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Holy fuckshit
#Repost @gogreensavegreen
You might be more than one. You might be different ones at different times. 🫶🏽🫶🏽 you might not be one of these. There are more roles 💪🏽 but this is an amazing intro.
You can’t just like the idea and envision yourself in one of these roles you have to figure out how to be about it ♥️🫶🏽
Via @deiloh & @fablefulart
Chat, is it wrong to send my therapist a TikTok? At 11:15pm?
THE OPENIG SONG IS GIVING EVEN BETTER VIBES SOMEHOW, like it’s so bowling for soup to the max!!!
Guys. Watching Phineas and Ferb in Spanish. This shit is fire. THE FIRST EPISODE IS INSANE! ITS SO UNHINGED AND THEN SOMEHOW THE CHARACTERS ARE JUST CUNTIER IN SPANISH. Like they’re just insane. AND THE ENTIRE PLOT WITH PERRY US JUST
Ok serious post. How do I outwit the AO3 curse? Because my desire to write is being suppressed by my inability to handle another fucking curve ball from life and I’m too scared to even look at my fix without fearing yet another disaster. Genuinely how do you write without being shot 57 times? Like do I have to make a sacrifice? Is there a special prayer? I’ll do anything at this point.
Chat. I am making mutuals.
Dead On Arrival by FOB is one of those songs that has levels of complexity to it. Like for me, the song literally is talking about itself. I ALWAYS skipped DOA because it was different from a lot of the other songs I was listening to by them. And then I gave it a listen and was like oh I forgot the ending bit is more interesting and I started fighting that instinct to skip it. Then I listened to it HIGH. I heard the words and got the meaning and I was like ohhhhh. It’s the irony of how fans react to music YEARS later. Because it has been yeaaaaaars and I’m still the target audience of emo sad hours and I’m being perceived by their music and it’s just so poetic, and then I’m like these are just some dudes and I am just high and this is just a song.
Hey. Just heard about the electrical tariff war between the US and Canada. This was not the dystopia 2020 me was expecting.
- strawberries and cigarettes by Troy Sivon
I am starting a thread of songs I want people to make edits to. TikTok, YouTube, I don’t care if you send it to me through the mail on a dvd, if it has these songs to two (or more) queer fuckers I’ll watch it. Thank you.
-poltergeist by Blackbear featuring Baywatch
Bruhhhhhh are you fucking for real right now. I am grieving a BABY!
It’s with a very heavy heart that I’m asking for help and kindness from anyone that is able. My niece Luna passed away this past weekend at less than 2 months old. We are raising money to help support her family through this tragedy. Please, anything you can do to help Jenn fly her daughter home to be laid to rest will benefit greatly.
TikTok has been down for like 12 hours and I can already see exactly how no other app is going to be able to offer what TikTok does. I always see the memes of oh when AO3 is down or crashes immediately in real time everyone’s reactions on this app are like sound the alarm. But that’s kinda only for that specific instance. TikTok did that for EVERYTHING! The ceo death, instant reactions from all sides, the cease fire, opinions analysis and takes across the board. Now, I went omg people must be blowing up that is actually happened like how they were the past few weeks but on the other platforms now, and the reality is that no other platform can give the same instantaneous reactions and unfiltered responses as things happen. No matter your stance on if you like TikTok or not it has to be acknowledged that this is such a huge form of censorship and limitations from allowing people to actually connect with one another.
I think of how “trends” used to take years to spread from the bigger cities like New York to the smaller areas states over. Or even across the ocean from Italy to here, etc. but as technology advanced the physical gap of distance became ideologically shorter as we were able to connect closer and closer to real time with one another but the second we achieved a platform the facilitated that in a raw form, it was taken down and removed. I wonder who benefits the most from division of people dependent on location, socialization, and ideology confinement?
Most people on this app are consumers of media and information that varies from topic to topic and format to format but the one thing that is consistent amongst us all is that we are impacted by the content we seek and what find us. We find ourselves within it and eachother as we form communities and create connections. Something that is seen across so many fandoms and forms of media is the destruction of division and people seeking total control, as well as the the societal repercussions that come from actions claiming to be for the better while in reality perpetuating these motifs.
The world has always been a place of turmoil. It has always had these dark moments. WE (the common people) just never had the ability to SHARE our perspectives and be HEARD by others. We have never been able to form emotional connections without shared experience in real time. There have always been people that are selfish and seemingly evil just for the sake of being evil but when those things would happen, people couldn’t do much more than endure. And eventually when endurance ran short and people became fed up change would happen, but it could only be made by the individuals experiencing these darknesses. Now we have created channels of support, community and awareness that allow for endurance and education. It allows for new options to be explored and perceived. That’s been snuffed out time and time again through banned books, canceled media, government interference and the monetary control of main news and information distribution. Eventually endurance will run out as it has in the past and we the people now have the knowledge of something different. Of lives spent without these sources of turmoil and alternative solutions to problems within our control.
Do not go silent into the night. We can not regress into a technological darkness as websites are being bought out, controlled, monitored and censored to strip the common people of their resources, communities and opportunities for growth. Survival and endurance are the current focuses of so many of us, but for those in a place of power, a place of privilege, and a place of compassion, that can see the other side, have connected across the social barriers they continue to construct and have begun dismantling the divisions that try to force us to forget that we are all humans, one in the same, creatures of the earth and souled beings capable of intense beauty and intense pain.
Alterhuman is an umbrella term, not a synonym!
Nowadays, I see a lot of folks using alterhuman as a catch-all for not being human. While nonhumanity certainly falls within alterhumanity, alterhumanity does not exclusively refer to species nor is it synonymous with nonhuman identities (ex: therianthropy).
Alterhumanity includes but is not limited to:
Fictionfolk: An umbrella term that encompasses all individuals of fictional origin or hold a personal connection to fiction. This includes fictionkind, fictives, fictionhearted individuals, folks with fictional hearthomes, imagithropes, etc.
Otherhumans: Individuals whose species is human but not in context to humanity as we see it in its current state. Some examples include human fictionkind and archaeosapient early humans or neanderthals.
Heartedness: A broad experience in which an individual may not identify as someone or something, but has a deep, personal connection with that person, place, or thing. This includes folk who are otherhearted/otherkith/synpaths, talehearted folk, and folk who have hearthomes (fictional or not).
Archetropy: An identity in which one heavily identifies with or generally experiences an archetype, trope, or pre-established character model in a way that is central to their identity.
Plurality: The state of more than one person within a body. That said, not all who are plural may relate their plurality to alterhumanity.
Dæmonism: The practice of communicating with one's internal dæmon, a thoughtform stemming from one's subconscious. A dæmon is also given a sentient form, typically a nonhuman animal of sorts. Can be considered as a form of plurality but depends on the individual and their relationship to their dæmon(s).
Soulbonding: A practice in which an individual forms a personal bond or connection to a fictional character and communicates with them from their headspace or soulscape. Can be considered as a form of plurality but depends on the individual and their relationship to their soulbond(s).
Furry Lifestylers: A subset of the furry community whose position in the subculture carries into their daily life. Some members have described it as "furry as a way of life", in which being a furry is inseparable and intrinsic to oneself.
I have alterhuman terms of my own to take into account as well:
Archaeosapiens: Individuals whose alterhuman identity is intrinsically rooted in prehistory, antiquity or mythic accounts of history. Although I don’t use it for myself anymore, I can say as the person who coined it that species is not central to archaeosapience; it is the distinct connection to one’s time that’s central. Anyone of any species can be archaeosapient.
Ontoplanarity: In referral to ontoplanar, which describes individuals who originate from planes and realities outside of this Earth. While one could relate this term to alienkind and spacekind, ontoplanar focuses one’s own point of origin rather than one’s species. In that regard, anyone of any species can be ontoplanar.
There’s also human alterhumans who aren’t specifically otherhumans. The idea that humankind as we know it is completely alienated from alterhumanity is a misconception, likely tying into the assumption that “alterhumanity = nonhumanity”.
I originally discussed this in the Alterhuman (Tumblr) Community but I felt as though I should make this information publicly available, especially with how the term has been sifting around lately. I’m not the first to bring this up, far from it even. If anyone who’s learned something from this wants to know more, here’s some posts to check out:
The finalized coining of the term Alterhuman/AHPI (x)
Aster’s discussion on alterhuman as an umbrella, particularly its conflation with otherkin (x)
Rani’s discussion on umbrella terms in the community, addressing erasure in folks’ usage of both alterhuman and fictionfolk (x)
Rani’s explanation on the difference between nonhuman and alterhuman as terms (x)
A thread of terms and experiences that tie into the alterhuman community (x)
I understand being excited to find a community that speaks to you. We’ve all been there!
That said, inclusive language is important. Even more so when the terms we use were already inclusive to begin with.
I think the best example I’ve seen to address this phenomenon is Aster’s example referring to queer and its usage. Queerness is vast. It is not synonymous with one specific experience in the LGBTQ+ community. That much is understood online.
In the same vein, alterhumanity is just as vast. It is not synonymous with nonhumanity, be it therianthropy or otherwise. It can be alienating for your peers to see it centralized as that experience alone. Alterhumanity is an ocean of possibilities and perspectives that should be recognized alongside nonhumanity. I encourage folks to look at it in full, if not use terms that specifically highlight what you experience instead of framing alterhumanity as only that experience.
Paradox of perspectives
An essay about a variety of my arthropod experiences, and how I go about linking / provoking temporary cameo shifts.
I do not talk about my arthropod experiences much. I am arthropod-hearted, that much is very blatant about me from what I study to how I spend my time and what I love to read about.
I do not consider myself a spider. I could have. A lot of my experiences line up with the average therian; I feel shifts, I've felt phantom limbs, once or twice, similarly few to how my bird phantom present themselves when I don't coax them out, I've had a similar "rightness" to some kinds of spiders (and a few other arthropods) that roadrunners, and things that look like roadrunners, elicit in me. However, I am not a spider. I'm a few feet to the left of being a spider, and if I squint and tilt my head, perhaps I could have been one, or perhaps have been and that's a bit of leftover from that time past, if souls exist, but I am not one, not in the way I am a bird. And while I would choose to have feathers if I could, I am fine with now observing spiders as a separate entity to myself, more than a reflection of what I should be.
However I still know what it feels like, to be a spider. In fact, it is from this experience that I started to amuse myself to see if I could also provoke shifts from other arthropods I enjoyed learning about, a stepping stone into shapeshifting as a amateur hobby. I'm not sure in what box to display that spider. Not a kintype. Not a linktype, as it is the only one of my arthropod experiences that was not voluntary. A little bit more than what's typically expected of a heart-type. If I got fancy, I could call it an antea-type, a past life still leaving a mark, but I am not very spiritual, so that feels shallow as well. I suppose it will stay "the spider".
There's few arthropods around. Not none, I've talked to a few, most notably a cockroach, a few moths, a few wasps, at least one centipede, and a variety of chimeric insectoid monsters. A few spiders, as well I think, but never enough to compare my experiences to. I've found it unsatisfying, to try and seek out arthropod experiences, as a lot of it tends to simply stay in the clear water of the experience : rudimentary "i looked at that picture, and it felt right", or "i felt wings, and it was similar to a moth". Not that it's a bad, incorrect way to experience it, but it doesn't tend to leave my curiosity sated. So here are all the notes I've had about being a variety of arthropods, from my spider, to the ones I shed into to my leisure, to others like me who like unnecessarily long descriptions of Being.
First of all, title drop. Why a paradox of perspective? To me, the red line between all earthen arthropods (and affiliate) I've been is that alien feeling. Yet the world very much is not! It is all things I can still interact with, still find if I try. Noemata of being a spider involve a complex, labyrinthine world of crossing shadows and movement. Noemata of being an endoparasite involve warmth and pulsating rhythm. The centipede was mostly touch and speed and grasp in lush-moist hidden places. When I try to depict them, to a human scale, I easily end up with fantastical worlds. The rotten vale of Monster Hunter, for the filarial worms that migrate through the body. More decayed, but I feel in it that pulsating warm rhythm, although perhaps there are better analogues. Pandora and it's web of vegetation are a human-sized version of any small woods, when you're a half a centimeter long predatory beetle. Being something so small does feel alien, when I am now part of the megafauna. Every snapshot I get, when applied to human size, becomes gargantuan and unfathomable to see on earth.
Maybe that's one reason why they're so rare. How do you realize you were something so small, when it feels so grandiose. It's hard to drop to your knees, angle your eyes, and realize your Yggdrasil was never even the biggest of it's kind. It is why I love becoming insects, though. It has a way of making you treasure the small.
When it comes to being a spider, I can only approximate. I have not chosen, so I must piece back what I was given. It was also shared with a long gone person who shared my mind, so I can only keep what belonged only to me. Some pieces were rather vague. I could not explain why I know I should have venom. I just knew it was how something like I was, killed. Perhaps I would not even, at the time, have known that's what it was, really. Simply a part of life. The sun lifts in the sky. Water is wet. My chelicerae pierce and liquefy. It wasn't really even the most important part of the hunt for what I was, just the finale. My hunt was not making something delicate and vicious that would ensnare for me, nor was it a brutal rushdown. I was mechanical. A biological bear-trap. Becoming More Spider meant patience to an inhuman degree (although inhuman is to be expected), it meant reactive more than proactive. I only had bribes, but it was almost meditative, to be a spider, and I quite liked it.
In symbiosis with that other-mind, I could feel his phantom book lungs (like gills upon my ribs), and the phantom pattern of his eyes upon my face (not that much vision. shades mostly, clear and dark. movements.). Long, grasping limbs to each side, set apart like a jaw (strong, sensitive, like a gun-trigger). Able to fold itself flat, to become the wall it stands on (pneumatics of inner workings, fluids in and out). Whatever it was, it liked shade and coolness and moisture. It disliked movement above it, but did not exactly flee it, it simply hid better and waited. It could be fast, when it was time, but for the most part, it was simply silent.
It's a bit hard, to make a whole from bits, especially something i'm not all the time. With being a bird, I can simply reflect on myself anytime, and that is simply what I am. With the spider, I kind of had to vivisect bits and pieces when and where they happened, and that was kinda all, unless I provoked more of it, which is what I ended up doing. I played dress up with a variety of creatures that felt similar enough, to see what felt right. I tried tailless whip scorpions, but while the grasping of the forearms were right, and Feeling more than any other sense was too, the long thin whips were not quite something I'd felt before, and it lacked that inherent Venom that my brain informed me I should have. Huntsman and wolf spiders were fun. So fun that I kind of hoped that would be it, for a long time. They were something very interactive to be, perhaps not as much as a jumping spider, i've never tried that, but a lot more of a rush than mystery spider. But that feeling of being something fast wasn't right, and the feeling of grasper, while more right with Heteropoda, did not fit wolf spiders at all. I actually realized the most likely culprit pretty recently, while watching the woods near my house. There is in fact all matters of little lethal biological bear traps littered all over the flowers, like decadently dressed death angels for bees and flies alike : Flower crab spiders. I adore them, now that I know where to look for them. I've lived near these woods all my life, yet I'd never spotted them. Thomisus onustus, Synema globosum, Runcinia grammica, Heriaeus hirtus and probably more i've not met yet. I don't quite think my mystery spider is one of them, but almost. If I had to guess, it was some sort of Xysticus, or something analogous. A ground crab spider. I might be wrong, this not an exact science, it's hard to interpret what could very well be figments of my mind. But I am quite satisfied with that answer, at the moment.
So that's arthropod number 1 I've been, the one I've been the most and the one who taught me how to shapeshift.
It takes me some time to manage to decent attempt at something I've never even slightly been. It's easy to have parts. I can feel a wasp's ocelli, a dragonfly larva's mandible or a pair of earwig wings just fine, as long as I have references for it. It's just a matter of visualization, really. I draw as a hobby. I see provoking a shift in myself just like drawing, just with sensations. Take a mantis's raptorial limb. Pull up an anatomy drawing. My upper arm becomes a coxa. The elbow, the trochanter, then the forearm, the femur. My hand fuses, and becomes the tibia. I cannot fold it right, but I can feel the weight of the spines along the ridges, I can feel where it should fold and lock together like well oiled machinery. Then the tarsus, which currently feels like it should erupt from my middle finger, feeling strangely appropriate to type with. Too short, in a human body, but similarly bendy, lacking the two hooks at the end. It's a vague one, and as I am writing this, I can simply shake it out and come back to a more neutral state of human-bird confusion, a more comfortable mix when it comes to operating a keyboard.
It tends to become tricky when it comes to adding everything up. I can have a mantis's arm, but then I must maintain it, and add it's head, with it's complex set of mandibles, of antennas, of eyes-made-of-eyes. One limb needs to become six, and my body starts to glitch. A bird, a tetrapod, is already somewhat complex, my human arms are both wings and bird feet analogue. What's an analogue to that third pair of limb, where do they go? I tend to prefer to lie down when I figure out how to optimally place and draw those feelings, eyes close, so my human feelings do not overlap too much. Even better in the dark. Once it's set, i can then usually trigger it again later, and it'll put itself in place naturally.
It was easier with something as simple as the Filaria worm, although highly dependent on me doing... not much. I did not really need to focus on phantoms then, just on the mind. The mind is not something you can easily find reference from, and to be honest, I would say whatever I feel is most likely a simulacrum of what it's like, after all I do not stop having human neurons during the experiment. But that's not really the point, is it, the point is just that it's fun. The Filaria, amusingly enough, I provoked out of loneliness. I wondered what it must feel like, to be something that is never lonely, because it lives inside something else, constantly surrounded by both it's peers and the thing that nourishes it. It was mostly sensations, what I felt, strangely easy to slip into, perhaps because I have experience with writing parasites for myself.
Back when I was not medicated, I would see the world breathe, sometimes, pulse and writhe, walls tensing and releasing, floor moving beneath my feet. The nematode felt something similar, in my mind. Warmth all around, each heart-beat a pulse, world around you contracting flowing writhing singing. Many-many others around you. Forward, without reason. Not much with reason, simply following the song. It is honestly one of the most pleasant shifts i've ever had. No fear. Nothing to flee. Death is simply a possibility of the world that also nourishes you. You cannot escape it, as there is no other world to escape too, and you are simply here, and you must go forward, and that is all. So no fear. It changes nothing. Blissfully nihilistic. The only glimpses I get are of the stage inside the body, perhaps another would be a different tune, but I'm satisfied with what I saw.
I'd say the mind will be easier to reach for writers than for visual artists. You can cross reference, after all, since I do consider I am channeling a soul, I do not find it particularly less interesting to build that mind through readings of scientific papers that, too, try to imagine what it is like to be something else. To go back to the mantis, I suppose I chose an easy one for me to be. It is once again something that stays in wait. However, it is a lot more active, a lot more visual, than my spider. How would that feel? What colors would I see? Where are my sensors to the world in that body? What would I fear? What would I seek? That's when having the body down gets handy, to me. I simply provoke it, sometimes I do little rituals, to tie it to certain accessories or knick knack, as I find it helps me focus. Shapeshifted, feeling the foreign limbs and foreign sensations, I find it easier to slip into a foreign mind. Everything becomes new. The woods near my house are discovered for a thousandth time with new eyes. The spider sought out moisture and shade, and silence. The centipede sought warms, long coiled body spanning meters, then a hunt, but everything was too small, so it waited, touch-tasted, inquisitive. Perhaps the mantis would seek an elevated zone, with luxurious foliage to hide itself, and would observe. I should try it sometimes.
Perhaps my experiments with arthropods will help some new people attempt more impermanent forms of linking, quite frankly i do not think it is the time spent that makes the serious of an identity, but it is hard even for me to separate the two sometimes, with how tied they were in old forum culture (not even touching on the idea of, gasp, voluntary identity and experiences being worthy). Honestly, I recommend trying it because it is fun. So a little challenge to readers : I would love for you to pick something, become it, and come back to tell me about it. Bonus points if it's some flavor of arthropod-like. Good luck!
Therians, Otherkin, & Alterhumans: I am BEGGING you to credit artists when you use their work for memes, moodboards, stimboards, icons, banners etc. (anything)
It is the minimum we should be doing when I know most of us aren’t even checking to see if the artists are even ok with using their works in this way.
I promise you it doesn’t actually take that long to find the creator most of the time, and if you cant find it- maybe someone else can or maybe don’t use it. “Couldnt find the creator” “credit to artist” etc, is NOT viable
when I went to sleep last night after having A Moment over being unicorn kin, I was snuggling my unicorn plushies which put a very funny image in my mind
Having the weirdest combination of phantom shifts tonight. It's a mix of mule and jaguar. The face is more of a mix, but the ears are seperate. I have four ears (six counting the physical human ears).
Quick sketch trying to show what's going on... this is very strange.
did anyone get like phantom shifts (or any at all) when they where younger and didn't know what they were or really question them until you learned about being nonhuman/alter human? a LOT in my childhood makes sense now learning I'm not a human
Werewolves & Chronic Illness
Let's talk about chronic illness, and how it relates to my experience of being alterhuman.
I was born defective. I won't specify what conditions I have exactly, for privacy purposes, but they primarily cause pain and fatigue. I have had them for my entire life, and will likely have them until I die. I had them when I first started exhibiting alterhuman behaviours as a child. I had them still when I figured out what I was 2 years ago.
The way I view my identity as a werewolf has been deeply shaped by my relationship to chronic illness. The depictions of being a werewolf that I am most drawn to, and the ones that I myself write, are characterised by pain and body horror. Where the transformation takes some kind of toll on the body.
My relationship to this body I inhabit has been ruled by pain and limitation. The idea of a seamless and easy physical transformation is unthinkable to me. When life within flesh has always meant compromise, why would this be any different?
When I was young, I saw the film “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. The werewolf in this film is effectively chronically ill BECAUSE of lycanthropy. Their symptoms worsen around the full moon. Their transformation near the end of the film has stayed with me forever. The creative team chose to depict a gaunt, almost miserable looking creature so far from any depiction of a werewolf I had seen before or since. It was the first time I truly saw myself in a creature like that.
I took one look at that dishevelled, long limbed, scarred creature, and instantly felt a connection.
My condition requires regular hospital treatment. Without it, my body would eventually destroy itself. The timeframe for this treatment? Roughly once a month. Sometimes lining up as the week before the full moon. Another parallel between the cycles of being a werewolf, and the cycle of being chronically ill. Just like my bestial instincts, my physical health waxes and wanes. Too much stress or physical activity, and my body has to rest. Or hibernate.
Which brings me to my other point. My existence as a werewolf, and as a chronically ill human, don't just mirror each other. They overlap at times. Am I emotionally riled up because of the full moon approaching, or because my condition is due for treatment? Is the pain I feel in my bones a need to get down on all fours and stretch, or the side effect of my body's dysfunction? My illness and my alterhumanity sometimes speak the same language. Given the choice, I prefer to see them as complementary.
Two sides of the same coin.
If I was born chronically ill, then perhaps I was also born a werewolf. In the battle of nature versus nurture, perhaps alterhumanity was simply my destiny.
Noemata: Background, definition, and use
noema (plural noemata) - noun From Ancient Greek νόημα (nóēma, “concept”, “idea”, “perception”, “thought”).
1. (philosophy) The perceived as it is perceived 2. (philosophy) That which is perceived in the noesis/noema duality 3. (rhetoric) An obscure speech or a speech that only yields meaning upon detailed reflection⁽¹⁾ 4. (otherkin community slang) Knowledge about oneself, one’s kintype, or the life of one’s kintype
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Almost from the moment I joined the community I lacked a word to describe the distinct images, knowledge, and ‘memories’ that would pop into my head in relation to my psychological kintypes. I was (and still am) very adamant that these kintypes were not past lives, and yet I had many experiences that were similar enough that I, at the time, begrudgingly referred to them as my “kin memories”. Upon sharing my reluctance around using this terminology, I found that many others – both psychological, spiritual, both, and neither – were experiencing the same lexical gap. So when I set out to find a word to bridge that gap, my intentions were to make it as broad and inclusive as physically possible.
It took a day or two of intense googling, before I found the word ‘noema’, which is a very rare word in daily speech, and is almost exclusively reserved for one specific branch of philosophy. It has several overlapping definitions (the three main ones listed above, followed by the community’s use), but the one that particularly caught my attention was: “The perceived as it is perceived.”
Now, fair warning, I took a philosophy class in high school that I haven’t been able to shut up about since, so when I saw that rather cryptic definition, it was of course love at first sight. How I’ve come to interpret “the perceived as perceived” after reading a some analyses of Husserl’s philosophy, on which it is based, is as a subjective truth - a noema is something that is real, not because we can prove its existence by scientific measurements, but which is simply real because a person experiences it as such. When discussing noemata in the context of memory-like experiences in the otherkin community, it is thus irrelevant if they’re “real” in any objective way, and the only thing that matters is that the individual experiences them as real.
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To define is to limit, so with the purpose of the word in mind (to be useful for everyone who felt the lexical gap) I had to be very careful with my phrasing. In my very first attempt at a definition I described a noema as “something in between a memory and an intuition, knowledge that is inherent but has been forgotten/has to be recalled.”⁽²⁾ This is not a definition that I stand by now as I find it too limiting and too focused on memory-like noemata.
In my next post⁽³⁾ about the topic, I didn’t attempt to define it so much as clarify a few things: A noema is not a “kin memory with a psychological explanation”, nor does it have to have any of the qualia of a memory. Any knowledge that has been gained about one’s kintype can be called a noema, including detailed episodic memories and knowledge as simply as your kintype’s eye color or the layout of their house.
In my final attempt to define it, when prompted to because Kiera wanted to add it to their dictionary, I described it as “inherent knowledge you have about your kintype. This may include memories, things you experience as memories but likely aren’t, or general knowledge about your looks, life, habits, or surroundings. Noemata may have a psychological or spiritual basis, may be a mix of the two, or may have unknown origins.”⁽⁴⁾ This is a definition I stand by to this day, though it still prompts some further questions and discussions.
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For starters, why did I include the word ‘inherent’ in that definition? It’s a word I’m very fond of, and you’ll often see it pop up in my long-form writings. I use it to mean ‘essential’, 'core’, and sometimes 'permanent’ or 'natural’/'instinctual’. In other words, for something to qualify as a noema it has to be ingrained with your kintype, one way or another - so things you only know because it was taught to you (for example, statistical facts about an animal species) would not count as noemata, but things you discovered on your own would. Even here we run into grey areas, though, because if a piece of knowledge was revealed to you in, say, a dream, would that count as a teaching or a discovery? Or would knowledge you didn’t discover through introspection, but instead felt compelled to seek out and study, count? I can’t say, and I think it’s up to the individual to decide if they want to call something like that a noema or not.
Next, I feel it important to mention that the examples listed in that definition (“memories, things you experience as memories but likely aren’t, or general knowledge about your looks, life, habits, or surroundings”) are only examples. There are other ways to experience noemata, for example (again, only examples and not the be-all-end-all of the word’s coverage) as precognition, visions of a parallel life, feelings about certain things or characters, and confabulations. However, there is one tentative exception: I have not created the word with consciously created scenarios in mind. If you intentionally decide that your kintype has red hair (instead of going off a gut feeling that they have red hair), I would not count that as a noema. Again, with room for grey areas such as OCkin, who have created a character and later come to realize that that character is their kintype.
Though the word has mostly found use as a stand-in for 'memory’ among psychological otherkin, that by no means covers all the ways in which it can be used, and in the past year I have seen it used more and more frequently by nonhumans and alterhumans regardless of the cause of their identity. My intention with introducing the word to the community was always to fix the lexical gap, and as such everyone who feels that gap can use the words 'noema’ and 'noemata’.
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Sources: 1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noema#English 2. https://aestherians.tumblr.com/post/181836451574/ 3. https://aestherians.tumblr.com/post/190929635719/ 4. https://www.beyondhumanity.net/alterhuman-dictionary/dictionary-n
I know I'm made of clay that's worn / blinded by imperfect form (creature - half•alive)
a drawing i did a few days ago that im extremely proud of. its about nonhumanity of course, about how a person is not their body, but how they see themselves. it represents my three kintypes: dragon, enderman and unicorn, and how phantom shifts can make them overlap sometimes over my physical body.
edit - i based my drawing on this one by @mossymenagerieart! go look at his art its really cool
Hi this is a positivity post regarding alterhuman diet dysphoria versus actual biology
(unless you already know these things)
To herbivore nonhumans who don't want to/can't do a vegan or vegetarian diet but feel dysphoric about being able to digest meat:
Herbivorous animals are not unable to digest meat.
Animal matter is actually easier for a body to process than plant matter, and herbivorous species need very complex digestive systems in order to support their lifestyles. This is why cows have four stomachs; why horses practically go into critical system failure if they get even a little bit sick. Animals that live mostly by grazing actually still do need nutrients that carnivores and omnivores get through their natural diets, which is why farming supply stores sell salt licks for animals. In the wild herbivores will quite often find ways to sneak some meat into their diets by eating bugs or small vertebrates, if you didn't already know about the fun fact of deer eating baby birds. "Obligate herbivore" meaning an animal that can ONLY physically digest plants is not a real ecological term the way "obligate carnivore" meaning animal that can ONLY physically digest meat is, though you might see it in other usages (i.e., referring to an animal that relies on a plant-based diet for all of its nutrients).
If a wild deer was given access to human society, they would probably not opt for veganism for connection with their true species; they would more likely appreciate having a way to get sodium so easily. This isn't to shame anyone who does choose a vegan/vegetarian diet for species euphoria reasons, but more to reassure folks who can't, you aren't less of an herbivore.
To carnivore nonhumans who feel dysphoric that their body can't digest raw meat like wild carnivores can:
It can!
The reason you don't want to be eating raw meat like a wolf or stoat or monitor lizard is because you will get sick or you will contract a parasite, which might sound like just a different reason to feel disconnected from your species, but here's the main two things:
1. The actuality is that wild wolves and stoats and monitor lizards DO get sick and contract parasites. This is often how wolves and stoats and monitor lizards die in the wild and why ones in captivity, being fed parasite-free meat and having illnesses treated, live longer. There are raw meats you can eat safely, you just have to know where they're sourced from and that they're guaranteed not to have risks! That's why sushi is a thing, and why people say you can technically eat raw cut (not ground) beef but not pork or chicken. Cooked meat is also often tastier and easier for the body to process (cit.: Grug et al. 780,000 BCE) so that's why humans have loved their medium-well steak since they came up with it. And 2. wild predators are "able to eat raw meat" mostly because they killed it, so it's fresh and hasn't been sitting around able to pick up bacteria, the way raw meat you get at a grocery store would have. This is why a lot of prey animals have a "play dead" defense mechanism: most predators do not want to eat something that's already dead, because it might get them sick.
If a wild owl was given access to human society, they would probably not desire only the rawest of meats for connection with their true species; they would more likely appreciate having access to food that had all the pathogens cleaned and/or scorched out of it.
Shoutout to adults in the kin community, whether you also identified as kin from a younger age or not. So often this identity is seen as a phase or something only younger people identify as, but there are those of us out here in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and older living our lives and existing out in the world.
To those of us who grew into it, to those of us that grew with it, I see you and love you.
On Sapience, Longing, and the Lack Thereof
Written by Max on August 12th, 2024.
So I was at Othercon 2024 this past weekend - and like many who attended, I came out the other side with a new piece of my identity to chew over. This essay is me chewing over my thoughts on archaeosapience, as it connects to my velociraptor paleotheriotype, and why I genuinely don’t feel like I fit the label.
One of the panels I attended and thoroughly enjoyed was “Not Humans, Still People: How Inhumanity Interacts with Personhood,” by Goratrix bani Tremere of the Draconic Wizard Workshop and Chaiya Askari-Vykos of the Treehouse System. During the panel, Goratrix and Chaiya argue that personhood is different from humanity, defining personhood as, essentially, sapience - the ability to understand oneself, to make rational choices, to comprehend the world in not only physical ways, but also the abstract and symbolic. All humans are people, but not all people are humans - nonhuman personhood is experienced by many, many alterhumans, and this is an important distinction to keep in mind.
Another panel I adored, presented by Sivaan of Candlekeep, was “Archaeosapience: To Awaken as Ancient in a Modern Age,” in which he discusses the label and the intricacies of his own experience as an archaeosapien. Once again, nonhuman sapience is a key feature here - as Sivaan writes in xyr coining essay, “[t]he “sapience” in archaeosapience exclusively refers to our awareness of our existence as ancient beings,” as opposed to an inherent connection with the species Homo sapiens. Archaeosapience does not require one to be human.
An archaeosapien is defined as “an individual whose alterhuman or nonhuman identity is intrinsically rooted in prehistory, antiquity or mythic accounts of history.” And funnily enough, here lies my personal disconnect with the term, even though I identify as a velociraptor - a prehistoric animal well known to be extinct. To experience archaeosapience requires personhood, requires sapience, an understanding of oneself as an ancient being. And this is one thing that my theriotype utterly lacks.
Now, I’m not saying that I lack sapience. I am a person, one who reads and writes and learns about the world around me. I also identify as human, separate but intertwined with my personhood, and my humanity is as important to me as my animality. Both of these core parts of myself contribute to where I stand today - as a prehistoric animal person who is, somehow, completely at home in modernity.
Throughout this essay, I’m going to refer to my raptor self in the third person - it thinks this, it wants that. I separate myself from my theriotype in this way because I do not feel like I’m myself in a mental shift. My raptorial mind is not a person, but an animal. It is incapable of understanding abstract concepts or philosophical thought, living in the physical world where it gets food, water, rest, shelter, and enrichment. This does not make it any lesser than my sapient mind - it does mean that it has a different way of understanding the world.
My raptor brain, the instinctual animal side, does not feel like it’s an animal from another era. It doesn’t even know what time is, beyond the regular cycles of day and night. It doesn’t understand common features of modern human society, like computers or elevators or money - not because those things didn’t exist back in prehistoric Asia, 75 million years ago, but because it’s an animal. I could be a gecko from the modern day and still feel the same mentally shifted apathy and confusion about the things I need to live day to day as a human being. The raptor doesn’t know or care about its status as a long-extinct relic, because as far as it’s concerned, it is alive and well, healthy and fed and comfortable in a house with people it knows.
In fact, my raptor brain doesn’t even feel attached to a habitat. Early on in my awakening, as someone who knows where velociraptors used to live in the spacetime continuum, I felt a sort of connection with deserts - I’d look at them and think, that’s like the place my species lived! This was the part of me who’s a person, putting a label to a place that I’ve never been, thinking fondly of it despite never having lived there.
The part of me that’s not a person, that knows nothing but pavement and grass and many-walled shelters keeping out the wind, looks at the desert and bristles with distaste. It doesn’t like the idea of being somewhere it doesn’t know, with sand and scorching sun and no food it knows how to catch. It knows its home territory, a place with cooling wooden floorboards and a comfortable nest of mattress and blankets and a cache of good food that never runs out, and it likes its territory. It doesn’t like the desert or understand the significance of it. It can’t comprehend the idea of wilderness enough to miss it. It doesn’t want to be wild and free, it wants to live in a building with air conditioning and clean freshwater from the sink.
As you can see, my raptor self is perfectly content to be a modern animal. How about my human self, the part of me that can think about my theriotype and know that it’s a prehistoric animal? Do I long for ancient deserts, grieve and yearn for a world I never experienced because I know it might have once been home?
Well… no. I don’t. For better or worse, my humanity feels inexorably linked to modernity, to cities, to technology. I can’t go anywhere or do anything without running into electronics. I use the internet every day of my life to learn, entertain, engage with the world around me. I couldn’t imagine living a life where I didn’t have it. There’s no disconnect from the modern day for me, no longing for the past - only the sense that I’m right where I want to be.
As a person, I’m content with where I am today. As an animal, a raptor can’t yearn for a time it has never lived.