#225.essays

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

(Dreamwidth mirror)

I just had my first experience with what looks like a berserker shift.

I've experienced so many different shifts, including mental. I know what my mental shifts are like, and they tend to make me more irate than usual among other things, and it goes away after some time with little to no issues. This one shift, however, is different.

I was playing Super Smash Bros Ultimate, specifically the World of Light mode. I was minding my own business, fighting my way through the map.

But then, I saw it. The Groudon spirit.

First of all, if you don't know, I transform into a Bowser-like form daily in a werewolf-esque fashion, with or without a trigger. The transformation happens in headspace and it typically manifests as a full-body phantom and somatic shift in meatspace when I'm fronting. Second of all, this fictomere also has a few paratypes associated with it because of its physical build, one of which is Groudon.

This screen, showing both of these entities at once, immediately triggered a full-body shift. Forcibly changing my form at a rapid pace, and altering my mental state on top of that. At first I thought it was my usual mental shift. It goes away on its own after a little while, so there's nothing to worry about, right? Turns out, this boiling anger in me felt noticeably stronger than usual, to the point of being uncomfortable in a way I can't quite explain. Not only that, this anger also targets my sysmates. When they try to reach out to me, I can feel this anger intensify, even when I normally have no problem with them or even love them. This anger does not differentiate between friend or foe. It only cares about demolishing anything in its way.

During this moment, I continued to play the game in anger, destroying enemies one by one, mentally shouting "GET FUCKED", "FUCK YOU", and so on towards the opponents. When I notice my sysmates' attempts to communicate with me, I still had enough self-control to distance myself from them and to gently warn them to not try to talk to me in that state because I don't want to snap at them. I can still tell that I don't want to attack them, but at the same time I can't stop this anger from targeting them. It's almost like a werewolf mid-transformation, using their last remaining bits of control over themself to warn their friends before they're completely taken over by the beast that'll attack them indiscriminately.

Thankfully, my sysmates can still switch in without issues so they can handle meatspace things while I can cool off. Or at least, attempt to cool off. In reality, I was still stressed out from the overwhelming rage, even more so because this went on for longer than my usual mental shifts. We all have no idea what to do, and they tried to help by listening to music associated with me (Kogane Tsukioka), and our unit (L'Antica). We unfortunately have no clue whether or not this works and what eventually helped me snap out of it. Either way, I managed to cool down and come back to my senses not long after.

The "hangover" phase was also rough. I couldn't properly talk internally or externally until the next morning. My mind was hazy and complex thought processes felt out of reach. Overall, I felt terrible. The whole thing is not enjoyable from start to finish.

I discussed this with my beast half. We're aware that this is a problem we have in common that we haven't figured out yet, and I'm not blaming it for this in the typical "evil alter" way even though one can argue I have all the opportunities to do so. I assured it that I see it as a "us versus the problem" deal and not "me versus it". And on a lighter note, we also wondered if this is true to Bowser's nature if he hypothetically experiences gamer rage. We think it's likely very accurate, considering how well the gameplay went.

Thankfully, the screenshot that started this whole mess no longer affects me the same way again at the time I wrote this. It seems to be a one-time thing.

I looked around therian / otherkin sites for more info on berserker shifts as a quick refresher, and to compare my experiences with others. On one hand, calling this a berserker shift makes sense to us. I suddenly had my usual mental faculties pushed away by unusually intense levels of rage. We think that this is very accurate to how Bowser would act in the same situation. But on the other hand, I still had a tiny bit of control at the time, enough to not cause any serious problems. I also didn't question where I was and why I was playing a video game. At most, I didn't recognize my sysmates, my own unitmates, but I didn't question anything else. This is not exactly me pondering about whether or not I can call this a berserker shift, it's more about the similarities and differences between what I experienced and what others have experienced. The way that shift went still made sense to me in a way, because Bowser is a nonhuman creature, but he's also sapient / sophont. It makes sense for him to have both animalistic and sophont thought processes, and for the shift to manifest the way it did.

Since I'm a human, I may see this differently from nonhumans who experience these shifts. To me personally, it's closer to the way a werewolf's mental state may change the less human they are in shape. Something that is Not Me taking over my thought processes and manipulating it to be more like It and less like Me in both body and mind, and in this case this Something is also not a fan of humans. While the beast does its thing, the human fought hard to regain even the tiniest bit of control. If it's just enough to prevent the more catastrophic incidents from happening, it's good enough for the human. Not saying one viewpoint is better than the other, I just see it this way because of the aspects of my alterhumanity, especially my connection to werewolf tropes.

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

Cause of Cistransness: Feminine Human Girl Meets Hypermasculine Reptilian Beast

(Blurb: this is a minimally-edited ramble about how depictions of Bowser from Super Mario Bros has affected my gender identity)

(Estimated read time: around 4 minutes)

I, in my human form, am no different from your average anime girl at her core. Conventionally attractive, very fem, all that jazz. Maybe with some of Bowser’s traits that remain on me even in human form, the horns and stuff, which I don’t mind and is generally very minimal. This is the form that feels the most “me”.

When transformed, I look like a fusion between myself and regular Bowser. My gender identity doesn’t change at all at any point in this process. I still am a femme girl. That gender identity obviously clashes so hard with his masculine aura and has caused me a lot of trouble, and by that I mean “my species dysphoria and my gender dysphoria are a package deal and cannot be separated”. But for now, I'll just focus on the gender aspect.

You need no introduction for Bowser. Regular Bowser is built like a gay bear minus the hair outside of some fanart. He's bulky. He has a deep, intimidating voice. Everything about him screams "manly man", and judging from what we've seen of his fans and fanworks of him in furry sites, everyone agrees. If he's not heterosexual, he would be a gay man. This is very, very far from who I am, gender-wise. There’s also Bowsette, a genderbent, humanized version of him that borrows a lot of traits from Princess Peach, and is very fem as a result. Conventionally so.

Despite having that "anime girl" look in common between my human form and Bowsette, I don’t see myself in her at all. I’ve seen the “Bowsette = transfem Bowser” reading, and I don’t see myself in that. It’s mildly amusing, but that doesn't mean I relate. It’s because I can’t voluntarily turn back into a human, it only happens randomly. Which means that for most of the time, I’m going to be stuck looking like “a really bulky, muscular man in a dress” or feeling like "a beauty stuck in a beast's body". I often get stuck sounding like him too when talking internally. I may not seem to have a reason to call myself trans because both Kogane Tsukioka the character and our shared meatsuit aligns with my gender and species, but under this condition, I had to fight so hard to "re-transition" into myself again, in a similar way to how a transfem individual with a very masculine build transitioning to feel more like herself. I can't just use magic and stay human for as long as I like (the way Bowsette transforms), so I make the Bowser-like body feel more like me, to the best of my ability.

I don’t see myself in other genderbends of him either if it takes too much of his bulk away. I’ve seen several non-Bowsette femBowser designs so far, but so far I’ve only liked only one specific design because that one is the closest any fanartist can get to portraying my build properly on a female character. But my god, was I over the moon when I saw that for the first time.

I project myself on regular Bowser way more easily than on Bowsette. Even then, only in some situations.

I enjoy looking through his ship art (ones where he’s shipped with humans), finding all the fluff I can project myself to. In rare cases, I’d also find fanart of him wearing feminine clothes. But I love these a lot because it helps me remember that just because I’m going to be stuck with this body indefinitely, doesn’t mean I can’t wear my usual clothes and look good in them. It also doesn't mean I'd be doomed to accidentally hurting my sysmates just by existing near them.

I enjoy the fluff because those are usually the kinds of interactions I prefer for my sysmates. It helped me ease myself into physical in-headspace interaction with them without the fear of injuring them. Sometimes it could also give me new ideas on what to do with them in headspace too.

Most of the best ship art of his that we've seen are with men, usually Luigi. I'm okay with that because we've seen a ton of excellent Bowuigi fanart, but I often wish I can see myself with a girl, as a girl. Lesbian Bowuigi fanart exists, but they're rarer than fanart of Bowser in a dress. If he's shipped with Peach, I have fewer options. I seem to find fewer fluff that I do like and most others just put me off in one way or another. Maybe it's too sexual, or parts of his personality that are too different from mine are present in a way that I can't ignore. Of course, I can't expect these fans to draw something that perfectly aligns with me without commissioning anyone, so I don't expect anything more and I'm generally already happy with what I did find. I do plan to draw art of myself, but it'll definitely take a while.

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

Yesterday I reread Gavin’s essay on being human, and some parts caught my eye:

“My body map doesn't have nonhuman features, parts like wings or tails or claws or pointy ears. Picturing myself like that feels wrong, it feels like sandpaper, like there’s this foreign thing attached to my body and I need to cut it off so I can stop this crawling sense of my body not being my own.”

This is likely caused by people in our system having base identities that are human in source, but either way, some of us have genuinely felt dysphoric because their headspace bodies suddenly diverged from an average human one day, myself included. My case is on the more extreme end since pretty much my entire body changes daily, while the others typically look about the same as their base identity’s source, save for one or two extra body parts that becomes part of their baseline form. Some aren’t bothered by it much, but others would feel that the extra parts felt very wrong. It may “just” be a tail, for example, but it can still be very distress-inducing for a human to suddenly have one.

“See, I get dysphoric about being considered nonhuman, but I've found some loopholes in there. I’m completely fine with my fictional counterpart - the character getting tossed into different AUs for our personal enrichment - being turned into a vampire, a werewolf, a selkie, an android, a person with wings. How's that any different from other expressions of nonhumanity? Well, for me, those stories don't induce dysphoria because they're about humanity, at the end of the day - how people cope with being seen as or turned into monsters, the way they treat one another and the way they treat supposed outsiders, the ways society might change if humans were slightly different animals but still called themselves human. If I were a werewolf, I'd still be human, just one living with the consequences of also being a wolf. If I had wings in a world where all humans have wings, I'm still human in the context of that world. That baseline sense of humanity is what’s important to me.”

With this paragraph, I wanted to focus on a couple of things. The werewolf example is basically how I see myself. Identity-wise, I’m solely-human and I don’t see myself as anything else. I just uncontrollably transform into a beast at times, like an average werewolf. The second one is on stories about being turned nonhuman. If I go into these plots, what I’d like the most would be the parts where the former human’s life would be affected, especially if they attempt to reintegrate into human society. What steps would they take to work around difficulties in operating human tools, if they still use them? What about other things that they did as a human? Do they sometimes mourn the normal human life that they suddenly lost? Or think about how their body still felt ill-fitting even after they spent quite a long time living in it? How would their friends treat them? How would the path to acceptance look like, on the former human’s side and on the people they know? I thought of these questions because I have to deal with those problems in real life, and I’d like to see it in fiction.

Though for the last question, I don’t remember coming across stories where the former human still experienced species dysphoria even after they accepted their nonhumanity, especially physical dysphoria. They probably exist and we just never came across that. Maybe we forgot the ones that we came across before. Or they really are very rare, I don’t know

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

A Long and Messy Post on... Fusion?

By: Kogane Tsukioka 👑 (she/her) (TL;DR: In this post I ramble about my experience with intentional subsystem fusion. Or at least, I think it's fusion? I also talked about how I can't relate to anything anyone else we know says about system fusion.)

Before we start, this is going to be very messy, don't expect much polish, nuance, or any "proper" citations from this. In addition, this is only about my median subsystem. The wider system wants functional multiplicity. Only this subsystem leans closer to fusion for itself.

Most of the time fusion in the plurality context sound very medical, too medical for our tastes. It does make sense considering it’s more commonly talked about in DID (and maybe OSDD-1) spaces and it’s not for our system in general. Normally we’d just leave it at that and never touch anything about plural fusion ever, but… even when I don’t really call it that, what my subsystem went through is basically fusion. If I and this subsystem were to have my own body, this would be considered very close to final fusion. Well, not final final, since the agreement I/we made is to keep a tiny bit of separation between us, making us lean closer to the "single person" end of the median spectrum.

I don’t think I aimed for this the way most people talk about it? Maybe because it’s not called “fusion” in our mind. What I had in mind was more like “no matter how unpleasant it is to admit this to myself, I have a gut feeling that this is a part of me and I can’t deny it no matter how hard I try. Separating doesn’t sound like a good idea and it’ll likely only make things worse in the long run. The only choice I have is to learn how to coexist with it, sit with the discomfort and examine the reasons why I felt that way. Chip away as many of those that I can work with, leaving only those that I can’t dig my way out of.” Sure, we know the process is technically fusion since it involves accepting more separate aspects as a part of me. It’s just not the first thing in our mind when thinking about it.

The subsystem initially starts out as two “halves” of myself. Later I decided to use a DIY “parts work” framework where I intentionally separate out parts of myself to learn more about my issues and help those parts feel safe. These parts have very few differences from the two halves other than minor cosmetic changes that can still be traced back to either half, and views on certain things revolving my own personal issues. For example, I may hold a view that having certain traits (that are normatively viewed as masculine) as a woman wouldn’t make me less of a woman. However, a part of me might still not be on board with it out of fear. She may only have this difference, or she may also wear different clothes from what I wear. Otherwise we’re no different. Every time these scared parts appear, I’d notice their presence, chat with them like I would with a sysmate outside of this subsystem, allow them to express their emotions and help them calm down, and so on.

Until one day, the subsystem stopped constantly splitting these parts off, leaving just the two main halves.

I assumed that our brain decided that it no longer needs to split me/us that way anymore, leaving just us behind since our separation is further than the separation between those aforementioned parts. I mean, it’s pretty obvious if you know who these two halves are. One is a young human lady, the other is The King of Koopas himself. Through a normative lens, these are polar opposites of each other. This subsystem setup results in me being a young lady who uncontrollably transforms into a beast that looks like a combination of me and him, and back into a human at random times. An unstable concoction of a person.

From here, all that’s left is for both halves to learn how to coexist. Or rather, for me to stop rejecting him just because of my discomfort. It’s undeniably difficult to find a middle ground to agree on when a human and a hulking beast are practically joined at the selfhood and our bodymaps clash with each other daily. We had to work on establishing our mutual trust from early on, and settle on what we can both agree on. What we agreed on was a bit like this: I’m going to be the “main” person, I get to keep everything I already knew about myself before all this mess unraveled, but I also have to understand that there’s no way for me to stop the involuntary changes no matter what I do, so it’ll be much less stressful for me if I work on accepting that as part of who I am instead of pushing it away into a separate entity.

We both have wildly different ideas on our “proper” forms, so obviously one side would be uncomfortable with being stuck in the other side’s form. Same goes for our internal voice. My voice is very feminine, his voice… well… needs no explanation. On the personality department, he’s noticeably more animalistic and aggressive than my usual baseline, but I can also argue that this trait has been here before he made himself known, and this bond only serves to explain a lot of my past behaviors. Logically, the best way for me to frame this is to see it as a mental shift. I used to be terrified of them, but as time goes on, I learned that this doesn’t pose a threat to my human mind. It comes and goes just like every other thought and urge. I also seem to feel emotions more intensely when transformed, but I’m perfectly capable of finding ways to handle it without forcing myself to change back. If I force myself to change back without working on those emotions, it wouldn't last long and it'll be undone almost instantly.

After around another month, we apparently fused further on our own after I worked on more of my discomfort. It feels like both halves work as one entity more smoothly compared to the times before this. However, due to our agreement to keep some separation between us, I can still see it in our subsystem’s headspace, and we can still separate ourselves that way if I want to. The difference is that I have a stronger grip on being the subsystem’s “main” person no matter what happens. My kneejerk reactions to shove the “undesirable” behavior became less and less frequent, and now I can see it as me doing it without flinching (much) at the thought. I still change forms uncontrollably, but at the very least I’m not as worried about it anymore.

At this point in this journey, I felt relief. Relief that I don’t feel as dysfunctional anymore. relief that I don’t have as many concerns about my weird condition anymore. Or at least, they don’t bother me as much anymore. But I don’t think my feelings have ever been described in most, if not all, other posts about fusion here. The relief does not stem from the fusion or stuff like my head feeling quieter, but from being at peace with myself. The actual fusion itself felt like “oh, okay? This subsystem felt quieter all of a sudden, okay then”.

In our system, intentional fusion would only work if the members involved are similar enough to each other to the point where their selfhoods are linked. This makes it not viable for most of the system. What I did was less “system aiming to work on becoming one coherent individual” and more “a human-turned-werewolf learning to accept their inner wolf”. Maybe we avoided almost everything discussing fusion not only because it's incompatible with the wider system, but also because of how it’s typically associated with negative things. So me not using terms associated with the process, and instead doing my own thing my way, removes that barrier for us.

Why do I not relate to anything? Is it because there’s very little talk on fusion in general in the community? Is it because we just started looking deeper into what fusion is around this year or so, thus still potentially harboring some misconceptions on it? Or if not, did it make me view the whole thing radically differently from seemingly everyone else? Am I just an oddball? Who knows.

I've read some accounts of full fusion from those who have undergone that, but I don’t think I relate to much of anything said there. One can maybe argue it’s because I’m still part of a system and fusing one subsystem is not the exact same thing as fusing an entire system, but still, I don’t feel any of the positives they described. Or I just viewed it very differently from them, because I wouldn’t describe the positives I experienced as anywhere close to how they do it. It’s ultimately not a bad thing, I’m just an outlier here. I know, fusion works differently for everyone, it’s just that I can’t relate to anything. And if I can’t relate to anything, that’s when the second-guessing begins. I ended up not being sure if this is fusion or something else. There's nothing wrong with being different. It's just that I felt a bit lonely at times because I can't relate to anyone else.

That being said, Feathers’ posts (among others) on "being fully fused for the most part and intentionally splitting individual parts off occasionally" does fit the current state of my subsystem. Most of the time, I’m just myself. However, I can access my subsystem headspace to check on individual members if needed. Whatever's going on here, at the very least I'm fine with this setup.

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

Thinking about the concept of suppressing/locking up unwanted sysmembers in hopes that they’ll disappear (and how my experiences count as another example of that method not working). Of course I can’t know what other systems experience so I won’t say that this is universally applicable but… I’m just looking back at my own experiences

It is definitely scary to discover that a foreign entity has embedded itself to your body, or arguably depending on how you see it, into your soul. Even moreso when you previously only knew this entity as a villain, a monster. On top of that, this link we have between us also causes my body to uncontrollably transform to match its image and giving me all sorts of problems including gender and species dysphoria. So of course, I instinctively tried to metaphorically force the lid shut and stop this whole mess. However, knowing what this beast is like and how powerful it is, this unsurprisingly only ended in failure. I earned a beating or five in headspace for the first few days or so. It wouldn’t stop tormenting me physically or mentally because I kept on pushing it away at that time. Again, it’s an automatic response, but that didn’t change the fact that I still did it. In theory, I know what I did was wrong, even when my own pain is taken into consideration. But in practice, my kneejerk reactions would come first before I can think of better actions to take.

It took some time before I can gather enough energy to reason with it. To really put the brakes in my automatic response of attacking it. To own up to everything and apologize. Of course, it was still angry with me at first. But at least that helped the less-angry version of it to reach out and talk to me, and that helped bridge the gap between us. The angrier one gradually warmed up to me too.

We also worked on a compromise, since we can’t really see any option being 100% beneficial to all sides. I’d rather have it latch on to me than seeing it bother anyone else, so I allowed myself to act as a “vessel” for it. We proceeded this way because we can’t split ourselves more without harming either side. I can work on my problems with the werebeast transformations myself, I just don’t want it to hurt anyone else. In exchange, I allow it to exist without being antagonized like the way I treated it before this. At the very least, I don’t have to like whatever it does to me. It understands that I really don’t like being forcibly transformed, but it’s also something that none of us can control, at least not easily. The least it can do is to not force me to like all that pain and agony.

Over a year later, I’d say it worked out! I definitely did cry and bitch and whine during the whole process, but I could definitely see my distress level in general being much lower now compared to earlier on. This entity has also fused with me and has functionally become my “literal other half” on its own will, and we function much more cohesively as a single unit now. Of course I still banter with the more aggressive one at times, but at least now we actually do get along. Overall, I can say we’re pretty stable now.

If you’re in a similar position, working on (re)building the bridge with an antagonistic system member, I can only hope that things will work out in the end, whatever your end goal looks like

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

Tbh our biggest reason for avoiding the “host” label is because we experienced enough of the “other people only cares about the host / our pre-syscovery self” treatment when the old host was still around, to the point where we’re plagued by fears surrounding this and decided to collectively give that treatment the middle finger and refuse to label anyone a host.

Now while we do have labels that technically mean something similar to what the definition of host is, they’re only for personal use, inspired by our interests and background, and we don’t mention it to anyone. Plus we do intend for these labels to not be immediately recognizeable to anyone outside the system so even if we do mention them, nobody will understand what these roles are without an explanation.

If anyone really insists though… we technically do have members who fit the definition. But it also depends on the scope and whatever else. There are members who can handle daily stuff with little to no issues, and they may or may not be very active. There are also ones who can do all that except “communicating with people. Online, offline, or both”. We tend to cycle between these reliable fronters once in a while. The more active divisions tend to have an idea which member(s) in their group would fit the above descriptions.

And if anyone insists on knowing who the “host” is for the entire system specifically…

The best answer would be me. A fictive. The one being haunted by the kind of Headspace Horrors that would make me require some sort of backup fronter to function in daily life. Because if I don’t have one, people will most likely notice that something’s off about us.

I’m arguably one of the weirdest members in this system of weirdos, is what I’m trying to say. If this goes against anyone’s pluralphobic framework of “host = most normal one” or whatever, it’s their problem.

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

As time goes on, I’m starting to think that I’m actually more canon-compliant than I initially assumed.

First, canon me’s skill has something to do with drawing (listed as something like “I’ll draw an exact image of you!”). We don’t know exactly how good her skills are, but she sounds very confident in it. Maybe it’s because I got stuck at front for too long, but it feels like I have one of the highest confidence levels in art out of everyone else in the system. I definitely still have a long way to go skill-wise, but I wanted to focus more on the confidence.

Another one would be this: one 4koma comic shows canon me talking about how she doesn’t really like having big boobs because it’s embarrassing for her to get weird looks because of it, instead wanting to have a more petite build like Yuika. I know the comic is about boobs, but in this context I’d like to believe that it applies to her entire body and not just her boobs. Yuika is far less busty (my B93 vs her B73) and is the shortest L’Antica member (158 cm, compared to my 165 cm).

From here I thought, if canon me is hypothetically subjected to the same werebeast condition I have, I think her reactions wouldn’t be very different from mine, and I understand why. If someone like that is suddenly subjected to a condition that turns them into a large hulking beast uncontrollably, of course they’d be very devastated. Nevermind the potentially worsening size dysphoria, showing up like that in public would surely attract weird looks, but this time it’s because they’d look like a freak. I think my reading here still makes sense from a canon perspective and it wouldn’t be very OOC of her to react the way I did if this were to be written as a canon-complying fanfic.

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

(Personal thoughtdump don’t mind me. Comments are ok but keep in mind that this is a very unpolished thoughtdump)

On one hand, I can say my genetics has become a mess and I can probably say I’m biologically/physically nonhuman (but non-physically human). And speaking more generally, our base forms match our base identity in every way the way we see physical alterhumans experienced it. When we front, we automatically and unconsciously think of the body as whatever our current form is (at least until we see our reflection in a mirror or notice a disconnect in size or body map between our current form and the meatsuit).

On the other hand, what I just said only applies in headspace because that’s where our true bodies are, hiding behind our shared meatsuit that doesn’t really belong to anybody in particular. Our headspace leans closer to being an actual location connected to our meatsuit’s consciousness in a way. Other people may not see this location and what happens in it as physical or even real, and we understand that. We just generally phrase our descriptions in a way we see fit. Headspace is as real as meatspace and so on and so forth, but we definitely can’t ignore the disconnect between the two realms. Not purely for skepticism reasons, but our mind’s probably already set this way for many things. Kind of the same thing that stops us from buying into hardcore religious beliefs from very early on before we know what atheism is. We may have some fantastical beliefs, but we often feel as if there’s a mental barrier that stops us from going “too far” with them. If it doesn’t apply to all of our beliefs, it applies to a lot of them.

This is kind of our biggest reason why we don’t go into physical alterhuman circles or use physical alterhuman labels. We have a feeling that nothing we experience would be seen as physical even in those places. The stuff we see as physical is only applicable to headspace and we make that clear when needed. Even if we want it to be the case in meatspace or at least see it as physical in meatspace too, we just can’t see it that way. We could be very wrong about the community but The Fear of Judgement is there.

We’re fully aware of “do whatever you want forever” but sometimes we need more than that to sort these feelings out, or we need more time to internalize it. The question is not exactly a simple “I feel this label fits perfectly but I don’t know if it’s allowed” even though this question is there at least in some way.

We feel much more at home in places that generally puts no emphasis in physicality (or lack thereof) of alterhuman experiences. All that matters is that this is what you experience, this is how you see it, and this is your reality. Fewer peer pressure (both real or perceived) to worry about. Thankfully, most general alterhuman places we’ve stuck around in are like this, at least as far as we’re aware of. Or at least, enough to not ring the alarm bells in our head.