After years of exploring our alterhumanity, we’ve come up with the idea to explain our identity in layers like this because we find this more helpful than worrying about which community-defined alterhuman identity boxes we fall into and how species identity would sometimes get messy because of our plurality.
Consensus reality. The vessel (body) is an average human being and everyone else sees it as such. Nobody identifies as this.
Slime body. It’s an orange-colored slime monster body that changes its form to match whoever’s fronting, but the forms it take can still break down from instability if we’re dissociated. Comes with (phantom) slime tentacles and some (phantom) leaking goo. Can also be the source of our cameo phantom shifts. Goo shifts are not always noticed by fronters. We often perceive the vessel as this if not as our headspace bodies (layer 3) when fronting, but nobody identifies as this.
Headspace bodies. Each individual member’s true physical bodies are on this layer, located in a plane of existence we typically refer to as a headspace, separate from layer 1. Bodies don’t always match one’s respective species identities because of how shapeshifting as a concept influences our headspace, but will always match their base identities in some way. Subsystems may or may not share a single headspace body, depending on the subsystem. Phantom shifts attributed to this layer often (but not always) stem from physical changes in headspace bodies.
Individual identities. An individual member’s identities are on this layer. Species identity, fictotypes, base identities, all that stuff. We can also put base identity as its own layer because that would be the very core of ourselves as people but for now we’ll just keep both layers combined.
Obviously this is solely about our own experiences but who knows, maybe others can also relate to this?