an otherhearted experience i want to talk about: “just otherhearted”
(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.
all this to say: to be otherhearted is to have unique experiences, to have a deeply rooted and meaningful identity, to have complex relationships with your hearttype beyond “just” anything. my otherhearted identities make me who i am. there is no ‘me’ without cows, without dogs, without thunderstorms. and i love being otherhearted<3
