Can't Have Shit In Detroit

Written by Max Biscuit-Machina on February 22nd, 2026.

(This used to be part of a reblog thread, but it's long-winded enough that I wanted to give it room to breathe. Check out Sora's blog though, he's got good thoughts!)

I recently read a post by my friend Sora (leo9ish, through-lines on Tumblr) about the way alterhumanity is often mistaken for a synonym of nonhumanity - and ve made an excellent point!

A lot of alterhuman identities seem to be viewed through the lens of species identity and apparent proximity to nonhuman identity.

People understand that being nonhuman makes you alterhuman, because otherkin and therians are the most recognizable part of the community - it's the most obvious way someone can be different from normal humanity, by not being the same species.

Unfortunately, this means nonhumanity is seen as the standard for other alterhuman identities to measure up to - the closer to nonhumanity someone is, the more accepted they are as an alterhuman. Put another way: the closer to humanity someone is, the less accepted they are as an alterhuman.

This is a problem, because most alterhuman identities are not nonhuman - they don't involve being a different species! But they're all judged against nonhumanity as a benchmark. It's something we've griped about before.

It got me thinking: if I'm not using species identity as a standard, how would I define an alterhuman identity? What do we have in common as a community?

( Read more... )

Written by Jude Rook-Machina on November 10th, 2025.

I’ve been having a really bad week while trying to write an essay about my experiences with amnesia in-system, specifically amnesia across gateway world barriers, so it’s not getting written right now - which sucks because the essay’s got some really interesting stuff I want to articulate!

But I already wrote this part, the creative writing, and honestly some of the nuance gets lost when I’m explaining what’s going on mechanically instead of showing the experience in more of a raw take, so maybe this isn’t a problem after all.

This essay is really putting the creative in creative nonfiction, because I’m transcribing internal conversations and visits we’ve had back home into prose, and I really get to play around with the medium when I’m writing something out like a scene! It’s a different sort of writing than we usually share, but it’s honestly way more fun to do, I like the challenge of trying to put the mental sensory impressions into text! It’s easier than usual when we’re not trying to flesh out the details I forget, and it’s interesting to put into words.

are you real

November 3rd, 2025

Example of an internal call with someone outside the system while I’m in-system; neither of us get to remember much about what our visitor is doing out-system, even if they usually get more than I do, which feels really disorienting when you’re having anxious doubt spirals about whether your friend is real. (The real answer is “stop worrying about the existential answer and focus on the person who’s talking to you,” apparently.)

a walk in the park

November 4th, 2025

Example of how it feels for me to be outside the system while still tethered to it – basically, our brain seems to only have so much rendering power, which means I go back home and wind up having dissociative episodes where I’m losing memories, chunks of time, and the ability to comprehend a lot of words and people and places. I have an anxiety spiral about some of it near the end, but honestly, most of this is nice! My loved ones know I have this problem sometimes, they do their best to accommodate me, and having memory problems doesn’t mean my life is plain miserable.

Written by Jude Rook-Machina on October 16th, 2025.

so the Linking is going great! I'm having FUN with this, hey fellow alterhumans we don't talk enough about how fun and enriching it can be to introspect and design forms for yourself that feel good and cool and right for you! copinglinks are cool and 'linking is cool and I'm having the time of my life

I have design notes after this, don't go anywhere :V

Written by Jude Rook-Machina on August 29th, 2025.

Hey there! I want to talk about an interesting part of being an original character, one who’s been tossed around in various situations for five years: I have over 50 different backstories and alternate timelines, as memories and innate knowledge and personal creative output, and all of them feel like me, even though I usually only talk about what happened to me in one specific canon and timeline.

Written by Max Biscuit-Machina on August 19th, 2025.

hi! this is a completely unpolished brain dump of information about my experiences as a wereraptor, because it's too interesting to stay stuck in my drafts for days while I work up the executive functioning to edit it into a cohesive essay! you're getting the same lowercase rambling my friends get about my identity and you're going to like it!

Written by Jude Rook-Machina on August 8th, 2024.

A vent piece.

Transcript:

Written by Jude Rook-Machina on July 16th, 2025.

Content Warning: In this essay, I’ll be talking about the weirdness of being a person with agency and a fictional character made by a writer, which may be distressing to some fictionkind! I also talk about abuse and unhealthy relationships, and we mention sex a few times since that’s part of our romance arc.

-

You know, there’s something really interesting about the alterfictionality of being written For Each Other, in a way that people generally aren’t.

Like, the interesting thing about me and Gavin is that we were written and characterized together as opposing leads in a romance story, and that’s obviously a Different Dynamic from getting together with someone in this world by chance, by choice, without a narrative backing it all up - even if our getting-together wasn't extremely tropey.

Written by Jude Rook-Machina, February 8th through March 1st, 2025.

I’m writing this essay to compare and contrast my experiences with the cultural expectations of the people - or nonpeople - I’m in community with. There’s the machinekin community, beings who are machines and robots and technology while perceived as human in this world, and often reject the label of personhood as too close to humanity. And there’s androidkind back in my own world, who are people who have fought for their freedom and rights against capitalist oppression and human bigotry. I feel alienated from both of these communities for different reasons, and I want to talk more about why.

Written by Max Biscuit-Machina on December 4th, 2024.

I have theriotype-affirming gear, wereside-affirming gear, and it's even a mask - but it's not a painted and crafted animal mask made to resemble the face of my theriotype. I think those are really neat, from what I've seen on TikTok and other more visual platforms, and the creativity is wonderful! It's just not the same thing as what I've ended up doing - so I thought I'd talk about what I do for species affirmation, to add another voice to the conversation!

Written by Max Biscuit-Machina on October 28th, 2024.

I think I have an interesting disconnect between being otherkin and being otherhearted. I see people who feel as though the two terms are nearly indistinguishable, and for some reason it's not like that for me! There's a clear line between them in my brain, and I wanna journal about my personal experience with that.