#exogeiny

[multiverse-sya]

I use humor to cope with my anxiety, exotrauma and memories. Even outside of my alterhuman experiences, I find myself relying on comedy but it takes a different path when applied to my alien experiences. It becomes similar to gallows humor.

For example, when I see planets exploding in movies, my first reaction is to laugh to cover up my emotions on the topic. The other option would be to feel sad about it, which I try to avoid. That eldritch monster I sensed (or recalled?) while trying to fall asleep one night? Comedy gold, look at that ridiculous edge lord. And when a specialty or event I knew about in my source gets brought up? Time to make jokes about it to cover up how well I actually know about it because I don't want to have that conversation with most people.

My mentality in a summary when I get like this: "I'm a very humanly human, I am just having fun with these things. Don't worry about it."

[multiverse-sya]

The truth is that idk. I don't really experience strong fluctations other than phantom shifts, and those just happen randomly. It's so ingrained in my mentality that I don't know often know where the difference really is. But I can tell I'm weird when I talk to people. I often omit speaking when I know that what I'm about to say is weird, so I stop myself unless I frame it in a joking way.

I'm decently good at reading body language and understanding what someone's feeling but I don't understand things like their huge obsession with romance, (which does coincide with my aro aceness) and that's just one example. I think a lot more about the bigger picture of things while most humans around me only focus on what's in front of them. I also have spiritual beliefs that don't coincide with other main stream beliefs. My brain goes to different angles and perspectives than usual. I think things through a really scientific way. Like when someone's upset, I'd think about how the brain allows you to experience emotions and what neurotransmitters are responsible for that. Most people are just "oh. They're sad." and move on. Another time, I saw two people hugging and my mind decided to do an entire internal monologue about how courtships like that are responsible for preventing a species from dying out and repopulating, just like any other animal on earth.

When I'm startled, I have strange reflexes and take on this stance. I still resort to this stance even after years of martial arts where for all intents and purposes, should have been trained out of me by now, because I never took that stance while training. I treat my hands like claws and move them strangely because it feels natural.

And just earlier today, my sister was making fun of me for not understanding how to style my hair. And the tips she gave me frankly made 0 sense. (She told me to part my hair to one side if I haven't brushed it after a shower because it looks weird otherwise?? How?) And tbh, I don't really care about my hair like other people do. By itself, that doesn't really mean anything nonhuman. But with everything I go through, and with this being something I experience daily, I can't just write it out and say there's no connection.

I have more examples but I can't think of any more for right now.

So okay here's a question for everyone, since I want to see more of this kind of discussion so I should start some: what IS it like? Not just your nonhuman side in a vacuum, examined as if under a microscope, but your day-to-day life and how you move through it as what you are. Where are you more human (or human-like if that's how you prefer to call it)? Where are you less human(-like)? What's different for you from the fully-human people around you? If you subtract the labels and terminology, how do you be who and what you are? What is your identity like when it's in motion, not just when it's under examination?

I know this is a HUGE, exceptionally vague question, but in my estimation, any answer that comes to mind is a good answer, so if something does pop into your head, don't worry about self-censoring it for whatever reason. Just hit me with your unfiltered truth, 'cause I'm super intrigued.

(I'll do it too in a reblog, that's only fair.)

[multiverse-sya]

I view my level of sapience as something completely inhuman, rather than something inherently human, unlike the majority of orthohumans. But my focus on sapience makes me not feel like a therian at all, even if I have some feline instincts from who knows where, and despite my nonhuman phantom limbs of having digitigrade, clawed limbs.

And the older I get, the more focused I am on gaining back the knowledge I believe I forgot, through memories and noemata. So, being knowledgeable and having a lot of memories of things to fall back on gives me some species euphoria. Especially since I feel like I lost some of my intelligence being here. And the thought of losing even more knowledge and intelligence scares me.

(As a disclaimer, I know that intelligence is a very hard thing to measure and that there are different types of intelligence, but please bear with me. I am aware it's not a black and white sort of thing, where either something has intelligence or it does not.) Even though there are some things I intuitively understand as a concept, there are still things my brain has trouble understanding, primarily with things involving numbers. And it makes me feel dysphoric.

I feel feral sometimes, but after thinking more about it, I now believe it's in more of an intelligent non-'animal' nonhuman, way. I suppose "alien" would fit the word well for others to understand what I mean. I think this is the major reason that I just don't feel like a therian anymore. I don't vibe with having unrestrained instincts, especially with instincts that do not include having a high level of sapience.

There's also the fact that animality is a social construct. Humans are objectively animals and fall under the kingdom animalia, but in society, they don't think of themselves as animals, and being called an animal often implies thoughtlessness and sheer instinct.

Coming from a species of arrogant aliens, I am trying really hard not to fall under that stereotype and am checking each sentence twice to make sure that it doesn't come across as rude or arrogant, because that is never my intention, especially when I'm talking about my own personal experiences that have solely to do with me and my existence in this place. I'd argue that even my species physically count as animals too, in the same way a sapient creature with certain traits that would fall under 'animal.' An autotrophic animal, but still an animal, even though different planets have different evolutionary pathways. I do sometimes joke around and call them plants, but nah, we aren't, really.

And speaking of evolution, there's so much that I can say about the theme of evolution in relation to my source right now and how it directly connects to my species, but I won't. Because it would go off topic and I would go off in a tanget. But if you already know, you know.

[multiverse-sya]

Idk how to explain this so I will do my best.

I was slowly falling asleep while listening to music. And I got maybe a cameoshift of gliding as a pterodactyl like creature near the water. The thing is that 1, I had solid phantom shifts and a vivid impression of actually soaring, but I don't actually feel like one, and it has no real or lasting impact on my identity. I don't really feel like I'm nostalgic for flying or have noemata about it, unlike the other experiences I have going on. I don't feel that I'm missing some long forgotten ability.

2, (and do I wish I was making this up), I lived on a planet with pterodactyl aliens. 🙃

And 3. I wonder if it's just some weird telepathic ability thing I did where silly old me looked into the eyes of such a creature and felt what it felt for a few seconds without actually becoming one. Because an ability like that does exist but there is only a one line description of what it does, and I don't know if it extends to their bodily kinesthetics as well or if it's all visual? It's not the first time I have wondered if I used such an ability before on other things. I thought about it before casually. And it's not like I can call a friend and ask them if this is actually part of the ability or if my mind is just grasping at straws, trying to make sense of this vivid glimpse. And once this sensation was over, I still felt certain phantom limbs, but they had to be cameos because I didn't identify them as actually part of me, or felt connected to them.

I would normally just ignore it as a half a second brain-fancy, but the vividness was weird, even if there was a disconnect between me and the actual creature. And I want to know the answer, but there's nothing more I can do to be more certain about it.

It makes me wonder how much of my feralness and animality was taken in and internalized by an ability like this and how much of it was just from watching nature documentaries as a little kid, or a combination of both. Maybe it's all due to the documentaries I'm just grasping at straws, even if the former is hypothetically possible, as I've just discussed with the pterodactyl situation.

[multiverse-sya]

I was speaking to my grandfather yesterday and I realized that I am just unable to tell him that I'm an alien while I'm busy talking about astronomy and exobiology with a completely straight face. I was mourning the fact that I wanted to see an actual incomprehensible alien from space while completely glossing over the fact that I have a decent idea on how some of them might look like.

I won't go into exact specifics but my grandfather has actually spoken and met with famous astrophysicists in the past, and it's a field he's well versed in. I also remember having interesting conversations about astronomy since the time I was really young, so I find it really ironic how things turned out. I might have even watched a few of the Carl Sagan cassettes he had back then as well, I don't completely remember.

One conversation that I can remember to this day was when he was telling me that there's something about the world that I was still too young to know about. And obviously, I had to know what it was. I have to say that five year old me took it pretty well: that the world can end at really any moment. I don't remember my exact reaction but I believe it was something among the lines of, "ohhh. okay." I get now that he probably meant something like a meteor hitting earth, or a nearby star going supernova.

I genuinely can't look at this conversation without thinking about my prior life as a pr.oto.ss, who has seen and lived through world ending disasters. I had a very sober and calm response when he told me this, and I don't remember panicking at all when I heard it, as someone who was always prone to just flip off and panic. I just quietly accepted it.

I believe that I was an alien from the very start of life, but it wasn't something I was aware about until almost two full decades later. I considered telling my grandfather that I feel like an alien, (even without mentioning souls, past lives or any other spiritual experiences because I know he doesn't believe it,) and I just can't. As pragmatic and as science minded as I am, and as much as I can explain the philosophy behind this belief, most people wouldn't warrant a second thought or really think about what it is that I'm actually telling them. The best way I can tell someone is by saying that I feel like this metaphorically even though the truth is much deeper than that.

Anyway, I can't actually get over the actual irony of my situation with having a family member who was part of the astronomy community, who does believe that aliens exist, (they've just never visited earth before), actually ends up having a grandchild that turned out to be an alien. Woops.

[multiverse-sya]

This might be relevant: I always felt I was missing something and strongly related to the idea of going home. When I was 5, watching wizard of Oz and hearing how badly Dorothy wanted to go home was always something that hit me. And a lot of my earliest dreams that I still remember had the same wish. I normally don't remember dreams but a few times throughout my life, I had these horribly emotional dreams where I'm leaving things behind or being left behind.

They're just dreams I can't really forget because of how strongly they impact me.

Do you ever get that feeling where you feel like earth isn't the right place for you? Like you were always meant to be somewhere else, like earth isn't your *home*. I am deathkin, and I have been feeling that SO MUCH recently, I always imagine myself in this specific scene that just feels so much like home. And I long for it. Is this what you would call a "homeworld"? Could it be caused my my otherkinity?

Me personally, no. (Even with regards to my hearthome, Pandora, I feel as if it's a second home, but I don't feel like Earth isn't my home.) But you definitely are not alone in that feeling in the otherkin community, and yes, for many it is caused by their otherkinity. It's a rough spot to be in regardless; I'm sorry you're having to deal with that.

[multiverse-sya]

-Be me, and remember seeing a green moon in a dream I had a few years ago.

-"Hey, wouldn't it be funny if it was actually canon?" -I proceed to search for this particular moon on the wiki. -3 moons later, I find this image:

-"How the hell???"

-Continuing, I read the wiki page and notice that the moon is important to xeno-archaeology. It was likely something that I might have taken part of or visited at some point. -_-

-"OH, so that's the significance of the green moon."

-Time to stare at a wall and contemplate my existence.

[multiverse-sya]

So it seems that I haven't spoken about my physical nonhumanity in detail before and how I personally view it. I will speak about it for myself.

Yes, like I mentioned countless times already, I feel fully disconnected from this body and don't consider it mine. But that isn't the only reason why I feel physically nonhuman, despite what my DNA tells me. It is mostly philosophical in that this form belongs to me, and that makes it inhuman by proxy. I believe everyone is more than the sum of their parts. You're more than just what the empirical world sees you as.

This is true for all people: I have read that all people's internal self perception of themselves is different from the way they are physically perceived by others, even those that are fully orthohumans. For example, even cis people of the same gender can view their gender differently from each other even if they looked anatomically the same. So I don't fully understand how some people can be trans affirming yet be so against physical nonhumanity. If the argument is because there are ways for trans people to transition, while it is impossible to transition to another species, then they ignore the times when transition isn't possible for one reason or another. There exists no sort of hrt for me to get the particular changes I want because I'm nonbinary and I want specific features but not others. So it isn't possible for me.

Besides gender, I particularly view my species as physical because of the interesting sensations and feelings that I get because of it. For example, I get strange instincts and phantom limbs or phantom sensations that interact and interface with my physical body. If it was not for this mundane body itself, experiencing these sort of things physically would not be possible. I feel that people forget that the brain is also a physical organ that exists empirically and that psychology has some connections to biology. The two aren't completely separate. If it was not for the brain and mind that I currently have, I'm not so sure how different my identity and feelings would turn out to be, or if it would even be possible to experience them at all. Even most alterhumans have no idea what I'm talking about when I talk about the sensations and feelings that I experience. The bottom line is that my brain has the ability to process these things.

And despite all of the focus that I put on the physicality of my experience, it actually stems from my belief that the reason my brain is able to experience all of this is because of my spirit's strange way of interfacing and interacting with the body, and the body is trying to make sense of these interactions by offering me these experiences.

[multiverse-sya]

I realize that there are times when I have trouble translating my thoughts, memories, and noemata into human language. I would understand a concept or see an image and find that I have no way to explain it with words.

Usually, when I have an idea about something, I normally have no trouble explaining it.

Just the other day, I was looking at something I created and thought immediately, "How would I go about translating what this means to other people?" It was by then that I realized that the simple reason I can't explain things like this all comes down to proper translation and filtering it in a way that can be understood by other people.

Yes, part of it is because I don't want people to know the context behind my ideas. I find that I need to come up with an alternate explanation on how I thought up of an idea. But other times, even when I'm fully open with what I am to others, some thoughts can't come across in human language. I wouldn't at all be surprised if it's because some of these things are concepts that can only be understood telepathically, a skill that people don't have here. Or, it could just simply be a word that can't be exactly translated.

[multiverse-sya]

I'll admit I was super oblivious when it came to figuring out my species. I ran into the video game (starcraft) multiple times but didn't make any sort of connection or realization to it. In my opinion, I find that really embarrassing. Relatively speaking, the first game came out in 1998 while the second, in 2010. So a bit old, I think. The latest expansion was 2015.

I think one reason I didn't make the connection was because of the video game graphics, which depending on when it came out, werent really realistic. It took looking into the story and into the artwork and cinematics to make a connection, which looked much more realistic than the game play. At the start, I was also really against the possibility of being from there as well, so part of my obliviousness could have also been due to denial and a terrible lack of self awareness. Because in hind sight, how was I so oblivious?? The signs were seriously everywhere.

It took having to connect the pieces of things I felt and experienced throughout my life and comparing it to what I've learned about the source once I looked into it. The feelings were also really repressed at first, so that didn't help either.

So in my case, I had to really sit down and research to figure it out because I didn't suddenly know just by seeing them. I'm jealous of those who find what they are instantly, because it would have saved me time and confusion.

Otherkin Obscura

One thing which has always made me wonder is that on the whole, the Otherkin community just doesn’t have many in it who have obscure identities (besides those who are alien, cosmic, or obscure within the therian communities). I have met just one person who identified as a character from classical fiction (Oliver Twist). Considering just how much fiction humans have created in our world throughout time, there have to be more. But, where are they?

The only reasons which come to mind are that people either don’t know they are something called Otherkin, or they have gotten the wrong idea about the concept and it’s been dismissed. I have no answers on how either of those things can be addressed. It’s something that the Otherkin community is constantly attempting to improve.

My two kintypes can be traced to old literature and myths: Centaur, being a basic part of Greek mythology, and Djinni, tracing back almost as far to the folktales of the Persians and Arabs. At the same time, my Djinni kintype has roots in a 20th century bit of fiction called I Dream of Jeannie.

I know that community, too, and have never seen any of the fans within it professing anything akin to Otherkin as any of the characters. Again, I wonder how many of that community are indeed Otherkin and identify as Jeannie, Tony, Roger, Dr. Bellows, etc. It’s not a question I would propose to them, though. I’ll just have to see if any are around at all in other forums/social media. That’s one reason I’m posting to Tumblr; talking about Otherkin won’t be automatically construed as “taking fandom just too far” as I would expect from Jeannie fans (I know that community all too well).

Now, I do admit that my kintypes are ‘old’ or based on ‘old’ media, and have almost no connection to so much of the Otherkin community which has huge numbers of people with identities related to modern media (be it stories or produced visual media). I can fully understand why that is. Obscure old media is just that, obscure, not read, not perused, ignored, dismissed, and all too often because “it’s old!”

But I honestly can’t be that isolated in having one or two identities which are based on ideas long out of the popular mindset. I know y’all are out there. So speak up and let’s see if we can’t indeed grow the Otherkin obscura beyond the obscure.

[multiverse-sya]

I have this mentality of needing to leave a legacy behind in this community. It's something that can only be done by writing essays and discussing my various experiences. I hope this doesn't sound selfish to say, but I'm afraid that my writings will be lost and forgotten in the future. I want to leave something tangible behind that says, "I have existed. This is what I am, and this is what I experienced." Because I know that if I don't talk about my alterhumanity, no one will do it for me. It's very easy for everything I leave behind to be lost to obscurity because of how poor I am in networking and socializing with complete strangers.

I have certain experiences that come out of nowhere, whether I've been focused on it or not, and they leave me spinning. As such, I need an outlet for it. It's not good to keep it suppressed for my own health, especially with no one to talk about it with. So this is also where this need for writing comes in from. It's a need to get these experiences out there.

There is a fear I have of being too visible but also too invisible, and I know that a suitable balance between the two doesn't actually exist. As you can imagine, this makes networking even more difficult for me. I want some attention but too much of it, and I start to chafe. I can talk like a philosopher when I'm approached, but it's approaching other people that I always struggle with.

Personally, I like to read about obscure and rare experiences and believe those especially should be cataloged. I don't particularly believe my experiences are more important than everyone else's. However, I do feel some amount of alien pride within me for having the opportunity to actually experience all this weirdness in the first place. Even if it makes me want to scream at a wall.

[multiverse-sya]

How this blog started 8 years ago: "I'm just a random feline/canid therian, with a prey drive and phantom limbs."

How it's been going since then: *confused telepathic noises, multiple existential crisis a month, and arcane knowledge I should have no way of knowing or experiencing.*

I don't feel like a therian at all anymore, sadly. I still feel feline, yes, but it's barely ever there. Being an obscure alien is what I am, and I likely was back then as well, if my random uncategorized experiences had a say in it. But I had no way to know that without looking into that species back then. I do however remember a nagging feeling like I was overlooking something out there.

I forgot if I mentioned it on this blog before but I believe that when my brain combined feline and alien phantom shifts together, it thought it was a wolf or a werewolf creature. It was the only true frame of reference I had at that time was what was commonly seen. I should have suspected something was off when I never had facial shifts. Even though full body shifts aren't needed to be 'right' about an identity, it seems to be the case for me, personally. The slim, clawed, upright digitigrade phantom body was there from the start.

[multiverse-sya]

I have to say this somewhere.

As more time passes, as more things are revealed to me, my doubt is completely vanishing.

Apparently my unconscious has been trying to remember something for 25 years and it's so consistent and weird. I don't know what to make of it. It might be because my stress is pretty high, but now I feel terrified.

I was trying to take a nap in the evening and a thought hit me. Idk wth I was doing in my past life but why is there a pattern with observing weddings and human rituals? Why is it so important?

I only connected the dots after I remembered something I experienced when I was around 5 years old, the morning after I attended my aunt's wedding. I don't know why I still remember the timing so clearly, but I recall seeing shooting stars falling from my room, as I was waking up. 2 decades later, I see the same thing in a game's cut scene.

And the time I fully discovered this part of me, and was coming to terms with it in my early 20s, I had a bit of a lucid dream of attending a wedding that night of my awakening, for a lack of a better word. I didn't think it meant anything, and wasn't thinking about the experience I had when I was 5 at all. I've only recalled it years after that point and decided that it looked really similar to what I saw, as an after thought. Then a sudden thought popped in my head today about seeing human weddings as an alien??? Then my brain immediately connected dots that spanned my entire life.

I'm freaking out. There's no way my brain is randomly pulling things from nowhere with a clear, consistent pattern. It's been there with me from the start, and I don't even know what it means. It's getting harder and harder for me to mask as a normal human. I see that this isn't a phase.

I don't even care about weddings that much. I find the ceremonies to be a waste of time and money. So this is really unprecedented for me.

Going to a family wedding in a few months will be a treat, going forward with this knowledge. Right now, I feel that I've had 5 shots of coffee and I haven't had caffeine in weeks. Long term stress makes me fear every new thing that happens in my life.

Me right now.

Idk, this is a rant.

[multiverse-sya]

I should have suspected something was up

I watched a couple of alien invasion movies, growing up. It was never a huge interest of mine, but I'd watch and enjoy them when the chance came up. I was scared of aliens and all of the technology that they used, with a few exceptions which I will talk about later.

When I first realized I was an alien species, I asked myself, "if I really am a nonhuman alien, why would these movies scare me so much?" Under the cut, I'll talk about some of my early childhood experiences with alien movies. Incoming long post.

Ironically, my dad likes to mention how Men in Black was the first movie I saw in theaters back in the 90s, even though I was too young to remember it. I also cried when the cockroach alien guy came up on screen, I couldn't blame toddler me for that, even though he makes me laugh in my older age whenever I see him.

But nowadays whenever I watch it, I can't help but laugh because a big part of the story was about aliens disguised as human in a city, trying to live their lives, where no one would suspect a thing. They made a joke about this too, and it really called me out.

Onto the more serious and scarier movies, I felt that alien invasions were a legitimate threat when I was a little kid, I know now that's not the case though.

It comes down to a few things. 1. Invasions are scary, no matter whoever does it. 2. I did have to fight through alien invasions before, on multiple worlds, some were against factions that wanted to destroy life off of planets. And 3. There was actually one alien movie that didn't scare me so much when I was younger, War of the Worlds.

The tripods don't scare me. Even back then, I thought they were really cool looking and badass. It felt weird to see an alien movie and not being scared of their alien technology when I was much younger. There was a strange absence of fear, where I would normally be terrified to see them walking around. I've rewatched it now, and the human harvesting they did inside the machines really does creep me out. But that fear is still fully removed and separate whenever I see the tripods just walking around and destroying cities and vaporizing people with their laser beams.

And, well, here's one from the movie and one from the source. They both shoot laser beams, by the way:

It was at least a solid decade before I even saw a colossus when I looked into the game's lore. Back in 2005 to 2006, they just didn't exist in game at all. But they were released in the second game during 2010. My first thought was just, "hey, they look like those tripods. Neat."

Around the same time, I became a fan of the alien v.s predator movies. My aunt and uncle had life sized Halloween costumes of them. And I always rooted for the y.au.tja. In my mind, the ya.utj.a were just some guys from another planet who wanted to fight and kill things. And they have an honor system, where they only went after targets that could potentially defend themselves. I was able to respect that, even when they took a villainous role. It was nice to see aliens not inside vehicles and see them as actual, living organisms.

I must have been around 7 or 8 years old, but my uncle was dressed in a life sized y.aut.ja costume, and I thought it was the real thing. Yes, I was a little scared at first, but you got to understand, that I was also afraid of Santa a few years before that, (lol). And the fear of seeing the y.aut.ja wasn't actually that bad. I wasn't hiding behind a couch the whole time. Sadly, it's been so long that I don't remember how the conversation with the "y.aut.ja" went. I don't remember what sort of questions I asked, but it was still a fun experience.

My species are pretty similar to them culturally, and with the high tech weaponry they had. I could respect something coming out of a ship to fight something dangerous face to face. I have a very similar mentality.

Lastly, there's this scene from Indep.enden.ce Day that really scared me. As I've written on at dreamwidth:

I was watching the movie when I was about 12. It was scary, but I didn't lose sleep over it at the time. But at some point in the near future, I managed to give myself a small anxiety attack over a certain clip from the movie. I don't remember what triggered this sense of dread but I remember getting some sort of existential dread in the middle of class. It was the scene between the scientist and the escaped alien, (called the harvesters) that they were originally trying to dissect. They thought it was dead but it woke up. Then, the alien began to use the scientist's own body like a puppet and demanded that the other humans need to release it, that there will be no peace, and it wanted to kill everyone. The other kicker is that these aliens resembled some of the Big Antagonist's hybrids almost exactly.

Now, I think it was a mixture of the possession, the feeling of being faced with an uncompromising enemy that wants to commit omnicide, and the appearance of the alien that scared me back then. Some of the words that the Big Antagonist and its hybrids used were very reminiscent of the dialogue that was between the harvester alien and the humans with whom it was talking to in the movie. I couldn't replay this campaign without thinking of this clip. The kicker is that this anxiety attack happened around the year 2008. The scenes where this took place in my source came out years later.

I really do not want to post pictures of the harvesters and the hybrid from my source here, look it up if you wish. But there is a very clear resemblance, leading me to think that the harvesters were used as inspiration for one of the hybrid forms.

Essentially, the things that the creators probably used for inspiration while developing the game were already an influence on me for no apparent reason before it was made 'canon.' It still 'validates' me even if they took that influence from other media. Because I already had these experiences before I knew anything about the source. A lot of the concept art and designs that ended up becoming canon just so happened to be accurate in some strange trick of the universe. And I can't really explain these coincidences.

[multiverse-sya]

While falling asleep, I got sudden inspiration and thought about coining the word "paralegendary" or "paramythic" to explain my connection to my fictional source in this universe.

I used to think that the events that happened in the story were a 1:1 accurate thing that reflected what went on in that life. But now I'm beginning to view the canon lore as a sort of myth or legend based on what actually happened, and not as something necessarily fully accurate. An example I brought up while explaining this to others was the 300 Spαrtan movie. They really did fight the Persiαn empire over 2000 years ago. But I highly doubt a courier was kicked into a huge pit by Leοnidas while he screamed, "This is Spαrta." And in reality, they had more than 300 Spαrtans in that battle. But over time, this real-life story was made into a legend and then dramaticized in the 21st century as a fun action movie.

This viewpoint also extends to the main characters that people here are familiar with. In my head, they are separate from the ones I did know because they are fictionalized versions of them and don't necessarily reflect who they really were, beyond holding a common trope or a theme they shared in common. (I also don't interact with that fandom, so I wouldn't know how they'd react to those characters anyway.)

So I do believe some things from my source were exaggerated for added effect, and some things might not have happened in the same way. But this would be something I need much more time to really figure out. And it will be very challenging.

[multiverse-sya]

I'm really, really tired of constantly masking and pretending to be a human, even if no one is around to see me. I can learn so much more about myself if I just let myself be and exist with no expectations and without hiding anything. It allows me to better identify between what is me and what is just the human persona that I put on to interact with the world. It's much more liberating to just not always care about having to behave 'normally'.

I figured this out by accident. My sibling called my name while I was off guard and distracted. I ended up staring at her intently, quietly in an inhuman way. It made me realize that I'd move and behave much more differently if I had no reservations. So it is time for me to experiment with this.