#alterhuman history

[liongoatsnake]

Website Update and Announcement For Major Project

Our website, The Chimeras Library, has been updated.

Changes include:

An Updated "Symbols Found In The Alterhuman Communities" which now includes the symbols for endels, archetropes, and conceptkin!

An overhauled "A Deeper Look Into Cladotherianthropy."

Added a Spanish translation of  "A Timeline of the Therianthrope Community." Translated by the alterhuman aike.

Added a Spanish translation of "A Timeline of the Fictionkin Community." Translated by the alterhuman aike.

Added a Spanish translation of "A Timeline of the Alterhuman Community." Translated by the alterhuman aike.

Added a Spanish translation of "A Timeline of Plant-Identified People in the Otherkin Communities." Translated by the alterhuman aike.

We're also happy to announce a major project we hope to be sharing in the near future.

The Chimeras Archive.

The Chimeras Archive will consist of an ever updating link to a Zotero account hosting citations for the over 500 items of various media related to the alterhuman community, mentioning alterhumans, or of interest to alerhumanity.

Categories that will be included: academic books, dissertations, journal articles, academic lectures, theses, non-academic books, documentaries, lecture or convention panels, magazine articles, zines, TV broadcasts, newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, podcasts, novels, comics, games, movies, plays, and more.

The Chimeras Archive is an updated version of a project we have been working on for the past decade. We are committed to collecting materials as they relate to alterhuman and sharing their existence with others. This includes not only collecting the citations of these many different kinds of media but also acquiring physical/digital copies of these materials.

Unlike our other projects which have designated versions published in pdf form. Our plan is to instead run a live and updating Zotero listing and a document where the same information will be listed in written form.

As this is a massive overhaul of our existing project, the completion into these two formats is taking a significant amount of time please see our "Academic Publications, Non-Academic Publications, Media, Art, and Fiction Related To Nonhumanity" for the previous rendition of this project in the mean time. We plan on releasing links to our Zotero and the live document in the near future once we have had a chance to better layout the groundwork for them.

[the-crystalized-cosmos]

So I've been working on a project all day. Basically just finding a ton of alterhuman terms, from the most common stuff like therianthropy, otherkin, and alterhuman itself, to extremely obscure ones like Otherchain, Circukin, Fractic and more. Listing them in a google doc, and then trying to find their origin. Making sure it's archived on at least the wayback machine (you'd be surprise how even common terms don't have their origin saved! Like the first use of copinglink wasn't even saved), and just listing it all out.

There's something so special, so calming, about archival work. Something so exciting about finding the history of terms (for example, did you know the earliest record I can find of speciesless is from 2011? Aspecies as a term from 2020), that get so buried and lost. Knowing that no matter how much time has past, those experiences remain.

The alterhuman community doesn't get the same rich background as a lot of other communities do. We don't have poems about wanting to be a bird flying gracefully in the wind dating back to the 1600s. We don't have diary entries of those who saw themselves in the character from Shakespeare's play, in more than a metaphorical sense. Most of our early recorded history, as it stands today, is the late 1900s. The earliest date for *anything* I can find is *potentially* the late 1960s, and confirmed somewhere between 1972 and 1974 (that being the The Elf Queen’s Daughters (EQD), the early part of the otherkin community). Therianthropy's history starts in 1992, though the term didn't come around until 1994 at the latest point. Transspecies dates back to 1994 as well. And that's most of our early history. That's as far back as we can trace most of it, to my knowledge anyways (I could totally be unaware of things).

Still, there's something special about being able to discover where a term started. Making sure a piece of history for a community that lacks so much isn't lost to time. And maybe we don't risk the lost of the history of things like therianthropy and otherkin. But what about aspecies/speciesless? Altervexo/Altervex/Alterspite? Hell even such a wide use term like Endel doesn't have the original coining post saved anywhere from our research (again, it *might* exist somewhere still, but we sure as hell can't find it). These are things that describe folks existence, their experience. In a way that's been put to words to try and describe in the most basic form something that is often near impossible to fully explain the depth of.

I do plan on making the document available to the public at some point. It's still in very early stages so I'm not comfortable sharing it anywhere beyond close friends currently. But my point is, archival is important. We don't get to choose what terms were made. And whether we agree with them or not, they matter. They describe something someone somewhere experiences. And in communities that so often have so much of their history looked over, lost, *erased*. We should strive to save as much of it as we can.

Terms I mentioned, and the origin I referenced. All links have been archived on the wayback machine as of June 2nd, 2025 or earlier, should they break in the future.

Therianthropy, and its history dating back to 1992 is taken from this pdf: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jDmjl78hQ2BiQtzQMTV3yRQkrIgB9eUZ/view

Otherkin, The Elf Queen’s Daughters (EQD), and its history dating back to potentially the late 1960s is from this pdf: https://frameacloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Scribner_Timeline2p0.pdf

Alterhuman's coining post can be found here: https://phasmovore.tumblr.com/post/98482696958/this-will-probably-be-my-last-post-on-semantics

Otherchain's history, and recoining on tumblr can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20241210230712/https://www.tumblr.com/shadowbandshub/763884852524302336/idk-if-ive-ever-made-a-coining-post-with and here: https://alterhumanity.fandom.com/wiki/Otherchain

Circukin's original coining post appears to have been deleted, as the coiner wishes to be removed from the community. However a reupload of what was on the coining post, as well as history on the original coining post can be found here: https://www.tumblr.com/nyctohyloph0bia/755458471273627648/circukin?source=share

Fractic's coining post can be found here: https://www.tumblr.com/empyrangel/704274200484003840/fractic

The first use of copinglink can be found here: https://www.tumblr.com/who-is-page/127897905604/demonicprinceofsin-no-idea-what-term-id-use?source=share while it's official coining can be found here: https://who-is-page.tumblr.com/post/139871297049/clinkers-and-copinglink

The first recorded usage of speciesless I can find dating back to 2011 can be found here: https://www.tumblr.com/solipsistful/11133858784/speciesless, while aspecies I can only find records dating back to 2020 found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/otherkin/comments/ent6pk/aspeciesspeciesless/

The original coining post of Altervexo/Altervex/Alterspite appears to have been deleted and lost, however there is an archive of the first page of the carrd found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220606042844/https://altervexo.carrd.co/ and the full definition along with record of original coining date and coiner found here: https://alterhuman.miraheze.org/wiki/Altervexo#cite_note-:0-1

As stated, the original coining of Endel was confirmed to be deleted, and I can find no lasting reblog of it, however there is this carrd: https://endel.carrd.co

[sophieinwonderland]

Anti-endos Erasing Alterhuman History:

Ooh! I have some words!

ALTERHUMAN HAS ALWAYS BEEN AN INCLUSIVE LABEL!

See the coining post for alterhuman:

Alterhuman has always included plurals underneath its umbrella. Not all plurals are required to identify as alterhuman, but plurality is covered as an alterhuman identity. As are specifically endogenic forms of plurality, such as soulbonds and walk-ins.

If you don't support that, then you don't support alterhumanity.

[hazyaltcare]

Are you guys fine with the term transspecies being used to describe one's experiences with alterhumanity? I want to request but not sure if I'd be rejected or no

As an overall goal, I'm not really looking to tell anyone how to describe their experiences with alterhumanity, but i'm guessing you are worrrying this may break the no radqueer discussion rule?

To my understanding, transspecies isn't generally considered to be solely under the transID umbrella. There are users of the term who are both pro-rq and anti-rq (and pro- and anti- transID.) The term "transspecies" also has a longstanding relationship with the alterhuman community outside of all of that sort of discourse.

So, with all of that being the case, we're definitely comfortable with doing transspecies-related requests.

Hope this helps! /gen

Mod Haze

[houseofchimeras]

Hello! I cannot for the life of me remember if it was you who argued that Dionysius was a dog alterhuman, so my question is if that was the case?

Either way thank you for taking the time to read this. =]

*Asker sent this ask fixing a typo:

DIOGENES! I MEANT DIOGENES!

We did include Diogenes in our document, A Timeline of People with Alterhuman Experiences & Related Subjects, though I wouldn't go so far as to argue that he was alterhuman. The document's purpose is to showcase persons or beliefs that have existed outside the alterhuman communities that yet feel reminiscent to what we call alterhumanity day. The document this information is in is currently under a rework as we've been doing research into the methodology and ethics around looking back into history to find examples of people who seem to fit modern day labels that relate to identity. As far as Diogenes, we're also looking into more/better references that go into his life. As the document exists as of yet most of our sources come from the book, Diogenes The Cynic the War Against the World by Luis F. Narvia. The current text we have regarding Diogenes is this:

323 BCE to 404 BCE: Diogenes was born in Sinope. Diogenes was a philosopher from Greece. He was one of the founders of Ancient Greek Cynicism and Cynic philosophy. One of Diogenes’s most famous traits that is referenced throughout the many accounts of him, is that he personally referred to himself as or described himself as a dog and there are just as many accounts of him exhibiting dog-like behaviors or thinking from the perspective of a dog. He is also on record many times likening himself to a dog or even stating for others to call him so. When introducing himself he would call himself, translated into English as, “Diogenes The Dog” but he has also become known to be called “Diogenes The Cynic” as the word “cynic” itself means “dog” or “dog-like” in Ancient Greek. Thus, his name, completely translated into English literally meant “‘a man from God who acted like a dog’” Throughout much of Diogenes’s life he was referred to as simply “The Cynic” or “The Dog.”  [1]

Many points of Diogenes’s life were written down by other phosphors and many of the most well-known accounts include Diogenes pointing out his dog-like nature or his preference toward dogs over humans. For example, it is recorded that upon Alexander the Great meeting and introducing himself to Diogenes by stating “I am Alexander the great king,” Diogenes simply stated, “I am Diogenes the Dog.” In another account, once, Polyxenus became angry upon hearing people openly refer to Diogenes as a dog; however, Diogenes simply said to him: “‘You, too, Polyxenus, can call me a dog. To me, ‘Diogenes’ is only a name that was given to me. In truth, I am really a dog, a dog of high breed, one of those that keep watch over their friends.’” There are also many accounts of him behaving in dog-like ways: he rejected and questioned customs and societal norms, he would bark (sarcastically or otherwise) at people, and so on.[2] He is also famous for living out of a tub on the streets as well as regularly eating raw meat. As a final example, Diogenes also apparently supported the idea primitivism and the idea of humans transforming into animals, especially into dogs. [3]

The philosophy of cynicism bares its name thanks to Diogenes. As the word “cynic” in Ancient Greek means “dog” Thus, Diogenes The Dog and Diogenes The Cynic are the same name. Also, in many accounts of Diogenes he was simply referred to as “The Dog” and thus he was also called “The Cynic.” Thus, the ways of thinking Diogenes helped to found, which viewed animals as being better models of life and behavior while viewing the ways of men poorly, became tied with being “a Cynic” and thus cynicism. [4]

Diogenes was not alone in his classical cynicism. There was apparently a group called the Pasupatas, who were, as described in the book, Diogenes The Cynic the War Against the World, a “strange group of people who since times immemorial found themselves attracted to dogs and to a doglike life. They had become apparently so divorced from their human context that, instead of speaking like human beings, they would bark among themselves and at other people, seeking to imitate the behavior of dogs in whatever they did. […] The Pasupatas displayed in their doglike behavior the exhibitionism and primitivism associated with Diogenes.” [5]

[1] Navia, Luis E.. Diogenes The Cynic the War Against the World. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2005, page 7-9.

[2] Navia, Luis E.. Diogenes The Cynic the War Against the World. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2005, page 62-65.

[3] Navia, Luis E.. Diogenes The Cynic the War Against the World. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2005, page 166.

[4] Navia, Luis E.. Diogenes The Cynic the War Against the World. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2005, page 9-11.

[5] Navia, Luis E.. Diogenes The Cynic the War Against the World. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2005, page 103-104.

~ Ocean Watcher (he/they)

[frameacloud]

Image description: The first image is an excerpt from the paper in question. It says, "One patient reconfigured her alters after reading J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and presented a complex cadre of alters based on hobbits, orcs, and wizards; another used Shakespeare's Tempest, a situation that became clear when I encountered an alter named Caliban."

The second image is a screenshot of a Tumblr reply from user blu-cheavy-main, saying: "hey do you have a link to the paper?" End image descriptions.

That's a very interesting paper! A book by the same author, Richard P. Kluft, also talks about fictional introjects. Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality, published in 1985 by American Psychiatric Press. You can borrow it from the Archive.org library or use WorldCat to see if you can borrow it from a library near you.

Kluft's book is the earliest academic source-- and earliest source, period-- listed in a booklet of history research by House of Chimeras, A Collection of Mentions of Nonhuman and Fictional-Based Members of Plural Systems. Chimeras's booklet gives this summary of the relevant part of Kluft's book:

"On page 180 while talking about the alters included within a specific case of multiplicity, the author [Kluft] noted one alter in the system was based on a character from The Hulk series and Captain Kirk from Star Trek, another alter had some similarities to Mr. Spock from Star Trek, and two other female alters had the same name as the two female characters from the series The Flintstones."

These are even different characters than the ones that the 1988 paper wrote about. Between the two sources, these tell about three different systems who had fictional introjects in the 1980s.

Think systems with a high number of fictional introjects are a new phenomena? Kluft's paper on polyfragmented/extremely complex DID from 1988 includes a patient with LOTR introjects, and another based off of Shakespear's Tempest. Fictional introjects have been a thing for a very long time!

[kimiko24]

DOG MOSAICS (From Italy and Greece ××)

[liongoatsnake]

Endel Symbol History?

We've been trying to work on some things and we realized that we had missed adding the archetrope and the endel symbols to our Symbols Found In The Alterhuman & Related Communities document. So we've been working on that. However, we're struggling to find the origins of the endel symbol (the strawberry with a white flower) or any of the alternative endel symbols at the moment.

We'd love to add them if possible. Does anyone know about the origins/history of these symbols?

[a-dragons-journal]

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm actually kind of obsessed with the recent trend of definitions including not only "therians are earthen animals" (not true, but understandable misconception considering how long people have been saying it) but also "otherkin is for mythical creatures only", which has never been true and which I've only seen popping up in the last year or two. Where did that come from? Is it just a function of people wanting these to be neat, divided boxes instead of the messy, overlapping Venn diagram they actually are? Is it an assumption being made that if therian is for earthen animals otherkin must naturally be for the other option? Is it the fact that mythical species are the most common kintypes you see using the label otherkin leading to an assumption that that's all it's for? Who was the first one to spit that definition out and why?

[post-punk-revival]

You know, I think it's ok if you have predatory urges toward small animals that make you uncomfortable because you know you'd never actually want to kill or eat them since they're so innocent. I also think it's ok if you really, really do want to and the only thing stopping you is knowing you wouldn't be able to pull it off and would get sick even if you did. We're carnivorous animals, we shouldn't have to affect human-faced sensibilities about how fluffy and cute a baby bunny is and how grossed out we are by our "immoral intrusive thoughts" or want OCD therapy for them. I have real intrusive thoughts, and my prey drive isn't one of them. Hunting other animals is fully natural for a lot of creatures that aren't human and it does not keep them up at night in their dens. It's ok if you're a wolf who genuinely wants to eat a deer and aren't really hung up on the wolf ethics of it, I'd hazard saying that's actually quite normal, for wolves

[soupygremlin]

alternians of tumblr! i have an announcement your gonna wanna hear :3

im making a history book of OUR STORIES!!!! Our lives, the way they actually went, not the way Homestuck told them. Of course, somethings about us had to be changed to make the audience more engaged and/or comfortable. We are aliens after all. But i want to give us the chance to tell our real stories. No changes, no beating around the bush. It will (hopefully) be in both English and Alternian, and will likely be a public (public to view, mine to edit) Google doc! Send your story into my ask box if you want in, reblog to spread the news, and tag your friends if you want!

[houseofchimeras]

i'm doing some soul searching rn with regards to my nonhuman identity and i'm a bit confused about the terminology.

theriomythic and fictotherian especially confuse me because i thought therianthropy specifically referred to animals and not fictional or mythical creatures and there are terms like otherkin and fictionkin etc to describe those for example.

is this just a result of communities evolving differently and independently coming up with terms to describe very similar stuff? is it just a matter of preference?

Firstly, Daski has created a great essay (or if you prefer, here is a recording of deir’s panel covering the same points) explaining how the concept of therianthropy being Earthly animals only arose within the community.

But to summarize, it’s a little bit of collum A and a little bit of collum B.

The online therian community and the otherkin community arose separately around the same time period in the early 1990s and had little, if any, interaction between them for many years.

In the therian community, people identifying as weredragons and other mythical creatures actually appeared really early on while the community was still forming. (There was even an infamous, werepontiac on AHWw.) Also, in the past, the therian community did not make a distinction between people who identified as natural Earthly animals and those who identified more as an actual werecreature, which mixed things up even more. Yes, a large majority were Earthly animals, but there were non-Earthly animals in the community as well. The early therianthropy was a lot more concerned with shifting and related experiences than what form the shifting and such took.

Over in the early otherkin community, there is some evidence there were people who identified as animals there as well alongside the non-Earthly beings and creatures. Yes, the early otherkin community appears to have been more geared towards or popular too people who were mythical but how the otherkin community defined itself wasn’t exclusive to mythical beings or creatures.

Even once the two communities started to become aware of each other, people more or less kept to whatever community they vibed with more or had discovered first.

However, in the late 2000s, people began pushing the idea that therians were strictly Earthly animal only and the discourse grew from there. The terms theriomythic and fictherian actually arose because of the rise of people trying to strictly define therians as being Earthly animals only.

Either way, in present day with both communities overlapping so significantly, label choice between therian (or theriomythic or fictherian) and otherkin comes down to personal preference and such, more or less.

That is a brief summary of it all, anyway. A lot has happened in the online communities in 30+ years.

~ Sky Singer (he/him)

Sources:

Daski. “Therian: Dispelling the Earthen Animal Myth,” Othercon 2022, https://theriversystem.neocities.org/essays/EarthenMyth

Daski. “Therian: Dispelling the Earthen Animal Myth,” The River System, [Tumblr insists on url become embed video? Tumblr, no. You're messing with my citations...]

House of Chimeras. A Timeline of the Therianthrope Community, Version 1.1. Updated 19 November 2021. www.houseofchimera.neocities.org

Scribner, Orion. “Otherkin timeline: The recent history of elfin, fae, and animal people, v. 2.0.” Last modified Sept. 8, 2012 in The Art and Writing of O. Scribner.

[thylacineboyhoax]

how i look with he/they in my bio

[im-not-just-physical]

documents about prehistorical beings are so cool 🦠🐟🦎🐊🦖🦕🐢🐹🐭🦣🐦‍⬛🦤🦈🐬🪼🐙🦂

[liongoatsnake]

As the actual Theta Delta symbol isn't something that can be added within the text of a display names or bios on Twitter and the like, but Greek letters are, people on social media have substituted the components of the Theta Delta for the symbol itself.

We don't recall ever seeing it on any other social media prior to it taking off on Twitter a few years ago. If the use of the Greek letters in-text like this has been used before in place of the Theta Delta, at the very least it didn't become widespread until some years ago on Twitter.

It basically is just used as a visual signifier that the person using them is therian (or otherkin as the septagram does not have an acceptable in-text symbol equivalent).

- Oliver (he/him)

What are your thoughts on the use of "ΘΔ", and where do you see it as appropriate/inappropriate to use? Thanks!

This question might be better directed at my partner system House of Chimeras (@liongoatsnake), who wrote and published Symbols Found In The Alterhuman & Related Communities. I'm afraid that while I know about the theta-delta's general history, I'm actually not very well-informed of the history behind "ΘΔ" separately as a character set used by the therian community. I want to say it was started by Ember (@synanthropic) on Twitter in late 2019 or early 2020 (the earliest use of it I can find on Twitter through its search bar is here, when a polytherian mentioned it in a reply to a suspended account, and I know Ember's account was suspended sometime during the Naia debacle in 2019-2021, which makes me feel like I'm right about this timeline?), but beyond that, I'm afraid I don't know enough to say much on it besides things that are already obvious (i.e. that people shouldn't combine the symbol with known hate symbols/movements). If there's a major controversy connected to "ΘΔ," then I am entirely unaware of it and have no knowledge of such. Sorry anon!

[liongoatsnake]

There is a fallacy to romanticizing the past. We as a society are bad about idealizing “the good old days” as some perfect paradise when that was rarely the case.

This fallacy of human memory and thinking affects the alterhuman community as well.

For people such as ourselves who have been around the community “for a while,” ™ we feel it is important to not fall for this fallacy of our brain make-up. No point in the past was truly any “better” than what we have now. The issues and discourse we talk about today still existed back then in some form or another to some degree or another.

We had people back then misconstruing liking something, identifying with something, having fun imagining to be something, etc. compared to identifying as something. Just like we do today. We just didn’t have the ease of offering more applicable terms to people like we do now. In the past, if someone wasn’t therian or otherkin they were just shit out of luck on what to call themselves instead because terms like copinglinker, fictionflicker, otherhearted, and many more terms are all relatively newish terms compared to how long words like therian and otherkin have been around. Nowadays our community is a wealth of possible terms that might better suit people.

This along with many other issues and concerns we have today also existed in some manner back then.

And for any issues and concepts that just really hadn’t been a problem until recently, consider any issues and concepts that we don’t really have to deal with as a whole today.

The past wasn’t unequivocally “worse,” but it also wasn’t unequivocally “better.”  The community has had its high points and its low points throughout its existence. Things have changed but things have also stayed the same in many respects.

Gods know we love history, alterhuman history is our jam and is truly our special interest, but we can’t pretend any part of the past was universally “better” than it is today.