iam_doll_parts | Reading

Psychodrama and Realitymashing (by Rogan)
Series: Essay
Summary: my favorite genre that doesn't exist.
Word Count: 3114
Notes: Winner of the March 2026 fan poll! This essay builds on my previous realitymashing essay, “All Narrators are Unreliable,” and you’d be best-served reading that first. This essay is dedicated to Sam Kieth, the original champion of comics realitymashing, who died March 15th. Sam Kieth’s work on Zero Girl and the Maxx are what originally inspired us to make comics, and our work as you know it wouldn’t exist if not for him. Rest well, titan.

What is psychodrama?

One of my favorite genres, though it doesn’t formally exist as far as I know, I call psychodrama: a person working through their own (or someone else’s) mind, memory, or imagination, made into “real” places or people. (“Real,” for the purposes of this essay, means, “must be dealt with and taken seriously.”) ( Read more... )

Current Mood: I DID IT
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/26966.html

lb_lee

Two bits of news!

First of all, we will be presenting a shortened form of our many-selved history lecture (along with, by request, a brief talk about how we came to do what we do and what it entails) at a little trauma and dissociation conference, from 3-7 pm on Friday, April 3, at Franklin Patterson Hall at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.

The second thing is, the essay I owe y’all will likely be late. Sorry guys. Ny died, Meagan got convicted of first-degree bullshit, this month has been challenging.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/26860.html

lb_lee

minoanmiss, AKA Ny, AKA my friend who died earlier this month, is having a fanfic commentathon thrown in her honor for June. If you want to participate or know details, please check out https://www.tumblr.com/rubybweek

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/26327.html

lb_lee

Rogan:

hungryghosts nerd-sniped me with, of course, multi etymology! Specifically, an anthology that looked like it might contradict my previous posts on the history of the use of "system" in plural space!, Richard P. Kluft was the editor; it's Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality from 1985!

( Interestingly enough, Kluft himself never uses the term in the book! He might've picked it up from other writers in this book, maybe? Would have to read more of his work to be sure, which... I am in no hurry to do. )

Current Mood: geeky
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/25749.html

lb_lee

Someone I knew from my North Texas days, Meagan Morris, is one of the folks arrested in the Prairieland debacle, which I only just learned about. She is facing minimum ten years in prison (as a trans woman, in Texas) for... I can’t even figure out what exactly she’s supposed to have done!

I’ve been on an antifa watchlist since before COVID because I went to a protest wielding a sign covered in penises and got quoted by USA Today. I guess I’m a terrorist now.

I’ll be at the protest tomorrow. Fuck this bullshit.

EDIT: okay, as far as I can tell, Meagan was convicted for going to an anti-ICE protest (“riot”), helping others there (“providing material support to terrorists,” now that Trump has declared antifascists terrorists), and using fireworks there (“use and carry an explosive” and “conspiracy to use and carry an explosive”).

She is facing 10-60 years in prison as a trans woman for being an antifascist and having fireworks. That’s terrorism now. That’s hitting people I KNOW. (Or knew.) This is where I used to LIVE.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/25563.html

who_is_page

I don't know if there's anything I can say about the Prairieland outcome that hasn't been said already. The fact that owning literature--specifically owning zines--can net you a terrorism charge and prison sentence of 10 to 60 years is... Unfathomable to me. Terrifying, as a zinester who creates and distributes both fiction and non-fiction. To see zines publicly redefined as insurrectionist materials in connection to terrorism on a government website makes my head spin.

The whole trial was a sham. A mistrial filed on the first day because of a fucking T-shirt? People convicted of terrorism when they weren't even at the protest in question, instead just because they know the people who were, they're against fascism, and they had spooky scary anarchist literature? Claiming anti-ICE protests are terrorism or that anti-fascists are a terrorist organization at all is beyond the pale. "Attempted murder" charges my whole ass, and using black clothing and the use of Signal as proof of a crime doesn't pass the sniff test at all. Our country is worse than a joke, because the incompetence is intentional and part of the design.

I'm wearing my "let's make zines" shirt today. There are zine meetups soon and I want to make something talking about this for them, because people in my community need to know and I'm going to explode if I don't do something, but it's such a huge, ugly pill to swallow. I feel more now than ever that I need to learn Esperanto, given the anti-fascist ideals it represents and the benefits to being able to communicate in a global lang. It's also nice middle finger to the fact that fash tried to stamp Esperantists out once and failed. And honestly? I think not talking in English would make me feel a lot safer tbh. Maybe I'll pick up Toki Pona after, too.

I think this just all goes to show that if the US government wants to lock you away, they'll make up and legitimize any reason to do so. Doesn't matter if you're actually guilty of a crime or not. Which we all already knew, but is still eternally devastating.

lb_lee posting in

pluralstories

"Slip into the thoughts of the best person who ever lived, even Saint Thomas Aquinas, for instance, just to pick an absolutely terrific person you'd think had a mind so clean you could eat off it (to paraphrase my mother), and when you come out--take my word for it--you'd want to take a long, intense shower in Lysol."

Blurb: An assistant DA asks her telepathic friend to look into the mind of a serial killer she swears is innocent. He's not sure he believes her, but the case takes a turn he truly doesn't expect.

Why is it worth your time?: This is a story where telling too much would ruin the experience. Suffice to say, it has breathtaking twists and a trickster hero who's not necessarily always pleasant, but magnificent to watch. We started this story not sure if we would like it, and by the time we finished, we felt humbled by how satisfying we found the climax.

Plural/1+ Tags: abuse intermediate focus, bodyhopping, closeting, setting-specific type, switching

Content Warnings: contain SPOILERS; see comments. It is not spoilers, though, to say that HEINOUS crimes are a major plot point in this book, and they are touched upon just enough to be evocative and unclean to hear about.

Accessibility Notes: Harlan Ellison is EXTREMELY famous and this novella got nominated for a bunch of awards, so this is a comparatively easy work to find. Available in... well, all of these collections, in hardback, paperback, ebook, audiobook, German, Serbian, and French.

lb_lee

Rogan: I guess, if I had to summarize my feelings about labels, any kind of identity label, it’d be this: labels are created for people; people are not created to fit them.

A label describes, but it shouldn’t define. If it strangles you, ditch it. Even if you can’t avoid other people slapping it on you, you don’t have to make THEIR mistake part of YOUR identity. (Sadly, uprooting nasty brainweeds like that is rarely as simple as just saying no. You may end up having to know your enemy, do way more research, and think way more about it than you’d like, just to pull up all them runners. It’s worth it, though, to be free!)

Whatever label you choose, hold it loosely. Don’t death-grip it, or you’re priming yourself for a total identity collapse if/when you change... and change is the only constant. Let yourself grow. Let yourself be playful about what you call yourself and why; we call ourself a “multivarious cyborg” and it’s a typo! We named ourself Loony-brain thinking this was just an embarrassing stage we were going through, and now we own it! We went from soulbonder to natural multiple to DID to “yes and” multi. Maybe one day, we’ll even be singlet again, or something else entirely!

Knowing your label is not the same as knowing yourSELF. There’s no linguistic shortcut for that work. Nobody can do it for you, and that’s good news: it puts the power in YOUR hands.

Use it well, and don’t hang on so hard.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/24563.html

lb_lee

EDIT: found typos and formatting errors that somehow escaped all previous read-throughs. Will edit and replace. -_-

Hey, so... since we got a printer, and since our shoulder and eyeballs are increasingly reluctant to let us read long things on the computer, we've taken to slapping together little zines for our personal enjoyment of our favorite stuff. We also use them to fool around with typography and stuff. You know, just make fun little things.

And then we were like, "Hey... what if we shared some of these?"

So here's our newest fun thing: my love is strange: an anthology of eight hundred years of unusual care. It's just a commemoration of being together in ways my current society would like to pretend doesn't exist and never did. Alt-texted, illustrated with pictures from the public domain. Table of contents:

( I wasn't joking about it covering a swathe of eight hundred years by the way. )

Current Mood: exhausted
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/24022.html

lb_lee

Winner of the 2026 fan poll! All text under this is text-only transcription of the comic.

( No Sneaks were involved in this sneak attack. )

Current Mood: happy
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/23710.html

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Rei Ayanami

April 2026

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Page generated 2026-Apr-03, Friday 08:10

Rei Ayanami

Reading

Essay: Psychodrama and Realitymashing

Plural History in Amherst

Ny Bweek

I Still Say MPD Multis Don't Own "System"

Meagan Morris

Prairieland Thoughts (Vent)

Mefisto in Onyx, by Harlan Ellison (sci-fi novella, 1993)

On Labels

Zine: my love is strange

Comic: Sneak Attack!

Profile

April 2026

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