Plural Stories

Submitted by a mysterious anon! Thank you, anon! :D

"As no one philosophy can fulfill all aspects of human life alone, your one self cannot go on unless you learn to work with the trio."

Blurb: A small crew of astronauts is on a mission to investigate Mars, where rumor has it a strange energy called 'Evil Mind' is stirring up delusions. One of these crew members is protagonist(s) Laika, a rookie radio engineer who is also plural. Like most instances of Mars in fiction, things quickly go south. Between solving mysteries, interacting with Mars' varied inhabitants, and hopefully putting a stop to the impending 'Judgement,' Laika and their bodymates - Ernest, Spacer, and Yolanda - confront their joint past and find who they all truly are. Also, everyone has a dog face, and yes, it is plot important.

Why is it worth your time?: The depiction of plurality is surprisingly sympathetic and dimensional for the time. If any bodymate dies in combat, it's a game over because the story considers all of them important. Most residents of Mars may be or are explicitly shown to be two-in-one; a few are three-in-one and Laika is five-in-one. Bodymates are usually treated like their own people, always called by their own name and pronouns by other characters. Though the writing at times can be questionable and other times very hard to follow, there are some legitimately interesting examinations of trauma, identity, and how the conservative Christian ideals of 'pure good' and 'sin' can be damaging. Like Xenogears, it's best to go in remembering when it was made, especially if you go looking at the original Japanese materials which...are more of their time than the English fan translation. (As an example of a strange writing choice, the bodymates are labeled as separate types of 'evil' but are not depicted as bad people in their actions.)

Plural Tags: fictioneers, fusion/integration, setting-specific, memory work, on purpose, otherworld, realitymashing, teamwork, community, enmity

Content Warnings: A TON. alcoholism, animal cruelty, assault, child abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual), death, dissociation, domestic violence, hospital surgery, integration (portrayed both negatively and positively)*, misogyny, murder, pedophiles, psychosis/delusions, religion, strong language, suicide and resulting survivor's guilt, trauma, very stereotypical depictions of Native Americans.
*Spoilers, one system of three integrates via killing a bodymate, but the one responsible turns into a boss battle so it seems more negative. In comparison, Laika& integrates by the end and the vibe seems to be positive.

Access Notes: Available for the PS1. The game is long out of print but has been uploaded on archive.org in Japanese, Spanish, and English. (No vouching for quality, caveat emptor.)

Let's Plays: For Japanese speakers, NicoNicoDouga has a couple of different playthroughs to check out, some which go into more detail than others. There's also one on YouTube with no commentary: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYnPhfZ3IEC0gVoIAvFp_S1veJosDqw1C

In 2022, an English fan translation was released. A full playthrough of that is also on YouTube with no commentary (except at the very end): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLegyQtkE9qr02L83RyYu19HzKdrHecp2B

The translation tries to be sensitive while acknowledging the game's shortcomings. E.g., it treats obviously trans characters with more respect than the original script, but the term 'personalities' is still used to refer to bodymates, and it keeps the term 'psycho' which the game uses to refer to one of the three types of evil on Mars.

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)

"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.)

" 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.

"SoulBonding isn't a power; it's more—I won't say mundane—more domestic than that, more peaceable, more of a friendship. I picture myself; I retreat from the world, into my own mindscape, and I picture myself sitting in a plush recliner. There's a sofa opposite me, I imagine, and if I wait and listen for their voices, if I welcome them in, Seihara or Shining Star, or several others who I didn't tell the Mentors about, will sit down on the sofa and talk to me."

Blurb: Three teenaged soulbonders get snatched by a military program, intending to use their powers for evil, but the bonders don't play along...

Why is it worth your time?: It's a time capsule into the old soulbonding culture of the time; Laura Gilkey says she originally wrote the story for a college creative writing class, probably in 1998. Its earnest, idealistic support for soulbonding is touching to read, twenty years down the line, even though it falls into the mindframe of the mindscape being intrinsically better than the "real" world.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, cofronting, otherworld, fictioneers, nonhumans [tree, werewolf], romantic relationships, community, friendship, teamwork

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Free to read online. Read it here! (And in case of breakage, here's an alternate link.)

Misc Notes:

"You think she's - actually - naturally - she was just born with several souls -"

Blurb: In a society where humans can't safely sleep, everyone upon adulthood joins bodies with other people, becoming systems of two so that someone is mentally awake at all times and dumping their physical fatigue into mice and other animals. But Book, Holly, and Crystal were born multiple, and Book's gender dysphoria is getting the better of him. He finds a new cohabiter, and the two bodies go on an adventure that goes wrong.

Why is it worth your time?: It's got a fun premise of a multi society that is far from utopian.

Plural Tags: cofronting, children, community, family, switching, setting-specific, abuse not mentioned

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in plain-old HTML for free. Read it here! (In case of breakage, back-up link here.)

"The actions and utterances of the possessed person are not the expression of the individual, but the loa."

Blurb: A journey into the Voudoun religion of Haiti, filmed by Maya Deren during 1947-1951 and edited posthumously by Teiji and Cherel Ito in 1981, focused primarily on religious song, dance, and possession.

Why is it worth your time?: Maya Deren experienced Voudoun possession herself (though it doesn't come up in the film--for that, see the appendices of the BOOK version of Divine Horsemen) and was an avante-garde filmmaker, which makes this film singular. It doesn't really have a story, but it's a cinematic expression of an experience from a time period that's hard to find without grotesque trappings of racism. Voudoun is treated matter-of-factly in this film, and it's worth your time. Mostly, it lets the footage speak for itself, with little commentary.

Plural Tags: spiritual, switching, on purpose, community, abuse not mentioned, possession

Content Warnings: Matter-of-fact but explicit animal injury and sacrifice (chickens, goat, bull). It isn't treated as lurid or disgusting, and the narrator makes it clear what's going to happen well ahead of time.

Access Notes: Available on DVD, VHS, and streaming. Alas, the DVD version I had contained no subtitles. There's also a book version, but because it is more about Voudoun as a religion than about plural or personal experience, it doesn't make the cut for this catalog. (That said, if you want to read Deren's experience of possession, that's Chapter 7.)

Someone has uploaded the film to archive.org here!

"This is a love story—a love story disguised as a piece of scholarly research."

Blurb: "Megan Rose, Ph.D., examines the practice and purpose of spirit marriage around the world, presenting transcultural evidence of this form of sacred union. [...] She shares her in-depth interviews with ten contemporary practitioners of spirit marriage, including a Faery Seer, a Shakta Tantric, a West African Shrine Keeper, a New Orleans Voodoo Mambo, Haitian Vodou practitioners, and a ceremonial magician," along with her own spirit marriage.

Why is it worth your time?: This is an unusual entry for this catalog, since it is anthropological research from a religion and magic perspective, but it is easy enough to read and crammed with personal stories of spirit marriage, along with possession, channelling, and indwelling, and that seems super-relevant. If you have been itching to read about metaphysical or religious experiences of pluralish phenomena and love, this book fills a big hole in a lot of plurals' education. Megan Rose is herself in a spirit marriage, and she states at the start that she will not spend the book arguing about the reality or truth of her subjects' (or her own) experiences--and indeed, she does not.

Plural Tags: creator speaks from experience, abuse not mentioned, mindsharing, otherworld, dreamfolk, nonhumans [gods, spirits, lwa, fairy], the dead, romantic relationships, teamwork, community, and metaphysical/spiritual

Content Warnings: Much discussion of religion, mentions of religious oppression but nothing too intense. That said, this can be an emotionally intense read, just because of its subject material.

Access Notes: Available in paper and ebook forms.

“My armor is made of sky iron, made for me. A bear’s armor is his soul, just as your dæmon is your soul. You might as well take him away” —indicating Pantalaimon—”and replace him with a doll full of sawdust. That is the difference."

Blurb: In Lyra's world, all people have daemons: a shapeshifting animal who settles into one form as an adult. Now Lyra and her daemon, Pan, are rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal - including Lyra's friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world. Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, a champion.

Why is it worth your time?: There's a reason this book birthed a whole community, the daemonists. Lyra's Oxford is a fascinating place, and a society built around the normalcy of daemons is what people most remember from it. (Indeed, a person without a daemon is terrifying in this society, the equivalent of a walking corpse.) The daemons are explicitly stated to be people's souls; when one dies, so does the other, and to tear one's daemon away is considered an act of horrific brutality on par with soul-rape and lobotomy.

Plural Tags: friendship, community, nonhumans [daemons, animals]

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in paper, ebook, and audiobook forms. Has been translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese, Norwegian, and Dutch

Misc Notes: First in a three book series, and honestly, I didn't care for the other two books and have zero desire to try rereading them; you might enjoy them, though. Northern Lights has also been adapted to a movie (which apparently sucked), a TV series, and a comic book, and I cannot vouch for the quality of any of them.

“After the fire was under control and firemen called, I stood outside in shock. Why did the fire start in the first place? How did I know how to stop it so quickly? What do I do now? I was covered in soot, and my lungs hurt. The apartment looked darker, unsafe. I walked back to the kitchen and made dinner. I don't remember much after that...”

Blurb: "Our daily adventures as a DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) system." A diary comic from the system's life in 2013.

Why is it worth your time?: It's a diary comic, so it's a look at the everyday life and feelings of GalaxySystem, without dramatic streamlining. And it's been going off and on for a good few years; there are long hiatuses, but thus far, the creators have always picked it up again.

Plural Tags: plural creator, nonhuman [cat person], plural community, abuse low-focus, MPD/DID,

Content Warnings: Allusions to bad relationships and abuse, at times foul language. Generally not much to worry about.

Accessibility Notes: Free to read online, not transcribed.

Misc. Notes: Incomplete, on hiatus. The nature of the beast kind of insures it.

Read it online here!