summer's jasmine

he/she. otherlink of some country that you can guess. pfp by my friend

[midsummers-jasmine]

names (not in any specific order): amir, amina, pakistan

otherlink, imagithrope - my identity for these is pakistan from countryhumans, if it isn't obvious already

if you know my main blog no you don't and if you do, keep it a secret 🤫

if i do not respond to your ask it means i will not. sorry

sourcemates highly encouraged to interact, doubles are ok ✌️

[midsummers-jasmine]

As an ' alterhuman ' sometimes if not always I find labels to be unnecessary for myself. Why?

[...] Words are employed to convey ideas; but when the ideas are apprehended, men forget the words. Fain would I talk with such a man who has forgot the words! -Chapter 13, What comes from Without, Miscellaneous Chapters of Zhuangzi

Source of quoted text

It is an opinion I've been meaning to express in this community, that I believe my identity as apparently a country, transcends words.

But I am usually afraid that I will get yelled at for it, because this community feels so focused on labels, and then they will slowly pry at my identity: is it voluntary? Is it involuntary? Are you an animal for some reason???

I hope there are alterhumans out there who don't care about labels.

[internpersonal]

I also do not care much for the labels. (half-related rant) To me, they are purely for convenience sake: and even then, the only label that functions for me is Countrykin - which is rare enough most people will not immediately understand what it means. (I would also be willing to say that countrykin as a term has no proper, recognized definition yet.)

‘Countrykin‘ is a very rough term which seems to change definition depending on every country I see use it. It varies enough person-by-person that It brings into question its efficiency. To me, it is best to determine how our country-ness works on a fundamental level for every person individually. I also feel as though there are no words to describe how mine works, so I sort of feel my way through it.

There are a lot of really uncomfortable questions that people will ask (without prompting) towards Countrykin types specifically. I prefer to try and avoid that as much as possible, generally.

[midsummers-jasmine]

Perhaps the fact that countrykin does not have an official definition is what makes it so freeing.

[internpersonal]

countrykin phantom shift (or whatever its called) is something i have never heard anyone else talk about because honestly i dont know if anyone else experiences it. if anyone does please tell me

[midsummers-jasmine]

Usually my phantom shifts are clothing based. I was on the metro one time and I felt the shalwar kameez that I would usually wear.

[internpersonal]

personally ive neve had one of those. ive heard its common but i only get the mysterious evil far-away country senses that shouldnt be possible

[midsummers-jasmine]

Being an European country has its benefits.../silly but still. What an interesting phenomenon.

[internpersonal]

countrykin phantom shift (or whatever its called) is something i have never heard anyone else talk about because honestly i dont know if anyone else experiences it. if anyone does please tell me

[midsummers-jasmine]

Usually my phantom shifts are clothing based. I was on the metro one time and I felt the shalwar kameez that I would usually wear.

[chinakin]

WHERE ARE ALL MY COUNTRYKIN

Anyone who is countrykin REPLY PLEASE 👇👇👇👇👇👇 and introduce yourself and your kin! I wanna see all of my fellow countries!

as you can tell by my user I kin the country of China who's in a queerplatonic relationship with the USA (xe's a different one from the other USAkins I've seen) and my boyfriend kins Russia

[midsummers-jasmine]

we gonna remake the silk route with this one 🗣️ 🔥

[midsummers-jasmine]

As an ' alterhuman ' sometimes if not always I find labels to be unnecessary for myself. Why?

[...] Words are employed to convey ideas; but when the ideas are apprehended, men forget the words. Fain would I talk with such a man who has forgot the words! -Chapter 13, What comes from Without, Miscellaneous Chapters of Zhuangzi

Source of quoted text

It is an opinion I've been meaning to express in this community, that I believe my identity as apparently a country, transcends words.

But I am usually afraid that I will get yelled at for it, because this community feels so focused on labels, and then they will slowly pry at my identity: is it voluntary? Is it involuntary? Are you an animal for some reason???

I hope there are alterhumans out there who don't care about labels.

[midsummers-jasmine]

When I made this account I was worried I'd attract the wrong audience.

[hersheysmcboom]

Doing good was never this easy! Every click helps fund those in need - no cash, no credit card, no registration and for free!

Look, I know it’s not a lot, but right now, it’s all we can do

[toasty-roll]

normalize therians who don't care for quadrobics

its not and never has been something you need in order to truly identify as a therian

it makes me so annoyed that people only think of therians as walking on all fours

if you do quads cool!! but its not inherently a therian thing

plus plenty of non therians do quads

[theriomed]

In order to be a therian, you need to pass.

Quadrobics are the 1 part of transitioning. If you don't take the effort to pass you are not a therian.

[midsummers-jasmine]

The therians who don't use all fours to move are crying

[midsummers-jasmine]

I feel afraid of partaking in discourse or debates or discussions about fictionkin and/or alterhumanity in general. I feel like that should mean something but as to what, I do not know in particular.

It is not because I am Otherlink and as such I feel I cannot partake in these, but that I feel like people take it way too personally. Maybe. I don't know.

[thecrispydemon]

OP it’s ok to not participate, and just exist. TBH 90% of discourse really doesn’t matter irl. It’s really not worth the stress.

[midsummers-jasmine]

Fair enough. And there's bigger fish to fry than trying to debate over someone's identity. We can put down the pitchforks and unite together against...idk, the bourgeoisie or something. the greedy capitalists.

[theriomed]

Kinmed/theriomed

The belief that you need to transition and have dysphoria to be an alternuman

Other beliefs:

Otherlinks/funlinks aren't really alterhuman nor valid. Their voluntary choice is not dysphoria.

You cannot choose to be alterhuman

Otherlinks shouldn't call it an identity, it's roleplay

Otherhumans don't exist, to be alterhuman is to be nonhuman. You can be a half human, full animal, but that's it. You can't identify as human you are already human.

Otherpaw is a useless label for people who wanna feel special and it mocks the alterhuman community

Fictionkinning shouldn't be fun, and fictionlinks shouldn't treat identity like it's a choice. Same with funlinks, they shouldn't treat it like it's a fun thing

Spiritual therians and mental therians are bullshit, you can't spiritually transition nor mentally transition, both are delusional, spirituality does not exist either. The only valid ones are physical and non physical because they actually work on wanting to be seen as such whereas the first 2 don't

Accepting reality, if you don't transition to being such you won't ever pass. Don't get pissed when people miscreaturify your identity, either work on passing or stay human.

[radnormal]

actual bullshit on my feed

u can be otherlink

u can be otherhuman

u can be otherpaw

u can be funlink

u can be fictionlink

no such thing as “radkin” exists

no such thing as “kinmed” exists

no such thing as “theriomed” exists

u arent hurting anyone

[ph0be6656]

Why tf does It look like the czech flag also

[unicornlink]

It looks like they used that one AI Generative site that "makes" flags for you, just a suspicion but it seems oddly like it. And the Botted Site steals other types of flags and mixes them with symbols and recolors them... so it might've taken the czech flag too ┐⁠(⁠￣⁠ヘ⁠￣⁠)⁠┌

[midsummers-jasmine]

lowk reblogging this because the whole czech republic should know this

[midsummers-jasmine]

A reminder that your alterhuman identity shouldn't be dictated by voluntary and involuntary. Maybe you're a mix of both, maybe you're neither, maybe you're one of those, and identity isn't as clear cut as it seems.

[midsummers-jasmine]

I feel afraid of partaking in discourse or debates or discussions about fictionkin and/or alterhumanity in general. I feel like that should mean something but as to what, I do not know in particular.

It is not because I am Otherlink and as such I feel I cannot partake in these, but that I feel like people take it way too personally. Maybe. I don't know.

[wirsindkrieg]

There's something that feels like it's gotten lost within the modern non-human, otherkin, and related communities, and I think that maybe it'd be good to remind everyone.

At the end of the day, these are experience-based communities. That is, the unifying thing that members of these communities share is a similar set of experiences related to being Something¹ Else. Everything else is just window dressing.

That includes trying to divide things up based on the origins of those experiences, or trying to figure out who's "valid" enough to be part of the community.² At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is if someone's experiences with being Something Else are similar enough to experiences of other community members for everyone involved to be able to have good discussions about it.³

What someone does with their experiences, or how they may or may not outwardly express them, matters far less to me than the fact that they have those experiences in the first place. These communities are at their best when those experiences are being shared and explored together.⁴ That sharing is what builds the community in the first place, and without it, there's nothing there.

That's why the most common advice about getting involved with the community is to make posts and talk about things. It's about starting and getting involved in conversations around shared experiences, because at the end of the day that's what the community is made of: shared experiences, and the conversations around them.

There will always be room for debate and (healthy⁵) discourse. Those things come naturally with any sizable group. But we have to remember that all of that has to be in service of understanding ourselves and our community better. Disagreements happen, but we can choose to make those disagreements productive rather than destructive.

I think we all need to remember more that, when all is said and done, we're here because we have a similar set of experiences around being Something Else. Those experiences are the tie that holds these communities together, and forgetting that means forgetting why we're here in the first place. Everything else is just window dressing (even if we can't agree on the colour of the drapes.)

(Footnotes under the cut.)

¹ = I use "Something" a bit loosely here, mostly for expedience. The same ideas apply equally to fictionkin, for example, and it would be inaccurate at best to refer to most characters as "Something" rather than as "Someone".

² = There is a reasonable discussion to be had about if engaging with the community is healthy for some people, but in practice that's generally more of an individual assessment than one that can be made about large groups (such as those whose nonhuman identity is rooted in delusions). Not relevant to my larger point, but I do think it's worth mentioning in general.

³ = The strongest example of "experiences not similar enough" would be the KFF ("kin for fun") crowd. Strongly relating to a fictional character is not similar enough to being Something Else to enable good conversation about the overlap (if any) between those experiences. Thus, the community consensus becomes that KFFs are not inherently a part of the community. ⁴ = An important note about "shared and explored together" is that it requires some amount of depth in what's being shared and explored. Thus the long-standing frustration with posts that are little more than "I miss my kintype's home environment"; there's not enough to explore there, and thus there's no room for discussion and building community.

⁵ = There are whole essays to be written on what constitutes "healthy" discourse, but I'm personally defining it (extremely briefly) as debate in which all participants are open to changing their minds, and everyone's goal is to educate and present their thoughts, rather than trying to "win" an argument. That is, it's about building everyone up, rather than tearing anyone down.

[kai-canine]

The "social media-ification" of the alterhuman/nonhuman community is genuinely insane. You got:

"Anti-zoo!" when they really mean anti-beastiality/anti pro-contact

"You can't be physically a therian!"

Only ever talking about therians or theriomythics, to the point where barely anything else is recognised outside of spaces like Tumblr

Making prey drive seem valid compared to other drives

Hypervisibility of quadrobics, gear and outings

Watering down the community to appeal to antis (and invalidating people in the process)

PAST LIVES. OH MY DAYS, THE PAST LIVES BS. (yes, past lives as a nonhuman are fine, just the idea that its the only "cause")

"Its not a mental illness, its a spiritual belief!" even though causes of nonhuman beliefs don't invalidate the experience

The biggest alterhuman YouTuber (Therian Territory) being essentially a factory for misinformation and invalidation of others' experiences

And that's barely surface level.

This is pretty much a PSA to any nonhuman blogs on here that if you have any other social media accounts, please don't hesitate to spread more information about it

[sadlyglyphtaken]

thank you for this succinct summary i will take everything in this at its word because this is my first time looking into what people say about alterhumans online. (is there another umbrella term i can use besides alterhuman though bc i don't really like defining myself in relation to humans) (eh it's whatever i guess) (i'd say "kinnies" but that seems to have shifted in meaning over the years or so i've heard)

[midsummers-jasmine]

I'm late to say happy birthday to all the America kins/links/fictives/factives/whatever identity you have. 250 years and balling lmao

[vincecoiner]

Fiction of Fact

A phenomenon (?) where your fictional identity/identities' (e.g. 'kin, link, hearted, etc.) source is fiction, but is also based on factual things.

I experience this through my Otherlink identity.

For example, perhaps someone who is a Fictionkin with the source Reverse:1999 also experiences this phenomenon, because while the game is fictional, it is also based on events that happened in this universe's history.

The reverse of this would probably be something like Fact of Fiction.

Tagging @radiomogai for archival, I hope folks see this even though it is not quite impressive 😅 (grinning face with sweat emoji).