Your Place For Voluntary Identities

It’s a shame that the ‘linking community appears to be clinically dead, at least on this hellsite. Well, “dead” perhaps is the wrong word. Let’s try “scattered until no community is left”. We’re really interested in experiences others had with coping-mechanisms-turned-involuntary because we’re at a bit of a crossroad here. As this topic is so little talked about, we’re going to share our story, for context:

So, when wei were early pubescent children, wei found ourselves in a place where muir secure world was crumbling around muis. Around that time, there happened to be a media hype around a certain flavor of vampirism: Creatures who outwardly were almost indistinguishable from humans, but weren’t human at all. They lived in the middle of society and yet were detached from it. In short: This kind of vampire occupies a fascinating liminal place between human and not-human-at-all.

To the neurodivergent, queer, therianthropic child subjected to a traumatizing environment that wei were, this was an utterly fascinating and irresistable symbol. It described how wei felt. It had “escape” built into its very core. You could be completely alienated from humanity and coexist with humans. Imagining muirself as a vampire helped muis to coexist with the humans who abused muis on a daily basis. Was excessive daydreaming about being a vampire a good coping mechanism? Doesn’t matter. It simply was muir survival strategy when no one taught muis how to process muir feelings. It kept muis alive, that’s what matters.

This also was the time when muir medianhood slowly began to shape into what it is today. Kiefer and Solo have been around since wei were five or younger, but the others don’t appear as facets before muir teenage years if wei remember correctly.

After approximately two years, wei discovered therianthopy and muir theriotypes began to  displace the “made-up” nonhuman identity. Dissociating remained muir main survival strategy and vampires remained an integral part of muir daydreams, but the desire to be a vampire in a literal sense faded bit by bit. Except that it actually didn’t go anywhere. It formed its own facet. It’s a “simple” one, mostly composed of feelings and instincts. It’s also the source of intense otherheartedness for everyone else in the collective, including muir daemon. In a way, this facet is pure concentrated fernweh and it’s radiating it in almost overwhelming doses.

Which brings us to the discussion we’re currently having: We’re clearly stuck with these feelings. They have been here for over ten years and don’t make an effort to go anywhere. Every time we ignore them, they hit us with the force of an ICE train. There is a shared desire to spread the feelings out again. To take them out of this extremely concentrated form and distribute them throughout the entire system, hoping that it will dissolve some of the fernweh. A shared vampire identity could also add a layer of cohesiveness, which would be a nice bonus. A star to orbit around, in a sense.

It would be incredibly easy as well. The shifts are there. The ‘heartedness is there. The only thing that’s missing is the permission to be a vampire. We are aware of at least three long established ‘kin communities who would look at this piece of writing and go “Tf folks, that’s ‘kinity? What’s your problem?”. Interesting how communties differ, right? Our hesitation probably is connected to the endless choir of “choosing to be something when you could choose otherwise is escapism and escapism is bad”, which is a can of worms we don’t want to touch right now because this is already too long. 

So, we’re in this really weird place:

There are undeniable, strong, persistent, involuntary vampire feelings

We’re faced with the decision whether we want to keep them as a hearttype fragmented into its own facet or make it a system-wide identity

The current situation is causing some discomfort due to the sheer intensity of concentrated feeling.

The whole thing started out voluntarily as a response to trauma. As voluntary as attempts to save yourself from trauma can be.

“Traditional” ‘kinity had wiggle room for this kind of experience, but today’s culture placed this barrier in our head that makes it very hard to give ourselves permission to explore and express this in whichever way feels good, even when we mentally detach it from ‘kinity and regard it as a standalone concept.

Some legitimate concerns around the balancing act of not falling back into our old survival strategies when we get triggered. There’s a lot of interconnectedness there after all. 

NOTE: I am not a professional and my words may not apply to everyone. If your linktype is causing you harm and won’t go away even when you try to drop it, please try to talk to a professional if you can. Therapists are understanding people who can help you, be honest with them and they can help you to do what you need to move on.

Linking can be very helpful most of the time, and even fun! But sometimes a linktype might become a problem, they might cause you to think or act in a negative way and have adverse effects on your life. In this case it is best to drop the linktype.

Linktypes that do more harm than good should not be kept!

For some it may be as simple as saying “okay X is no longer my linktype.” and to walk away and leave it at that. If that is the case, that is wonderful, please do so! If you cannot simply do this, for any reason, you will need to examine you, your linktype and your relationship to your linktype. I have outlined a method of examining your linktype and a few methods which you may try in order to drop the link. 

Please exercise caution when attempting to drop a link. Make sure you have some way to continue forward, whether it’s a new coping mechanism, a support group, or a new linktype, or something else entirely. Again, if you are having difficulty, please talk to a professional therapist about these difficulties, be honest with them so that they can help you be the best person you can be for yourself!

Please think about how these actions may affect you and take caution. If you feel that you are at any point in danger of physical harm, please talk to a professional!

Examining the linktype:

Moving on from a linktype may mean you will need to take a good look at what made the linktype useful to you as well as what has caused the harm. Take some time to do this before attempting any further methods of dropping your link.

Take a piece of paper and draw three columns, one for positive things about your linktype, one for neutral things, and one for things you might consider to be bad or harmful. Take a good read through this.

If you see a common thread of negative traits, events, backstory, etc, are they things you can cast aside? Are they things you can safely ignore or rewrite out of the linktype and have them be more positive than negative?

Rewriting a character:

If dropping is not an option or is proving difficult for one reason or another, try taking your list and rewriting the character to be something you aspire to. Try to focus on keeping more positive traits.

If your character had a traumatic past or event happen to them, try to rewrite them in a way that either helps them to cope with this trauma in a healthy way and make positive changes to them, OR to rewrite the past or event to either disappear or change it to a positive thing instead.

If your character has a negative outlook on life, why is that? What caused them to think and act this way? What can you change that might give them a more positive attitude and change them to be more of a role model for you to look up to? You might even create an event that changes them for the better.

You can take anything of a character that may have been causing an issue for you and rewrite it into being a positive change. This may or may not work, depending on your personal attachment or ways of linking. 

Side note, if you do rewrite a character please do not go into fandom spaces and claim it is canon. It is more than okay to write stories or make art that shows these rewritten things (see villain redemption fanfiction especially), but be aware that some people may point out that it is a bit out of character or not canon (depending on the changes you made). Don’t let fandom ruin things for you, but also do not try to make fandom cater to you.

Replacing the link:

If you cannot drop the link or rewrite the link, perhaps you can replace the link.

What are some characters or things that have similar traits but does not have the specific negative traits that are causing problems for you? Try and find some characters or things with enough similarities that it does not feel too strange to you to swap the two as links.

You may also want to see if you can find a character or thing that has similar positive traits AND more (or specific) traits to help with erasing or coping with any harm a previous link may have caused.

You might try linking something of the same species, from the same fandom, or something with similar powers or backstory. Whatever works the best for you!

Linking an OC:

It might be best to replace a harmful link with an OC that encompasses all the traits you want or need in order to cope with whatever you need. Linking with an OC is extremely valid and also a great way to fully control what you’re linking with.

Create an OC that is much like you, but can do the things you want or need it to do. That might be anything form being able to fight off bad thoughts, to loving and knowing how to cook really tasty healthy foods. The best part of linking an OC is that they can be completely anything you want or need them to be! That makes them a great way to replace or drop a linktype that might be causing you harm!