who goes there

From Within Our Hearts Zine || Info Doc

There's not nearly enough talk about hearttypes, so we wanted to to get conversations rolling by making a collaborative zine about it!

Otherhearted describes a person who has a strong fundamental connection to a species or character which impacts their core sense of self. This is most commonly described in terms of identifying with a being as opposed to identifying as one, although this is not always the case. - Otherkin Wiki

This zine will be a collection of artwork, writing and more all about being otherhearted. Whatever that means to you - both fiction and nonfiction pieces would be accepted. If you got something you wanna express about hearttypes, we'd love to hear it!

Full submission guidelines below the cut.

You really want to be an animal, or your favourite character, but you know you're not? You can do that--you can just.. become them.

You have a hearttype but it feels kinda weird and it feels like you should have been that thing, but you're not? You could always 'link it if you're dysphoric about not being that thing.

You have something that was--or you thought was--a kintype, but now it's not, and you miss it? Just link it back into yourself.

You think [thing] is really cool and it'd be cool to be one? You can!

You want to incorporate an aesthetic of [thing] into your identity and it'd work best if you just became that thing? That's absolutely a thing you can do.

You think it'd be fun to identify as something other than what your body is? You can make that happen.

Being [thing] would help with something in your life? Go ahead, you can do that.

Interest Check!

From Within Our Heart - an Otherhearted Zine

There's not nearly enough talk about hearttypes, so we wanted to to get conversations rolling by making a collaborative zine about it!

Otherhearted describes a person who has a strong fundamental connection to a species or character which impacts their core sense of self. This is most commonly described in terms of identifying with a being as opposed to identifying as one, although this is not always the case. - Otherkin Wiki

This zine would be a collection of artwork, writing and more all about being otherhearted. Whatever that means to you - both fiction and nonfiction pieces would be accepted.

How it would work is we'd have a few month submission window and anyone could email us pieces they'd like added to the zine. No formal applications or try-outs. If you got something you wanna express about hearttypes, we'd love to hear it!

If you'd be interested in either reading or submitting to this potential zine please comment, reblog, like, or tell us in the tags!

If we get enough interest, we'll create a second post with more detailed instructions on how to submit pieces and deadlines.

Previous Community Zines:

Modern Draconity

My Gender is [NOT] Human

I've never seen an ask game for hearttypes specifically so I wanted to make one! I did my best! Be sure to specify which hearttype you want to know about if they have more than one!

1. What about you and your hearttype are similar?

2. What about you and your hearttype are different?

3. How did you discover (and confirm) your hearttype?

4. Any headcanons/theories about your hearttype?

5. Any habits you picked up from your hearttype, or any you had before you even knew about it?

6. Any hearttypes that developed from a different thing like a synpath or copinglink?

7. Anything you personally don't like about your hearttype? Could be personality, something that happened/happens to them, how they function, etc.

8. Are you a "deep longing to be", "deep admiration and empathy for", "ideal self", "should have been", and/or other experience 'hearted person?

9. Would you take your hearttype's physical body? Anything you'd change?

10. Do you experience shifts of your hearttypes?

11. Any hearttypes you're questioning at the moment?

12. Do you ever feel desires/urges or emotions that are due to or influenced by your hearttype?

13. What was the hearttype that took you the longest to confirm?

Please consider taking and sharing the survey!

Results will be made into an easily-digestible post with graphics after the survey closes.

Ok yes some of them may be otherhearted but the issue with kff is that it is entirely a fandom thing. If they are also otherhearted that is its own thing, and its like, fine to teach them about it in case they are alterhuman in this way and its good for more people to know what otherhearts are but it feels like sometimes it is just being used as a shield and a sacrifice for kin when the fandomy relationship with the character kff have is Also Not what Otherhearted Is. Just because its identify with rather than as doesnt make it not a deeply held important identity.

(for @skylargoesbark alterhuman new years posts!)

i know a lot of folks tend to think of otherhearted as “just having a connection”, or like the lesser version of kin, and it will never not get on my nerves when i see someone (trying to correct someone else) say “therian/kin isn’t a connection!! if you just have a connection, that’s just otherhearted!!” or something similar.

it’s the word ‘just’ that always gets me. it’s just a connection. it’s not kin; it’s just otherhearted.

it feels reductive. it feels like dumbing down what it truly means to be otherhearted.

personally my hearttypes aren’t just anything. they’re a whole slew of complexities and emotions that are integral to who i am as a being. they make me who i am, and i wouldn’t be the same without them.

and i know people tend to think it’s not a big deal, and even if i were to say “imagine if someone said ‘it’s just a kintype’ about one of your kintypes”, many of you probably wouldn’t care. but my issue is that to otherhearted creatures, specifically, it happens over and over and over again. and if i ever point it out, suggest a correction, i sometimes get dogpiled on as if im the bad guy; op didnt mean it that way, dogbite, don’t be so sensitive. you’re overreacting.

but i suppose that’s the problem, isn’t it? that they didn’t mean to. that reducing our identity in such a way is so common, so familiar that people don’t even think about it when they do it. that in their subconscious, otherheart will only ever be “just a connection”, and nothing more. even if they don’t mean it that way. it still stings a little even if it wasn’t intentional.

Gonna be plural on main for a second, but cofronting for us always feels so intimate. Or maybe we make it intimate just by virtue of who we are and what we do? Noel curls around me like the world's biggest sentient chair, and it feels like her soul's touching mine. I can feel the memory of her teeth and wings like my own, while still feeling her scales up against my back and the way she rumbles in amusement, the closeness of it shaking my bones, as I write this. Never more than when I'm cofronting do I have to stop and admire that if we're made of anything, her and I are made of the same stuff. I'm hers in a way that transcends anything else, and in the same way she's mine. If soulmates exist, we're each other's.

Cofronting in this way for us is like being wrapped in the warmest hug you can possibly imagine, but so much better. In discussions where my singlet friends are first learning about plurality and specifically my plurality, they often ask: isn't it exhausting getting no privacy? How can you handle people always being with you? And I also have to ask in return: isn't it lonely? How can you stand living without even one person who'll ever understand exactly what you're feeling, who's always there for you? And we both kind of shrug at each other and accept that our lived experiences are polar opposites in some significant ways. This closeness with another person just isn't something I could imagine ever going without. It'd be like losing all my senses and my family all at the same time. It'd be devastating and life-changing in ways I couldn't comprehend and frankly don't want to. And it'd be so, so fucking lonely.

Attendee registration is OPEN!

This post will be updated over time. It covers basic information, community history, symbology, community writings, and more.

this is not to discourage plural daemons and daemians from the community ofc, you're always welcome, but I'm getting a little sick of people considering this unique identity with it's own history and community as 'tulpmancy lite' or 'a fancy term for median system' or 'just another type of created plurality'.

Your rational, adult self can only look back forlornly, whispering sweet nothings and "It's okay, it's okay". Because you know that "We've never actually been a dragon" isn't something your inner child is able to swallow at all. You've tried telling them before, and all they could say back is "I don't understand".