alter{non}humanity

So, in my talks with other medians about the way fictotypes and fictional facets feel and can act differently from how fictionkin or fictives experience their identities due to medians being something not-quite-singlet-nor-fully-multiple.  So @vagabond-sun and I decided to coin a word for this sort of experience. 

Fableing (from the word “fable”) definition: a fictional identity facet in a median system, who has experiences and feelings in common with both fictives and fictionkin in a way that makes them feel positioned somewhere between or adjacent to the two

Demifictive: A general term for a fictive who is not fully what they are a fictive of for any reason. 

An example could be someone who only loosely identifies as such, or someone who is a hybrid or post fictive. 

Polyfictive: A fictive who is made up of two or more things found in fiction. 

Similar to polykin, which is what inspired this term. An example would be a fictive who is a combination of two fictional characters. 

Hybrid Fictive: A fictive that is combined with something else, not always another fictional character. 

Just some terminology corrections. Most of us know that ‘kin’ isn’t a verb, but some people don’t know how to not use kin in that way, so I’ve made a post that should help with that.

Otherkin is who you are, not what you do.

“I’m kinning x/I am kin with x/I kin x”: - I am x kin - I am x - I identify as x - My kintype/theriotype/fictotype is x

“If I kinned”: - If I discovered I was x kin - If I was x kin - If I was otherkin, I would be x - If I discovered I was otherkin, I would be x - If I was a(n) x

“Kinner:” - Otherkin - Kin - Therian (If earthly animals) - Fictionkin (If fictional)

“I’m going to kin x”: - I discovered I am x kin - I discovered I am x

Eyy, I took some time while slacking off from real work and updated my dictionary and improved the navigation a tad!

Go check it out if you have a sec and give me feedback, thoughts on more terms to add (I have a list posted of stuff I want to add soon, but I’m always looking for more content…or if you have references for me to cite for posted or to-be-posted terms), and any corrections that need to happen, whether it’s terrible formatting, incorrect information, or whatever else.

Also, let me know if you find any broken links…as a single entity who does this as a side-project, it’s hard keeping up with all of the url changes that go on! That goes for the entire site too, especially the resources section. That’s an unmanageable beast, and some help updating urls would be greatly appreciated!

Dr. Jan Dirk Blom, an expert in clinical lycanthropy (the delusion of turning into an animal), has a similar opinion, saying that unless an otherkin individual is suffering, there’s no reason to seek professional help.

“As regards the existence of [otherkin] communities, online or otherwise, where like-minded people join each other to exchange experiences and ideas on their affinity with animal or supernatural identities, I can only say that we cannot have enough of those groups”, he wrote.

“Human experience and behaviour is so diverse, and only so little of it tends to be presented as ‘normal’ in the media, that communities such as these should be embraced and encouraged by us all.”

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It’s a discourse many of us in the community have heard rehashed — is the word “transspecies” an inappropriate comparison of nonhuman struggle to transgender struggle, or is it a deeper reflection of our own experiences? Less often discussed, however, is why transspecies individuals call themselves transspecies instead of or in addition to other, more common terms.

The transgender comparison is often brought up, and sometimes that’s intentional — many transspecies individuals are transgender. When you experience both cross-gender and cross-species identities, the lines can blur between them. Kintypes and other identities may not match the gender one was assigned at birth, or even a human conception of gender at all; if you’re a space alien from a species with 174 principled genders, male and female probably seem pretty foreign to you. My own first introduction to the nonbinary community, long before I transitioned, was through an otherkin individual who had both a female and a male kintype influencing them. In that case, to be transgender is to be transspecies, and vice-versa; there is no meaningful separation of the experiences.

For me, it particularly brings to life the performance art piece Becoming Dragon, which questioned the purpose of and satirized transphobic “Real Life Experience” requirements through a yearlong continuous VR-like life as a dragon in Second Life. Micha Cárdenas is not, to my knowledge, nonhuman-identified, but bringing together the creation of a gendered experience in the physical world and a species experience in the virtual world in this sense is a deeply transspecies act, even done by a person who is not transspecies.

But transspecies brings to mind another word as well: transhuman. In Micha Cárdenas’s I Am Transreal, she reflects on much the same: “Today we can become, in our minds and at a low resolution, any creature we wish. Through nanobiotech and soon through body hacking, perhaps the dream of shapeshifting, of becoming bird, wolf, or dragon, is rapidly approaching.” Though not necessarily centered in a realistic picture of the near future of body modification, this is a dream held by many transspecies people, one that might sometimes be compared to the common desire to transition in the transgender community and might at other times be seen as its own unique experience.

Several prominent transspecies activists, such as Neil Harbisson and Tiamat Medusa, are involved in body modification; the thousands of dollars Tiamat has spent on tattoos, tooth pointing, tongue splitting, implants, and more have been the subject of many a dramatic tabloid piece, while the former’s cybernetic color-sensitive skull implant — designed to supplant his colorblindness — visibly marks him as a cyborg. Though not all transspecies individuals have the money, resources, community support, and desire necessary to make such huge physical changes (or any changes at all), many of them do desire physical changes, often ones not possible with current technology. I have personally pursued cosmetic surgery options to appear more like my true self, and hope to do so more in the future. Other transspecies people make social changes, where possible, to resemble who they want to be — name changes, open nonhuman identification, and so on. These transition aspects call to mind both transgender and transhuman lifestyles.

There are other reasons too — the politicization of humanity and the valuing of a true human experience, and the way in which this experience is denied to many oppressed people, can lead to some of us rejecting it wholesale, abandoning the socially constructed human ideology that’s used as a tool to hurt us. It can work to evoke an identity centered in species dysphoria and a need for tools to escape it. It can be a way of reflecting on the desire to belong culturally to a species that doesn’t exist on Earth or to live among one’s extinct people.

It is, ultimately, one more way for those of us who are nonhuman to express the vastness of what that nonhumanity means. And in a world with hundreds of words meant to capture a uniquely and purely human experience, what’s wrong with one more word to reject that?

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It’s a term I came up with to describe everything that’s important enough to my nonhuman experiences and identity that I wanna mention it, but that doesn’t fit into any other category.

In @obligatorycoffee‘s dictionary it’s described as “a character, animal, or mythical creature that is not a kin/therio/fictotype or a hearttype, but somehow feels important to your established identity. Some examples of how it may manifest include: inducing shifts of one or more of your established ‘types, showing up as a cameo shift that somehow feels related to your established ‘type, or feeling similar to a hearttype because they remind you of your kintype in some significant way.”

Voluntary Identity Discord Server

 Hey! I’ve seen people here and there asking about a community space for coping/otherlinkers, and there is one! I don’t admin, but I got permission to boost the Discord server from the one who does! Whether you use the copinglinker/otherlinker label or not, if your alterhuman identity* is partially, completely, or questionably voluntary, if it’s quoiluntary, if you want to form your own self-shaped identity, or even if you’re just interested in the concept and how these identities are formed in general, this server is open to you! * whatever it is! plurality, ‘sonas, parames, etc are taken into account here, too, if you feel a shared experience.

while we’re going off with symbols, we’ve never really liked the kin flag trend and always much preferred actual symbols to represent otherkinity, so here’s some otherkin symbols based on the elven/fae star. 

This is dragonkin, angelkin, robotkin, and alienkin. 

i made emoji out of some of the symbols that exist for various alterhuman and adjacent communities! i made them for the alt+h discord and forum initially, but i’m making them public domain because fuck it. the world needs more alterhuman emojis.

-sum/Othersum/Objectsum: under the alterhuman umbrella, a term for when you are/identify as, on some level, a concept, object, place/location, form of media, or other abstract idea. 

Separate from kin not because I don’t support the objectkin/other communities, but because I think it would be great for those of us listed above ^ to have our own community, too.

This can also be different from kin in the fact that while you can spiritually identify as any of the things listed above, this word is also supportive of “identifying as” being an abstract/incomplete/“close enough” terminology. 

Examples:

Someone may be watersum. They are water in a way they don’t need to define. While waterkin may be applicable, so is watersum. 

Or someone may identify as Atlantis, or music, or a certain time period, or a TV show. Perhaps these are somehow tied into their identity in a way that makes their identity inseparable from their special interests/hyper fixations, things related to their past, things related to headmates, etc.

Someone who is, say, MLPsum may be someone whose identity is related to and revolves around mlp or being mlp. A general sense of “I am this, even though ‘this’ is not one specific person/place/etc”

I think this could also heavily tie into a lot of mogai genders, since a lot of them have to do with more broad/abstract feelings. Someone could feel their gender and sumtype could overlap, for example.

I’m thinking the symbol for the community may be a cloud but I’m not sure yet, I’m trying to run this by people to get their opinions of it first! 

Atlantis, a forest, water, rain, wind, colors, TV shows, songs, etc, are all examples of things one can be! 

Because people have been asking about non-metaphysical theories behind otherkin, and I’m additionally seeing lots of people with the misconception that “otherkin” means “caused by past lives”…

I’ve spent several years collecting theories about the causes of an otherkin identity/nature from the community. This is by no means a complete list, but it’s what I’ve managed to gather. (I would love to hear any theories that aren’t on this list!) You can find an earlier, more formatted version (though a therianthropy-centric version, because that’s where I spent the first several years of my time in the community) of this list at Project Shift.

Archetypal: Otherkin are connecting on a deep personal level to archetypes and mythic symbols, and embodying those archetypes.

Biological: Being otherkin is a biological phenomenon, rooted in the hindbrain and showing up in physical characteristics and changes, like elongated eyeteeth and shifting eye color. Or there’s an abnormality of the brain, a genetic mutation. (Can be said to go along with the “genetic” theory.)

Dissociation: Being otherkin is related to or due to a dissociative disorder, whether it be full dissociative identity disorder or a lesser form of dissociation. Shifting is dissociation from higher thought processes and emotion, the “human side”.

Dual Souls/Walk-In: Two souls occupy the otherkin’s body, one human and one non-human, or his soul is part non-human and part human.

Energetic Resonance: The otherkin’s energy resonates at the same frequency or on the same wavelength as that of their kintype, leading to some similarities and identification.

Everyone’s Otherkin: Everyone’s an otherkin, everyone has a non-human aspect. But very few people become aware of or accepting of this fact, and so there aren’t a lot of awakened otherkin. Anyone can awaken, though, and become otherkin.

Genetic: Otherness is passed from generation to generation, like body type or some mental disorders.

Imprinting (from Winged Wolf’s site): When young, the human imprinted on an animal of a different species, and thus grew to believe (at some level) that she was that animal, imitating the behavior and mannerisms of that animal.

Links to Gaia: Therians are links to nature and the primal side of humanity, an attempt by nature or deities or some other power to return balance to the world. Therians are to fight for this and protect the environment.

Links to Magic: Otherkin are links to magic and the otherworlds, an attempt by deities or Faerie or some other power to return magic to the world. The duty of otherkin is to bring magic into mundane life and introduce wonder into the world around them; this was one of the original purposes behind glamourbombing. (This theory is most often seen with fae-kin.)

Mental: Otherkin identity is a mental fabrication, where the person desires so much to be something other that sie tricks hir mind into experiencing shifts of perception, phantom limbs, etc. It’s an elaborate game of ‘let’s pretend” taken to a new, more vibrant, more serious level. (Similar to the “dissociation” theory.)

Neurological: Otherkin identity and the experience of being other-than-human results from atypical neurology. An article by Liesk explores this at greater length.

Primal Association (from Winged Wolf’s site): “Everyone has a primal side–this is the part of the brain and personality which is instinct-driven. It may be that in some persons, the primal side is very well-developed. On top of that, the person may identify their primal nature with an animal or animals, similar to the way a dissociative has separated different personalities in their mind.”

Psychic Connection (from Winged Wolf’s site): “If a person, when very young, developed a very deep psychic link with a certain animal, then they may take on–or take in–the mind of that animal to such a degree that it becomes a part of them, and remains so even after the link is severed.”

Reincarnation: The otherkin was hir kintype in a past life, and shifts are past life memories. Or hir soul is non-human, but instead of being reincarnated into the corresponded body, something happened to reincarnate hir as a human. Or sie spent enough lifetimes as a certain species (or had a lifetime as that species that heavily impacted her soul) that the energetic nature of hir soul (or something of the like) is that of a certain non-human species.

Shamanic/Totemic: Therianthropes are people with a natural affinity for shamanic practices, astral shape-shifting, etc, and their theriotype is their power animal, not who they are. Or the totem animal of the therianthrope has more influence over the therianthrope’s behavior and mannerisms, or they’re more in touch with their totem.

Soul Parts: The soul has many parts (such as with the Egyptian concept of the soul or the Norse concept of the self) and one or more of those parts resonates with, has the nature/shape of, or in some other way is non-human. This can also explain people with multiple kintypes, if each part is, in some way, a different “species”.

Soul Splitting/Shattering: Souls can split, break, fission, or shatter into more than one piece, and often do. Soul-pieces sometimes/often fuse onto other soul-pieces, and sometimes a nonhuman soul-piece fuses to a human soul, resulting in an otherkin.

Reposting here in case the announcement over on the Therian Nation blog didn’t get seen. https://theriannation.tumblr.com/post/190374721657/vol-1-issue-1-now-available