#plenanima

3,676 words

estimated reading time: 15 minuets

A bit of a messy exploration of my experiences with nonhumanity and my physical body. Working through how gender, exercise, and the physical body interact with my archaeosapience and gargoyle identity. What do I call myself when my experiences are deeply nonhuman, but not in the same way as physical nonhumans or transspecies?

I am physically nonhuman. Inhuman. However you seek to put it. I may not have been particularly open about it before, and most of my prior explanations for myself and the way I am are tied to my spiritual beliefs as an attempt to make sense of my multiple kintypes within this one body. In doing this though, I neglected entirely to pay attention to the looming physical aspect of my nonhumanity. In turn I believe this led to a lot of personal disconnect and strange feelings towards my nonhumanity. In attempting to explain it purely through spiritual means, and attempting to stay along the lines of "I know my body is human", I was neglecting part of myself. I can't know my body is human because it is not. I don't speak about this metaphorically, ie. I am a dragon therefore my body is that of a dragon. No. Every single atom that makes up my physical structure. My very DNA. Is not human. At this very instant I genuinely and fully believe that I do not have a human body despite the shape it's been formed into and the shape it presents to all others. Despite the mother I was birthed from, despite those I am a 'blood relative' of, I am not human. In every aspect, on all levels including physical, I am nonhuman. And yet this still leaves me with questions. Is it really possible for my DNA to be an amalgam of all of my different kintypes? Are all of my kintypes physical? Or are only a few physical with the rest coming from other sources. The answer is nuanced and complicated and I urge you bear with me here for my explanation. I believe my Teratosoma plenanima primarily encompasses that which makes up my DNA. The form it takes, the form that my body is and the physical structure that I bear are my Teratosoma. My amalgamation of physical kintypes have merged into the shape that creates my Teratosoma plenanima, which is how I believe I can hold multiple physical kintypes while being entirely physically nonhuman. I have multiple partial sets of DNA that have combined into the shape of one creature. It is also important to note, however, that I do consider my Selkie/Animal Bride archetrope to be part of my plenanima. While this is not a physical identity, it shapes the way I view myself and the way I interact with the world around me. Something about my physical self (my correct appearance) feels as though it has been stolen from me and is being hidden somewhere to keep me living within human society. My fundamental physical structure has remained the same though. In the same way a Selkie appearing as human is still biologically and physically a selkie, still a seal, my outward appearance that most take as the approximate shape and form of a human is still physically, biologically that of my plenanima. And while there is a spiritual aspect to this (re: our soul is naturally split which affects our physical form) I do believe that my soul's makeup only matters here insofar as it keeps my physical form stable with my amalgamation of DNA.

I'm back up in the Ozarks for the holidays, and it's strange. Making me think about how and why my plenanima became so heavily fictional. When I was young and up here, I would run away into the woods when upset. Follow along the coyote paths and collect the bones from their hunts. I'd sit and watch bugs eat the dead deer. I'd collect the dead birds and bury them and I'd fish out bones from ditches and creeks. Catch snakes and crawdads and bugs. It's where I ran to when everything up here became too much (which was, to be honest, very often). I'd climb up onto the cliffs and sit at the edge, so high that buzzards and hawks flew at my eye level.

A lot of my nonhumanity, especially as an early child, came from my family in the Ozarks. And so I find it strange that throughout all my iterations and versions, even going into my current pencorpus, none of them resemble the wildlife up here. My feelings of nonhumanity are never stronger than they are when I'm up here. I'd expect myself to take the form of the place I went to feel the most comfort, but it's not. It's always been something very far off, very different.

It probably has to do with my general use of escapism. I protected myself by retreating so far into my head that the real world can't touch me. So I guess that meant that the beasts of this world couldn't get to me.

My plenanima is so deeply fictional, it's completely rooted in the coping mechanism that kept me safe when the stress was enough to render me constantly ill.

I've recently realized that my pencorpus really lacks a fictional essence. I'm starting to wonder if it's not "central to my identity" not because it's not inherent to me, but because I have been so fictional for so long that I am struggling to connect with nonhuman identity that is rooted in reality. The boar and donkey and bird aspects of me are definitely there, but they are locked away. I feel like I should be able to touch them the way I touch and interact with amphibians and reptiles, but I struggle to.

There is also the thought of plenanima/pencorpus as some stronger, deeper type of duality to me. I've spoken about it before here and on my main blog, but gender for me is very nebulous and hard to navigate due to certain things being pushed onto me as a young teen. Because I wasn't feminine in the correct way (being tomboyish, not shaving, no makeup), my family assumed I had to be a trans man. Every time I deviated from the presentation they wanted, I was interrogated about my gender identity. They insisted that the only reason I'd be the way I was was because I was a closeted trans man. It confused me, it made me feel like I wasn't allowed to be a woman and I'd only ever find myself in masculinity. The thing is, I'm not a trans man or really even trans-masc. Engaging with that identity felt wrong, but its what I thought I had to be. This idea of a "masculine identity that i am both allowed to be and that feels good" manifested itself in my fiction in complex ways. It's an emotion that is very evident in my plenanima.

I didn't really start to realize what had happened until very recently.

My pencorpus came about a year and a half ago, in summer of 2024. The things that happened in my mind and to my sense of self in that time shan't be repeated here, but it was tied closely to my experiences growing up in the Ozarks. It established a hard line in my mind between "me" and "not me" that was distressing and hard to navigate and control. I was very dissociated, and that disconnect from my plenanima gave way to many many cameo shifts and paratype developments. The dissociation faded, eventually, but I haven't really been able to shake that sort of... separation. What happened that month has haunted me and while I do not think plenanima/pencorpus is akin to that, I do notice similarities between a "me but to the right" and a "me but to the left". Both are me, but one developed from coping mechanisms, isolation, and escapism. The other is blurry and unfocused, but free of whatever constraints are on the other.

I am, as a gillman, not allowed to be feminine. Others have never let me do it in a way that's comfortable or feels right, it's always been taken away and then weaponized against me. I don't think I can be faulted for trying to find safety in being masculine, it really was my only option for a long while. Even still, it is safer for me. I'm still actively interrogated about my gender by family, dressing or looking traditionally feminine makes me feel sick. It's easier to claim masculinity, the thing that's been pushed on me for so long, than it is to exist as feminine despite my status as a cis woman.

My pencorpus does not care, there is liberation and joy in existing as a woman outside of cishet expectations. Seeing my body as something more akin to a female boar lets me exist in my skin and in my gender. Things that would be warning signs to my plenanima are natural to my pencorpus.

A lot of this has been discovered with the (unknowing) help of my girlfriend, who has given me a safe place to figure out how I want to be seen, treated, and desired. Being able to engage with parts of myself that have been severely neglected in a safe way has really helped me realize a lot of this.

I have dabbled with the thought that maybe this is some sort of plural situation. A part of me that developed under chronic stress as an attempt to keep me safe (plenanima) and then a part of me that has been preserved and protected from the stressors (pencorpus). I have completely different feelings around gender and my nonhuman wants and desires absolutely change. But I ultimately don't think that's what it is, and even if that argument could be made, I don't think calling it that would help at all. It gives these two things too much separation in me, implies that there is some difference or split in my sense of self or two different influences. When it's really just.... different traits coming out in response to my environment. All fully me. I'm just finally learning how to actually engage with the parts of me that I've forced into hiding for so long.

I think that I am still very heavily a gillman, and I will be for a long while still. But I also think that being a jersey devil will begin to become more important to me as I continue to exist in safe spaces, like I do with my girlfriend. Right now, I doubt that I will ever stop being a gillman, I just expect my whole set up to slowly morph into an equal duality than a primary vs. secondary thing.

If any of this makes sense at all.

Thanks for reading and dealing with my ramblings.

I imagine my nonhuman identity as a bunch of circles. The largest, and all encompassing one is this idea of nonhumanity in general. Within it, there are two more circles that do not intersect, the plenanima and pencorpus. They sit side by side.

Many identities (other circles) exist and overlap within the plenanima and pencorpus. They intersect and interact and arrange themselves in different ways. I can feel how they move and shift, like ripples in water. They may absorb each other or split like cells do. Some days they overlap more in some areas than others.

The satellotype is a 'type fully encompassed by another, larger 'type. There is no part of the satelle that exists outside of its parent.

I am fully an alien, but nothing about being an alien exists separately from being a gillman. Interacting with myself as an alien means that I must also interact with being a gillman.

It is not a paratype, as a satelle is a full nonhuman identity. But it is not fully "independent", it must exist alongside and in tandem with

And so my satelles are quiet. I don't need to talk about them much.

I was thinking about what I said about alligators the other day, and they are 100% another satelle. A full identity, sure. But so firmly set in my gillman identity that it won't really do me much good to interrogate it further.

I haven't spoken about satellotypes ass much as I hoped I would, but I'm trying to make up for it. Hopefully this makes more sense. Very rushed and vaguely accurate plenanima breakdown for you. I didn't include everything (obviously) and these things ebb and flow, but hopefully I added enough to communicate what I mean.

My fiction is that of a fish alien. Most of my nonhuman traits don't align with that fiction perfectly, and I am comfortable interacting with earth as a swamp monster. Sometimes my bones feel ancient, like I'm waking up in a new body hundreds of millions of years later. I am, in some strange way, still distinctly me in a way that is correct, but it's been twisted into something new too quickly for me to process.

i haven't been able to find a way to articulate it, but i feel like a Devonian beast that got buried in the mud and instead of fossilizing, I crawled out human. The connection is there, something happened, but I'm missing it. For years I've called myself an "alien in a skinsuit who got amnesia and forgot they were originally an alien but knows something is wrong". And I still stand by that, but I feel like it can apply to so many things. I am a fossil who never fossilized, I was supposed to be lost to evolution but got swept up in it, instead.

I adore human evolution, the process in which I and we became myself and ourself. Particularly, I've always been enamored by that amphibious step on land, the first breach of our first frontier. It probably meant nothing to us back then.

And that's another thing I love, they were us. You trace it back far enough and that's who we were. It's a part of time that I can not disconnect myself from.

I do wonder why it is the amphibious stage of this that gets me and nothing else. I don't have the same connection to our history as small, arboreal mammals as I do of our history as amphibians. Whatever reason it is, it's why I have a hard time attaching myself to human evolution as a whole. I am a screenshot, a specific few million years in time, shoved into a human body. This human body is mine, I understand how I have become this, but I have a few gaps in my memory, so to speak. I remember the swamps, the mud. But I don't remember the grass, the trees, the fields, or the fruits. I don't remember the shifting of my bones and spine into something that stands upright. That dissonance leads to an approximation of myself. Some sort of fish man, something that is trying to make up for this great distance of time between what I was and what I am. They say that Earth back then would have been Alien to us now, and I'd have to agree. Although I have not left this place, I can't help but feel like an alien in my own home.

My fiction, which has very much become a home for my mind in the nine years I've had it, was built in response to a lot of these emotions. It let me construct a home for myself that felt right, and so it is no wonder that any emotions I have about being alien is connected to my fiction. These feelings are, to bring in some other identities of mine, the crux of my plenanima. Any identity that stems from my experience being alien and amphibious and fictional is crucial to how I see myself.

I'm going to repeat myself here: my plenanima being artificial is not to put it down or say it's Fake or Less Than any other part of my identity. It's my lived experience, it's how I find control in an otherwise very hectic world. I've been functioning under a version of this constructed self for ten years. To say that I am somehow separate or unfused from it would be very inaccurate. But I have no idea how to articulate that level of artificial intimacy in a way that doesn't imply some level of "fakeness", if you know what I mean. I'm like a mollusk, I've created my own shell to protect me. It is a shell, it is not the soft fleshy vulnerable bits of myself, but it is still certainly me and it lets the soft fleshy bits of me navigate the world safely. I can't separate myself from it, but I can understand that it is a non-organic extension of the self. It's a little silly, almost. As I explore myself further, the original roles of plenanima and pencorpus have almost entirely swapped places. 

As I begin to listen to my plenanima as I would listen to my pencorpus, I begin to juggle the complexities of their different genders and their ideal presentation. My gender is the same for both my plenanima and pencorpus, they do not have different genders, but the way I want to go about presenting that gender differs based on what part of me I listen to. On one hand, the plenanima was made in part to express my gender in a way that would please others. A sort of nonbinary, transmasculine, or butch sense of self. Masculine features, such as body hair and a deep voice, would be expected on me and I would therefore be allowed to desire such things. Masculine gender was the only channel through which I felt I could access desire for traditionally masculine traits. So my plenanima absorbed and became that masculine gender identity in a way that was very detached from myself, I could interact with masculine gender identity through my plenanima in a way that would not upset me, that would not give me dysphoria over having a masculine gender. 

My pencorpus, on the other hand, never developed that masculine gender. Because it was protected by the plenanima, it houses a much more genuine gender expression that I am able to now tap into and explore. I am able to inhabit the Female Animal and my desires without needing masculine (or perhaps man-aligned?) gender to get there. I can desire power, strength, body hair, a deep voice, and other things while also retaining a distinctly female identity, without having to be transmasculine to get there. The issue with my pencorpus is that it is nearly impossible to exist in without reinforcing  others ideas of cishet, "normal" feminine identity and womanhood onto myself. In the eyes of others, it is Woman Lite or Cis+ instead of a completely different axis on which to measure ideas and values associated with femininity or the idea of womanhood. 

I can either listen to my plenanima and have access to emotions that are "allowed" and expected for me to experience while also existing in a constant state of mild gender dysphoria over masculine identity, or I can listen to my pencorpus and have traditional womanhood pushed onto me to combat my "masculine" desires but maintain a comfortable internal sense of gender. My plenanima is able to exist as-is without issue within a small circle of my friends. And I appreciate it very much, I am incredibly grateful for that, but I can't ignore how the vast majority of my experience in the real-world will not adhere to a very queer understanding of gender and that my presentation will dictate how others treat me, and in that situation my pencorpus would be of better use to me. 

I am talking in circles. And I think that anyone reading this might be a bit exasperated with how much I am dwelling on this. But these are not feelings or emotions I can really ignore. If I prioritize one then I wound the other, I feel guilty and bad no matter which direction I go in. I am a minotaur stuck between "man" and "beast", unable to commit to either due to how strong these sides are. 

And so the question has become "what to do?" What to do about my shell and flesh? In many ways my plenanima and pencorpus co-exist without issue. I can navigate the shifts and nonhuman urges with little issue, it's something I actually enjoy a lot! But there is this very clear shell holding me back, my fleshy bits want to grow legs and walk around! But I can not get rid of the shell, it has become such an important part of me, it's protected me and is absolutely fully integrated into my sense of self. It will be here forever. But I am unsure how to get rid of these limitations it has brought onto me. 

Ideally, I would find a way to dissolve the barrier between plenanima and pencorpus. The best parts of both would be able to meld into one, to function in a way that was not so separate. I think a lot of this has to do with how gender is seen in both the queer community and the cishet world. I am displaced in both, and that is definitely one of the major influences in all of this. I come back to the minotaur. 

In making pencorpus for myself, I've unleashed a beast and now can't really think of a way to talk about myself without having an opposite of pencorpus. 

We know that pencorpus is about nonhuman experiences I have that are not incredibly important to me. I experience them, they aren't somehow "lesser" than or "less vivid" than other experiences. They're just not central to my identity. But that leaves a gap in my vocabulary- what IS central to my [nonhuman] identity, and how do I talk about it in regards to my pencorpus? I've drawn a line between "central to identity" and "not central to identity" but only named one side of it. So I'm going to call this unnamed side, this bag that holds all of the identities that are central to my sense of self, a plenanima. Full (plen) soul (anima), to oppose the pen (almost) corpus (body). This allows me to differentiate between these two types of things I experience. 

Being a gillman otherkin and alien satelle are the two big players in my plenanima, with my xenomorph link and stitch fictionkin nesting inside of the alien satelle. There is my gargoyle otherheart, as well. I am unsure where my minotaur archetrope sits, as it effects my pencorpus but is central to my identity. Respontis, perhaps. An item (res) that briddges (pontis), although I'm not sure if labeling this in-between is necessary right now. But I'll put respontis in my pocket just in case. This is about plenanimas. 

Like my pencorpus creates a jersey devil, my plenanima creates a gillman. There is, of course, a gillman kintype within the plenanima, but I simply can not ignore how my connection with cephalopods, bugs, shellfish, other invertebrates, and fish as a whole deeply impact my form as a gillman. I like gillmen, I'd enjoy being one without all of this extra stuff, but the wonder and connection I feel when I see some of these other beasts is so strong and so important to me that I can't meaningfully talk about my identity as a gillman without at least acknowledging all of these different influences. Otters, seals, eels, cetaceans, and so many others. 

There has always been an element of fluidity in my identity. I've talked about this, and it's not new to me. I've changed shapes and forms multiple times. I don't like to be pinned down to a singular thing, if my identity gets too singular I have to leave and run for another. This hasn't been happening with nonhumanity, but I feel like the language I have to describe myself is limited to "multiple full, separate things", "lesser things", and "fully shapeshifter". I haven't found the language to talk about how all of these things are connected all of the time, how this fluidity still revolves around a single concept, that even cameo shifts and paratypes impact everything else. Plenanima and pencorpus let me do that, and I can talk about an identity with the added context that it interacts with every other thing in this identity bag I've made for myself. 

I'm not going to make a coining post for plenanima like I did satellotype or pencorpus because I just don't need to. Satelle and pencorpus were always for me, and no one else. I don't care if others use them, I'd be glad to know that others find value in them, but I'm not a term or identity coiner and looking back I think it's a little silly that I formatted those posts like that. 

In my post "On Octopi" I talked about how I was going to avoid plenanima because I didn't want to split up my identity into so many different parts. That's still true, but ever since I introduced myself to the idea of plenanima, I haven't been able to shake it. It works so well, it makes so much sense for me. Over the past month I've been trying to think about my fluidity like I did before I knew all about the different nonhuman terms. Small bits that make up a larger one, like a blackberry. Not separate things to be named. That's what my goal for plenanima is, I think. And it's been working so far. It feels great. 

Thanks for reading.