Draconic Starry Dream

At some level, interacting with a character in a kin/fictive way, and interacting with them in a fandom way are fundamentally incompatible.

As I always say, and I mean, to the very core of my being. Characters in fandom are objects, and every fan is allowed to treat them as objects, treat them however they want. They're toys, and fiction, and fandom are a game. Fiction is not reality, and the way people interact with characters doesn't reflect anything about their IRL desires.

It is important, it is fundamental, to protect everyone's right to be wrong about characters, cruel to characters, to make fiction and art where awful things happen to them.

But as a fictionkin/fictive... those characters are real to me. Some of the characters that are most important to me in fandom are important to me because they're ME. That's a life that I lived. That's experiences that I had and choices that I made.

And seeing people be mean about them does hurt. And sometimes my internet filters, and blocklists, and emotional barriers are simply not robust enough to protect me from the way it feels when someone says something negative or hurtful.

Especially when it's being attached to/in response to a piece of fanwork that I made that was heavily derived from my own experience.

Seeing "I hate him so much" reblogged on a piece of work where I was emotionally vulnerable about myself hurts.

And the kicker is that people are 100% allowed to react to characters that way. That's fine and normal, I'm the weird one here, for reacting the way that I am.

No parts of it extended beyond the lines, and the paper ticket was clearly displayed, impaled on a horn.

Michelle Dionne Peacock was a 59-year-old black woman who, by our communities’ definition, would’ve been transmisogyny-exempt on account of being a cisgender woman. However, she was killed on account of Tommy Wayne Earl’s misogynoir AND transmisogyny, even going so far as to refer to her as a “male acting like a woman” when questioned on the murder. Earl had no grounds for his accusations apart from Peacock’s appearance which, last time I checked, doesn’t indicate anything save her blackness. Considering Earl also had to be separated from black inmates due to “not getting along with them”, I think it’s warranted to assume his transmisogynistic motive is equally rooted in misogynoirist behaviors/mindsets that masculinize black women. In other words: he’s just as much of a violent racist as he is a violent transmisogynist, and whether or not Peacock was actually a transgender woman meant nothing to him. Only his ideology mattered, therefore it was the only part of his crime he recognized. Most transphobes are like this.

Caster Semenya and her battle against the International Olympic Committee’s intersexist, transmisogynistic policies is another case I think of, though thankfully it isn’t a fatal one. In 2019, World Athletics (formerly the IAAF) introduced new regulations that forced intersex athletes and other athletes with DSDs like Semenya to take medication that would suppress their testosterone levels. Semenya refused, as was her right to. Ever since, she has been pursuing legal action against these regulations. In tandem with her legal battles, transmisogynoirist and intersexist cultural wars were sparked because of the barring of Caster Semenya. Her being a cis woman in actuality did not stop these culture wars from happening. People only cared about the narratives being fed to them, and again, most transphobes are like this.

Semenya is not the first nor the last cis black woman in the sports industry to be subjected to this treatment. Far from it. Serena Williams is infamously made a target by misogynoirist sports reporters and commentators whose actions against her often skew into transmisogynist territories as well (see: Mark Knight‘s political cartoon for The Herald Sun from September 2018). In that same year, Williams addressed internet conspiracies around her having been “born a man” as well. Imane Khelif is an Algerian woman, and another athlete no less, who was subjected to similar treatment as the aforementioned gold medalist Caster Semenya. To no one’s surprise, Head TERF-in-Chief J.K. Rowling fed the fire against Khelif, claiming her opponent “had everything snatched away from her because the IOC allowed a male to get in the ring with her”. Mind you, Khelif is a cisgender woman. But again, most transphobes are like this. They don’t acknowledge anyone or anything else besides their own echo chambers.

Even Michelle Obama has been subjected to transmisogynoirist harassment from American right-wingers who repeatedly make conspiracies and accusations of her “secretly being a man”. Quite recently, UFC fighter Josh Hokit peddled this exact rhetoric on the South Lawn of the White House. Emboldened by the likes of Joe Rogan and in the shadow of the Trump Administration, no doubt. Are you starting to see the trend of non-white women being misgendered, largely to feed racist narratives against them— and if not that— to further erase the existence of intersex people? If you’re this far in, I’d hope so.

On a less public level, I was shared a video by a black co-worker that applies to this; said video was of a black woman being harassed in a women’s restroom. As she’s filming, an older white woman comes around the corner and insists that she is in the women’s restroom, implying that the woman recording shouldn’t be there. She tries to ignore the old lady at first, but ultimately (and rightfully) tells her to leave her alone. Only for that same woman to claim she’s “mean” for doing so, as if she didn’t spend most of her time harassing this woman.

Admittedly, I used to sympathize with people’s reasons for using TME/TMA terminology in communal spaces. I felt obligated to use it since it was the least I could do for my peers. In retrospect, this terminology is flawed. People regard it as another version for AGAB terminology (which cannot be stressed enough that it was appropriated from intersex spaces in the first place), but it’s deeper than that.

I am not a woman, but your average person is going to assume I am a black woman. They have the potential to exercise the same violent misogynoirist, or even transmisogynoirist, mindset against me as Tommy Wayne Earl had against Michelle Dionne Peacock. My experiences aren’t like that of an actual black trans woman, nor was it for Michelle, but that doesn’t change the fact that our societies don’t care about distinction. Our societies can and will operate on its own optics regardless of who we are, and once they perceive us one way, they aren’t going to stop and check if that’s actually true or applies to their beliefs. If American white supremacists can still peddle “Michelle Obama is a man!” conspiracies in 2026 and with confidence, what makes you think society as a whole will suddenly start caring about who does or doesn’t apply to its systems of oppression?

Not only does this terminology overlook the nuances of sex and how it is experienced among people, but it also overlooks nuances like the racialization of gender and sex, especially when those nuances CAN and HAVE led to the discrimination of people like Michelle Dionne Peacock, Caster Semenya, Serena Williams, and many, many more.

You cannot separate these cases of racist, misogynoirist discrimination and violence from the transmisogynistic rhetoric therein. You simply can’t. It’s all connected. The notion that any of these women are men relies on our societies’ fearmongering around black people (and in Khelif’s case, people of color in general) and transgender people alike as well as how they dehumanize us. Worst of all, we see the fallout constantly in our communities, seeing how black trans people— especially black trans women— hold the highest statistics of being hate-crimed out of any other transgender demographic.

also you are never going to be safe for people for whom english is their second language. if someone clarifies their meaning and apologises and you can't accept that over the original wording then don't bother pretending to be autism friendly.

and like part of my autism is that i become convinced that the way i interpret words is the way that they're meant. my autism is disabling to my communication abilities. i have poor emotional regulation, i jump to conclusions. a lot of my reactions are informed by prior negative experiences. i can and probably have been overly defensive in the past.

and i've been misinterpreted so much and had my words picked over and mocked for saying the wrong things and mocked for being unable to say anything at all and it always feels devastating. it's ironic that the same disability that has me treated poorly would have me react poorly to a similar situation, but that's just how it is.

What is system hopping?

System hopping or system travel typically refers to travel between systems. There are two different definitions. One being travel between completely different bodies, and one being travel between subsystems or sidesystems. The former is the much more commonly used.

The Claim:

A rumor has been circulating for a while claiming that the second definition of system hopping was the original and that the term was stolen from RAMCOA survivors.

Examples:

(Those last two are from r/systemscringe, if you're curious.)

Where did this start?

The apparent originator of this rumor is a Tweet made April 10 2021.

There is no record of system hopping ever being used in relation to RAMCOA before this date. Some individuals simply jumped on this as a chance to smear the endogenic community, claiming that they appropriated/stole/bastardized the RAMCOA term.

The user who made the Tweet later deleted it after seeing how it was being misused.

They've also confirmed that, to their knowledge, this term wasn't used in relation to RAMCOA systems before them in the RAMCOA world.

Searches have confirmed this the same. This was not a RAMCOA term before 2021.

How Old is "System Hopping?"

The earliest use of system hopping we're aware of dates back to 2005 on Livejournal.

This was a full 16 years before the RAMCOA association was ever made.

@thelunastusco has reported anecdotally seeing this term frequently in soulbonding and fictionkin communities as early as 2007.

The entire claim is a complete lie that has been parroted in order to smear system hoppers and endogenic systems as a whole.

Bonus: Traveling is Older

Since one of the tweets mentioned that RAMCOA survivors could use system travel instead (which to be clear, they can, because I don't believe in gatekeeping terms), I thought I should address this one too, while also addressing another claim... that system travel is a reinvention of system hopping:

As far as we can tell, system travel existed first as the name for this phenomenon. In 2001, Dark Personalities included a header for "intersystem travel."

LiveJournal had a "traveling & visiting" tag back in 2002.

And a post where this was discussed as traveling has been found in 2003.

Conclusion:

System hopping and travel are both terms originating in the early 2000s in reference to moving between differently-bodied systems.

The rumor that there was any association between system hopping and RAMCOA didn't start until 2021. The lies that were spread as a result ultimately led to the author of the Tweets deleting them.

There is zero merit to any of the claims that system hopping is an appropriated RAMCOA term.

For more on system hopping and what it is, check out this post from @thelunastusco.

If the community was anything like it was maybe twenty-ish years ago, I would’ve left. There’s far too many aspects of my alterhumanity that would’ve had me grilled, disrespected and harassed to hell and back. I’ve heard enough accounts from fictionkind who either saw this firsthand or shortly thereafter. Honestly, you don’t even need to go as far as twenty years ago when cases like Tirea Na’vi’s happened in 2010. Don’t even get me started on the community’s history with linking and the concept of choice-based experiences in general.

You can do the things that you see from our communities’ past. The current state of your community has never impeded you from doing that. I may not post my essays on Tumblr as much as I used to, but I still write them and post them to Dreamwidth!

You want forums? Join the Nonhuman National Park! You want to see more discussion and commentary on people’s experiences? Participate in conventions! Be it as staff, as a panelist or an attendee— make connections! Look into ways to safely organize in-person meet-ups and clubs! You want to see more art or other creative works from alterhumans? Boost artists in our community! Download our peers’ zines and games on Itch.io! Read our peers’ writings, whether it’s poetry, essays, short stories or ramblings! I know it feels nonexistent, but our community IS thriving and full of culture!

✨️What's one thing all or most members of your system have in common?✨️

(or more than one if you want!)

*cracks knuckles*

I’ve gotten here and tasted the freedom, many of us have, why are you asking me to bind my wings again?

It is a struggle that I can no longer find comfort in otherkin only space.

This is my first life.

At the same time, I have access to memories that don't belong to this lifetime, yet they don't feel like my memories. Instead, they belong to someone else: A dragon spirit, an ancestor named Aeris.

But with her, this is all a paradox.