Entries tagged with alterhumanity

Current Music: Dark Light – Weeknight

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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.

𝁮

Current Music: Serebin in Costanza – Disparition

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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.

𝇅

Current Music: Subways Of Your Mind – Fex

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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

𝁮

Current Music: The River, the Woods – Astronautalis

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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.

Current Music: Alien Is Me – Lukas Rossi

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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.

⏛

Current Mood: vague
Current Location: cafe, Iowa City
Current Music: Love Machine – Space Art

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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:

𝄌

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: just kidding, Iowa City
Current Music: You Can't Hide From What You've Done – Lucas Desouches

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Fishke's Bio

It's me.

We might not all write our own bios, especially since a lot of us are going to be too bored or uninterested in the concept of writing stuff on Dreamwidth (the reason we always quit this shit for up to a year over and over again before realizing the whole OSDD thing). But since I'm me right now. & I came up with the idea. This is an open post meaning I'm probably gonna come back to it and now and then and jot stuff down here instead of making new posts if it belongs here, same with the rest of our bios, which probably will allow us to write bios for headmates that aren't there at the moment and allow them to come back later and edit it to their liking!

Name: Formerly Fishmoth, a cool band name the rights for which unfortunately go exclusively to Vestige. Now Fishke. Idk. I guess while we have several cross-member, more universal species identities, there's several smaller sub-identities that we feel less because they're only attributed to one specific facet. Silverfish being one of them and fishmoth being a synonym for silverfish and the silverfish being me. But ya can't just go around in daily life going "My name is Fishmoth, yea, like the bug." Fishke is, all things considered, a "real name". It means little fish. It's perfect because it's Yiddish, and it's diminutive, which works well for me because I'm submissive to all in life, exactly like a limp fish

Gender?: I hardler know'er
Just kidding. Idk. I guess I feel vaguely masc, but it's really watered down. Perhaps filtered through the lens of outdated computer hardware amphibious insectoid Java script coded centrifuge centipede wet bird. Like gender.webp. I tried to download Male from a sketchy website and got a bootleg version and a virus
Hence the he/they/it

Sexuality: I don't knowwww or care but I think I sway more aroallo than anyallo

Archetropy: We'll probably go into more detail about how all of us, more or less, even the introjects, embody at least some aspect of our wayvariant archetype if not all of it. And I take the "generalist" portion. I'll also take anything else anyone is giving out for free, or forcing me to take if they want. I'm sort of everything, not in the "wow, I can see myself in the whole universe" way, but in the "yeah, sure, I'll be that!" way. I'll eat anything as long as it's edible and several things that aren't. There's a reason I carry so many of our conflicting species identities like aquatic creature and bird and bug and computer thing when other system members sometimes exist just to embody one. There's also a reason I listen to both Compactor and Louie fuckin Zong. Oh you thought finding out you're a system and there's like 15 guys in your head would save you from having to say you listen to everything? Well it would if it weren't for the 1 guy in your head who actually does
Not all of us embody our reality-warping archetype...delusion? or our horror arche...genretype? Genretrope? But yes. I do. The former being more of a compliment to the latter, tbh, as far as "get dimenionally fucked up!" goes. But suffering is my name and body horror is my game. Especially if it's an allegory for systemic oppression :D

Species: I once saw a post that describes a type of animal as "generic grey fish." I don't think I am a specific type of fish, maybe not necessarily generic grey fish because the sort of fishlike being I am includes that in its sweeping broad brush along with catfish and lungfish and beached eels and anything that lives underwater and creeps people out with dead eyes and cold flesh. But in less of an animal way than a wacky cartoony way, almost. I am also a computer and a bug. Specifically, I am sort of a software, like an algorithmic online chatbot coded for a specific purpose and is bad at anything else even though it tries its hardest, or a very compressed file of a type like jpeg or avif or bmp. I'm art conceptkin if a webpage built entirely in BBCode is art. I'm less of a computer and more of a contraption or perhaps a gadget. Email worm. Programming bug. And also a literal bug. House centipede (Scutigera coleoptrata), silverfish (Lepisma saccharinum), sea slater (Ligia exotica) and drain fly (Clogmia albipunctata) specifically, but I'm not opposed to being likened to cicadas or beetles or moths or no-see-ums or other flies or let's be honest Any Bug. I'm also something weird that crawled out of the Cambrian ocean or didn't, or some kind of Spore creature or just a .gif file of a Spore creature, and an osprey. (Pandion haliaetus.)
Physically I see the body as an uncomfortable and implausible mishmash of incompatible species

Fictional identity if any: No fictotypes to speak of; but I did go around eating several flickers for lunch and dinner, one of which actually stuck enough to at least be a recurring flicker (fucking. GUESS. my chipper sillyguy computerguy facade. hello hello!) but the other 3 or 4 or 5 (I actually can't tell which ones were attributed to me or which ones were even flickers) blew away with the wind. Of the sources I feel comfortable enough mentioning those include The Stanley Parable, Slaughterhouse-Five and Mickey 17, and I think that tracks for me. Me when I have a job AND a disability, in THIS economy?

Heartedtypes: dragons, and stickbugs. Literally two of the first things I did when I started fronting today were pull up HTTYD 1 and Dragonheart to watch, and fantasize about seeing walking sticks in the wild. Ants also I think they are quite good though I am not one like Quasar is

Special interest: It's definitely the biology one and it's definitely the subset of the biology one that gets weird with it, I'm not here for speculative taxonomy, I'm here for organism mechanics and cellular biochemistry and to be offputting about plants 'n protists. If I have to have a body I'm gonna know how the damn thing works. My favorite flower is the Monotropa uniflora ghost pipe, a chlorophyll-absent symbiotic relationship between a parasitic plant and a fungus that blooms from mid-August to early-September in moist shaded areas, if you were wondering.

Music: I like it when songs crunch my brain. I like it when songs feel like eating chips. I LOVE it when songs have heavy distortion on the instruments or vocals and the singer is talking about a time they got really fucked up and suffered and possibly stopped being a human. It doesn't have to be dark and edgy. It can be like electroswing or Hawaii Part II or AJR. Starset, Frost*, Joywave, Demi the Daredevil, Tears for Fears, Seeming, Linkin Park, Awolnation, Muse, Kongos, Arockalypse, Lemon Demon, Blue Stahli, all the futurepop and industrial you have in stock. And I wouldn't mind a quick get up and dance if you're offering

Other preferences: I <3 body horror <3<3<3 Also my favorite of our favorite games is Lethal Company, band is all 3 of the system's collective favorites (Starset Frost* and Seeming), movie is Electric Dreams (no shit), book is Slaughterhouse-Five (wow!) and show is Dungeon Meshi (where does he come up with this stuff?!)
Just to curb potential assumption: Obviously I love Dungeon Meshi. That's my shit. Yes, we flicker Laios. No, I am not the one who flickered Laios, nor did I absorb him.
I think.
It's actually possible, and if I knew what was going on in my own head as well as I know the life cycle of earwigs, then I might actually have put 6 flickers. I don't think Vestige is the one who absorbed that flicker (THEY would know) but I can't say anyone did so maybe he just came and went and nobody called dibs.

Symptom presentation: I think I hauve OCD. Especially like... digitally. I'm the one who CAN'T close or tab out of a page if text is highlighted and I like our tags to be organized universally the same way by character kerning and stuff like that. I also have the huh whuh flavor of dissociation/inattentive adhd. Like where am I lol

Why I exist: idk lol
Coping mechanism for long-term chronic pain and obvious disability that everyone around me absolutely disregarded and told me to walk off and stop being so inconvenient because I'm not a person so much as a thing that's supposed to be useful (which would date me to age 14 at the earliest, which also tracks for when I started getting really into coding, and 17 at the latest but I assume it was before then because if I had split after we were already part of the nonhuman community then we would have questioned computerkin right away, so my best guess is 14 or 15)? So to have a personality that accepts this physical reality with eagerness and a fascination with biological horror would be a surprise tool that... helps us now and becomes disadvantageous later, actually
Nah that's way too lucid and self-aware for me. Obviously I just exist to be ok with everything ever

I would describe my personality as the floor. Easily reprogrammed. Functionally useless doormat that is made of memory foam. Sender said it best, but I forgot exactly what it was that he said like 3 or 5 or 10 hours ago so I can't quote it actually. I clock in to be a pain sponge. & I do enjoy it. Brainfogged always, idk what's going on, I can and will fail to notice very large and obvious things directly in front of my face, but your honor I'm ballin. Do not let me operate heavy machinery

Things of note:

⟣ (that's my symbol!)

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: cafe, Iowa City
Current Music: Over the Edge It Goes – Au4

Entry tags:

Theories of system member origin pt. 1

Alias: being a literal clock, able to pinpoint anything related to timing with so much more ease than the rest of us, and we think it formed/split during the second-to-last week of January, 2017. A little background on Alias before we go into this: it is a clock, like I said, more specifically a pocket watch, and it does not see itself as a human in any way; barely even a person. It doesn't hate itself, it's not self-loathing or anywhere near what null is like, but it has a constant air of empty melancholy, like a casual and peaceful attitude that, when peeled away, reveals a deep-seated depersonalization to the point of feeling discomfort at the idea of receiving sympathy. It is the only one out of all of us who can accurately measure and estimate the time in its head, and it does so with a shocking precision (once, when asked the time in the middle of a grocery trip, it said "I think it's about 8:27" and it was, in fact, exactly 8:27). It has a special affection for uncomfortable, disquieting spaces; backrooms fiction, strange liminal horror games, photographs that don't sit quite right, the basements of libraries at 1 AM.
We attempted in a pit of depression and spent 5 days in a hospital, and there is something to be said about the brain's ability to zero in on a minor, barely-significant annoyance in order to cope with the stress of something much greater shadowing it.
Picture this.
You're 16 years old in a psych ward. You didn't want to die because of a chemical imbalance, you wanted to die because you were immersed in an atmosphere of abuse and dehumanization from the authorities in your life. Your solace is music, the Internet, your favorite shows and your friends, but those aren't allowed. You can't go outside; you are confined to your room and one or two hallways of uncanny, inhospitable atmosphere. You aren't being treated like a person, and unlike your usual, familiar experience of that, you aren't even being treated like an animal or a child either—you're some kind of unthinking thing. You're being given medication and told that any complaints about life circumstances that can't be fixed are just dramatics, so you know there is no light at the end of this tunnel when you go home and nothing is better. None of this is helping.
But all you can think about, all that you're able to agonize over, is that at night, when you're lying in your room and you have no phone, no clock, and your window doesn't let you see the sky, is that you can't tell what time it is.
It's all you can care about anymore. Once they've locked your door just to stop you from leaving into the lobby every five minutes to check the clock, you can't even sleep. And there's nothing else to think about. Maybe they're right; you really are unthinking. You aren't a person. All you care about is the time.

Stranger: following the pattern, here's the necessary context on Stranger. Out of all of us, he would be the first to say that his presentation is specifically butch. He doesn't just affect masculinity, he wraps himself around it like it's a second heart that pumps his blood. But he isn't a human. He sees himself as a monster, a dark figure of a paranormal beastly nature looming in windows, something that any sensible person would balk at the sight of. He gets euphoria from someone saying "You startled me!" because he was too quiet for them to notice he was in the room, and from a sense of unease at how accurately he can mimic another person, as if it might have to come up later that his very appearance can't be trusted.
Now picture another scenario.
You are a pre-teen or perhaps young teen girl, let's say 12–14 years old, and your whole life, you have associated power with fear. The people who demand respect from you are the people who you are most afraid of and the demands which you cannot decline. You know that someone who is in control, who will deal with it, whoever is the person to go to for help, is the person you are also most terrified of.
You are also excruciatingly aware, even if you don't quite have the words for it, that you are at the age where your masculine affinities stop being a quirky tomboy thing, and start being a threat in the eyes of adults around you who endeavor to produce a good feminine woman. You are becoming disgusting. You are becoming something to be afraid of—but not in the same way as the people who raised you, no. You've always been lesser, so your growth into this grotesque thing isn't a growth into power, it's reprehensible. For someone who is following all the rules, being the source of fear is called authority. For someone who dares break them, being the source of fear is called monstrosity.
You are more like a creature from a horror movie than the hero who kills it.
And you are also at the age where you get your own iPod and your music taste starts to veer drastically off of the top 40.

🝯

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: cafe, Iowa City
Current Music: Pink Moon – No-Man

Entry tags:

Flicker absorption

I've mentioned before on my Tumblr that certain members of our system tend to "absorb" flickers, meaning that when we flicker, sometimes, it isn't the whole system's flicker, it's one specific member's and it tends to cause them to front more consistently for the duration. When this happens, often the result is that that particular alter will adapt the former flicker into their existence, not quite as a fictotype, but in a way that's permanently felt; it's hard to explain, but it's as if the flicker is recurring enough to be considered a significant part of their alterhumanity or identity as a whole, but only for that specific headmate. Vestige shows this in the most intense way, generally identifying those former flickers as fictotypes, but several of us will do this while others usually won't, and it's interesting to note the different patterns (type of character, type of flicker) by which it happens, because it actually does seem to reflect respective personalities.

For examples:

Vestige, as mentioned: tends to flicker a certain archetype of solitary, unassuming, wilderness-wandering character, usually who is a reluctant fighter or unfortunately-chosen warrior, often drawn toward a specific fate, carrying a specific weapon, and/or fights a great evil; usually taciturn, unsocial, ranging in verbality from "simply talks less than others due to his introspective personality" to "literally canonically was created no mouth so that it couldn't speak." The flickers he absorbs, and especially the ones he considers fictotypes, are often the deeply-felt, spiritually significant flickers—he will be the one to have dreams about lives as these characters. They have seven that we know of, three of them being the fictotypes we (mostly them) openly discuss on our blog. Four if you include the Novakid identity that he experiences as a fictotype of a specific character rather than a species identity like the rest of us. Vestige doesn't necessarily see themself as serious, per say, but they carry themself with a gravity that maybe only NOCH and Levi can actually match despite their self-professed mundanity, and the pattern clearly follows their affixation to a narrative and their superstitious nature. Not to mention their sincerity (at the intersection of deeply felt and unflappable reactions) likely being the reason those flickers are the easiest ones to talk about.

Fishke: tends to flicker mild-personalitied, people-pleasing characters, who let life just happen to them, aren't generally treated well by the other characters but don't have the ability or worldly understanding to push back, or have scientifically impossible disaster happen to them but are just like, chill about it. Often experiencing a systemically dehumanizing level of body horror or exploitation and approaching it with a pathologically blasé disregard for their own personhood. They're flickers that aren't that intense, that we barely even noticed enough to realize it was a flicker at the time or that we had to wonder if it was a flicker of the character or if it was just a general becoming askew that was attached to the media. There are five instances of this that I could name off the top of my head, but only one of them was even intense enough in the first place for Fishke to carry it with him and still feel attached to it, and if you watched that particular movie you could probably hear it in the way he talks. It's probably one of the most obvious manifestations. Fishke is a "go-with-the-flow" personality to a pathological degree; if you called them a doormat, they'd apologize for being in the way of your feet; nine times out of ten, if we get hurt or wake up in discomfort or pain, it's Fishke who immediately appears to take the brunt of it. I think they actually kind of like it.

Sender: I think I tend to flicker composed, easy-going but sober characters, often ones who experience horrors but respond to them with a questionable mix of grace and repression. It's hard to pin it down because I can only say I've absorbed three flickers plus one... other thing... which is not a good sample size, but all three have been eloquent, measured speakers, generally depicted well-dressed, often poetic personalities, storytellers, but perhaps not quite handling things as well as they (and others) think they are, with a quick failsafe of avoidance. These were flickers that hit suddenly and intensely, then smoothed out over time into a less intense but more long-term stability, perhaps even seasonally recurring, but that often felt like they were lasting too long for comfort. I would go into why this is probably appropriate for me, but I honestly think being in front currently means I'm way too blind-sided to actually see it, and I can't help but imagine reading this later as someone else and disagreeing with it, so I'm just going to leave it as is. Which... actually speaks for itself.

Ben: like Fishke, flickers we're not even quite sure can be called that or if it was just a character that was far too relatable (with a notable exception of a character from a game we never even played and didn't want to), that seem to just barely itch under his skin but not enough to actually pinpoint in his identity. These are characters that, almost without fail, are trapped in a certain place, undergoing violation of their autonomy up to outright unwilling physical mutation, beholden to employment. There are three, and what's interesting is that he, one of the most masc-presenting and binary guys in the system, is the only one who we know of who's flickered a female character, let alone more than one. I think Ben's flickers are possibly the least parallel to a headmate's personality, but there's something to be said for the there, but just not-there enough to be frustrating, and of course he gravitates to characters who feel trapped, exploited, and not quite as OK with it as Fishke's.

NOCH: Its flickers are sort of like Ben's and Fishke's in intensity, but ones that we can say for sure were flickers; lower-energy flickers, but with an undertone of certainty. There are five I can think of right now, and there is a consistency in their archetypes that we can easily point to: utterly inhuman, and in fact primarily incomprehensible beings or maybe not even acting agents as opposed to forces of supernature, who arguably either committed unforgivable acts of horror out of malice, or were more complicated and sympathetic than the intended human audience was meant to view them as. They line up almost too perfectly with NOCH's labyrinth of a species identity too; two intelligent supercomputers (one a spaceship AI and the other an architect of impossible structures), one that's an otherworldly abomination, one that's an otherworldly abomination in an impossible structure, and one that skips the architect or abomination and just is an impossible structure itself.
Yeah, we'll never forget NOCH's "I think I'm flickering from House of Leaves; guys, I think it's the house!"

Fenn: Fenn's flickers start, last and end, appropriately, like a blow to the head; an immediate recognition, a profoundly manic spiral, a passionate confirmation and a song and dance of suppression within a length of time that NOCH would take to blink. Of three characters and one "thing" (like the one I have...), his flickers unfailingly and unsurprisingly often have a reckless physical disregard for their health, if not life; a penchant for flashy catastrophe; even more than once someone who experienced projectile head trauma.
Need I even say more?

🝯

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: boiling mire, Iowa City
Current Music: Phantasmagoria – Ashbury Heights

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Simply Plural has no point

At first it was a little bit helpful and the patterns were interesting. But by now I find my selves more hindered by it than anything. Living in the moment, being who I am in the moment is more stifled than liberated by feeling the need to pull out my phone and jot notes down or mark transactions. At a certain point, it would just be compulsive. If I feel less secure in being who I am in the moment, which things I like, how I feel, and how I want to present if I didn't "set as front" yet, then the app is just unhealthy. And it absolutely shouldn't ever feel like we can't exist in cofront without confirming that's what it is and who. If I know, then I know, and I shouldn't need to update it; and if I don't, then I wouldn't anyway! This was mostly Still's idea which makes sense

We're not gonna delete it but taking a "break" for a week or so just to see if it feels lighter without that internally sourced pressure would decide if we keep using it at all or not

In today's news it is too fucking hot and everything died goodbye

🝐

Current Mood: good
Current Location: cafe, Iowa City
Current Music: Dream Sweet in Sea Major – Miracle Musical

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Going back through my blog's old posts

Something we've been doing to note who may have made certain posts and tag accordingly, or just add old posts to newer tags for fun. It's interesting though to recognize where patterns develop and who may have been present for when and for how long. And how it influenced our interests (or were influenced by)! For example, scrolling through spring of 2022, we see a LOT of Vestige, Fishke, Sender, and Fenn, a little bit of Ben, and Alias closer to the summer, but not much NOCH, Quasar, Levi or Stranger to speak of. Understanding why for a lot of those is just the tip of the iceberg. (I mean, Sender is just obvious, spring 2022 lol (that context is just for me and 3 of my closest friends)... and Ben started to be more active with the release of Prehistoric Planet, same with Alias and Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe.) Other patterns are also interesting. So much of our posting during that time was this deep fictionkin thought which tracks well enough for a Vestige and Fenn combo deal. Well. Mostly Vestige. The months in between January (when we'd have "the recurring Knight flicker") and March–April (when we'd have "the recurring Snufkin flicker") was always a hotbed of fictotype questioning so of course spring is when Vestige would be running around in our head knocking over pots and slaying higher beings and whatnot. It always has been.

See also: that's when we started questioning bugs for the first time, hence me and Sender. You gotta wonder which was the chicken and which was the egg though. Either way it's fun to go down memory lane and remember that the first arthropod we ever questioned was a damn beetle.

⟣

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: cafe, Iowa City
Current Music: Experiments In Mass Appeal – Frost*

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There isn't a word for every single experience and there doesn't need to be

But I feel like there is a particular dichotomy that I strongly associate with in an undeniably alterhuman way: the dragon and the phoenix. In any form they're portrayed; sometimes a dragon is a wild beast and a phoenix is a bird of golden fire, but sometimes a dragon is a storm and a phoenix is the sun, sometimes a dragon is a solar eclipse and a phoenix is the totality—in any manifestation, it feels like me. But it's not anywhere close to dragonkin or phoenixkin or mythological therianthropy at all, because I am not a dragon nor a phoenix. I know by now, having questioned, confirmed, and even 'linked both multiple times throughout my life. It's the symbol. The symbolism is what I am, the illustration, that contrast. The dichotomy is what represents me. Maybe I actually am something of a diptych!

I don't think every experience or identity under the alterhuman umbrella needs to have a word for it. If I can explain myself and how I feel, then it's real. A deep dive into Latin roots isn't going to help me get myself across any easier to most people because whatever word I come up with isn't going to be something anyone else already knows and understands, like therian or archetrope. I'm starting to feel the same way about our horror-genre experience, though I'm not sure if I'm even the one it applies to, so I'm not sure if I get to make a call about whether it gets a label or not... but the dragon/phoenix thing seems to just be me, and I say it doesn't need one. More discussion of unnameable identities is healthy for the ecosystem. It gives more people the space to have experiences that aren't named in the first place.

🜁

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: residence, Iowa City
Current Music: I Will Possess Your Heart – Death Cab for Cutie

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Thinking about headmate names

Actually, what I'm thinking is that 'I' may be more separate than we thought. That I'm no longer sure if we really are all just parts of the same Ekho. Maybe I need to do much more intense research on OSDD, with a focus on experiences. We get to define our own, but I'm not sure how to do that anymore, or if we might be holding ourselves back out of social fear. I think that will have to be its own, probably even longer post. (We should probably also write up posts that give context for some of the things in the first one, mostly just because it would be a fun way to break in the new journal.)

Many, if not most, of our nicknames were chosen as placeholders for simpler self-reference while we were figuring ourselves out in the beginning of this year. Most of them in the moment and just based on our irl name or a reference to our species. We were always going to end up changing them individually when we each moved on from "who am I?" to "what do I want?" Ben already did. He was "Nov" for like a week, but it really wasn't him. A good number of us have found ones they like more than their original placeholders; Sender (formerly Night), Alias (formerly Cel), Fishke (formerly Fishmoth—calling that band name) and Stranger (formerly Exo) may come on here to talk about their names once they front again (and remember this exists! Alias was the one who started this earlier today and it just forgot we even had this account, rip).

Valrook never really sat right with me, even though I'm pretty sure I was the one who chose it in the moment. I like "Val." I like "Rook." But Valrook is just a barely-changed reference to my species, and I feel like with the fictional identity I have, my name should be more significant to who I am. More than Ectych, if I'm being honest, though I'll go with that right now, I really do like it, it's just...

Considering my 'types: "Link." "Ghost." "Echo." Etc. There's something in common about these names that I'm noticing. These are both nouns and verbs. These are verbs that give you their own title when you enact them. To link is to be a link. To ghost is to be a ghost. To echo is to be the echo.

As nouns, they are conceptual. Intangible. You cannot touch a ghost. You may hear an echo, but you can't paint one. You cannot picture what a link looks like, at its basest definition, only things that do it; although, they are links too, because they link, and so are you.

As verbs, they are an active choice, but only at surface level. Do you really choose it? Are you still choosing it once you've become it? Are you choosing to be a ghost? An echo?

To glow is to be a glow. To shadow is to be a shadow. To burn is to be the burn, a caustic wound on those around you as you burn through them. To end is to be one: your own. To flicker is to be one, just a moment of sparks. I feel oblivious, like it must be right in front of my nose and all I need to do is reach my hands out into the space between the world and touch it, and it will light up. Maybe a lot like a flicker actually, though I don't know if it should be that.

I'm not sure. I will take Ectych and run with it, but I think really I'm still waiting, and I will be for a long while after everyone else in my system has settled down with their name. Because I'm waiting for it to find me. Everyone else may have run after one and caught it, but I think I'll be sitting here patiently until a verb comes and makes me into a noun.

🜁