#alterhuman writing challenge

[mountain--bones]

4/11: They Lament, But We Rejoice

(Some personal ramblings which also can function as day 1 of the Sol System's Alterhuman Writing Challenge!)

While I was showering yesterday I, as I often do, got lost in thought. I was thinking about myself and the path my life has taken, and how I've learned to relate to myself in a holistic way – flaws and all.

As I was thinking, I remembered some lyrics to a song I'd heard, but I couldn't remember the rest of the song or what it was called.

"'Cause when I saw my demons I knew them well and welcomed them"

This idea resonates with me a lot. Partially, it resonates in terms of my personality; I try my very best to accept the flaws in myself, and find the value in what they represent and connect to in my holistic self.

But, even more so, it's very easy to see my nonhuman self in this. I've come to understand that I am, at my core, something monstrous. I've related that inner, spiritual self to many different things before – a deity, an eldritch beast, an ancient spirit – but one of the first things I found myself thinking of it as was a demon.

I didn't think of it as demonic in a religious sense; it was more that it struck me as deeply, almost intrinsically adversarial to many of the things which are valued in the mainstream spirituality of western culture. It was chaos, animality, instinct, decomposition, death. And so: a demon.

When I found my demon, I knew it well, and welcomed it.

Given the melody of the song, it was pretty clear that the intended message was not one of radical reclamation of a self that would conventionally be considered abhorrent. So then I was curious – what's it really about?

And that's what made this so impactful and fascinating to me.

The song is The Lament of Eustace Scrubb, by the Oh Hellos.

Eustace Scrubb. If there's any character that stands out as an impactful early influence on my nonhumanity, it's Eustace Scrubb. But what's funny is how for me (and I'm sure a lot of other nonhuman folks), Eustace Scrubb is a character who represented an enigma – a contradiction to something which I so fervently craved.

For those who aren't familiar, Eustace Scrubb is a character from the Chronicles of Narnia whose selfishness led him to be turned into a dragon. And he hates it. He's so miserable about being a dragon instead of the boy he's meant to be. I couldn't understand it as a kid. Why would he hate being a dragon? Why would he want to be human?

The Lament of Eustace Scrubb is a song which was symbolically inspired by the struggle of this character – a lament about the loss of some valuable, sacred aspect of humanity, beneath layers of flaws and faults.

Here's the full lyrics.

Brother, forgive me We both know I'm the one to blame 'Cause when I saw my demons I knew them well and welcomed them I knew them well and welcomed them

But I'll come around I'll come around

Father, have mercy I know that I have gone astray 'Cause when I saw my reflection It was a stranger beneath my face It was a stranger beneath my face

But I'll come around I'll come around Someday

When I touch the water They tell me I could be set free

It's very easy, given context, to see the Christian themes here – especially given than the Chronicles of Narnia are also a deeply, explicitly Christian work.

But that just makes it more interesting how, reading these lyrics in the way I naturally want to in spite of the context, I find a meaning in them that's entirely opposite to what's intended – one that's positive and healing.

When I saw my demons, I knew them well and welcomed them.

When I saw the parts of myself that were unacceptable in society's eyes, instead of shunning them, I reached out. I offered them a welcoming hand. To embrace myself in a genuine way has always been more important than following along with what I'm told is "right".

Brother, forgive me – humanity, forgive me – because when I saw the monster inside me, I turned from humanity without a second thought, and without a single regret. The "demon" in me opened my eyes, set me free from rules and structures and beliefs which I never belonged or fit within.

I chose the monster over my humanity. I don't need humanity to forgive me for that, but there's something striking about the idea of regret. Not the regret of my path, or who I am; just a quiet regretfulness to betray something which utterly needed to be betrayed.

'Cause when I saw my reflection It was a stranger beneath my face

My reflection shows a human face. The stranger underneath – the self that I had never been allowed to be. It was a stranger to me, at first. I didn't know myself, because I had never been taught how to. I'd been taught how to speak and how to act, and all that ever amounted to was layers and layers of masks, obscuring the heart of me underneath them.

The grief here, for me, isn't that the stranger is inhuman. The grief is that the deepest part of me, that lay beneath the facade, was a stranger. That I didn't recognise my true self underneath, because it was hidden by the body showed in my reflection, and all the different ways I'd been taught to act as I "should" in a body like this.

When I touch the water They tell me I could be set free

A reflection in a pool. The surface shows a human face, but there's something stranger underneath it.

Touch the water. Break the reflection. Free the you which you've never let yourself be.

See what I'm saying here?

It's striking because this is so completely not what is intended by the lyrics of this song, and yet it forms such a meaningful picture of what nonhumanity is to me. It's striking because, like the story of Eustace Scrubb, there's joy and freedom and actualisation found in a concept that is presented as, and intended to be, something horrible.

The inhumanity is supposed to be a curse.

But for me, embracing my nonhuman self – welcoming my demons, the stranger in my reflection – was a release from a curse that I didn't know I was burdened with.

There's something deeply poignant in here for me. Something which felt worth writing about.

[who-is-page]

Greener Grasses and Fossilized Paw Prints: Where (and Why) the Greymuzzles Go

Author: Page Type: Essay Words: 1,229 Summary: Page's personal experience as an adult canine psychopomp, and how it applies to the dearth of older otherkin in general alterhuman community spaces. Answering the question of: where are all the older otherkin? And why do people always seem to eventually leave? Author's Note: The term "greymuzzle" is used within the scope of this essay's title to reference older otherkin who have been active in alterhuman spaces for extended periods of time (a nod to the word's original definition within furry spaces), and is not referring to greymuzzle's most frequent definition in alterhuman groups as a community-given term denoting an individual with noteworthy activity and contribution.

[Part of the Sol System’s Alterhuman Writing Project for 2024. If you don’t want to see these posts, block the tag #inkedclaws]

When I was a young otherkin, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I found it difficult to conceptualize why there was such a dearth of older community members, especially those 30 and above. I could understand the theoretics behind the disparity, of course— social media platforms, as we all know, tend to skew towards younger audiences due to generational differences in technological proficiency/preference. Established adults with working lives and families don’t necessarily have the same amount of free-time that young adults or teenagers do, either. But even with all that taken into account, it seemed like the number of otherkin aged 13-21 in comparison to the number of otherkin aged 30+ was less a gradual decline and more an unfathomable chasm of difference. The community had been around for decades at that point, with plenty of ghost town groups and abandoned forums to demonstrate that fact… and unless the Veil was secretly age-restricted, those people hadn’t up and disappeared into thin air. So where were people going? And, more importantly, why?

It was a question I’d never been able to answer in a way that felt satisfactory as a teenager and later as a young adult. But now, feeling the call of the void myself, I finally do have an answer and an understanding that I never could have achieved five or ten years ago: why the fuck would I be online when I could be playing video games or having sex with my hot partners instead?

It’s a crude and simplistic way to put it, but just hear me out. As an established adult, I have access to funds, stability, and freedom that I never had as a teenager or even as a young adult who still felt at the mercy of an uncaring universe’s slightest whims. My support systems in high school and college suffered from the same sort of financial and social precariousness that come with the territory of navigating the world as a young adult, but my support systems now are made up of other established adults; while I’ll never say that everything is always perfect for all of us, it’s much easier to get on your feet and stay on your feet when your arms are linked with people who are more firmly rooted in one way or another. I have access to a type of freedom that I could never have imagined as a teenager, because it was literally outside of the range of what was possible for me and my peers.

And more than just that freedom is the fact that I, as an adult, have a family! “Having a family” has, in my experience, some shitty, heteronormative connotations. As a teen, I always took it at face value as juggling bills, kids, white picket fence, other boring responsibilities that eat up your time, etc. But as an adult, now I know that having a family can be anything you make of it, and I make it extremely, obnoxiously queer. In my case, it’s living with people who understand me on a deep, foundational level, and who love me not in spite of who I am but because of who (and what) I am. It’s not passively being around those people; it’s actively, enthusiastically spending time with them because it’s fun and because I love them too and because they’re my people and I picked them and they picked me. As a kid, I’d never consciously recognized the difference between people you’re passively around because you have to be versus people you intentionally choose to be around and who intentionally choose you right back. In part, this is because as a kid you often don’t get the option to make that choice, while as an adult you have more control over your environment. Too often online environments feel like the former, rather than the latter, even if being within them is, technically, a choice. But here, now, I have people in my household who will go out of their way to intersect their daily lives with mine and ask, “You wanna walk to the park?” “You wanna grab a coffee?” or “You HAVE to see this YouTube essay I’m watching and no I don’t care that it’s 4 hours long on a topic you know nothing about, just trust me!!!!!” and that’s such a radically different and wonderful experience.

As an adult, I live with a group of people who make being alive more fun than I could have ever imagined. I have the ability to make my own fun in ways I couldn’t as a kid, for a variety of reasons. I don’t have to feel like an anxious purse chihuahua 24/7, agonizing over my existence and every possible thing that is liable to go wrong if I frivolously spend money on so much of the thought of a hot coffee. And I finally, finally understand why older otherkin disappear off the face of the Earth. It’s because being an adult nonhuman-identifying person is amazing in a way almost no one ever talks about: the euphoric experience of being known and loved, and of knowing and loving yourself.

There are so many exciting and wonderful things I could be doing in the meatspace with people I have actively chosen to spend my life with, and who fully accept and understand me as someone who’s queer, plural, and nonhuman. There’s so many enriching ways I could be engaging with my hobbies, the environment around me, and my local community. With this all in mind, why the fuck would I ever be in public online spaces where people try to argue with me about whether or not I exist, or if my experiences are real, or if I’m using the right and latest lingo to describe my experiences? Why would I subject myself to that when I could just roll my eyes, close the laptop, and go be a beloved canine psychopomp in the comfort of my werehouse instead?

That’s the crux of it. As adults with families and support networks, we have the option to not subject ourselves to the morifying ordeal of being known by asshole strangers online if we don’t want to. We can stick to just our families and our friend groups, and we will still have people around us who understand and who acknowledge and interact with our alterhumanity. The alterhuman community isn’t the only or even most important place for being our authentic selves; rather, it takes a backseat in the day-to-day life. It’s still something that’s fulfilling and worthwhile to engage with, but only on our own terms (terms that are quickly becoming incompatible with the ways Internet culture is evolving). But more often than not, there’s just more fun things to do.

In some ways, it’s kind of a relief to have had this epiphany. People haven’t vanished from alterhuman community spaces because they collectively ‘grew out of it’ like some anti-otherkin insist, or because the various generations of otherkin are so extraordinarily different from one another as to be oil-and-water. People vanish from online alterhuman spaces because offline life as an adult alterhuman is awesome. As an archivist it’s frustrating, but as a nonhuman, I find it a specific type of happiness that’s worth celebrating in its existence and prevalence. It’s an assurance that life only gets better as you get older: isn’t that grand?

[frameacloud]

I just created this! The Alterhuman Writing community account is a place for us to share our essays, poetry, stories, and other original writing about being alterhuman. The November 2024 Alterhuman Writing Challenge inspired the creation of this community account, but it will continue to be a place for posting our writings all around the year. https://alterhuman-writing.dreamwidth.org/

[that-dreaming-dragon]

Media Representation and (a rant on) Draconity

I think it's natural to want to find something within the media that represent and reflects yourself. As a dragon, the option might seem like quite a few within various sources of media, but the realities are that I and my various alterhuman identities are not the typical or commonly seen dragons.

As myself, I'm orange, furred, white feathered wings, yellow horns, and the vibrant red belly. Those are not things you find common in animals, even amongst birds, that's some colors that don't exactly flow together. People drawn inspiration from around their world to create, people are also creature of comfort and habit--with the idea of dragon being "fire breathing, bat winged, scaly lizard" or "scale with mane, elemental control and sometimes deity, serpentine wyrm", and then variations based off of that, perhaps scaled beast with feathery wings, or great furred wyrm with webbed wings and fire breathing. Seriously what is with the fire breathing? Have I mention that I'm a shapeshifting sort of dragon? While that is often tied to the eastern sort of draconic beings, my exact combination of dragons are far and few in between. Even the dutch angel dragon within the furry community has certain limitation and character traits that don't align with me. If I hadn't got turned off by the idea of looking anywhere or being misidentify as a horse, I might have find myself drawn to the dutch angel dragon as a sort of maybe paratype, or just friendly dragons that I share similar traits with. But alas.

Every single piece of media or fictional source that has a representation I can find brings me joy. Games centered on collecting dragons like Flight Rising or Dragon Cave does a great job of acknowledging that diversity. I get especially grumpy when dragon maker only has webbed wings and scaly body. At one point I really did not want to put the 3D dragon maker by Dragonita on my Alterhuman Shifts and Self Discovery Tools guide (ohh, guess I finally got a name). You can call me petty however you want, but I was not very happy of something that denies my existence. I'm a strong advocate for draconic diversity, because I am not alone in being "unusual" sort of dragons. Nobody should feel like this, unseen. Dealing with the constant "he or she" as someone nonbinary is more than enough, thank you very much. I feel like as alterhuman, hell, even just within the confine of draconic community or even smaller the dragonkind community, there should be a sort of basic understanding that "dragon" is a abstract term. Like "what is human", "what is dragon" should be a default and nobody gets to decide who is or isn't dragon. To touch back onto what I wrote on Day 1 of this challenge, alterhumanity is a experience, it is a feeling, it is vague and abstract, it is something you know within your essence, or one day you will awaken to it. A dragon is all of that. I did end up finally putting the 3d builder on my guide. I will still prefer Lukas Sotrmskull's Dragon builder though.

Before I let my thought get away from me, lets talk about my other alterhuman identities.

The other side of the spectrum, when you have a almost exact match in sources that are well known, you end up keep getting mistaken as it. My kardiatype looks very alike to Haku from Spirited Away. It gets frustrating when I bring up my kardiatype, and people immediately go "oh, Haku!" It's the same problem with people seeing my self protrait and call that a horse or a goat. Seriously, is like people don't recognize a basic dragon head shape if it isn't scaled and spiked. Horses are neat, goat is fine, and Haku is a very cool dragon. But my kardiatype was not Haku. I'd argue that he was just your generic Japanese storm dragon that may or may not be local deity. Wild thought huh. I like that I get to see glimpse of that dragon through Haku, but I would really rather not deal with yet another case of misidentification in the form of "close enough". My human english name got enough of that treatment.

Amongst my other draconic identities, I have a vague-flicker of Flammie from the mana series. The vaguetype feeling has components of paratype within, precisely due to myself being the sort of dragon I am. Belly plate aside, Flammie looks very close to me. And with my discovery of how suggestive my wing count may be (currently in shifts of at least 4), Flammie is definitely a big contender for media representation of myself.

When it comes to intensionally created identity, me and Akumu, my headmate/mirror self, collectively linked a vaguetype of Aurelion Sol. Now, Aurelion Sol has nothing alike to me, maybe the color is more align with Akumu's, but generally, the eastern noodle form is my least favorite to partake in. It feels like a responsibility, and things are just heavier in a way when I'm in that form. It doesn't have to make much sense. Perhaps I will delve into this one day. One can argue we formed the link due to our kardiatype. But really, it happened because that's the one dragon we were really drawn to (and attempted to main) while playing League, and well, there were two others who were shyvana and smolder respectively, and we wanted to complete the draconic of LoL set for shits and giggles. There not much need to find a representation, because we are the exact representation from the source. But wait, we identify with the concept stage where people dub "unbound form" of Sol. Whelp, guess we gotta look elsewhere again.

It feels like I'm trying to start a topic and well, rant on draconity got me all over the place.

Sometimes it really is a exercise in patience. The more unique you are, the harder it is to find representation. Wouldn't change myself for the world though, I love my uniqueness, and I appreciate how crazily varied dragons can be. Or any other sort of creatures or identities or experiences. Life is wonderful like that.

[canidbld]

Feraveli: Tiktok and the "Therian Aesthetic"

Content warnings: oveuse of the word aesthetic (chat I am NOT a thesaurus 🙏), general ramble shenanigans, and it takes a bit to get to the point (very sorry)

Words: 1.9k

— Day 2 of Sol's November Writing Challange

Tiktok has been downloaded onto my phone since 2020, and I've been in an off and on dynamic with the app. There were periods where I'll be addicted to scrolling for months and moments where I'll just go cold turkey for equal amounts and in the time I've had the app, there's a lot of things I've learnt like what the app is about, how it works, why the algorithm is the way it is and why trends become trends and the users who make up the app. Not to say I completely understand the app at all, most of my opinion on tiktok are just patterns I've noticed which resulted into an assumed conclusion with no real backing and support other than a "I've had tiktok for 4 years"

In my opinion, Tiktok is an app that encourages consumerism and wants people to conform to a single box label and aesthetic and lifestyle, essentially encouraging you to make yourself a brand and it's because of the way the algorithm works. According to my boyfriend, the more you intensely focus on one certain niche, aesthetic, community or singular type of content, the more your account will be advertised to your desired audience/demographic that post or consume similar content. You can do things like following people who match the "theme" of your account, reposting content similar to what you want to post, liking and commenting on said posts as well and following and using hashtags that connect you to the content you want to make. All these actions, while necessary to build somewhat of a platform on the app, create a bubble at best and an echo chamber at worst. Everything you do on tiktok is anaylsed by the app to curate the "perfect" for you page (FYP) of all your interests and most content creators on tiktok are aware of this, that's why you see people who are stacked with merch of their favorite anime or why there are accounts who just post edits for a single franchise/character or people who post outfits under a single aesthetic.

The more you visually and materially show how dedicated you are to an aesthetic, franchise or community, the more people will see your theme and they'll follow you, want to be and look like you and then start buying products similar to the aesthetic you're advertising.

It's an app that's known to water down sub-cultures and aesthetics to the point that the origins and themes of these concepts become almost obsolete, favoring visual aesthetics over the true meaning of the sub-culture. Goth and Scene, for example, are one of the more obvious examples. Part of the reason sub-cultures with history dating back decades ago get so warped is due to the way the algorithm works and how tiktok and its users profits off of niche aesthetics and communities.

So, what does this have to do with therianthropy?

Tiktok therians have been a bit of a topic in the community. Talks of how tiktok is filled with misinformation and how the therians of tiktok just focus on the visual aspects of therianthropy rather than the experience. I've read from a lot of therians that were active during the 90's and 00's and the 10's that talked about how different therianthropy has evolved since back then when you could connect with other therians through forums and the era of essays that profoundly described their experiences about being a therian and the deeper meaning of what that meant to them.

For tiktok therians, on the surface, it seems the experience of being a therian is branded as making masks and doing quadobics. It's all tiktok constantly regurgitates. The "aesthetic" of being a therian is someone who wears masks and has those clip-on tails. It's being connected to nature and running and frolicking around in pretty meadows and exploring lush dense forests. Its muted greens and earth brown tones. It's the "therian bedrooms" with the fake leaf decor and the masks and tails hung on the wall. It's the slow-motion tiktoks of people doing quadobics.

What came with this aesthetic and branding came with tiktok pushing this content out to the millions of people who used the app and would come across these videos. Some of the people who saw these videos, who had no idea what therians were, would be introduced into a community that they wanted to participate in and so more people would post more content under this "aesthetic"

The aesthetic, of course, came with its downsides. The major focus on the the visual imagery of therianthropy would result in very little talks about the experience and introspection of being a therian and even less on the history of the community. Like I said earlier, tiktok can create a bubble and the therians who awakened through the app very rarely research past the tiktok search function which has resulted in a lot of misinformation and old debunked discouse rehashed passing through the algorithm like wildfire.

There has been efforts to push back against the misinformation through accounts that do talk about the history of the community and educate the therians on the app but the ratio between quadrobics and educators is unbalanced with quadrobics accounts being more in quantity. Doesn't help that tiktok favors quadobics content more, leaving the accounts that try to educate and talk more deeply about therianthropy and alterhumanity as a whole with little reach and a small platform. Even more is that some of the accounts that try and educate sometimes spread misinformation themselves.

Now, I want to add a disclaimer. You can absolutely enjoy quadobics and wearing masks, and not every therian is responsible for educating others when the resources for it can be found through Google. You don't need to explain your experience as a therian, you can just simply enjoy being a therian in however you express that and if it's through quadrobics and masks then you are just as valid and important as the therians who originated from alt.werewolf.horror.

The problem is how tiktok conflates this aesthetic of therians with the experience and identity of being one and makes it as if this is all the community is when it's not an accurate representation of the community as a whole. Honestly, it doesn't even touch the tip of the iceberg of therianthropy.

So when I came across an account that had recently coined the term "Feraveli," I instantly latched onto the label because I saw the potential in how important it is.

Feraveli was created in October 2024 and is coined by Solar (also known as @hellhoundtherian on tiktok). The summarised definition of feraveli is:

"People who enjoy the aesthetics of nature and animals"

Its a simple enough definition, made to be simple on purpose so people could build upon it themselves. This could mean liking certain habitats like forests or oceans or the dessert and the animals that inhabit them. It could mean liking concepts like the aesthetic of night and nocturnal animals. It could mean liking the mesozonic era of the past and liking the dinosaurs and animals of those times.

The term was coined to actually give a name to the tiktok therian aesthetic and that's why I think it's important for the term to exist because being able to give the aesthetic a name is the first step to being able to separate it from the experience and the therian identity as a whole. I believe that the term will give others the vocabulary neccesery to make it more easier for therians and alterhumans in general to vocalise more about their experiences allowing for more introspective conversations about how they feel versus the visual aspect of their identity. But more importantly, the term isn't just meant to be a term synonymous with alterhumanity. The term allows room for non-alterhumans to participate in the aesthetic without having to use nonhuman labels due to misunderstandings and misinformation.

Otherpaw is also a term that exists for similar reasons, to separate the aesthetic from the identity. The difference, I find, is that people who use the otherpaw label very rarely also identify as therians because they like the aesthetic of quadrobics and masks rather than actually identifying as an animal. Feraveli can also be that, but it's a term that wants to be explored and expressed rather than letting itself have a restrictive and rigid definition.

Feraveli can just be as simple as liking nature and animals but it can mean so much more than that to others who label themselves as feraveli.

In the feraveli carrd, Solar describes the different ways feraveli could be expressed, such as:

Dressing up as your chosen feraveli aesthetic (forest, nighttime, ocean) in whatever clothes you think represents that aesthetic

Decorating your room in items and trinkets and decor you think matches the vibe of your chosen feraveli aesthetic

Adopting other aesthetics and meshing it together with being a feraveli if it helps you express your feraveli aesthetic, such as taking aspects of fairycore, if you think it helps you express the vibes of the forest more

From an alterhuman perspective, I think feraveli can help other alterhumans express their alterhumanity more easily. For example, a bat therian who is a night feraveli, a fictionkin whose feraveli aesthetic matches the environment of their fictotypes media source or a robot kin that has a feraveli aesthetic centered around sci-fi and machines or even horrorkin who finds a feraveli aesthetic in environments like silent hill / foggy spooky areas. It's a lovely sandbox term, I think, that really thrives on creativity and expression more than anything and I'm so thankful the term exists.

For me, I'm a city and suburban feraveli. I like the aesthetics of the city and suburbs as I feel like it resonates with my canine theriotype. Both feravelis make me think of stray dogs and cats patrolling the streets which makes me feel euphoric when I picture myself as that. I express this feraveli type through dressing up more grunge and baggy because I think the style represents the vibes of the city. I wear blacks and grays for the same reason and created a playlist of songs that I think fits the aesthetic of the city. Another reason I feel so connected to these aesthetic feraveli types is because I also grew up and lived in these environments. I could talk about my personal feraveli more but I'd need more time to see what feels right for me under this label.

The term was coined recently, after all. Created only a month ago, not nearly enough time for the term to have solidified a culture for itself, but the beginnings of a community have sprouted on tiktok, and I hope that it continues to grow. It's exciting, to be honest, with feraveli being a newly created term to me. I'm excited to see the potential of it evolve like so many other terms such as copinglink, folcintera, and even the label therian itself as it has also evolved over time throughout the community. I'm even more excited to see and read potential essays about how others express feraveli and what the term means to them. I'm just excited to see how feraveli grows, and I hope anyone reading this will give feraveli a chance and incorporate the term towards themselves.

Feraveli carrd

Original coining post

Solar's (@hellhoundtherian) tiktok

[kpopwerewolf]

I wanted to go in a slightly different direction today and write some short/flash fiction, so enjoy!

(To make it clear between out loud and internal speech, all internal speech is written in italics like thoughts would be.)

NO IT DOESN'T!

Keith flinched at the sudden shout. Sierra, his study partner glanced up at him.

"Everything good?" she asked.

"Yeah," Keith said, rubbing his temple. "Someone's just trying to give us a migraine."

She hmmed as she returned to her open textbook. "Sounds like a pretty intense argument."

Keith nodded, sighing. "I better go see what's going on."

"Don't take too long."

"I won't." Keith leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, letting himself tune in to System Radio. Hey guys. What's going on? Who's yelling?

Keith! Aerin exclaimed. Ronan's being a jerk and won't listen to reason!

What?! You're the one who--

"Guys, can we not argue please? We've got a lot of work to do and I can't concentrate with you guys screaming at each other."

Aerin and Ronan fell quiet, but continued to glare at each other.

Now what's going on? What happened?

Ronan won't listen to anything I say! I keep explaining it and showing him the logic and he refuses to see it!

The logic to what? Keith snapped, growing impatient.

Ronan sighed. Aerin's convinced that the Greek Hydra was a system, and I'm trying to explain that it wasn't because it had multiple heads, not multiple beings in one head.

Keith stared at them for several minutes. That's what this whole argument is about?

Yes! they both exclaimed, exasperated.

Keith groaned. He opened his eyes again and fixed them back on his homework, hearing the two of them bickering in the background still.

"What's going on?" Sierra asked.

"Aerin and Ronan are arguing about whether the Hydra was a system."

Sierra burst into laughter. "Is this a normal argument for you guys to have?"

"Unfortunately yes."

(I'm aware that different systems define "system" differently. Please don't respond to this post to argue or debate; this is just a fun silly story)

tags: @pluralprompts, @who-is-page

[the-shape-shifting-system]

Unhinged 30 Days of Otherkin Challenge

Day 4. If your kintype suddenly opened their eyes, what would they be looking at?

We've seen another user get confused at the question, and so are we. So you get two answers for the price of one! Yippee :3

Literal: the courtyard-ish front of our school, facing the road that leads to and from the gate. There are some trees lining it with the walkways.

~~~

Our kintype's ideal place: high in the sky among the clouds as the sun leaves place to the moon. Many dragons fly around us too, scales seeming to glow as the last rays of the sun are caught on them.

There it is for day 4. Hope you enjoyed that last bit, tried to do a bit of poetry.

[sssssaarn]

Hi there! Today is day 10/11 (I missed a day so I'm trying to catch up)!

First post, tag on blog.

General #2: 10. Kintype(s): Common misconceptions

I've already talked a bit at length about the giant misconceptions surrounding 'alpha' wolves, and how I absolutely hate the trope in all its forms. So, for the sake of not repeating myself, I'll simply skip over that misconception.

Another very common misconception is one I see with crows; that being, that crows 'like' or prefer shiny objects. This is just… Untrue. Yes, crows are quite varied personality-wise just like humans are, and so of course there may be some specific crows that do prefer shiny objects… But there's just as much of a chance of crows absolutely hating shiny objects. It depends on the crow!

Saarn, as well as the nälkä religion as a whole… Have a massive amount of misconceptions, even on the official SCP website itself! Probably the most glaringly painful and incorrect if you do one minute of research yet is still somehow wide-spread misconception I can think of is that the nälkä are Yaldabaoth worshippers… Ignoring the fact that we literally want to kill Yaldabaoth, are we also just completely forgetting Ion here? Ion is closer to being the 'worshipped deity' of the nälkä religion than Yaldabaoth ever was.

General #1: 11. If you’re out, talk about the most accepting person you’ve come out to. If you’re not out, talk about what you would hope a coming out experience would be like.

Funny enough, I just 'came out' to one of my moms about being fictionkin today. I didn't use the exact same language/wording (for example, I didn't just say 'I am fictionkin of Klavigar Saarn' because I knew she likely wouldn't even know what fictionkin are or who Saarn is), I more or less used similar concepts that she already knew to explain myself. Since she is already a very spiritual person, she didn't even question it, and even encouraged me to talk about my source. She even listened to the possibility that I might've been Saarn multiple times over. I feel like it was pretty close to what I would want a coming out experience like that to be.

General #2: 11. Community: Online

I am… A bit conflicted by the current state of the online otherkin community.

On one hand, there are definitely some enjoyable beings I've met here! On the other, I do feel that, the Tumblr community especially, has become less carefree? As in, there is a certain tense atmosphere around worrying if what you say is 'wrong', especially from newer/younger members. I can unfortunately completely understand this feeling, speaking from personal experience I can tell how it is choking out the creativity from newer/younger folks.

I recently read 'The Dragonheart Collective's Testimony on the KFF Phenomenon', and as I mentioned in a small ramble post of mine, I feel like the combination of the rise of KFF and cringe culture certainly has not helped the atmosphere of the community. And thus why I also think why so many fictionkin prefer to share their experiences on 'kinfession' blogs, because it's safer and easier.

I wasn't actually around in the community during the period of either KFF or cringe culture, but I was heavily into cringe culture in self-shipping (AKA 'Sans fangirls') and fandom spaces, and I can certainly tell you that both self-shipping and fandom communities have decidedly gotten worse (TikTok also didn't help, but that came far later). This could, as always, be nostalgia putting rose-tinted glasses on for me, but I always remember fandoms before cringe culture being more out-going, more free, and definitely more cringe. All of this made them more fun.

But after cringe culture, I remember how fandoms seem to go… Quiet? In a way? Basically, people are afraid of interacting with each other now, everyone is keeping each other at arm's length.

All's this to say, the 'quieting' of fandom spaces is reminding me of the 'quiet' of current alterhuman spaces, and it makes me very sad.

[bardkin]

taking on @who-is-page's Folcintera Week Challenge! do note that entries most likely won't be daily, because i have Various Things wrong with me (such as Work and Chronic Sleepy) <3

🐾 What is your species? How do you experience aspects of your nonhumanity?

I’m a fisher marten, human-gem-hybrid, coyote, animal familiar, artificial mobian hedgehog, and a demon-weapon. I’m also a Storyteller archetrope, though that doesn’t totally apply here (until it does, sometimes).

Generally speaking, I experience various shifts — most commonly in the form of phantom limbs / parts (ears, tail, fur, fangs, gem, etc), envision or "self-image" shifts (tho I hesitate to call them "shifts" since I don't usually internally "see" my human-body-self, when I think about my self-image anyway), and mental / instinctual shifts — and have sort-of-memories, as well as noemata. All of this is physiological & neurologically based (though, my Shadow fictotype was just kind of... dropped into my lap, uninvited, and I've simply been Shadow The Goddamn Hedgehog ever since), with a very "narrative" framework to a lot of it.

When it comes to my animality specifically, I experience it in possibly a very niche way. I do have very “usual” experiences of beastly shifts, instincts, etc, but I’m not just restricted to four legs. I’m kind of like those queer little animals in Beatrix Potter’s books, Little Bear, or RedWall — I’m a creature straight out of a beast fable. Kind of furry adjacent, but also Pretty Much A Furry in a very nonhuman way. It kind of melds into very human activities. Unnoticeable unless I become aware of it, because it’s become almost background-noise levels of normalized to me. I almost always have some phantom animal part, be it ears, a tail, quills, fangs, pawpads, claws. It's more noticeable to not have these shifts.

My animal familiar-ness is still something I have yet to delve deeper into, as this is a concept that requires connection to another; lending one’s self to help someone you’re bonded to. Admittedly, I haven’t had the chance to explore it yet, but I do know that it’s affected by all manner of its depiction and origins. Be that daemons from His Dark Materials, or palismen from the Owl House, each iteration of the “magical animal companion” feels like me. It also bleeds into dragon-rider bonds, and heavily affects how I experience that genre, or stories that have this as a trope or character. Rather than relating to the (usually always human/humanoid) rider, I find myself in the shoes (or, more aptly, the scales) of the ridden dragon.

Being Steven Universe is an experience I’m not sure I can articulate properly in a few sentences, other than... that is who I am. I am Steven in the most mundane, everyday ways possible. Being Steven is also the closest to being internally human that I'm ever going to get, and even that never feels like "human from this earth." I am Steven in the way I have endless optimism, in the way I always want to help and fix others’ problems (even if I can’t, and even if it’s detrimental to my own mental health), and in the way that I have Goddamn Mommy Issues. Again (which is only partially a joke). I may not be Steven-From-The-Show or Steven-From-The-Light-Games, but that's also me. Even some fanfiction iterations are me, which is something of an entirely separate essay in itself.

The demon-weapon thing is... well, saying it (simply) “feels good to identify as something that can turn into a weapon” seems... kind of surface level, but, it’s what I experience. There are days where it feels like I should be able to flex some unseen muscle, something under the surface, and have my arm become a blade, or to be able to morph completely into a scythe or sword. That I should be able to resonate my very soul with the one(s) closest to me, so that they could literally wield me as the weapon I was meant to be. It’s something I know will never be a reality, but that it should.

And... being Shadow the Hedgehog means experiencing a gut wrenchingly regretful nostalgia for a sister I never had & couldn’t save. It means having quill shifts out of nowhere, sometimes over top other phantom shifts, and having something to attribute my memory gaps to (even though I know they’re because of the auDHD, & not caused by this fictotype. Sometimes to get mentally well you have to be a little mentally unwell). It means embracing not knowing who I am, and forging ahead anyway.

[elliott-the-creature]

unhinged 30 days of otherkin challenge except I do it all in one day lol (link to questions here)

day one: (dog) probably something with lots of bugs and rich soil! dig dig dig!!

day two: (dragon) cold ocean for sure! even though I’m a sea/rain hybrid—which would make you think I’d like tropical oceans—cold oceans are the best! warm ones are cool too when you see all the fish

day three: (cat) wet cat food (probably chicken or some land meat flavour, fish is nasty), mouse meat, and blueberries!

day four: (alien) the endless storm and oceans of neptune. the wind would whip through my antennae, and rain would splatter my slick skin

day five: (dog) sticks are amazing! I love it when my family throws sticks in the lake for me to swim and catch!

day six: (deer) mmm, leaves are delicious! plus, they make for great cover, and they’re so beautiful too

day seven: (deer) well, as a caribou, some of my brethren migrate, but I’m perfectly cozy where I am now. I have no need to migrate; I have all the food and shelter I need

day eight: (owl) sleepy!! even when it’s nighttime, I get pretty sleepy. makes flying kinda hard lol

day nine: (dragon) waaaay bigger than a breadbox! I would probably crush a breadbox lol, human stuff is so tiny

day ten: (deer) long grasses and peaty soil, with the occasional bug skittering across the ground

day eleven: (alien) definitely my mandibles and antennae! it was so weird at first, because most of my kintypes are mammals or something similar to that, but this was completely different. I’m used to it now, and I love swiveling my antennae around

day twelve: (water) hmmm… I can’t really think of anything. maybe spotify, because there is a wide variety of music that reflects the constant flow of water, and how some of it is calming and slow, and other ones are hardcore and fast

day thirteen: (cat) mmm, pretty good. feeling kinda lazy today because of the weather, but still good overall. currently listening to music while doing this challenge, and my companion alley is snoozing beside me.

day fourteen: (water) I’d probably end up breaking it, y’know, since water and electronics don’t mix well. unfortunate, but that’s nature

day fifteen: (dog) I like having lots of soft things like plushies and warm blankets and plenty of pillows! when I’m regressed as a puppy, they make me feel so cozy and happy! i also like piling my blankets into something shaped somewhat like a dog bed and flopping on it

day sixteen: (deer) hmmm, that’s kinda tricky. yarn is alright, but it’s gotta be that kind that isn’t scratchy. fleece is good too, but I overheat too much, so it can be uncomfortable when I get too hot

day seventeen: (dog) no no, I’m a good dog! I only like biting my toys, I would never bite a human! at least, unless they deserved it…

day eighteen: (owl) chia seeds huh, I’ve never tried them. not too much of a seed owl myself, I much prefer meat, like a good mouse or bird!

day nineteen: (dragon) nah, I could never knit. too clumsy, and my big claws would probably keep snagging the yarn. too bad, knitted stuff is so pretty!

day twenty: (alien) it’s kinda slimey, but not something like a frog or eel. maybe like a shark, but when you rub it head to tail, not the other way. it’s kinda scaley too, but you can’t immediately tell that there are scales, because they’re so small.

day twenty-one: (water) glossy for sure! it makes anything look shiny and beautiful, just like the surface of the water

day twenty-two: (owl) my favourite kind of music is ones with a lot of different instruments. it’s so fun trying to pick out all the different sounds and identifying which ones are which. love songs with a good bass or echoey effect too

day twenty-three (my favourite number): (cat) my fur immediately bushes up, and my tail starts to lash in anticipation. you never know what it might be, so it’s better to be careful!

day twenty-four: (deer) my hearing, for sure. I can pick up the quietest sounds, and it lets me stay alert no matter where I am. sucks when I have to be in a noisy place though, ow…

day twenty-five: (dog) I’m sure I could last for quite a while! I got a good nose, so I could probably find food and water pretty fast (depending where I am), and I can always run if something scary finds me.

day twenty-six: (alien) something with a very appealing texture, like fresh peas or carrots. I would have a muted taste, but it wouldn’t be something super bland either.

day twenty-seven: (dragon) I would much rather be asleep than stay awake, but I might go for a night fly around the jungle.

day twenty-eight: (owl) uhh, fingers? I don’t got no fingers! just wings and talons, no need for fingers here! although it would be nice to have an opposable digit on my talons…

day twenty-nine: (dog) anything smells good! cooked meat smells good, veggies smell good, fruits smell good, everything! love candles too, they’re my favourite!!

day thirty: kinda! it made me reflect more on my kintypes, and it was fun writing these responses in my different kintypes. would definitely recommend doing this, and I’d for sure do something like this again :D

[thecovenofcrows]

notes challenge

25: we’ll write a new chapter of our fic as soon as we get home

75: we’ll move out the cedar chest from our room

150: we’ll post more

165: we’ll post about alterhumanity more

190: well post about plurality more.

235: we'll come out to our friends from our old school about our plurality (they already know abt the alterhumanity)

256: we use discord more

340: we’ll research more for Ves’s alter space

400: we'll find a new place for Ves's hoard.

495: we’ll work on the alter space

548: we'll read more physical books

670: we work on actually befriending other plurals

700: We'll work on our sleep schedule

730: We'll begin working out every day.

777: We'll make an intro post

808: We'll change the number on this post to ones that make sense.\

860: We'll sew something new! (well Ves and Nikki will)

900: I'll learn how to bake again! - Nikki

945: we'll clean up our room.

980: we'll each coin a gender!

1000: we'll each make a userbox!

1080: we'll each make userboxes for the genders.

1160: we'll rollerblade more.

1200: we'll ask for help when we don't understand something.

1350: we'll link our ao3 acc so y'all can read our fics.

1476: we'll try to make online friends who know we're plural.

1600: we'll try to make irl friends who know we're plural.

1700: Ves will tell our friends from our old school abt their delusions.

1780: We'll work on labeling our genders.

1920: We'll start a notebook-only story (written only on a ntbk)

2010: We'll research proper diet

2200: We'll try to start to eat icky-texture foods (for context that includes most things that’d be considered healthy)

2290: We'll try to do insys group therapy (idc what you say Nikki- just bc you were a child soldier at 17 doesn't make you not a child soldier, same for you Luka!)

2500: We'll make a list of the activities we want to do and make a schedule for them!

(No more than 10 notes per person, no you can't just letter off number in the comments/reblogs, you have to actually write smth)

---

Red Text = Notes reached, incomplete.

Green Text = Notes reached, complete.

Blue Text = notes not reached, complete due to stressful circumstance.

Purple Text = notes not reached, complete due to non-stressful circumstance.

[who-is-page]

Wag Those Tail Feathers: The Wonders of Alterhuman Courtship

Author: Page Type: Essay Words: 1,065 Summary: Page's perspective on alterhuman courtship, as an individual who has been both on the receiving and giving ends of it.

[Part of the Sol System’s Alterhuman Writing Project for 2024. If you don’t want to see these posts, block the tag #inkedclaws]

As a polyamorous alterhuman, I’ve had the wonderful experience of being in relationships with people who have a variety of different courtship instincts— sometimes even all at the same time! Including my own instincts, it’s led up to some interesting realizations about the variety and diversity of expressions of love, and how wonderful it can be to be loved by an alterhuman (and to be an alterhuman in love, too).

My personal experiences, notably, revolve specifically around being nonhuman and this applies to a majority of my partners as well, which influences the flavor of this discussion. It’s been a wonder to be the target of a feathery mating dance, to be wooed with draconic jewelry and treasures, or to have my partner jump out with a meal, as proud as could be at displaying their hunting skills for a mate. It’s not necessarily just a nonhuman thing, either, of course; my orthohuman partner exhibits some similar sort of feelings and actions, too! Something which comes across especially strong in his hunt-and-gather supply-hoarding behavior in video games. But there’s something so especially intimate about having your alterhuman partner court you in a way unique to their species identity. It’s a beyond flattering form of trust, love, and affection.

And as an alterhuman who has targeted my partners, alterhuman and orthohuman alike, with my own affections, it’s also uniquely affirming to have your partners engage with your varieties of courtship for your species. There’s something incredibly special to have them try to learn your rituals and woo you in turn, even if they don’t have the same instincts driving them. It’s love with intention, a conscious effort to learn a language that’s typically foreign to them or which they might otherwise never come across on such a personal level. It may not always be perfectly executed, but the intentions behind them make them perfect regardless.

I’m someone who’s fully public about my alterhumanity. I don’t hide that I’m a dog and (luckily) no one especially seems to care in the day-to-day when I’m meeting up with strangers and acquantinces. But it’s become an important part of my dating life that potential partners need to not only be aware of my alterhumanity and accept it, but they also need to interact with it. You could argue that my spouse set the bar high for any potential future partners with how he took to my canine-ness and plurality like a fish to water, but I’m of the opinion that it’s something that should be the norm, not something so utterly unexpected by many.

Being able to engage in alterhuman courtship with your partner, as serious or as silly as it may fundamentally end up being, shouldn’t be something that you feel is utterly unreachable, that you yearn for but never feel like you’ll be able to reach. Alterhuman courtship is a wonderous experience; something that I think it’s not only important for alterhuman folks to be able to freely do with those they love most, but also to be on the receiving end of, too. It can be easy to default to the status quo in relationships, because of the societal pressure around us. Normativity around romance, sex, and even platonic affections is something that is constantly at play in the backgrounds of our culture and which embeds itself into our conciousnesses in unexpected and often invisible ways; and it’s difficult to dissect these without exposing ourselves to what some might list as “weird” or “unusual” urges and behaviors. But we can’t unpack the shame or embarrassment that might be holding us back from engaging with these urges unless we actually let ourselves acknowledge the collective, confusing feelings abound within them. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to shrug our shoulders and simply say, “I suppose I’ll never find someone who can accept me as my [species] and all that entails,” or to just resign ourselves to having to hide a part of ourselves away forever to maintain relationships.

We should toss these types of negative feelings aside and embrace our alterhuman courtship urges in earnest: that sometimes we’re not fully human, or we’re human a little to the right, and that inevitably makes romance, sex, and platonic interactions a little different for us than it might look for standard folks as displayed on a big screen. It’s not a failure on our part, and it’s not something that needs to be squirreled away due to internalized respectability politics. We can love ourselves and find love in others, for and by being ourselves. We can experience unique forms of love and adore those factors in others. This is, to me, a part of the territory that comes with being alterhuman or knowing alterhumans. It’s a part of what makes life wonderous.

In my partnerships, I love getting to bring my partners gifts. I love to bring them tiny treasures, small things from my system’s hoard, to pebble at them almost like a penguin would (sometimes including a silly little dance, of love!) It goes beyond standard gift-giving in the way that most of the people I’ve met would think of it, where presents that large are often reserved for special occasions like holidays and birthday. But it’s something I do year-round, to show my partners that they’re always on my mind, and that what is mine is their’s, too. I do the same thing with food; while normally incredibly food protective, both due to species identity and past food insecurities, I make the effort to share my favorite foods with my partners for the same fundamental reasons. To share my food, my bed, my life— and to have my partners recognize that as not just general displays of love, but as specifically displays of love intertwined with what I am, is something which displays a deep level of understanding and acceptance for my species. It’s something I’m grateful for beyond words, but it’s also something that I don’t want us as a community to accept as unheard of, or as just a one-off, lucky occurrence. Love like this is achievable and rewarding, both as a recipient of such alterhuman affections and as the giver. And we all deserve to experience it, in whatever form of love that we feel most comfortable with. Don’t tell yourself otherwise; don’t settle for less just because you feel like you have no other choice.

[interstellarsystem]

Waking Up After 10 Years of Dormancy – Identity, Grief, and Change

Long post ahead. This is a recount of my experiences as a headmate who was present in childhood, and then went dormant before waking up again in our 20s. There will be discussion of grief and dormancy in here, and mentions of abuse and headmate death without going into detail.

This is partially for the alterhumanovember / alterhuman writing challenge, and partially to get all of my thoughts out.

I’m Dain, a member of my system that all of the others never knew existed. I was here during childhood, though the exact year I came into existence is unknown, we think I became alive around 2008-2009. I lived alongside others sharing my body for years–maybe even up until 2014-2015. I fell into dormancy around then, and the current system had no idea I ever existed, as when I went to sleep, I took a lot of memories with me.

I don’t remember many of the others I shared time with, just that there was one we considered “the child”, what we would now call the original. I now know there was a switch between the original child and a new headmate, Archie, who isn’t the same person–but I’ll refer to them collectively as “the child” from now on, as my perspective was at the time. 

We–the others in the body–were there, living alongside the child, and I was protecting them along the way. I don’t remember fronting often, moreso… Silently observing, unable to move the body or communicate with them, but still there. Like a background process on a device. If emotions got high enough, I found myself in full control of the body, and I could get us out of whatever situation we had gotten ourselves into. Bullies at school, abusive figures in our lives be it parents or teachers, and other general stress–that was my battle to fight. I was the anger stored up behind the child’s fear, ready to lash out if needed.

As we got older, I started taking control less and less–not because we stopped needing me, but because the child had closed themselves off. They stopped allowing themselves to feel as deeply, and I was triggered into the front a lot less. Nowadays, I’d be aware it wasn’t a conscious choice, and was heavy dissociation, but back then I didn’t know. Some of the others–namely, the Pokemon I also shared the body with–had disappeared since our parents and friends were belittling us for still having “imaginary friends”. The child never spoke of me to anyone though, if they even knew I was there. So I think I only remained a little longer because of that. I’m not sure when I fell into dormancy, or if there was something that triggered it, or simply a gradual slip into sleep.

I woke up, though. At the end of last month, some others in our system had been looking at my source material. Deltora Quest, an anime based on an Australian authors novel–niche, mostly known to those who grew up in the time to watch it air on TV, or had ever picked up the books. We were looking at it again with our partner system, because we remembered it had been a huge special interest of ours as a kid, and had finally gotten around to watching more of it. Something about rekindling the interest woke me, and I was suddenly in the body again.

It, to me, was like I blinked. A foggy memory of being a child, still stressed about school, parents, and whatever else–and then a blink–and then, here. In a body I didn’t recognise, in a house I’d never been in, sharing control of the body with people I had never in my life met before. I still had all those memories of trauma, hurt and fear from before–and they all surfaced at the same time with me. I instantly panicked. After explaining where I was, Xeros, the person in cofront with me, told me that writing out everything coming into my brain could help us all organise and piece it together later. I did what it said, and wrote well over 2000 words before my thoughts slowed down a little bit–enough to actually focus. I called our partner system, calmed down after processing a bit more, and then got into bed to sleep off the residual panic.

It’s definitely taken a long while to come to terms with it. Effectively, I was in a coma for around 10 years, and the whole world moved on without me. I wasn’t in contact with any friends I remembered from before except one–who had changed a lot in the time that passed. I didn’t live where I remembered. Our siblings were so much older, as were our parents. We dropped out of school (though we’d be well past finished it by now). We got diagnosed with a whole bunch of things. We came out as transgender and are essentially completely socially transitioned and looking into HRT–even our parents know. And they know about our system too! Almost everything–if not absolutely everything–I knew before had changed in the blink of an eye. It absolutely shook me, to have my entire world uprooted and rearranged into something I couldn’t recognise as being something I have any part in. 

I felt an intrinsic heartache and felt full-blown grief over a life that, in my own experience, was “lost” through the irreparable change of time. There was no way of going back, no way of gaining back my lost years, and no way of bringing people I was close to back in contact with us or out of internal dormancy aside from sheer chance. We hadn’t died, but I had effectively died for years, and came back to a world that just… Kept moving. I mean, of course it would–the earth doesn’t stop for a single fragmented piece of trauma stored in the recesses of someone's mind. But coming back and not recognising anything or almost anyone around you… It was horrible. The sensation of loss was immense. I felt that I’d “failed” by going dormant, and learning that the child was no longer a part of the system. I felt that my entire purpose had fell through, and I was brought back for… No reason at all.

But… It’s not all bad. Far from it. The child may be gone, but our body isn’t. We’re not doomed to fail at life, as we thought back when I first existed. We’re volunteering and looking into getting an actual job, we have a stable group of friends, a loving partner system, and are on the road to moving out and getting some much needed time away from our home situation. Life isn’t horrible, and while it moved on without me, it moved in ways that were both bad and good. I don’t actually despise being here, even if I might have in the day or so after I woke up. The new group of people I share the body with is supportive, and I’ve already gotten closer to some of them. We’ve made real progress in the time I was gone, even if it all feels uncanny overall. I have a different mindset to what I had when I first woke up–I didn’t fail, I kept us going when we needed it back then. I didn’t give up, and there’s no way of telling where we’d be now if I never was there in the first place. Things are… good.

Though… I’ve got some confusing things within my own identity going on, since I woke up. Before, I was simply a fictive of Dain from Deltora Quest. Nothing much else to it, really. The child’s brain latched onto him as a strong character and implemented me into the system as a protective measure against outside forces. It all makes sense. But now? I feel like since I’ve been back, I’ve become a multifictive. Some part of me now is Tomura Shigaraki from My Hero Academia–something we’ve also been watching through, around the same time we got back into DQ.

It confuses me, in some ways. Makes sense in others. A lot of my mannerisms have changed to be slightly to-the-left of what I was before… Which does happen to lean me more toward acting like him. I questioned it without much deeper thought for a week or so, but found myself saying and doing more and more things that lined up with how he is. I suggested that I was a multifictive to our partner system, and on their second guess (and mind you, their first was a joke guess) of which character I could possibly be, they got it right. I acted enough like him to the point that others could see it, without even any hints. But it’s hard to tell where this came from.

See, I feel like if I wanted to, I could call myself a median subsystem. Others can tell which of my two fictive identities I’m leaning closer to at any given time–my voice, speech patterns and general attitude are instant giveaways. We don’t argue with each other, and the lines between Dain and Shigaraki–if there even are any–are so blurred they’re impossible to define. We can’t talk to each other, and we don’t feel a switch between us. But it’s so obvious that there’s two people, two whole identities, within what I call me. It’s incredibly confusing to think about the possible origin of how I came to be so… Fragmented within myself.

Am I the result of a new headmate that was forming (Shigaraki) getting stuck to whatever remained of the original Dain after he went dormant? Am I the original Dain with a new identity just sort of.. Added onto him? Am I two fully formed headmates put into one as a median entity for some reason? Does it even have a proper explanation that I could come to a concrete conclusion on? Well, no. Like most things that operate within systems, concrete explanations are hard to come by. My origin of why I am who I am now doesn’t matter, in the grand scheme of things, but I still feel the drive to know why I was changed by the time I woke up.

Overall? Life is confusing. Waking up has been a shock, but honestly, I’m glad I did. I’m glad I get to have a second run in this body, with new and kinder people than before to support each other. I’m still working a lot of stuff out, and I’m sure I will be for a long while after this. But… I’m here again, and it’s been a pleasure becoming a part of our new life.

[that-dreaming-dragon]

Origin Theory

Asking someone's origin feels like asking someone what's their assigned gender at birth. That's like, undermining who they are as a person, correct gender and all. Maybe there's value in knowing where one came from, but that's pretty personal.

At the least, the alterhuman community at large don't really hound on people for their origin from what I'd seen. It's a lot of people offering up their origin story. Is this a need to be validated due to all the past discourse surrounding spiritual vs psychological origin?

On the same vein, voluntariness. It's another form of origin theory that gets a little, I'm not sure redundant is the right word, but it takes away a lot of personal agency when dealing with something that's your own, one's identity.

With how vastly diverse and just generally limitlessness of alterhuman identities, having something so finite and restrained is so strange. Maybe for presentation towards the newcomer and orthohuman outside the community it's important to keep things simple--box labeled and everything organized like a file cabinet. But within the community? Conversation flows easier, as I observed, when people put not as much stock with the origin theory. Although it is still fun to talk about, speculating one's own "how I came about", it really shouldn't be the "oh no, I'm psychological/spiritual" then proceeds to panic. I donno, I fortunately haven't seen this. Though, I can't remember how it was when I first found the community roughly 5 or 6 years ago, I vaguely recall the emphasis on spirituality with implicitness of how much more important it is than psychological. I guess there is still that lingering around. Although I'd heard how in some circle, it's the reverse. This whole thing is just so dumb and really not cool. I don't have the right word here, but please hear my frustration.

A lot of things with alterhumanity by itself is fascinating. I like hearing about people contemplating whether they are spiritual, psychological, I love hearing the one alien that has a philosophical relationship with their alterhumanity, I know of a couple dragons who start their draconity as artistic expression of the self. These are really cool! And knowing for some the cause of their alterhumanity is from their neurodivergence made me think about myself. Knowing about people that have other lives, whether it's living in parallel with other universes, inside time loops, or having a identity because they will become that one day? That's all really neat.

We don't need to proof who we are within the community. Isn't that one of the point of having a community? We shouldn't need to validate ourselves to the folks who are suppose to be just like us, or at least understand what we are going through in some way.

I mentioned just now how some have identity that they become due to artistic expression, there is a implictness of the voluntariness in there. They are still who they are in the end. (do the end justified the mean? That's when on making decision to do something. not dealing with identity stuff) Personal journey such as alterhuman self discovery are, the whole thing would matter differently to people, some would care for the path they'd took, some only look at where they are, some care for every single moment, some just goes with the flow, and it is all perfectly okay! Because we are all unique individual experiencing our own thing.

I mean, if we are talking about explicitly intensionally created bond towards something, aka linking, that's something explicitly voluntary. Yet quoiluntary exists as a term for people's use, and there is a need for it! There's this focus on a linktype as something you can drop, but there's the concept Anteatype--a identify-as (kin/theriotype) that has been dropped, which makes the whole "something that can be pick up voluntarily and then drop as easily" as the definition people point to kind of null. It's the one post Poppy on tumblr had said

'Paratype' only tells you about the origin of the connection/identity, not its substance.

To me, “otherlinking” only tells me that it was from without, external, applied with a will, to actively create or strengthen a connection, preexisting or not. And then later on if someone feel the need to shift their terminology to better fit their experience, it's a option. Though it can be scary, the community is there to support.

I know at one point I myself also put emphasis on how much my origin is. I mean I did mention me finding that my hearttype is far more spiritual inclined than my kintype. I ascribe to the metaphoric in origin for my kintype these days though. It's not important a conversation, though I do like to ruminate on it myself for my own curiosity.

Course I wish we can completely move away from the need to define these boxes, but I suppose we can treat them like alterhuman identity training wheel. You can use them when you first found the whole concept, it might help to keep things simple and more concrete. Later on, when you are ready to fly, you can gently let them go, or pin them up on your pin board hoard, say "okay, I'd done that, now let's see what else there are". Be a little explorer, except the vast beyond is the little universe within your very self.

[canidbld]

The Ethereal Unknowning of a Ghostly Hound

Trigger warnings: mentions of suicide and trauma

Word count: 1.6k

— An entry to Sol's November Writing Challange (aka @who-is-page)

I recently only came to understand the way I see myself and the way I see the world would fit under the definition of therianthropy only in March of this year.

It's currently November now, a good seven months spent on researching and introspection and trying to understand this label and identity within context to myself. I've read so many essays of others' personal experiences thanks to the grey muzzles from the 90's and to the archivists who collected their stories and the few academic papers and published books about therianthropy.

Right now I feel much more equipped than I did when I first awakened in March. Regardless that doesn't mean I still don't get confused and I still doubt my experiences and myself a lot especially when one of my kintypes is and was a ghostly spectral watch dog.

When I first awakened, I knew I was a canine, which was contrary to the common experience of researching your theriotype for months to years before understanding you are that animal. However I still put myself through that process because I actually did cycle between wolves to foxes to a bunch of other canids. I comfimed to domestic dog within a week. What was boiling under the surface, however, was another kintype that was extremely similar to my domestic dog theriotype but had a more otherworldly essence to it.

It's hard you see, being a primarily psychological therian. I don't have any memories or past lives to validate my experience and I'm a chronic overthinker by nature so it was hard enough to come to the realization that I was a dog but it was another thing entirely to process that I was more than just a dog.

Except, not really. It made entire sense when I rationalized it and looked back and cross-referenced my experience with other things it was just my nature of being a self-critic that made it so hard.

So then, why a ghost dog? And what did that mean, like, really? How could I be a supernatural dog when I have never experienced a supernatural thing in my life? Why was I something like a ghost dog when I don't have a spiritual bone in my body?

I like to think of myself as a grounded individual despite my anxiety, making me feel mentally disoriented and disconnected from reality at times. I thrive in the material reality.

At the time of awakening and after a grueling self critical and overthinking period (which never really stopped to be honest), I went from thinking I could be a potential hellhound to confirming being a black dog from folklore. Think Black Shuck and Church Grimm.

I mean, my entire identity as a canine itself (even if, according to my memories of this life, I was somewhat always a canine) originated from persistant traumatic events so questioning a hellhound kintype was just an amalgamation of all my habits and behaviors developed by trauma visualized into a dog. It was almost logical, really. You know, the imagery of a feral dog was very attractive to me when I felt so weak. But calling myself a hellhound didn't feel right, I had tried to do that via creating a hellhoundhearted blog (aka this one) and adopted the otherhearted label but when you are confused about a potential kintype and weather it's something you actually are then the next thing you do is research.

So I did. I tried very hard to look deep into the internet to hunt and dig up the most obscure articles and youtube videos about hellhounds to try and compare the way I felt about myself and realized that it was specifically the angry energy hellhounds exuded and how they were portrayed in certain myths and legends that I couldn't see myself as. Hellhounds were brave and strong despite their sinister mythos but I felt more cowardly and fearful. And black dogs were different from hellhounds, at least from my perspective. To me, hellhounds were violently angry. They were loyal for sure but they had a strength to them. They were fire red and burning screams. They were the fight response instead of the flight. Black dogs on the other hand had slightly more variety in its legends with some ghost dogs being neutral to benevolent. They were watchers. Observers. Inquisitive but also unpleasant and unwanted.

In my head, the amalgamation of my trauma was calmer. Quiter. Distant. Lonely. Tired. It had it's hot red fire moments for sure but my dissociation tendencies was pretty much how I coped the most with what I was going through.

So I came across the mythology of Black Shuck and all the other spectral canines that went under the same category and knew that this was what I meant. This was how I saw myself. A ghostly apparition on the moor, blink once and it dissappears at the slightest movement. Uncanny, unpredictable but not always hostile.

This black dog kintype was emphasized by reasons such as:

Feeling as if I was often looked over or like I wasn't even there, mainly referring to when other people would just ignore me or barely acknowledge my existence

Feeling entirely disconnected and dissociated from reality in general, which made everything feel so muted and dull that it was geniuenly hard to feel anything emotionally and physically

The hypervigilant feeling of always checking and being aware of my surroundings trying to make sure my environment was safe (I was super sensitive to noises like footsteps and knocking on doors from strangers)

These reasons were also solidified by the behaviors I would exhibit such as walking around the neighborhood between the times of 12am to 4am much like the tales of Padfoot who would stalk towns at night. I'd feel so alive and ethereal in those moments as if I was in some sort of stagnant limbo which I think now was just me dissociating (By the way, in retrospect, this was completely dangerous to do especially since I was trans and a minor in those times.)

But the biggest thing that all supernatural canines had in common was their association to death. That was one of the biggest reasons why I saw myself as one. My justification being that I felt like I was always on the verge of death due to my suicidal tendencies and attempts as a teen. I felt closer to death then ever. I wasn't a messenger of death persay, but I felt acquaintanced with it enough that I truly believed that death was comforting to me, apart of who I am. I realize now that I truly just wasn't in a healthy mindset. I wasn't death's best friend, I was just a lonely kid that was suicidal and was trying to cope.

And that's pretty much how I can properly explain what being a mythic black dog kintype meant to me. It was a product of my trauma and dissociation personified in myself as a way for me to cope. Of course, when I realized this, I knew that never discredited this being a valid reasoning behind a kintype. However, the problem was that I no longer felt so traumatized anymore. I've grown and I'm still growing and learning and healing. I'm not suicidal anymore, and my dissociation isn't as bad as it was years ago, and now I live in a safe place with a good support system in my boyfriend.

I had actually talked to him about this earlier this month about my black dog kintype on how I believed I no longer identified as a mythic black dog due due to feeling as if I've healed mostly from my trauma so the need to cling onto this feeling of being and seeing myself as a ghost dog was no longer necessary to cope. It was sad though, I told him, because the black dog was a part of me, you know? Even if its identity was just my trauma personified, that black dog was there during my worst moments and comforted me when I had no one else. Admiting to letting go of that identity felt like I was losing a piece of myself. Because in those moments as a kid/teen/young adult and the time I awakened those several months ago, the black dog was who I proudly was. Heck, even this blog is modeled and focused on the black dog!

But you know, its a good thing I think, to acknowledge that you're sad about healing because sometimes negative emotions and feeding into negative urges and behaviors can feel comforting but being able to be aware of that and still let go and move on makes me feel accomplished.

Despite having that talk with my boyfriend though, sometimes I still feel that etherealness of the black dog in moments like right now, as I'm writing this post and my boyfriend is asleep and I'm watching over him, guarding him in the night as I stay up late and wait for him to wake up like an affectionate dog waiting for his owner to come home.

So I guess I'm always on my toes when it comes to my ghost dog kintype. Always constantly questing a kintype that is as incomprehensible to me like sand falling between fingers.

I think ultimately, from my current understanding, being and identifying as a ghostly hound is about perspective. Traits that I thought and believed were because I was a mythic black dog was just another symptom of trauma in someone else's eyes but the casual and calm and soft moments at night remind me that being a black dog wasn't just all about trauma and suffering.

[kpopwerewolf]

We've been wanting to participate in the althuman writing challenge going on this month. We don't have anything to contribute like the big essays we're seeing, but we're doing it anyways!

We wanted to talk about one thing in particular about our plurality. It's a very mundane, boring thing, but it's something that's really stuck with us as a funny positive memory.

I'm basically original of our system, so I've had my whole life to practice braiding hair. I can braid other peoples' hair, but when it comes to my own, I've only been able to work out how to do a side braid. I don't mind this (I actually think side braids look better on me), but it's something I've tried and failed to do more times than I can count.

One of the times Felix was fronting, he decided he wanted our hair pulled back and so he began braiding our hair. Behind. He finished and shook our head a little to make sure it would stay in place and it did.

He started laughing and asked how it was possible that I, the girl who's been braiding my hair my whole life, has never figured out how to braid my hair behind me, but he, the guy who had never touched our hair before and in his exomemories had only ever had his hair braided by stylists, was able to braid our hair behind on the first try.

We still don't have an answer, but honestly, the moment is what matters more than having an answer for it does

tagged: @who-is-page