Entries tagged with length:short

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Rachel in Love, by Pat Murphy (sci-fi short story, 1987)

"-- I am not a monkey, she signs. -- I am a girl.

Blurb: A chimp, taught ASL and implanted with the personality of a man's dead daughter, is raised as that daughter until his death. Taken to a scientific research facility, it's up to Rachel to decide who and what she is, and how she wants her life to go.

Why is it worth your time?: Rachel's experience of species dissonance, deciding where she fits in (among humans? among apes?) and reconciling her past, human self with her current chimpanzee self feels relevant to anyone who's had to undergo a major identity change (and move from one species to another). Check it out!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, identityblending, copies, nonhumans (chimpanzee), setting-specific, serially singlet

Content Warnings: Contain spoilers; see comments

Accessibility Notes: Available in German, Dutch, Japanese, and French. This story has been reprinted oodles of times, and is available in paperback, hardback,

Misc. Notes (if any): This story has also won some awards. It's well-reputed!

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Drawn Together, by Minh Lê and Dan Santat (contemporary picture book, 2019)

"...and we build a new world that even words can't describe."

Blurb: When a young boy visits his grandfather, their lack of a common language leads to confusion, frustration, and silence. But as they sit down to draw together, something magical happens--with a shared love of art and storytelling, the two form a bond that goes beyond words.

Why is it worth your time?: This is a beautiful realitymashing picture book about a grandfather and grandson finding ways to communicate by sharing art-making time together, with their artistic avatars battling a dragon with their drawing implements of choice. This is a rare communal realitymashing piece that ISN'T a horror story! Well worth checking out!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, realitymashing, family, fictioneers??? (for lack of a better term for one's artistic self-insert), visions

Content Warnings: None.

Access Notes: Available in paper book and ebook forms.

Misc Notes: This book has won a load of awards for good reason!

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Real to Me, by Minh Lê and Raissa Figueroa (social-emotional learning, picture book, 2023)

Submitted by

matshushima! Thank you,

matsushima!

"Others tried to tell me that she wasn’t real, that she was just imaginary.

But what did they know? She was real to me."

Blurb: What do you do when your imaginary friend goes away? Did you dream up the entire friendship? Maybe... But you miss her laugh, her comfort, and her silly mischief. It all feels so real... you couldn't have just imagined those things, right?

Why is it worth your time?: It's a cute picture book about imaginary friends with a fun twist at the end.

Plural/1+ Tags: imaginary friends

Content Warnings: N/A

Accessibility Notes: Picture book, available in print, digital, and audio

Nine Lives, by Ursula K. Le Guin (sci-fi short story, 1969)

"He never was alone before. He had himself to see, talk with, live with, nine other selves all his life."

Blurb: A clone of ten named John Chow come to help mine a hellish planet... but when disaster strikes, there's only one John Chow left. How does he deal?

Why is it worth your time?: The John Chows are referred to as A clone, not TEN clones, and have an interesting sort of group self. And of course, Le Guin is a legend. Give it a shot! It's good!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, identityblending, copies, setting-specific, intimate and teamwork relationships, on purpose

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Accessibility Notes: This story has been anthologized more than anything in the catalog. Available in print, ebook, and audio, and in German, Dutch, French, Serbian, Spanish, Italian, and Lithuanian

Misc. Notes (if any): "singleton" is used in this story to refer to non-clone single selves. Is this possibly where later ('90s BBS) plural usage came from?

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

"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.

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The Three Tongues, by Catalina Rios (lesbian poetry, 1988)

"In every strong woman
there are three tongues
all in contradiction,"

Blurb: a poem of the three voices in strong women.

Why is it worth your time?: It's short, meditative, and free to read online!

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse low focus, closeting, voices

Content Warnings: None

Accessibility Notes: This poem has been anthologized in the 1990 collection Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color. It is also in Sinister Wisdom #34, which has been digitized and is screenreadable online, and is backed-up on the Wayback Machine!

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in the shadows, by Kieron_ODuibhir (Batman fanfic, 2020- )

"How long have you known I wasn’t real?"

Blurb: The adventures of Batman, an eldritch imaginary friend who has sadly outlived the child who first imagined him. What does he do now, especially now that Superman's figured it out?

Why is it worth your time?: This is an impressively original interpretation of Batman that explains so many things about the character in such a delightful way. (Why is he able to do so many things a regular human can't? Why does his cape change in shape and size so? How is he still doing this after so many decades? Because he isn't actually human.) Reading about spooky asocial protector-of-children Batman building relationships despite his lack of humanness is heartwarming. This story is especially fun to read paired with Trippe's Something Terrible.

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, imaginary friends, nonhumans (eldritch nightmare monster thingy?), friendship

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Accessibility Notes: Free to read and screenreadable on Ao3 and also backed-up on archive.org!

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Untitled, by Adam Ellis (horny fantasy comic, 2025)

"This would be the first time since I was a kid that I haven't bought a new console on day one..."

"STOP! You don't need to succumb to consumerism! You can always buy one in a year or two!"

"Psh, Nintendo? That shit's for babies. Go buy cigarettes."

Blurb: A man ponders buying a new Nintendo, only for his inner angel and demon to discover new feelings for each other.

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

Plural Tags:abuse not mentioned, nonswitching, nonhumans (an angel and a devil), romantic relationships

Content Warnings: Beefcake. That's presumably what you're here for.

Access Notes: available on tumblr! Page 1, and page 2. Also backed-up on the Wayback Machine, but not screenreadable.

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Louisa May Incest, by Carolyn Gage (fanfiction play, 1990)

"Louisa, I love you. I'm the only one who has ever loved you. That's what you created me for."

Blurb: Jo March from Little Women gets into a fight with her author, Louisa May Alcott, about how her story will end. Who is writing our stories, and how do they trap or free us?

Why is it worth your time?: This play packs a punch! It hurt to read, but it is good. A lot of Gage's work is about the way we adapt to abuse and violence, how it gets into our heads.

Plural Tags: abuse high-focus, closeting, fictioneers, romantic relationships, nonswitching

Content Warnings: Incest! It's in the title! See comments for more.

Access Notes: Available on paperback and ebook. Also included in the collections The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and other plays (the 2004 HerBooks publication) and Nine Short Plays.

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

"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.

Zeta-Epsilon by Isabel J. Kim (science fiction short story, 2023)

Submitted by

beepbird! Thanks,

beepbird!

"Zed didn’t say that you were the ones that called her my sister, and it’s too late, now I have always loved her and she has always loved me, and I cannot imagine thinking without her."

Blurb: A man brainshares with the spaceship he lives on... and does everything in his power to get her back.

Why is it worth your time?: This has pretty explicit parallels to multiplicity- to the point that the narrative itself asks the question of whether Epsilon is an alter and/or tulpa at one point. It's also one of those rare narratives where separation is presented as a negative, where the system wants to share brainspace- and where being plural is the happy ending.

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, nonhumans (spaceship), family, teamwork, setting-specific, switching, cofronting, on purpose

Content Warnings: Main character fakes own death by suicide, conscious surgery without pain

Accessibility Notes: Audio and text freely available at https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_03_23/. (Back-up link here.) You can also purchase a print edition or ebook of the magazine this is hosted in from a bunch of sources linked on that page if you'd like. Also holy moly, this story has been anthologized a LOT!

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Conversation with a Legend, by R. M. Meluch (fantasy prose, 1989)

"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.

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

"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.

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The Rational Ship, by Caro Clarke (sci-fi/porn prose, 1989)

"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!

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

"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.

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Mara, by Lois Metzger (? prose, 1981)

"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.

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A Dream of the Past, by Dorothy Eady (fantasy prose, 1949)

"'Have I the honour to address Ti?'

This answer did not seem to have quite the effect I hoped it would.

'You are addressing the Sole Companion of the King, the Overseer of All the Works of the King, the Overseer of the Scribes of the King's Book, the Director of the Palace, the Superintendent of the Canal-Banks, the Overseer of the Schools, the Director of the Court-Wigmakers, Overseer of the Pyramid of King Nefer-ir-ka-Ra, Overseer of the Pyramid of King Ni-user-Ra, the Honoured One Before His Lord, Ti.'

I stood corrected!"

Blurb: A green Egyptologist, upon falling asleep in Ti's tomb, gets taken on an educational journey of ancient Egyptian life, accompanied by (the somewhat pompous) Ti, along with illustrated carvings on the tomb depicting the events described.

Why is it worth your time?: It's a lighthearted, informative journey into ancient Egyptian life, made more meaningful by it representing in broad strokes Eady's own experiences of past-life memory. The illustrations are nice additions!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, creator speaks from experience, the dead, visions, voices, nonswitching

Content Warnings: None.

Access Notes: Reprinted in its entirety in Jonathan Cott's The Search for Omm Sety, which is available in paperback, hardback, and online at archive.org

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Helping Hands, by Neon Crypt System (slice-of-life comic, 2025)

"The way I do things does not have to emulate your way of doing things. These are not mistakes but my own understanding and way of learning finally being seen."

Blurb: A short eight-page comic about two headmates cooking a meal together.

Why is it worth your time?: It's a short, poetic moment of learning and acceptance. Also, how Neon Crypt shows reality layers through color is pleasing.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, cofronting, creator speaks from experience, nonhumans (toy tree snake thing?), teamwork switching

Content Warnings: None.

Access Notes: Free, nonscreenreadable. Read it here!

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outcasts always mourn, by ND Stevenson (autobio comic, 2024)

submitted by

quailfence!

"he's kind of stuck around since then, mostly as an inside joke, a little bit not. I like having him around. there's something really poignant about looking at the world through the eyes of a gay person from the past"

Blurb: A piece about how ND Stevenson pretended to show Oscar Wilde around Vegas as a way of coping with overstimulation on his trip there, which then turns into a reflection on Wilde's legacy and how the world has changed for gay people since his time

Why is it worth your time?: It's a short, sweet piece about queer history and seeing things through the eyes of other people

Plural/1+ Tags: creator speaks from experience, people: copies, people: imaginary friends, people: the dead, type: nonswitching(?), type: on purpose

Content Warnings: References to historical homophobia. Passing reference to sexual harassment. A few suggestive poses/mild nudity.

Accessibility Notes: online/digital, free, not screen-readable

Read it here!

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All of Us Love All of You, by Stink Animal and the Bad Smells (love song, 2023)

Thanks to

beepbird for telling us about this!

"She and her and us and we
All of us love all of you
And that's all we know how to do"

Blurb: A plural love song by an all plural therian band.

Why is it worth your time?: It's cute, bouncy, and fun!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, creator speaks from experience, romantic

Content Warnings: None

Access Notes: Available for pay what you want on bandcamp! Lyrics now available in the comments below! (Thanks,

synecdoches!)