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@tiercelgreen
Welcome to my Den!
I'm Tiercel Green aka Obsidian Ghoul. Irish American part-time illustrator, full time Nameless Ghoul, and host of the Quintessence System. Here's where you can find a bit about us and what we do! VERY LONG LIST INCOMING
front question
wonder if others feel pressure in head based on front .
main front pressure is always present , but others conditional . can communicate with anyone regardless of if front or not , so proximity determine where pressure is . and yes , someone far enough back literally feel like pressure in airspace behind head .
for kossai none of this is especially intense or painful , genuinely tune out main front pressure most of time . hellsbands also get pressure , but say all above head - think that difference is neat ! wonder if that also speak to front mechanisms of both this court and hellsbands' legion respectively , and if other collectives have similar thoughts .
We don't actively feel pressure so much as we do a tingling or presence. Using similar colors, this is sort of how it feels for us when we're front/cofront/observing.
Our observers feel like they're "behind" us in a way so we habitually roll our eyes back or look "behind" us when speaking with them.
I've never understood the hyper empathy approach to other animals and how humans are villainized for killing animals. Animals will literally kill and eat each other, they aren't more morally "pure" than humans are. I promise you that the coyote eating roadkill has no empathy for the roadkill, they are just trying to survive and reproduce like every other living organism.
Please stop applying human empathy onto animals, human morals don't apply to animals.
Now, this isn't to say to not be sad at an animal's death, it's a totally normal and okay reaction to have. But don't villainize humans who hunt other animals to survive, they are as much a part of the ecosystem as we are. Humans are animals, they are also a part of nature.
EDIT: I would also like to add on that a lot of anti hunting stuff does stem from classism, especially in rural communities where hunting is deeply tied to the culture, lifestyle and history of the location.
Not to mention that a lot of folks generalize humans and human activities (which is extremely racist on so many levels) humans may all be the same species but they are a diverse species with many different cultures and ideologies, don't assume that humans are all the same western stereotype of a hunter
not every mutual fits neatly into an archetypal medievalism but there are some mutuals that im like yeah addressing you as “my liege” would come strangely naturally
what mutual is prev
my liege lord
my loyal knight
my wise wizard
my evil advisor
my brother in arms
my lady muse
my wild mermaid friend
my fellow alchemist
my dashing rapscallion
my monstrous foe
We really need to acknowledge the problem of bug centered blogs being regular victims of harassment. Can you imagine running a blog about horses and having to get comments and messages every day about how much their hatred and needless killing of horses is justified and that you're a psychotic vegan that hates people with phobias and wants humanity to die of disease. Every single day. We should not have to fucking put up with this, fix your hearts genuinely
What do you do once the Hype is over?
Something that is a constant point of talk in the Alterhuman community is "Where are the Elders at?" "Why don't Elders post as much anymore?"
And as someone who's been in the community for over 10 years now, I distinctly remember thinking "Hah, that'll never be me. I love posting about my alterhumanity" But low and behold, I've kinda fallen off from posting daily. Heck its a miracle if I make a post once a month! Sure I lurk around the tags and forums. I'm active in the comments at least. But I've definitely noticed my presence in the community falling to the back burner.
So I'm calling all "Elders" and "Greymuzzles"
Go ahead and pick a couple of questions from the following and answer them (or answer them all, I'm not a cop) vvvvvv
What are some ways that you still struggle with Alterhumanity?
What are some Alterhuman Success stories you have? (Whether it be finding a neat hack for dealing with species dysphoria or a fun affirming encounter you had such as coming out to a friend)
What are some lessons that you've learned after all these years?
What are some writings that you've done that you think are still relevant now? (feel free to link to them!)
What are some major differences in what the community was like when you discovered it vs how it is now?
How did you deal with the "Hype" of discovering your Alterhumanity wearing off?
What have you learned from the newest generation of Alterhumans? Feel free to tag people, respond directly to this post, or to make your own post!
Hello! Haven't been in the actual online community very long but I've been aware of and actively engaging with my alterhumanity for 10 years at this point. To answer some questions!
1. I still struggle a lot with my alterhumanity namely in that I feel like I'm acting too human a lot of times! While I believe myself to be nonhuman down to a physical level, the fact that I still have to walk around mimicking a human routine and doing human actions can be pretty distressing. I catch myself feeling and thinking "I'm not even a human I shouldn't have to do this I could just run away right now." quite often, but less so than I did when I was in my teens. Especially early teens.
There is also an ever present worry that I've made it all up even though I've been reminded again and again by everything about my life that I absolutely am not. I don't know if it will go away, but it's gotten much easier to ignore.
2. This is more of an Adult Money Can Be Used For Goods And Services type deal but I got a human sized dog bed and set myself up a den with a nest inside of it beneath my bed so that I have a comfortable, dark, and cozy place to relax and hide away when I'm feeling stressed out and unable to function around others. My roommate very much so understands as he is a dog in some way, and so he's very supportive overall of my lack of human behavior and need for space.
3. Don't worry about it. It's very basic advice but it's the one I stick to the most closely. Constant worry and examination of your own identity will only lead to more doubt and distress in the long run. While I do participate in a bit of discourse from time to time and generally encourage people to use the correct definitions and terminology, I am not the identity and microlabel police. If that's what works for you, good on you, but please don't feel pressured to attempt to label and explain away every aspect of your identity. Also, Write. Please write. I already have a whole post detailing this but please write about your experiences. We lose out on hearing the voices of our whole community if they refuse to speak.
4. My neocities holds all my essays I think are relevant and some that are outdated but I keep up for posterity and archival reasons. I actively encourage anyone who may read this to keep a Neocities, Dreamwidth, Strawpage, Carrd.co, etc. About themselves.
5. In a way I feel the community now is both more open and less policed/harshly restrictive towards new members. I remember the 2000-2010s Period in which every new member was holding up Thorn of Therian Territory as their primary source of advice and the older community had reactively closed off in response to the very unflattering and rude portrayal of Naia Ōkami in the documentary she featured in as well as the rise of "therian" documentaries that depicted our community as being weird and cringe which in turn encouraged folks on tumblr to begin making otherkin and therian cringe posts. (Take this with a grain of salt. I was born in the early 2000s. I mostly experienced the 2010s aspect of this which had a huge uptick in bullying over youtube.)
We were policing the community out of a need to protect our own. And while there is certainly less now, I think we may fall back into a level of gatekeeping with the uptick of bullying on tiktok and us being present in the news now. I don't think we'll ever be allowed the same level of privacy and secrecy that we once had again, but I fear we may repeat ourselves out of perceived necessity.
I enjoy, genuinely, how open this community is. But between the misuse of terminology that's been around for ages, the attempted re-coining of some terms by certain individuals or the coining of new terms for experiences we already have words for (ie. The whole "Faunaluna" situation that went down on Tiktok late last year/earlier this year.) or the rise in folks claiming others are "larping" their alterhumanity, I think we may backslide into restrictive attitudes again if we cannot handle these with grace.
6. All that was exciting will eventually become mundane. I did feel disappointment and disconnect after the "wow" of discovering my alterhumanity wore off, but through keeping up with myself(selves) and engaging with my nonhumanity in little ways each day I've been able to keep that connection. Through how I dress, speak, act, eat, make art, etc. This is how I stay connected.
I also remind myself (and others) that it is well ant truly ok to feel disconnected some days. It will happen. Be gentle and kind to yourself.
7. I think from our newest generation I've rediscovered a bit of the spark I used to have back around when I was a similar age. Which again, not very long ago, but so much has changed. The emphasis on gear and masks and quads especially, and I do love the crafty part of our community.
My biggest takeaway really has been freedom of self expression. I think the newest generation of alterhumans is spectacular at being individuals and displaying that through everything they do and every space they occupy. And I really do think we can take their propensity towards individuality and adopt it for ourselves.
One thing im uncomfortably woke about is bugs. And im actively trying to get more uncomfortably woke. By this i mean i DO believe the normalised fear of bugs stems from both government and business propaganda. The start of household pesticide sales coinciding with the boom in insect related horror movies. The promotion of anti intellectualism and anti enviromentalism. If you're scared of bugs, you wont care about saving them. If you dont care about saving them, you wont care about saving our home, since without bugs it cannot be saved. If you dont care about saving our home, the rich can do whatever they want with the chunks of it they continue to destroy.
I WILL calmly and kindly try to help anyone who is afraid of bugs. I will show them my finds, i will explain their importance, i will tell them just how sweet and gentle and friendly they are. And I WILL shoot down any immature loser who believes senseless killing is the only possible response to not liking something.
Get woke. Love bugs.
EDIT: this breached containment. My usual like count is like 5 😭 i want to clarify i mean people who conflate fear with hate are the ones who wont care about saving our planet, like people who threaten to kill peoples pet bugs or actively kill bugs outside for no apparent reason. Not people who run away from a bee.
A partial history of plural self-advocacy
Plural self advocacy is exactly what it says on the tin: plurals taking control of our own lives and being in charge of how we’re represented. It’s what happens when we speak for ourselves instead of letting singlet academics do it for us. Plural self advocacy has a long history that stretches before the existence of the internet, and it has made a difference. Here are some notable milestones, and what they’ve done for us.
1987ish: Truddi Chase is giving interviews (x, x, x), very openly insisting that her headmates are real people and that integration is not a solution for them.
February 1989: The first issue of Many Voices is published. This newsletter for and by trauma survivors with dissociative disorders is likely one of the first places that plurals could speak about their experiences on their own terms. It would run for over 20 years until 2012, when it was bequeathed to the ISSTD so that the issues could be made publicly available.
1993: Richard P. Kluft’s ‘Clinical Perspectives on Multiple Personality Disorder’ mentions Truddi Chase’s outspokenness against integration, disdainfully. ‘Some perceive the alters as real people’, it says. This paints a clear picture of how multiplicity was perceived at the time.
1995: Astraea’s web is created. This site continues to be one of the biggest plurality resources out there, and Astraea themselves have had a wide reach in plural activism - they’ll come up several more times in this article. They have curated a wide selection of sources on early accounts of plurality, plural involvement with legal issues, and the struggle against psychiatric abuse by all kinds of neurodiverse people, not just plurals.
1998: The Vickis begin to compile experiences of the ‘midcontinuum’, giving us the first terminology to describe median experiences. This is also, as far as we’re aware, the origin of ‘plural’ as an umbrella term.
2001?: darkpersonalities publishes ‘why we are not MPD/DID’, generally regarded as the first known instance of a system explicitly separating themselves from the ‘disorder’ definition. The empowered multiplicity movement grows from this. While many people take a cynical, bitter view towards people who still identify with their diagnosis, it begins to be associated with more sympathetic stances as it develops (x, x, x). Many of us look back disapprovingly on darkpersonalities’ attitude towards triggers and survivorship, but their role was still foundational to the concept of empowered multiplicity.
2002: Tim Bayne writes on the moral defensibility of forced integration, laying out a grounded philosophical argument for considering non-host plurans autonomous people. It’s unknown what influenced him to write this paper, or whether any plurals were consulted.
2002?: The activist group Pavilion is formed. Their activities include outreach towards mental health professionals and academics, interviewing for radio stations, creating informational pamphlets and compiling resources for plurals and interested singlets.
2003: Matt Ruff, author of Set This House In Order, acknowledges Astraea and a plural friend-of-a-friend for introducing him to natural plurality and the idea that plurals don’t have to integrate, inspiring his book.
2011-2013: The Coalition for DSM-5 Reform writes launches a campaign to urge the DSM taskforce to change much of the proposed writing. This gets a lot of attention from plurals, and as such the DSM-5 revises its definition of DID to include distress/impairment, and for the first time accepts the self-reporting of plurality as valid evidence (x, x). It’s worth noting that this is an incredibly small step - as Astraea’s web says, ‘It was not proposed because therapists are beginning to recognize that non-disordered multiplicity exists; it was proposed in order to accommodate members of cultures and races where being more than one person is contextually normal.’ But it’s a step, nonetheless, that begins to recognize that plurals are the ultimate authorities on our own experiences of ourselves.
May 11, 2015: VICE interviews systems including Astraea and Oure Gaiya for a piece questioning if plurality is always a disorder.
2016: The plurality playbook is published internally at Google. It covers advice for plurals on succeeding in the workplace while dealing with the specific challenges that plurals face, and advice for singlets on respecting and assisting their plural coworkers.
January 18th, 2019: The Double Gears system (well known at the time as streamer and speedrunner protomagicalgirl) disclose their plurality on Hbomberguy’s DK64 stream for Mermaids. The hashtag #pluralgang trends on Twitter as a result, encouraging many people on twitter to come out as plural and many more to realize they’re plural by being introduced to the concept for the first time. #pluralgang has been a consistently active hashtag for the year since its inception and continues to be used to share resources, organize meetups, promote activism and generally remind plurals that they’re not alone.
The plurality playbook is also publicly published around now. In the new foreword, the Lizzes cite the activity surrounding #pluralgang as their motivation for this.
March 2019: The first Plural Positivity World Conference is held. It was created as a counter-conference to the one hosted annually by the ISSTD. The fees for attending the World Congress on Complex Dissociation and Trauma start at $200 for just one day, making attending near-impossible for the lay person. As the Crisses put it, “The ISST-D holding meetings, disseminating information, creating policy, teaching new standards for treatment, discussing new options, or sharing their research findings about us should not be done in a place that by design excludes us.” The Plural Positivity World Conference will run again in 2020.
December 25th, 2019: Power to the Plurals announces The Plural Association, a peer network for plurals which intends to provide phone, email and live chat helplines.
To this day, the overwhelming majority of plural activism has happened outside of the medical model. Improvements in the treatment of plurals have come from us being seen as people, and singlets seeing us as people has come from us viewing ourselves that way - by making spaces for us to understand ourselves and create narratives that aren’t bounded by pathology. Even changes within psychiatry have mostly been motivated by pressure from plurals demanding fairer treatment. It is good, and necessary, for us to speak for ourselves. We have done so much, and still have so much more to do.
This month’s article was written by Joey, one of our community mods and volunteers, and voted on by our Patrons. You can write for us by applying through our volunteering page, and decide what ideas we tackle by pledging $5 or more a month.
I made a sort of diagram to try to explain the connection of my kins with one another, as well as a timeline to when they happened, and their origin. This may change with time (identity is fluid and ever changing).
heart-shaped sunglasses (a two-faced god's remorse)
Flowers blooming in still-pink lungs,
stars and
iridescent eyes with flicker-long lashes
blinking up and down my arms, I -
I should have seen this coming a long time ago.
Life on earth
was barreling towards me like a freight train.
I clipped my wings.
I ripped away the spindly black crown
affixed to my skull.
I traded plush velvet pillows
and a stomach full of gold coins
for green box hair dye and a computer screen.
The angels are gone.
The angels are gone.
My only friends are long, long gone.
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.
I just realized that many many people have jobs
Rb with your job, wtf do you people do while offline???
How would you describe a dragon to someone who has never seen a dragon?
"Horse but make it a lizard and give it bat wings and horns"
didnt know how to interpret "make it a lizard" so i wrote lizard and drew an arrow pointing to the horse so people know its a lizard. Also didn't know what bat horns were so I gave it a horned bat nose
"A body like a big cat but completely covered in scales, the head of a crocodile with the horns of an ibex, and the wings of a bat on its back"
On it boss o7, ive mashed all these animals together and threw scales all over it. This the dragon you saw?
"Take a lizard, extend the neck. Add a pair of bat wings to the back. Add horns and sharp teeth."
Seems like we're onto somethin' boss! Though idk how it'd be so fearsome bein such a small thing.
"Big-ass lizard with wings" "big lizard" "Giant lizard" "Big fucking lizard"
don't seem too special?
"Imagine a winged alligator that was 70 feet tall and aware of its existence"
i dont know if this is a dragon but it could definitely be some kind of god
"Dinosaur with wings and horns?"
Dunno which dino you were talkin about so i just picked a random one. Stegosauus :}
"Big snake with legs and horns that can breathe fire"
Ah. Hm.
"A dragon is like a tree, in that it's a made up category for a broadly similar type of mythological creature that has no relationship to other dragons, but you know a dragon when you see one the way you know a tree when you see one."
this is literally exactly like medieval bestiaries. a description which was game-of-telephoned out of an ancient account from somebody who might have seen the animal in question, being misinterpreted by an artist who has not seen it
Filtering proship, antiship, problematic media, etc. and any tags related to shipcourse— I’m tired of ship discourse somehow finding its way to my dash despite having never touched it on this blog. Oh my days. Everybody, become less involved in each other’s fandom activity PLEASE.
Humpback whales breaching: gorgeous, majestic, graceful, embodies all the strength and beauty of the ocean
Minke whales breaching: I will launch myself out of this ocean like a f***ing surface-to-air missile to seek and destroy my enemies
I remember an interview with a guy that did the camera work for nature documentaries and he said that baleen whales like these guys were the scariest things to shoot because “They’re the size of a train, they can suddenly appear out of nowhere in dark or murky water and they don’t make a goddamn sound. I was absolutely sure that one of them was going to hit me and well, ‘that’s all folks!’. Gave me a lot of perspective on how I handle myself when filming smaller animals now.”
Fin whales breaching: sea serpent
levitating minke whale
Sperm whale breaching: wjaht the fuck
I have a feeling I have already shared this, but please, take the contribution of the northern right whale dolphin.
The humble eyebrow
self reblogging cuz i added image ID and also im already seeing all the hashtag NotAllMisanthropes mfs crawling out the woodwork
I'd like to state on record that just because someone has a long list of kintypes/hearttypes/paratypes etc. and does not actively talk about some does not mean they are any less important. Nonhumanity is a fairly boring thing sometimes all things considered, and there isn't an awful lot to talk about! For instance, under the bounds of my pencorpus I hold a nonphysical harpy kintype. Now While I do believe this is partially a result of my physically being a member of Botaurinae (bitterns), It holds its ground as a singular identity as well which bars it from falling under the classification of paratype the way that many other aspects of my pencorpus do. Ie. My mountain coyote paratype that only ever shows up in the context of my dragon kintype, my Salt Marsh Moth paratype that only ever shows up in the context of my 17 Year Cicada hearttype, My unicorn paratype that only ever shows up in the context of my Hiisi and skogsrå kintypes. The purposes of my categorization [plenanima, pencorpus, intusorbita] is so that I can broadly classify my various alterhuman identities into specific little baskets that allow me to place an equal weight onto every identity within a given category all at the same time. Just because I do not mention something much/ever doesn't mean it isn't still there and doesn't matter deeply to me. There's just an awful lot going on all of the time and I don't always have the time to talk about each piece of my being separately! Especially in tandem with being a system of nearly 20 members! We're a very very complicated guy!
