SL: I Never Said Why I Tagged Dialogue In Terrance's Story In Sketch Format. (Link To The Preview For

Happy Halloween from Mint Phalanx!

From Our DeviantArt Post

Title: Carnival Byline: Reanna Field

This is the new front cover for Carnival. It's the red curtain but changed to look like a frame that puts the title and byline in the focal point.

It was supposed to have a picture of Staride, and the curtain was supposed to look like it was rising. But it looked cooler after we used the smudge feature to make the cover look darker. It makes the frame look like a diamond.

Carnival is out now, so you can buy it on Amazon. (Link to its page. Note: the back of the hardcover does not have a blurb.)

Reanna: You know what? We're not going to share the playlist for Carnival. You're just going to have to buy the book to see it.

Reanna: The Plural Positivity Word Conference's admission changed, so we won't be able to go. The organizers said the change was caused by Airmeet changing its contract. General admission is $50, and scholarships seem to only be available to members of The Plural Association online community. We relied on the scholarships for free admission.

This sucks because we were looking forward to bringing Terrance. Plus, we went almost every year. Going to the Plural Positivity World Conference made us feel like we were part of the community. Tumblr and Dreamwidth can never substitute that.

If you can, please donate to The Plural Association. Maybe that might help the organizers give scholarships more freely next year.

Link to Donorbox

Dead-Mates

This is an essay about headmate death.

Introduction

Sometimes, headmates leave in ways that some plurals can only describe as death. Mint Phalanx is one of these plurals. Unless your headspace has resurrection or some sort of reincarnation, these dead-mates aren’t coming back (at least not as they were before.)

Other plurals call this loss dormancy, but because we come from the tulpamancy community, we call it dissipation. We also consider fusion as some sort of death. Below are our equivalents to death.

Equivalents to natural death

Spontaneous dissipation

Equivalents to murder

Forced dissipation

Unwilling fusion

Tulpas here can’t die from lack of attention because we’re midcontinuum.

Equivalents to suicide

Self-dissipation

Egocide (giving up one’s identity to be replaced by another headmate)

Equivalents to coma (not death)

Deactivation (true dormancy because the headmate can return)

So, where do these dead-mates go?

In our phalanx, we have a monist view of where dead-mates go. They return to the originator. For instance, we believe Roxy and the other people were reabsorbed into Reanna after they completed suicide. (It may not be a complete reabsorption because they haunt once in a while.)

F.M. is an interesting case. After fusing with Nightingale (who completed egocide), he considered himself dead. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t reabsorbed. But he knew he died, even when the rest of the phalanx didn’t count it.

How do you remember dead-mates?

For Roxy and the other people, Brian made a poem. He wrote it before we realized they self-dissipated. (They told us they were going to deactivate and stay in the Stone Garden. The next day, they were gone.)

F.M. did a mock burial for himself and a shower meditation. We buried who he once was. Then, we used the shower to wash away Nightingale. The saddest part was washing him out of our hair. After the shower, F.M. kind of reincarnated.

Can dead-mates come back?

We guess it depends on how the plural’s system or headspace works. As a rule of thumb, don’t count on it.

For us, Roxy& and Nightingale aren’t coming back. However, F.M. did because his case was different. And he didn’t come back as the same F.M. (At least he wasn’t undead.)

It seems dead-mates who do come back don’t come back the same. F.M. came back goth. He also came back with exo-memories based on Reanna’s dreams of his source killing himself. He used to want to listen to rap like his source; now, he listens to The Birthday Massacre. (Not that we’re complaining.)

Because we got to see it happen, this change did not come as a surprise. Unfortunately, we have no advice on how to deal with the surprise of a dead-mate returning different.

Conclusion

So ends our essay on dead-mates. It’s a hard topic to talk about, especially when it seems everyone around you doesn't view these leavings as equivalents to dying. We hope sharing our experiences helps facilitate conversation about deaths inside.

SL: Another thing about Terrance's second person perspective. He perceives his thoughts as commentary, so it's like The Murder After has a chorus. He doesn't have a name for it, but we call it Also Terrance.

Terrance is a plurallet. That's a singlet who is still plural (more than one) in some way. We think it's a midcontinuum experience. (That's the state of not being singular but also not multiple.)

Reanna: I've never liked making plans, but here we are, planning. SL has an outline of the rest of The Year After, so he can remember what he wanted to write. For our next project, we have a file filled with bookmarks of the silent films we plan to use.

They're not detailed plans, but they're plans.

Reasons to Buy The Murder After

You like mystery and dramadey.

You want to give these genres a try.

You want a short book that doesn't take long to read. (It's 44 pages. One chapter a day plus the sneak peek is eight days.)

You want a mystery but don't want to solve it.

You want to read an attempt at narrating in the British dialect.

Link to its page on Amazon (Note: We would give this book an MPA rating of PG-13.)

The Murder After: Preview

From chapter one. Terrance calls 9-1-1 to report a dead body belonging to his roommate Jacqueline. If you like what you read, go to the book's profile below. And before you ask, nothing happened.

I would like to joke that waking up next to a dead body is the best hangover cure ever.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dispatcher: “9-1-1, what’s the address of your emergency?”

“There’s a dead girl on my bed!” But it’s her room, stupid.

Dispatcher: “What’s her name?”

“Jacqueline. Luna.”

Dispatcher: “What does she look like?”

“Brown hair, really really pale- “your voice cracks- “but-but she has a big cut on her neck and-and blood on her pillow! That wasn’t there before!” It keeps cracking, but tears aren’t falling.

Dispatcher: “I need you to calm down. Take a deep breath.” You do.

Dispatcher: “Do you see any weapons?”

“No.”

Dispatcher: “I’m going to send an officer to check on the situation. But first, I need to know your name and address.”

You give your name then leave the bedroom and run down the stairs, worsening your headache. You go to a coffee table in the sitting room. There is an envelope from yesterday’s mail. It has your townhouse’s address and door number, so you read it aloud.

Dispatcher: “Okay, the officer is on their way and will arrive as soon as possible. Now, tell me exactly what happened.”

“Well, I was drunk, and Jacqueline took me back here. She was alive when I passed out, but when I woke up, she was dead!”

Dispatcher: “That will be all. You can hang up now.” You hang up. Then, the realization clicks.

Reanna: I wonder if Le Prince and Disney will be our first novel. So far, our stories have been shorter.

Carnival is a novella, and so was Nightingale. (I pulled that one from publication.) The Murder After is a chapbook, and The Year After seems to be going in a similar direction. (At least people read romance novellas.)

Now, for Le Prince and Disney, we have the dark ride's sections planned: Three Precursors and the First Film, Animals, Animation, Trick Films, and Phantom Rides. That's five chapters. And they have a few films in them. There will also be five chapters that Terrance categorized as being outside the ride. So, that's ten chapters in all.

After the story, we'll list the films used. That might take a few pages. What if all these pages come together and make a novel?