Curated Collections About Alterhumans

About this directory

Other people on itch.io create hundreds of wonderful games, books, and other creations about alterhumans. I want to help bring them appreciation, celebrate them, and make them easier to find. This page is a collection of collections. In the collections below, I carefully curate and review each thing I add. The downloadable files are archives of the live collections and what you see on this page.

This project is a work of love for our communities. I curate this web page and my own collections by the means of hours of work by myself and my peers. This project and the creations in it don't use any artif-cial int-lligence to g-nerate any text, images, or research. I declare this with Nova's "alterhuman made" icon, shown at right. The cover image for this project is derived from Allium House's alterhuman emojis (public domain). In rows from left to right, the symbols in the cover image are for otherhearted, transspecies, therianthropes, alterhumans, otherkin, furries, transhumans, and plurals. Other derivations of them appear on this page below, together with Page's fictionkin symbol (public domain).

Enjoy exploring these collections! If you want to ask me to add or remove your creations from my collections, or if you have other comments, you can contact me.

Alterhumans

What are alterhumans? This definition is from "A list of some alterhuman identities and groups," an essay that I helped co-author, together with House of Chimeras, Page Shepard, Dinocanid, Ryuu Yumemoto, Draconic Wizard Workshop, and others:

"In 2014, Lio of the Crossroads System created [the word alterhuman] as an umbrella term and identity for anyone who feels they have an identity beyond the scope of how one might typically think of 'being human.' [...] it includes but is not limited to nonhumans. Some groups who can opt-in to considering themselves under the alterhuman umbrella are otherkin, therianthropes, fictionfolk, plural systems, daemians, vampires, voluntary identities, furries, and more. This umbrella is very broad because its purpose is to give these communities something to unite under without erasing their distinctions."

Each of the below collections is about one of these identity groups, or has things that would be interesting or useful to them.

Plurality

This is my hand-curated collection of 100 games, books, and other creations by other people on itch.io about dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly called multiple personality disorder (MPD), and other forms of plurality. Some plural systems have members who aren’t human or who are fictional characters, or choose to consider themselves alternatively human because they have more than one person in one body all the time.

Fictionfolk and experiences of fictionality 

Here are 16 creations by others about identifying as characters or species from fiction, or having another profound sense of personal connection to a piece of fiction.

Therianthropes, otherkin, and other alterhuman nonhumans. 

This is a collection of 40 creations by others about people who consider themselves to be nonhuman animal species, such as wolves, or folkloric creatures, such as elves or dragons. This is an integral, inherent part of who they are. Their communities formed in the early 1990s.

Xenogender

This is a collection of 21 creations by others about having a gender that doesn't fit within human understandings of gender. Some creations in that collection are about real people who feel this way, some of whom also consider themselves nonhuman. Other creations in that collection are speculative works about what gender might be like in nonhuman societies or in the future.

Other alterhumans and similar 

There are many more ways to be alternatively human than the above. This collection is for more who don't fit into those categories. As of this writing, this little collection has five creations about transhumanism, furry lifestylers, and descriptions of experiences that are common among some sorts of alterhumans but don't use those words for themselves. If I later find and review enough creations for other sorts of alterhumanity, I'll make them collections of their own. 

More creations that alterhumans might like

I curate these next collections of creations on itch.io that aren't (necessarily) about alterhumans, but which alterhumans are very likely to find appealing, relatable, or useful.

• "Character creators." Plural systems enjoy using games and tools for character customization for creating pictures of their system-mates. I add blurbs about what sorts of characters these can depict, so therians and otherkin can also find tools for pictures of their nonhuman selves.
• "More that alterhumans might like." This is a catch-all collection of even more various games, books, and tools that might resonate with alterhumans, for various reasons. In some cases, it's because alterhumans were involved with creating them. In some other cases, the creations seem similar to an alterhuman experience but they don't come from that context.

Xenofiction

Xenofiction means stories and games where the main character isn't human. They aren't supposed to be literally about alterhumans, usually, though it's popular for alterhumans to tend to enjoy reading, playing, and making them. See if you can find some stories or games that feature your species or kintype, and if not, then create one!

• "Animal protagonists." This is a collection of games where the player character is inherently a nonhuman animal, and that is important to the story and play. You can experience the world from the perspective of a house cat, dinosaur, or hive of insects, for some examples. Therianthropes tend to enjoy these.
• "Nonhuman protagonists." In these games, you play as other sorts of nonhuman characters than species of animals known to live on Earth: dragons, ghosts, elves, robots, plants, and more. Otherkin and other nonhumans may find something relatable here.
• "Human-passing protagonists." Games about nonhuman creatures trying to fit into human society can be metaphors for various experiences in real life: passing as a member of another ethnic/gender/class group, masking your autism, social anxiety, impostor syndrome, or looking at familiar experiences as strange.
• "Nonhuman protagonists (not reviewed yet)." This is a big collection with 512 creations in it, as of this update. When I take a closer look at these later, I'll move them into one of the three collections above, with added descriptive blurbs and content warnings as needed. Since this collection doesn't have those, please explore it with caution.