#Also we've seen Fight Club and similar we know evil alter ego trope we're just so DONE with it as a whole

[queer-omens-in-the-archives]

On the use of the “violent alter ego” trope in Jonny Sims’ book “Thirteen Storeys”

This is a rant that’s been marinating in our brain for a while, about how Thirteen Storeys is part of an unfortunate trend of “excellent singlet writer, influenced by pop culture representations of what “multiple consciousnesses in one body” looks like, writes an explicit “multiple consciousnesses” experience as a harmful and offensive stereotype, even as they – clearly on accident – write extremely accurate portrayals of plural experiences... in other, non-explicitly “multiple-consciousnesses” areas of their work”.

You won’t be lost if you haven’t read the book, but proceed with caution – major spoilers ahead for chapters 4 and 10. CW for non-detailed descriptions of violence regarding chapter 10.

A few terminology notes before we start:

By “plurality”, we mean “the experience of multiple consciousnesses existing in the same physical body”. A “plural”, or “system”, or “plural system” is one such group of consciousnesses sharing the same body. A “singlet” is someone whose consciousness is the sole consciousness in their body.

Plurality does not automatically mean Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which is a clinical diagnosis for a specific set of symptoms, not just the mere presence of plurality. We, personally, are plural without DID.

We use "system mate” and “brainmate” as a more inclusive synonym for “alter”, which is clinical terminology that many plurals reject.

For those of you who haven’t read Thirteen Storeys: it’s a horror anthology about a haunted building, where each chapter has a different narrator, and the pieces assemble slowly and subtly until the last chapter brings all the plot threads together.

---

Chapter 4 is told from the point of view of a little girl, Anna, who has an imaginary friend named Penny. That immediately pinged our plural radar, because “weirdly consistent imaginary friends” was how we first conceptualised our plurality to ourselves. We thought, “if there’s going to be an evil alter ego in this novel, pretty sure it’s going to be Penny in this chapter!”

Witnessing Anna and Penny’s friendship only convinced us more. The way Anna’s parents can’t see Penny and Anna knows they can’t, but she still treats Penny as real, no matter what they say; the way Anna and Penny interact and talk to each other; what they do together and how they do it; how Penny is sometimes there, sometimes not – all of this resonated with us. It’s how we, as several people sharing a body, experience the world.

We later learned that Penny is not Anna’s brain-mate, but a ghost haunting her. No evil alter ego trope here! We were a little disappointed because this would have been a legitimately delightful depiction of plurality, compared to how the “evil alter ego” trope is usually wielded.

 ---

Alas, the trope shows up in a much more unpleasant form in a later chapter. This time we did not see it coming, because – as usual with this trope – it did not in any way look like our actual lived experience, which the first of two problems we have.

Chapter 10 tells the story of Jason, who works as a concierge and has a co-worker named Max. To the reader, it looks at first like they exist in different bodies. Among other things, Jason remembers Max teaching him how to do his job; we see Jason talking to Max in front of other people; we see Max talking to other people in Jason’s presence; and Jason sometimes watches Max through surveillance screens.

Now, knowing that the chapter was told from Jason’s point of view and that Jonny Sims often uses unreliable narrators, perhaps not noticing earlier was on us for not being observant enough. There are enough little clues that you can see the reveal coming, but these clues did not ping our plural radar the way Anna and Penny did, because the clues that are relevant to the “violent alter ego” trope are so far removed from our actual experience of sharing a brain and body.

For instance, there’s no way, internally, that we could mistake “someone inside our brain is doing something outside and I’m watching them do the thing” for “I am literally seeing my brain-mate do something on a surveillance screen in a different room”. Even those of our plural acquaintances with stronger dissociative barriers than ours usually “only” experience amnesia when their brain-mates control the body. Full hallucinations of one’s brain-mates, while possible, are not in any way a common plural experience.

 ---

Coming back to the story: Max is very verbally aggressive, which Jason tolerates because he’s not part of the groups Max usually criticises; and one of Max’s defining traits is a baton he always keeps on hand. Jason considers Max a friend, until Max becomes physically violent and beats up a sixteen-year-old, before turning on Jason and beating him up as well.

After that happens, the ~twist reveal~ is that Max and Jason were in the same body all along, and Jason was “actually” the one doing all the violence.

And here lies our other problem.

We understand that Jonny Sims uses the “violent alter ego” trope to make several important points about not enabling other people’s violence; about complicity through silence; about radicalisation and the perpetuation of white supremacy; all topics that absolutely deserve to be broached.

Years ago, we were friends with a guy very like Max (that friendship has since ended, thankfully in less bloody circumstances), and we rationalised it to ourselves in eerily similar ways to how Jason rationalises Max’s behaviour; so we could tell where that was going to go, and we definitely enjoyed the commentary there. There is valuable input there.

But plurality is not a purely symbolic experience for singlet authors to wield. For many of us it’s our lived reality, and there is nothing symbolic about it. There would have been ways to make the exact same points without using a trope that is actively detrimental to plural folks, especially plurals with dissociative disorders.

Besides, while some plural systems do have violent members, these members are usually violent to others in the system, not to people outside of it; and, like so many other demographics often demonised in popular culture, plural systems are vastly more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. We’ve had enough Splits, and it’s time to start writing better depictions of plurality.

---

It especially hurt to see from Jonny Sims, a writer who we can generally trust not to use neurodivergence and mental illness as a source of horror.

It shows, in that his portrayal of the “violent alter ego” trope is still the least bad we’ve seen. He never makes an explicit link to any form of plurality (when others have no qualms about namedropping DID for shock value) and doesn’t use the trope to make “crazy people” a source of horror (Max’s existence and evil-ness is clearly tied to the building’s weirdness, not at all inherent to Jason’s psyche). We can appreciate that.

On its own, it does not mean this is a good use of the “violent alter ego” trope.

We would be a lot more comfortable with it if Jonny had ever written other plural characters, who just happen to be plural. But he has never – to our knowledge – written any plural character whose existence doesn’t rely on that trope; never once a single character whose plurality is depicted as a neutral or positive thing.

Unfortunately, Anna and Penny were a much more accurate and compassionate portrayal of what our lived experience of sharing a body looks like, than Jason and Max who were explicitly shown to have that experience.

 ---

As a conclusion of sorts:

If you’re going to write something about “multiple consciousnesses in one body”, no matter the in-world justification, be aware that plural folks in your readership will likely identify with it, and will definitely notice if you only ever write “multiple consciousnesses sharing a body” as a horrible thing.

Do your research, consult with plural folks – many of us are willing to talk about our experiences, if you’re coming with good faith questions.

Here are our three favourite resources on plurality, if you don’t know where to start (each of them links to more resources):

https://morethanone.info : Plurality 101.

The Layman’s Guide to Multiplicity : an older resource, last updated 2004. Some of the terminology is outdated compared to current usage, but the contents are still relevant today. We especially enjoy the way it debunks most common myths about plurality.

The Plurality Playbook : meant “to help employees and managers understand dissociative disorders, as well as plurality as a whole”. Most of the guide is about plurality in a workplace setting, then the FAQ section at the end touches on more general topics.

Thanks for reading all the way through!