Flock of Changes

"Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds, Baked in a pie." ♜...☿...☽

[flock-of-changes]

I’ve unlocked my blog again after a bit. Anyone who wants to browse it again is free to. 

I need to leave, though. Genuinely. I have been logged out since I locked the blog, and am only coming back to let people know I’m not continuing here. 

Please, if there are any posts on this blog that I’ve made that have been influential, that have been important or useful, please let me know and I will archive them on our personal website [link removed so this shows up in tags, but the url is haunt.wtf]. I’ve left contact details on my about page on this blog, but I can be found at high-femme-baphomet on Pillowfort, @ the flock and haunting#9999 on Discord, or emailed at [email protected] (it doesn’t have to be Alt+H business, I’d rather just keep emails compartmentalized.) 

I genuinely would like feedback so I don’t have to dig through all of my archives myself and guess what’s best to save, and so I can have these things in a more permanent place where people can hypothetically check in for new essays and such. 

But as for Tumblr? I’m done. Genuinely. I cannot do this anymore. Every time I come back and look at this blog I get so angry and depressed. This website has done terrible things to me, and I’m happy to leave now after being trapped here since 2012. 

It’s been good, alterhuman communities. Stay frosty. Catch me on Pillowfort, email me or DM on Discord for invite codes if you want em. I’ll see you around.

(p.s. I've gone from Rook to Aster as a name during all this, but never updated anyone here. So heads-up, it's Aster from here on)

[flock-of-changes]

I wanna clarify.

When I said Wolf scares me, I don’t mean because I think this is a representation of our inevitable future. 

I mean that I’m scared because as a psych ward survivor, it’s horrifying that anyone would look at a person like me and immediately draw the conclusion that our future *would* look like that. And then make money portraying our abuse. It’s not like, a hypothetical thing for me to think about being treated violently in a hospital, y’know? Or even about treated violently to make me stop identifying as nonhuman. I have been there, and I have seen and lived it, and it isn’t something I can just brush off as “bad horror writing.” I can only see the very stark reality of psych ward violence and conversion abuse. So yea, I’m pretty upset. That’s a personal thing. 

But the worst part is that it’s all panned as a bogus allegory for transgender people instead of being recognized as portraying a real thing that exists. I am talking about being portrayed on screen as crazy people who deserve conversion therapy while also being completely erased from any discussion of the movie like it isn’t about us at all. That’s messed up and wouldn’t happen to any other group without backlash, so why shouldn’t we speak up? 

Wolf isn’t even the only recent movie to deal with species dysphoria or nonhuman identity as a major plotline. Wild Mountain Thyme also has done this (to arguably better effect) and I anticipate that this won’t be the last time we see this.

If we don’t start telling people we’re here, and what our experience is like, then these movies and the people reviewing them will do it for us. I dunno about y’all, but I can’t just sit here and let people say that one part of me is an offensive allegory for another part of me, speaking as one of countless trans people with species dysphoria. But it all starts here -- By saying species dysphoria is a real thing, and not a metaphor. That we are real people who often need help, and who are overlooked and marginalized. And by talking about our experiences with species dysphoria.

We don’t need to be afraid. We just need to make ourselves heard.

[sarksdimension]

I posted this on twitter too, but I feel as if it goes here as well. Why am I posting this? The film Wolf, that’s why.

Our identities as species dysphoric people are not “comical”. We’re not here to be mocked, we’re not here to be gawked at, we’re here to exist. I’m disgusted, and the amount of negativity this film will generate for the nonhuman community terrifies me.

We’re a DID system of mostly nonhumans, and some of us identify as otherkin or alterhuman in some other way. This film will affect all nonhumans, in systems or not, and seeing as we already are very alienated from our peers due to our identities, this isn’t good.

Species dysphoria affects many in the alterhuman community, including us. It’s not making a mockery of trans people–we’re trans ourselves. It’s not something funny or something to lock someone up for. It’s not something to gawk at. It’s an experience. A real experience.

[flock-of-changes]

hey who coined “alterhumisia” while i was away? that a good portmanteau right there

[xenodelic]

Hey! That was us! Here’s the coining post - it is still technically in the state of a “tentative” coining. The post doesn’t have a lot of notes and I’m still waiting on more community feedback on it! So any discussion or critique of these terms would be very welcome. If it gets more attention we could make an “official” coining post. 

[flock-of-changes]

Oh hey, cool!

My only thoughts really are that I like it, and that I think the disclaimer at the bottom does a good job explaining why we need this word and how it describes a type of marginalization that interplays with axes of oppression, rather than describing a single form of systemic oppression itself? Because you know people will have questions about that, and I think that explains it well. 

I will probably be using these words for lack of better ones! 

[flock-of-changes]

hey who coined “alterhumisia” while i was away? that a good portmanteau right there

[flock-of-changes]

I might be posting about my website so that people link to it and know where to find a stable and growing collection of my old and new writings from here and other sites. 

This is not my return to this blog, it is just using the platform to let people know where they can find my stuff, and that stuff is going up slowly. 

I’m admittedly nervous putting our system’s personal website up for people but. Here we go. It’s still unfinished but hey, it probably will always feel that way to me so?

[flock-of-changes]

Proposed New Term -- the original coining of Fableing

As the coiner of fableing, I wanted to update people to the fact that my coining post now has a permanent place on my part of our system’s website. In the future, I’d really appreciate if wikis, Carrd pages, resources, etc who need to link to the original post please link to my website page directly. It will guarantee that context, source, and term are all in one place and don’t get lost in the internet telephone game.

[alt--h]

Community initiative: Bring alterhumanity to Wikipedia!

Wikipedia is the single most consulted source of information on the internet. But have you looked at its article on otherkin? What do you think about it? Do you think it could be better? What about all the other alterhuman topics which don’t have articles at all?

We want you to help us improve the representation of alterhuman topics on Wikipedia, and therefore to the public in general.

And we’ve set up this project to do just that. By working together, we can:

 educate each other on how to make factual and useful edits to Wikipedia that won’t be removed, and back each other up when edits are challenged

pool our research resources, using different people’s memory of alterhuman history and access to material to build good sources

decide as a community which articles are worth our attention, what information is relevant, and how to write in ways that represent us fairly

combat the systemic bias that’s inherent to Wikipedia’s structure

How can you help?

We wrote this guide to give you an introduction to how Wikipedia operates, different tasks you can do, and how to do them.

Once you think you understand how it all works, check out the list of articles we’re keeping an eye on and the project trello for specific things to do.

Then you can head to the #alth-projects channel in our Discord server or the project’s thread on the forum to let us know what you’ve accomplished! You can also suggest things to add to the to-do lists, get help with specific tasks, and just generally ask any questions or make any comments you might have.

You can also use the #AHWikiProject hashtag on social media to talk about this, share progress, tips, questions, and anything else!

We hope you’ll join us in making the internet’s favourite reference site a better ambassador for alterhumans!

[vagabond-sun]

hey, it’s me, the person who wrote this post! (but not the person whose idea it was, you can thank @housetiger for that)

i’ve been a casual wikipedia editor for about a year now, and while i’m far from the most experienced, i know enough to help out. if you’re interested in getting involved but wikipedia seems intimidating or confusing, as well as the above stuff, you can reach out to me directly. i also run a community for it on pillowfort!

[alt--h]

Community initiative: Bring alterhumanity to Wikipedia!

Wikipedia is the single most consulted source of information on the internet. But have you looked at its article on otherkin? What do you think about it? Do you think it could be better? What about all the other alterhuman topics which don’t have articles at all?

We want you to help us improve the representation of alterhuman topics on Wikipedia, and therefore to the public in general.

And we’ve set up this project to do just that. By working together, we can:

 educate each other on how to make factual and useful edits to Wikipedia that won’t be removed, and back each other up when edits are challenged

pool our research resources, using different people’s memory of alterhuman history and access to material to build good sources

decide as a community which articles are worth our attention, what information is relevant, and how to write in ways that represent us fairly

combat the systemic bias that’s inherent to Wikipedia’s structure

How can you help?

We wrote this guide to give you an introduction to how Wikipedia operates, different tasks you can do, and how to do them.

Once you think you understand how it all works, check out the list of articles we’re keeping an eye on and the project trello for specific things to do.

Then you can head to the #alth-projects channel in our Discord server or the project’s thread on the forum to let us know what you’ve accomplished! You can also suggest things to add to the to-do lists, get help with specific tasks, and just generally ask any questions or make any comments you might have.

You can also use the #AHWikiProject hashtag on social media to talk about this, share progress, tips, questions, and anything else!

We hope you’ll join us in making the internet’s favourite reference site a better ambassador for alterhumans!

[alt--h]

we’re looking for community mods!

we’d like to get some more people on board to help us manage both the Discord server and the forum. we are looking for:

people who are (bodily) 18 years or older. Alt+H is legally incorporated, so we have certain legal responsibilities to volunteers. managing that is simpler when we don’t have to contend with child volunteering laws, which vary massively by country and even US state. there’s also, of course, some experience that comes with age, especially in relating to other people.

people who have a good handle on their mental health. it’s essential that you’re able to keep a level head when dealing with server incidents so as not to escalate them further. preferably you should also not have any triggers that are so unavoidable that they’d hinder your ability to mod.

people in timezones outside of central time, mountain time, eastern time, and greenwich mean time. this isn’t a hard requirement, but we probably will give preference to folks who can fill the gaps in our current coverage, since we’re all kinda clustered around the east coast of the united states and the british isles right now.

people who are going to be active on the server/forum. we want mods who are a part of the community, not just someone who steps in to make rulings and then steps out again. as far as we’re concerned, keeping discussion lively is part of the gig.

previous mod experience is nice but not required – as long as you have the soft skills, we can teach the actual mechanics of moderation and our specific policies. you can apply to be a moderator on both our platforms, on just the server or forum. (also, we’re prioritizing looking for forum mods, because the mod team for that is much smaller, and activity is lower, and we’re hoping to give it a boost.)

if you wanna help out, you can join our discord to view the application form

(you must be a member of the Discord regardless of which platform you want to mod for, because that’s where our staff room is)

we’ll be leaving the form open for a month, after which we’ll contact the people we’re interested in taking on. we hope to see you there!

[wrathofset-deactivated20211217]

Thutmose III and Set at Karnak Temple. Source

[egypt-ancient-and-modern]

[gh0stspxce]

Alterhuman Pride Flag

alterhuman (from alt+h’s home page) A subjective identity which is beyond the scope of what is traditionally considered ‘being human’. (adj) A person with such an identity. (noun)

symbolism: black represents a lack of/absence of light. this represents being “without” humanity, to any degree and in any manner. purple represents ultraviolet, as in the medusan and transspecies flags; it’s a colour beyond what can be seen by humans and represents existing “beyond” humanity. magenta represents a colour that’s entirely removed from the visible light spectrum - the “something else than” human. the white alt-key (⎇) is the symbol representing alterhumanity, in white which represents all colours of visible light combined into one. this stands for the many experiences united under the alterhuman umbrella.

comments, links, svg, and thanks under the cut:

Keep reading

[aestherians]

Please stop using ‘alterhuman’ when you mean 'nonhuman’

[aestherians]

Also the community needs to talk more about the fluctuations that can exist in how nonhuman or human you feel, and the ways your mental state can affect this to the point that you sometimes become completely disconnected from your own identity/sense of self.

[flock-of-changes]

I think it’s funny that we’ve come full circle to *not* talking about the core principle of shifting as a thing. It came from therians in werewolf fandom talking about “mental shifting” from more human to more animal, to the point that there was discourse about sub-experiences of shifts. But this sort of stuff *was* talked about at some point. 

That said, it never did get to the point of “shifts that disconnect you from your “this-world” identity” and I think it’s ... difficult to talk about.

I wrote this 2 years ago, and it’s something wei still feel. Like, maybe it’s just because wei’re plural but I feel like it wouldn’t be right to just dismiss it that way, yknow? But here’s one of the times when [I literally just forgot] every detail of the life I’ve lived here at all. It’s happened more than once. 

And likewise it’s happened with other aspects of myself and other facets. Where “this life” becomes either foreign, wrong, or I forget it entirely. And even my “human” fictotypes are multifaceted and don’t end up being human really. Not normal humans, if nothing else.

[vagabond-sun]

now that i’m seeing a lot more people in the communities comfortable with using the term ‘species dysphoria’

and more people are talking about the semiotics of ‘physically nonhuman’ (x, x)

and we’re acknowledging that you can be nonhuman due to neurodivergence and other traits people are systemically dehumanized for (x)

and there’s been a very interesting post going around about the overlap between BIID and species dyphoria recently (x)

can we talk about nonhumanity by physical illness/disability?

both my undeadness and general monstrous feels are based largely in that. not entirely, and they’d still be there if i wasn’t chronically ill, but i dunno. something about skulking through the world on three legs, pallid and creaking at the joints feels very corpsey, and very othering.

so i’m pretty sure there are a lot of people having experiences in this vein, actually. i think we should make some space to talk about and explore that.

[flock-of-changes]

!! I see you cited me in one article there, but I actually wrote something more specifically on this on my (kind of abandoned ;;) Dreamwidth account: [How Disability Gave Me Four Legs and Why It Kicks Ass] I remember when I first started using a cane, I felt so .. visible. People started treating me differently. I would (and still do) get strangers asking invasive questions about it, giving me unsolicited advice on how to “get better,” pointing out literally every single time they see me without my canes like it’s a good thing and they never wanna see my canes again. I also love the “you’re too young to be using canes!”  I felt like a “three-legged monster” down to even writing poetry about it, and I meant it in the most reclaiming and positive way. My cane was another leg, another sense that let me feel out what was around me and in front of me. I could test the sturdiness of ground, the depth of snow. I had an extra foot in getting up or down hills. And when I started using two canes over one, I felt quadrupedal and euphoric! Here were the four legs I’d wanted for so long, and as of now I’m waiting to get fitted for the forearm crutches I’ve been wanting to replace my two canes for better mobility. Those will become even more an extension of my body when they’re fitted just for me.  But the feeling of being a monster isn’t always positive. Having my scoliosis, I get to be very aware of every “hunchback” monster, of every vengeful disabled person, of every creature defined as monstrous for having a “deformed” body. Most recently it was seeing the Pet Semetary remake and how horrifyingly they depicted a young woman with spinal meningitis as a literal monster, constantly in pain, with the cracking of her back and creaking of her joints being exaggerated grossly into something equivalent to the Jaws theme. You could hear how her “disfigurement” makes her monstrous without even seeing how horrible they make her look. It hurt. It hurt so badly and I hated every scene she was in. I saw myself in that monster.  I think very few people, even neurodivergent people who you’d think would ally with us most, actually understand how dehumanized physically disabled people are. [We’re literally freakshows]. We’re actual monsters in the eyes of other people. People don’t want us to exist, down to literally [trying to wipe us out] (TW: forced sterilization, eugenics) on the regular.  And while i don’t have a lot of defined and specific identity around feeling monstrous, good or bad, due to my disability, I’d absolutely say it plays a role in my alterhumanity and self-perception as non-human. Inhuman. Refusing to accept the label “human” at all.  My current goblin copinglink is also impacted by my disability? I purposefully chose an “ugly” creature and depict my goblinself as having the same scoliotic curve in its back that I do, so I have the room to love myself as I am.  Idk disability plays into my alterhuman stuff a lot and I’m so glad you brought up the topic because I think not having the room already opened to it makes it harder to think about on my own. I can’t pinpoint it to a single identity so much as it just pervades everything about me as a nonhuman. And really adds to that “physically nonhuman” feeling a lot and gives it new meaning, because I’m dehumanized specifically for how my body works and looks. I’m literally physically inhuman in the eyes of others. No amount of “but i know im REALLY human” will cover that up or make people treat me as such. 

[flock-of-changes]

> denied bottom surgery

> has Jame Gumb fictionflicker

( :