The past 24 hours have been tumultuous, emotionally excruciating, and quite humbling. Things have taken a turn for me that has totally blindsided me while paradoxically involving patterns of which I have long been aware.
Dark Twins is…something else. I cover a lot of different themes here, and it’s always been a part of this Substack’s character that each separate topic I cover has some appeal to different kinds of people. However, as those who have been following more closely have likely perceived, my mind is driven by the need to synthesize all of my experiences and ideas. I think in holistic terms and find it very uncomfortable and difficult to compartmentalize myself. I need to be authentic and for my life to fit together neatly into a harmonious whole. I have been stuck for a very long time, only getting more and more tangled up by this need, as I have approached the precipice where I now stand. This is because, as an awareness of certain aspects of myself has resurfaced, I have been feeling fragmented. Divided. Broken.
It will always be the case that those who resonate with every piece of the puzzle here at Dark Twins will be very few and far between. It’s quite possible that no one will resonate with all of it. This site is “niche” to the extreme, and because of this, I’ve had to accept going into this that it will never be all that popular. That’s never been a driving part of my goal, and so I don’t do a lot to promote the site at all. One of the main reasons for this has been a nagging feeling that there was still something missing. As such, my goal has never been to reach the most people, but rather, to reach the right people. I know that even if only a handful of people ever find their way here, if those people are the right people, I will set waves of change in motion that will sweep across the globe even if I am no longer here by the time it finally happens.
There will be people…probably not a lot, but there will be some…whose lives are changed by reading my writing.
They are the only reason I have not yet given up on these attempts to reach out to the world at large; otherwise, I would very much be inclined to keep my gifts to myself, and to only share myself with a handful of people, in a life of relative seclusion and obscurity.
To an extent that I have fully understood, but had thus far been unable to articulate, the obstacle comes down to one thing: Identity.
Identity Crisis
I’ve had a hell of a time fitting in over the years. This goes back as far as is humanly possible, beginning as soon as I set foot outside my family home. Having been raised in a fairly progressive household by a couple of die-hard hippies, it was always the case that both of my parents worked, and so my mother would drop me off at a daycare run out of her friend’s house. I can still remember how all the other kids treated me, even some who were quite a bit older than me. My earliest social interactions were marked with very clear hostility, and it got physical. It didn’t get any better when I started at a corporate daycare center, Daybridge, as my alternate persona, Gogo Bordello, wrote about in Turning Things Around: Playing the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild reaches into that deeper part of my psyche because the camps full of monsters remind me so much of the time I walked into a wooden play fort on my first foray out onto the playground, and got the shit beat out of me by some older kids (the leader of whom, if I may be so dickish, had a face like a Bokoblin, the ugly little shit).
There’s another connection between this post and that daycare center that I’ve written about in another post, and I’ll be winding my way back around to it soon. The whole thing comes full circle, it’s pretty fuckin’ cool.
Anyway, the point is that I’m pretty sure those early life experiences explain it all, but that still doesn’t really solve the problem: I never felt like I belonged anywhere, no matter how hard I tried. The only places where I even halfway felt a sense of belonging have always been “fringey.” I’m going to skip over some of the earlier ones for now, but the first one of prominence was the subculture of punk. I loved the stripped-down, DIY ethos that infused the entire phenomenon, from the music itself (shitty power chords, and songs made up of no more than three of them) to the fashion aesthetic (ripped-up clothes from the thrift store or army surplus shop, homemade patches and t-shirts, etc.). More than anything else, I loved its associations with chaos and with the destruction of the systems of social normativity that oppressed anyone who simply didn’t fit in.
As I wrote about in the series The Wind Rose, I was also taught magic at a very young age, and so the big wide world of occulture has always appealed to me as well. Magical people tend to experience the world in ways that no one else quite does, and magical systems give them languages they can use to relate to the others who do the same.
Punk rock and occulture have so much in common that it’s actually disheartening as fuck when you learn they don’t always play along well. There are atheist punks who really don’t wanna hear about sigil magic(k), astrology, and invisible currents running through our lives. However, they do overlap often enough, and you’d think that for someone like me, such overlap would constitute a “sweet spot” where I would finally feel like I belonged, but no, not quite; where they did overlap, the “dominant” identity was usually the punk one, which, compared to occultism, is still somehow too mainstream. Almost every punk I met who accepted a magic(k)al worldview was a relative dabbler in the Dark Arts…at least when I was younger. Nowadays, magic(k) and witchcraft are so mainstream that this is no longer the case. And yet, that happy turn of events still doesn’t help me feel like I fit in anywhere in particular.
Why? Because, by the time that started happening in the social spheres, I had found my way to Left Hand Path occultism, which is in some ways almost like a full synthesis of the “punk/goth” and the “occult” subcultures: These people are too individualistic even for other magic(k)al folk, still wanting more to color outside the lines than to find a group to merge with. You can be punk, and you can be a witch, but even to this very day, the Left Hand Path is misunderstood enough that even other magic(k)al folk who might fit both of those categories will look suspiciously upon us. I’ll be coming back to this, too. However, before I go where this thread is leading, I need to address the part I skipped over: Important aspects of my identity that I have been cut off from for far too long, until yesterday.
In my post Following The Fire Chapter 3: Don't Worry, I Already Had My Messianic Delusion, I wrote about the time I spent involved in another fringe subculture: Otherkin. In Games People Play, I went into more detail describing the primary identity I formed as part of that subculture. I mention that I ended up separating myself from the Otherkin community because of some deception coming from my closest friend in the community, but there’s more to that picture.
As I mentioned in that first post above, I draw some parallels between the Otherkin community and the LGBTQIA+ community, most especially that “T” part, transgender people. The common thread between Otherkin and transgender identity is the disconnect between one’s inner identity and one’s physical body. Back when I was part of the Otherkin community, transgender identity was still far less understood and accepted socially than it is now, so I didn’t make the connection as firmly as I could have between the two, but the similarities were there. However, there was one very important difference: At least transgender people still identify as human beings. There was something about the Otherkin community that, at the time, felt to me as though it just went too far.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think the identity itself was valid; I had a metaphysical framework that could allow for it. I knew that we live in a vast universe where, most intelligent people agree, there is plenty of room for far more than one other planet out there to be supporting intelligent life; it is said that this is almost a certainty from a statistical viewpoint. The only part these people disagree with is the idea that any of us are close enough to one another in this vast universe to actually find one another. However, if you connect this concept with a spiritual belief in reincarnation (or something akin to it, like metempsychosis), then it’s not too farfetched at all to suppose that some people might have spent past lives on other planets, as other types of beings. I had concluded that in the case of Otherkin, that could be what was going on, some kind of “identity bleedthrough” from such past lives and into this one.
I ended up deciding that, if that were the case, then there was a reason we incarnated as humans, and it would be to have a human experience. As I recall, I ranted self-righteously about this in our chat room and stormed out with the haughty attitude that if all my friends wanted to spend their energy pining for their nonhuman lives while wasting this one, they were welcome to do that, but if they wanted me to participate with them, they could go fuck themselves.
And it has taken me years to fully understand and accept that I have been living with a condition akin to gender dysphoria ever since.
I made the decision then to weave that “Otherkin” identity back into my life, but in a non-literal sense that can best be understood by reading my theory of The Personal Myth.
So, it’s a tricky predicament to understand that you hold an identity status that, at least on the surface, somewhat lends itself to the LGBTQIA+ experience; however, there are some problems involved, as well, because despite the similarities, the differences between being transgender in the strictly human sense and being Otherkin are big enough, and the Otherkin community marginal enough, that the issues begin to strain not only the parameters of classification and definition, but also ethics. Transgender people are harmed and even killed because of who they are. The idea of identifying as something other than human is still so widely seen as being “a bridge too far” that it begins to pose a threat to those who “merely” identify as transgender humans. Put simply, the world at large is having a hard enough time accepting transgender folks that to push things even farther and start lobbying for the acceptance of non-human identities can easily be viewed as doing legitimate harm to the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. That will also unavoidably translate into more harm against real people.
It’s a dilemma I understand all-too-well, because it has resulted in a growing sense of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella being “close, but no cigar.” The shoes did not fit.
It is for this reason that, despite the deep and heartfelt sympathy I have for the experience of transgender people, I have also had a formidable internal block to fully embracing the aims of LGBTQIA+ allyship due to the growing sense that, common struggles notwithstanding, they would probably reject my identity, as hypocritical as that is.
Why?
Because at present, the very concept of “identity” is abstract enough that, from a strictly philosophical point of view, there’s really not a substantive difference between identifying as a gender other than your sex, and identifying as a species other than your physical body. There’s just not. The distinction does exist and it comes from somewhere deep within us, but it’s not a formal one. We can’t point to a part of the brain where identity is stored, that can definitively tell an outside observer, “Here is this body’s default identity.” So far as we know, there’s no such thing; instead, identities are made of information.
In other words, if your transgender identity is legitimate, then so is my nonhuman identity, because it still causes dysphoria.
It has resulted in some odd behavior on my part, where I deeply want to be an ally, but I keep finding myself making oddly standoffish comments in discussions, like a child who isn’t getting enough of the right kind of attention. And the unfortunate result is that when I do that, it probably comes off more like I’m a bigot than a jilted member of the community.
In recent times, I’ve become more aware and understanding of the gender identity of nonbinary, and just how broad that definition can be. In the back of my mind, I’ve understood that that gender definition is technically broad enough that Otherkin could slide themselves under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella….especially if they did so quietly, with the attitude that their gender is what it is, and need not be discussed at all in order to be validated. Except…
...your gender identity cannot be fully validated if you can’t even talk about its specifics. Thus, even under the nonbinary flag, I still felt like an odd duck, but I had largely concluded that it was the best I could do. And so I have tried to get more involved in the affairs of the umbrella, but there has always been that disconnect.
However, the synchronicistic shit storm under which I have had to navigate for the past couple of years has finally led me to my solution, and in the next section, I will tell that story.
Enter The Void
The timing, of course, has been pretty neat: My previous two posts here have focused with greater intensity than most on Rose, a mysterious figure who can be thought of variously as a spirit guide and as an anima figure. Of course, she herself has always maintained that she is every bit as real as I am and that she’s living in a body on earth with whom I’m currently living: My partner, Veronica. Rose can take pretty much any form she wants, but one thing I universally associate with her (rather fittingly) is the rose-pink glow she emanates.
This past few days, I’ve been seeing friends of mine eagerly recommending the animated film Nimona, just released on Netflix. Upon viewing the preview, I know exactly who it made me think of, and Veronica had the same response: Nimona reminds me of Rose, and the relationship between her and the other protagonist makes me think of the relationship between Rose and I.
I knew I’d have to see it when one friend of mine in particular posted a recommendation. However, as part of the efforts I described above to try and be a better ally, I’d been following the Facebook page of Art By Veya, which recently got a surge of notoriety after going viral with her t-shirt design, “PriDEMONth.” I wrote about it in The Rainbow Flame, an idea brought to me by Rose herself back in February. I’ve had a hell of a time being the “recipient” of The Rainbow Flame because of that pesky matter of not feeling like I even belong under the umbrella; so who the FUCK am I to bear this flame?
Veya also highly recommended the film and, owing (here we go again) to some of the ways in which posting activity has lined up, Veya is yet another one of the people whom I have wondered about as potential readers of my writing. I had dared to entertain the possibility that some of my writing might have found its way into some of this stuff; the whole “PriDEMONth” did line up in some ways with the writing I had done about my connection with the demon Vine in posts like My Cousin Vine. Even if it wasn’t intentional and was “merely” synchronistically-aligned, the thematic overlap was apparent.
Just yesterday, in her group Cancel Culture Crusader Order, where I had been lurking because I felt so awkward, Veya made a post announcing a new, focused direction of activism for the group, along with an invitation for newer members to introduce themselves…and so I took a risk and wrote a post introducing my work, emphasizing its connections with the Left Hand Path.
Probably not the best idea.
While I waited for the post to be approved, in a completely separate vein, the Facebook algorithm served me a suggested post that caught my eye, from a page called Void Simps. I noticed its artwork was all done in a blue and pink color scheme that my readers might recognize because all of the images I’ve been creating for my most recent posts have used it. I have not written about the symbolism involved, but let’s just say that these two colors have been coming up a lot for me lately, and that I had independently connected them with the Void (the actual void, as in Da’ath or the Abyss, from the Qabalistic Tree of Life). You know I followed that page when I saw those things lining up there!
And then I watched Nimona.
Let me tell you, I can’t even explain it, but I cried my way through that whole film, and the tears started flowing as soon as I pressed “play” on the remote. They only got worse as the story unfolded.
And though I knew it would be ironic as fuck, I also had a really strong feeling (because I had seen several other posts get approved and go up since I had written my own post) that my introductory post in Veya’s group would get rejected. Why ironic? Because, this is a movie about a shapeshifting monster posing as a human, and how it’s wrong to reject people for being different. And here was Veya gushing about this movie all over Facebook for thousands of people to see, and yet I just knew I was going to get rejected from her group because I was just too different for their tastes.
I made a pact with myself to finish the film, and I cried the hardest at the end when [SPOILER ALERT] the form assumed by Nimona in the climax was clearly a creature of the void. It even made use of a certain aesthetic that I myself have used in connection with my work here at Dark Twins. I was a teary-eyed wreck.
And, after the film, I did go and check, and I had my guess confirmed: My post had been declined.
At least the fuckers didn’t ban me; but they might as well have. I saw no need to argue with them because it is neither my intention to invade the space Veya has created, nor is it to force anyone else into seeing things my way. But one thing I will do is stand up for my identity, a cause championed by Veya as well, and I will also fight tooth and nail to carve out a space for that identity and for anyone else who shares it. So I didn’t put up a fuss or say anything; but, with no desire to stay where I am not welcome, I left the group. Fuck those bozos.
And then I got to thinking about Void Simps, and how that page seemed to have its own aesthetic. I pulled up Chrome on my phone, and typed “void aesthetic” into Google, following a hunch issuing forth from deep within my gut.
And that’s when I learned that Voidpunk is a thing…and it’s an established gender identity with its own flag.
Read about it here:
Voidpunk - What is it? What does it mean?
Going Forward
I am amazed at all I have gone through in the short time (fewer than 24 hours) since I found that article. As I said, I have always been able to relate just enough to the LGBTQIA+ community, on the grounds of my lived experience, to know there was some overlap, but never enough to actually feel like part of it. Of all the many flags that fall under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, I had not found one that I felt fully covered me, and so I have been completely unable to relate to the feeling of peace, the wave of relief, that comes with that kind of representation. Lacking that crucial element, I have been unable to fully empathize with the experience, and as a result, even in my post The Rainbow Flame, I have aimed some skepticism at the emergence of all these newer sub-identities that fall under the umbrella. Now I have to eat my words, because I have felt the magic of being seen and included.
I have a pride flag that fits me.
I am happy about that.
As the page above explains, Voidpunk is an identity subculture that specifically covers those whose lived experience has alienated us so much from others that we’ve begun to lose our grip on our human identities altogether. Most specifically, it is applied to those who have been dehumanized as a result of the status of being aromantic or asexual, as well as being neurodivergent or otherwise disabled. Even the wider autistic community has not felt like home to me. Why? Again, because generally speaking, ND people still see themselves as “people", i.e., as human. They have not all been pushed so far outside of normative society that they no longer even feel like a human being. And that is an important distinction.
The difference between Voidpunk and Otherkin is the very same one that turned me off about Otherkin myself: By and large, Otherkin take their “other” identity far more literally than I do and that results in a very different lived experience from mine.
As for me, I have always referred to my identity as Erowen as “the whole Erowen/Sarsha thing,” very awkwardly. However, I now have a one-word label for that identity: Erowen is my “voidsona.”
In other words, Voidpunk seems to acknowledge the elements of fiction that go into what is, nonetheless, a genuinely-held identity.
The only other place I have seen even come close to making room for something like that? Occulture. However, the pages I have seen about Voidpunk seem to cleave to a secular framework for describing it (which, admittedly, is absolutely crucial in order for it to have any hope at all of acceptance in the mainstream).
This seems to be the dividing line for many people under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, no matter how accepting they seem to otherwise be of unorthodox identities: A large swathe of the community holds a secular/atheist worldview, which in many cases could be a response to the excesses of religion that do lead to abuse. And I can’t blame them for holding the views that they do, and I can draw healthy boundaries and let them enjoy their worldviews.
However, now I have an exciting new direction in which to take Dark Twins: Incorporating Voidpunk into the rest of my work. This means building a framework, rooted in the perspective of The Personal Myth, to help flesh out the Voidpunk identity and give it room to grow by weaving in Left Hand Path philosophy.
For example, the “void” in “voidpunk” refers to a feeling of emptiness inside; however, I find it very neat how very much my “voidsona” of Erowen is already tied into that other sense of the word “Void:” Erowen and Sarsha are literal creatures of the Abyss. And this opens up an entire new dimension of possibility.
Welcome to The Void.