mackerelgray | Reading

Mori: welp, our new shrink got ratfucked by Trump, even though we only got him last month, which means we have to go hunting a new one and start the whole training process over again while moving. This means we are eager to clear our plate of other distractions ASAP!

First: Wanna help us move? We will be moving on the last weekend of May--most likely Sunday, June 1 because our other three roomies move on May 31 and we don't want the front door to become a clown car. Are you available? Are you willing to lug boxes and get treated to dinner afterward? We would appreciate you (especially if you have wheels)!

Second: FREE STUFF GIVEAWAY (long as you cover shipping)! We have a couple books free to good homes:

Sweet Abilene, a M/FTM porno comic by the great E.K. Weaver. Sweet Abilene is a spin-off of their webcomic Shot and Chaser, so you can get a good idea of the art and main characters! It's great! We want other people to love it!
Festival of the Bones II: What Is Remembered Lives, an anthology of ancestor worship stories and poems edited by the Writers Egbe of Ile Orunmila Oshun. We fed it through the bookscanner, which means this book can now be liberated! (The PDF will be uploaded once we get it OCRed.)

Finally: FRAMED ART FOR SALE! An original and two print spreads, $50 a pop (plus shipping)! Frames are a pain to move! Snatch it up on the cheap!

this page of MPD for You and Me (original)
two spreads of the queer trans multi wedding in LB Goes To Alaska (prints made to look like the originals in a sketchbook, which include marginalia and green colored pencil underdrawing that are erased from the comic). You can see a photo of one of them here. One spread shows Zyfron and Mystics doing their wedding smooch and first dance; the other shows the wedding dance afterward. These spreads inspired the name of the art show they were framed for, "Love is for all of us." If you need high-res images of the pages in question, just ask!

Okay, back to trawling my health insurance website for potential new shrinks!

Current Mood: rushed

leo9ish

Spirit companion rambling and artistic self-expression 🎨🖌️

( ! image contained within ! )

Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: in a cuddle pile
Current Music: Wolf by Saint Mesa

lb_lee

Still working through that big stack of zines from Jimmy Dunson and Rebel Hearts Press, and we're down to the last thing: a paper back anthology of essays entitled Building Power While The Lights Are Out: Disasters, Mutual Aid, and Dual Power. It's really making my brain buzz with ideas! I'm only midway through, but so far my favorites are "Mutual Aid and Anti-Racist Organizing in Rural Appalachia" by Rural Organizing and Resilience, "Love My People: Following in the Footprints of the Panthers" by Suncere Ali Shakur, and "Survival Programs: Then And Now" by Malik Rahim (an old guy in his seventies who was part of the Black Panthers in the '70s). Like the other stuff from Rebel Hearts, it looks to be a paper-only release.

I just want to quote a few paragraphs from Shakur here, because... how could I NOT love this book? He cut his teeth on mutual aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, where black men were getting murdered as looters by vigilantes, cops, and others. It was not a safe time and place, and he describes the following events:

( The stories of Mike and No. 1 Gangster Killa )

Current Mood: hopeful

lb_lee

We uploaded Untouchable, a 4-page sketch comic about Rawlin's chronic and infectious health condition, and her self-loathing from it.

Mild content warnings for body horror, contagious chronic illness, and bad feelings from it.

lb_lee posting in

pluralstories

Submitted by

packbat! Thanks,

packbat!

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.

lb_lee posting in

pluralstories

Submitted by

packbat. Thank you,

packbat!

There wasn’t much to do now, so Syrus jumped off the bed to do some simple exercises.

Syrus asked, [So what are we supposed to do besides that plan?]

[The best we can do is not cause any trouble and have the ceremony pass without any issues.] (Luna)

[Fair enough.] Replied Syrus, in the middle of her first push-up. At the peak of the second, she asked, [Want me to accidentally burn the priest?]

[...] (Luna)

[Hello, Earth to the Moon?]

Lilly sighed, [She needs to say no, but wants to say yes…]

“Hehe, I know.” Laughed Syrus.

Blurb: It began with an accident, or maybe a miracle is a better term.
Three souls dying by different strokes. One died in glory and blood; One died, betrayed but glad it was over; One died poor and alone.

Then on the child’s fifth birthday, the three sleeping souls awakened. Three souls, one body, two desires, and containing all the powers each had in their last life.

Were they destined for greatness? No. But when the past comes to haunt them, their home taken away, they have to make a decision… May it be as simple as a majority vote.

“Let’s squash them!”

“...can we just run away?

“Were you never taught to aim for the eyes?”

Why is it worth your time?: Okay, so you know the fantasy stories where someone gets reincarnated and ends up powerful because they still have the knowledge and abilities from their past life? It's one of those, except three people get reincarnated in the same body and they have the power of all three working together. It's not, like, a deep exploration of plurality, just a cool body-sharing fantasy adventure story.

And also the protagonists' new parents figure out that their kid is a plural system and are super supportive and loving. Which is really sweet and heartwarming.

Plural/1+ Tags: closeting, cofronting, otherworld, the dead, teamwork, spiritual, setting-specific.

Content Warnings: violence, injury, poisoning, and death; murder, kidnapping, arson, child endangerment, and animal death; grief and trauma.

Accessibility Notes: online, screenreadable, free. Scribblehub link.

Misc. Notes (if any): The way dialogue is formatted for completed sentences, with both periods inside the quote and commas outside, is unusual, if pretty clear and comprehensible. The first part of the story goes up to Chapter 63, but it's ongoing and it sounds like there's a lot of plot still to go. (Cataloger note: Holy crap there are well over a hundred chapters, I don't think I want to manually back all that up.)

lb_lee posting in

pluralstories

"The ancestral visions persisted. One day I was flooded with grief and felt as if I was slipping from life. Frightened, I began calling out to my grandmother Lela--she was the one person who I believed could help me. The air filled with an electrical energy and a feeling of peace washed over me. My breathing calmed and I felt my grandmother's presence. My grandmother who had been deceased for eighteen years had rescued me.

"Yet, I still did not trust that my Ancestors really supported me. I believed that I had experienced a psychotic episode and feared that I would end up as one of the 'crazy' ones..."

Blurb: a group of writers "share short stories, poems, prayers, and personal accounts of Ancestor reverence--intimate glimpses of our experiences with the Ancestors, those descended from our bloodlines and some not related to us by blood, but whose lives continue to inspire us."

Why is it worth your time?: It covers a bunch of different writers of different backgrounds (though with a focus towards the Yoruba tradition of Ifá/Orisha), all interacting with their ancestors in different ways, through dreams, channeling, divination, and more! A very personal and interesting collection on the whole, but nonfictional stand-outs include "Erasing the Lines" by M'kali-Hashiki (about losing the ability to contact spirits, and struggling to regain it), "Responding to the Call of the Ancestors: Transforming Vinegar into Honey" by J. Phoenix Smith (about dealing with intense family trauma via ancestor veneration), and "License to Forgive," by Iyalorisa Ayokunle (about having to banish an ancestor from her altar). Also includes a 1990s short story by Nisi Shawl about the nuances ancestor worship when combined with the American legacy of slavery.

Plural Tags: abuse intermediate-focus (depends on the chapter), creator speaks from experience, the dead, family relationships, spiritual, voices, visions

Content Warnings: discussion of slavery's legacy, family trauma, complicated family relationships, fear of madness

Access Notes: This book looks to be out of print and a paper-only release. Though still obtainable, it's not easy to get, so I'm probably going to be feeding my copy through the library book-scanner for accessibility purposes. (This means, regrettably, that the obnoxious handwritten footnotes of the previous owner will be included.) Stay tuned!

Misc Notes: Full Table of Contents (with most spirited-relevant entries in bold, but the whole thing is worth a read):

"Introduction" by Luisah Teish and Sauda Burch
"Reaching Back To Reclaim Genius" by Awo Fanira
"The Breaking" by Xochipala Maes Valdez
"Remembrance: Mary 'Pula' Lucero" by Xochipala Maes Valdez
"Sparkle and Sheen" by Sauda Burch
"Erasing the Line" by M'kali-Hashiki
"Mourner's Kaddish" by D'vorah J. Grenn
"Remembrance: Douglas Johnson, Sr." by Jessical Johnson
"The Old Folks Say" by Luisa Teish
"Remembrance: Ralph P. Orduna" by Sauda Burch
"Turning to Face the Ancestors: A learning journey recovering heart and memory" by Gail Williams
"Remembrance: Samuel Williams, Jr." by Gail Williams
"The Cosmic Eye" by Uzuri Amini
"Remembrance: Aunt Emmalou" by Arnia Dobbins
"Let the Dead Bury the Dead" by Sauda Burch
"Remembrance: Family" by Gilbert Burch, Sr.
"Remembrance: Donald L. Williams" by Gail Williams
"Remembrance: Louise Merrill" by Amanda Bloom
"My African Odyssey 20 Years Later: the Ancestors of Goree Island" by Uzuri Amini
"Remembrance: Great-Aunt Nancy Collier" by Sauda Burch
"Remembrance: Sarangerel Odigan (1963-2006)" by Daniel Foor
"Ancestral Legacy: Excerpts from an interview with Andrea (Courage) Johnson" by Sauda Burch
"Remembrance: Marsha King", by Andrea Johnson
"Full Circle" by Iyanifa Fasina
"Remembrance: Rose Maes" by Conrad Maes
"Responding to the Call of the Ancestors: Transforming Vinegar into Honey" by J. Phoenix Smith
"Remembrance: My Brother Charles" by Rashidah Tutashinda
"Acnestral Spirits" by Uzuri Amini
"License to Forgive" by Iyalora Ayokunle
"Remembrance: Durinda 'Winta' Anderson" by Karinda Dobbins
"Remembrance: Great-Grandpa Pablo Valdez," by Xochipala Maes Valdez
"The Rainses'" by Nisi Shawl
"Remembrance: Grandpa Pete" by Rebecca Rodriguez
"Preservation" by Luisah Teish

lb_lee

Sneak: after Trump came into office again, I did a cartomancy spiral using Portable Fortitude. It ended up so appropriate that I put the cards up as a ward on our walls at the appropriate directions! It’s been six months so I thought I would post them here before finally putting them away to rest. ^_^ Most are self-explanatory, I think!

( Read more... )

who_is_page

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

leo9ish

A little follow-up to that post I made the other day about maybe potentially using the "otherhuman" label: I had a very pleasant exchange on Tumblr about the matter and... Yeah, I don't think otherhuman was the word I was looking for, LOL.

( Read more... )

Just gonna put my response on the aforementioned thread under the cut for posterity. Originally posted to Tumblr on May 13, 2025.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Music: Firewood by Regina Spektor

lb_lee

This is a short story for

pluralstories that I found in the sci-fi library, in an apparently impossible-to-find anthology called WomanSpace: Future and Fatnasy: Stories and Art by Women. It came from New Victoria Publishers, a long-shuttered feminist press. While digging around in the library archives, I stumbled upon it, and it's short enough that I decided to type it up here for plural posterity.

Mara
by Lois Metzger

I don't wear glasses, but I put them on. My mother's face was a blurry haze; her clothes were without detail, only color.

"Please give them back," she said. I took off the glasses and saw clear gray eyes and white hair. My mother was sixty-two.

"You won't cause any trouble?" sh said.

I listened and heard nothing. "No trouble," I said.

My mother cried. Mara told me a story: On my world people don't cry: their skin changes color. When they're happy they look yellow or red; when they're sad they turn dark blues and greens.

( Read more... )

lb_lee posting in

pluralstories

"As he walked away I realized how wrong I had been with one of my answers. Two heads are better than one: Mara's and mine. She was silent then. I knew I wouldn't mind being in the hospital. But I couldn't bear if I were by myself."

Blurb: A heroine finds another world and a friend who helps her survive this one. What is sanity anyway?

Why is it worth your time?: A very short story, a time capsule from early feminist press sci-fi, still emotionally resonant today.

Plural/1+ Tags: Abuse:intermediate focus, nonhumans (space alien?), friendship, voices

Content Warnings: institutionalization.

Accessibility Notes: This story was only published in WomanSpace: Future and Fantasy: Stories and Art by Women, from New Victoria Press, a long shuttered feminist independent press, and it seems to be impossible to find a copy. (I myself found it in a sci-fi library.) Anna's Archive has a digitized copy, but the story is so short, I just typed it up myself.

lb_lee

Sooooo, the cat fosterer's landlord will not allow the cats to be kept more than two weeks, which means that by May 29th, we'll need more fosterers for the cats. I fucking hate this.

There are two elderly cats, no health problems, asides from sometimes allergies, and meds can be provided to mix into their food. If possible, it'd be great for the two cats to stay together, since they've spent their entire adult lives together, but considering how difficult this is already being...

Please spread word of this. We hope we can find a place for these cats.

Current Mood: drained

lb_lee

Guys, we have truly arrived as artists: someone is pirating our work in Florida!

( And it led to good things! No, really! )

Current Mood: bouncy

lb_lee

Pluralstories: Why We Did It Like That
Summary: "Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off." --Spider Robinson
Word Count: 3450
Notes: Winner of the fan poll this month and sponsored by our fans at LiberaPay and Patreon! Derelict from a "plurals in video games" academic paper that didn't end up happening.

We first got the idea of making a catalog of plural stories in 2009, back when we were in library school. People seemed to want one, and we heard plenty of complaints along the lines of, "I just want to read a story about people like me!" but at best there were lists of a few favorites on a blog or (later on) in an itch.io collection. Arguably the closest thing to a comprehensive catalog was Nita and Anita's now-defunct Multiple Personality and Dissociation Book List, which after a decade in existence listed 161 books with keywords and reviews. However significant, it had major flaws: it was limited to books from a medical standpoint, used only vague keywords like "fiction" and "psychiatry", gave no description of what the books were actually about, and kept the reviews (the only place to find content descriptions) siloed off and organized by reviewer name, rather than book title. Something more comprehensive and searchable was needed.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: geeky

leo9ish

Originally posted to my Tumblr on May 5, 2025. Short post, but I thought it was worth keeping a copy of, even if only for myself.

Kinda wondering if I should adopt the otherhuman label?

It's been on my radar for a good while, but I shied away from it because, aside from the rampant crosstagging, it seemed like it was headed down the path of "human but not REALLY" (assuming it wasn't there to begin with), which… No. I mean, technically maybe, but No.

It's a difficult thing to balance for me, because, like, obviously there's something exceptional and greater-than-human about my identity, or else I wouldn't want or need to label it. But humanity in all its forms is a significant part of my identity and personal narrative, and I don't want to single out and other any specific form of humanity just because it's this world's Default and my experiences aren't in total alignment with it.

I don't know if "otherhuman" is the term I'm looking for, but I like the idea of a label that encompasses my relationship with humanity, and I want to be able to communicate that my "Otherness" is more than just being of another species.

EDIT May 14, 2025: A follow-up to this has been posted!

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: バルーン by Atelier Ladybird

bodyetal

A bit late to mention it here, sorry, but yes! We’ll be delivering the keynote in two weeks (May 24th, 10am EST).

We are incredibly proud and honored, honestly. We worked really hard on our session, and we can’t wait for folks to see it! Crow&, Riley, and TW cowrote it, with each of us recording roughly a third of it. This was our first time trying that, and we love how it turned out.

Unfortunately, ticket prices are way higher this year due to Airmeet changing their ticket structure for the worse, but our session (minus the Q&A) will be on the plural events YouTube channel!

Information on the conference itself is here:
https://powertotheplurals.com/pluralpositivityworldconference2024/

Current Mood: excited

lb_lee

Took me a while, but I made an archive.org profile and am slowly uploading the multi stuff I've bookscanned and OCRed for posterity.

It is sloooooow as molasses, and I have over a hundred issues of Many Voices to upload, so it's definitely going to take a while.

Also hey, I uploaded that weird mysterious Wayfarer 1 vid, for those of who you were dying to see it! (Never uploading a vid again; I think I had to leave my computer for an hour or so.)

EDIT: made it through three issues uploaded and got clocked as spam because the metadata is nigh-identical except for the date. ...maybe I'll just upload them in year chunks, instead of each individual file, because holy crap otherwise I'll be in a hospital bed by the time I get the whole thing up.

lb_lee

EDIT: foster found!

Hey guys. A friend of ours in New Hampshire is becoming homeless and are in desperate need of someone to foster their two elderly cats, preferably by May 15. The cats have no health problems, asides from sometimes allergies, and meds can be provided to mix into their food.

If possible, it'd be great for the two cats to stay together, since they've spent their entire adult lives together, but this is an emergency.

Transit can be arranged to bring the cats to the fosterer.

Please spread word of this. We hope we can find a place for these cats.

gze

Author: C&
Length: 5-8 minutes
Warnings: discussion of slavery, trauma, abuse, political issues

Hello. It has been awhile since we have posted or written an essay in this body. If you have been enjoying our writings, then we apologize for that. However, we have had very good reason to be away. It is a reason we cannot discuss publicly…for personal reasons.

( Just because one has a victory does not mean the war is over. )

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mackerelgray

Chirp! Bark! Hey!

May 2025

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Page Summary

lb_lee - LB is Moving! Take Our Stuff
leo9ish - casual update: ghosts! wow!
lb_lee - Building Power While The Lights Are Out: Disasters, Mutual Aid, and Dual Power
lb_lee - Untouchable is on healthymultiplicity.com!
lb_lee in pluralstories - Listening to Jekyllase by Trismegistus Shandy (sci-fi slice-of-life short novel, 2019, 2023-2024)
lb_lee in pluralstories - Triiffic-Soul: Can I Be In Control? by Bobple (fantasy serial fiction, 2023-)
lb_lee in pluralstories - Festival of the Bones II: What Is Remembered Lives, by Ile Orunmila Oshun (prose, 2010)
lb_lee - A Ward for Trump Times
who_is_page - Experiencing Identity mini-zine
leo9ish - Maybe not otherhumanity, but certainly human alterhumanity?
lb_lee - Mara, by Lois Metzger (1981)
lb_lee in pluralstories - Mara, by Lois Metzger (? prose, 1981)
lb_lee - Emergency Cat Fostering Needed Again--New Hampshire or New England thereabouts
lb_lee - Jimmy Dunson, Rebel Hearts Publishing, and The Pirates of Florida
lb_lee - Pluralstories: Why We Did It Like That
leo9ish - [Repost] Otherhuman label consideration
bodyetal - We’re Giving the Keynote at the Plural Positivity World Conference!
lb_lee - Archive.org
lb_lee - Emergency Cat Fostering Needed--New Hampshire or New England thereabouts
gze - Building Culture Within Strife - Struggles and frustrations

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