Plural Stories

"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.

"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.

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!

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!)

This was submitted by wolffyluna! Thank you, wolffyluna! :D

"If all physically possible universes exist, so do all physically possible girlfriends… including the one you’re imagining who’s imagining you."

Blurb: Ana’s parents, who hadn’t heard that it wasn’t game-theoretically optimal to punish her for dropping LSD, packed her away to a troubled teen camp. During the day, Ana faces the harsh Utah desert, near-starvation, and torture in the name of “therapy.” At night, she seeks desperate comfort in the arms of her alternate-universe girlfriend, Yuya, one of three hundred wives in the harem of the Emperor of Every World. But as their respective prisons wear away at their very selves, both girls face a choice: to become the monsters those in authority want them to be, or to die trying to escape.

Why is it worth your time?: It's a really good exploration of the ways being in awful situations can make you a worse person, and also how you can help lift others out of it even if the other people are arguably 'only in your head.' It also contained a wrenching dialogue about multiversarial philosophy that made me cry.

Plural Tags: abuse (high focus), romantic relationships, type: on purpose.

Content Warnings: Institutional abuse including forced exercise torture, abusive therapy, moral injury, attempted child murder, consensual underage sex.

Accessibility Notes: Available as ebook on Amazon. Also available on hoopla in some libraries.

This is part of a series on Moon Knight submitted by erinptah! Thank you, erinptah! :D See her whole post with clips here!

“It’s easy to do, dear Steven — excuse me, dear Jake. You’ve got so many different names, identities, and moods, even you forget who you are half the time.”

Blurb: After dying and being resurrected (for the first time, but not the last) by the Egyptian god of the moon, mercenary Marc Spector sets out to atone for the harm he caused…by becoming a moon-themed superhero. That’s on top of being Steven Grant, rich CEO/investor in unspecified businesses. And being Jake Lockley, who ranges from “friendly, easygoing, regular guy” to “comedically murderous sociopath” depending on who’s writing this run.

VOLUME 1 BLURB: Steven lives in a mansion with his girlfriend/sparring partner Marlene, and tries to convince himself he’s just Marc in denial. Jake drives a cab, hangs out with his friends at a local diner, and tries to convince everyone he’s just Marc playing a role. Marc goes Moon Knighting with his friend/pilot Duchamp, and tries to convince himself that he can just disappear into his other “personas.”

Although the writers haven’t committed to any mental-health diagnosis, the headmates have a little too much depth for “one guy with different aliases.” There’s no abuse backstory for the system, but it comes up with some of the minor characters, and it’s a source of sympathy even if they’re antagonists. The supporting cast is colorful and charming, including a love interest who isn’t just there to look pretty — she does research and undercover work for Moon Knight missions, and though she doesn’t like fights, she can hold her own if she gets caught up in one.

…and, okay, it’s still the ’80s. Sometimes women get kidnapped and end up in their underwear for no reason. Other times you get sketchy racial portrayals of non-white antagonists. Some of the villain plots are just aggressively, cartoonishly stupid. But the good parts are good!

Why is it worth your time?: Marvel Comics’ longest-running and most-successful attempt to portray a superhero with DID. (Some writers don’t actually attempt it — but we’re limiting this roundup to the runs where they remembered.)

“Most-successful” still means plenty of flaws, drawbacks, and general comic-book nonsense! But at its best, the writing is a heartfelt, complex, insightful, funny portrayal of A Troubled System Doing Their Best, which a lot of IRL plural readers have found relatable.

Plural tags: abuse low-focus, relationships: friendship, romantic, teamwork, type: switching

Content warnings: ’80s-typical issues with race and gender.

 

Access Notes: Most of these are available in print collections of some sort, as well as digitally through Marvel. Nothing audio or screenreadable as far as I know.

(Full title: Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr and Madwoman)

"Like her sister Nana, Ida too would have a spirit husband, but unlike Nana's posthumous nuptials, Ida would join her partner on this side of the grave."

Blurb: A biography of Ida C. Craddock, a sex educator who married a spirit in the 1890s and who was hounded to death by Anthony Comstock for it.

Why is it worth your time?: It's well-researched, and one of the only biographies of Craddock. Schmidt doesn't seem to know what to do with her spirit marriage, shoving it into two chapters ("Pastor of the Church of Yoga" and "One Religio-Sexual Maniac") and treating it with bemused incomprehension, but he does an excellent job explaining the cultural context around Craddock's work and harassment. The excerpts of her diary that he quotes regarding her relationship with her spirit husband Soph remain touching and relevant a century later. Recommended, despite its limitations!

Plural Tags: abuse low-focus, otherworld, the dead, family, and romantic relationships, spiritual, voices

Content Warnings: Kidnapping, institutionalization, imprisonment, era-expected ableism, misogyny, racism, and classism, plus religious oppression, parental violence, suicide. Despite this, the book isn't that rough a read; most of that happens in the chapter clearly labeled "Every Inch a Martyr."

Access Notes: Available in paper, audio, and ebook forms. Very easy to get ahold of.

Misc Notes: If you want to read Ida C. Craddock's writings, including Heavenly Bridegrooms and Psychic Wedlock, check out https://www.idacraddock.com/ There's also Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: the Essential Ida Craddock, but we haven't read it and can't say anything about it.

"Fellas, is it gay to share a body with another man? (Well, it definitely is if you're in a relationship with each other.)"

Blurb: Two headmates get it on!

Why is it worth your time?: This is the only multi porno I know of written by a plural of their own experiences. Short and free. Go for it!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, plural creator, intimate relationships, romantic relationships

Content Warnings: Sex!

Access Notes: screenreadable!

Read it here! (Back-up link for chapter 1 and 2)

"No distance separates us,
Time and space stand still,
My yearning is our yearning,
Where went "I"?"

Blurb: A religious poem about loving someone not physically visible.

Why is it worth your time?: It's short and been transcribed for free. What have you to lose?

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, nonhumans [spirits, gods], romantic relationships, spiritual

Content Warnings: It's a religious poem.

Access Notes: This poem has been textually transcribed online.

Misc Notes: This is a poem from the winter 1988 women's spirituality issue of Rainbow Bridge Magazine, a quarterly publication of Ziraat, a branch of the Sufi order, published at this time in San Antonio, Texas. It doesn't seem to be in screen-readable or digital form anywhere, so I transcribed it.

"On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings
--oh, happy chance!--
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest."

Blurb: A mystical Catholic poem about meeting God in ecstatic, holy, erotic darkness. Also known under the titles "On a Dark Night" or "Dark Night of the Soul."

Why is it worth your time?: It is the source of the term "dark night of the soul," and it is also the gayest, horniest-for-Jesus poem I have ever seen, making it well-loved by queer men. St. John of the Cross was apparently buddies with St. Teresa of Avila, which explains a lot. It is a beautiful, loving poem about being guided by inner sight to a lover nobody (including the seeker) can see, and it's not at all hard to monkeywrench it for plural purposes.

Plural Tags: nonhumans [God], creator speaks from experience, abuse not mentioned, romantic relationships, spiritual

Content Warnings: Uh. Jesus bangery?

Access Notes: Public domain; you can read it on Wikipedia both in English and the original Spanish.

Misc Notes: Apparently St. John of the Cross had to be gently nudged to explain his theology, leading to him writing two books of commentary on this poem. I tried to read one. It was a slog.