Plural Stories

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 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.

Submitted by quailfence! Thank you, quailfence!

Something—not a thought, but almost—flickered across her gray matter. The Smoulder, walking; looking at the faded wallpaper; feeling the flexion in her feet. And then it was a thought:

[This again?]

(Wait, were costumes supposed to remember—)

Blurb: In the future, sex worker Evie uses a technological 'costume' to help her with her job, and in particular a client of hers known as 'the company man'. But the costume has been starting to act strange recently...

Why is it worth your time?: It's good! I like how sex work is presented as just A Job in the story - not something uniquely awful but not exactly Great either. I also found the high-tech costumes to be an interesting piece of tech, and the story uses them very well

Plural/1+ Tags: bodyhopping, type:setting-specific, type:switching. Not really sure how to rate the abuse in this one??

Content Warnings: include spoilers; see comments

Accessibility Notes: Online, free, screenreadable here: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-girlfriend-experience/ Back-up link here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250922133223/https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-girlfriend-experience/

"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!

We dream of us. Complete and secure within ourself, requiring nothing, but desiring everything.

Blurb: A dream of merging into a greater hivemind.

Why is it worth your time?: It's short, beautiful, and surreal. Plus it's free!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, dreamfolk, creator speaks from experience, identityblending, intimate relationships

Content Warnings: loss of identity

Access Notes: free to read, screenreadable, online

Misc Notes: Read online here! Back-up link here.

I come to myself and say:
I am here for you, little sister.

Blurb: A poem where a Buddhist nun reaches out to comfort her tormented younger self, embrace her pain, and transform it.

Why is it worth your time?: This poem is powerful, and one of the best, most succinct descriptions of what it feels like to descend into the abyss of youthful pain and transforming it in the present. Recommended!

Plural Tags: abuse high focus, creator speaks from experience, memory work, children

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in the book, The River in Me: Collected Poems, available on paper and ebook. Sister Dang Nghiem has a lot of poems about dealing with pain in the past, embracing her past selves, and talking to them. The book itself is worth a read!

"Will you take the job?"

Wehavetowehavetowehaveto.

Persistent as bear traps, those two. I smile through my teeth and the please that won't stop pounding in my head. "Kid, I don't think I have a choice."

Blurb: PI John Persons has been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid's abusive stepdad. Said stepdad is also a monster, which is good... because so is Persons.

Why is it worth your time?: This book grabbed us from the first page and couldn't be put down. John Persons is a Lovecraftian horror inhabiting the body of a dead man, the ghost of whom is still floating around in there somewhere (though not really active). The ghost will speak to him, he refers to "the body" and trying to take care of it despite being EXTREMELY corrosive to meat, and ugly Lovecraftian possession is a major theme. It's good!

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate focus, bodyhopping (alluded to in the past), nonhumans (eldritch Lovecraftian horrors and Elder Gods), the dead, possession, nonswitching, visions, voices

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in German (as "Hämmer auf Knochen"), Catalan and Valencian (as "Persons Non Grata"). Ebook and paper.

Misc Notes: First book in the Persons Non Grata series!

"What about the others from the show? Do you ever see them?"

"They've all been gone for years. Longtusk held out the longest. But I was the star, and the stars are always the last ones left."

Blurb: Lauren's been a fan of Terrence Tiger since she was a little girl, and the chance to interview the cartoon star is any fan's dream. But there's more to Terrence than sight gags and pratfalls, and soon there's more to their relationship than either of them expected.

Why is it worth your time?: It's a bittersweet story of fandom and shameless love of the beings who populate our favorite cartoons. I enjoyed it!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, nonhumans (Robert Rabbit style toons, anthropomorphic animals), romantic relationships

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available for free reading online on Weasyl (back-up link, also available in the collection Six Impossible Things and Bad Dog Press's ROAR vol. 3 (which appears to be out of print). Screenreadable.

Misc Notes:

I wonder if you really send
Those dreams of you that come and go!
I like to say, "She thought of me,
And I have known it." Is it so?

Blurb: A poem where one woman pines for the loss of another, but is still able to be with her in dreams.

Why is it worth your time?: Similar in tone and content to Shakespeare's 27, a poem of those who visit us in dreams. It's free, short, and publicly online, what have you got to lose?

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, dreamfolk

Content Warnings: None.

Access Notes: Screenreadable and freely available to read online, courtesy of the Atlantic! I've also backed it up on the Wayback Machine and reposted the poem in its entirety in the comments, since it should be in the public domain.

Misc Notes: Sarah Orne Jewett had many passionate friendships with women, which marriage tended to strain. This poem perhaps recognizes that.

Submitted by acorn_squash! Thank you, acorn_squash!

“With Rafe and me, the most common form of communion is through touch. Most often I will know he is there by the sense of an enfolding and encircling presence, often a distinct pressure. And I meet him also through words, which ring in my heart—as that day on the beach in British Columbia—but sometimes manifest themselves more outwardly as well. That ‘I love you’ I so longed to hear in life has been heard many times since his death, fashioned just like on that night when I relived his death, by forming the words distinctly and powerfully in my jaw.”

Publisher’s blurb: This is a guide-book for those who are called to the path of conscious love. This powerful book, written by an Episcopal priest, tells of her intense relationship with Brother Raphael Robin, a seventy-year-old Trappist monk and hermit. The romantic yet platonic relationship that ensued between the 50-year-old Bourgeault and the 70-year-old hermit lasted five years, until his death. Both believed that a relationship can continue beyond this life, and here Bourgeault describes her search for that connection before and after Robin's death.

Why is it worth your time?: It’s a sweet story. Bourgeault seems very happy with her relationship. She trusted her own experiences, even though they contradicted what everyone was telling her. Much of the book concerns the research she did to find a theological explanation for what was happening.

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse: not mentioned, creator speaks from experience, people: the dead, relationships: romantic, type: nonswitching, type: spiritual

Content Warnings: Death and Christian mysticism; it's in the title. Also: Christian perspectives on sexuality, occasional heteronormativity & sex-negativity, hot-and-cold relationship.

Accessibility Notes: Available as a library book in print or ebook.