming. If you want a good old-fashioned dream lover story, consider trying it! It's only six pages, and the pencil (or charcoal) artwork is nice.

Plural Tags: abuse low-focus, dreamfolk, romantic relationship

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: This was originally printed in a 1971 comic anthology magazine, Imagination no. 1, in 1971, but good luck finding THAT, so I scanned and uploaded it to archive.org. Someone else also scanned all of Imagination No. 1 and PDFed it here. Not screenreadable at this time, sorry.

Misc Notes: Apparently William Jabin, the guy who printed Imagination No. 1, did it when he was just 15-17 years old! He has an interview where he talks about it and William Stillwell here.

"It's one thing to create living creatures by accident, but I have a feeling there'd be real trouble if I went around doing it on purpose. The fabric of reality can only take so much strain, after all."

Blurb: An artist learns the secret of bringing her paintings to life. But there are ethical considerations to keep in mind...

Why is it worth your time?: It's short and sweet and has dragons. Give it a try!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, fictioneers, nonhumans (dragons)

Content Warnings: None. This story is pure fun.

Accessibility Notes: Only printed in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy #48, but fortunately, it's been digitized on archive.org! Screenreadable in that format.

Misc. Notes (if any): Illustrated! Cute.

"A woman who hears voices is a lot more dangerous than a woman with an army. Keep that in mind."

Blurb: Radical feminist play about a smartass butch lesbian named Jeanne Romee (AKA Joan of Arc) who recounts her story as the hero of France, heretic burned at the stake, and redeemed saint against her will.

Why is it worth your time?: This play is award-winning for a reason. Jeanne is incisive and insightful, witty and angry, and Gage has a rare ability to cut to the heart of dissociation as a tool of control. This play is very much of its time and culture, but if that's not a problem for you, check it out! It's good!

Plural/1+ Tags: Abuse intermediate-focus, the dead (saints), spiritual, voices, nonswitching

Content Warnings: It is not a spoiler to say that Jeanne suffers the fate of the historical Joan of Arc. Others DO involve spoilers; see comments

Accessibility Notes: This play is shockingly easy to get, aside from an actual performance! It's available in audio form as MP3 download or CD, in script form, and in the collections The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and other plays (printed in 2004 from HerBooks) and The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays (self-published and A DIFFERENT COLLECTION), the latter of which is available both on paper and ebook. It was also published (and now freely available online) in Sinister Wisdom #35, Summer/Fall 1988, pg. 95-116. Archive.org has audio recordings of various performances. Available in French, Bulgarian, Chinese (Mandarin), Portuguese, Italian, German, and Spanish.

"Whenever you meet people who think they are reincarnated, they were always Somebody in a past life, like Ruth--THE Ruth in the Bible--or Mary Magdalene's mother, or one of Napoleon Bonaparte's generals. No one is ever a third world villager who died of malnutrition at age seven. [...] A friend of mine said I was probably Alexander the Great, because of my near-fanatic interest in him. I said no way in hell."

Blurb: An American female reincarnation of Hephaistion gets to see Alexander the Great, the love of her lives, again, and recounts the experience to the Loch Ness monster afterward.

Why is it worth your time?: Queer genderfucking reincarnation short story.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, the dead, romantic relationship, spiritual, visions

Content Warnings: death, drinking alchohol

Access Notes: This story is in an out-of-print small press anthology, Memories and Visions: Women's Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Susanna J. Sturgis. Used copies can still be scraped up; it is also available in bootleg screenreadable digital form on archive.org. The whole anthology contains many spirited, many-selved stories and is worth checking out!

Misc: Notes: I think this author might be dead, seeing as her website has been taken over by a sketchy lawyer company for some reason. So I feel pretty okay saying that she speaks from experience; she mentions having a Navajo "spirit guide" who was deeply disappointed in her rugmaking skills.

"I've no way of knowing if I've ever lived in Elsinore. After wiping they tell one very little about the past history of one's body..."

Blurb: Sci-fi retelling of Hamlet where Ophelia's mind was wiped and the woman she is now continues living on, telling her story to a rather insufferable female noble (before banging her).

Why is it worth your time?: Unusual story of a singular nature, and it's short, free, and online. "O" has no memories of the pre-wipe body tenant, and has only what she's put together and what she's been told.

Plural Tags: abuse low-focus, serially singlet

Content Warnings: incest plus skeezy sexual dynamics (very much on purpose)

Access Notes: This story is in an out-of-print small press anthology, Memories and Visions: Women's Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Susanna J. Sturgis. Used copies can still be scraped up; it is also available in bootleg screenreadable digital form on archive.org. The whole anthology contains many spirited, many-selved stories and is worth checking out!

"With a shock like ice water we were chained mind to mind. Another person shared my ship, shared the awareness of myself; I was the ship and no one could have it. [...] Through the chain I sensed all Writer: the pride, the remoteness, the arrogant imagination, the reach spanning praeterspace that sets a Writer above all other ultra-psis."

Blurb: A starship captain uses her mental bond to her ship and chains minds with a Writer to orgasm their way into praeterspace.

Why is it worth your time?: Lesbian erotic sci-fi writing about bonding minds with someone you really don't like (but is also hot)!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, bodyhopping, enmity, intimate, nonhumans [a spaceship], on purpose, setting-specific, voices

Content Warnings: sex!

Access Notes: This story is in an out-of-print small press anthology, Memories and Visions: Women's Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Susanna J. Sturgis. Used copies can still be scraped up; it is also available in bootleg screenreadable digital form on archive.org. The whole anthology contains many spirited, many-selved stories and is worth checking out!

"The time storm flooded around her. Violet energy chakra waves began to pulse about her head, her brain wave pattersn becoming visible to me. I cast back in the storm, searching, for 1119 B.C.E., finally locating the oracle at Delphi. The brain wave patters of its priestesses glowed and arched fantastically before me. I brought them forward with me through the still raging storm, ready to instill and replicate their complex patterns into her brain waves. [...] Neurons hissed into place, finding their structure, sparking like fireworks..."

Blurb: a Chaos witch travels through realities, has a conversation with a poet friend, and writes out some of her spells.

Why is it worth your time?: Trippy second wave feminist meta-cyberpunk story that I can safely say I have read nothing else similar.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, creator speaks from experience, otherworld (uh... fractal realities?), copies, realitymashing, plural on purpose, setting-specific

Content Warnings: brief appearance of a woman tormented by medical machines

Access Notes: This story is in an out-of-print small press anthology, Memories and Visions: Women's Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Susanna J. Sturgis. Used copies can still be scraped up; it is also available in bootleg screenreadable digital form on archive.org. The whole anthology contains many spirited, many-selved stories and is worth checking out! It was also printed in the December 1988 issue of EOTU.

Misc Notes: Schein's author's note includes: "all of her science fiction is based on her real life experience [...] she still hears the first line of [The Chaos Diaries] as a voice in her head sometimes, and wonders what that means," thus the creator tag.

"The ancestral visions persisted. One day I was flooded with grief and felt as if I was slipping from life. Frightened, I began calling out to my grandmother Lela--she was the one person who I believed could help me. The air filled with an electrical energy and a feeling of peace washed over me. My breathing calmed and I felt my grandmother's presence. My grandmother who had been deceased for eighteen years had rescued me.

"Yet, I still did not trust that my Ancestors really supported me. I believed that I had experienced a psychotic episode and feared that I would end up as one of the 'crazy' ones..."

Blurb: a group of writers "share short stories, poems, prayers, and personal accounts of Ancestor reverence--intimate glimpses of our experiences with the Ancestors, those descended from our bloodlines and some not related to us by blood, but whose lives continue to inspire us."

Why is it worth your time?: It covers a bunch of different writers of different backgrounds (though with a focus towards the Yoruba tradition of Ifá/Orisha), all interacting with their ancestors in different ways, through dreams, channeling, divination, and more! A very personal and interesting collection on the whole, but nonfictional stand-outs include "Erasing the Lines" by M'kali-Hashiki (about losing the ability to contact spirits, and struggling to regain it), "Responding to the Call of the Ancestors: Transforming Vinegar into Honey" by J. Phoenix Smith (about dealing with intense family trauma via ancestor veneration), and "License to Forgive," by Iyalorisa Ayokunle (about having to banish an ancestor from her altar). Also includes a 1990s short story by Nisi Shawl about the nuances ancestor worship when combined with the American legacy of slavery.

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate-focus (depends on the chapter), creator speaks from experience, the dead, family relationships, spiritual, voices, visions

Content Warnings: discussion of slavery's legacy, family trauma, complicated family relationships, fear of madness

Access Notes: This book looks to be out of print and a paper-only release. Though still obtainable, it's not easy to get, so I'm probably going to be feeding my copy through the library book-scanner for accessibility purposes. (This means, regrettably, that the obnoxious handwritten footnotes of the previous owner will be included.) Stay tuned!

Misc Notes: Full Table of Contents (with most spirited-relevant entries in bold, but the whole thing is worth a read):

"Introduction" by Luisah Teish and Sauda Burch
"Reaching Back To Reclaim Genius" by Awo Fanira
"The Breaking" by Xochipala Maes Valdez
"Remembrance: Mary 'Pula' Lucero" by Xochipala Maes Valdez
"Sparkle and Sheen" by Sauda Burch
"Erasing the Line" by M'kali-Hashiki
"Mourner's Kaddish" by D'vorah J. Grenn
"Remembrance: Douglas Johnson, Sr." by Jessical Johnson
"The Old Folks Say" by Luisa Teish
"Remembrance: Ralph P. Orduna" by Sauda Burch
"Turning to Face the Ancestors: A learning journey recovering heart and memory" by Gail Williams
"Remembrance: Samuel Williams, Jr." by Gail Williams
"The Cosmic Eye" by Uzuri Amini
"Remembrance: Aunt Emmalou" by Arnia Dobbins
"Let the Dead Bury the Dead" by Sauda Burch
"Remembrance: Family" by Gilbert Burch, Sr.
"Remembrance: Donald L. Williams" by Gail Williams
"Remembrance: Louise Merrill" by Amanda Bloom
"My African Odyssey 20 Years Later: the Ancestors of Goree Island" by Uzuri Amini
"Remembrance: Great-Aunt Nancy Collier" by Sauda Burch
"Remembrance: Sarangerel Odigan (1963-2006)" by Daniel Foor
"Ancestral Legacy: Excerpts from an interview with Andrea (Courage) Johnson" by Sauda Burch
"Remembrance: Marsha King", by Andrea Johnson
"Full Circle" by Iyanifa Fasina
"Remembrance: Rose Maes" by Conrad Maes
"Responding to the Call of the Ancestors: Transforming Vinegar into Honey" by J. Phoenix Smith
"Remembrance: My Brother Charles" by Rashidah Tutashinda
"Acnestral Spirits" by Uzuri Amini
"License to Forgive" by Iyalora Ayokunle
"Remembrance: Durinda 'Winta' Anderson" by Karinda Dobbins
"Remembrance: Great-Grandpa Pablo Valdez," by Xochipala Maes Valdez
"The Rainses'" by Nisi Shawl
"Remembrance: Grandpa Pete" by Rebecca Rodriguez
"Preservation" by Luisah Teish

"As he walked away I realized how wrong I had been with one of my answers. Two heads are better than one: Mara's and mine. She was silent then. I knew I wouldn't mind being in the hospital. But I couldn't bear if I were by myself."

Blurb: A heroine finds another world and a friend who helps her survive this one. What is sanity anyway?

Why is it worth your time?: A very short story, a time capsule from early feminist press sci-fi, still emotionally resonant today.

Plural/1+ Tags: Abuse:intermediate focus, nonhumans (space alien?), friendship, voices

Content Warnings: institutionalization.

Accessibility Notes: This story was only published in WomanSpace: Future and Fantasy: Stories and Art by Women, from New Victoria Press, a long shuttered feminist independent press, and it seems to be impossible to find a copy. (I myself found it in a sci-fi library.) Anna's Archive has a digitized copy, but the story is so short, I just typed it up myself.

Submitted by

erinptah! Thank you,

erinptah!

"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).

"And again I feel
her black wings opening:

do not tame my angel"

Blurb: A poem about a woman's intense, erotic love for her Lilith angel, who comes for her in dreams.

Why is it worth your time?: It's a short, intense, erotic poem about sapphic spirit love. Give it a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, otherworld (dreams), dreamfolk, nonhumans (angels, Lilith?), intimate relationships, spiritual

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Screenreadable, free to read on archive.org. Read it here! I'm also just going to post it in the comments because it seems likely to disappear off the internet.

Misc Notes: Published in a Thelema tome, The Equinox Vol. 5 No. 4: Sex and Religion, which has a lot of older stuff in it that isn't well dated. Using 1981 as a placeholder for now, since that's when the book came out.

Profile

Many-Selved Stories and Multi Media

Syndicate

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Powered by Dreamwidth Studios