lb_lee: A clay sculpture of a heart, with a black interior containing little red, brown, white, green, and blue figures. (plural)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote2025-09-13 08:29 am
Entry tags:

True Memory Syndrome

Rogan: man, but I am so glad the False Memory Syndrome folks were so wrong about everything.

Read more... )
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote in [community profile] pluralstories2025-09-11 07:10 pm

Severance by Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller (sci-fi dark-comedy mystery TV, 2022-ongoing)

Submitted by [personal profile] erinptah! Thank you, [personal profile] erinptah!

"Eventually, we all have to accept reality. So, here it is. I am a person. You are not. I make the decisions. You do not. And if you ever do anything to my fingers, know that I will keep you alive long enough to horribly regret that. Your resignation request is denied."

Blurb: Employees at Lumon Industries have undergone "severance"—a medical procedure that splits their mind and consciousness between a work self and a home self. The switch is triggered by going in and out of their office floor, so the "outie" never has to experience the drudgery of being at work...and, you know, the "innie" will spend their entire existence never seeing sunlight, but if their outie keeps coming back, what can they do about it?

Why is it worth your time?: Strong acting, compelling plot, good characters. Even with all the creepy unreal sci-fi worldbuilding (the severance procedure itself is just the tip of the iceberg), the way the corporate evil actually plays out is upsettingly realistic. The writers are interested in exploring different versions of "why would someone volunteer for this procedure?" and "what kind of systemic indoctrination does it take to keep the innies going along with it?" The main four employees are complicated and messy and you can't imagine how they're going to get free...but you sure do hope.

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse high-focus, fusion/integration, relationships: family, relationships: romantic, relationships: enmity, relationships: teamwork, type: setting-specific, type: switching, type: on purpose

Content Warnings: General for the series: Worker exploitation, imprisonment, severe mental/emotional manipulation. Others involve spoilers; see comments.

Accessibility Notes: Apple TV+ offers closed captions and audio descriptions in English, dubs with the option for audio descriptions in multiple languages, and translated subtitles for even more languages

Misc. Notes: I tagged "abuse high-focus", but it's not for the kind of child abuse typical for real-world plural narratives, it's because the whole plot is about the setting-specific exploitation of the work selves
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote in [community profile] pluralstories2025-09-11 07:01 pm

Embrace, by Sister Dang Nghiem (2000-2024?, poem)

I come to myself and say:
I am here for you, little sister.


Blurb: A poem where a Buddhist nun reaches out to comfort her tormented younger self, embrace her pain, and transform it.

Why is it worth your time?: This poem is powerful, and one of the best, most succinct descriptions of what it feels like to descend into the abyss of youthful pain and transforming it in the present. Recommended!

Plural Tags: abuse high focus, creator speaks from experience, memory work, children

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in the book, The River in Me: Collected Poems, available on paper and ebook. Sister Dang Nghiem has a lot of poems about dealing with pain in the past, embracing her past selves, and talking to them. The book itself is worth a read!
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote in [community profile] pluralstories2025-09-11 06:52 pm

The Body, by Sister Dang Nhiem (autobio poem, 1989-1999?)

Here is a child trapped inside the body


Blurb: A child within a young woman's body fantasizes about escaping sex.

Why is it worth your time?: Short, painful, poignant.

Plural Tags: creator speaks from experience, children,

Content Warnings: possible sexual violence? The poem is ambiguous

Access Notes: Available in the collection The River in Me: Collected Poems. Sister Dang Nghiem has a lot of poems about dealing with pain in the past, embracing her past selves, and talking to them. The book itself is worth a read! Available in paperback and ebook. This poem is also short enough that I'll just post it in the comments as well.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote in [community profile] pluralstories2025-09-11 06:32 pm

Hammers on Bone, but Cassandra Khaw (horror/noir novella, 2016)

"Will you take the job?"

Wehavetowehavetowehaveto.

Persistent as bear traps, those two. I smile through my teeth and the please that won't stop pounding in my head. "Kid, I don't think I have a choice."


Blurb: PI John Persons has been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid's abusive stepdad. Said stepdad is also a monster, which is good... because so is Persons.

Why is it worth your time?: This book grabbed us from the first page and couldn't be put down. John Persons is a Lovecraftian horror inhabiting the body of a dead man, the ghost of whom is still floating around in there somewhere (though not really active). The ghost will speak to him, he refers to "the body" and trying to take care of it despite being EXTREMELY corrosive to meat, and ugly Lovecraftian possession is a major theme. It's good!

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate focus, bodyhopping (alluded to in the past), nonhumans (eldritch Lovecraftian horrors and Elder Gods), the dead, possession, nonswitching, visions, voices

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in German (as "Hämmer auf Knochen"), Catalan and Valencian (as "Persons Non Grata"). Ebook and paper.

Misc Notes: First book in the Persons Non Grata series!
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote in [community profile] pluralstories2025-09-11 06:15 pm

Moonspell, by Regan Forest (romance novel, 1989)

"Nicholas Paul is you, lad. This lovely lassie found you at once in her head, but she could not find you in person for a long time to come. So you became Nicholas."


Blurb: An adventure writer runs into her protagonist in real life... but how can this be? And what does it even mean to have life-or-death power over this poor bastard? Now they have to work together to figure out what happened.

Why is it worth your time?: This book is like a romance novel version of Stranger Than Fiction, and a lot of attention gets paid to the power dynamics of what it means to be author and character; it really, really sucks, turns out, and this is super relatable for anyone who's had similar concerns! This is a very traditional heterosexual romance, but the characters behave like decent, reasonable people and the idea is neat. If you're into Harlequin romances, this might be for you!

Plural Tags: abuse not mentioned, fusion/integration, identityblending, fictioneers, romantic relationships

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: This book is available on paperback, and some generous soul has bootlegged an OCR PDF of it on piracy websites.

Misc Notes: In the About the Author section: "Regan Forest has, for a long time, fantasized about creating a character--and then meeting him in real life. That spark generated Moonspell."
lb_lee: A colored pencil drawing of Raige's freckled hand holding a hot pink paperback entitled the Princess and Her Monster (book)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote2025-09-10 06:35 pm

Thorn, Frostflower, and Phyllis Ann Karr

Rogan: While shelf-checking at the sci-fi library, I found Phyllis Ann Karr's Frostflower books: Frostflower and Thorn, and Frostflower and Windbourne.

I had encountered the characters before, in a short story, "Night of the Short Knives," in the Crossing Press anthology The Women Who Walk Through Fire: Women's Fantasy & Science Fiction vol. 2. In the back of that anthology (which the sci-fi library also has), I found the following author's note:

"I met Thorn and Frostflower at a summer writing workshop led by George R. R. Martin in Dubuque, Iowa. Not that they are based on anyone I ever met in 'real life.' Since long before I knew any theory about the Astral Plane, I have believed that characters are real entities who allow writers to use them. Thus, my fiction is a cooperative effort between the characters and myself; but Frostflower and Thorn answered a call for Sword and Sorcery figures in particular." (p. 273)

That note was written in 1990; her first Frostflower title came out in 1980. She's still writing other books today.

lb_lee: A curlyhaired woman with a determined grin on her face, thinking 'dicks dicks dicks' (dicksdicksdicks)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote2025-09-07 01:43 pm

Anatomies of Desire

When I talked about sex, it was often assumed that I didn’t know about sexual abuse, that I didn’t know about violence against women, and that because I chose to celebrate a passion or to describe a passion, I was immune from the anguish of being a woman in this society. [...] My whole life’s work has been saying—along with others—that we cannot only have an anatomy of victimization. We are more than that. We must have an anatomy of desire, of celebration. We must not assume that because a woman speaks about passion she doesn’t know pain.

—Joan Nestle, “A celebration of butch-femme identities in the lesbian community,” A Persistent Desire: A Femme/Butch Reader p. 462

Rogan: Joan Nestle was talking about the power of transgressive female desire, but the quote also rings with me as a trans multiple. As there’s a push within our own ranks towards identifying with trauma, this idea that the only “respectable” way to be or become multiple is to be (preferably sexually) victimized, and as there’s a political push to see trans people’s very existence as sexually abusive to children, I have found power in shamelessly depicting my erotic desires through art.

It took years to reach this point; sexual violence is like a black hole that sucks everything into itself. Every time I write about sex, including this post, I have to delete constant digressions about the damned black hole. Mac and I had to set a rule that Multi Orgasmic would NOT discuss abuse because otherwise it would’ve been about damn near nothing else! And obviously it was a smart choice; Multi Orgasmic is my #2 ebook bestseller. People are clearly hankering for this stuff; they just don’t say so in public, mostly, because true, honest desire is scary. When you want something that badly (sexual or not), that is a vulnerable place to be in, and that vulnerability by nature is uncomfortable to witness. So we ridicule it, trying to end that vulnerability, that honesty, so we don’t have to look ourselves in the face.

If heartbreak HAS been a part of one’s multiplicity, it’s natural to go through a stage where the grief consumes everything. But like a necessary burn, it’s meant to leave a more fertile land behind, ready for new growth. Eventually, you gotta have something besides suffering to hang your sense of self on. Eventually, you need something good to fight FOR, not just something evil to fight AGAINST.

For me, that good stuff includes banging my headmates and making stuff like Multi Orgasmic. Think what it might be for you. What gives you that soul-satisfying feeling? What waters your heartflowers? What is that good thing to fight for?

What brings you to that scary place of wanting?
beepbird: A crowd of shadowy figures. (Default)
Not Applicable ([personal profile] beepbird) wrote2025-09-06 09:14 pm
Entry tags:

The Houses

Once, there were the People and the Sea. The People lived beside the sea, making their houses from the wood and rock they pulled from their earth, but the Sea made no houses and laid no stones.

The People did not understand this. "Surely," they said, "you will freeze or burn without shelter. The weather is harsh. Where are your homes?"

Read more... )
lb_lee: A skeleton wearing a crown of blooming roses (the bony lady)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote2025-09-04 05:44 pm

A follow-up post regarding Angel, Lucy, Nall, and Screwtape

We found some of the lost blog archives of the deceased soulbonds from the "Destroying your soulbonds is murder" color bar.

First of all, [personal profile] synecdoches were right in that, according to their 2001/7/2 LJ profile, there were only four deceased: Screwtape (or Screwy for short, from C. S. Lewis's the Screwtape Letters), Angel Morningstar, Cutey the Sprite (from Secret of Mana), and Nall (from Lunar and Lunar 2). Their bonder was one of the cofounders of the LJ soulbonding comm, Laura/Serena190 (soulbonding, 2002/11/9). They’re also discussed in the Soulbonding Database Dump, under the bonder’s name “Laura” when she was 19.

This post contains discussion of death, fear of insanity and Satan, and ends in the death of all bonds involved. )