#cherub dot txt

[eyesfangsandwings]

It feels like all the angels in media are either perfect all-benevolent beings or mindless servants of an uncaring deity enforcing said deity's will. So where's the rep for angels who are half-feral and steal all the shiny things in your house and hide under the furniture screaming at strangers and sometimes drop off a chewed-up metaphysical theory on your doorstep as a show of affection, huh? :/ [/j]

[eyesfangsandwings]

Thoughts on cringe

Well, it wasn’t what I planned on writing, but I sat down and blacked out while free associating and here’s what popped out. Putting part of this under a cut because it got long. If the opening paragraphs tantalize you, just read on I guess? :,>

I wish I’d been cringe.

I wish I hadn’t spent years trying to hide and ignore a key part of myself, perhaps one of the most key parts of myself, because I thought I was just engaging in wish fulfilment. If I ignored it, improved myself, then my self-esteem wouldn’t be so low and I wouldn’t need to pretend I was a divine being to feel better about myself. I went to therapy and hoped it would go away. I quit otherkin and furry groups because they were “a bad influence” and hoped it would go away. I took medication and hoped it would go away. I started transitioning and I hoped it would go away.

Ten years. It never went away. Ten years to realize that by telling myself I was lying to myself, I’d lied to myself.

Ten years I could have spent learning about me. Ten years I could have spent learning about my faith. Ten years I could have spent growing. Ten years I could have lived more openly and been happy.

I see young otherkin, going to meets and talking openly about their kintypes. I see them bark, growl, hiss, and so on in public. I see them play. I see them do what their kintypes do. I’m jealous. I know I shouldn’t be. I just wish that was ten-years-ago me, being the angel he knows he is.

I grew up in the shadow of an expanding Internet and an expanding world. I saw what happened to people who were too openly weird, too openly nonhuman. You heard horror stories of furries who lost jobs when their hobbies came out. You had to deal with freak-of-the-week shows tearing away the curtains of secrecy in what often amounted to a safe space for people who were different in any way.

I had to constantly explain to furcon onlookers that the CSI episode was not indicative of the realities of a furry convention up until 2012, nine years after it aired. Almost as long as the ten years I spent choking back my awakening as it tried to crawl out of the human skin I was desperately trying to hold together. They approached me because I was the “normal” one. I didn’t wear ears or a tail, and certainly not a fursuit. You wouldn’t have caught me dead at a midnight howl. Furry was the only nonhuman indulgence I allowed myself for a time, before it started forcing me to realize I wasn’t pretending to be nonhuman on the weekends, I was pretending to be human on the weekdays. I could barely even do furry things, because I had to be respectable.

That was an annoyance compared to the people who’d stalk you across everything you did, of course. At least the onlookers had a sort of innocent ignorance. They didn’t know they were talking to someone who, while he didn’t think he was an animal, knew deep down he wasn’t human. The people who’d figure out all the names you used were the ones to be afraid of. It exposed the vulnerable side of you that you could only show with a name true to yourself, more real than the one you were given by someone else when you fell into the world screaming, then stitched the two together in an ugly patchwork for all to see.

I wouldn’t call myself a private person. I wouldn’t be writing this if I was. It’s more there’s just parts of me I couldn’t face. I put too much stock in being the logos-oriented person that society places so much value on. Humans are humans. There are no past lives. Only children pretend to be animals. Only someone with delusions of grandeur would pretend to be some sort of powerful mythical being.

Angels aren’t real. I can’t be one. I can’t. I can’t. It’ll go away and I can move on with my life. I can’t howl at the moon. I can’t talk about the dysphoria. I can’t run around in the woods barefoot. I can’t wear gear, no matter how much better it makes me feel. I can’t groom and preen in public. I can’t be an embarrassment to myself. I can’t be one of those people.

A fun fact! I still feel a deep sense of shame when I catch myself doing species-typical behavior in public despite not trying to actively repress it anymore.

Melodramatic, maybe, but I feel like I’ve damaged some part of myself and now I have to try and repair it. So I’ll wear gear. I’ll have my chew toys (they’re stim toys for human bodies, don’t worry, I’m responsible.) I’ll dump florals and honey into everything that it pairs with taste-wise and call it kinfood (and delicious, because it is.) I’ll make a nest to sleep in, and I’ll wear my kigu when I do, because it has wings and horns, and that’s me. I’ll wear a shawl and when the wind blows through it, I’ll close my eyes, and it’ll be the wind through my wings.

I can’t change what ten-years-ago-me did. I can affect what now-me does. So I’ll be cringe.

[eyesfangsandwings]

I am seriously, unironically considering paying for using the Tumblr Ad-Free Experience because this is the social media site that has let me down the least, especially in light of everything else.

[eyesfangsandwings]

So about a year ago I made a post about someone in the otherkin community who, quite some time ago, abused me. I said I was mostly fine at the time. But in retrospect I wasn't fine then, and I'm definitely not fine now. It's one of the reasons I've been avoiding this blog.

It just constantly hangs over my head. I've written a post still sitting in my drafts naming who it was and I hoped that would just get it out of my system, but...no dice. I don't really have anyone I'm close enough to talk to within the otherkin community about it which is what my therapist tells me to do and honestly this isn't the fault of the community-- I'm just very slow to trust people about this thing. Historically she's been very persuasive (I mean, she took me in for years) so it's hard to believe I'll be believed if she's still around somewhere. Also there's constant drama everywhere and I can't stand the idea of potentially contributing to it.

Rock and a hard place I guess. I'm not happy no matter what I do. Keeping it inside means it's eating away at me and has been for a long time, if I say something I have to deal with the fallout and I'm afraid of what that could be for me and other people around me.

Anyway. I dunno! I guess this is a cry for help. Or something. I desperately need to talk about this and I need to figure out what to do on that front. But not right now. It's late and I need to sleep.

[eyesfangsandwings]

I wanted to do a quick essay on cherubkin but college has started for me and TTh classes are my roughest, so anything heavy-impact isn’t happening today. So, I like this classification system and I’ll try to place myself on it and give some rationale on it.

I’d place myself as 1G5orange. It’s a little difficult to figure out if I’m on the farthest extremes of the scale, the only reason I’m hesitating is I haven’t talked to fellow otherkin much, so I’ll try to explain my rationale.

Starting with the easiest to explain! I almost said red, but honestly I’ve been able to deal with it better lately. It’s hard to tell if that’s just coping techniques or adjusting or what, but it’s not constantly at the forefront of my mind now. It used to be serious enough I couldn’t shower without the lights off, look at myself in a mirror, or even see my own shadow without having serious moments of dysphoria. I’d say wearing gear again and having a fursuit helps, a lot, but I still deal with dysphoria on basically all fronts: physical, mental, social. Now I don’t walk around most of the day in a dissociative haze! So, improvement. It still bothers me a lot though.

Add “why going on medication forced me to face how bad my dysphoria was and how I needed to integrate my kintype into my daily life” to the list of things I need to write. :p

I had to think some about the involuntary vs. voluntary debate. I’m honestly not even sure how you’re supposed to tell, but the fact my reaction to my first awakening was “nope nope nope, don’t want it, let’s repress that and hope it goes away” and then I spent about four years waiting for it to go away, and then another long while trying to not deal with certain aspects of it...yeah, my awakening was a bit of a mess and took years for me to fully accept. But I’d say spending so long trying to run from it means it’s quite involuntary.

Anyways, yep. I’m an angel. 100%. Total integration. There’s no human essence alongside the angel, I just am. I have no doubt about that. I wouldn’t say I have a complete, total disconnect from humanity, hence why I’m not 100% nonhuman, but I am very nonhuman. I love humanity! I like being around them, I feel like I understand them pretty well. I’m just not of it and I wish I could explain that and be treated like what I am. But we all know that doesn’t go over well.

Phew. I think that’s everything. I wanted to get in the habit of writing semi regularly again, so while I’m wiped I figured talking about myself in terms of things I already experienced and don’t need to explain too much in detail would be a good compromise.

Felt like experimenting with the idea of a spectrum to describe the phenomena of nonhumanity or related things, as only having labels to work off of has its pitfalls when so many overlap. And so, the KINsey scale was born. Intended to be used per each identity/kintype. Feel free to reply or reblog with your own personal codes! My bonobo type is 3E-F5orange (tho that does fluctuate a bunch). Further explanation of my reasoning behind this....

I can't help but notice there are millions of new terms being coined every week, because what we already have is clearly unsatisfactory for many. And the differences between a of the popular labels are very blurred and overlap a bunch, sometimes to the point of being functionally the same! For example the element of choice for otherkin however small, especially for the psychologically inclined, means you could be fretting about whether you're kin or otherhearted or otherlink or something else entirely. When it shouldn't matter that much. And with the more popular labels comes an implied hierarchy with classic otherkin/therian being at the top, and its cousins being lower down.

Classic otherkin especially, need to adhere to a particular narrative. Or else they're "delegated" to being hearted or something. To fit in. So increasingly I and some others have been thinking of ourselves as being "animal people", just animal people (replace animal with anything else that fits, fairy etc), a species first approach if you will. There are endless backstories and reasonings for why we are the way we are, but the result is the same. It allows for greater personalisation when you're like "I'm an x-person, and this is how". If your identity straddles the line between involuntary and voluntary, or if it was a sudden thing in your 30s rather than childhood, there's no pressure to pick a term and adhere to its norms. You're an individual and no less a real x-person than someone who has been struggling with something they've had no say in since toddlerhood. I'm a bonobo person, therian is the most convenient wordage but my backstory doesn't really tell you whether I really mean it, only how I got here. I don't always conform to the expected narrative.

Of course, I understand people also enjoy having labels, so I'm not hinting at removing them altogether. But spectrums supplementing those could be a viable compromise imo. I'm kinda dubious that we really need so many microlabels and umbrellas when it's already so muddy. It means you need to study what all of these are and have the memory of a computer in order to know wtf someone is talking about. If we prune that a little bit, it may allow for more legible communication.

[eyesfangsandwings]

I just took a bubble bath with...way more bubbles than was necessary, but it was weirdly species-euphoria inducing? Like being in the clouds...and since I’m supposed to have very thick fur, walking out covered in bubbles was kind of like having it. Extra non-clothing insulating layer. :> Dumping this in a few tags in case it helps anyone else at all.

[eyesfangsandwings]

What it means to be cherubkin

I’ve never met or even heard of another cherubkin, so I thought I’d try to document some of my thoughts about what it’s like. This isn’t really anything you should use to reliably determine your own kintype, it’s sort of me just flinging words at the wall. I want to write more on this later but it’s something that’s hard to talk about because I’ve kept it secret for so long. I’m trying to work towards being more open, though.

Anyways. Professional (ish) writer voice on. Here’s the abstract version:

I am a cherub. I am Heaven’s fire, I am a roaring, untamed blaze. I am, first and foremost, free and wild. I am light, and eyes, and fangs, and wings. I love humanity but I am not of it. It is my deepest wish to help humanity, but I fear I may have to burn down much of what they have built to save them. I am a divine predator, a gentle lamb, a despised carrion-eater, because I am not a single animal but the collective impression of an animal filtered through divine awe and fear.

I have a human body. I’m fully aware of that, too aware of that. But I have no essential qualities of human-ness. Other angels might, but I was not meant to interact with humanity directly. There’s a certain absurdity to my existence that’s hard to deny for that reason. I don’t know why I’m here. But I am. And I’m trying to make the most of it.

[eyesfangsandwings]

Today's thing that has me emotionally compromised (I have been emotionally compromised for a few days but this really got me in a good way) is fursuit makers and watching fursuits come together. Just...the level of care people put into them is so much. I was watching someone make a lemur suit and they put in a tooth comb and a secondary tongue and just! That took so much research and attention to detail!

I know how much my own fursuit helped with my species dysphoria and I always have a moment where I wonder if whoever is getting the suit has dysphoria too, and if it'll help them as much as it helped me. It meant so much to me that my own maker went out of their way to do an accurate musteline head shape (down to the nose and teeth set.) Fursuits are such a beautiful, underappreciated art form.

[eyesfangsandwings]

The more I think about it the more I feel like xenoboy (though...honestly I'd prefer the term xenomale b/c I don't think there's that much boyish about me) really fits me and my experience with gender identity. I'll probably still use transmasc/nonbinary man to refer to myself outside of otherkin spaces but I feel like nonhumanity and my inability to connect to human conceptions of masculinity despite being on the gender binary for my kintype is such a big part of my gender I can't really ignore it.

I have looked into other xenogenders fairly extensively and none of them have clicked other than xenoboy. So, that's just what I'm going with for now. Also, this doesn't change pronouns, I'm still a they/he. :> I'm kind of just thinking aloud.

[eyesfangsandwings]

The promised con report

I’ve had a bit of rest, and I think I’ll make my first essay something light! Anyways, hello! I went to Othercon in both 2020 and 2021. I had a fantastic time at both so I thought I’d give my experiences in case anyone was on the fence and might want an insider view of the experience. Here we go! Under the cut in case people want to save some dash space.

Spoilers: it was good.

I will be honest and admit I almost didn’t go to the convention. I had very positive memories of Othercon 2020 and I had this irrational fear it wouldn’t measure up in some way. So I was a last second applicant, and I really do mean last second, as in I technically missed the window to sign up by a few hours.

So when I woke up that morning I was a bit of a sadsack, certain that I wouldn’t get an email with a link to the server and trying to convince myself that was fine and I’d find out something else fun to do over the weekend. You can imagine my surprise when I got an alert with an email from Othercon! Of course that immediately changed my mind that it was fine if I didn’t get to go, and I went straight to the server.

Maybe it was my imagination but it definitely seems like it was slightly bigger this year! I went to the first panel, the species dysphoria meet-and-greet, and it turned out that having a proper voice call was going to be very difficult as there were eighty people who jumped in. I didn’t get a chance to speak but there were a lot of people with really interesting opinions! I even learned a few new terms to put towards feelings of dysphoria I’ve had for quite some time.

Unfortunately, despite being interested in quite a few other panels (RIP kinfood panel) I kept missing a lot of the other Friday panels, and I was torn on whether or not to go to a watch party...I ended up wishing I had, however. There were still a lot of interesting conversations going on more or less all the time in the channels, however! And I got to infodump about fursuits at a few points. :p

I turned in earlyish, and woke up on Saturday, which was probably the busiest day. I went to most of the panels bar the fictionkin ones, and they were incredibly insightful. Special shoutout to the species euphoria panel which was one of the most wholesome experiences of the entire convention.

Sunday was for the most part the relaxed day! I only went to one panel, and it seems I really should have attended the create-a-dragon panel given that everyone had an...interesting time, going by the results. Closing ceremonies had what seems like a new tradition for Othercon, the MEGAHOWL ™....but this time with soup, several people reciting (among other things) Shakespeare soliloquies, the Bee Movie script, and a few people somehow having a conversation while the Discord call began to violently glitch out from having too many people speaking, howling, yipping, meowing, growling, etc. a lot.

...Yeah, it definitely has the usual wild, untamed atmosphere of an IRL convention, not that I’m complaining. ^v^ Afterwards there was a watch party of A Whisker Away and this time I got to tune in! I couldn’t stay up until the end but it was a really fun movie.

Closing thoughts: I’ve been severely isolated from the otherkin community for a long time. I attended Othercon on a whim last year and more or less did again this year. I don’t regret it either time for a second. It’s been the first time in years I felt aligned with the community and helped me feel at home with myself. There were a few minor roadbumps but it was an extremely well run affair. I don’t want to call it life-changing but the fact I’m starting to re-engage with otherkin instead of just being solitary over in my corner should be some indication. It’s inspired me to finally start talking about my experiences, which...is not easy to do, to say the least!

But, the hows and whys of that is another story for another time. Come back around the campfire sometime and I might talk about it. :>

[eyesfangsandwings]

Just otherkin-in-postsecondary-humanities-education-things: when the inevitable debate over “how do we define personhood and can nonhumans be included?” comes up and you just quietly die inside while trying to pretend you aren’t trying to argue for your own personhood against the humans in the room.

[eyesfangsandwings]

Otherkin culture is not playing games with character generation where you have to be human by default.

[eyesfangsandwings]

I'm still working on my con/trip report! I'm going to have to split it in two at this rate because the hiking stuff left me with a lot to cover. Admittedly it's been hard to write lately because...well, honestly, I had a hugely important realization after coming back and being in a massive emotional pit for a while: I really, really need to be recognized as nonhuman somehow outside of just conventions. So a lot of the post-con depression is just having an emotional need I didn't realize existed fulfilled and then just being thrown back into not having it in very quick succession. I...do not know how to resolve this yet but I've got a therapy session coming up so I'll bring it up then and report back I guess.

[eyesfangsandwings]

I have a lot of thoughts about species dysphoria and my experiences. Like, a lot. And I do want to write them, but I feel self-conscious about it. I think there’s a big temptation, maybe just for me, to frame both my experiences as a transmasc and alterhuman in terms of pain. Making it an experience of suffering feels legitimizing, I think, because so many people assume that being otherkin must be a form of wish fulfilment. And framing it around the pain of dysphoria feels like it should eliminate that.

But...I don’t think it would? I’m pretty sure that the goalposts would just get moved by anti-otherkin people. That I’m just getting worked up over nothing and it’s all in my head. Still, it does happen and it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot since I’m still fairly early on in the acceptance phase of my own nonhumanity. So I also want to talk about the joy in accepting nonhumanity, I just don’t have the words for it. And at the same time I don’t want to give people the wrong idea about what otherkin is, and I don’t want to potentially feed into that tendency to make out otherkinity as something miserable.

aaaa. decisions are hard

[eyesfangsandwings]

Started crying tears of joy once I got back to my room because I was getting he/him'd and people were interacting with me as something other than human. The trigger point was seeing my fursuit in the mirror and realizing that was what people saw when they looked at me and then I just had to lie down for a while.

So that's about the emotional state I'm in. I'm managing it pretty well and keeping myself regulated so I'm okay, just having some moments over here. :,>

[eyesfangsandwings]

Forgot to pack a hairbrush for my mane during this trip so I just used a slicker brush I brought for my fursuit. Worked surprisingly well and made me feel more like a critter of ambiguous nature instead of a human 10/10 would recommend.