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.