Multi Bechdel

[lb_lee]

Rogan: After making my silly Bechdel in Bookshelf post, I found myself thinking about other variations. I also found myself thinking about how community is shown in fiction.

 

Part of the appeal of the Bechdel Test, and why it's lasted, is because of the absurdity of half the world's population never talking to each other about anything besides the OTHER half. Women are everywhere, always have been, and yet it's still not uncommon for stories even nowadays to act as though men are most of the population. (We noticed it most recently with Bull Moon Rising, a book from 2024, which takes place in a city where women are conspicuously absent, asides from the heroine's party. We dug through, and the only other female characters, at all, was the drunken failed hero of yore, some sex workers, and maybe a bar maid or two. The crowds in the streets, the customers at the taverns, all men. It was like they'd hidden all the women in a basement somewhere, "Sultana's Dream" style, except "Sultana's Dream" is from 1905 and was a scathing satire on purdah!)

However, when it comes to smaller demographics, who aren't half the world's population, it's a lot easier to skate by. Which got me thinking about my old joke about how the only time I ever saw two multis in the same room in a work of fiction, it was Two-Face and the Ventriloquist in Arkham Asylum in an episode of Batman: the Animated Series. (As far as I remember, they don't speak to each other, though I would've loved just a little, "Singlets, huh?" gag. Obviously that wasn't going to happen.)

Thankfully, my multi shelf now has a few things where there is more than one (ha!) plural who talk to each other... or at least act like they do. Wow! Golly! What are they, you ask?

• The Book of Autonomancy, by Ronin Ellis and One Fox Faraday of the Desired Constellation. Horror story where a DID multi works by exorcising "ghosts" that feed on the emotions generated by being triggered. Two multiples are friends in it! You see them talking to each other in flashbacks and, in the current day, via text message! Self-published.
• "Net Dreams," by Phil Foglio. Short porn comic where two cyberpunk women share their dead teammate between them in dreams, so community comes with the territory. Self-published.
• War Zone, by Sam Medlock. Horror story where a Native teenager attempts suicide and reality unravels. The protagonist talks about it with a friend and a doctor who both have experienced similar things, afterward. Self-published.
• Spirit Marriage, by Megan Rose. It's a nonfiction book about a spirit spouse interviewing other spirit spouses! (Spice?) It's community all the way down! This one even has an actual publisher (though it's a small New Age one I'd never heard of previously)!
• Be Gay Do Crime, by the Mary Nardini Gang. Queer anarchist magic zine about death and dancing at the end of the world.Teeeeechnically has a publisher, if Contagion Press still exists. 
• Thunder Shaman, by Ana Mariella Bacigalupo. Nonfiction academic anthropology book about machi shamans of the Mapuche people of Chile, which regularly involves spirit possession and "sharing personhood." (An amazing term I am absolutely going to use from here on out!) Also has a (university) publisher! About halfway through so far, definitely keeping it.

We also have the "community" tag on pluralstories, but as you can see, it's pretty slim pickings. Less than 10% of the listings have it.

I don't think it's a coincidence that of the six works on our shelf, five of them are completely outside the medical ideas of multi... and this includes the "backlash" communities: the empowered, healthy, natural, -genic plurals who use MPD/DID for their base even as they hate it, like a Catholic who can't quite escape their own history. (I include myself among them.) With the sole exception of the Book of Autonomancy, which we had to format, print, and bind ourself, all the others involve spirits: the dead, gods, lwa, etc. (Though "Net Dreams" involves a dead person in a cyberpunk context, rather than a religious one.)

Why? Because mental illness is treated as something to hide. It's not something to build community over, talk about, share; on the contrary, it's only the most negative kind of separation. Jane Phillips, in the Magic Daughter, remarks caustically that "One can only be heroic with MPD if one leads a life so successful that no one could possibly know." And indeed, in her book, she talks about HEARING about another multi, getting her phone number... and never being able to bear the thought of calling her, speaking to her, SEEING her. Both multiples, apparently, can only bear to be known as multiple to their (shared) therapist... the multi equivalent of the women who can only talk to men.

But spirit possession and other religious practices, however stigmatized, are still based on community. It's not something you do alone. Francisca, the titular thunder shaman, might be a member of an oppressed indigenous group, but she isn't the only machi in town! She has competitors, friends, a cultural context for what she does. The spirit marriage folks are open enough about it that the author can talk to them about it, and all of them have some group they're a part of, a role in their faith, however dubious. They might be separate, different from others... but that difference can be a neutral or positive thing, not just negative. Even the dead person in "Net Dreams" brings her two surviving teammates together!

These works are published by academic, anarchist, or self presses. I hope more appear over time.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

Does the book Set This House in Order qualify as another one?

This immediately got me thinking about how sad it is that in Marvel Comics there are several multi protagonists, and yet I can't currently think of any examples of them talking or connecting. Like I'm sure if you dig enough, you'll find some, but they don't really interact and don't actually talk about multi experiences. I think a well-written example of connecting around being multi involving Aurora and Legion, or Moon Knight and Sentry, could be really cool.

[erinptah]

I do know of one (1) scene where Moon Knight and Sentry interact! ...but it's very short, and only broadly references mental-health issues. If you didn't know they had plural stuff going on from reading about them already, you wouldn't figure it out from that scene.

(Since Thunderbolts came out, there's a little bit of MCU fic where MK interacts with Sentry. Pretty sure I'm the only one writing fic where MK interacts with Aurora...)

[lb_lee]

Maybe one day, Hulk and Moon Knight can hang out...

[erinptah]

There's also a little bit of fic about that! Including some I didn't write, even.

In canon...not holding my breath, unfortunately :(

[lb_lee]

Yup! It counts! It's under the community tag on pluralstories for that reason.

In Doom Patrol, Crazy Jane and Rebis are on the same time, so I feel like they surely interact, and I just don't remember off the top of my head because it's been a while since I read it. That's DC, though.