This is from a story I'm beta reading, so it's not publicly available. This is a fantasy, and the main character met someone who told them that they're plural. The main character thinks about how they've heard this is a thing, and mentions various ways this can be a thing:
- A god hanging out with you in your body
- A spell "gone wrong" (whatever that means)
- Your sense of self is broken because of magic and/or grief
- A soul of someone else joins yours in order to protect you from abuse.
And I just...don't know how to feel about this? I'm also a fantasy writer, and I've unintentionally put in some stuff that has to do with plurality, but it's more about headspace and memory problems than "there are multiple dogs in this hot car." And I do want to write about plurality in a fantasy setting at some point.
But saying that plurality only exists because of magic feels...not the best? Can't people just be plural for regular, normal reasons and not fantastical ones?
idk I'm torn I feel like part of this is "oh this is cool I want to see this kind of thing in fantasy" but another part is "is this going to make people think that this isn't a thing that happens in real life and is just made up." Which is already a thing we gotta deal with because of crime/thriller stories.
Of course, how I give this person the feedback without outing myself is an entirely seperate issue, but I'll figure something out. But I need to figure out how I actually feel about it first. And I do want to hear what other people have to say and what they think to see if I'm missing something.
