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"That was her true gift to them: she taught them how to keep hoping in the face of the world that told them their memories were delusions, their lived experiences were lies, and there dreams were never going to come true. Perhaps that was her secret for engendering loyalty in a student body that was otherwise disinclined to trust adults, listen to them, or answer when they called. She believed."

Blurb: Jack and Jill were twins sent to a Gothic mad science world, and when they got kicked out, they came to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children until they could return. Now Jack's back again, having been bodyjacked by Jill; can she get her own body back, save her twice-dead mentor, and keep her undead girlfriend going? Lucky for her, she has other wayward child heroes to help her...

Why is it worth your time?: The Wayward Children series is a weird edge case; many a gateway system, fictionkin, or walk-in can sympathize with the longing to return to a world very unlike this one, and McGuire expresses that longing and need beautifully. It also has one of the best depictions of body dissonance I've ever seen; Jack and Jill might be identical twins, but their bodies are NOT the same, and Jack KNOWS it. The whole series may be well worth a look, though even Come Tumbling Down doesn't exactly have bodySHARING, just bodyswapping and theft.

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate focus, bodyhopping, otherworld, enmity, setting-specific

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in hardback, paperback, audiobook, and ebook.

Misc Notes: Though Come Tumbling Down is #5 in this series, if you only want the Jack and Jill books, you can read #1 (Every Heart a Doorway) and #2 (Down Among the Sticks and Bones). Honestly, I would've preferred to have read #2 first. If you want those books, #1 is available in Hebrew, Portuguese, and German, while #2 is available in German and Portuguese.

"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.

Submitted by

thishouse. Thank you,

We

Bootstrap ourselves from mere insensate clutches of jelly and molecular interaction until We

Remember

We were on an adventure.

For many long spans of time we were Lante, once we had repaired Lante. Except that Those-of-We who had learnt what Lante was had to make such repairs so that what came out was less Lante and more We. But Those-of-We had experienced what it was to be Lante and could fill in the gaps. We were We and We were Lante and Lante was Lante and did not know it was also

We.

Blurb for Book 1: Avrana Kern spearheaded an exoplanet terraforming program with the goal of populating new Earth-like worlds with monkeys uplifted to human-like intelligence by a nanovirus. Her program was sabotaged by people who rejected her scientific ideals, and the conflict blossomed into nuclear war back on Earth. Avrana escapes the sabotage, and she uploads herself to a computer system while she waits for rescue. The monkeys died, but the virus lived on. Its host becomes a species of jumping spider, beginning their ascension toward a space-faring society. Thousands of years after the nuclear war, ark ships take off from Earth and seek terraformed planets to re-establish a home for humanity. The ark ship Gilgamesh discovers Kern's World, and its crew are determined to make a new home there.

Why is it worth your time?: Besides the unique and interesting plurality portrayed in these books, they're fantastic science fiction with an emphasis on worldbuilding and speculative evolution. Their greatest strength is their empathy toward atypical experiences of sentience and intelligence.

In Book 1, Avrana Kern is the primary plural character as the distinction between her, the computer system, and her uploaded version of herself blur together. In Book 2, Children of Ruin, Tchaikovsky adds sentient octopuses, and the octopuses' selves divided between their Crown, Guise, and Reach showcases a permanent co-fronting experience. Also introduced in Book 2 but explored further in Book 3, Children of Memory, is a naturally plural species that seeks to understand what it means to live as one and as many at the same time. In Book 3, there's also a sentient headspace-like world.

Plural/1+ Tags: setting-specific sci-fi stuff, enmity in Book 1, the naturally plural species is a scary antagonistic force in Book 2 at first, teamwork in Books 2 and 3

Content Warnings: nuclear war, extreme isolation, murder, lynching

Accessibility Notes: audiobooks available; pretty easy library book; Book 1 is available in English, French, German, Romanian, Portuguese, and Dutch; Book 2 is available in English, German, French, Romanian, and Dutch; and Book 3 is available in English, German, and Dutch

Misc. Notes (if any): Even though Book 2 has a "plurality is a scary monster" situation, the resolution is peaceful and empathetic, and the species is redeemed and explored further in Book 3.

"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!

Submitted by

packbat! Thanks,

So out we went, and a few minutes later we were at the mall. It wasn’t a large mall by today’s standards, but it was fairly new, and though Cynthia wasn’t impressed with the selection of clothing, I was in hog heaven, since it was all new to me. I don’t know how many pieces of clothing I tried on that day. I was a little tired but still feeling enthusiastic when we stopped for lunch. I would have bought dozens of things, as much as I could possibly afford and maybe more, but Cynthia kept cautioning me not to spend so much of Scott’s money that he wouldn’t want to be me again. So I didn’t buy anything at first, until I’d tried on a bunch of stuff at several stores. Then after lunch I went back and bought my favorites: a flower-pattern peasant skirt, a solid green long-sleeved blouse, and matching shoes with a low heel. The skirt and blouse had no pockets, so I needed a purse as well. I wanted to buy a necklace or earrings too, but reluctantly decided I’d better not push my luck. Scott needed this stuff if he wanted to be me again, and the less money I spent, the more likely he was to want to be me again. Then, after he’d made a habit of it, I could buy the necklace and earrings.

Blurb: In 1970, a young college student is introduced by his roommate to jekyllase. Based on the recently rediscovered formula created and then thought lost by Dr. Henry Jekyll a century earlier, it's all the rage on campuses now: it will show you your inner, repressed self. What will that look like for Scott and his friends?

Why is it worth your time?: It's a cool story in a classic kind of speculative fiction style, and explores a lot of aspects of its specific fictional form of plurality through it - notably relationships within jekyll-hyde pairs, how the introduction of hydes changes jekylls' relationships with others, and the power dynamics and logistics of the drug-induced switching.

Plural/1+ Tags: enmity, friendship, teamwork, setting-specific, on purpose.

Content Warnings: alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use; homophobia; transphobia; attempted sexual assault; period language we wouldn't use today. Also, it's possible for a jekyll (jekyllase user) to use jekyllase to the point where the hyde (the alternate identity created by the drug) becomes their body's base form instead of transformed form and jekyllase would be needed to revive the original; the idea of doing this deliberately is discussed.

Accessibility Notes: online, screenreadable, free. The author has posted it to multiple archives, but the Scribblehub edition is our recommendation.

Misc. Notes (if any): The way it explores gender is probably not a clear match to plural gender issues, but it's definitely interesting. Also, while the story takes place in the 1970s, the framing device is that this account was published later (presumably around the mid 2010s when it was written), so things like the period-appropriate theories of gender and transness that the protagonists look up are given commentary from a more modern perspective.

Submitted by

beepbird! Thanks,

beepbird!

"“The formal definition of insanity,” I said, “is actually quite fluid. Two people can have the exact same condition, with the exact same severity, but one can be considered sane by the official standards while the other is considered insane.""

Blurb (taken from the back of my copy): Stephen Leeds, AKA 'Legion,' is a man whose unique mental condition allows him to generate a multitude of personae: hallucinatory entities with a wide variety of personal characteristics and a vast array of highly specialized skills. As the story begins, Leeds and his aspects are drawn into the search for the missing Balubal Razon, inventor of a camera whose astonishing properties could alter our understanding of human history and change the very structure of society.

Why is it worth your time?: Despite being framed as hallucinations, Leeds' aspects are treated as fully autonomous people who make their own decisions, sometimes surprising him. It's nice to see them treated as rounded characters of their own, let alone rounded characters with independent relationships with each other.

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse not mentioned, realitymashing, friendship, romantic, enmity, teamwork, nonswitching, visions, voices

Content Warnings: character death, gun violence, terrorism mentions, kidnapping(? Debatable about whether it counts, but they do get knocked out and wake up tied to a chair at one point), debate about wanting a "cure". This is also the first book of a series, which has a content warning in the comments.

Accessibility Notes: Physical book or ebook (legitimate or otherwise); audiobooks are available on audible, Amazon, Google Play, etc. I'd assume that it can be found at libraries given that I found it at a library sale. All text, so screen reading shouldn't be an issue for ebooks. This particular book of the series has also been translated into French and Spanish!

Recommended by

nevanna!

"I never signed a pact with the Devil in my own blood, and I don't have nipples in my ears... but I do consort with spirits, don't I? You said so yourself. Bear does follow me everywhere like a familiar. And I am possessed."

Blurb: Sometimes, when a person dies, their spirit goes looking for somewhere to hide. Some people have space within them, perfect for hiding. Makepeace is one of the latter.

Why is it worth your time?: This book is VERY good! The plot goes through so many twists and turns, and Makepeace grows from a nigh-feral girl to a strong young woman in her own right as she accumulates her ghosts and learns to deal with them.

Plural Tags: abuse low-focus, bodyhopping, closeting, cofronting, the dead, nonhumans (a bear), friendship, teamwork, enmity, possession, voices

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in French, Spanish, ebook, and audiobook.

Submitted by

matsushima!

Blurb: By the age of thirteen, Lily Bailey was convinced she was bad. She had killed someone with a thought, spread untold disease, and ogled the bodies of other children. Only by performing an exhausting series of secret routines could she make up for what she’d done. But no matter how intricate or repetitive, no act of penance was ever enough. (Goodreads)

Why is it worth your time?: Bailey writes about her OCD as a separate voice in her head that's been with her since birth. The other entity tells Bailey she is bad and She helps Lily to become good. Pre-treatment, Lily refers to herself in plural, referring to both herself and Her, her OCD, as one. (It is unclear if Lily is plural or not.)

Plural/1+ Tags: type: medical(?)

Content Warnings: Suicidal ideation, involuntary inpatient psychiatric treatment, fusing(?) or disappearance of headmates/voices

Accessibility Notes: Available at my public library(ies) in print and digital

Misc. Notes: I'm not 100% sure if this counts as a plural story but I thought it would be an interesting addition here.

"When I was younger I used to think I was Angel... (you know... from Buffy?)"

Blurb: A short personal zine about fictionkin identity and having a dissociative disorder.

Why is it worth your time?: Short, simple, free! Give it a go.

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

Content Warnings: Reference to self-hate and allusions to violence.

Access Notes: Textual transcript available! Just going to post it in the comments for easy access.

Read the zine here!

Submitted by

beepbird! Thank you,

beepbird!

"I'm so tired of the bad blood between us. But it's hard to let it go. You've hurt me. And I've also hurt you."

Blurb: You're on a path in the woods, and at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess. You're here to slay her. If you don't, it will be the end of the world.

Why is it worth your time?: Overtly median protagonist where hearing voices is a central part of the narrative, an ever-changing princess whose fluidity of self is emphasized, and it's all amidst a narrative where your choices all have meaningful consequences (despite the time loops). Hearing voices is presented as a strength, not a flaw, and you even have the chance to tell one of them that you missed him.

Plural Tags: nonhumans, the dead, realitymashing, enmity, teamwork, nonswitching (mostly), median, voices, possession

Content Warnings: a detailed list of content warnings written by the developers can be found here (it even breaks it down by route): https://blacktabbygames.com/content-warnings-stp

Accessibility Notes: Game can be purchased from Steam, Gog, itch.io, and on Switch. Dialogue is narrated and the accessibility menu includes font replacement and adjustment, text-to-speech for non-narrated dialogue, and contrast improvements. Game is a visual novel, so it's mostly text, though there are some stunning images that don't give much information that's not also stated in text.

The audio is only available, however, in English. (The text is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (both Catalan and Latin American), Japanese, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.)

If the violence is too much for you, ManlyBadassHero did a censored Let's Play here covering all routes and updates.

Misc. Notes (if any): Abuse is not related to the plurality; there's never any explanation given for the voices existing, actually. Check the content warnings for sure on this one. It's definitely a horror game.

Also, there is merch: shirts, stickers, and posters!

Full title: Searching for Catherine Auger: The Forgotten Wife of the Wîhtikôw (Windigo)

"Whatever else happened during the course of her life, Catherine Auger was a woman who witnessed the foretold arrival of 'flesh eaters'; literally, in the form of her own husband, who proclaimed himself a cannibal, and metaphorically, in the form of people who symbolically consumed of the blood and body of a Jewish prophet each Sunday. She had beheld the arrival of cannibals."

Blurb: A scholarly history of the life story of Catherine Auger, a Métis woman in Alberta, Canada who in 1896 watched her husband lose himself to a wîhtikôw, which compelled him to devour his own children. She protected both them and herself, and witnessed his murder by the local medicine man.

Why is it worth your time?: This is possibly the most negative possible form of spirit possession, covered in scholarly detail by Carlson, who is an academic and a distant relation of Auger, but also a solid writer. The story is riveting and tragic. He uses sources ranging from oral history, witness journal entries, and government records about how an apocalyptic wîhtikôw prophecy, the Augers, and religious and racial tensions between Europeans, Métis, the Cree, and Salteaux, led to tragedy. Give it a shot; it's academic but very readable.

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, nonhumans (wîhtikôw, more commonly known as witiko/wendigo), enmity, spiritual

Content Warnings: Violence, threats of cannibalism of children and loved ones, murder, racism, apocalyptic religious prophecies and religious tension. Also a tragic ending for Felix Auger, AKA Napanin. Due to the academic style of writing, though, it's not as horrifying as you might think with those warnings.

Access Notes: This is a 20-page chapter in the anthology Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands, edited by Sarah Carter and Patricia A. McCormack. The anthology is available on archive.org (well, if/when archive.org recovers from the mass attack on it), and also as a paperback and ebook.

Misc Notes: Nathan D. Carlson has previously written "Reviving Witiko (Windigo): An Ethnohistory of 'Cannibal Monsters' in the Athabasca District of Northern Alberta, 1878–1910" in Ethnohistory (2009) 56 (3): 355–394, which is available at https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory/article/56/3/355/8822/Reviving-Witiko-Windigo-An-Ethnohistory-of It is not a story, so does not qualify for this catalog, but if you want to learn more about the wîhtikôw, check that out too!

"So at some point I need a way to distinguish btw 'old leg' and 'new leg' and how does Aimee Mullins do it with 13 legs? Ahhh, they all look different. But these two legs look exactly identical and it is effing UNCANNY to me and I never thought I would say that b/c I do not find my own legs, even prosthetic, uncanny. But when there are two of me-legs [why not pirate voice, sure] then yes, I am uncannied. What should I call them? Am I going to need to become a we pronoun? Plz dear god no."

Blurb: During the COVID-19 pandemic, a disabled cyborg reflects on her cyborg mind and how her concept of self changes and multiplies when she gets a new leg that DOES NOT LIKE HER.

Why is it worth your time?: Jillian Weise writes a lot of cool stuff about cyborg identity, disability, and sense of self, and this essay takes a very different tack to a form of many-selvedness I've never seen discussed elsewhere. It's short and free to read online; give it a shot!

Plural Tags: creator speaks from experience, abuse low-focus, enmity, bodyhopping

Content Warnings: Difficulties with a new prosthetic, and the capitalism thereof.

Access Notes: Screenreadable, free to read online. Read it here! (Back-up link here.)

"I'm a car. And a hotel. And a babysitter. And all my clients are dead. And I fucking HATE my job. Lucky me, I carry around a refuge in my head. The same place I stick all my temporary residents."

Blurb: After a near-death experience, all Kat wants is to get high and shut up the ghosts in her head. But after she ends up in the middle of a cosmic war between angels and demons, she has to pick a side.

Why is it worth your time?: It's funny, the art is pretty, and Kat's mindscape is a major player in this story about claiming your own mind and life. Give it a shot!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, otherworld, the dead, realitymashing, enmity, teamwork, friendship, spiritual, and visions

Content Warnings: Drugs, mild violence, naked nonsexual penis.

Access Notes: Available in paperback and ebook forms. One volume at time of posting.

Submitted by a kindly anon! Thank you, anon!

Full title: Clock Tower Ghost Head AKA Clock Tower 2: The Struggle Within

"Don't be afraid, Alyssa..."

Blurb: Teenager Alyssa Hale is trying to start over in a new city after a horrific incident at her previous school. She is haunted by someone named Bates who has been taking control of her body against her will. Things go from bad to worse upon reaching her uncle's house and finding a dead body shortly after. The reason why Bates exists will be revealed, but she must learn to accept him in order to find that truth and, most importantly, survive the night.

Why is it worth your time?: Alyssa and Bates switching is a game mechanic that can be used to solve puzzles! One can do or find something the other can't, and vice-versa. That itself is pretty cool, especially for a PS1 game.

That said, the game's got a lot of issues. The English version's box claims that Alyssa has an 'evil split personality and she is thirsty for blood oh nooo' without acknowledging Bates as his own person. The Japanese version at least makes it clearer that they are two separate souls in the same body. In both versions, Bates, the so-called 'evil' one, is really more Chaotic Neutral.

See comments for clarifying spoilers!

Plural Tags: spiritual, teamwork, enmity, switching, the dead, family

Content Warnings: death (child and adult), bodily mutilation, strong language, parental neglect, medical experimentation

Accessibility Notes: It is a PS1 game long out of print with two language options (Japanese and English, separate releases); the English version is prohibitively expensive to acquire secondhand, but it's available to play on archive.org. This Let's Play has unobtrusive commentary, reads all text aloud, finds all endings and extra bonuses. The game itself comes with all dialogue subtitled and audio both.

Misc. Notes (if any): Honestly...the game kind of sucks lol. But this system appreciates protector tropes, and Bates very much hits that trope. Plus, in the English version he's voiced by Roger L. Jackson who is so very fun to listen to!

This one is submitted by a friendly anon! Thank you, anon!

"I wanna say, that your value is much higher than your assessment. It shouldn't be measured in terms of data..."

Blurb: An android, subject to horrific experiments, finds himself part of a network of clones. He fights to set them free along with the other victims of experimentation, and succeeds--at the cost of his life. Those 7 clones find new life together with their human partner, but the threats to their existence are far from over...

Why is it worth your time?: Season 1 is a set-up for the bulk of the plural content in Season 2, "Eclipse of Sybil", in which the androids act as an external system connected via their own network. (Yes, the title is partly a reference to that Sybil, whose name was used for the computer term 'Sybil attack'.) Although they each have their own body, the way they cooperate, share memories, and talk about each other is nevertheless very plural. It's cool seeing what a system could look and act like on the outside.

A particular heartwarming scene: one member tells the system's partner how each of them have their own unique thoughts, but laments that they must be indistinguishable due to being the same model of android. The partner, upset, responds with, 'of course I can differentiate all of you!' Just like how a system might feel as though only the body is known to others, but a loved one can tell the difference between members.

Also, the artwork is gorgeous.

Plural Tags: nonswitching, switching, setting-specific, on purpose, teamwork, nonhumans [robots], enmity, memory work, bodyhopping, otherworld [cyberspace], copies, realitymashing

Content Warnings: abuse (adults and children), blood, death (dismemberment, decapitation, shooting, falling, fire, car accidents...), experimentation, gore (machine), graphic violence, strong language, suicide (attempts and one who chooses to shut down), trauma (flashbacks, anxiety attacks), hospital/surgery scene

Accessibility Notes: Lots of translations! The entirety can be read in Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, and Russian. Season 1 can also be read in German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, and Spanish.
There are plain text scripts in English, but they don't distinguish between who is speaking.

Available to read on Archive Of Our Own
Also available for free download by the creator (where all the translations can also be found)

Misc. Notes (if any): This is a Detroit: Become Human fan comic that goes off the rails with the artwork being a main draw (heh). Massive spoilers for the game, of course, but since most of the story is its own thing, it can (probably) be read without any knowledge of the source. Midjourney was used for a little of the art, which is clearly notated by page.

(Cataloger's note: oh jeez this is very large, I made a local copy of the English translation but don't have it in me to back up all the translations, sorry folks.)

"Goldie let me absorb him. So that I could live. That means my soul isn't entirely my own, ennit?"

Blurb: Burned-out sorcerer John Constantine had a twin who died in the womb. In the world on other side of the mirror, it was the twin who survived, and John who died. And one day, that twin comes out to make him an offer to solve everything...

Why is it worth your time?: It's good! Jes & Cin packed a lot of thought on themes of self-hatred, grief, and sacrifice into these short little comics. Give 'em a shot, they're free!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, otherworld, children, the dead [twins], nonswitching, fusion/integration [failed and successful both], family and enmity relationships, setting-specific, visions

Content Warnings: It is not a spoiler to say that these are comics about a dead twin, and the grief therein!

Access Notes: Not screenreadable. Free to read online, though not posted in order!

Misc Notes: The creators have put it all in one expanded "Director's Cut" post now! (EDIT: here's also the tumblr post version.) Here's the masterpost on the creation of it (back-up link). The authors' notes in the original posts are also well worth reading:

"There are more things in the human mind and heart, a twentieth-century Hamlet might remark, than are dreamt of in our psychology."

Blurb: Brief thumbnail life stories of overwhelmingly-American multiples from 1811 to 1981, including trance states, fugue folks, Spiritualist mediums, and the start of the MPD surge.

Why is it worth your time?: If you want a crash course and quick look-over of the historical progression of how multiples were seen and categorized in mostly-America over the course of 170 years, this book is invaluable! Dig into the citations in the back to find the original records; a lot of them are surprisingly findable.

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate-focus (depends on the case), fusion/integration, otherworld, children, relationships of enmity and friendship, medical, spiritual, switching

Content Warnings: Institutionalization, medical ableism, physical and sexual violence, self-harm, and serial rape. Despite this, the thumbnail-sketch format of the book means none of this hits too hard.

Access Notes: Still in print, improbably, and though never officially digitized, we and Orion Scribner joined forces to create a screen-readable PDF of LB's copy. (Sorry for the annotations.)

"The woman who tells her life in the following pages is a Korean shaman [mansin], one who invokes the gods and ancestors, speaks with their voice, and claims their power to interpret dreams and visions."

Blurb: The anecdotes and life stories told by Yongsun's Mother, a mansin who lives outside Seoul.

Why is it worth your time?: Despite its academic source, this book is very readable, namely transcriptions of the stories Yongsun's Mother tells about herself in casual conversation or at work. There's a lot of possession stuff (her deceased husband has just as fractious a relationship with her while dead as he did while alive) that's very different from American norms!

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate-focus, the dead, nonhumans (gods, spirits), relationships of family and enmity, spiritual, voices, visions (dreams), possession

Content Warnings: Domestic violence in the past, and results of the Korean War--starvation, the torturing to death of a spy, and Yongsun's Mother got taken for a spy as a teenager, starved, interrogated, and marched north until she escaped. The war stuff is all in Chapter Four (aptly named "War Stories and a Meeting with the Mountain God"), the DV all over. Yongsun's Mother's familial relationships have always been complicated.

Access Notes: Paperbacks are pretty cheaply available for a few bucks secondhand; the ebook is only available for $149 for some unfathomable reason, which is highway robbery. This is a rare case where we recommend pirating it off Library Genesis instead.

Misc Notes:

"The you that killed Viola Wright was mulched a month later. I found my outlying scrap of consciousness balled up in Gus's pocket, all unbeknownst to him, along with the rest of your magically compressed matter and a great charge of vibrating magic. It was an unsettling vantage, for where I curled infinitesimally in your remains I could hear what I might call my primary self screaming above Gus's head.'"

Blurb: Gus is a sorcerer so obsessed with Catherine that he murders her, and her ghost is stuck haunting him forevermore. Unable to accept that Catherine doesn't love him, Gus then becomes obsessed with finding other girls that remind him of Catherine and making THEM love him... only to kill them when the inevitably don't'. He creates magical duplicates of himself to do that dirty work, forever recycling them into new copies, using Catherine's ghost to follow them. But over the decades, that means a piece of Catherine is embedded in those pieces of Gus. And she still wants her revenge...

Why is it worth your time?: It's pretty good! This is a book covering 150+ years of time, with three major time periods and two (or three, depending how you count) different points of view, and a decently sizable cast, all organized well enough so as not to throw us. Gus is utterly convincing as that special brand of romantic obsessive who sees himself as the most loving person, all the while being an utter horrorshow, and Catherine's revenge is delicious.

Plural Tags: abuse (mostly of a ghost) high-focus, cofronting, copies, the dead, enmity, setting-specific, possession

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in print, ebook, and audiobook

Also submitted by a mysterious anon! Thank you, anon!

"I am the darkness within! The caged beast at the heart of all humanity! The spirit of--"

"London at night! I know! Speaking of humbug, you do realize I can hear all of your little inner monologues, don't you?"

Blurb: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, only more queer and crossing over with other classic horror. Jekyll runs a society for mad scientists like himself who push the boundaries, hoping to become more accepted by wider society. Of course, considering it's the Victorian era, this is easier said than done. Especially when there's Hyde, who has his own agenda...

Why is it worth your time?: Takes the Jekyll and Hyde story and makes it more nuanced, not simply 'Hyde is pure evil'. The two don't necessarily get along, but their relationship has elements that some systems may find relatable. Though switching has to be physically induced via potion, the two still make plans at a couple points on when to switch so one member can go out and do something he wants to do, etc. Also does a good job tackling themes such as racism, queerphobia, and classism. The art is quite nice!

Plural Tags: on purpose, otherworld, enmity

Content Warnings: racism, homophobia and transphobia, the typical psychological effects that occur with Victorian repression, trauma, body horror, blood, some sexual situations (non-explicit), emotional manipulation, strained family dynamics. Others contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: The first volume is now in print with a second volume on the way, but it is free to read online with weekly page uploads. https://www.theglassscientists.com/about

Misc Notes: The primary author is nonbinary and a POC!

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