#225.kogane

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

[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]

Othervague experiences can include internally reacting to something about your vaguetype as if you’re them, only to immediately remember that it’s not that simple

Basically something like “I would never do that, I mean they”

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

It’s almost exactly a year after my initial “moment of realization”, and I noticed that my own form changes have gradually become less bothersome, more manageable. It’s much easier for me to view this in a more neutral or even positive light compared to the previous months where doing so is much harder. At this point I can genuinely accept that my other form is still me.

But my species identity is still human. Not even “100% human + 100% nonhuman”, just “100% human”.

Technically I’m a were, but in a “human that turns nonhuman at times” way. My nonhuman form doesn’t affect my species identity, how I feel on the inside. Deep down I still feel human, despite my constantly-resurfacing nonhuman traits. My nonhuman form no longer feels like a prison for the most part, but it still doesn’t have much to do with my species identity.

[tsukioka-clusterfuck]

(Experiences a hundred things that point to a kintype) but I’m not this thing though

(but it’s actually true and not a form of denial. Multiple questioning phases have always ended with a “no”)

Sometimes alterhuman identities can be complicated enough to not fit any community label you’re aware of and there’s nothing wrong with that!

[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]

Us when we reblog fanart of our sources (but especially me when / if I do it with this blog because one source is vastly more popular on tumblr than the other)