WELCOME TO THE RAINY CITY
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Welcome to my paracosm page.
I'm a 30something immersive/maladaptive daydreamer. I made this site to talk about something very special to me: my paracosm, the rainy city.
I used to be really embarrassed to talk about my paracosm in public but that lead to dark places because it's really important to me and I want to share it with people! Cringe culture is dead and I want to let go of any residual embarrassment so I built [am building] this website to give people a little peek into my inner/other world.
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Is the rainy city a soulscape or a paracosm? Yes.
Links marked with a will take you outside of pine island projects.
PARACOSM
setting
Setting information is divided into diegetic & exegetic .
diegetic
The rainy city is Mariel Boatwright's paracosm/headspace, made into a physical place with a combination of math and magic. The cost of living there is the color of your eyes: sooner or later, everyone's eyes turn monochrome gray.
Mariel lives with her family(ies) in a little cape house in the northwest corner of the city. The front door can, theoretically, open into any world. It is connected directly to redacted but it is possible to open it to anywhere.
Visitors to the rainy city enter through a door at the public library, down by the beach, but Mariel's friends can go right in through her front door. Sometimes strangers wander in along the train tracks to nowhere or, in Vee's case, fall through the fabric of reality out of the sky.
exegetic
I'm a Lewisian worldbuilder, which is to say, I'll throw in everything but the kitchen sink with little regard for "realism." The rainy city operates on the rule of cool.
RESIDENTS
Italics indicated a day-tripper .Yes, I am a day-tripper in my own paracosm.
- Mariel (Aldreich) Boatwright (she/ immortal - elf)
- Tristan Boatwright (he/ 33)
- Thea Boatwright (she/ 12)
- T.J. Boatwright (he/ 12)
- Loren "Lorie" Aldreich (he/ immortal - elf)
- Kristopher Aldreich (they/ 20)
- Blue Aldreich (they/ 20)
- Sarah Cohen (she/ never ask a lady her age)
- Ari Cohen (she/they/ 19)
- Benji Cohen (he/ 15)
- Rose North (she/ 30+)
- dæmon: Polaris
Rose is my parame — she is literally me with a different name and pronouns to differentiate between me/parame. When I first started immersive daydreaming, I was using the name "Rose North" and my pronouns were "she/her." I experience her in first person; I am her/Rose is me.
- Jasper Sloan (he/ 36)
- dæmon: Xenia
- Vee Zając (e/ 25?)
non-residents
- dæmon: Polaris
- Elouan (he/ immortal - vampire)
Elouan livees in a world diagonally adjacent to this one, connected through the rainy city but he does not live (and is not welcome) there.
- Emily Chopra (she/ 20)
Emily is one of Kristopher's college friends but she comes to visit the rainy city often.
Boatwright family
Aldreich family
Cohen family
&c.
Some of these characters show up, in disguise, in my fiction and poetry but these works are "non-canonical" to my paracosm and not part of the story continuity.
TROPES
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
SOUNDTRACK
Like many immersive/maladaptive daydreamers, music is a cue for interacting with my paracosm and soulbonds. I've made playlists associated with some of the people who live there:
Mariel Boatwright
Kristopher & Blue Aldreich
STORY NOTES
Story notes are posted to my junk drawer journal, pineisland in the 'verse: rainy city tag.
INFO
general information
COMING SOON
about me
L?/C? G(bX sM+/F+/X+) F(A&/D+)
O(cS+e/Ba-&/C+/?) Sp(H+/Hm+) I?*/T-
soulbond code
I'm a soulbonder (but not plural ):
soulbond describes the common experience of a writer who finds that characters can take on a life of their own, sharing a connection and communicating with the author.The rainy city is my other/inner world or soulscape and neurodivergent special interest.
Fanlore: Soulbond (Fictive Presence)
my history with paracosms, soulbonds, etc.
The rainy city started getting built in 2006 or so, though Mariel had been around since 2001 and I had been Meep since 2003 - but my history with imaginary friends &/ soulbonds goes back as far as I can remember: some of my earliest friends were what I would later call "soulbonds," characters from books I read that walked, fully formed, into my mind and stayed with me long after I finished reading. (I have vivid memories of biking around with Molly McIntire, the American Girl character.)
I don't take any of this too seriously because I was in a soulbonding cult a long time ago. It's not uncommon .
site info
paracosm v1 .s o u l // whispers is named after the early '00s soulbonding info site, .s o u l // whispers
LINKS
info desk
What is soulbonding? &c.fictionkind Note: Community for soulbonders, otherkin (including fictionkin), &c. Dreamwidth account required to join.
pluralstories otherworld
From Fiction
lb_lee's Essays Index
other worlds
These links are a mix of paracosms, inner/other/secondary worlds, &/ soulbond/gateway/plural systems! By including them here, I make no claim about the veracity of their experiences or any assumption about the terminology they use to describe those experiences.
Interstellar System
Numbers Story
Para/Cosm
Penwrythe's Dreams
The Black Sands
anomaly.monster's "Exoworlds"
archived sites
These links have some historical definitions, theories, etc., as well as personal experiences of soulbonding in the early '00s.
I soulbond, do you? (2001)
Despirit SoulBonding (2001)
.s o u l // whispers (archive / PDF text copy ) (2004)
Shining Half: What is soulbonding? (2004)
"The Trinity" (archive ) Note: original fiction about a team of soulbonders escaping a government experiment, written by the same person who ran Shining Half, above. (2002)
Nothing Network's shared worlds (2004)
Thank you to Irkeneon's soulbonding sites archive for help finding some of these!
scholarly works
Scholarly works about soulbonds, paracosms, otherkin, and related concepts.