The Monsters in Alcha-Tera

Welcome to our DreamWidth account! We're not exactly new to DreamWidth, but we're trying it again after a long break. Our system is all nonhuman and all around the alterhuman spectrum - mostly identifying as otherkin, therian, fictionkin, etc The most common 'types in our system are Pokemon and broadly both mythical and fictional creatures (especially from video games). We practice daemonism and we have a collective daemon named Mebbit (current profile picture) and individual daemons. In addition that, we also have soulbonds and are immersive daydreamers! Our system is gateway-esque with some elements influenced by mental illness. Our body is in its 20s but our system is kid and teen heavy with the average age being closer to 16. Age incongruence in general is common within our system.

We just realized that the reason we might be struggling so much with just... existing as a system might be because we're caught in an obsession that we need to know everything about.

We need to know every headmate, every part of the headspace, every little mechanic down the the details. We need to understand why we exist and what we're experiencing.

All of that comes at the cost of actually experiencing it. It's exactly the same issue when we try to use microlabels, just at a bigger scale.

If a new headmate comes or someone we can't identify fronts, it becomes an analysis of trying to figure out who they are, their identities, and why they're here. Trying to record existing headmates gets overwhelming quickly because of how complex all of us are and how tied we are to the headspace.

Then the headspace becomes an issue because it's so large and there's so many layers to it. The same location on the core layer might be different from its soul layer. If we try to just live in the headspace, it becomes that we need to write it down, we need to get every part of it.

We can't interact with our daemon easily because we're so caught up in figuring out what it is. We can't interact with our soulbonds easily because they go outside what we want to be the status quo for our system. We're terrified of our system being as big and complex as it is because we feel like we'll get lost in it and that results in us loosing each other in trying to force that status quo and over-recording.

That's where this issue began. It was when we decided to obsess over it and that turned into the compulsion to analyze and understand. We've been caught in an OCD spiral for the past 5 years and didn't identify that's what was going on.

We've subtly created a lot of internal conflict and strife with ourselves and the reason we've been struggling to find the root of it is "finding the root of it" was also in and of itself a compulsion.

We went to a local zine fest a month or two ago and want to get more into making zines. Our dad made zines in the 90s and he's been going back and printing a lot of his old zines, though they're more like comic books. They're actually pretty cool but he (reasonably) does not want to share any of them online and I don't think I could share any of them without risk of getting doxxed.

We have a lot scripted for now and he gave us a large infodump this morning about how to go about laying it out and printing it. We may get around to converting some of our essays into zines, though we may need to make more "new to the concept friendly" essays. There was one we came up with for Trans Day of Visibility but wasn't able to finish in time, but it's far enough along that we may be able to get started on it.


We've also been working on a few homemade TCGs on and off as we get more into Pokemon and also smaller TCGs like Altered. The gimmicks we have in mind is that they can be played side by side, which means that systems can play them without any modification. The idea that is the furthest along is based on emotions (something like Voidpet, but with more monster variety and variations). So far we just haven't been able to come up with a good win condition.

We did play with the idea of making a TCG based on our system but weren't able to figure out a decent execution. There's also the typical monster mechanics which we also had a draft of, but we need to figure out a way to make it interesting.


Then there was also a modified version of the Pokemon TCG we've drafted to be played by a system. We still need to playtest it to modify the rules and erratas, but the idea is that the bench space is cut to 3, there's an added supporter bench of 3 where one supporter in the bench can be activated per turn, and there's a visible "bag" section for item cards. So it's set up like this: 

Prize	Prize		Active		Stadium
Prize	Prize				Deck
Prize	Prize	Pokemon	Pokemon	Pokemon
		Supporter	Supporter	Supporter
Bag					Discard

Some cards had to be modified with this set up (Professor Sada's Vitality for example would be broken, so we removed the draw engine). Any unused cards at the end of a turn just get shuffled back into the deck. To keep evolution Pokemon from being useless, there's a rule where Pokemon can be evolved when they're placed down, but their abilities are neutralized if they're evolved during set up.

We just need to playtest it, and we're probably going to end up either printing out proxies or trying to find a simulator that will let us do this.


Luckily for all of this, there is a printer at work and our boss is never in, which is perfect for using to print our random neurodivergent bullshit in short amounts.

Playing the Pokemon TCG is causing a lot of identity realizations to our "Pokemon as a special interest since we were 5" system where it's had an impact on our alterhuman identity.

So Domino (the Umbreon, if you knew our system a year or two ago he fronted a lot more) and I formed together in maybe 2018 or so. We pretty much instantly knew we were an Umbreon and Espeon and knew we had some connection to each other, we just never really figured out what that connection was. We've drifted apart a bit since we formed but we know there's something with our identities that we haven't cracked yet.

So cut to now. We're building a deck that involves Girafarig and got us thinking of it a lot more because there's a Girafarig card that's been on our desk for the past several days while we try to get the cards we need for this dec.

On top of that we have another beta Pokemon who's also writing an essay unpacking how he realized he's a beta Pokemon that only just leaked after existing for a few years. A part of that was how the pieces might be together to recognize a pattern, but it can take a push to fully realize what that pattern is.
 
We had beta Pokemon and Girafarig on the brain so naturally we start thinking of beta Girafarig, which has both heads being the full "giraffe".

(Credit to TCRF)

It's like hm. That feels like it might sort of fit that Domino and I are both two halves of a beta Girafarig.

So we look a bit further and begin to think. I always drew myself with the calico pattern and at least think of myself as mostly orange and I don't even feel I'm remotely a purple Espeon. I never put the connection together, but beta Espeon just happens to be yellow, which even though it's not orange, is way closer to how I see myself.


It also has that more stout appearance I actually have! In headspace, I'm not as sleek as a normal Espeon. I never though too much about my tail placement and I don't think I have two separate tails like this beta sprite has, but if anything they might be forked closer to the base.

So for Domino that might mean he's a beta Umbreon. Beta Umbreon doesn't change much but is purple and a poison type.



This also matches Domino a lot closer, because he's known too that he might not have the yellow (or blue for the shiny) rings, and thinking of himself with purple rings seems to have him projecting easier so far.

Same with being a poison type would explain a lot of weird alterhuman things that he thought was because of being an Irken that may be closer to just being a poison type.

Going back to the beta Girafarig, it's also a Normal/Dark type, which I could see myself as a Psychic/Normal and Domino as a Poison/Dark.

I also might be Girafarig-kin at least. I've felt a connection to Girafarig for awhile and had a sona on the back of my mind for a few years that was a Girafarig. I could see myself identifying as a Girafarig easily.

Either way this might start to help us understand what exactly we are since that's been a huge mystery for us since we formed, we just never put the pieces together.

Anyway here's the card we've been staring at for the past few days that sparked this realization. I love this artist's cards so much (would try to master set it too but his alt art Giratina is like $600 aaaaaaa)

I wanted to make a post somewhere about our experiences with this and thought Dreamwidth might be a better place to do this.

When it comes to our experiences with soulbonding and what we identify as soulbonds, we've realized it's a lot more complicated than we thought it was. When we were newer to soulbonding and the plural community we thought they had to be spiritual and had to be in our headspace. As we've done a lot more research to the point of me doing a panel for Othercon about soulbonding, we've realized that soulbonding is very broad we more or less have soulbonds all over the spectrum of what a soulbond is.

We have collective soulbonds which exist as presences we feel when fronting. They don't appear in our headspace and most often the resemble "telephone" soulbonds - they mostly do their own thing independent to us while occasionally checking in on us. They might favor certain fronters but for the most part they are a soulbond to the entire system instead of an individual. Even to the point of creating a soulbond-ception if existing soulbonds front.

Archie being a soulbond has been around for a chunk of our life. We just never identified him as a soulbond because for a long time we had no idea what he was exactly, since he just felt like a head presence and not an actual part of the system.

Alpha Sappire came out at a point in our life when we entered an abusive situation. During the time we got into that situation we discovered we were a system, and then shortly after we went through one of the most traumatic times of our life.

We clung to Team Aqua as a whole because of the abuse we went through. They felt like a positive and strongly-knit group, and Archie was the one we felt attached to the most because of the way he treats the player character. On top of that a part of the trauma we went through involved a hurricane, which was thematically appropriate.

The way we've always identified with the player character also added to that. Pokemon Emerald was our first video game ever, and generation III was when we got into the series that would become a lifelong special interest and something very important alterhuman-wise to our system. The player character of the Hoenn games is who we can easily envision as our "humansona". As a result of that, it's very easy for us to get immersed into the world of Hoenn. Team Aqua was also a group we were oddly attached to (one of our earliest sonas was a Team Aqua Vaporeon and playing Pokemon Emerald we'd just "hang out" in the Aqua base).

So as we went through very turbulent teenage years and young adulthood (sorry to anyone who knew us then - we were a mess), we felt a presence of Archie who was helping us get through it and cope with the extreme emotions and turmoil we felt. We both jokingly and seriously called him our dad a few times. Most of this presented through maladaptive daydreaming too where one of our biggest paracosm at the time involved a collective self insert.

This actually amplified after Ultra Sun/Moon came out and we decided to get the boss collection for Team Aqua (basically two Pikachu cosplaying as Archie and a Team Aqua grunt. Also a Kyogre). Having a physical representation of Archie helped and we'd find it easier to talk to him "through" the plush. Especially since we'd bring them for any future hurricanes we went though.

We didn't start to process Archie was a soulbond until recently. As I was working on the soulbond panel and reading through other experiences, my system began to discuss how common the experience of soulbonding might be. That was when we started to click that that's what Archie was. He's just a soulbond in the literal definition of a fictional character that exists in our mind and we're experiencing soulbonding similar to how a singlet might despite being a system. There was definitely a moment of "wait a fucking minute".

We've started to engage with him more openly and embrace that familial connection we feel to him. The headmate group who goes to play Pokemon has apparently called Archie "my dad' before. Either way, I'm glad he actually decided to keep humoring this mess of beings, and I think he's still a strong parental figure for us even as the abusive situation we were in has long passed.

The exact nature of it is something we're still figuring out. It likely involves the actual physical in nature identity we have of the Hoenn protagonist but that's going to be a lot for us to unpack even outside of the soulbonds it granted us.