you have those wings, sew them to me

tagging guide

disclaimers:

some of these words have different or more broad meanings than the way i will be using them for sorting — just know that i’m aware of that.

if i want the post to reach a wider audience than it would reach with sorting tags alone, i might add more than just what’s needed for sorting.

if a creature says they don't like to be called a certain label, i’ll try to avoid tagging my reblogs of their posts with that label (a rule that is most applicable on posts talking about personal experiences). but sometimes i’ll miss something. if i make that mistake, don’t hesitate to tell me!

# i say some stuff — posts where the op is myself, or where i reblog something and add my own thoughts.

# tags in which i ramble — for posts that are not my own, but where i add enough in the tags that i consider it worth knowing about.

# not my post — posts made by others that i reblog without adding anything to the discussion.

# therian — posts regarding earthly animal kintypes and therianthropy specifically.

# otherkin — posts regarding mythical/magical nonhumanity and otherkinity specifically.

# nonhuman — blanket tag for posts about therianthropy and otherkinity, as well as posts about nonhumanity. (aka, if you wanted to scroll thru my therian and otherkin posts at the same time with some extra posts about nonhumanity, you’d choose the nonhuman tag.)

# alterhuman — posts regarding forms of alterhumanity other than nonhumanity/therianthropy/otherkinity (ie, kithtypes, archetropes, fictionflickers, etc) and posts regarding the nature of the word itself.

# otherhearted — self explanatory. i will mainly use this term instead of the other variants (animalhearted, otherkith, etc).

# critter experiences — posts containing the personal experiences of any who fit under the alterhuman umbrella, both my own and others’. (alterhuman as in the real meaning, not the meaning as i’m using it for sorting up above.)

# critter origins — umbrella tag for posts regarding theories and beliefs on why folks are nonhuman, whether psychological, spiritual, other, or both. related tags would be #psychological critter and #spiritual critter. if the belief is a combo of the two, all three tags will be used, and if it’s neither, just the main one.

# critter questions and/or questioning — for posts where the poster is questioning aspects of their alterhumanity or has questions about alterhumanity, and posts that would help those who are questioning.

# critter info — posts about animal behavior, welfare, environmental stuff, or legends/myths/lore.

# critter community — any posts concerning the alterhuman community, both on history and modern-day phenomena. will sometimes overlap with the following tag:

# term discussion / term coining / term definition — a three-in-one tag that is probably self explanatory.

# critter shifts — umbrella tag for shifts of all types. since i have phantom and mental shifts most often, most posts will probably be about those. 

# critter creativity — moodboards, memes, stimboards, ID packs, joke posts(?), poems, short stories, art, comics, masks, tails, etc.

# critter polls — umbrella tag for polls.

# critter ask game — umbrella tag for ask games (questions and answers).

# humanity — stuff about humans, humanity as a concept, or alterhumans’ relationships with humanity.

# [__] kintype # [__]kin — format for posts relevant to specific kintypes. first one will be for ‘types with two or more words, and second for types that are just one word. (because bat-eared foxkin looks clunky, but bat-eared fox kintype doesn’t. at least not to me.) some you will see frequently on my blog include: bat-eared fox kintype, pearl fox kintype, foxkin, pocket dragon kintype, dragonkin, cryptidkin, faekin. 

# [__] hearttype # [__]hearted — same premise as above, but for otherhearted stuff.

# miscellaneous — self explanatory.

all post dividers by: @plum98

this post was last updated: june 16, 2024

incident one: i tried to talk about alterhumanity with my mom and sister. not just in vague, this-is-a-thing way — they already knew it existed and thought it was weird — but i tried to explain phantom limbs to them. i asked them if they experienced phantom limbs, and kinda told them about mine. which was a mistake. they didn’t make fun of me exactly, but my sister gave me weird looks (and thought i was confusing it for imagination, which i didn’t have the energy to correct at that point), and my mom just said she thought i had a strong imagination (in a less-frustrating way than my sister). but i left the whole interaction feeling VERY much like i’d shared too much of myself. i still feel that way about it. i noticed afterwards that it was harder to feel connected to my ‘types.

incident two: i filled out an alterhuman survey. i’m not sure why, but something about one of the questions — or rather, something in the way i answered it — left me feeling… empty, in regards to alterhumanity? i closed the app and got up from my chair suddenly feeling like i’d broken something. i don’t really know why it made me feel that way. the question had been asking about how much i viewed myself as human. my answer was that i felt like “human” was more of a job title, a purpose, than something i was. it was the first time i’d contextualized it that way — outside of my head, at least? — and… idk. but everything felt Different after that. 

these both happened around the beginning of 2024, i think. for a few weeks afterwards, i clung on to posting about alterhuman stuff, trying to get that feeling back. eventually though, i accepted the lull and stopped trying to wring connection to myself out of tumblr.

i didn’t fully accept the reasons for the lull, though. it’s true that i’ve had natural lulls before even knowing i was alterhuman, but i pretended that was all it was.

since the lull began there’s been a few spotty days where my connection feels stronger, but hardly ever to the strength i felt it before, and hardly for longer than a day or two.

what really worries me is that the only kintype i feel consistently connected to now is being a pearl fox (and avian-humanoid, but that’s less of a species and more just limbs that almost always feel comfortable to me. and dragons, which feel more like otherheartedness, but i always get shifty about those whenever i interact with dragon content). but even being a pearl fox feels more distant than it did. all my types felt very real as i was feeling them, but i worry that they won’t come back. what if they were hyperfixation-induced identities, and now that the hyperfixation has abated, i’ll never feel like them again? 

because i am a psychological alterhuman. i’m at the whims of my own subconscious. i think i definitely was everything i said i was back then at the time i said it, but i don’t feel like i am anymore, not in the same way. i tried, but i can’t force it to come back. i’m still not quite sure why it left.

to be honest, the only thing that’s keeping me from completely doubting if i’m alterhuman at all is remembering how i found out i was alterhuman in the first place.

i acted nonhuman (specifically, cat-like) since i was eight, until i was shamed out of it.

i constantly pictured myself as a dragon and had dragon phantom limbs around the ages of eleven-thirteenish.

right before finding out about alterhumanity in 2023, i realized i was placing an unusual amount of weight on the question “what is your favorite animal.” my answer had been cats as long as i could remember, but that had become increasingly uncomfortable to say in recent years (dysphoric, in hindsight). i felt that my favorite animal had to encapsulate my personality, and for some reason, cats no longer did. i realized i was drawn more to foxes the same week i learned about alterhumanity. 

i kind of wish i had learned about alterhumanity a bit later than i did. a couple months later maybe, that would’ve been ideal. give myself more time to learn about foxes and i connect to them on my own, without getting it tangled up in preconceptions, yknow?

because red foxes? the species that pearl foxes are a color morph of? i initially discarded them too quickly, because i didn’t feel connected to the classic red fox color morph. so i went searching for a whole different fox species, and found bat-eared foxes. it’s hard to describe in with words, but think that made everything a lot messier in the months afterward.

i’ve always had a fascination and connection with dragons, which hasn’t faded in the same way my connection with cats did, but i’m wondering if i was too eager to call it a kintype. i’m definitely at least dragonhearted, that’s for sure. i’ve definitely been a dragon before. i think i’ve been all the kintypes i list in my intro post, but i don’t know if that being was something that was ever meant to last.

i’m thinking about the list of animals i wrote down before discovering alterhumanity, when i was trying to figure out which creature was my favorite. i think i want to go back to before i found out about bat-eared foxes, and i want to start from scratch. make absolutely sure i’m not tying myself to an exceptionally long, hyperfixation-induced cameo shift. they have all been very important to me, and still are in many ways, and i’ve been scared that admitting to myself that things might have Changed and that it would mean they could never be important to me again. but that’s silly. they can be important again if that happens to happen.

i’ve only been awakened for what, a little over year now? compared to so many other alterhumans, i’m just a kit. i’ve barely started my journey with nonhumanity.

so i’m tentatively starting with a new status quo; i am a pearl fox.

i think i’m comfortable saying that, but i need to parse what exactly that means to me. i’m less so a pearl fox in a real-world all-fours fox kinda way (though it feels like that some rare occasions). i’m more so a fox in fable-trickster-figure kinda way, creative and clever and skulking around. (i think that may be where my fae/changeling kintype came from — it melds with my pearl fox ‘type in a way that may mean it’s not entirely its own thing. i don’t feel comfortable calling myself a fae anymore, not in a literal way. changeling i still have to think about.) sometimes i feel more like a pearl fox in a grungy way; less whimsical, more grounded, listening to rough music and wanting more from life. sometimes being a pearl fox feels more like a metaphor: a metaphor for how various parts of my identity has been dehumanized, and a channel to express the parts of me that snuck around to stay safe.

but it always, in some way, feels like me. it feels like it fits my pre-awakening criteria for a favorite animal: an animal that can encompass my personality completely.

i should probably make a new intro post with this info soon, but i’m not quite sure how to explain it in that format yet. but i’m happier now that i’ve figured this out. all my other kintypes, and even my hearttype and hearthome, i want to put away for now. not necessarily abandon forever; if the connection is still there in some form, they’ll come back. but i want to make sure i’m not forcing myself to make them stick around.

in an earlier post of mine i said that i think my base species — the species i feel like when none of the others are particularly strong — has become changeling. but during this last month where i haven’t posted, my feelings shifted again, and i realized that all my ‘types now feel more like ‘heartedness than nonhumanity.