#anymic

(The sliders are in arbitrary positions as it's meant to show how my kintypes fluctuate; which I imagine kind of like a soundboard. The grey box next to "doll trapped" is a checkbox.)

I learned a lot of new terms and concepts at Othercon and have done a lot of reflecting and introspecting. I've finally officially decided to be a catlinker and I've reconsider my stance that the term "therian" doesn't apply to me. I've decided that it does.I've also come to the realization that it feels kind of like my light kintype has its own kintypes due to a panelist mentioning a nesting doll kintype situation. I don't believe my alterhumanity has anything to do with past lives personally (the octoling kardiatype is due to basically what I would describe as a parallel life that's been manifested into CyanTide (previself party member)), but I'm sure there could be other causes. Maybe more parallel lives. I'm pretty sure that's the case with my aliedragon (MoonLighter) kintype, as manifested in Glow Bright (previme party member).

Also, I don't have a good term for when I'm trapped in a doll. It's not a kintype or a paratype or a hearttype or a hearthome or anything. My anymic glitchy kintype is kind of like a spirit and a specter, but it's not a ghost. Even still, it's like sometimes it's bound to this old doll and gets trapped inside against its will. Not always, though. Sometimes I fel like this feeling bleeds through to my altereldritch form.

Shout out to u/GhostOrchidGynoid on Reddit for coining the term alterfae (https://www.reddit.com/r/alterhuman/s/uRxk7tnKpE) and the alie- prefix; I am expanding their definitions past just fae for my altereldritch, alterkitsune, and aliedragon kintypes.

Feel free to ask me about any unfamiliar terms.

I often think about my place under the label of therianthropy and the way I often feel like I still don't quite fit in. It's odd - I can blame that feeling on a lot of things, but none of them seem to give the full story behind it.

Maybe I don't fit in because I'm an adult, and so many therian spaces are filled with kids. There's definitely some truth to that, but then I go into therian spaces with solely adults and I still feel like I don't quite fit in.

Maybe I don't fit in because I don't experience the act of shifting between a more human and a more animal state, and so much of the therian experience seems to be focussed on what it's like to shift. And there's some truth to that too, but there are plenty of therians who don't shift at all, and I still feel like I don't quite fit in with them either.

Maybe I don't fit in because I only have one theriotype. Which is ridiculous, because a lot of folks only have one theriotype... And I still don't quite fit in with them either.

Maybe I don't fit in because I'm a contherian with experiences that have stayed steady through my entire life, from practical infancy up to now 25 years later. But there are other contherians out there, and I still don't quite fit in with them either.

Or maybe it's because of my anymic identity - inherently I won't quite fit in with anyone because my species identity doesn't really match anyone else's, let alone anything that is known to exist. But it's still not quite that either, because there are lots of anymic therians experiencing what it's like to be something without name and potentially without equal, and I still feel like I don't quite fit in with them.

In reality it's probably a mixture of all of those things, but that still doesn't seem to be the answer. In all of those cases I still should fit in somewhere, and yet here I am, feeling like I don't.

The question of whether or not my identity's "origins" have anything to do with why I still feel like I don't belong has definitely crossed my mind a few times - so many folks can fit theirs into neat categories as past lives, spiritual, psychological, etc., but I'm certainly not one of them. Somehow it feels like I am all of those and also none of them at the same time.

I feel like maybe I was just born with the wrong soul in the wrong body - that's spiritual for sure. And I feel like maybe my brain is just completely and totally wired wrong - that's psychological. But there's something else. Something not quite spiritual and not quite mental.

I started to wonder if maybe I'd feel more at home with the holotheres and physical therians, but no, definitely not there either - I understand that I'm in a human body, I am under no impression that I currently physically am my theriotype in any way (and my species dysphoria won't let me forget that). So it's not really a current physical identity. I'm also under no impression that I can physically transform into my theriotype in any way, so it isn't Clinical Lycanthropy either.

There is something viscerally physical about it, though. I never really believed that I could physically transform or that this body was entirely nonhuman, but I absolutely believed that someday I would break free from my human skin and become my nonhuman self. I believed it lived just underneath my skin and that when I became an adult, it would emerge and I would be free from my human existence. Obviously that never happened, as I sit here 25 still painfully human in shape and form - and painful it is, as my body has seemed to continuously deteriorate as I grow. What started as just severe asthma and immunodeficiency transformed into multiple physical disabilities over the years.

My disabilities, my chronic illnesses, these have nothing to do with my nonhuman identity. Logically, I know that. Emotionally, it feels like my body is rebelling against its own existence, as if it is rejecting the mind and the soul that are so unfit for living within it, willing to sacrifice itself in the name of eliminating the viruses that are the spirit and brain that don't belong inside it. This is one of those experiences that I can confidently say I have never seen mirrored in the alterhuman community in any way - maybe i just haven't been in the right spaces to hear about it, or maybe it's just too heavy of a topic for most folks to talk about, or maybe I really am alone in this experience.

Circling back to my younger self's belief that my nonhuman self physically existed just underneath my human skin, I can't blame them for feeling that way. This is another experience that seems either non-existent or extremely rare in the community: my phantom appendages feel nothing like what most folks describe them as. I feel them in their full forms, but those full forms feel ghostly - they "clip" through things, I am fully aware that they aren't actually there. That in and of itself seems to be a fairly common experience... but for me it's combined with another sensation. I can feel these things - the wings, the tail, the claws, the teeth, the ears - as if they are physically trying to push through my skin. It's not pain, but it's a strange sort of pressure. I wish I could explain it better, but... just imagine. Imagine feeling as though there are other limbs or different appendages just beneath your skin, pushing to break free, constantly, all the time, every day, for as long as you can remember. It's uncomfortable, it's awkward, and it gets even more uncomfortable when the ghostly versions of the limbs "clip" through things. A signal seems to get sent from where they phase through whatever they're phasing through, all the way to the point where I feel like the physical versions are trying to push out from - that results in an even more uncomfortable tingling/pulsing sensation, both from that basal point and from wherever the "clipping" is happening. This kind of an experience is another one that I have not yet seen mirrored in the community - whether or not others experience it, I don't know, but it's a point of mental contention for me. Others explain their phantom shifts and I just cannot actually relate to it. I feel like what I experience is so fundamentally different, and it's another reason why I often feel like an outsider in the community.

As I continue to ruminate on this feeling of not belonging in a community that I should belong in, I come up with so many answers - like the way I've always known I was nonhuman but how my exact species identity, despite having many consistencies between them all, was so difficult to figure out, and how I still feel like I don't have a full grasp on exactly what it looks like. Every time I try to imagine exactly what it looks like, the image is blurry, shadowy, not quite whole - I can make out the vague shape, I can see its golden yellow eyes, but that's about it. And then I wonder if maybe this thing must be some kind of a past life identity, maybe I'm seeing it through its own eyes, not quite able to recognize itself beyond the most basic shape and the eyes, but it doesn't feel like a past life. It doesn't feel like a current or future life either, though. It just feels like the life I was supposed to be living, a life I keep running and reaching toward but always falling short.

And then I think about the way the community talks about shifting, or the lack thereof. As I said, I don't shift, I just constantly experience everything all the time. But what I mean by that seems so different from others. Other contherians exist as both human and nonhuman simultaneously - I seem to exist solely as nonhuman, only human in physical form, and via masking. When I fully allow myself to unmask, there is nothing human about me other than my body. Those who have seen it will attest. It's disturbing to witness, it's uncanny - it skips past cringe and dives straight into "would be seen in a horror movie" territory, apparently. The way I move, the way I react, the way I sound (if making any sound at all), the way I stand (or don't stand, if I'm somewhere where I can physically be on all fours), I become something seen as monstrous in the eyes of orthohumans and alterhumans alike. It isn't my species identity that is monstrous - on the contrary, my species identity poses little to no threat to humans - but I suppose it comes down to the idea of the uncanny valley. When I fully unmask, it becomes glaringly obvious that I am something inhuman in a human's body. I have seen the reactions some nonhuman identifying folks have had to me being mostly unmasked - in the case of one, seeing me fully unmasked - and it becomes clear that, even though none of us identify as human, there is something different about my identity. There is something fundamentally different about the way I experience it.

I want so badly to know that my experience isn't the only one of its kind, I want so badly to know that i have a place in this community (and that I have a place in this world, frankly), but I keep trying, and I keep coming back over and over to the realization that what I go through lies in some liminal space where I definitely don't fit in with orthohumans but I don't quite fit in with other nonhuman identifying folks either.

CW: cult mention, death mention, apocalypse mention, religion mention, spirituality, bigotry.

I am a somtive/dreamtive "headmate" (party member; I don't like the term "headmate" for myself), and the lives I remember only seem to exist in this world through me and the dream that brought me here. I say "lives" because, in the world I remember as my own, I am a magical gaurdian beast reincarnated into a human body. I wish I could remember my name from my first life, but here I've come to refer to myself as anymic archaeosapient magical gaurdianbeastkin in lieu of a proper name, let alone one the people of this world would recognize. I was worshipped as a deity in my first life, but I don't really feel like a deity. I was only doing what I needed to do. More on this later, but even given this glorified history, I would be genuinely shocked if anyone in this world were to recognize any of what I remember.

In my first life, I was this powerful magical luminous golden gaurdian beast the size of a small mountain tasked with protecting the world I'm from. I fought this equally powerful, magical, and enormous red serpent-bull-man beast of chaos, death, and destruction. Ultimately, I sealed it away underground where I stayed to gaurd it and make sure it stayed sealed away. As such, I was worshipped as a deity. In this life, I formed a small glowing green rabbit companion in my mind and magically projected it into reality with magic as a sort of helper and messenger. A manifestation of peace and prosperity. After hundreds of years, I faded into a deep slumber, passing on from that life and leaving my rabbit companion to watch over the world in my wake. It was prophesied that I would be reborn into a human vessel far into the future when the red beast begins to break free and my powers would reawaken to seal him away once more.

By NeveVR52#5663 on Discord for me of my anymic AKA unknown species kintype!!