#are we not all worried that we're like that Spongebob ep where he tries to be a jellyfish and just gets stung and realizes it sucks? RIP

[caliginouscreature]

Wow, I’m already at my 100th post for this blog!  I’ve been meaning to write more about my ’kin experiences and feelings here, so I’m going to use this 100th post to try and talk a little about my species dysphoria for one of my ’types.

It’s hard to say the kind of monster I am because I don’t think there’s a general word for it, but I usually call it being a “Silent Hill monster” due to its amorphousness, connection to trauma and grief, sense of justice, symbolism, proximity warning, tendency to lurk and follow through dark and foggy areas... etc.  It’s not just for Silent Hill, but it feels like that general category of creature.

Anyway, I tend to feel what I’ve realized is a lot of species dysphoria about this... I get really sad and feel like I’m invalid because I get really really scared when I play horror games like that!  When I look at footage from early SH games, and certain retro indie horror titles, I often tend to feel some sort of connection, a wanting to go there, a desire to run around, explore, lurk, vibe with it; I tend to enjoy listening to the ambience on its own too, I love the older more industrial SH tracks... I’m always happy to get to see locations like that in person (and walk around them when they’re not sectioned off!), and really have always loved that surreal creepy “liminal horror” aesthetic in that sense... BUT whenever I try to play any game like that, I just start shaking like a leaf no matter how much I tell myself it’s fine and I have no reason to be afraid! It’s already bad enough that I can’t see in the dark and I’m not immune to the harshness of the environments that such entities dwell in, but this is a kind of species dysphoria that I never really see anyone talk about, so I tend to feel a bit alone on it... I guess an ideal workaround would be a mod of SH or similar games that’s more like a walking sim where you can just hang out with the monsters and watch them move around (maybe interact with them? 😳 but not excessively! show some respect), but that seems pretty unlikely to happen.

I GUESS an explanation could be “even horrifying Silent Hill monsters would be scared shitless if another Silent Hill monster tried stalking and attacking them”, which would be pretty funny to be honest, but there’s no way to know for sure!  It’s the feeling of longing and admiration, where it meets the dissonance of actually trying to get into one’s source/supposed home but feeling uneasy, where I feel really worried.  idk if any other fictionkin, fictherians, otherkin, etc. have felt something like this, but I have, and I’m putting it out there for the record, and in case anybody’s felt something similar and also worried about whether or not they count because of it.