Plural Stories

“...It’s complicated,” he said. “The thought of being someone’s girlfriend, or boyfriend, or whatever, it really creeped us out.”

“Is it because they saw you two as one person?”

“No. It’s… Like…” He sighed. “Subsa. What are we?”

The butterfly tilted his head. “You’re PJ.”

“No, like, you and us. What are we, together?”

Blurb: A butterfly, a boy, and a robot dog try to figure out what their relationship is to each other.

Why is it worth your time?: It's short, sweet, and loving. Give it a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, cofronting, nonhumans [butterfly, robot dog], queerplatonic relationships

Content Warnings: None whatsoever.

Access Notes: Free, screenreadable, available in Spanish. Read it here! (EDIT 2024/10/6: deleted and the Wayback Machine can't play it.)

(EDIT 2025/02/12: contacted author, was asked not to rehost or back it up. This is now officially lost media.)

"Her horror grows to anger. Her anger grows to rage. Her rage grows to berserker fury. She is not Petra now. She is not even Mayanna. She is..." (from Section 3 Chapter 3 of the prose serial)

Blurb: (adapted from the intro from Section 3 Chapter 3 of the serial) "Modern English schoolgirl Petra Stone is a reincarnation of the matriarchal warrior princess Mayanna. The Princess and the schoolgirl exist as two independent personalities. She has been taken back into ancient matriarchal Britain by an Amazon group: Rahiyana, the leader; Thunder, a seven-foot powerhouse; Whirlwind, the teen tornado and a shape-shifting imp named Uisce. But the evil patriarchal Lord Fear is determined to kill Petra and has sent a powerful and mysterious band known only as the Swarm..."

Why is it worth your time?: This is a heck of a ride: a mostly-lost sword-and-sorcery prose serial and computer game about a lesbian matriarchy whose chosen one is a multiple. The serial is pulpy.

The game is a throwback, even by 1992's standards, but it's spoken of with fondness and respect by text-only game fans, and while we took  a while to get our sea legs, we found it enjoyable with its dreamy, whimsical tone. It's the first computer game I know of with any multi themes at all. Unusually for its time, it involves multiple female party members, all of which you can play by typing the command BECOME WHIRLWIND (or Rahiyana, and so on), so there's a strange element to the player becoming multiple people and questing to bring a different multiple to power. I have never seen a project like this, and it is an odd duck that I'm glad has been salvaged, even piecemeal. If you're into sword and sorcery, or just the oldest multi computer game I've found, give it a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, the dead, nonhumans [goddess, dog], spiritual, switching, possession

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: The prose serial is the most overtly multi part of this story, and it gives valuable context for the no-intro-given game, so read it first. Sadly, it seems to be mostly lost media; only Section 3: Berserker Chapter 3: Berserker and Section 4: Histories Chapter 1: Trial by Conscience have been scanned, though at least they've been posted online as both PDF and screenreadable plaintext. The special collections at UC Davis may have more?

Both halves of the game can be played thanks to emulator on archive.org, but despite being text-only, it is probably not screenreadable, and only Silverwolf Part 2: the Sacred Mountain has Petra/Mayanna/Silverwolf in it, and in a fairly passive role. (The two halves can be played in any order. We found Part 2 more enjoyable, but if you're dying for completionism, here's the link for Part 1: Quest for the Sword.) There is also a walk-through, which I found invaluable.

There was a comic meant to be released with the game, but far as I know, it never came to be.

Misc Notes: Okay, I fell down a rabbit hole with this one,because it is an odd, odd duck. I am restraining myself from infobricking about the kinky matriarchal Irish women who dressed in Victorian fashion and also became a well-reputed text-only gaming house. What a wild ride.

Also, I'm leaving the authors' names as "various" in the header bar because here are the names associated with this project:

• Michele Dennis (illustrator of prose)
• Laeretta Krenne-Genovene (writer of prose)
• St. Bride's (credited as the game creator, also the name of the group that the creators were part of)
• Priscilla Langridge or Marianne Scarlett, who were credited as St. Bride's Game Mistresses in this 1986 article from Crash Magazine.
• Zenobi Software (the company that picked up the Silverwolf game after St. Bride's went bust and actually got the damned thing released)

"I am a bee, living with a moth. We live between two worlds—our inner world, where we interact with each other, and the outer world, where we interact with everyone else. We share a body out there. It looks human, so we have to pretend to be human. We also pretend to be a single person, just to make things easier. We have a few friends who know our secrets—that we're not human, that we're more than one. Some of them are even just like us. But for the most part… we're just a pair of insects trying to make it in a human world."

Blurb: Short vignettes about being plural and nonhuman. Bee and Moth make food, gifts, and cuddle. Moth is nervous around people, and Bee encourages him to come out of his shell.

Why is it worth your time?: It's cute, sweet, and quiet. Also, it's short and free!

Plural Tags: nonhuman [bee, moth], switching, no trauma discussion, queerplatonic

Content Warnings: None!

Accessibility Notes: Text-only, should be screen-readable, also available in Spanish. Short and free!

Read/play it here! (EDIT 2024/10/6: oh shit, it's been deleted and the Wayback Machine can't play it!)

(EDIT 2025/02/12: contacted author, was asked not to rehost or back it up. This is now officially lost media.)