#tiercel talks

[tiercelgreen]

I am on my paws and knees begging folks to realize they don't have to be the world's most amazing writer ever to write! The alterhuman tags have been feeling really devoid and empty of a lot of the usual interesting essays lately and that makes me really sad! I love it when you all write! I love reading about the experiences of people! You also don't have to be interesting to write about yourself. Most people, I find, view themselves to be quite boring and are more fascinated with the lives of others. The reality of this is that you think you're boring because you've lived with yourself/selves your entire life! Of course you're going to seem mundane to yourself. But the secret is, nobody else is you. And no matter how utterly boring you find yourself or your thoughts or your particular relation to the alterhuman community I can assure you, you are interesting to others out there. Your voice DOES matter. Your thoughts and experiences DO have value. You ARE valuable. So please, please write. Please draw. Please share your experiences through literally whatever form you possibly can! I LOVE to read about everyone's unique experiences. Some of my favourite essays and writings out there have been from people who are so entirely and vastly different from myself that I could never have even conceived of the way they viewed things and how they experienced the world around them until I read about their experiences. Some of my favourite artworks are from people who's styles and preferences are wholly different from my own. I promise you, you do not have to be talented or skilled or amazing or perfect to create something of meaning and worth that revolves around your experience. Whether that be a handful of sentences attempting to verbalize a way you felt during a shift, or a several thousand word essay on your particular experience as a spiritual therian. Whether that be a simple pen scribble or a 16+ hour finished piece of work. Whatever it may be. It has meaning because you made it with your own digits with your own hands with your own claws and its yours. Please write.

[tiercelgreen]

Speaking on and thinking of primarily the active Police Dog Discourse but also other similar sentiments I have been seeing.

Hey. Hi. Yeah. White Alterhumans and Nonhumans. From another white alterhuman since y'all are apparently incapable of taking POC seriously when they say the same thing.

Your alterhumanity does not negate or erase your whiteness

Your nonhumanity does not negate or erase your whiteness

You are not exempt from benefitting from white privilege because you are not a human

Just because you aren't human doesn't mean you haven't been affected by and raised into spaces utterly saturated with the idea of white privilege, even if you can't actively see it. I am not begging you, I am telling you to examine yourself and your beliefs and how your identity may play into them.

This post is not directed towards any one person in particular. Rather towards a set of discourse as a whole. If you feel personally targeted or attacked by this post, take a moment to think about why that may be. And please for the love of Satan listen to POC members of our community, they're more knowledgeable on these subjects than I am and more readily able to point issues like this out and articulate why they are a problem. Do not only get your discourse opinions from white creators. This includes myself.

Have a lovely timezone

[tiercelgreen]

I wish the world we lived in was more accommodating of requests for shifts in language surrounding the way we refer to ourselves. By this I mean it shouldn't have to be a whole process to request someone use your name and pronouns and honorifics while calling them 'preferred' as if it's just a preference and not the only correct terminology for you. For example, I'd like it if species honorifics were more accepted. Don't want a Mr. or Ms. but Mx. and Mg. aren't exactly doing it for you either because it sounds too human? Consider. Drg. (Dragon), Cn. (Canine), Fl. (Feline), Fsh. (Fish), Av. (Avian), etc. etc. etc. It's not a necessary change at all but I think we should have the verbal freedom to request 'silly' stuff like species based honorifics if that's something that works for us. My own species based honorific, Tiercel (Tc.) I think is a good example of this. I don't necessarily think they need to be standardized into language, but I do think having them as an option is useful. I think standardization in a way is the death of creativity and self expression, even if it is helpful in the field of academics when it comes to making sure everything is legible and clear. Language has laws sure but what's to say we can't develop new linguistic forms within these laws or even create new laws. I understand that my view on honorifics is going to be coming from an English Speaking POV because that's my native language, and I won't attempt to create species based honorifics for any other languages, but I do think this concept can be applied to other languages given time and thought.

[tiercelgreen]

re:linguistics within the alterhuman community regarding physical therianthropy.

The constant adjustment of definitions and shifting of goalpoasts to broadly include every possible person is how words lose their meaning entirely. I get it, I understand, but the strive for perceived "legitimacy" within online spaces carved out for marginalized groups is sisyphean in nature. The boulder is going to fall back on you again when the linguistic goalpost inevitably shifts and now "physical therian" isn't considered the "most legitimate" way to be a therian. How long from that shift until we move into occupying CLCZ spaces and conversations again? How long until this community splits and we flip right back around to the side of discrediting physical experiences and calling them delusional in a way meant to be derogatory again, how long until we alienate everyone?

I understand the push for inclusive definitions and inclusive community, and I fundamentally believe that we can have that unified community that people look for, but constantly attempting to fit yourself into a box that isn't yours is not the way to do it. This is a layered issue.

It's okay to not be a physical therian. It's okay to not be a therian but be otherhearted or otherlink. It's okay to have your therianthropy be purely spiritual in basis in the same way it's okay to have it be mental, physical, or delusional. I promise I PROMISE you do not have to adopt a definition that isn't yours to be part of the community. But you cannot expect to be met with open arms when you continue to shove community members out of places they belong by trying to change the language that was built by themselves for themselves. By us. For us.

I am mentally, physically, and spiritually, nonhuman. My body and brain and soul are not human. And when I say that, I mean it. I, at this very moment, do not have the body of a human despite how it may look to those of you who perceive me from the outside. I am a Teratosoma. And I come to you to tell you that It is okay to not be exactly like me. And that you are welcome here.

Language has always changed, yes, but the fantastic thing about it is that we can simply make new terms if no existing ones actively fit. This has and will always be the case. We've been doing this for centuries and will continue to do so.

[tiercelgreen]

that's college for ya

lemme tell ya trying to speed write an essay about the interplay of scifi and fantasy elements in hellboy while unmedicated the day before it's due was NOT good for my dragon brain. unlocked a whole new level of fear and stress i can only imagine prey animals experience when being hunted.

[tiercelgreen]

My very big project is almost complete and so I've decided to give you all a little sneak peak of it! This is Teymareth, our pernese dragon headmate.

Some of you may be able to guess what this project is and I may have mentioned it in prior posts (or perhaps on my dreamwidth I don't remember) but it's near completion!

My absence was for reason, I will return with the finished product soon enough!

[tiercelgreen]

Having a satanic identity with christian parents is a distinctly uncomfortable state to live in. Barring any of their other thoughts about my nonhumanity i'm well aware if any of them found out I'm specifically a Nameless Ghoul, a demon summoned from the pits of hell to serve a satanic ministry, they'd lose their minds because everything I am goes against their perception of what is good and evil.

Now I am not claiming that "my christian parents hate my nonhumanity" is a unique experience, far from it. Many of us with traditionally christian families have to suffer through the knowledge that any amount of expressing our true selves means being told we're damned to hell or running the risk of being kicked out and ostracized from our own homes. I'm lucky in that regard, having an apartment I can live in and pay for of my own accord, but I understand not all are.

I'm specifically talking here about the fact that I Am A Creature Irreversably Bound To The Imagery Of Satan. The Devil. Lucifer. Whatever you call him. Do I actually believe he exists? That's.. complicated. I'd like to think I come from somewhere. But I don't know. I have my own religious beliefs but I don't necessarily think i'm the only correct one. But what I Am is bound to his particular image. And yet I still visit and take residence in a christian home for the holidays. I'm permitted under their roof because they do not know i'm a son of their enemy. So to speak. It feels weird.. they'd pray for my fall back to the pits if they knew what ate their food and laughed along with their jokes and slept in their beds. I feel like an infiltrator and I mask for safety. I guess that's my mask in this situation, not a literal one but putting on the secondary image of a normal child. It helps Azem can take over for me at times.

Reaching out to the broader demonkin community here I suppose with this post. I doubt this is a particularly unique experience but I want to hear from fellow hellspawn on this. Or anyone really. What's this been like for you?

[tiercelgreen]

Explaining my Alterhumanity

(with visuals) I have a slightly more concrete theory as to why my alterhumanity is the way it is, if you will all bear with me for a moment. Let's start with the soul. This, at least in accordance with my spiritual beliefs as a Finnish Pagan, is the average human soul.

Everyone and everything has one, no matter what or who it is. However, we're going to be talking about the human soul here to explain how my (alterhuman) soul deviates from it. The soul is split into Three Parts. The Henki, the Luonto, and the Itse.

The Henki is your lifeforce, your breath. You receive it the day you are born and lose it the day you die. To be without your Henki is to be dead. The Luonto is your Nature, your passions and hobbies and crafts, some of your personality. A Strong Luonto means a healthy, skilled, and strong-willed person, and a Weak Luonto means an unhealthy, unskilled, and weak-willed person. The Luonto, along with reflecting in one's physical state, is often considered to be a guardian of sorts and can leave you for a time if you do not tend to it. While it is not you, it is a VERY important part of you and affects nearly every aspect of you. Importantly, Luonto are often depicted as animals. The Itse is your Self, your identity. The Itse holds your personality, your core identity, and everything that makes up your selfhood, and is what travels to Tuonela or returns to life in a new form when one dies. The state of an Itse can ALSO affect one's physical form, as an Itse may leave or be cast from the body, which causes the health of the body to suffer immensely. Keep in mind that the Luonto and Itse affect the physical form of a being as we continue here. Bearing all the prior statements in our thoughts, this is how I believe MY soul looks.

I believe I have many Luonto and Itse that make up portions of my soul alongside my Henki, and that they all affect my Physical Form. I believe that due to my High Number Of Luonto And Itse, my body is Physically Inhuman, as no Human Body can remain human when has to contend with Multiple Aspects Of The Soul that have a Physical Effect. While a standard human may be able to handle having an animalistic Luonto (and even then, not all 'human' bodies can, there are so so many physical alterhumans), my body is no longer human (and may never have been) due to my soul being entirely nonhuman. In my case, Soul affects body, body does not affect soul.

['Human' (Current Base Body), Dragon(kin), Bittern(kin), Selkie (archetrope), Enderman(kin), Nameless Ghoul (Unknown)] Each new Itse or Luonto (I have not figured out exactly which is which just yet) that I discover physically affects my body, to the point where my very matter and makeup cannot be that of a human's, even if this body is perceived as a human to the average outside observer. Whoever merged all of my branching Itse and Luonto together also saw fit to make it so that I could not freely change between these forms (believe me I have TRIED), or perhaps that's just an unfortunate byproduct of trying to merge so many variants on one being into a single body and a single soul. Another byproduct of all my Itse and Luonto being in one body, is that we share a Henki. Once this body perishes, I believe all my parts will transfer together into whatever my next form happens to be. Do I think this explanation suffices for everyone? No, absolutely not, this is just how I view myself. A strange merger of spiritual and physical alterhumanity. TL:DR Soul's fucked up. I have a nonhuman soul which reflects physically on me and makes my body nonhuman.