niche kin appreciation 11: share how you discovered your kin

it was like… a month after my Awakening. i had finally come to terms with being a dragon, but i still felt like something was missing, somehow. there was this feeling that i wasnt quite done with my journey, that i had to keep looking.

i dont think there was a single moment of realization or anything that made me immediately suspect that i was an enderman. it just kept calling me, i kept coming back to this species again and again, but each time i would dismiss it. i wanted so badly to be an enderman, but i felt that this desire wasnt enough, that i was not allowed to call myself one because i wasnt feeling it “the right way”. i also had a lot of internalized shame about minecraft in general, bc it has always been one of my special interests and kids were not always kind about it.

i talked to some people about it. it was a time when i still used discord to communicate with the community, and i remember meeting a system that had an enderman alter on there. we chatted about instincts and behaviors, and i realized that it all fit me almost perfectly. i had found myself! i was an enderman.