pluralstories | Entries tagged with genre:?

"I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt; I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and the soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed, blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind."

Blurb: A soulbonder's "character notes and monologue work for Joan of Arc."

Why is it worth your time?: It's a short, ephemeral remnant of work from a soulbonding subculture of the past, giving extra pathos to Joan fighting those who would take her voices from her. Check it out!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, creator speaks from experience, spiritual, voices

Content Warnings: It's a monologue from Joan of Arc's prison cell as she prepares to die. I don't know what you expect.

Access Notes: Screenreadable, free, and archived online on the Wayback Machine

Misc Notes: Del was on Kurai's 1999 SB list. This piece is old enough and anonymous enough I felt safe to use the tag.

lb_lee

Submitted by

matsushima! Thank you,

matsushima!

Full title: Exploring the Aventine: An autoethnography on making sense of immersive daydreaming in the context of developmental trauma

"I summon my fantasy world characters and imagined others into dialogue and interaction. As we all converge at an intersection of immersive daydreaming and developmental trauma, ancestors whisper of intergenerational trauma and patriarchal psychiatric discourse."

Blurb: Immersive daydreaming is fantasy activity that is vivid, intricate and highly absorptive. Akin to an ongoing ‘movie-in-the-mind’, it often has the quality of feeling real and can continue over a period of months or years. The term ‘maladaptive’ daydreaming (MD) was introduced (Somer, 2002) to describe immersive daydreaming before researchers investigated it as a distinct psychiatric condition (e.g. Somer, Soffer-Dudek, Ross & Halpern, 2017) related to developmental trauma.

This thesis presents an autoethnographic journey into the Aventine, a term I use to refer to an elusive, liminal space. I ask readers to adopt and experiment with various lenses I use in my attempts to navigate immersive daydreaming from a critical, post-qualitative perspective. … The pathologization of creative responses to trauma is then countered to reveal fantasy as a site of liberation.

This creative-relational research is situated, experience-near and dialogical. Attending to the social/political, I challenge traditional forms of trauma-related fantasy representation and claim a space where the intuitive, imaginative and numinous are welcomed into therapeutic practice and scholarship. This thesis highlights the importance of process-driven research: from intrapsychic wars to synchronicities , and ultimately to a sense of homeness, I invite you as reader to accompany me on what became a reclamation of artistic and spiritual freedom.

Why is it worth your time?: It is a PhD dissertation on immersive daydreaming that includes transcripts of extensive inner dialogues between the researcher and real and imagined others from the researcher's life and immersive daydreaming story that spanned over a decade as well as real world historical figures.

Plural/1+ Tags: creator speaks from experience, people: copies, type: setting specific

Content Warnings: racist intergenerational trauma

Accessibility Notes: Full text PDF available on the University of West England (UWE) Bristol Research Repository

lb_lee

"You think you can just leave me behind?
That's unfortunate. I don't think so."

Blurb: A theatrical song from the perspective of the "bad" headmate of the protagonist of the video game Celeste, explicating their selves-hatred and -sabotage.

Why is it worth your time?: This is a very unusual remix, with a musical theater feel, very far abroad from the original soundtrack song it's based off of. It's free and short, give it a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse:intermediate focus, enmity, voices

Content Warnings: selves-hatred, commands to suicide, sudden screaming

Access Notes: Available for free to listen on Ocremix.org! Lyrics are here.

lb_lee

"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.

lb_lee

"You're more yourself than usual, Nadine. [...] Sometimes you will wake in a different bed than the one you fell asleep in. Sometimes you will feel like somebody else entirely. But all the time, while you are there, the people you become will always be you."

Blurb: A Jewish lesbian musician flees into the woods... and starts dipping in and out of time and bodies.

Why is it worth your time?: Unusual story of a singular nature, and it's short, free, and online.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, bodyhopping, identityblending, otherworld (the past), children, realitymashing, setting-specific

Content Warnings: pogroms

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's also legitimately available for free online (and screenreadable) in Sinister Wisdom #34!

Misc. Notes: This story was eventually expanded into a complete novel entitled Running Towards a High Thin Sound in 1996.

lb_lee

"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.

lb_lee

"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

lb_lee

"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.

lb_lee

Submitted by

numinousdread! Thanks,

numinousdread!

"I often imagine what my neighbors think as I am rushing huge catering trays into my car, and then the next day I have a full drag outfit made all of synthetic hair that I'm rushing to my car, and then the next day I'm covered completely in blue paint because I'm doing a Violet Beauregarde drag number. [Both laugh] You know, I think about it. I'm just kind of embracing. For me, it is about gender. It does relate to gender, because I just think of myself as a house for many different beings, and they all are employed. [Both laugh] They all have jobs. They have all different jobs, they have different outfits, they have different likes and dislikes, and they're all trying to make this human vessel their home. Sometimes chaos ensues. [Laughs] That's how they’re all tied together: they all live in the same house."

Blurb: A Nigerian-American trans artist and chef discusses his work, feelings about top surgery, and experiencing his body as a house for multiple beings.

Why is it worth your time?: An interesting discussion of drag as an outlet for plurality, and a very non-sensationalized/chill presentation of Amabebe's experiences (imho).

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, spiritual

Content Warnings: Discussion of the loss of Amabebe's father, as well as non-specific discussion of his difficult childhood and how he used dissociation as a coping mechanism. (Abuse is not specifically mentioned.) Brief mentions of angry family responses to his top surgery.

Accessibility Notes: Available for free in audio and transcript form.

lb_lee

"If William is a character worthy of being written about, then he exists. He exists, inside my head to be sure, but in his own right, with his own vitality. All I have to do is look at him. I don't plan him, compose him of bits and pieces, inventory him. I find him."

Blurb: An essay by the late, great speculative fiction writer about her discovering of Earthsea over the course of a decade and its independent autonomy.

Why is it worth your time?: Le Guin has passed on, but her legacy is immortal. The essay is a beautiful explication of creative discovery and the realm of the imagination. Give it a shot!

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

Content Warnings: None.

Access Notes: This essay has been reprinted many times, including in ALGOL #21, Dreams Must Explain Themselves, The Language of the Night, Fantasists on Fantasy, and a similarly-titled by very different 2018 collection called Dreams Must Explain Themselves: The Selected Non-Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Available in print and ebook forms.

lb_lee

Submitted by

yolcatzin !

「やあ、僕の名前はティーチくんだよ。今日は僕といろんな事学ぼう」 "Hey, my name's Teach. Today we're going to learn all sorts of things."

Blurb: A thriller dressed up as a very incompetent edutainment show. Your host, a cat named Teach (joined by his headmates Sam and Kobayashi), tries to give you entertaining life lessons from the white void he calls home, even as he is beset by unpleasant, horrific, and inexplicable events.

Why is it worth your time?: Don't let the crude art style fool you. The mysteries are compelling, the drama is effective, the comedic moments land, and the bodysharing protagonists have very interesting dynamics with each other.
When we watched, we were invested in the one-sided relationship Sam has with Teach. That bunny is filled with so much yearning and he is so unhealthy and obsessive about it. He's a riot!

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate-focus, enmity, family, friendship, nonhumans [bunny person, cat person], romantic, spiritual, switching, the dead, visions, voices

Content Warnings: Infrequent eyestrain-inducing graphics and harsh noises.
Depictions of abuse between headmates, blood, body horror, death, illness, gore, manipulation, murder, mutilation, obsessive/stalkerish behavior, suicide, unreality, urine, vomit. Discussions of familial abuse, incest, sexual assault, and COVID-19. (Context: This series is full of seasonal/topical episodes, so there are a few episodes from 2020 that mention the pandemic. These can be skipped without missing out on important plot points.)

Accessibility Notes: This series is entirely in Japanese. There are no transcripts or Japanese subtitles. As of the time of this submission, the first fourty episodes have been subtitled in English by the creator, and there are fansubs going up to episode 200 of 374 (compiled in this playlist). Unfortunately, all of these subtitles are baked in (not screen-reader-friendly) and riddled with errors. If you don't speak Japanese, you won't be able to fully enjoy this series.

Episode by episode playlist

Compilation playlist

lb_lee

Submitted with the kind assistance of

rax!

"that review forced me to face a tangential fact, but one no less important: the knowledge that I am — that we are — not alone."

Blurb: (from creator description) "ally is an ergodic, arborescent, semiautobiographical work about identity, mental health, spirituality, and the mutability of the past. A lot of the information contained within is real, some of it isn’t. Each page is structured as a conversation between myself and my ally, a mirror reflection of myself."

Why is it worth your time?: "a fictionalized memoir in which Scott-Clary grapples with issues of mental health, sexual and asexual identity, what it means to have a self, how abuse and trauma affect those things, and how being a hopelessly nerdy furry specifically inflects all of that in really interesting directions. It's a typographical adventure (the whole thing is produced in LaTeX), with the inclusion of sheet music, threaded stories, interlocking footnotes, and subtle but crucial uses of color. I think it's my favorite plural memoir."

Plural Tags: cofronting, nonswitching, community

Content Warnings: Several sections focus on suicide, self-harm, rape, sexual content, and poor mental health.

Access Notes: Read online for free at https://ally.id/ Text is screenreadable, but the images unfortunately are not alt-texted.

Misc Notes: See Rax's post about ally here! You can also buy it at https://makyo.itch.io/ally (ebook) or https://ally.id/book?pk_campaign=itch (paperback)

lb_lee

"It does not want to remember."

Blurb: The new being is helped through a challenging experience.

Why is it worth your time?: It's short, free, surrealistic, and in the end uplifting. Give it a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, visions, voices, realitymashing

Content Warnings: contains themes around trauma and general mental health.

Access Notes: Not screenreadable.

Misc Notes: Free to read on itch.io!

Misc. Notes: Cataloger's note: contacted halfbakeddozen 10/16/2024 and they have stated the work is not available for download or back-up.

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

"Sharing your partner’s every intimate thought and desire lends itself to altering both selves into a blended amalgam of the two, a swirling pool of thoughts where there used to be two distinct beings."

Blurb: a microfic that describes the special, identity-altering relationship between bonded witches and dolls.

Why is it worth your time?: Nonhuman hivemind fic, short and free!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, setting-specific, nonhumans [witch, doll, robot], teamwork, community, queerplatonic, and romantic relationships,

Content Warnings: Reality and identity distortion

Access Notes: Plain text, screenreadable, free. Read it here! (EDITOR'S NOTE 2023/11/28: deleted? Back up link here.)

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

"and so the heart leaves the body behind"

Blurb: "An experimental zine about Identity fracturing & Trauma."

Why is it worth your time?: This is a trippy, strange, upsetting zine about souls turned against themselves and with complicated inner relationships. Its experimentalism makes it unusual, and that makes it valuable. It should have a place here.

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate-focus, otherworld, nonhumans [unicorn person, oyster person, angel], children

Content Warnings: "Sexual trauma, body dysmorphia & nudity. Also an extra warning for mild flickering, I'm not used to screentones so I wasn't able to stop them flickering slightly during scrolling."

Access Notes: no alt-text.

Misc Notes: $3 AU on itch.io. Buy it here!

lb_lee

"Gameplay:
- Go to sleep in the bed and open the door to enter the dream world.
- Explore the dream world and collect effects.
- The dream world is very large, so use landmarks to navigate: walk straight in one direction until you come across something to use as a landmark, then change direction and walk straight until you find another landmark, and so on.
- If you get lost or stuck, press 9 to wake up.
- You can save your game at the desk when you're awake." (from the Readme)

Blurb: A young woman who cannot leave her room explores the strange world of her dreams instead.

Why is it worth your time?: This game has a devoted niche following for its surreal, open-ended sense of mystery. It just drops you into an environment with lacking instructions and leaves you to figure it out. There are all sorts of strange little easter eggs, including dream creatures you can't interact with or even see under most circumstances. This is a game that's easy to get lost in, in all senses of the word; I had to play it with the Wiki open. It's something to be experienced, rather than beaten. Also, it's free!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, dreamfolk, enmity (but only if you choose it), visions

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: There are surely a bajillion Let's Plays of this game, but we haven't seen any of them and can make no recommendations. Being an RPGmaker game, both the old fan-translated version and the new Steam version are Windows-only, far as I know. (We played the fan-translated one.)

Misc Notes: This game may have helped inspire Lisa: the First! There is also a manga and a TON of fanmade games, none of which I have touched. Seriously, if you want a fandom to dive into, Yume Nikki will keep you busy forever.

lb_lee

" Practice automatic writing, possessory trance, and other methods of channeling.
Journey to the underworld and find your way out."

Blurb: "A small, powerful set of mythopoetic instructions for working with the queer dead, composed after the overlapping underground worlds of the Bay Area lost thirty-six of their people in the Ghost Ship Fire."

Why is it worth your time?: This is an expression of ecstatic queer grief in the wake of preventable loss. It's short, free, and beautiful in its passion.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, otherworld, the dead, community, spiritual, possession

Content Warnings: Death and religion.

Access Notes: The nice thing about anarchists is you can get their work all over the place. Read online or download for free in various accessible formats, or you might be able to find one of Contagion Press's paper copies around for $2. Back-up link here.

Misc Notes: Although the author is listed as "anonymous," there's enough overlap in writing style and content that I suspect the writer was also involved in the Mary Nardini Gang's Be Gay Do Crime--which was also first printed by Contagion Press in 2018, also concerned with queer magical anarchism, and also concerned with the loss of friends (specifically, Feral Pines) in the Ghost Ship Fire.

lb_lee

"Make sure they know they're never gonna be far from your thoughts as long as you live...and maybe ask 'em while they're busy rewriting you to remember that you always tried to be kind to your characters."

Blurb: Spider Robinson, the writer, writes himself into a story where he interacts with his fictional characters, tells them about the Usenet fandom that has formed around them, and they celebrate... and then real-world-Robinson posts said story on real-world-Usenet.

Why is it worth your time?: This is an odd duck, and probably not of interest to most people, since it's a victory lap following Robinson's publishing of six(ish) Callahan books, but it's also a very soulbondy work where writer, fandom, and fictioneers are all involved. Usually it's only two of the three, from what I've seen. Also, an interesting time capsule into internet fandom back in the '90s!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, nonswitching, fictioneers, otherworld, realitymashing, friendship, community

Content Warnings: None; alcohol and minor discussion of someone in the fandom dying?

Access Notes: Short, free to read online in plain text. (Back-up link) On paper, as far as I know, it only exists in The Callahan Chronicals, which is long out of print, but which is apparently available via bookshare and also on audiobook.

Misc Notes: Spider Robinson has telepathy, mindsharing, and identity blending as a major theme in multiple works of his (including the Stardance books and, in the Callahan series, "Two Heads are Better Than One" and "the Mick of Time") but none quite make the grade onto this archive. Even "Post Toast" feels like a weird edge case.

Profile

Many-Selved Stories and Multi Media

Story List

Syndicate

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Plural Stories

Entries tagged with genre:?

Analyzing Joan, by Del (monologue, 1999)

Exploring the Aventine: An autoethnography... by Dr. Charlene Thomson (PhD dissertation 2024)

Leave Me Behind, by Navi and SQORE (Celeste fanmix, 2025)

The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, by Carolyn Gage (one-woman play, 1988)

The Amazing Disappearing Girl, by Judith Katz (? prose, 1988)

The Chaos Diaries, by Lorraine Schein (? prose, 1988)

Festival of the Bones II: What Is Remembered Lives, by Ile Orunmila Oshun (prose, 2010)

Mara, by Lois Metzger (? prose, 1981)

"Episode 162: Checking in with Salimatu Amabebe", by Tuck Woodstock (podcast, 2024)

Dreams Must Explain Themselves, by Ursula K. Le Guin (personal essay, 1973)

ねこのティーチくん/Teach the Cat, by Oyasainoni 9 (slice-of-life thriller animation, 2019-2022)

Ally, by Madison Scott-Clary (autobio? hypertext, 2019-2020)

[Insert Title Here] #4, by halfbakeddozen (? comic, 2022)

A Myth of the Doe, by XeniaNuminous (spiritual prose, 2023)

Pair-Bonded, by Arsenal System (sci-fi prose, 2022)

Paranoia Agent, by Satoshi Kon (? TV show, 2004)

The Unicorn, the Oyster, and the Angel, by Donny (? comic, 2023)

Yume Nikki, by Kikyama (horror? game, 2004)

First Protocols of Queer Goetia, by Anonymous (magic anarchist poetry, 2018)

Post Toast, by Spider Robinson (sci-fi? prose, 1996)

Profile

Syndicate

Style Credit