What with my health up to no good and needing to focus on that, I quit my 2nd job, so I’m back to my far more manageable 32 hours a week routine. That means the Fictionkind Dreamwidth community will be much more active again, also in thanks to @tanadin, who was the only brave soul to offer to help administrate the place.
I haven’t advertised here in a minute and this was as good a time as any to do that. So, for anyone who hasn’t seen it - or saw it before and forgot to jump on it then - Fictionkind is a Dreamwidth community that exists for all fictionally identified individuals and systems. Not just ‘kin and 'kind, but fictives, fictionhearted, soulbonds and their hosts, fictherians, fictionflickerers- really, you name it. If a fictional species, person, or world has significantly impacted or altered your identity, you’re welcome there.
More about it can be read here, which is required to see and agree to before you even join. If it suits your fancy then get in here and liven up the place! Right now we’re very prompt-oriented and we need way more than that. Even the content that you think is cringe or annoying is 100% wanted.
We’ve just finished polishing up Hidden Dragon, Anxious Townsfolk and published it on itch.io! It’s a short alterhuman-inspired, GM-less TTRPG that can be played alone or with friends: all you need is a deck of cards and a six-sided die. It’s currently listed for $2, but we also have a couple of free community copies up for grabs as well!
A link to the game will go onto our website in its next major update.
I wrote notes down about this thing trolls do (pretending to be multi-racial) and why it’s a factor in my non/alterhumanity, because I want to write a proper thing about it. But I’ve had a shit few weeks so this is what you get. It’s very disjointed because, well, notes.
Unless you’re lucky enough to be welcomed by one or more of your ethnic groups, you’re an outcast. I’m too white for my Asian side and I’ve never been at ease or unconditionally welcomed by the white side either. Even my foster parent who isnt blood related told me that she would never adopt a nonwhite child again, because she cant deal with other cultures anymore. Guess I ruined it.
I dont have a home among human beings even if I feel like I should, and I’ve long since given that up. I’m an anomaly, an aberration, a hybrid that no one wants too close. As a kid I got this message, swallowed it whole, and my attachments were forever disordered. The idea of having familial bonds as an adult makes me sick and tired. I like people well enough, but they need to keep a polite distance; the few times they or I or both of us forgot this rule, the relationship imploded. Mania and fawning is not affection, it’s desperation.
I’ve felt like a nonhuman animal for all of my life, and this includes my humanity, my phenotype and environment and culture(s). I dont fit. Being born in America was the final blow, since it washes away your heritage in a sea of conformity, even if you are white or half white. I couldnt be Irish, and I couldnt be Korean either. My identity was trampled as much as my countries of origin were. I was told to be Christian, and American, and Female, and White. I was never any of those concepts, even when I was still dirt in the ground.
It’s strange to be used as a mockery of alterhumans (How can I make otherkin look crazy? Pretend to be multi racial! That’s so CRINGE!). But it also works, because these things move together in the dance of my alienation. For me it is cringe. I dont even like thinking of the components of my human body too much because they’ve been a source of shame for so long.
Trans racial is an actual thing that describes people of one ethnicity adopted and raised by another. The fact that it’s co-opted by people who (sometimes) think they’re supporting us by making fun of alterhumans is insanity. Like cool, I get it, people like me are an absurd concept comparable to being trans-fat and having 20 personality disorders at one time, message recieved. I’m being sarcastic, but a part of me just internalized it as another thing that makes me not human. Or at the very least alternately-human. Human, but a little bit off. Something is piloting this body but it just aint right.
Ichigo has the same story, though less explicitly stated. Bullied by his peers and discriminated against by adults for his hair and appearance, finding kinship with the one other mixed kid who sticks out and gets hurt like he does (Chad), and having the rest of his identity fragmented and fought over for the entire story until everyone wants blood. That’s always been his/my story, and all of it is true and all of it is metaphor.
Enter Aizen Sosuke who - at least in my timeline; ymmv - is another mixed race outcast. Dubious history resulting in a man who stands alone and learns to prioritize himself. Adopts an entire species that is also fragmented and kicked to the curb, and teaches them both of his languages while he’s at it. They adopt some of his customs and vocabulary and behavior because they’re in awe of him no matter what he is or what other people thought about him.
I only exist because this person wanted me to, “in his image” in an almost biblical sense. This should be my inspiration to accept all of my pieces no matter what, and I did- but not in a human way at all. I enjoy being a creature that other people dont understand or even like. To a Nazi I’m contaminated. To a more subtle racist they just cant put their finger on why they dont like me. Each side of the family blames the other for supposed failings and bad influences, but all I heard growing up was that there was something fucked up about me and it had to be someone’s fault. Likewise, as Ichigo, after being told and shown in so many ways that to exist across boundaries was a bad thing, I snap, and I start to like it. The man who encourages me to like it and shows me actual care becomes a god figure. This is how you craft a new kind of guy with all sorts of things going on (me).
I have nothing to say to “trans race” trolls except that they need to get good, because I DO feel like a freak and there are so many layers to that.
The director and filmmaker both admitted point-blank to looking at otherkin, thinking about species dysphoria, purposefullydoing no research, and purposefully envisioning a future where conversion therapy prisons are the norm for people with species dysphoria.
This is not an exaggeration. This is real. Someone actually looked at us and decided this was the reality they wanted, and they didn’t wanna base it in actual reality at all.
Please don’t let people think this movie is an allegory for transgender people or gender dysphoria. It literally by admission is not. And while trans people are obviously impacted, we need to start admitting that there are other very real people that this is literally – not allegorically – about forcing through conversion “therapy.”
They made a movie about conversion therapy prison for species dysphoric people.
As a pluran, I can say it is the equivalent of Split for species dysphoria.
Please tell people species dysphoria is real and people with it are going to be harmed by this being one of our first major pieces of “representation.”
Not all representation is good. This isn’t representation when they literally admitted to not researching real species dysphoria at all.
I could probably write an essay on the subject, but in short, something I’ve been thinking about for a while now - the problem I have with the statement “I have no issue with “kin-for-fun” people as long as they’re respectful,” which I see around now and again (and please understand I’m not vagueing anyone in particular), is that misusing ‘kin terminology to mean roleplay/relating to/projecting onto/etc. something is inherently disrespectful. It’s not possible to be kff and respectful to actual otherkin at the same time. You either respect us, or you think it’s okay to mangle our terminology to mean something it doesn’t instead of using your own words. You can’t have both.
(Obviously this is assuming the person in question has been/is being told the actual meaning and is continuing to use “kin for fun” language anyway, not someone who has no idea actual otherkin exist at all - true ignorance is another matter.)
Please for the love of god remember not to support LycanTheory, the owner of the Therian Guide forum. He’s been more and more recently showcasing just how pro-bestiality he is as an individual and as a forum owner, including through attacking other forums’ anti-bestiality policies and through attacking explicitly anti-bestiality posts.
Don’t be fooled when he says he’s a “zoophile.” He’s a bestialist, there are archived website pages of him talking about his past inappropriate “encounters” with animals (including losing his virginity to his dog!), and he’s very openly advocated in both the past and present for people to be “pro zoo sex’” and “pro zoo rights” which are, let’s be real, just euphemisms for bestiality.
He’s also recently been seeking out vulnerable demographics to target and ‘convince’ of their 'zoosexuality’, most specifically minors 13 and up– if you’re a therian or otherkin who is a minor or who knows minors, please make sure that you or your friends are aware to not respond if he reaches out on social media platforms.
Wow this blew up a bit! It blew up enough to, in fact, get my unused account from Therian Guide banned by LycanTheory:
Unfortunately for LycanTheory, he was not quick enough on the draw to prevent me from quietly searching the forum’s threads and posts these past few weeks to use as citations and sources for my updated Beware (Be-were?) on Therian Guide.
The newly updated Beware on Therian Guide can be found HERE.
My experience with exotrauma before antidepressants was, primarily, an almost daily barrage of violent flashbacks. Like an amv, but worse and not fun. I would be sitting on the bus to work and be lost, far away Somewhere Else, feeling my teeth in the neck of my opponent - just as often someone scared and following orders; you have to swallow that with the rest. Or with a blade dragging on my spine. It would make the brain fog worse… Or come with it, not sure which.
On meds these lessened considerably. Weeks could pass without so much as a twitch towards violence. I focused more on what the sun offered me today, instead of what the moon saw a lifetime ago. Or whatever, it was.
I wont say they’ve come back, because I have much better control over my thoughts now, but something tickles back there again. Without the depression and caged in panic feeling. Is it worse if now I can even enjoy some of it? Empowering? Progress or regress?
The spiritual/psychological divide becomes more nitpicky and pointless by the day. If you take it literally, spirituality is to focus on one’s soul or spirit, your place in the grand scheme of things, and you can do all that and be a hardcore atheist if it suits you. You’re a higher thinking organism conscious of existence in a profound way; that in itself is a spiritual act, even if it all comes down to atoms and electrical impulses to you. You are here and that means something *now*.
Your psychology affects your spirit and vice versa. Even if it wasnt literally a past life, if it manifests that way in your mind in exactly the same way then what is the difference in each moment? I’m agnostic. I dont know what happens after you die, I just have guesses based on my feelings and some observations of death around me. That’s all anyone has, no matter what they tell other people; our very best guess, maybe a wish. When I think of my timeline it feels like a real thing that happened a long time ago, with memories as patchy as the ones from this world. I’m skeptical but open minded.
And if you do think you were reborn, then that does something to you. I know because I was there and sometimes still am. It changes the way you respond to the stimuli around you, to other people and places and events. Your mind adapts to your beliefs and you behave accordingly without really noticing it unless you try. If you try too much then you just make a science experiment out of yourself. The past may reach across time to grab you, and it doesnt make you a helpless puppet. The things you believe in will change you cognitively forever, even if you stop believing in them later or the shape of them evolves over time.
