#merlin (xe/he/they)

[interstellarsystem]

Nonhuman expressions of affection are great. Purring. Exposing weak points as a show of trust. Head bonks. Preening and chewing. Nuzzling. Biting. Intertwining tails. Feeding each other. Little chuffs, chatters, beeps and squeaks. Fluffing up of feathers, fur or other things. Dancing to impress. Cleaning their fur, scales, feathers or skin. Sharing body heat. Ears pointing toward those you care about to show your full attention is on them. Slow blinking.

[terror-punk]

Be Openly Scary

Society is scared of a lot of things it shouldn't be. A lot of those things can't be helped, a lot of those things don't hurt anyone, and a lot of those things are not what people even think they truly are.

So you know what?

Talk about your hallucinations, your delusions, your psychotic symptoms. Share things about your gender identity whether it be nonconforming, trans, xenogender or anything else. Scream about your nonhumanity and animal urges. Be open and unwavering about your systems existence, presenting as more-than-one wherever you want. Use and introduce your pronouns, even if people find them weird or offputting. Rock back and forth, pace, twitch and stim in any way you please. Wear things that reflect your identity in public. Get tattoos and body mods to your heart's content. Tell people about your personality disorders.

Don't make yourself small because others can't handle you. Be open where safe. Be you. Be scary.

[abadbutsadcollective]

One moment I'm like "why am I hearing things that aren't there. why did our psychosis come back hard" but the next I realise I'm a psychosis holder. Hallucinations georg if you will. The guy who Just Does That. Wow who would've thought.

[disabirbity]

We've been so low on spoons lately. A little bit of extra stress is really all it takes to make it much harder to do the exact same things you were doing before.

[grimwalker-grimoire]

When you're partially curled up on your side to sleep and your cat decides to sleep in-between your stomach and your knees to be close to you and be warm? That means the world to me. I'll be your warm shelter and you'll be my hot water bottle.

[grimwalker-grimoire]

Jerrys allowed? He's not all black but he absolutely does something.

why don't you look at a black cat's fur turning brown in the sunlight and maybe you'll calm down

[interstellarsystem]

We didn't actually know plural pride day was a thing, somehow (it's every 3rd Saturday of July).

So, happy plural pride day to systems and plurals of all kinds. Systems of all origins, structures, member counts, disorders or lack thereof; you are real, you are valid, and you have a place in this world just as anyone else. People will not always be accepting, but that goes for any identity. Their perception of you does not define you or your reality.

The future is plural. Be proud.

[terror-punk]

Win for the queers today, I think.

We went to and spoke at a local council meeting this week. Long story short, our town is planning a pride festival and we're helping get it off the ground for its second year running. And, of course, the council doesn't like that very much. They were holding a vote in their meeting about whether or not to remove their funding from it, and if so, how much. The amount ended up getting dropped a bit, but nowhere near as much as a lot of them wanted it to be. A small win, though not the best outcome.

We'd been to a council meeting about the festival before. The first time was before the first festival, and one particular councilor had called for a vote to cancel it. We, helping run the festival, of course registered to speak at that council meeting as a member of the public and give our two cents. This was earlier this year, and we won--the festival was a huge success! That particular councilor wasn't happy, but oh well! That's a him issue.

Yesterday, though, we saw that specific transpbobic councilor in the dollar store. He, behaving like something out of a damn cartoon, looked us dead in the eye--then slowly turned away and started literally whistling. I cannot make this up. Literally whistling innocently. He seemed to wander around for a bit, then make a line straight for the door to leave. Like okay, the scary transgender who's spoken at your meeting twice is in the craft isle at the dollar store. So damn scary. We had a good laugh about it with our partner who was also there with us, and carried on with our day.

But, later that night, we get a notification on our phone. This councilor had looked us up on Facebook of all places--a place we don't have our face, we have our chosen name and a random bird as our icon--and followed our account. This guy, so damn pressed about us being outspoken and contesting him and his attempts to cancel the festival, remembered our chosen name, and sought us out on Facebook to follow us. We had to use our legal name for the registration forms! He remembered that in our speech, we introduced ourselves as our chosen name.

If that's not proving we live rent free in this old queerphobes head, I don't know what is. I see this as an absolute win, and a sign we're doing the right thing--being a person that assholes feel the need to keep tabs on. That's right, be threatened.

[abadbutsadcollective]

Bird culture is gently nibbling on your friends to "preen their feathers" that totally exist.

[interstellarsystem]

Other kinds of alterhumans too, not just nonhumans.

Otherhearted people in or above their 40s, their hearttype as strong as ever. Systems of all origins working everyday jobs, their headmates working together. People with hearthomes who are older but kept that feeling close to them. Furry lifestylers living their best lives and connecting with others like them. Those who are alterhuman in a vague and undefined way, living on as the rest of us do.

Older alterhumans of all kinds exist everywhere. They might be working at your school, or at the local cafe down the road, or in the library. They might attend game nights or social groups. You could walk past them on the street, or they could live 3 houses down. We're out there, and our alterhumanity doesn't have to go away just because we grew.

i love you older alterhumans i love you therians in college i love you nonhumans in careers i love every single speciesqueer or otherwise nonhuman individual who breaks the stereotype of our identities being just a phase

[disabirbity]

Man. Why can we never remember what our symptoms are when we experience them. Like we know we have disorders and symptoms. We know this. But we always wonder why the fuck we are the way we are and get all Surprised Pikachu Faced when we realise it's one of The Disorders.

Us like 5 days ago: Talking over people, not caring about money, talking loud and fast, feeling great, living on 4 or less hours of sleep.

Partner: Hey are you manic.

Us: Oh. Fuck. Yeah probably.

Me, a fool, today: Bro why can't I sleep. Why did I clean the room at 1am instead of sleeping. Why is my brain going so quickly. Why do I type so much today.

[grimwalker-grimoire]

ALSO HOW IS UR BLOGS SO WELL ORGANISED LMFAO ✨😭🙏🏻, OURS ARE A MESS EJSJEBE/SILLY GEN

Personally we need everything to be as organised as possible or we go a little bit feral. Even though the tags and the search doesn't always work, the system for tagging + the sideblogs are part of why we stay on Tumblr. I mean, our computer files are so organised there's subfolders upon subfolders within subfolders that probably would make it hard to navigate for anyone else, but hey, we know exactly where everything is.

[interstellarsystem]

Has this been done yet? Probably.

Tried to use language that's inclusive of alterhumans who are still human.

[disabirbity]

I've been on abilify and it singlehandedly was the medication that made me lose faith in trying more meds. I'd tried many before with many side effects and not much use, but that one? Fuck no. If that thing can fuck me up that bad, I'm not risking it anymore.

Things it did:

Caused what I call "sleep paralysis dreams". Not full sleep paralysis as in "I've opened my eyes and am hallucinating, and I cannot move". A recurring dream in which we could be anywhere, unable to move, and crushed with this all encompassing fear that we couldn't even fix while lucid (which we often were). The dream was basically a repeating line. I can't move what the fuck > This is that dream again > I know it's a dream why is it so scared > I need to wake up so bad > Finally wake up in actual physical pain. We had it almost every night, and the psychologist insisted that it wasn't the medication because it's not a listed side effect. But we stop the med and now we just... Don't dream at all--which is better! We actually don't dread sleeping anymore!

Caused heart palpitations! Multiple times a day, bad enough we got put on medication for them. They're gone since stopping abilify. We told the psych the meds were giving us symptoms and he said that it's definitely not the abilify. Uh huh.

Made me stop being depressed (yay!) but also unable to feel happy (not yay!). Literally couldn't feel anything on that med and we didn't even notice it, is the scary part.

Made me sleep for upwards of 14 hours a day. Chronic exhaustion, feeling so fucking tired and falling asleep everywhere. Horrible paired with those dreams that made us want to stay awake for a week.

Made me so hungry. That paired with undiagnosed hypothyroidism? Horrible combination--unless of course the abilify caused that too.

Didn't even make me stop hallucinating! Or stop the paranoia! It didn't do what it was even meant to in the first place!

So yeah... We hate the shit. Sorry to dump on your post but the solidarity in the notes was great and we wanted to share our piece. No shame if it helps you, it just definitely destroyed our life for a while. We still have heart palpitations on occasion, and we can't take naps because that makes it much more likely we get another of those dreams due to us drifting in and out of sleep a lot when we try to nap.

Is there... Something special about abilify that makes it suck to so many people? There's no other medication we've seen so consistently hated. We've been on other antipsychotics and they've been nowhere near as bad, and we don't see hate for others as much as this one either. What exactly makes it so horrible so often? Genuinely wondering why, if there's even a reason besides "psych system sucks and wants you sedated so you're not 'crazy' lol".

anti drug awareness campaign but it's "just say no to abilify" and directed at psychiatric patients

[abadbutsadcollective]

Questioning: Future Life? Kintype? Hearttype? Or Something Else?

Ok, weird new experience for me time. Hoping to get some feedback but also get my experience out there. No one in my system has ever felt this before, so I'm doing what we always do and writing about it. Gonna put this under a cut because it's long, but feel free as ever to read and give input.

Point is: do you ever feel like a character would have you as their kintype?

This character, Hawks from MHA for your information, is very very similar to me. Bird guy with red feathers, his backstory if you twist it lines up eerily well with Hunters (from The Owl House, the guy I'm a fictive of), his general outlook in a lot of ways matches up with me. But I'm not him.

Honestly it's like looking into a funhouse mirror. The reflection is similar to you, but definitely to the left, and if you saw that thing walking down the street you wouldn't call it you. Just something that looks like you. Something that was you, but got changed somehow, even if it still holds the pieces of what you were.

This would be all fine and good, no problems--he's just not something I identify as even though he's similar, right? Simple, problem solved! But the actual problem is... I feel closely intertwined with him to the point where I feel like he should have a me kintype. Instead of a sense of "I have experience of being this man and see myself as him", I feel like he would have experience being me, and that if anything he'd literally have me as a kintype.

Obviously this guy is a fictional character and can't have kintypes unless the source creators wrote it in there. So this isn't even about the source material itself, this is... A distinct feeling. Different to "haha he's like me, he'd probably have me as a kintype" too--it's deeper. It's not a joke or a fandom thing.

I've seen people talk about future lives around--rarely, but I've seen it. Never in-depth aside from "a life you believe you'll have in the future", so we never really learned about what it's like to have an identity that stems from that. I feel like maybe this could be related? It seems to fit the feelings well enough, I'm just not sure how that would work in a logical way. Not that it needs to be flawless in its logic--but I do prefer to have a satisfying explanation for things that concern me.

Hell, is it a parallel life maybe? We've seen more on those. It'd be confusing if Hawks-me in whatever other timeline had a me kintype and I didn't have him as one--though I guess it could work regardless? Maybe? Haven't got anything else pointing toward that explanation yet though--once again it's something I'm not entirely familiar with.

Could it be a hearttype? Never heard them described in this way, though. We've seen "this is like family to me"--not what I experience. I don't know him. We've seen "I should be this"--also not true. I should be me because that's who I am right now, I don't think I "should have" been Hawks. It just doesn't seem to fit, though in a pinch I guess I could describe it as one for a quick explanation?

In the end I could always go with vaguetype and call it a day. But I still don't think that's direct enough of a term--it's not vague, it's a distinct feeling that doesn't have a name. It's unclear on what this is, sure, but only because it doesn't have a name or explanation.

Not that I really need to put a name to it, but this isn't something we've heard of before. I'd like answers, or at least to put this out and maybe have some form of solidarity with someone over it--whether that be now, or a year or two in the future when someone else finds this and goes "wow, just like me!".

I'll keep thinking on it, I just needed to get this all down somewhere.

[grimwalker-grimoire]

YO HI! YOU GUYS ARE SO COOL! WE'RE @thenexuscollective NICE TO MEET/SEE YA!!/POSPOS

Hello! Thank you, and nice to meet you too!