Aw, life, no.

Hey! We have new stuff up for sale! MULTIPLE things for sale, in fact!

See, at cons for years now, we've been selling paper-only zines of some of our essay compilations. They've proved surprisingly popular, so now that my blog is unviewable in Mississippi, I figured what the hell, put them up for sale online as paper books and digital downloads! Mississippi lawmakers cannot stop you (yet)!

First: Xenogals! ($3 Ebook with transcript here; $5 paper comic here).

Rawlin spent 20 years eaten by a parasite god and 4 years coming back from it. But what does it mean to be a person again, to begin again? Who even is Rawlin now?

Mori, the resident godslaying monster dyke, doesn't know any more than Rawlin does... but she looks forward to finding out together. Herein:

• Selves (re)discovery!
• Smooching
• Anatomy lessons!
• FEELINGS!

32 pages, 5.5" x 8.5", black and white. Text-only transcript included for ebook.

Second: Quick'N'Dirty Plural History! ($10 ebook and subtitled vid here; $5 paper zine here) In 2020, an organizer for the Plural Positivity World Conference came up and said something along the lines of, “Hey, LB, wanna do something about plural history for our conference?” They said, “Sure, why not, how hard can that be?” and immediately learned the folly of their arrogance.

The paper listing is the zine only; Payhip (and itch.io) have both the hour-and-a-half long video (subtitled) made in 2020 and the 48-page zine. All of the content can be found for free elsewhere; this is just if you want to throw us some bucks for it. It’s intended as a brief, incomplete, inglorious history of just some of the people under the many-selved umbrella in America over the centuries: double/dual consciousness, multiple personality, dissociative identity disorder, soulbonders, empowered multiples, natural multiples, the genic slapfight, etc. It’s also meant to be a decent vaccination against bullshit and lies peddled by jerks!

I suppose if people really want the vid on DVD, I can make that happen? If you want that, let me know, and I can adapt things.

• How to measure your level of distress (aka: how bad shit is)
• How to ask for help (and who to ask)
• How to make a pocket crisis plan zine
• How to make a plan in case you get hit by a bus, put in a coma, and need your loved ones to manage your life affairs and make healthcare decisions without you
• Medical and legal stuff, wills, and body donation stuff
• How to pack a go-bag (and get the fuck out of there!)

(inspired by chatting with frameacloud)

Rogan: So, those cursed tapes. I'm positive some of you are like, "Rogan, why are you doing this to yourself?" Well, for years, I've wanted to do a big thing on the whole ritual abuse/RAMCOA/OEA culture/identity and multi, because it's still relevant and important (and frankly scary). There were at least two plurals I considered friends once who went down that rabbit hole, with awful consequences, so it's personal. I want to understand what happened to them and why... and because I'd prefer to do it without rabbitholing myself, I turn to older records from the past.

On Saturday, Oct. 18, we are tabling at Watertown Zine Fest! It runs from 11-4, at the Watertown Public Library, 123 Main Street, Watertown, Massachusetts 02472. We have cranked out a bunch of paper-only zines, including our headspace essays, queer short stories, and a 32-page Mori/Rawlin comic, Xenogals! Come drop by and check us out!

On Friday, October 24, we will also be  New England Graphic Medicine Summit. 10-11 AM, giving a presentation on Many-Selved Portraiture. Located at MCPHS University on Longwood Avenue, but online attendance is also possible! Come see us show off many-selved artistic efforts! There'll be a slideshow!

Mori: Okay, so apparently we CAN absorb information through audio... as long as the INTERNET isn't involved with it, a blazing distraction of "CLICK ME CHECK ME MULTITASK BADLY!" So putting on a cursed tape with which to time our work shifts of spot-blacking and page-formatting Xenogals Ashcan works out really well! And we took NOTES! :D Which we are posting here for our own convenience.

The first tape we listened to was the one labeled 3-D “Ritual Abuse: Evaluation & Treatment Strategies for Children and Adolescents,” by Kimball Ladien, M.D., at the Believe the Children First Annual Conference. After having listened to the whole thing, I STILL don't know what year it was made, only that it was probably before 1990, because it mentioned the McMartin preschool case positively. The conference took place in Illinois, probably Chicago, and it mostly seemed to be Illinois people.

You and the large dog escaped from the dungeon with 100557 points, the amulet of Yendor (worth 5000 Zorkmids), a garnet stone (worth 700 Zorkmids), 1 worthless piece of colored glass, and 1112 pieces of gold, after 19727 moves. You were level 14 with a maximum of 112 hit points when you escaped.

Hit return to continue:

Rawlin: A little past midnight, on October 15, 2025, I did it. I made it to level 40 (Hell) safely, tamed the Hell Hound with treats (Mori: didn’t know you could do that! We didn’t have to fight him at all, renamed him Good Hellhound) and when the Wizard of Yendor made himself invisible and began teleporting through levels, I decided to hell with it and used my painfully obtained wand of wishing to wish for a dead floating eye (Mori: didn’t know you could safely do that either), ate it, and then wished for three potions of blindness. After that, I quaffed both it and a potion of speed, and one or two hits at a time, I whittled him down and finally defeated him.

I used my final wish for three tripe rations, whereupon I climbed up through the dungeons until I returned to Level 9, where I had left my original pet dog for safekeeping. (It is impossible in hack103 for your dog to follow you all the way to Hell and back.) once little, the dog was now large and feral. I gave my dog treats and then we went home together, one level at a time.

I am pleased at my win.

Mori: by the end of the game, dragons were RUNNING from her! Didn’t know that was possible either! Good game, sugarcane.

Mori: in hack103, of course!

We each have our preferred Hack classes. Rawlin likes the wizard.

( Eating monsters, fighting dragons. We need a hack103 tag. )

Mori/Rogan: Guys, we watched Steven Moffat’s 2020 Netflix series, Dracula, we can’t stop thinking about it, and now we’re making it all y’all’s problem.

( the spoileriffic adventures of poutybat Dracula )