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Prompt #1: Awakening

By Silver of The Dragonheart Collective

It wasn't a specific event for me, I suppose. I entered the system(not yet knowing we were a system) and soon after began questioning some kind of dragon. I knew I was some kind of a dragon, and due to the shared memories I didn't yet differentiate myself from I knew what otherkin was- us having identified as a cat therian for awhile before that.

I first identified as just a dragon, but I remembered a series of in-character guidebooks for Dnd and a particular dragon species in it. And the longer I sat with the possibility after rereading them and examining my noemata, the more I was sure. I was a Silver Dragon from DnD, or rather, a dragon that was so very close to one that describing it as such was easier and got across what I was better than if I didn't.

It had the right shape, the right ‘lore’, that it matches the closest to anything else I had found. Not exactly, of course, but close enough.

I looked at and dismissed other possibilities, but within a month or two really I knew I couldn't really be anything else. It just simply fit. Identifying this way brought me relief and confidence. Indulging in this identity and reaching for the memories of my past life brought me happiness and confidence and stability to myself that I lacked before. I knew what I was and that I was allowed to be that way. Being a dragon is simply what I am, and allowing myself to be as such improves my mental health and brings me great joy. Thus I keep doing it.

I tend to call this experience of mine of coming into myself an Awakening, rather than just me joining the system as this is how I experienced it. Its the language I had when I was going through it, so calling it that works for me.

I came into the system with the identity already there, its just as I hadn't recognized that I was a newly arrived headmate at the time. I saw the discontinuity in identity as a abrupt standard Awakening. When I arrived and took over as host unknowingly I saw it as an Awakening instead of me simply becoming host then. One could say my Awakening started at the moment of my ‘birth’ in this realm, or possibly that I never had one as there never was anything to awake.

The previous host and those who were there at the time loved dragons and related to them, but there weren’t actually one- I am. I suppose that should have been the first clue, there was no identification AS a dragon before that time in those memories. But it hadn't occurred to me yet that it was an option to simply... Not be the same person as that which wasn't a dragon, not yet at least. It would be a few years yet from then.

I experienced it like an Awakening though, and saw it for the longest time as one, so I count it as one.

Honestly the reason why I finally accepted maybe I wasn't alone in the body was because Mell beat it over my head shortly after she arrived, and it was undeniable I wasn’t her. I am quite glad she did, and well- part of why it was so hard to ignore was that Mell was a fictive of a character I was very much not really like at all, and she was very loud about it at first. She knew who she was and she was firm about that. Her views about her canon and how it effects her now are Very Complicated and deserve their own post written by her(one that is planned on happening Eventually Maybe)- especially as she doesn't really consider her arrival and identification to involve any kind of awakening of any kind.

Most of us in the system with fictional identities just don't use the awakening label because our identities didn't happen until after we cracked the egg carton, actually.

Fawn is ambivalent about the awakening label and experience- as our egg carton cracking was what allowed fae to really stretch faer personhood out- and thus fae didn't really discover faer theriotype and identify that way until then even though fae was around before then.

Mell, as previously stated, never awakened to anything because she was always herself from the second she arrived- as was Gengar. In fact, we knew Gengar was a gengar even before it confirmed itself as existing.

Jun also had her identity confirmed when she was confirmed separate, however it was more of a gradual process of confirming that Jun was indeed a fictive based on a Naruto OC we made for daydreaming purposes than a 'this person shows up and says who/what they are' that Mell and Gengar were. Jun doesn't really identify with the awakening framework either for that identify- but does for the wolf were/therian one. She will take it, but its not something she goes out of her way to call her experience.

The other headmate that could be argued to really have an awakening experience though is Kan, though in a weird complicated way it happened twice. Just before we became selves-aware, Kan was formed and became host for awhile. Previous to xer current state, xe had a long questioning and confirming process complete with impulses and memories like the standard awakening process and kinfirmed xerself as Kanaya from Homestuck. As we had not cracked the egg carton yet, this caused us to consider this an awakening. Xe had very strong spiritual views on the whole thing before doing dormant about 2-ish years after becoming selves-aware and having an ego death in the process to become someone else- only keeping xer name and pronouns and general idea of who xe had been.

When Kan came back after several years in the brain soup and we confirmed xer was around, it took a few days of questioning to determine what xe had become. We drew some sketches of phantom limbs and what Kan felt were traits and general species identifications that 'felt right' to have and narrowed things down. Though once xe fronted a few times it was pretty apparent- not many species fit the very specific description of an AI loaded on a crystal that has a projected physical form, glowy tron lines, and a weird relationship to immortality, cannibalism, rebirth. The current special interest of myself at the time (Xenoblade 2) contains a specific species that fits the bill, so that was xer settled.

Kan is firmly psychological in belief and of a fictional species and not a specific character, so its less ‘oh no my life is on display’ and more ‘yes this fictional species serves as my template for conception of self’. Xe feels the symbolism of the death-rebirth cycle and the similarities to xer previous fictional identity is part of why xe is like this. I am rather inclined to agree with xer judgement.

All and all, those of us who had experiences that were most like traditional Awakenings (Kan and I) had them before egg carton cracking, and those of us who claim the awakening label to any degree (with the exception of myself) are all from this body in origin and not walk-ins.