Alias' Bio

Name: formerly Cel, now Alias. Cel was literally just the acronym of our full legal name and I didn’t want to be more associated with it than any of the rest of the system. But I liked it because it likens to cel shading. Alias has the same idea re: older cgi terms, but also a) has extra meanings that also really suit me, like an imposition to represent an idea! and B) is really funny as a name. Yeah my name is Alias. Yes it means Name.

Gender: i am not a human OR a person i am a thing
it/its ONLY. if you’re uncomfortable because it’s dehumanizing then good. that’s what I’m here for

Sexuality:generally romantic… nebulously, vaguely… i know that i am objectum (if it wasn't obvious) but romantic feelings toward real human people is something I greatly struggle to grasp. which doesn’t necessarily mean I’m aro. if anything in my mind it’s the opposite I wouldn’t be so confused if i didn’t feel anything. i’m so good at not feeling anything, it’s when feeling things comes into play that i start getting downright baffled

Archetropy: there is a facet of our wayvariant archetype we’ve dubbed “the enigma.” the familiarity of vagueness, the comfort of abstraction, a welcoming of the unknown and indecipherable. that’s me.
also re: the horror archetype i can be the horrors if no one else wants to. I know that interacting with me often starts to slope into the uncanny valley, and that I’m not personally afraid of it or experiencing any horrors because I live here and I’m quite comfortable thank you. but I’m not like a horror monster or villain or something. maybe just something that serves to freak the protagonists out before they encounter the real enemy; like a wandering spirit that speaks in riddles.
i'm being honest i plain ol' forgot we even HAVE a "reality warping/warper/warped" archetype-thing because that just IS what i AM. it isn't even a bulletpoint on a list i look at to remember for me. i forgot about it the way someone doesn't consciously register they're an organism that came from a fish and breathes air to be alive 24/7.

Species: in no way am i an animal. mostly all the objectkin sentiments, like I am the Casio calculator-synthesizer (Casio VL-80 if you were interested), the transistor radio, any time we see a technological instrument and go “wow me core” that’s me, etc… the main thing is that i am a clock, specifically a pocket watch, specifically a specific pocket watch and sort of a time machine. The Transversal character we made to be designed based on me, Fitz, is a wayward aimless schizotypal daydreaming dropout who finds out he is actually the soul of a magical ghost/artificial intelligence fitted to a vintage pocketwatch repurposed into a time machine in the 1970s, placed into a human body with no memory until 2020. So that’s sorta the basic idea actually. the character’s not LITERALLY what I am like Kalev or Quasar would say about theirs, but that is my vibe and then we made a character about it
i’m also conceptkin with early CGI. and i have little bit of the uncanny liminal space conceptkin energy that NOCH has but for me it’s not Scary House and brutalist architecture and kills you stuff, it’s like… you know, the real horror of being lost in the backrooms with a monster isn’t the monster or even the rooms, it’s the being lost
re-read Fishke's bio and realized i forgot to add what i see the body as which i guess is a decent representation of what i see it as. i don't. it's barely there to me. if asked whether i think of my physical body as organic i guess i'd say yes but you'd really have to stress the physical body part because that thing is not even in the same plane of existence that i'm chilling in

Fictional identity if any: Not really. We based a character off me, but it’s not like Kalev turned out, everything in common I have with the character is just stuff we took from me and gave him rather than any instance of the other way around

Heartedtypes: uuuh. mostly cephalopods but other soft-bodied marine invertebrates are so <3 I wouldn’t say i’m jellyfish hearted but I love all cnidarians and echinoderms also and cambrian critters and worms and tunicates and

Special interest: “Symbols codes and ciphers” section of the language store please. Symbolism with a linguistic application basically. Also would be nothing without my CGI history #mycgi

Music: my favorite artist of the system’s collective favorites i’d put as either I Don’t Know How But They Found Me or jack stauber. everyone keeps being surprised i like harder stuff like set it off and jim davies just because i’m the one who listens to jazz & electro-swing and 70s electronica and vaporwave and graham kartna but they forgot that the next thing on that list is king gizzard. can’t a clock contain multitudes? if it has a consistent beat i’m eating it anyway

Other preferences: my favorite game of the ones we’d list as our favorites is the stanley parable ultra deluxe. big on stuff like that, things that aren’t close to horror by any means but still can’t be separated from that eerie atmosphere of vague spatial wrongness. needless to say i’m of the many versions of my self whose favorite book is slaughterhouse-five. and obviously a huge kane pixels fan especially people still live here but can you blame me? I mean look at the stuff he does with graphics, the kid’s a wizard
do I need to say my favorite movie or is it obvious to anyone who knows how the whole system feels about Gate to the Mind’s Eye

Symptom presentation: I’m actually one of the less verbal headmates if i had to guess. we all have varying displays of being bad at talking and mine is more concretely in the fact that i can’t make my mouth do the things i’m asking it to. regardless of how much i actually want to be talking and know what i’m trying to say. I’m one of the more likely of us to start having paranoid spirals about our friends disliking us. I also know I’m one of the more visibly schizospec/cluster A headmates, I don’t need it pointed out, I’m aware… you can tell I wrote this entire thing out of order and didn't bother to make it comprehensible if read in order too
i have 100 alexithymias

Dress: right now as we speak i am wearing a white t-shirt decorated with colorful penrose triangles. it’s a real shirt and we got it at a thrift store. my favorite shirts of ours are the patterned button-downs and silly brightly colored patterned t-shirts and and the idkhow merch. i have a favorite mug that is an original 1980s ftda florists rainbow mug, we don’t drink from it due to the lead but it can never be replaced because i got it at an antique store for $8. fishke said i dress like bowling alley carpet well he ain’t even seen me strike yet

Why I exist: see here https://theredoesnotexist.dreamwidth.org/1833.html sender said it better than i could. I would obviously not call my self a fictive because in no way is my identity even influenced by fiction, but maybe introject would actually apply somewhere

fishke had a section for describing himself as a person and explaining his own personality and things of that nature. this is a luxury afforded only to the most cognitively aware and unscattered members of a system, which in our case is everybody except for me

Things of note: my symbol, 𝄌, is the musical notation symbol for coda, the movement of a piece that brings it to its conclusion.
That being said:

𝄌

(no subject)

Now it's time to post a bunch of stuff we've already written and posted elsewhere for absolutely no reason except to have fun and fill up our account and put them other places than just one single Tumblr blog (eggs, basket)

(Also for these ones, instead of writing the music I'm actually listening to, I'm going to the playlist of whoever wrote it and putting it on shuffle, or even better, finding a song on it that really vibes with the content of the post. Honesty takes second priority to a musical consistency. I'm the one posting these for today but it's way more fun to show some of their music tastes than just write the same Ashbury Heights song in the music section over and over (we've been looping Phantasmagoria for days)).

𝄌

Living Computer Complex

People are often less surprised to find out I’m otherkin than they are to find out that specifically I’m bugkin. Who actually sees themself on any level as a centipede? Because it makes sense for people to identify as cats and wolves and dragons; those are cool, and more essentially, those are sympathetic. Bugs don’t have anything going on inside them. They don’t have interesting intraspecific behavior.

They’re like aliens; they’re practically just living computers; they’re the lurking uncanny monsters in a supernatural horror movie; oh by the way those are also things I see myself as. A cephalopod and a fish, too. This combination isn’t random. Being any these things occupies the same part of my life. Probably comes from the same thing. If it sounds like these are all things that have nothing to do with each other, sorry, maybe I just think about this kind of thing disproportionately. I think about Lovecraft’s fiction and movie monsters and Independence Day how I have always, since before I was old enough to form memories, let alone articulate why, hated alien invasion stories, hated stories about the ugly monsters that all must die, hated the "evil other."

I always rooted for the scary aliens and eldritch horrors and uncanny valley shadow-people and city-levelling beasts. I’ve always pointed to the robot character in things for who I related to. I came away depressed from 2001: A Space Odyssey, because for some reason I felt like I’d been told that people like me must be discarded to achieve the next stage of humanity’s evolution. I haven’t always had the words, but I’ve always, somewhere in the back of my mind, known why.

There are movies where things like me dare to appear where we're not supposed to and cause destruction and harm with soft-spoken cold logical brutality. There are books about things like me, terrible in our inscrutability, challenging rational thought with our otherness.

You don't think I have emotions or feel pain, so it's okay to hurt me; yet you think everything I do accidentally is on purpose. You can’t see feelings in me, but you can read malice in my behavior when it suits you. Sometimes you don't give me any credit for intelligence I know I have, and sometimes you expect me to be smarter than I'm capable of and assign blame for simple mistakes that implies calculated evil. No conscience, inner self or intellect, so I’m nothing but intention.

You prefer to pretend I’m not there, but if you can't, then it's my fault for making you notice me.

I’m sensitive to unexpected things that you aren't, which you think it's okay to use to punish me. Or sometimes it’s just because you think the reactions are funny to watch, but if I dare get angry at you for it, the threat of my presence justifies the initial action. And yet at the same time not sensitive enough to things you are, which you think makes me less than you. There’s just something I’m lacking inside me if I can’t feel the same way as you.

You're uncomfortable with my appearance because I don't express things the same way as intelligibly. I can’t meet you where you’re at. I can’t understand or be understood like you can. I can’t keep up. Is it my voice or the way I’m using it, or something about my body that casts an impenetrable screen around me, or something about my mind that can’t find yours in the dark? My thought processes are unfamiliar, so they don't exist to you. If it takes effort to discern, it's not there. Don't ask yourself why there's a problem between you and me. You are not willing to put in the effort of learning how to communicate with me. You expect me to adapt to you instead, even when it’s impossible.

I'm not complex like you, but somehow, unlike you, I'm complicated.

Sometimes I can’t even really tell anymore whether I’m writing from the perspective of bugs, aliens, computers, monsters, or just a very tired autistic person.

⏛

Everyone Likes Nectarines

Stone fruits are back in season.
I’ve been standing on bridges and scaring myself.
I’ve been buying plums on blue-skied afternoons.
It feels good to consume something so fleeting.
When you look over the railing at the water and know it isn’t cold enough
You’re sort of glad it isn’t
You sort of wish it was.
It’s beautiful out. Everyone agrees.
Everyone likes nectarines.
It’s harder to go over in spring.
It’s harder to be grateful.

𝇅

An explanation of wayvariance (⩝)

I've tried to narrow it down, I've tried to separate it, and I've tried to find convenient ways to define it. I explained it as having multiple distinct archetrope identities that were closely related—"wanderer," "mimic," "opportunist" "shapechanger"—but they aren't distinct. Most archetropes will say their archetypes are things like knight, or unreliable narrator—I don't think mine is inherently different or more internally complicated in any way, but the problem is that most archetypes and concepts have words that mean them. Everyone knows what a knight is. No matter where and how long I pored over the dictionary and Etymonline, I couldn’t find one single word that explains what I am. I had to realize that it's the very fact of what it is that makes an existing word or phrase impossible. So I made my own.

I call it Wayvariance. It's a portmanteau of sorts, between the words "wayfar" and "variant." A wayfarer is obviously a traveller or explorer, but the etymology of way (to mean the course by which something occurs) and fare (to mean to wander, to be/exist, or even simply just to go) implies a connotation of someone who doesn't just travel, but who's defined by it. Variance originally meant only the act of undergoing change. Its meaning of diversity, difference, came later; a result of inevitable change. The way evolution is a constant course of change, meaning inherently that it's also existence in infinities.

Wayvariance is being a wanderer. Not because I travel a lot, but ontologically. I always leave. I leave both physically and existentially. The wanderer grows bored with home, with comfort and familiarity. Not just bored. Sick. Sick to its stomach. Being in one place for too long creates a miasma. I could find something to hate about anywhere I end up. I've lived in enough places in a short enough amount of time to feel that anywhere I go next is implicitly not a place I'll stay for very long, and to feel like even just three years is a crazy long amount of time for me to spend living somewhere. A new city to become part of is my version of someone else’s return to a cozy childhood bedroom. But I never really am a part of them, I know by now. The homebody is a river carving canyons over eons. The traveller is always the fish.

"I would tell you about the ocean if I had a moment to stay and chat. But those other places call again and we will never see each other after this. I seem to be the only one who recognizes this. You say ‘keep in touch’ like I have hands and not fins."

I go where I go. It’s a matter of perspective whether it's freedom or being towed by an invisible rope to unknowable destinations, I guess. I choose to appreciate it, but only because I couldn't ever choose to stop it. To drift through existence. The word “plankton” etymologically traces back to the Greek for “wandering.” Plankton are defined as any creature which does not swim purposefully, but rather is carried by ocean currents. Am I purposeless? Rootless? Is this why so many people think their roots are their purpose? I never knew what it was like to have either. No wonder I'm anti-zionist as a Jew. Doikayt doesn’t just mean hereness to me, it means anywhereness. There is no soil or stone with my names already carved. There are no waters that whisper for me, only to. You get it.

Which is all to say: the difference between a wanderer and someone who is lost is only a matter of deciding that what you are is a conscious choice rather than being haplessly dragged along by the universe. Either way, there is no end and no source. I don’t even know what to say when people ask where I'm from. Whatever works, who’s asking?

Wayvariance is being a shapeshifter. One who changes. Not just their shape, too, but their whole self. Recreates the self. In fact, it’s my only constant. The one thing that will never change about me is that I will always change. I know that I'm trans because I seek radical physiological transformation more than any other reason. I cannot live a whole life without knowing what it feels like to be so drastically modified; not even out of a frenzied sense of curiosity, but out of an unavoidable instinct. I crave change, and I need it. The wanderer grows bored with home, with self, body, mind. It needs to leave. Stagnation kills me, like mosquitoes breed eggs in the still waters of my life. My name isn’t the same as it was 3 years ago and it won’t be the same three years from now. Even the way I write or draw is inconsistent. Even the way I type. An example: it wasn't a mistake to switch from digit to word when writing the same number just now. I felt like it—but I can't explain why.

Shapeshifter transforms the body and the mind remains intact. Wayvariant, on the other hand, becomes. Embodies. Change does not even have to be from the inside out. When I put something on myself—a name, an answer, an image, a character, a preference—it seeps into my epidermis like the ink of a tattoo until the only way to remove it is with the regular moulting of my feathers. I can't relate to stories of fictional shapeshifters because I can’t imagine turning into something physically but not becoming it in my entirety. What do the words mind, heart, body and soul mean? They are all equally mutable and impermanent. I have identified as otherkin for nearly eight years and I don’t have the same kintypes I did when I first realized, not because I was wrong about being a fox, but because I became a badger instead. Not even the same kintypes I did half that time ago, not because I was wrong about being a badger, but because I became a cladotherian instead. Queer, but never wanting to call myself “against labels” or “still questioning” just because I was aroace femme-presenting nonbinary and now I'm a butch bi man. You get it.

I used to relate to the phoenix. But there's no dramatic blaze of fire or victorious rising up from the embers for me. I don't need to burn to exist in the ashes of everything I used to be. Maybe someday a sapling will grow from them instead of a bird. If there was such thing as consistency, I would consistently be changing. But there isn’t. So when I grow into a tree, I certainly won’t be a bird anymore.

Wayvariance is adaptation, and by extension, survival. Sometimes Wayvariating is like being the last survivor of an apocalypse because you refused to die more like a cockroach than a hero, but that’s OK, you’re used to the loneliness. Sometimes it’s change that’s evolution at such a rapid pace it doesn’t need generations, only you and a certain willpower. Was there a reason the bird needed to suddenly be a tree in the first place? Sometimes Wayvariating is like chewing your leg off to get out of the trap. Backed into a corner snapping and hissing, it’s not very heroic either but I’ve always been more like a wild animal than that particular archetype allows for.

That also means Wayvariance is mimicry, inherently. Mimicry is survival. An adaptation. Some creatures will mimic a coloration of a poisonous species to deter predators. Some creatures will mimic the beats of a human interaction, perfectly memorized and choreographed to avoid being noticed. Some won’t even realize they are the only one in the room who’s having to pretend to be human. For a lifetime. They just know that snapping and hissing don’t protect them as well as dancing and laughing do. So I learned how to dance and laugh, but not because it's funny.

A terrifying concept for humans to think someone in the room might not be the same as them, but somehow smiles and speaks like them all the same. Like it has learned their behaviors, their patterns. A horror movie monster. One you don't notice right away, even speaking to it. What is it scheming? A great evil? To hunt, kill, devour? To make innocent humanity its victim?

Why would an animal have to pretend to be poisonous if it was the one who was bloodthirsty?

Wayvariance is opportunism. That’s also an adaptation. A Wayvariant is an animal that can survive on any diet, in any biome, because it takes what it can get while it can get it. That’s being a generalist. For a wild animal, at least. A sapient person's version I guess would be called eclecticism. My preferences are wide enough that I may as well not have any. Being a generalist means I say I “don’t play favorites” and I say I “have no taste” in things because I never know what to say when someone asks me my favorite type of movie, or game, favorite genre of music, what’s your dream job… where would you like to live? No answer, for me. Every answer. I could find something to love about anywhere I end up.

I also endeavor to diversify the self, too. Not just my options. It’s not just about differences. It’s about encompassments. It is difficult for me to make my self small because it naturally desires so many things. Therian, but struggling to whittle myself down to as socially acceptable a polytherianthropy as I can muster even if some people can only imagine I'm struggling to “maintain so many conflicting identities.” Autistic, and having special interests in topics some people find so impossibly broad like “art” that I have genuinely, not joking, had my disability fakeclaimed over it. Archetrope and having a 'type so conceptual and expansive as this that I need to make my own word for it. You get it.

Which means Wayvariance is to contain multitudes. It is not a contradiction for me to contradict myself. It comes easily because I'm not just OK with being confused or confusing, I embrace it. I don’t understand how others would find being "your own opposite" hard to wrap the mind around. Asymmetry? A walking paradox? Maybe in the eyes of others. Multitude eyes see those variating evolutionary infinities behind themselves. You can be both the desert and ocean. You can be snow and fire. You can be the desert and the ocean but not both at once. You can be snow and fire, but neither snow nor fire. This is so normal to me that it’s tricky to explain. When I write or do art, a million projects open at once that I chip away at over time across the board works better for me than putting all focus into one; if I'm playing three games, or watching three shows or reading three books at once, I finish all three before I would have finished just one if it was the only one. Something about the variety keeps my attention better than hyperfocus ever could, even with the autism/adhd combo. I liked having a million thousand nested links on my blog because there’s something about labyrinthinely navigated lists that makes more sense to me, and something about having different sideblogs for different topics that doesn’t. And I'm plural. No need to expound upon that one. Plural in more than one way, even. Plural in different ways that don't stay consistent. If I expound anyway, it's because I can't help it. You get it.

Wayvariance is ambiguity. I revel in it. I love those stupid link labyrinths, but I also like having nothing in terms of information that's accessible at all, even difficultly, because obscurity is my nest, where I feel safe. Vague isn’t uncomfortable for me, if anything, it’s familiar. Uncertainty is like a lullaby and a confident answer to a question is like waking with a start from the sensation of falling; you know the feeling—jarring, sudden. I'm not insecure when things don't make sense, though I know others sometimes see it that way if I'm nonsensical too often. I never feel more secure than when things don’t make sense. If there was such thing as home, mine would be the strange and ephemeral, and the antichronology of dreams, and enigmas. But there isn’t. So I am always waking up somewhere time exists, and you know the feeling, jarring and sudden. Making myself understood sometimes is like a fool’s errand, especially because way too many people think being esoteric is always a choice. I make an entire new word to describe my archetrope identity and then write an entire essay trying to explain it, because (as the modern adage explains) “human language is like trying to nail down the ocean” and unlike some, I am not human, I am the fish called to seas and from river to river, never with the privilege of walking back onto dry land where words lie.

G-d, why the hell was I an English major.

Wayvariants are outsiders, foreigners wherever they go, from across oceans to their home towns to the inside of their own heads. I am, after all, a wanderer, and I always leave. I leave both physically and existentially. Because I always leave, I also always arrive. I am a stranger wherever I arrive. Both physically and existentially. And a journey inevitably always changes the traveller. If I ever were to come back home, I'd be a stranger there too.

But like I said. There is no such thing as home.

WTNV is schizospec media and Cecil is schizotypal fuck with me

This will be the first and last time I do a full on dissertation on a totally inconsequential headcanon. This isn't a fandom blog. This isn't a fandom post. This is a THESIS.

Rarely do I headcanon characters, let alone as having ‘disorders’ even if it’s a label I also identify with. Generally antipsych and as a disclaimer I don’t even really believe one can “have schizotypal” like it’s an innate feature of the brain rather than a description for a pattern of behavior and experiences. However as a closeted queer teen Cecil being a happily gay man was profoundly important to me and as a deassimilating young adult Jew Cecil being casually Jewish was profoundly important to me and as a relatively recent adult experiencer of psychotic symptoms who finds relatability at the very least in the impression of schizotypal, Welcome to Night Vale has continued to be profoundly important to me so if I may have the floor:

The main antagonistic presence throughout the entire series is literally a corporation represented by insistence on emotional over-expression especially of joy to the point where it's consistently symbolized with an obsession with and amount of smiling that is presented as uniformly horrific. It's also a religion that worships a god that tortures people with flat affect by forcing them to feel deliriously happy. It takes place in a town where reality is accepted to be subjective and impossibly bizarre for everyone by default. According to Joseph Fink his original idea for the show was “a town where every conspiracy theory is true.” This fictional place where schizospec people wouldn't really even be disabled by the norms of their society occupies a space in my brain I imagine most people have reserved for “fandom.” 

I know the issue of Cecil’s fashion sense is a hot button topic in the WTNV fandom but under the consideration of him being schizotypal (like me! :3), I’m holding on with a death grip to the idea of him genuinely being totally uncoordinated and bizarre rather than some kind of avante-garde fashionista queen. I’ve been told I speak like him because of the discordance between my tone and the things I’m saying, when I genuinely didn’t consider what I was saying might be unusual or disturbing. He’s a “blabbermouth” because he has a level of social awareness where he DOESN’T REALIZE why or even that others might not want that information public until after he says it (haha I do that 🥲). The casette tapes episode didn’t just mess me up because it was ooky spooky, it messed me up because it felt like being fucking read. I wish I could thank a podcast for giving me one more character who doesn’t experience time “normally” that I can point to and say “look, it’s me!” (Shoutouts to Vonnegut as well)

“But he wouldn’t be schizospec because none of that matters since it’s normal in Night Vale!” Ok well have you considered: YEAH THAT’S THE POINT. That’s why “schizotypal Cecil” is my hill. Because schizospec traits and experiences would be considered normal in Night Vale. In my eyes this is a schizospec character in a setting where psychosis and cluster A personality types aren’t pathologized because they aren’t considered disordered because reality IS actually fucked up so it’s normal to experience a fucked up reality!!

Carlos is canonically autistic (true). Cecil is not neurotypical just because he’s not also autistic. He reads so schizospec to me it’s not even funny. WTNV is a schizospec story. Thank you for coming

𝁮

An explanation of a 'cryptidkin' kintype (🝎)

I will be clear to start that throughout this I’ll be referring to the kintype as “it,” which seems like a separation from myself, but this is me in the traditional way a kintype is, I’m merely describing the “species,” even though I’m by technicality the only “member” of it. Words like cryptid, spirit, demon or entity sometimes put across a general idea of what this kintype is when trying to explain it, but each is incomplete on its own. This is a complicated kind of being, not quite organic, but also not entirely conceptual, theoretically animalistic yet mere physically manifestive of an idea. Cryptid or demon can work under the context of my kintype as a literal being, an individual predator with behavior, regardless of where it sits on the scale from flesh to illusion or beast to strategist. Spirit or entity can work under the context of it as an explicit embodiment of natural phenomena.

Before I can keep explaining the details I probably have to mention the most important part of this kintype, and the main catalyst for confirming it, why I sometimes refer to it and myself as conceptkin: this is autumn. Not as in it’s closely associated with the season; this being is fall, manifest: the earlier dusk and longer nights, strangely bright skies, harvest and hunter’s moons, loom of winter on the wind and rain, from the last cricket chorus to the first frost, and the season of the haunting of vivid memory. That’s what I am. That’s what this kintype is if you were to give that a form and intentions. That’s why I called it a spirit or demon. It’s an embodiment of a force of nature, like a grim reaper. To use the analogy, if someone had a grim reaper as a kintype, they might identify simultaneously as the cloaked skull figure, and the concept of death itself. I am both the lurking cryptid, and the concept of fall itself, and these are (to me) the same thing.

Sometimes I call it an audiophage, a word that pre-existing language allows for immediate comprehension of, especially when introducing the idea of it to people, because of (one of) its (in my mind) most defining traits: This is a creature that eats sound, literally. Not the object or being that produced the sound; the sound itself. For sustenance, it physically consumes noise—environmental noise, music, speech—absorbing it, leaving silence and sometimes rendering the source of the sound incapable of making the same one again. This is how it “eats,” and it consumes nothing else, but it is also a process with an intentional benefit: any sound it consumes, it is able to then mimic, including the qualities of a person’s voice.

I’ve related this kintype (and associated feelings, before I came to understand it) to the Thing ever since I saw the film, and I was never quite sure why. By nature, its body is illusory at most, and not exactly a very fleshy beast, so the supposed body horror aspect of its mimicry confused me. It’s a being I’ve more often described as being made of darkness, mist, fear, night and sound than flesh—flesh and bone and blood would be sixth or lower on that list. I related to the music video for The Wolf by Siamés too, as well as the monsters from the series Gemini Home Entertainment, No-Face, and the grotesques invented by the artist Trevor Henderson. I’ve eventually realized that the body horror part of this kintype is not immediately connected to its vocal mimicry. I don’t pretend to be another person or try to convince others that I am; the copying seems more automatic, without a true strategic understanding of what it is I’m actually doing even when under personal interpretations that this is a creature that knows the moves it’s making.

The body horror aspect comes only as a result of the fact itself that I am a being not by default made of organic material, rather by shadow, fog and constellations: a visually uncomfortable convergence when an attempt is made to be so. Imagine a being normally not organic and alive trying to appear or even become so by pulling into itself shade from the dusk, flickering embers from extinguished bonfires, the scent of cold rain, and the image of arrangements of stars from the night sky. Forming it into a shape and beginning to breathe, then to follow your footsteps exactly in the woods, in derelict ruins, in cemeteries, in your window at night. Tapetum lucidum glowing cruelly as a solar eclipse. Teeth a little bit differently shaped each time. Talk if you want to donate your voice. Do not talk if you want to keep it. It will hear you either way.

I also really like Over the Garden Wall :3

𝁮
 

The Artist's Favorite

I am a song you like to sing.
Maybe not the one you’d win awards for
but the melody you think to hum
when your room is quiet and your voice is bored,
I can form in the back of your throat like a muscle memory
I can be the sound if you design the tune.

You are the poet that writes me.
I am your words upon the page,
nothing without your hands,
before you devised my flow and meter nothing
after you close the book nothing
my meaning only the perception the eye gives it.

Who am I to disagree with the stroke of your brush
who am I to rebel against the scrape of your chisel
when your hands are all that I am.

You weave me with pride one day
I will be the artist’s favorite tapestry.

This is not love
I am not me, I am made of you
it is not a kindness
unless you sing me in major key.

𝇅

The child who could not scream

When he was born, his first breath was cold
But he didn’t scream. So they declared him
The healthiest baby they’ve ever seen,
So much that he didn’t even need
The blanket they had ready for him.
So they handed him back to his parents and his first
Lesson from the world was that it was cold,
And his second was that there would
Be offered no warmth.

When he was learning to walk
He fell and scraped himself
And did not scream.
But children always scream when they’re hurt
So when he said, “I’m hurt,” calmly,
Without tears, they said to him,
“No, you aren’t. If you were, you would
Have screamed. This is unimportant.
Lying is wrong,” they told him.
So he never received a bandage
And never asked for one again.

When his room was cold at night,
He never slept with a blanket.
He had learned that lying is wrong
And he wasn’t cold.

When he was in school
Other kids started to push him
After class on the playground.
They would hit him when no one would see,
So the child went to a teacher
And said, “The other kids are hurting me.”
But the teacher never heard him scream. So he was told,
“No, they aren’t. If they were, you should
Have screamed. This is unimportant.
Exaggerating is wrong,” he was told.
So he never saw the cruelty prevented
And never expected to again.

When it was cold outside,
His body never shivered, even involuntarily.
It had learned that lying is wrong, exaggerating is wrong,
And he wasn’t cold.

When he was going to work one day,
Just once, for a moment,
There was something in the air
That chilled his breath and suddenly, all at once,
Over his body came every shiver of a cold that had never been quelled, and every scrape that had never been given a bandage, and every bruise from a hit that had never been prevented,
And over his mind came every rage at injustices unnoticed, and every betrayal of pain dismissed as a fantasy, and every dolor of a child never offered warmth.
All at once. And he screamed.
The man who never screamed fell to the ground and grabbed his head and wept and screamed,
“Help me, oh my god. Help me.”
So people rushed to him and asked, “What? What’s wrong? What do you need help with?”
But he couldn’t say. He didn’t know the word injustice, or betrayal, or dolor, or bruise or scrape or cold.
He only knew the words lie and exaggerate and unimportant.
So he told them he didn’t know, that he was wrong, and apologized,
And went to work.

And when the man went to bed that night
He slept without a blanket
And wasn’t cold.

Lavender

I am not this flag of resistance
Flown by someone who balks at the word conflict.
Who knows what these colors used to mean?
She loves green and her favorite is blue.
In the midst of the quiet she forgot to show her violet
And the red is washing out.
Dropping pink, straight to white.
I am not this merchandise, ten bucks per pin
So they have a way to look the part
That they can take off when they go back tomorrow.
I am not the logo.

I am the all eight and a lavender bloom.
I am with you, backs to the wall,
Your hand in mine and my other
Gripping the dagger.
I am an inconvenience,
Which is the only way I know I can keep
My handhold on the cliff.
I am not just a shout. I am also a whisper.
I am the dagger, too.
I am the way you look at me
When we are both afraid, and you know
I will not go down without a fight.
And you are the fight.

🜁

Organism

Unravel in the necropole woods, listen to the trees.
They want to help, but don't know how.
Become yourself in there.
They are giving you shadows to wear once the sun is gone.
Warm in the night.
This will be your yarn from now on.
So thread yourself back together, weaver.
Morning dew is frost now to you, loves no harmony in tears.

𝁮