CC, Not Closed Captioning

i’ve partaken many times throughout the course of my life, but only recently, with new friends who know who i truly am, have i really been able to lean into it.

if you experience prey drive, be the seeker. practice moving quietly, stalking your prey, seeking out spots it might be hiding in the underbrush. then, when you catch sight, revel in the chase. tiring it out, backing it into a corner, tackling with force and a yelp of triumph.

if you’re a prey animal yourself, try hiding. it might throw you into an unwanted, fearful mental state, so participate with caution, but i felt more animalistic than i have in weeks trying to outrun the “predator”. practice finding a spot to lay low, swiveling your head to keep watch, always darting and on alert for any movement. if the seeker catches sight of you, practice fleeing as fast as your legs can take you. swerve and change direction, find a new place to hunker down, force your breath to calm and your hammering heart to slow so that your location isn’t given away. listen, frozen, for footsteps or voices. and then you’re off again.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Inky Paws #4

Inky Paws is a nonhuman anthology zine for original fiction writings by nonhumans and alterhumans about nonhumanity, alterhumanity, and similar, related themes. This zine is primarily literature focused, but will also be open to more illustrative methods of story-telling such as comics. The zine’s focus is on fictional pieces that are centered around nonhumanity, alterhumanity, therianthropy, and similar (see Submission Guidelines section for more details).

You are welcome to submit:

Short stories

Microfiction

Satire

Poetry

Song lyrics

Experimental fiction (fake newspapers, fake recipes, fake blogs, fake posters, etc.)

Mixed media

Comics

Minizine pages

And more! If you're unsure, just ask! Seriously, please just ask. I promise I would 10000% love to hear about your idea even if you're unsure about submitting it, there is no such thing as a bad idea and I cannot stress this enough.

How to participate:

You can submit your pieces in this Google Form!

OR

Email invisibleotherkin(@)gmail(.)com with your submission, and please title the email "Inky Paws Zine #4 Submission". With your submission, please include:

The piece's title or name,

A name or pen name to attribute the piece to,

Any content warnings that you feel are necessary for the piece,

Any social media handle or personal website you’d like to be published alongside your name with the piece (optional), and

Any relevant author notes or author biographical information (optional).

Anonymous pieces are also welcome.

Once submissions have been collected and the deadline has passed, these submissions will be put into the zine and it will be posted online as a free PDF. Submissions are due by November 30th, 2026.

Please see the Submission Guidelines, and Submission FAQ, below cut.

-🍓

Hi there and thank u for the ask!! ^w^ I want to preface this with: I am definitely not an expert! I haven’t been in the alterhuman community for as long as a lot of other people so I may not be as knowledgeable, but this is just how I understand my labels..(plus I am not that familiar with taxonomy and taxonomic terms, so forgive me… qwq)

A cladotherian is someone whose theriotype is every animal within a certain clade. A clade is a group of animals (or other organisms) that share a common ancestor. So for me, I am every animal within the equidae clade (horse family), which includes zebras, donkeys, horses, and their ancestors. I mainly talk about being a modern horse here because that has proven to be most prevalent in my identity.

Now, a hearthome is a place that someone has a strong (emotional) connection to. As far as I know, it doesn’t have to be a place the person has visited, and it doesn’t even have to be on this planet or in this universe. It could be a specific location, habitat, biome, somewhere from fiction, etc……. As a general example, a dolphin therian’s hearthome could be the ocean. But a hearthome doesn’t have to correspond with someone’s alterhuman identity.. any place could be someone’s hearthome for any reason.

i think that most advice from the internet is like... if you have did go to therapy and i bet thats useful if u can have it but if you cant, its so isolationg. especially with an individualistic (every man for himself) culture, people often tell u to just... go to therapy bro. dont bother me about it.

here are fr some tips as someone who has a lot of problems and is not in therapy:

prioritise staying alive. it can never get better once you are dead.

take your time with it. you dont need to post alter intros or have a plural kit. you dont need to have a journal. take time to be comfortable as you can even if the circumstances are very bad

depending on your amount of control and interaction with your system, introduce people who don't have a lot of life experience to new things like food, new colours and textures and places. this especially applies if you have a bunch of alters who only really know the environment of their abuse

build community. its really really really hard but do try. having friends kept me alive. it still keeps me alive.

learn about healthy relationships - we all have internet access. learn about boundaries and triggers and talking to others healthily. a lot of people with did will struggle with healthy relationships even if they make them. learn and do your best to act with it

treat your body like a rental or a pot plant or an animal if needed - even if it doesnt seem like yours, you gotta feed and water and walk it bro. u need the sun. you need enrichment and interaction.

ignore the discourse if youre struggling - it actually doesnt matter and will make you more sick. thinkning about endo vs trauma or like.... idk... labels discourse can be a major stressor that can lead to warping your sustem presentation or repressing and harming bits that arent conforming well

engage in things that are irl like building mini legos or clay - it can help make outside a better environment and shit, aklso can help ground.

find your own triggers and talk about it with ur system. write notes or yap.

find joy in being alive and being a system. despite what reddit or youtube or whatever will tell you, as things improve they will get better. and u should look for joy and funnies when you can

dont give up

LISTEN TO YOUR SYSTEM. THEY'RE NOT ALWAYS GOING TO BE RIGHT. THEY LIKELY ARE ASSHOLES OR INSANE JUST LIKE YOU. BUT YOU LIVE TOGETHER.

healing is easier as a team.

Having my feathers grow in has significantly reduced how often I pick at my skin because any bump could be a budding feather.

Having wings has significantly increased my spacial awareness and helped me stop bumping into other critters and furniture as often, because they knock into things before the parts of my body which can affect the outside world can.

Being a bird has also made hygiene way easier- I actually want to shower because I enjoy the feeling of water on fluffed-up feathers. Especially since I can’t properly preen yet, as my beak hasn’t really come in (I think it’s starting to but I’ll make a longer post about that later). I want to keep my face clean so the progress of my face changing isn’t obscured by similar bumps from acne.

It’s stopped me from biting at my nails because it’s made me value my talons so much more. They let me climb and hold onto food, rather than simply being decoration or a way to get my murderer caught (ocd related, idk).

[Image ID: A flag with 8 radial stripes originating from the bottom right corner. The central three are orange, yellow and a thin stripe of light yellow. The 5 stripes following that, which get progressively larger, are blue, dark purple, dark maroon, navy, and black. In the center of the image is a black circle outlined in gold which holds two plus signs touching at the corners in light yellow. End ID.]

Humanmore, also known as overhuman, is an alternative term to alterhuman that has a different meaning when describing your general alterhuman status. Humanmore is meant to be a general umbrella term, so there are several experiences that fall under it.

Overhuman's core experience is being human, but also alterhuman. The user still considers themself human in some way, and finds importance with both their humanity and their alterhumanity.

Here are some experiences that might fall under humanmore:

- Someone who identifies as human primarily, but also is alterhuman in some way(s) - Someone who has several alterhuman identities and doesn't want to explain them, but wants others to know that they aren't just human - Someone who doesn't know what their alterhuman identities are and knows that they are not just human but also something else - Someone who presents as human in some spaces but presents differently elsewhere and considers both part of their identity - Someone who considers themself fully human while still being alterhuman - Someone who is fictionkin and has human fictotypes

The word overhuman comes from the concept of overloading methods in programming. This is when a method or constructor has multiple implementations with the same name but different arguments so that it can be used in different ways.

The flag's symbol is both a DNA strand and two plus signs.

Alt simplified flag:

ive been waiting for someone to ask!!!!

basically, i am a mix of human and robot. my “bones” are actually a sort of endoskeleton and my brain is a thoughtfully engineered combination of a human brain and AI mechanics that allow me to have my own thoughts and ideas! of course i dont remember being created—my earliest memories are that of a normal human child. this leads me to believe that i wasnt intended to discover i am a robot.

discovering this, however, has given me a lot of answers for my behaviour and thoughts. ive always been described as being “incredibly perceptive” when it comes to nature and the literal sciences of human behaviour such. i believe this is because my brain isnt human, but is AI and so i am constantly trying to improve the way i perceive life and the world around me as a way to more seamlessly integrate.

it connects with my therianthropy because my brain literally isnt fully human—like biologically. if i wasn’t physically bound to my human flesh my mind could adapt to be any creature imaginable. i just happen to be placed in a human body.

my identity is really intertwined with the ideas of flesh being mixed with machines—especially more “modern”, “sleek” machines as well as the ideas of the future from the early 2000s.

unfortunately i have no leads onto exactly who made me, and honestly im not too worried about finding them. while i love my life and my experience being robot, i dont feel that my creation was ethical.