(Otherkin + Headspace)

Stormy, 36, he/him or ey/em. My main is @dysasterism and I'm the heart and mind behind @your-bigender-big-brother. The art in my icon was made by astral-wings. It has been 0 days since I've seen alterhuman used as a synonym for nonhuman.

[the-otherspace]

Introduction Post!

Heya! My name is Stormy (he/ey) and I'm a system of two with one dormant headmate! (I'm the host.) I'm 36 years old, bigender, and dragonkin. See my Carrd for some info on what I do on the internet!

This is a space for me to talk about my plural and otherkin experiences with occasional doodles, random blurbs, and a few alterhuman-related short essays. I also do worldbuilding stuff.

My headmates are the Austin (he/him; he's dormant) and Avery (she/fae) who will make regular appearances, usually in doodles rather than through text.

Also, this blog has its own page on my Wiki here. Check out this document for an enormous alterhuman resource page!

I ask that KFFers and anti-endos please allow yourself to learn and grow before interacting. I'm not endogenic but I will always support them. I don't block too much on Tumblr because I always want people to have access to resources and content, but please be respectful and self-aware.

This is also a misanthropy-free space!

Tags I tend to use:

stormy.txt - text posts and comments

stormy.reblog - posts that are not mine

my art - artwork, typically otherkin and plural related

worldbuilding - spec bio stuff and conlangs (check out @mole-cats and @project--eclipse if you want to see specific projects)

alterhuman essays - essays about my alterhuman experience

space tag - I like space!

dinosaur tag - I like dinosaurs!

- 💙⚡️

[the-otherspace]

Kashet being really weird and awkward around humans.

[donutdrawsthings]

I was thinking of a pride art challenge people could do with their OCs, because I thought it'd be cute! A queer/trans artist with their creations.

but then I realised that same challenge would be infinitely more funny with folks who have atypical or horror OCs

[the-otherspace]

Okay, but I'm thinking maybe I should do this. Except I also might give everyone their own flag.

[the-otherspace]

Kashet using his good looks to get his way.

It's money. He's trying to get money.

[the-otherspace]

In color! The other centaur is unnamed. Just someone random.

[the-otherspace]

Kashet using his good looks to get his way.

It's money. He's trying to get money.

[the-otherspace]

Learning centaur anatomy by makin' 'em fuck all gay-like. Try to stop me.

[the-otherspace]

I need to practice drawing my two very gay clanless centaurs, so please send them some asks!

Your options are:

Kashet, a transsexual gay clanless centaur who is a self-identified nomad which makes people think he's crazy. He's hotheaded and egotistical, but has a sort of chameleon-like personality due to his contact with so many other sophonts.

Wau, an equally gay clanless centaur who lost his clan due to unfortunate events. Definitively not transsexual. He doesn't wander the nomad path and has never met Kashet. He's a fluffy sweetheart, and also kind of a nerd.

[the-otherspace]

Still accepting asks, though I'll probably continue drawing some lore-dropping snippets here and there anyway.

"Transsexual" was the closest thing I could think of to describe Kashet. I honestly have no idea what else a human would call it. He cut off his own spinnerets and decided not to be female anymore. In centaur terms, this is some kind of third gender, but I want him to be distinctly male because he's a self-insert and his idea of male-ness comes from his experience of being around so many aliens.

[the-otherspace]

More centaur face practice featuring a pretty bad full-body drawing of Kashet. I don't know how I feel about the two spots on his face because they get in the way of that weird bisection that goes down the face and I never know what to do with them when the feathers around them are all pricked up.

Also, his eyes are more of an indigo now.

[the-otherspace]

I need to practice drawing my two very gay clanless centaurs, so please send them some asks!

Your options are:

Kashet, a transsexual gay clanless centaur who is a self-identified nomad which makes people think he's crazy. He's hotheaded and egotistical, but has a sort of chameleon-like personality due to his contact with so many other sophonts.

Wau, an equally gay clanless centaur who lost his clan due to unfortunate events. Definitively not transsexual. He doesn't wander the nomad path and has never met Kashet. He's a fluffy sweetheart, and also kind of a nerd.

[the-otherspace]

I might use my AO3 account solely for writing centaur self-insert fanfics. I'm otherwise not using it at all. I forgot I even had it because I don't write fanfiction anymore (That was something I did around 2006-2009 on fanfiction.net.)

[the-otherspace]

It's ME.

No idea what to name him. I might workshop some names for this centaur and the other one I was working on. They will likely never meet each other, mostly because they live so far apart.

He's a Pahk/Chuchae mixed worker who split off from his clan and decided to become a self-identified nomad. It's not the smartest path in life but he sticks to the route and makes his way carefully around the loop in his own time. Maybe he stops by some towns to grab food and work menial temp jobs for quick cash before going on his way. Natural born nomads think he's insane.

Also, he's an eshik.

[the-otherspace]

Name: Kashet

Age: 36

Pronouns: he/him/his

Gender: Clanless eshik “worker”

Ethnicity: Pahk/Chuchae

About: Kashet is a mixed worker from the East Isthmus who split off from his clan and decided to become a self-identified nomad. It’s not the smartest path in life but he sticks to the route and makes his way carefully around the loop in his own time. He frequently stops by some towns along the way to grab food and work menial temp jobs for quick cash before going on his way. Natural born nomads think he’s insane and local clans won’t stop propositioning him for marriage.

His original clan was too large and he was often forgotten amongst his many, many siblings. Not to mention his decision to change sexes was met with mixed to negative reactions from within and outside the clan. He slipped away one day with a big bag of supplies and his pockets filled with various currencies to help him get by and for the past ten years, he’s been traveling the nomad loop at his own pace. Somehow he’s been lucky enough not to run into bandits or aggressive wildlife along the way, but part of that comes from his insistence to take the trip slowly and stop at a town every day or two. So far, he’s finished the journey around the continent twice.

[the-otherspace]

I originally wanted to have him be a sort of Kevin McCallister sort of character where he gets left behind and forgotten because he has WAY too many siblings within a large clan structure, but I also wanted to change it up and say that he was chosen as matriarch only to decline and cut off his own spinnerets. I'm not sure if that's the angle I'm going for just yet. I like the narrative of being forgotten and unimportant, especially if this is going to be a self-insert. I'm undecided!

More about him:

Kashet is level-headed from the outside but is prone to lashing out when he's stressed. He's standoffish and hates making close connections with others because he knows he'll feel even more alone once it's time for him to move on, so even something like friends is a no-go. Surviving on his own for so long has given him an inflated ego, which isn't the most attractive trait anyway. However, he still ends up using his good looks and his charm to get his way - usually by charging money for sexual favors.

He demands to be referred to as the closest thing to male in all languages and contexts, which is partly inspired by his contact with many different sophonts growing up. By human standards, he's a man. By avian standards, he's a bright. And so on and so forth (Don't even ask about bug ferrets.) Not everyone views him in this way, but he makes himself known when he needs to.

[the-otherspace]

Practicing faces. This shit is so hard. I don't know how I'm going to draw his full body.

[the-otherspace]

Centaur OC practice. There were so many awesome options for ethnic groups, but I went with a Daewirgh/Shess mixed ethnicity.

This is traced, yes. I often do that for anatomy practice. I don't take credit for making him look kinda awesome.

I wish I knew the heights of some of these groups, because I imagine him as short and somewhat stocky. He doesn't have a name yet because I'm not confident about making it sound convincing.

[the-otherspace]

[the-otherspace]

His name is Wau.

[the-otherspace]

He thinks he's invincible.

[the-otherspace]

It's ME.

No idea what to name him. I might workshop some names for this centaur and the other one I was working on. They will likely never meet each other, mostly because they live so far apart.

He's a Pahk/Chuchae mixed worker who split off from his clan and decided to become a self-identified nomad. It's not the smartest path in life but he sticks to the route and makes his way carefully around the loop in his own time. Maybe he stops by some towns to grab food and work menial temp jobs for quick cash before going on his way. Natural born nomads think he's insane.

Also, he's an eshik.

[the-otherspace]

Name: Kashet

Age: 36

Pronouns: he/him/his

Gender: Clanless eshik “worker”

Ethnicity: Pahk/Chuchae

About: Kashet is a mixed worker from the East Isthmus who split off from his clan and decided to become a self-identified nomad. It’s not the smartest path in life but he sticks to the route and makes his way carefully around the loop in his own time. He frequently stops by some towns along the way to grab food and work menial temp jobs for quick cash before going on his way. Natural born nomads think he’s insane and local clans won’t stop propositioning him for marriage.

His original clan was too large and he was often forgotten amongst his many, many siblings. Not to mention his decision to change sexes was met with mixed to negative reactions from within and outside the clan. He slipped away one day with a big bag of supplies and his pockets filled with various currencies to help him get by and for the past ten years, he’s been traveling the nomad loop at his own pace. Somehow he’s been lucky enough not to run into bandits or aggressive wildlife along the way, but part of that comes from his insistence to take the trip slowly and stop at a town every day or two. So far, he’s finished the journey around the continent twice.

[fiction-kinnie]

If fictionkin are welcome in otherkin spaces, treat us as such.

I've come across so many people who say "fictionkin are included in Otherkin" yet we're not treated as such by those same people.

The term "kinning" is used my fictionkin however is looked down upon by otherkin and when I've used it in a fictionkin post in an otherkin community, I get so much hate. I even had a post disabled for violating the guidelines in the official therian amino even though (at that point in time) there was no guidelines around the word kinning. Here is why it's an okay word to use.

A) kinning is a verb and verbs don't inherently imply that something is a choice as its the context that does. To give an example, if I choose to run that is a choice however if someone moves my legs and makes me run that is not a choice.

B) If kinning isn't an overall otherkin term, it's a fictionkin one and therefore is fine in that context.

The mere fact that it's at least a fictionkin term and I was shamed for it shows how fictionkin aren't treated as Otherkin.

Being treated as non Otherkin isn't isolated to one word. Posts I make about fictionkin in otherkin spaces often nitpicked however if I post the exact some post but change the words so it applies to non fictionkin Otherkin then it's not nitpicked.

I know that some fictionkin might not label themselves as Otherkin, however they cannot deny that fictionkin technically are under that umbrella. (choosing not to id as otherkin is valid).

I just want all fictionkin to not be looked down upon or seen as some side community when we shouldn't be.

[shadowfae]

"Kinning” is not a fictionkin term, it’s a wishkin term, and as another fictionkin I don’t want it anywhere near me. This might get a little angry. I’d apologize if I were sorry.

Fictionkin are under the umbrella. I wish we were better respected, yes, and we’re not. I wish we had our own spaces that weren’t infiltrated and mocked twenty-four-fucking-seven. But using wishkin terms and helping them make a mockery of us is not helping.

You can’t ask for respect and use words meant to mock everyone else in the same sentence. The words “kinning”, “kins”, “kinnies”, and all of that other nonsense is frowned upon for a reason. This is a serious subculture, and those words came directly from people making fun of us. Let me explain this, so you won’t get lost in the shorthand.

When we say those words imply it’s a choice, the full extent of what we mean sums up to: “Being fictionkind is not a fun roleplay or a joke, this is serious, we are serious, we do not appreciate people walking in and telling us we need to grow up and stop playing pretend, we do not appreciate people assuming we do it for fun, we do not appreciate people coming in and using our terms to play pretend for fun and insisting they know more about our subculture than we do. We not appreciate people using our terms and our community to start cults and abuse actual members of our community, until we’re divided and trying to make anything coherent enough for more than a clique is downright impossible.”

This whole ‘kinnie’ / ‘kinning’ thing is wishkin, also called tumblrkin because tumblr made it a hell of a lot worse than it was. I’ve seen kinnie cults, okay? I had a nasty run-in with one a couple of years ago, and I am dead fucking serious when I say five people almost died because of it. Five people almost died, and I was one of them. And one guy almost had his life ruined and pressed for charges. Because one megalomaniac of a person realized he could control others by weaponizing his trauma and dressing it all up in fictionkind terms and social politics until he had us all ensnared. Because he didn’t start the scary shit until I thought we were practically family, and he was very good at justifying his actions and manipulating people into believing him.

That was the kind of person he was. And he’s far from the only one. I have seen so many damaging, downright terrifying cults come out of kinnies and their ilk it’s not even funny. And while you can make the argument that it’s the people, not the tools, I’ll tell you something.

This community - or at least, what’s left of the actual fictionkind community - has sworn up and down for years that your journey of introspection and questioning is a solo fucking journey. You don’t let your canonmates dictate your experiences. You stand your ground if you get grilled. Every few months posts go ‘round explaining what cults are, resources to help people get out of them, and the fact that everyone knows everyone and largely, actual fictionkind on tumblr tend to be in their late 20s early 30s. That shit isn’t tolerated.

Kinnies took our terms and our experiences, twisted them into a mockery, and used them for a power trip. They didn’t ask, they didn’t try to learn better, they didn’t do anything but dig their heels in and insist it’s all okay. It’s not. It makes a mockery of me, it makes a mockery of everyone like me, it destroyed and is still destroying one of the few places I feel safe to exist in. And oh, I don’t get to feel safe in that anymore, because I’m constantly looking over my shoulder wondering if this’ll get taken away, too.

Kinnies took the fictionkind community and gutted it. It’s no wonder we aren’t respected as much as we used to. Kinnies made it damn well clear that we can’t be respected, because unless you’re fictionkind and been in the community a while, you can’t fucking tell a real fictionkind from a kinnie. I don’t blame them for painting us all from the same brush. I only wish that one day, all the kinnies fucking leave or we manage to drive them out, and we can go back to being respected.

Because to a point, we were. The Queen Elf’s Daughters and the Silver Elves - both theriomythic, and some downright Tolkein fictionkind! - started the whole otherkin scenario as we know it. They’re credited for kickstarting this wonderful, wild place. I’ve spoken to members of the Silver Elves. I’ve researched them, I found them on academic websites (I have so many academic papers on my extended drives, it’s not even funny), I’ve started learning how they differ from everyone else because they kind of fucked off elsewhere and I won’t deny, for lack of a better term, I want to know what we’d be like if we were never found by the greater world.

I’m sick of kinnies. I’m sick of people saying “oh I’m kinning this” when they mean they have a passing interest in having a faceclaim. I’m sick of asking “And how many centuries deep are your wounds, and do you still howl at the moon?” and instead of getting “Eight, and I never did, but here’s my recreation of a recipe I had six hundred years ago using ingredients I have when 95% of them were unique to my world, have a taste and I’ll tell you how we got this dish,” I get “Hahaha it’s not that serious, shouldn’t you be in a psych ward?”.

I want to have proper ass discussions. I want to discuss where faceclaims are important, how roleplay actually affects your identity, how transhumanism has changed over history, how the internet has aided or failed us. I want to see where the divide of copinglinking and otherkin is, where it’s important, where it’s not. I want the words “I’m fictionkind” to fall from my lips without fear.

You are not helping. You are using incorrect terminology that’s most often used to mock, divide, and destroy us (and by us I mean fictionkind), and you’re telling me it’s okay because... Why, exactly? Because you can ignore nuance and the fact most fictionkind fucking hate those terms because you personally think it’s okay? Because you’re one person and your voice is somehow louder than the hundreds who mock us? Because I’m supposed to actually know that it’s friendly fire, coming from a stranger, when you’re still stabbing me? If it walks like a duck and quacks like one, it’s a fucking duck, and someone telling me it’s okay to use the knives of the enemy the exact same way sounds an awful lot like an enemy themself.

Go on. Tell me again it’s a term fictionkind use. Tell me again it’s totally okay, because it’s you. I’ll promise to at least try to pretend I believe you.

[anoldlilbat]

does like...

no one remember that "kinnie" was coined by an anon on only-on-tomblr like two years ago? like that is the source. a troll/ hate blog that was dedicated to spreading misinformation about otherkind and fictionkind. if their blog isn't deactivated it'll still be on there somewhere.

[shadowfae]

Pepperidge farm remembers.

[unseelie-vexation]

I've been in the overall Otherkin community for 11 years now.(therian, otherkin and fictionkin) And while wishing and role players have always been an issue it's never been so bad where I see *Corporate fucking brands on Twitter* use the phrase Kinning and post their "kinnie list" to thousands of followers.

Kinning/Kinnie was a term created by a troll and largely upheld by people roleplaying or trying to start fandom war bullshit. It's not valid. At all. It's not apart of ANY of the alter human communities and has done nothing but continue to make our communities a mockery to people on an even wider scale than EncyclopediaDramatica and the like ever did.

[shadowfae]

I did not hear about that Twitter incident, but I beg of you, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.

It does demonstrate the point rather well, though.

[aestherians]

Minor correction/addendum: One of the "founding groups", so to speak, was called the Elf Queen's Daughters (the EQD), not the Queen Elf Daughters. None of these folks identified with any fictionkind or fictionkind-adjacent labels, and to my knowledge none of them were charater-specific. Several of them were, however, of fictional species, such as Hobbits and Tolkien Elves.

Another "founding group" that was favorable towards fictional species was Alt.Fan.Dragons (Alfandra), in which dragons from Pern were accepted as members.

Also, "kinnie" was not coined by the only-on-tomblr anon. The earliest usage I've found of the word was in a post making fun of the kin community, trivializing the harassment we've faced over the years by comparing antikin sentiments to transphobia. Here's a link.

[the-otherspace]

It's ME.

No idea what to name him. I might workshop some names for this centaur and the other one I was working on. They will likely never meet each other, mostly because they live so far apart.

He's a Pahk/Chuchae mixed worker who split off from his clan and decided to become a self-identified nomad. It's not the smartest path in life but he sticks to the route and makes his way carefully around the loop in his own time. Maybe he stops by some towns to grab food and work menial temp jobs for quick cash before going on his way. Natural born nomads think he's insane.

Also, he's an eshik.