#critter experiences

[vulpecular-draconic]

i’ve been attempting to walk on my tiptoes more often to simulate digitigrade legs, but after a couple minutes of it the balls of my feet start to hurt. i need to buy some of those socks with paw pads on them — those would probably help cushion it better

[vulpecular-draconic]

(link to a previous post for context.) 

this past month, i’ve been trying to define what i am. primarily through the lens of “what would i feel comfortable putting in a new intro post?” how do i want to describe myself? what things am i certain about?

i’m definitely alterhuman. besides phantom limbs, i just… don’t have a human-ish relationship with humanity. neither “i am human” nor “i am not human” feels accurate to me, currently. the phrase that feels best is “i am not quite human.” if i met an alterhuman in real life, i think i’d describe myself this way. i’ve tried to conceptualize exactly what the phrase means for me (percentages, metaphors), but anything specific like that feels wrong. it’s just that phrase with no clearer meaning as of yet.

as for ‘types/‘hearts i would feel comfortable putting in a intro post: 

1.) pearl fox, of course

2.) i’ve liked calling myself a monster since i can remember. i hadn’t considered it a kintype before because by the time the idea occurred to me, i was using the label of cryptid, and i thought it would be redundant. but “monster” is more broad, and i’ve liked it for longer (before i even knew about alterhumanity). i think i’m more comfortable introducing myself as a monster than as a cryptid. (unless i am specifically a cryptid that day, ofc.)

3.) similar to monster, i’ve never called myself a shapeshifter, even though i imagine myself as one literally every day and have for years. i avoided saying i was a shapeshifter for two reasons:

i thought of my daydreams as just an ideal reality that could accommodate me being polykin, instead of shapeshifting being an identity in of itself.

i assigned “changeling” to the role of “base identity that encompasses my other identities.” this doesn’t feel correct anymore, as changeling has a specific feeling in a way that shapeshifter doesn’t; it’s less transferable and doesn’t mesh with all the things i can be. (i’ve mentioned before how being a dragon and being a fae/changeling feel incompatible to me for some reason.) i’m still a changeling sometimes (for a couple days last week, in fact) but it doesn’t work as a broader label for me.

now that my identity feels more soupy, i’ve found that calling myself a shapeshifter in an alterhuman way feels amazing. i think the word describes my identity really well — fluid, and implying that i’m never quite human even when i don’t feel like anything else in particular. my soul is a shapeshifter in the same way my soul is genderfluid, i think. another perk is that it doesn’t require a commitment to specific forms/kintypes; the process of trying to kin-firm creatures i knew i was at the moment always kinda stressed me out. i’ve seen a couple shapeshifters in the alterhuman community put their current forms in their intro posts alongside their more permanent ones, and i think that would be very helpful for me.

4.) oh, i’m also definitely still cecil-hearted. i don’t think that’s going anywhere for a while. if i could physically shapeshift, i would absolutely love to shift into my mental image of him every once in a while.

so yeah! expect a new intro post soon-ish with this new info. 

[vulpecular-draconic]

i’ve been thinking about non-otherkin/non-therian alterhuman identities recently and i realized i haven’t really explored that yet in myself. i have a fairly good grasp on my kintypes (for now at least), but i’ve been ignoring or even in denial about some of my other alterhuman identities.

it started yesterday evening (march 26), when i began to officially question whether maned wolves are a kithtype or kintype of mine. i still don’t know, but today, as i was researching about what hearttypes feel like vs what kintypes feel like, i realized that i’ve felt non-kin alterhuman things before now.

first my mind went to cecil palmer from welcome to night vale. i hyperfixated hard on that podcast when i first listened to it last year. i still get unreasonably excited about it, especially about cecil.

i once briefly considered being fictionkin to cecil, but brushed it off immediately — one, because i don’t feel like i am him (which is a pretty tell-tale sign i’m not), and two, because our personalities aren’t similar except for a few surface-level things. i dismissed it as extreme gender envy and tried to ignore it.

but i still felt (and continue to feel) an intense connection to him.

i’ve related very strongly to characters before, and to characters much more similar to me than cecil is. yet even the character i’ve had an intense spinterest on for several years can’t compete with this flavor of feeling. it goes deeper than gender envy (although it does include that). i want to be him. i’m not distressed that i’m not, but i do thoroughly want to, if just for a few hours. that’s not the full feeling, but it’s the facet i can articulate best.

i denied the possibility of being alterhuman in any way about cecil for so long because i was worried that if i decided to call myself fictionkin, i might lose myself in trying to adopt the personality of someone so different from me. (for a long time i didn’t know how widely acknowledged it is that fictionkin don’t have to match the personalities of the canon version of the character.) i didn’t want to consider fictionhearted either, as i was worried taking that first step would be crossing some line.

i think — well, i know, i just like to allow room for uncertainties — that cecil is a hearttype. (kithtype? fictionkith??)

there’s nothing else he could be to me, honestly. hearttype is the closest i can succinctly come to describing this feeling, and by “closest” i mean pretty darn precise.

and now my other revelation: hearthomes.

although i’ve got cecil as a hearttype, i don’t think i’d describe night vale as my hearthome. i’m fond of it, yes, but my chest doesn’t ache with the longing to live there. no, that honor goes to the world of tangled.

i don’t want to get too detailed, as this post is long enough already, so i’ll keep it short:

i’ve wanted to live in the world of tangled/tangled the series since i first watched the show. i don’t have any hearttypes or kintypes from there, not even an oc-kin. but it feels like home.

i’ve been asked what fictional world i’d live in if i had to choose one. i always immediately answer the tangled universe. for all the plot holes and underdeveloped lore, i absolutely love it, and if a portal opened up in my room right now to take me there i’d hardly hesitate. my favorite spot in disney world is that small tangled-themed section, even if it is just relegated to the bathroom area. it’s the closest i’ll ever get to actually being there. it felt bittersweet when i visited. my heart swelled looking at it all, and i think i’ve cried about it, but i don’t have any concrete memories of the latter.

sooo… yeah. i’m ‘hearted to cecil palmer and the tangledverse is my hearthome.

i’ll add these to my intro post soon. i don’t feel like i need a questioning period for these like i do for the maned wolf. they’ve been boiling in the back of my mind for so long that i already just… kinda know.

[vulpecular-draconic]

weirdest otherkin experience i've had: that one time i felt phantom bird wings on my back, but they had no feathers

[vulpecular-draconic]

for the last several months, i’ve been letting myself actually hiss and growl and snarl when i’m startled and frustrated. i used to do it when i was 8-9, but my family made fun of me, so i stopped. i wish i never had. it’s so much more stress-relieving than normal human reactions.

a loud noise scares me and makes my heart start beating really quickly? hissing once or thrice at the source of the noise works WAY better to calm me down than just cursing or clutching my chest or whatever. same for growling/snarling when i’m angry. highly recommend.

[vulpecular-draconic]

i don’t talk about being cryptidkin much, mainly bc my other nonhuman experiences are easier to explain. my appearance and exact nature as a cryptid changes, which can make it hard to post about. but i do want to talk about it. it’s as much a part of me as any other of my kintypes.

being a cryptid is frustrating sometimes, because i want to be creepy and offputting and i can’t really do that effectively with a human body. i want to be a spooky creature who does weird unsettling things. but, then again, i don’t want to genuinely terrify (most) people. sometimes i do. sometimes i think it would be funny. but then when i really, really think about it, i don’t think it would be worth it.

the other common cryptid feeling i have is the instinct to hide. i have this instinct with all my kintypes to some degree, but it’s most notable with this one — maybe bc i don’t have many other solid traits.

[vulpecular-draconic]

Hello! I'm a trans man who (as far as I'm aware) is not an alterhuman/therian/other, so I was wondering, is species dysphoria anything like gender dysphoria from your experience?

hi!! thanks for the ask! sorry it took me so long to answer, anon, i hope you’re still hanging around. it took me a while to figure out how to phrase this.

ok, so! for me, both species and gender dysphoria can be separated into two different categories: body and social. species also has a third category: mental dysphoria (not an actual term in the community, as far as i know, but it describes my experiences).

gender dysphoria 

body dysphoria

this dysphoria is concentrated on mainly three things; my chest, my voice, and rarely but occasionally my jawline. the first is the worst, but as long as i’m wearing the right clothes my chest usually doesn’t bother me enough to keep me from functioning. i plan to have surgery to change it. the second thing only bothers me when i’m Aware of my voice, which most of the time i’m not. i plan on taking voice training for that. the third bothers me so little that i don’t care to change it.

social dysphoria

this dysphoria is bad. i hate being called my assigned gender, and i hate people using my deadname and assigned pronouns. i didn’t used to think it was as intense as it is, but last year i had the opportunity to be fully out for a couple weeks in a place away from home, and coming back to being misgendered felt like a punch in my gut every time. 

species dysphoria

body dysphoria

this fluctuates wildly, both in intensity and the things it’s directed at. i usually have a few weeks where i feel phantom limbs and species dysphoria all the time, and then a few weeks where it’s hardly there. when it’s bad, it’s really bad. instead of a few specific traits that distress me, my whole body feels wrong, down to the bone structure. and there’s no way for me to realistically change it. it’s difficult to make your entire legs not be shaped like a human’s, y’know? minor species dysphoria is somewhat better; having claws can be achieved by buying wearable ones, fangs can be had by attaching costume accessories, incorrectly shaped pupils can be fixed by wearing fancy contacts. unfortunately i don’t currently have any of those items, but i could definitely get them in the future.

social dysphoria 

i don’t have this with species as badly as i do with gender. ideally, i would be treated as i normally am but while in a nonhuman body. except when my fae or cryptid ‘types are strong. when that happens, i usually want to have the social aspects associated with them — making bargains with humans, people being unnerved by me, things like that. i don’t think i get as much social dysphoria from my other kintypes.

mental dysphoria 

this one has no gender-y equivalent. it’s dysphoria over your thought patterns and knowledge level not being the same as that of your species’. i don’t think the same way i would if i was bodily a fae, or fox, or pocket dragon, or etc, and that can be distressing. during mental shifts (when thought patterns do seem to match more closely to that of your species), it’s still not exactly correct, and that’s quite frustrating. mental dysphoria is worst for me with my pocket dragon ‘type, since that mind is the most different from my usual mind. 

sometimes my gender intertwines with my species (becoming cryptidgender while also being a cryptid for example). the dysphoria doesn’t really change, just the identity thing i attribute it to.

i’d also like to mention my cecil palmer hearttype (a hearttype, in case you aren’t aware, means i identify *with* him rather than *as* him. he’s important to me and affects me in a way different from other fictional characters. i wish i was him, but i’m not). cecil gives me a LOT of gender envy, which is ironic considering he has no canon design. i have a sort of mental dysphoria towards him, in that i very much wish i knew what it was like to think the way he thinks, but it’s not distressing the way it can be for my kintypes.

so to conclude my answer: yes, my species dysphoria is similar to my gender dysphoria, but different enough to be distinct. i’d consider my species dysphoria worse on the whole, though.

[vulpecular-draconic]

although my phantom limbs haven’t been as strong/as frequent the last couple of months, i’ve still been thinking about my nonhumanity, and i’ve made a few discoveries!

first: the post i made about feeling more disconnected from humanity during this lull than normal and feeling like a changeling instead? i think i’ve figured out that “changeling” is my standard now. back when i first discovered alterhumanity, i did feel like a human, but i’ve slowly drifted away from that. now i’m at the point where when i’m not feeling like any specific kintype very strongly, my default is changeling.

which, speaking of, is subtly different than fae. i noticed that pretty soon after realizing they were ‘types, but i haven’t been able to articulate the difference until recently. the two are technically of the same species, but still different. when i’m feeling strongly fae it usually comes with at least a slight mental shift (and pearl fox phantom limbs, more on that in a sec), but feeling changeling is just… normal. my normal nonhuman brain. if someone came up to me and asked what species i am on an average day (and if being nonhuman was an accepted thing in society) then i would probably list “changeling” first.

my pearl fox kintype is intertwined with being fae/changeling. even if i’m not experiencing pearl fox phantom limbs, my natural inclination is to imagine my fae self with pearl fox features, or as a full-on anthro pearl fox. it goes the other way around too, where being more pearl-fox-ish leads me to feel more fae-ish.

a similar thing happens with cryptid and maned wolf (although usually not anthro there). cryptid itself is still mostly feelings and instincts based, and it can apply to many forms, but maned wolf-ish bodies fit it very well.

speaking of maned wolves — after questioning for a while, i think i’ll consider it a kintype? i’m still uncertain, but calling it a kintype seems most accurate.

i think i’ve mentioned how i am sometimes a shadowy being? that’s related to being cryptid, of course. the thing i’ve realized is that it’s probably an accidental otherlink. i started imagining myself as a shadowy being several years ago, way before i knew about alterhumanity. i chose things about it, so i know it was voluntary at the beginning. but after all this time it’s become a part of my identity. my connection to it fluctuates (like with all my kintypes), but i can’t drop it, and there’s some things i can no longer change about it.

OH. also! you know how i have “antlers” in my intro post, and how i say idk what they’re about? well i am very silly, because they are definitely related to being a cryptid as well as being a dragon. i don’t know how i didn’t realize it before. i usually get antler shifts the more cryptid i feel, and my dragon horns (at least on one of the dragon ‘types) are antler-ish. so yeah. very silly. i’m probably gonna remove them from my intro post soon

and not a discovery, but i’ve began working on a chart to explain my kintypes’ connections to each other, since it’s difficult to describe using words. i don’t know how long it’ll take.

…and i think that brings you up-to-date!