shadedhollow
nights/hollow | he/they/it | alterhuman sideblog of nightbody | icon from antiqueanimals
223 posts
Latest Posts by shadedhollow
current shifts
a) occasional short shifts of a unidirectional airway. air going in through nostrils on my face and going out through nostrils on my torso just under the ribcage.
b) toon-like shifts brought on by certain hedgehog media. loose, almost rubber hose. those are always fun, and always weird.
Alterhuman is an umbrella term, not a synonym!
Nowadays, I see a lot of folks using alterhuman as a catch-all for not being human. While nonhumanity certainly falls within alterhumanity, alterhumanity does not exclusively refer to species nor is it synonymous with nonhuman identities (ex: therianthropy).
Alterhumanity includes but is not limited to:
Fictionfolk: An umbrella term that encompasses all individuals of fictional origin or hold a personal connection to fiction. This includes fictionkind, fictives, fictionhearted individuals, folks with fictional hearthomes, imagithropes, etc.
Otherhumans: Individuals whose species is human but not in context to humanity as we see it in its current state. Some examples include human fictionkind and archaeosapient early humans or neanderthals.
Heartedness: A broad experience in which an individual may not identify as someone or something, but has a deep, personal connection with that person, place, or thing. This includes folk who are otherhearted/otherkith/synpaths, talehearted folk, and folk who have hearthomes (fictional or not).
Archetropy: An identity in which one heavily identifies with or generally experiences an archetype, trope, or pre-established character model in a way that is central to their identity.
Plurality: The state of more than one person within a body. That said, not all who are plural may relate their plurality to alterhumanity.
Dæmonism: The practice of communicating with one's internal dæmon, a thoughtform stemming from one's subconscious. A dæmon is also given a sentient form, typically a nonhuman animal of sorts. Can be considered as a form of plurality but depends on the individual and their relationship to their dæmon(s).
Soulbonding: A practice in which an individual forms a personal bond or connection to a fictional character and communicates with them from their headspace or soulscape. Can be considered as a form of plurality but depends on the individual and their relationship to their soulbond(s).
Furry Lifestylers: A subset of the furry community whose position in the subculture carries into their daily life. Some members have described it as "furry as a way of life", in which being a furry is inseparable and intrinsic to oneself.
I have alterhuman terms of my own to take into account as well:
Archaeosapiens: Individuals whose alterhuman identity is intrinsically rooted in prehistory, antiquity or mythic accounts of history. Although I don’t use it for myself anymore, I can say as the person who coined it that species is not central to archaeosapience; it is the distinct connection to one’s time that’s central. Anyone of any species can be archaeosapient.
Ontoplanarity: In referral to ontoplanar, which describes individuals who originate from planes and realities outside of this Earth. While one could relate this term to alienkind and spacekind, ontoplanar focuses one’s own point of origin rather than one’s species. In that regard, anyone of any species can be ontoplanar.
There’s also human alterhumans who aren’t specifically otherhumans. The idea that humankind as we know it is completely alienated from alterhumanity is a misconception, likely tying into the assumption that “alterhumanity = nonhumanity”.
I originally discussed this in the Alterhuman (Tumblr) Community but I felt as though I should make this information publicly available, especially with how the term has been sifting around lately. I’m not the first to bring this up, far from it even. If anyone who’s learned something from this wants to know more, here’s some posts to check out:
The finalized coining of the term Alterhuman/AHPI (x)
Aster’s discussion on alterhuman as an umbrella, particularly its conflation with otherkin (x)
Rani’s discussion on umbrella terms in the community, addressing erasure in folks’ usage of both alterhuman and fictionfolk (x)
Rani’s explanation on the difference between nonhuman and alterhuman as terms (x)
A thread of terms and experiences that tie into the alterhuman community (x)
I understand being excited to find a community that speaks to you. We’ve all been there!
That said, inclusive language is important. Even more so when the terms we use were already inclusive to begin with.
I think the best example I’ve seen to address this phenomenon is Aster’s example referring to queer and its usage. Queerness is vast. It is not synonymous with one specific experience in the LGBTQ+ community. That much is understood online.
In the same vein, alterhumanity is just as vast. It is not synonymous with nonhumanity, be it therianthropy or otherwise. It can be alienating for your peers to see it centralized as that experience alone. Alterhumanity is an ocean of possibilities and perspectives that should be recognized alongside nonhumanity. I encourage folks to look at it in full, if not use terms that specifically highlight what you experience instead of framing alterhumanity as only that experience.
Paradox of perspectives
An essay about a variety of my arthropod experiences, and how I go about linking / provoking temporary cameo shifts.
I do not talk about my arthropod experiences much. I am arthropod-hearted, that much is very blatant about me from what I study to how I spend my time and what I love to read about.
I do not consider myself a spider. I could have. A lot of my experiences line up with the average therian; I feel shifts, I've felt phantom limbs, once or twice, similarly few to how my bird phantom present themselves when I don't coax them out, I've had a similar "rightness" to some kinds of spiders (and a few other arthropods) that roadrunners, and things that look like roadrunners, elicit in me. However, I am not a spider. I'm a few feet to the left of being a spider, and if I squint and tilt my head, perhaps I could have been one, or perhaps have been and that's a bit of leftover from that time past, if souls exist, but I am not one, not in the way I am a bird. And while I would choose to have feathers if I could, I am fine with now observing spiders as a separate entity to myself, more than a reflection of what I should be.
However I still know what it feels like, to be a spider. In fact, it is from this experience that I started to amuse myself to see if I could also provoke shifts from other arthropods I enjoyed learning about, a stepping stone into shapeshifting as a amateur hobby. I'm not sure in what box to display that spider. Not a kintype. Not a linktype, as it is the only one of my arthropod experiences that was not voluntary. A little bit more than what's typically expected of a heart-type. If I got fancy, I could call it an antea-type, a past life still leaving a mark, but I am not very spiritual, so that feels shallow as well. I suppose it will stay "the spider".
There's few arthropods around. Not none, I've talked to a few, most notably a cockroach, a few moths, a few wasps, at least one centipede, and a variety of chimeric insectoid monsters. A few spiders, as well I think, but never enough to compare my experiences to. I've found it unsatisfying, to try and seek out arthropod experiences, as a lot of it tends to simply stay in the clear water of the experience : rudimentary "i looked at that picture, and it felt right", or "i felt wings, and it was similar to a moth". Not that it's a bad, incorrect way to experience it, but it doesn't tend to leave my curiosity sated. So here are all the notes I've had about being a variety of arthropods, from my spider, to the ones I shed into to my leisure, to others like me who like unnecessarily long descriptions of Being.
First of all, title drop. Why a paradox of perspective? To me, the red line between all earthen arthropods (and affiliate) I've been is that alien feeling. Yet the world very much is not! It is all things I can still interact with, still find if I try. Noemata of being a spider involve a complex, labyrinthine world of crossing shadows and movement. Noemata of being an endoparasite involve warmth and pulsating rhythm. The centipede was mostly touch and speed and grasp in lush-moist hidden places. When I try to depict them, to a human scale, I easily end up with fantastical worlds. The rotten vale of Monster Hunter, for the filarial worms that migrate through the body. More decayed, but I feel in it that pulsating warm rhythm, although perhaps there are better analogues. Pandora and it's web of vegetation are a human-sized version of any small woods, when you're a half a centimeter long predatory beetle. Being something so small does feel alien, when I am now part of the megafauna. Every snapshot I get, when applied to human size, becomes gargantuan and unfathomable to see on earth.
Maybe that's one reason why they're so rare. How do you realize you were something so small, when it feels so grandiose. It's hard to drop to your knees, angle your eyes, and realize your Yggdrasil was never even the biggest of it's kind. It is why I love becoming insects, though. It has a way of making you treasure the small.
When it comes to being a spider, I can only approximate. I have not chosen, so I must piece back what I was given. It was also shared with a long gone person who shared my mind, so I can only keep what belonged only to me. Some pieces were rather vague. I could not explain why I know I should have venom. I just knew it was how something like I was, killed. Perhaps I would not even, at the time, have known that's what it was, really. Simply a part of life. The sun lifts in the sky. Water is wet. My chelicerae pierce and liquefy. It wasn't really even the most important part of the hunt for what I was, just the finale. My hunt was not making something delicate and vicious that would ensnare for me, nor was it a brutal rushdown. I was mechanical. A biological bear-trap. Becoming More Spider meant patience to an inhuman degree (although inhuman is to be expected), it meant reactive more than proactive. I only had bribes, but it was almost meditative, to be a spider, and I quite liked it.
In symbiosis with that other-mind, I could feel his phantom book lungs (like gills upon my ribs), and the phantom pattern of his eyes upon my face (not that much vision. shades mostly, clear and dark. movements.). Long, grasping limbs to each side, set apart like a jaw (strong, sensitive, like a gun-trigger). Able to fold itself flat, to become the wall it stands on (pneumatics of inner workings, fluids in and out). Whatever it was, it liked shade and coolness and moisture. It disliked movement above it, but did not exactly flee it, it simply hid better and waited. It could be fast, when it was time, but for the most part, it was simply silent.
It's a bit hard, to make a whole from bits, especially something i'm not all the time. With being a bird, I can simply reflect on myself anytime, and that is simply what I am. With the spider, I kind of had to vivisect bits and pieces when and where they happened, and that was kinda all, unless I provoked more of it, which is what I ended up doing. I played dress up with a variety of creatures that felt similar enough, to see what felt right. I tried tailless whip scorpions, but while the grasping of the forearms were right, and Feeling more than any other sense was too, the long thin whips were not quite something I'd felt before, and it lacked that inherent Venom that my brain informed me I should have. Huntsman and wolf spiders were fun. So fun that I kind of hoped that would be it, for a long time. They were something very interactive to be, perhaps not as much as a jumping spider, i've never tried that, but a lot more of a rush than mystery spider. But that feeling of being something fast wasn't right, and the feeling of grasper, while more right with Heteropoda, did not fit wolf spiders at all. I actually realized the most likely culprit pretty recently, while watching the woods near my house. There is in fact all matters of little lethal biological bear traps littered all over the flowers, like decadently dressed death angels for bees and flies alike : Flower crab spiders. I adore them, now that I know where to look for them. I've lived near these woods all my life, yet I'd never spotted them. Thomisus onustus, Synema globosum, Runcinia grammica, Heriaeus hirtus and probably more i've not met yet. I don't quite think my mystery spider is one of them, but almost. If I had to guess, it was some sort of Xysticus, or something analogous. A ground crab spider. I might be wrong, this not an exact science, it's hard to interpret what could very well be figments of my mind. But I am quite satisfied with that answer, at the moment.
So that's arthropod number 1 I've been, the one I've been the most and the one who taught me how to shapeshift.
It takes me some time to manage to decent attempt at something I've never even slightly been. It's easy to have parts. I can feel a wasp's ocelli, a dragonfly larva's mandible or a pair of earwig wings just fine, as long as I have references for it. It's just a matter of visualization, really. I draw as a hobby. I see provoking a shift in myself just like drawing, just with sensations. Take a mantis's raptorial limb. Pull up an anatomy drawing. My upper arm becomes a coxa. The elbow, the trochanter, then the forearm, the femur. My hand fuses, and becomes the tibia. I cannot fold it right, but I can feel the weight of the spines along the ridges, I can feel where it should fold and lock together like well oiled machinery. Then the tarsus, which currently feels like it should erupt from my middle finger, feeling strangely appropriate to type with. Too short, in a human body, but similarly bendy, lacking the two hooks at the end. It's a vague one, and as I am writing this, I can simply shake it out and come back to a more neutral state of human-bird confusion, a more comfortable mix when it comes to operating a keyboard.
It tends to become tricky when it comes to adding everything up. I can have a mantis's arm, but then I must maintain it, and add it's head, with it's complex set of mandibles, of antennas, of eyes-made-of-eyes. One limb needs to become six, and my body starts to glitch. A bird, a tetrapod, is already somewhat complex, my human arms are both wings and bird feet analogue. What's an analogue to that third pair of limb, where do they go? I tend to prefer to lie down when I figure out how to optimally place and draw those feelings, eyes close, so my human feelings do not overlap too much. Even better in the dark. Once it's set, i can then usually trigger it again later, and it'll put itself in place naturally.
It was easier with something as simple as the Filaria worm, although highly dependent on me doing... not much. I did not really need to focus on phantoms then, just on the mind. The mind is not something you can easily find reference from, and to be honest, I would say whatever I feel is most likely a simulacrum of what it's like, after all I do not stop having human neurons during the experiment. But that's not really the point, is it, the point is just that it's fun. The Filaria, amusingly enough, I provoked out of loneliness. I wondered what it must feel like, to be something that is never lonely, because it lives inside something else, constantly surrounded by both it's peers and the thing that nourishes it. It was mostly sensations, what I felt, strangely easy to slip into, perhaps because I have experience with writing parasites for myself.
Back when I was not medicated, I would see the world breathe, sometimes, pulse and writhe, walls tensing and releasing, floor moving beneath my feet. The nematode felt something similar, in my mind. Warmth all around, each heart-beat a pulse, world around you contracting flowing writhing singing. Many-many others around you. Forward, without reason. Not much with reason, simply following the song. It is honestly one of the most pleasant shifts i've ever had. No fear. Nothing to flee. Death is simply a possibility of the world that also nourishes you. You cannot escape it, as there is no other world to escape too, and you are simply here, and you must go forward, and that is all. So no fear. It changes nothing. Blissfully nihilistic. The only glimpses I get are of the stage inside the body, perhaps another would be a different tune, but I'm satisfied with what I saw.
I'd say the mind will be easier to reach for writers than for visual artists. You can cross reference, after all, since I do consider I am channeling a soul, I do not find it particularly less interesting to build that mind through readings of scientific papers that, too, try to imagine what it is like to be something else. To go back to the mantis, I suppose I chose an easy one for me to be. It is once again something that stays in wait. However, it is a lot more active, a lot more visual, than my spider. How would that feel? What colors would I see? Where are my sensors to the world in that body? What would I fear? What would I seek? That's when having the body down gets handy, to me. I simply provoke it, sometimes I do little rituals, to tie it to certain accessories or knick knack, as I find it helps me focus. Shapeshifted, feeling the foreign limbs and foreign sensations, I find it easier to slip into a foreign mind. Everything becomes new. The woods near my house are discovered for a thousandth time with new eyes. The spider sought out moisture and shade, and silence. The centipede sought warms, long coiled body spanning meters, then a hunt, but everything was too small, so it waited, touch-tasted, inquisitive. Perhaps the mantis would seek an elevated zone, with luxurious foliage to hide itself, and would observe. I should try it sometimes.
Perhaps my experiments with arthropods will help some new people attempt more impermanent forms of linking, quite frankly i do not think it is the time spent that makes the serious of an identity, but it is hard even for me to separate the two sometimes, with how tied they were in old forum culture (not even touching on the idea of, gasp, voluntary identity and experiences being worthy). Honestly, I recommend trying it because it is fun. So a little challenge to readers : I would love for you to pick something, become it, and come back to tell me about it. Bonus points if it's some flavor of arthropod-like. Good luck!
working on the shading to a piece featuring one of my catfolk characters, and i was like, "oh, i can just feel my own face to get an idea of where the light falls and the shadows are!" before i realized i have the wrong head shape on 😔
One thing I noticed in the alterhuman community is that most of us use names that relate a lot to our theriotypes. I'm Watcher because I'm a cat, @talon-dragonbeast is Talon because she's a dragon, @harpyrex is a Harpy... You understand what I mean, right? However, I've been wondering if irl names that creatures here use are related to their therianthropy. I'm guessing no, but I don't really know.
So, regarding your irl name, how much does this name relate to your theriotype/s? I'm talking about legal name, or the one you use the most with friends or family if you're trans, or nicknames. (DON'T TELL ME YOUR IRL NAME IF YOU DON'T WANT TO). If your irl name doesn't relate to your theriotype/kintype, would you legally change it to one more keen to your theriotype? Below is a poll you can answer with this question.
For example, my legal name is my deadname because my parents are transphobic and won't let me change my name. However, in college and with everyone irl who is not my family, I use another name. This name is gender neutral/masculine because I'm non binary, I use he/they pronouns irl, and it looks like a dog name. Tho I was not aware of this when I chose it, because I was fifteen and I didn't know I was alterhuman, this nane looks like a dog name. Which I'm really happy about.
I was wondering if others do what I did. Is your irl name (it doesn't matter if it's legal name, but the one you use the most) like a name that your theriotype/s would have? Would you change it legally for a more nonhuman name?
i wonder if something like a torc necklace could simulate a collar while being discreet? hm... something to test someday.
day 3, lambeosaurus!
thought about making a pinned post or about page, but honestly? i much prefer having information all over the place. you want to know what's up? scour the blog for crumbs or send an ask.
Therians, Otherkin, & Alterhumans: I am BEGGING you to credit artists when you use their work for memes, moodboards, stimboards, icons, banners etc. (anything)
It is the minimum we should be doing when I know most of us aren’t even checking to see if the artists are even ok with using their works in this way.
I promise you it doesn’t actually take that long to find the creator most of the time, and if you cant find it- maybe someone else can or maybe don’t use it. “Couldnt find the creator” “credit to artist” etc, is NOT viable
my fictionkintype is psychological in nature, so it's a bit funny to me that i talk about it in metaphysical terms.
in reality, i shaped the identity of [sleepyhead]. but i think about it as a past life that helped to shape me. i may not have that holy courage, but the soul lives on in me.
when I went to sleep last night after having A Moment over being unicorn kin, I was snuggling my unicorn plushies which put a very funny image in my mind
