#did this And now it looks like a traumacore edit which was Not at all my intention but who cares. Who Care

[time-was-over]

i wanna do something that matters etc etc

[post-punk-revival]

So, as a bit of an addendum to my “complaining about aesthetic blogs” post. And when I say “a bit” it’s actually a small novella, because that’s how I roll, which I’ve accepted by now.

“Complaining about aesthetic blogs” is not really what I was talking about. I said this in a reply, but ‘kin aesthetic blogs were not the intended target of that post. I love aesthetics and moodboards. I’ve made plenty of my own because they’re fun to make and a great way to get out any unexpressed nonhuman feelings that don’t feel right put into words. And the first part of this post is to apologize, because it did really seem like I was saying that aesthetic blogs are the downfall of the community or something, and even if that’s not what I meant, people felt attacked by that. So sorry about that.

What spurred this particular post was something that has personally affected me. I have a fictotype (technically a kintype, but I experience it as a fictotype in a convoluted way) that I have known about for at least a year but have never mentioned even once in any public alterhuman space. This is because when I was questioning, I delved into the tag on Tumblr and was severely disappointed by what seemed to be the apparent only community of what I had hoped were people experiencing the same thing as me. All I found were pendulum readings, vent edits crosstagged as #traumacore and #horror aesthetic (often containing uncensored self-harm attitudes, which is not a fun thing for me to see), and self-described kin-for-funs who “know they’re not actually a ghost, that’s delusional, they just like the ghostkin aesthetic.” This was, again, over a year ago, and honestly, since then, it seems to have improved. The number of aesthetics being posted has not gone down, but the tag is now mostly genuine ghostkin. So the moodboards are not what I actually have a problem with, when I probably thought I did. I remember a few years back when ghosts were lumped into conceptkin and said to be “invalid” or making the community look bad. Now both ghostkin and conceptkin are largely accepted.

So this is also kind of an opening-up post? I’m still hesitant to use ghostkin after years of ghostkin being a word that was dragged to hell and back mostly by therians for being fluffy, “only kff,” or a troll term. And also because ghosts… are technically a type of human, not nonhuman? So is it really ‘kin? But that’s getting into pedantic linguistics and mythological philosophy. I’m a ghost. This is a kintype caused by dissociation, subconscious coping with the way autistic people are treated, and imprinting on certain media. I call it a fictotype because my conception of ghosts comes entirely from pop culture and media like Beetlejuice and Paranatural, and because I experience this identically to how I experience my Novakid fictotype (internally, if not always externally). (And because ghosts are technically not nonhuman, so it’s not technically otherkin :P) But that’s not really the point of this post.

I’m genuinely sorry to anyone I riled up with the implication that aesthetic and moodboard blogs are ruining the ‘kin community, and for implying that crosstagging is inherently harmful. I will admit I actually did think that when I made the post (specifically between ‘kin and -core tags), but several responses detailing why what I said was wrong has made me realize that’s not true.