Plural Stories

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.

Submitted by erinptah! Thank you, erinptah!

“OK, Cathy,” she said, not in the least perturbed. “I’ll tell her.” Then she stood up, and started a conversation with herself, in which she told Jodie she wasn’t seeing Mummy or Daddy because she had to be safe.

Blurb: When seven-year-old Jodie was taken into foster care, her behavior was so difficult that she went through five carers in four months. Experienced carer Cathy Glass almost passed on her too, until her own (teenage) children insisted they wanted to see Jodie through. Eventually Jodie began to disclose details of the abuse, overlooked by Social Services for years, while Cathy struggled to get her the professional care and long-term support she deserved.

Why is it worth your time?: The rare outside view of a small child who appears to have DID, who ends up in the care of adults that are attentive and well-informed enough to recognize it.

You wouldn't know it from the promotional copy, and DID doesn't get invoked by name until nearly the end of the book, when a couple of alters firmly identify themselves as Not Jodie. But the dissociative traits are visible from day one, when Cathy reports Jodie having intense, distracted conversations with what she assumes are "imaginary friends." Among the kid's other issues, most of them Cathy never overtly connects with the alters, but there are a few that the reader might recognize as DID-related anyway (e.g. struggles with time perception). All of which suggests that Cathy's original real-time notes about her experience with Jodie were pretty solid.

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse high-focus, cofronting, people: children, type: medical, how would you tag for "real system described from the outside POV of a singlet but not in a horrible way"?

Content Warnings: past child abuse (sexual and physical), past animal abuse, physical aggression and sexual acting-out. Others involve SPOILERS; see comments

Accessibility Notes: Available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Misc. Notes (if any): There's some awkward misinformation in the dialogue (e.g. describing the non-Jodie headmates Reg and Amy as "characters"). Thankfully, Cathy's actions stay refreshingly grounded in "managing the issues Jodie-and-company actually have," there's not much focus on her idea of what DID "should" be.

"These stories were very old, as old as people, and they had survived because they were very powerful indeed. These were the tales that echoed in the head long after the books that contained them were cast aside. They were both an escape from reality and an alternative reality themselves. They were so old, and so strange, that they had found a kind of existence independent of the pages they occupied. The world of the old tales existed parallel to ours, as David's mother had once told him, but sometimes the wall separating the two became so thin and brittle that the two worlds started to blend into each other.

"That was when the trouble started."

Blurb: After the tragic death of his mother, his father's remarriage, and the birth of a baby brother, troubled boy David finds himself sucked into a fantasy world that seems cobbled together from the various books in his room. But those books and stories don't all belong to him, and some of them are very grim...

Why is it worth your time?: It's an enjoyable dark fantasy with truly frightening villains, tragic heroes, all overhung with a backdrop of World War II, which David is too young to fully understand the nature of. Give it a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, otherworld, fictioneers, the dead, visions, voices

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: This book is mainstream and well-liked and has gotten multiple printings, so it's easy to find in libraries. Available in ebook, audiobook, paperback, and hardback formats. Also got translated into French, where it won an award!

"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.

"I'm part of your imagination too. I'm you too, Joel."

Blurb: After a painful breakup, Clementine undergoes a procedure to erase memories of her former boyfriend. When he finds out, he undergoes the same procedure and slowly begins to forget the woman that he loved, only to discover that this may not be a good idea. A flight through mindscape ensues, trying to dodge the memory-erasure.

Why is it worth your time?: It's really good! Nowhere else have I seen a story (asides from those about dementia) that is so about the preciousness and pricelessness of memories, even painful ones. The special effects are used subtly to show the differences between memory and reality, with surreal geography, blurred environments representing them not being fully committed to memory, and some looming psychological horror as memories warp before erasure. This is definitely hard on the ish part of pluralish, but seeing as Joel's introject of Clementine comes up with ideas that he himself seems unable to think of, one could argue that his memory of Clementine is somewhat freestanding and has taken on her own life within him. It's also the most relatable movie about amnesia we've ever seen.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, memory work, otherworld, realitymashing, introjects, nonswitching, romantic relationships

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Has subtitles in English, Spanish, and French, dubbing in French--my DVD version, anyway.

Misc Notes: Do not believe the box; this is NOT a romantic comedy, and if you go in expecting that, you will not have a good time.

Alim:
She still keeps plastic on the furniture.

Cary Grant:
It keeps the evil fresh.

Blurb: Alim seems to have it all: a great career, a handsome boyfriend, and a personal guide in the spirit of Cary Grant. And living thousands of miles away from his mother, Nuru, and his family in Toronto, he can keep his lifestyle hidden. But when his mom pays an impromptu visit, Alim needs to reconcile these different sides of himself.

Why is it worth your time?: It's good and bittersweet! This is a rare time I will put a story on this list where someone has to leave their headmate behind. Cary Grant and Nuru simultaneously represent parental figures and different sides of Alim-- Cary is racist but wants Alim to be happy, while Nuru is more abrasive on the surface but also more able to change. Alim's relationship with them both can be fraught. Nuru steals the show, if you ask me; she's sympathetically complicated.

Plural Tags: imaginary friends, nonswitching, other world

Content Warnings: homophobia and racism, both external and internalized, past parental death, strained familial relationships

Accessibility Notes: Available on DVD, probably streaming somewhere. Subtitles in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai

"Of course I was okay, those Sundays, because I had Michael for company. Michael, who was my best friend in the world, maybe my only friend, when I was eight years old. My imaginary friend."

Blurb: What if your imaginary friend from childhood was your one true love? Jane Margaux is a lonely little girl with an overbearing mother and only one friend: Michael, who's imaginary. After he leaves her when she's nine years old, she never forgets him, until she runs into him again in her thirties.

Why is it worth your time?: It's... okay? It's a very straightforward sweet romance novel, with all the tropes and contrivances therein. (Though no constant escalation of conflict.) If you're not into romance novels, you won't be into this. It's cute and sappy, about a woman coming into her own with the help of her perfect man. In this book, imaginary friend is a job description, overlapping with "psychopomp" and (possibly) guardian angel. Michael's nature is intentionally left ambiguous, but though he is often invisible, he doesn't have to be, and he's clearly able to interact with the world by himself.

Plural Tags: nonswitching, imaginary friends, noncorporeal romance

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in paper book, ebook, and audiobook formats.

Misc Notes: Apparently this book became a made-for-TV Lifetime movie! Haven't seen it, cannot vouch for it. Seeing as Jane is engaged in the movie, sounds like it is pretty different. That movie is available on DVD and streaming.

“This guy is a true freak!”

Blurb: You play as the Killer7, a one-vessel assassin team who shoots and murders their way through a suicide-bomber death cult, organ traffickers, a superhero team, and their own creation, accompanied by the ghosts of their victims along the way. Each headmate plays in a different way and has different skills, and waking them up over the course of a level is a key gameplay mechanic. All are needed to switch in at one time or another, from Con the blind speedy punk, to Kevin the spidery silent knife-thrower, to Garcian, the black man you never, EVER want to die.

Why is it worth your time?: This game has a cult following, and its weirdness is both strength and weakness. It has a singular style, a lot of over-the-top cool, and the story is a self-contradictory fever dream. We only get to know a few of the Smiths outside of gameplay, but the little touches of individual body language is charming--they fight, speak, move, and even go up and down stairs differently. (Mask de Smith's goofy gallop downstairs amuses me every time.) It wasn't my thing, but it is SOMEONE'S.

Plural Tags: switching, spirits, introjects, the dead

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: This game is available on Steam, for Gamecube, and for Playstation2. It has both audio dialogue and subtitles, but unfortunately, never both together. A completionist Let's Play is available. Also, this game has an epilepsy warning for flashing lights, and the high-contrast cel-shading-and-gradients color scheme is a migraine in a jar. It gave me headaches.

Misc Notes: There was a comics adaptation, but it was mediocre and got canceled before finishing its first arc; don't bother.

“Last night right after the show
I had to let myself go
I got too needy wouldn't leave me
For one second alone

But I still sleep with myself
That's kinda complicated
I steal the blanket as well
That gets me so frustrated"

Blurb: A ridiculous farce of a song about having a terrible dysfunctional relationship with your own ego, breaking up, and continuing to have sex with it.

Why is it worth your time?: It's three and a half minutes of catchy comedic absurdity about someone making terrible life choices. It's funny, you can listen to it for free on bandcamp, I'd say it's worth your time.

Plural Tags: in-system romance (in the worst way)

Content Warnings: in case the band name Regurgitator didn't cue you, you might be offended by this song. Think of the sleaziest, scummiest way you could depict such a relationship, and you've about got it.

Accessibility Notes: The original version that I know from the Mish Mash! album is available for $1 AUD, but there are at least three versions of this song available on bandcamp, and you can buy them all in one go for $4 AUD. Mish Mash! is also available on CD and vinyl.

“Something else that puzzles me about other people is that a lot of them don’t know their purpose in life. This usually does bother them—more than not being able to remember being born, anyway—but I can’t even imagine it. Part of knowing who I am is knowing why I am, and I’ve always known who I am, from the first moment.”

Blurb: After the murder of their original in childhood, Andy deals with the outside world while more than a hundred other souls share an imaginary house inside his head, maintaining a somewhat-orderly coexistence.  Andy's new coworker, Penny Driver, is also a multiple personality, a fact that Penny is only partially aware of. When several of Penny's other souls ask Andy for help, Andy reluctantly agrees, setting in motion a chain of events that threatens to destroy the stability of the house. Now Andy and Penny must work together to uncover a terrible secret that Andy has been keeping . . . from himself.

Why is it worth your time?: It's good. Also, hey wow, a story where there's more than one plural, and they make friends and have different ways of viewing their plurality! There are precious few stories about plurals relating to each other, and the challenges and rewards of that.

Plural Tags: fusion/integration, switching, MPD/DID, headspace, plural community, inner children, memory work, abuse high-focus

Content Warnings: In comments below; contains spoilers.

Accessibility Notes: Available in ebook and paper forms. Translated into German under the title Ich und die anderen.