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Our Table of Contents has all the stories/essays. If you're curious about our blog's etiquette and filters, that is here, and you can check your filter status here. (The filters post, like most of this blog, is locked; introduce yourself and ask to have access.) For everything else (including who we are and "how to Dreamwidth"), check our profile page!
( Stories, Essays, Comics and Zines up for grabs! )
2026 September Fanpoll
Sep. 2nd, 2026 04:23 pmHey everybody, it's that time again: time to vote for which stuff gets the LiberaPay/Patreon money this month!
As always, anyone can vote (please do!), but LiberaPay and Patreon patrons get double weight for their votes. (Due to Patreon's porn purges, I really encourage you to use LiberaPay, if you get a choice.) If you want to see the blurbs for any of these works, those are here! (You can also leave your requests there; requesting a story or essay is always free!) If you don't have a DW and so can't do the poll, that's okay; just leave your vote in the comments below; anon comments are turned on.
Which works gets the money, and thus posted this month? YOU CHOOSE, readers!
As always, anyone can vote (please do!), but LiberaPay and Patreon patrons get double weight for their votes. (Due to Patreon's porn purges, I really encourage you to use LiberaPay, if you get a choice.) If you want to see the blurbs for any of these works, those are here! (You can also leave your requests there; requesting a story or essay is always free!) If you don't have a DW and so can't do the poll, that's okay; just leave your vote in the comments below; anon comments are turned on.
Which works gets the money, and thus posted this month? YOU CHOOSE, readers!
Poll #35013 2026 September Fan Poll
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22
Did you toss LiberaPay/Patreon money my way this month?
What writing gets posted this month?
View Answers
Born Lucky (Infinity Smashed)
4 (18.2%)
Henchwench for Hire (F/F supervillainy)
3 (13.6%)
Rutless (transfem omegaverse porno)
0 (0.0%)
Kayfabe in the Coliseum (pseudo-Greco Roman blood sports)
1 (4.5%)
Crazy Boys Split Apart (Crazy Boys Ch. 4)
10 (45.5%)
What if Someone Masturbates to That? (essay)
19 (86.4%)
What comic/zine thingy gets posted this month?
View Answers
Fire (Rawlin and Mori silliness, 1 page)
7 (35.0%)
Protection (1 pager, grimdark, personal)
3 (15.0%)
Thrown Away (5 page Rawlin and Mori sketch comic)
8 (40.0%)
Cult Comix (cultiples diary comics)
8 (40.0%)
Possessions (screamy poetry zine about haunting your murderer)
5 (25.0%)
Dr. Frankenstein vs. the Queerborgs (bookspine poetry)
6 (30.0%)
Comic: "Whatever You Want"
Aug. 31st, 2026 09:12 pmSneak: Whatever You Want has now been uploaded! Text-only version here. Four pages of Rawlin figuring out gender with Mori!
Mori: We are going to murder NVIDIA in its sleep, and no Linux jury on earth will convict us.
Mori: We are going to murder NVIDIA in its sleep, and no Linux jury on earth will convict us.
Welcome to Vago, AZ!
Aug. 31st, 2026 08:27 am![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fictionkind had a prompt we couldn’t say no to:Write a travel guide for visitors and tourists about a place from your source. (Not a noematapedia, literally "Welcome to BLANK! You won't regret your stay here in this beautiful country/city/etc...")
(suggested by
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bokuwatetsuo)~
Welcome to sunny Vago, Arizona, where the sun’s always shining, the rent’s often cheap, the public transit’s sometimes extant and the cops sometimes are not!
( Read more... )
Fictive Book Giveaway
Aug. 28th, 2026 08:45 amOh right, forgot one more book for giveaway: A Novel Love Story, by Ashley Poston. Woman’s car breaks down in her favorite romance series, but the author died suddenly and now the series is in stasis. For the romance-loving fictioneers among you!
Same rules as others: free in the States, you pay shipping if you’re internationally.
Same rules as others: free in the States, you pay shipping if you’re internationally.
Multish Book Giveaway
Aug. 26th, 2026 07:56 pmEDIT: all books claimed!
Mori: Want some multish books? We got multish books for giveaway! Cost you nothing if you're in the US; you pay shipping if you live overseas. We got:
C.S. Friedman'sThis Alien Shore- crip multi space operaBenjamin Walker's Beyond the Body: The Human Double and The Astral Plains - Rawlin cannot make me read this. We tried, but we got the Psychical Research guys, and we don't got to chisel no citations out of THEM. So I am liberating it unto the universe, y'all.
Rogan: We dropped into the sci-fi library briefly because there were a few books we wanted to add to the system... and found a big stack of comics on the cart labeled with our name. Turns out someone had donated the entire series of Transmetropolitan in trade paperback and we are the Person Who Knows Comics, so everyone decided to leave it for us. (Far as I know, there's one guy who knows manga and that's about it.)
We don't much care for Warren Ellis or his work (and this was not for lack of trying, back before we decided that our reading for fun is FOR FUN, plus Elli's reputation nose-dived), but Transmetropolitan is one of those series that are huge for a lot of people and critically acclaimed, so we are relieved to have the whole series just horked up in bulk in one go, sparing us the work. Thanks, mysterious donor!
We added it to the catalog, stickered and shelved it, and made a note on the mailing list so folks would know what we did.
The senior librarian responded with a bemused remark along the lines of, "I have no idea what Transmet is or why it matters, but yay, thanks for taking care of it!"
To which someone else responded, more or less, "yes, that is why we made it LB's problem."
Well, we've achieved our goal of becoming the head person for the comics section, I guess! (Seriously, though, we're glad about this. If we're the only person in that library who knows what Transmetropolitan is, we should be the one who handles comics.)
IPT Journal Treasure Garage Sorting
Aug. 22nd, 2026 10:44 amWhat a organizational nightmare. We took a CD-ROM of:
- 2973 files
- 713 folders
- 25.6 MB
—and after deleting all duplicates, superfluous images (background textures, etc.), it is now:
- 473 files
- 36 folders
- 15.8 MB
—and is actually fucking organized. (Issue 10 was in a subfolder in Issue 9. No author names were in the file names. You people live like this? YOU PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THIS!)
All that remains is finishing the Table of Contents, listing what articles we want for later, and zip-and-ship on back.
Articles we want to go over for ourselves:
- the one where female multis are all just schizophrenics who really wanted to fuck their dads
- the one where PTSD is just paranoid schizophrenia
- the one that advises legal attack when accused of child abuse
- the one about how those guys who made child pornography didn’t make child pornography (spoilers: they made child pornography, it just wasn’t illegal til ‘77)
- the one that used as data on false allegations of abuse the accusations reported by the accused of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation... while admitting there was no testing of veracity whatsoever.
- the occult cop who quotes the Bible a lot
- the one about the pedophile journal interview
Gold star to Flash Renamer, that little program that made this WAY easier.
This is a silly post of a silly photo and also Rawlin's new hair style.
Rawlin enjoyed having hair that read as feminine to humans, but discovered she REALLY cannot stand the sensation of hair on the back of her neck in summer. She mostly wore it in a topknot, but then she could not be petted, which is a tragedy, so she asked Mori to cut her hair in something short but femme, so now she's not too far off from where she was at in the start.
Telling you the context for this photo will not help or improve anything, so we just aren't going to tell you what it is, just that no Tiptoes were harmed in the making of this photograph.
( Dog catches cat. Cat wins. )
Rawlin enjoyed having hair that read as feminine to humans, but discovered she REALLY cannot stand the sensation of hair on the back of her neck in summer. She mostly wore it in a topknot, but then she could not be petted, which is a tragedy, so she asked Mori to cut her hair in something short but femme, so now she's not too far off from where she was at in the start.
Telling you the context for this photo will not help or improve anything, so we just aren't going to tell you what it is, just that no Tiptoes were harmed in the making of this photograph.
( Dog catches cat. Cat wins. )
Ch. 3: Crazy Boys Make Rules
Aug. 20th, 2026 09:09 pmCrazy Boys Make Rules
Summary: D and Rogan aren’t sure what to call what they have together, but they make rules about it, plus Rogan dumps a douchebag.
Series: Crazy Boys
Word Count: 6000
Notes: Winner of this month’s fan poll! If you want to gain extra poll weight and support work like this, check out my LiberaPay and my Patreon! Also, though White Lake’s name is made up, everything else about it is completely true.
Junior Year: Rogan
D is getting increasingly concerned about our not-relationship.
( This is the one place where we don't have to do what they expect us to do. )
Summary: D and Rogan aren’t sure what to call what they have together, but they make rules about it, plus Rogan dumps a douchebag.
Series: Crazy Boys
Word Count: 6000
Notes: Winner of this month’s fan poll! If you want to gain extra poll weight and support work like this, check out my LiberaPay and my Patreon! Also, though White Lake’s name is made up, everything else about it is completely true.
Click here for Content Warnings (contain spoilers!)
anti-black racism; concussion, urine, vomit, benign hallucinations, and other aftermath of injuries (no violence is shown).Junior Year: Rogan
D is getting increasingly concerned about our not-relationship.
( This is the one place where we don't have to do what they expect us to do. )
Lifesaving Programs By Guys Named Dan
Aug. 20th, 2026 08:48 am(Post title is a lie; only one of these programs is by a guy named Dan.)
Nowadays, it is expected that every program you need will come from a centralized depository, or “the app store,” guaranteed to be functional and trusted. But crusty garage salers we, we sometimes enjoy using third-party software gotten from websites that look like they haven’t had a style update in twenty years, run by a random guy named Dan. Blessings upon the Dans of the world, who have made our computing experience infinitely better! And what is a blog for if not to advertise these random programmers?
(All of these programs are for Windows. Linux had all these things either built in or easy to get.)
( wonderful mostly-free programs by randos sometimes named Dan )
EDIT: BuildBooklet by our friend Leaf. She made this so we could make print-order PDFs of our comics using DrRacket (a bigger project she worked on). Doesn't work on Windows XP, but it works on Linux and Windows 7 and later! It does exactly what it's supposed to do! A+ work helper that freed me from having to rely on Adobe!
So here’s to the Dans. Cheers! Do you have any “guy named Dan” programs that you swear by?
Nowadays, it is expected that every program you need will come from a centralized depository, or “the app store,” guaranteed to be functional and trusted. But crusty garage salers we, we sometimes enjoy using third-party software gotten from websites that look like they haven’t had a style update in twenty years, run by a random guy named Dan. Blessings upon the Dans of the world, who have made our computing experience infinitely better! And what is a blog for if not to advertise these random programmers?
(All of these programs are for Windows. Linux had all these things either built in or easy to get.)
( wonderful mostly-free programs by randos sometimes named Dan )
EDIT: BuildBooklet by our friend Leaf. She made this so we could make print-order PDFs of our comics using DrRacket (a bigger project she worked on). Doesn't work on Windows XP, but it works on Linux and Windows 7 and later! It does exactly what it's supposed to do! A+ work helper that freed me from having to rely on Adobe!
So here’s to the Dans. Cheers! Do you have any “guy named Dan” programs that you swear by?
How To Rest, by Kimball Anderson
Aug. 16th, 2026 08:39 amRogan: I have an exciting thing to announce: my friend Kimball Anderson has started publicly releasing their comic, How To Rest! (Read on their website: https://outside-life.com/c/how-to-rest/ Buy ebooks from itch.io: https://earnestattempts.itch.io/how-to-rest )
( what it is and why you should read it )
( what it is and why you should read it )
Rogan: This post is brought to you by Phosphor of hungryghosts nerd-sniping me again. He knows my weaknesses and he asked, "someone in Otherconnect was wondering - when did the concept of system names become a thing?"
I plunged into my records and here's what I found! (With the gracious help oferinptah!)
The first time I've found what we might call a "system name"--that is, a name for the whole kit and kaboodle of body tenants that isn't just the body's legal name and/or individual names--is in 1905, in Morton Prince's Dissociation of a Personality.erinptah dug through their copy and quoted this bit:
Sally was a personality of "Mrs. Beauchamp," not considered the "real one," and not treated well by Morton Prince, so I think it's important that he notes that it's specifically HER who used this name, "the family," for the group. And it was not a one-off! Over a decade later, German philosopher Schiller mentions not just "the Beauchamp family" (396) but also comments on the Doris Fischer case by calling them "the 'Doris' Family" (391). Clearly he found the idea useful!
After that, though, I have a big gap in my records. (System names probably exist; I just haven't been able to FIND any for easy reference.) Headmates are generally referred to by their individual names/psuedonyms or, for the whole of them, by their legal name or psuedonym--Billy Milligan, Sybil, Eve, etc. There is this sort of unwritten assumption that the legal name is the real person that encompasses everyone within. There isn't the group names we see so often now--the Flock, Zyfron System, Loony-Brain, etc. Where did these come from?
The first record I have (after Sally in 1905) is "Cafe D'Air" from the June 1986 issue of Speaking for Our Selves, #4. There are also people going by things like "S. Jeremy," "CW of Bonnie," "Bogie and Scarlet," the usual chaining together of names.
In 1987, the Troops for Truddi Chase broke ground in insisting on having their book, When Rabbit Howls attributed to them under that name, rather than just Truddi Chase. Thanks to S4OS (the first multi community record I have), it's clear that the Troops didn't originate this idea, but they certainly helped popularize it, and the idea of a group name became pretty common afterward--it's all over the place in the Many Voices newsletter, alt.support.dissociation, and books like The Flock, by Joan Frances Casey.
So as best we can tell, the idea of group names seems to be multi-originated, possibly to get away from the medical thing of just calling us by individual names or the "real person's" name, maybe around the '80s when multis actually started talking to each other and leaving records behind that I can actually find? I'll have to reread "B. C. A."'s "My Life as a Dissociated Personality" to see if any group name gets mentioned there.
hungryghosts nerd-sniping me again. He knows my weaknesses and he asked, "someone in Otherconnect was wondering - when did the concept of system names become a thing?"I plunged into my records and here's what I found! (With the gracious help of
erinptah!)The first time I've found what we might call a "system name"--that is, a name for the whole kit and kaboodle of body tenants that isn't just the body's legal name and/or individual names--is in 1905, in Morton Prince's Dissociation of a Personality.
erinptah dug through their copy and quoted this bit: With this hypothesis in mind, all three members of "the family," as Sally used to speak of them, were interrogated, in search of some accident or emotional shock which might have caused a split in consciousness. (213-214)
Sally was a personality of "Mrs. Beauchamp," not considered the "real one," and not treated well by Morton Prince, so I think it's important that he notes that it's specifically HER who used this name, "the family," for the group. And it was not a one-off! Over a decade later, German philosopher Schiller mentions not just "the Beauchamp family" (396) but also comments on the Doris Fischer case by calling them "the 'Doris' Family" (391). Clearly he found the idea useful!
After that, though, I have a big gap in my records. (System names probably exist; I just haven't been able to FIND any for easy reference.) Headmates are generally referred to by their individual names/psuedonyms or, for the whole of them, by their legal name or psuedonym--Billy Milligan, Sybil, Eve, etc. There is this sort of unwritten assumption that the legal name is the real person that encompasses everyone within. There isn't the group names we see so often now--the Flock, Zyfron System, Loony-Brain, etc. Where did these come from?
The first record I have (after Sally in 1905) is "Cafe D'Air" from the June 1986 issue of Speaking for Our Selves, #4. There are also people going by things like "S. Jeremy," "CW of Bonnie," "Bogie and Scarlet," the usual chaining together of names.
In 1987, the Troops for Truddi Chase broke ground in insisting on having their book, When Rabbit Howls attributed to them under that name, rather than just Truddi Chase. Thanks to S4OS (the first multi community record I have), it's clear that the Troops didn't originate this idea, but they certainly helped popularize it, and the idea of a group name became pretty common afterward--it's all over the place in the Many Voices newsletter, alt.support.dissociation, and books like The Flock, by Joan Frances Casey.
So as best we can tell, the idea of group names seems to be multi-originated, possibly to get away from the medical thing of just calling us by individual names or the "real person's" name, maybe around the '80s when multis actually started talking to each other and leaving records behind that I can actually find? I'll have to reread "B. C. A."'s "My Life as a Dissociated Personality" to see if any group name gets mentioned there.
Rogan: TL;DR, we’re going to have to read that three volume Fischer case, or at least the first two volumes. This case sounds fascinating and possibly the most thoroughly documented single multi case that’s publicly available.
( A little background about the Society for Psychical Research, the people in it, and what they did. )
Anyway, F. C. S. Schiller was a German philosopher. Schiller gives a summary and review of the 2400 page, 9 pound(!) report on Doris Fischer, bless his heart, and I decided to dig into that to see whether I really wanted to read The Tomes. Its full title is “REVIEW. Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research. The Doris Fischer Case of Multiple Personality. By Walter Franklin Pierce, Ph.D. Vol. IX. August, 1915. Pp. 1-700. Vol. X. August, 1916. Pp. 701-1419. Vol. XI. August, 1917. By James H. Hyslop, Ph.D. Pp. 1024.” It’s in Vol. 28 of Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 1918.
Turns out the Doris Fischer case is indeed of interest to me, for multiple reasons. A lot of the later familiar psych terms are there: dissociation, multiple personality, co-conscious. (He probably got them from Morton Price’s famous and then-new work on Ms. Beauchamp; he’s pretty good about saying where he heard stuff.) He uses “in” and “out” to describe someone fronting (or “assuming control of the common body”) or not.
But (and this is where it gets REALLY interesting to me), he also discusses the “supernormal” aspects of the case, treats them as worthy of discussion, study, and scientific testing (even when he does things like basically say "Hyslop's medium was wrong and those statements were dumb, for these reasons." Most of all, he says something that I want to shove in the face of every multi who ever takes doctors too seriously:
Schiller, though he is on-board with the cure of returning to singleness (though he mentions consent, will have to read The Tomes to see), he does his best to extend grace to what he calls the Doris Family, to express the good each did or tried to do, even when they failed. He emphasizes that maybe Sally in the Beauchamp case would’ve been more helpful had her doctor treated her better, something that doctors nowadays would do well to learn. Even more:
Schiller was a smart guy. It seems appropriate that towards of the end of the paper, he concludes, "nothing is more likely to impede investigation than premature acceptance of 'explanations.'" (pg. 403)
A lesson we could all stand to learn, a century later.
( A little background about the Society for Psychical Research, the people in it, and what they did. )
Anyway, F. C. S. Schiller was a German philosopher. Schiller gives a summary and review of the 2400 page, 9 pound(!) report on Doris Fischer, bless his heart, and I decided to dig into that to see whether I really wanted to read The Tomes. Its full title is “REVIEW. Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research. The Doris Fischer Case of Multiple Personality. By Walter Franklin Pierce, Ph.D. Vol. IX. August, 1915. Pp. 1-700. Vol. X. August, 1916. Pp. 701-1419. Vol. XI. August, 1917. By James H. Hyslop, Ph.D. Pp. 1024.” It’s in Vol. 28 of Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 1918.
Turns out the Doris Fischer case is indeed of interest to me, for multiple reasons. A lot of the later familiar psych terms are there: dissociation, multiple personality, co-conscious. (He probably got them from Morton Price’s famous and then-new work on Ms. Beauchamp; he’s pretty good about saying where he heard stuff.) He uses “in” and “out” to describe someone fronting (or “assuming control of the common body”) or not.
But (and this is where it gets REALLY interesting to me), he also discusses the “supernormal” aspects of the case, treats them as worthy of discussion, study, and scientific testing (even when he does things like basically say "Hyslop's medium was wrong and those statements were dumb, for these reasons." Most of all, he says something that I want to shove in the face of every multi who ever takes doctors too seriously:
A soul’s organization is not adequately expressed by physical analogies. Its so-called ‘dissociations’ are not mechanical physical processes, even when they are excited by bodily injuries. [Three of “the Doris Family” attributed to their creation to an act of physical violence.] Nor are they wholly morbid. What stands out in Doris Fischer’s case is that they are really teleological—protective reactions to alleviate the burden of living. (Pg. 395)
Schiller, though he is on-board with the cure of returning to singleness (though he mentions consent, will have to read The Tomes to see), he does his best to extend grace to what he calls the Doris Family, to express the good each did or tried to do, even when they failed. He emphasizes that maybe Sally in the Beauchamp case would’ve been more helpful had her doctor treated her better, something that doctors nowadays would do well to learn. Even more:
We are far too ready to ascribe finality to the knowledge of the hour and to assume that what has not been found, or is not officially recognized, does not exist. But few facts are so obtrusive as to force themselves upon us if we will not look for them, and still fewer so strong that they can make their way against a hostile prejudice. Now the professional interests of doctors are such as inevitably prejudice them in certain directions, and it is possible that they may overlook a good deal. At any rate the Doris Fischer case suggests that in all such affairs there may be a good deal more than meets the ordinary doctor’s eye. [...]
Nor can it be too strongly impressed on future investigators that scientific completeness and honesty require them not to omit what look like supernormal incidents merely because they do not understand them. We know so little about the intimate ‘nature’ and structure of ‘souls,’ and about their disorders and potentialities that we should not allow any a priori prejudice to impede the investigation of whatever facts we can observe. Nor should we acquiesce too easily in terms like ‘dissociation’ as the beginning and end of wisdom. They are little more than descriptive metaphors... (pg. 397-398)
Schiller was a smart guy. It seems appropriate that towards of the end of the paper, he concludes, "nothing is more likely to impede investigation than premature acceptance of 'explanations.'" (pg. 403)
A lesson we could all stand to learn, a century later.
Meet Me Here on IRC, LOLOL (let's jam!)
Aug. 12th, 2026 03:23 pmSneak: Bob and me are doing work stuff and we're hanging out on IRC while we do it! If you want to come chat, we're at #LBparty on FreeNode! It'll be like the old #pluralcafe days. ^_^
EDIT: I am hanging out in a random Linux IRC chat room, and a Portuguese man is telling me excitedly about the eclipse he got to see, and sharing pictures, and there is also an older American who is listening to the Red Sox game. This is really nice! I am enjoying this.
EDIT: we are showing each other pictures of our old laptops and talking about how wonderful they are and what we run on them, like people showing off pictures of their dogs. (There are also pictures of dogs.) I am having a great time. The Internet is a wonderful place and there are wonderful people on it.
EDIT: all done for today! We also showed each other pictures of cats. Red Sox chatter is having a birthday on Sunday. I will have to remember to log in so I can wish them a happy birthday! It's an old server for an old distro for old computers so apparently not many people hang out on it anymore, it's apparently mostly just those two. What a nice way to break up the tedium of the HTML/CSS project we are working on!
EDIT: I am hanging out in a random Linux IRC chat room, and a Portuguese man is telling me excitedly about the eclipse he got to see, and sharing pictures, and there is also an older American who is listening to the Red Sox game. This is really nice! I am enjoying this.
EDIT: we are showing each other pictures of our old laptops and talking about how wonderful they are and what we run on them, like people showing off pictures of their dogs. (There are also pictures of dogs.) I am having a great time. The Internet is a wonderful place and there are wonderful people on it.
EDIT: all done for today! We also showed each other pictures of cats. Red Sox chatter is having a birthday on Sunday. I will have to remember to log in so I can wish them a happy birthday! It's an old server for an old distro for old computers so apparently not many people hang out on it anymore, it's apparently mostly just those two. What a nice way to break up the tedium of the HTML/CSS project we are working on!
Psychical Research Articles, 1887-1895
Aug. 11th, 2026 12:25 pmWe have started trawling through bookscans of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, printed and stapled some of the articles, and guys, this stuff is amazing. In chronological order:
- “Multiplex Personality,” by Frederic Myers, 1887 (pg. 496, in print). Myers is a British delight; his premise is “the mutiplex and mutable character of that which we know as the Personality of man, and the practical advantage which we may gain by discerning and working upon this as yet unrecognised modifiability,” in other words, “what if multi good actually? How do we decide what a ‘normal’ state of consciousness is?” Myers is the kind of guy who likes to drop quotes in Greek, Latin, and French all over, and I can see why they put Gurney in charge of writing the book they shared, but he is witty, thoughtful, and has cool ideas. Hell, he made me go “hmm, you may have a point,” multiple times over a hundred years after he died!
- “The Voices of Jeanne D’Arc,” by Andrew Lang, 1985 (pg. 198). Scottish Joan of Arc fanboy arguing why people claiming she was a crazy hysteric are wrong. Nice to know that people were getting sick of that over a hundred years ago. Plus he is laser focused on her voices, which was exactly why Mori wanted it. Did its job.
- “Some Psychical Phenomena Bearing Upon the Question of Spirit Control,” by Charles Hill-Tout, 1895, pg. 309 in print. Fascinating article by a Brit in Canada who went to Spiritualist meetings and readily admits to changing personalities many times... but NOT due to spirits, but out of his own suggestibility. He is very clear and it’s unusual to see someone who describes their own experiences so lucidly, while also being so skeptical and thoughtful about them. His article was the one we were least sure of, but he proved us wrong! Definitely recommended for anyone wanting to read early accounts of nonpathological, nonspiritual plurality (though temporary) and how the guy himself saw them.
It also turns out the American Psychical Research guys put out a 3-volume series (totaling over 2400 pages, sweet mother) about multi Doris Fischer. For some TOTALLY MYSTERIOUS reason, they have never been reprinted... but all three volumes are online! (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) BLESSINGS on the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals, they have made our research INFINITELY easier.
- “Multiplex Personality,” by Frederic Myers, 1887 (pg. 496, in print). Myers is a British delight; his premise is “the mutiplex and mutable character of that which we know as the Personality of man, and the practical advantage which we may gain by discerning and working upon this as yet unrecognised modifiability,” in other words, “what if multi good actually? How do we decide what a ‘normal’ state of consciousness is?” Myers is the kind of guy who likes to drop quotes in Greek, Latin, and French all over, and I can see why they put Gurney in charge of writing the book they shared, but he is witty, thoughtful, and has cool ideas. Hell, he made me go “hmm, you may have a point,” multiple times over a hundred years after he died!
- “The Voices of Jeanne D’Arc,” by Andrew Lang, 1985 (pg. 198). Scottish Joan of Arc fanboy arguing why people claiming she was a crazy hysteric are wrong. Nice to know that people were getting sick of that over a hundred years ago. Plus he is laser focused on her voices, which was exactly why Mori wanted it. Did its job.
- “Some Psychical Phenomena Bearing Upon the Question of Spirit Control,” by Charles Hill-Tout, 1895, pg. 309 in print. Fascinating article by a Brit in Canada who went to Spiritualist meetings and readily admits to changing personalities many times... but NOT due to spirits, but out of his own suggestibility. He is very clear and it’s unusual to see someone who describes their own experiences so lucidly, while also being so skeptical and thoughtful about them. His article was the one we were least sure of, but he proved us wrong! Definitely recommended for anyone wanting to read early accounts of nonpathological, nonspiritual plurality (though temporary) and how the guy himself saw them.
It also turns out the American Psychical Research guys put out a 3-volume series (totaling over 2400 pages, sweet mother) about multi Doris Fischer. For some TOTALLY MYSTERIOUS reason, they have never been reprinted... but all three volumes are online! (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) BLESSINGS on the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals, they have made our research INFINITELY easier.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Why
Aug. 9th, 2026 07:34 pmToday in adventures in library cataloging: thanks to the big honkin' donations, we have big stacks of "replace battered old library paperback with shiny new hardback donation," and I decided to go through one of them. Early in the stack was Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Moon Men.
There was only one problem: the paperback and the hardback, though identically titled and authored, weren't the same book.
Oh, about 2/3rds of the Ace paperback Moon Men had the same chapter titles as the Canaveral hardback Moon Men, but completely arranged in different ways, and possibly massively different revisions. On top of that, the Canaveral version of Moon Men turned out to be IDENTICAL to the Moon Maid.
I know precious little about Burroughs. I threw up my hands, weeded Moon Maid because our copy was about a century old and looked it, made a note saying that the two Moon Men were probably different, maybe don't weed? And told the librarian mailing list hoping one of them are massive Burroughs fans and can help bail me out.
But it seems criminally unfair to not only have a book with multiple titles, but also ANOTHER book of the same title with DIFFERENT CONTENTS. That's even worse than Spider Robinson having two different collections named Melancholy Elephants!
EDIT: the sage librarian has returned from her month-plus-long sabbatical with the SCA and she apparently has her own copy of Moon Maid and wants to try and keep as many as possible. I will be happy to leave this disaster in her capable, more knowledgeable hands.
There was only one problem: the paperback and the hardback, though identically titled and authored, weren't the same book.
Oh, about 2/3rds of the Ace paperback Moon Men had the same chapter titles as the Canaveral hardback Moon Men, but completely arranged in different ways, and possibly massively different revisions. On top of that, the Canaveral version of Moon Men turned out to be IDENTICAL to the Moon Maid.
I know precious little about Burroughs. I threw up my hands, weeded Moon Maid because our copy was about a century old and looked it, made a note saying that the two Moon Men were probably different, maybe don't weed? And told the librarian mailing list hoping one of them are massive Burroughs fans and can help bail me out.
But it seems criminally unfair to not only have a book with multiple titles, but also ANOTHER book of the same title with DIFFERENT CONTENTS. That's even worse than Spider Robinson having two different collections named Melancholy Elephants!
EDIT: the sage librarian has returned from her month-plus-long sabbatical with the SCA and she apparently has her own copy of Moon Maid and wants to try and keep as many as possible. I will be happy to leave this disaster in her capable, more knowledgeable hands.
Nominal Linguistics of the Birdsacks
Aug. 8th, 2026 08:11 amSneak: last night, we dreamed of neat alien linguistics!
( Name linguistics of parasitic bird people! )
( Name linguistics of parasitic bird people! )
Tax Free Weekend!
Aug. 7th, 2026 09:43 pmSneak: it’s tax free weekend in the USA! Perhaps you would like to buy a book? _@
You can check out our work at our shop page, but more locally (and pressingly), the sci-fi library we volunteer at is throwing a used book sale!
You see, we have recently gotten multiple HUGE donations, and a lot of the books, we already have. (Everyone donates stuff like Heinlein and Tolkien.) Our shelves are overflowing and there are still roughly a hundred boxes to go. We are eager to be free of this surplus, so: BOOK SALE! Come buy lovely used books, magazines, even a few box sets for super cheap! FREE US!
Authors we have ESPECIALLY large loads of (and I was sorting and lugging them all tonight, so I am VERY aware):
* L. E. Modesitt, jr.
* Eric Flint (both as author and editor)
* Anne McCaffrey
* Elizabeth Moon
* Andre Norton
The library will be open for business all weekend, from noon to at least 6pm. They are at 504 Medford St. in Somerville, MA, very close to the Magoun Square stop on the Green Line Extension, and there is also parking and air conditioning! Come cool off and rehydrate and use the bathroom while yart saling! We ourself may not be there, but if we are, say hi!
_@You can check out our work at our shop page, but more locally (and pressingly), the sci-fi library we volunteer at is throwing a used book sale!
You see, we have recently gotten multiple HUGE donations, and a lot of the books, we already have. (Everyone donates stuff like Heinlein and Tolkien.) Our shelves are overflowing and there are still roughly a hundred boxes to go. We are eager to be free of this surplus, so: BOOK SALE! Come buy lovely used books, magazines, even a few box sets for super cheap! FREE US!
Authors we have ESPECIALLY large loads of (and I was sorting and lugging them all tonight, so I am VERY aware):
* L. E. Modesitt, jr.
* Eric Flint (both as author and editor)
* Anne McCaffrey
* Elizabeth Moon
* Andre Norton
The library will be open for business all weekend, from noon to at least 6pm. They are at 504 Medford St. in Somerville, MA, very close to the Magoun Square stop on the Green Line Extension, and there is also parking and air conditioning! Come cool off and rehydrate and use the bathroom while yart saling! We ourself may not be there, but if we are, say hi!
We have been reading Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death, and it's opened up whole new chapters of multi research that we're very excited about!
( I'm glad I waited to dig into Spiritualism until now, because I feel way better prepared for it! )
( I'm glad I waited to dig into Spiritualism until now, because I feel way better prepared for it! )
