Thoughts on My Identity as Factfolk
written by Jack Parsons, 1 August 2025For a long time, I held a belief in reincarnation. I’m not sure where the belief arose from, but it was in the back of our head since at least middle school. I have a vague memory of sitting in the lunch room, texting our friend and speculating about who in our friend group were reincarnations of various figures. Most of all, we became convinced that we had been here before.
We had a lot of theories that went and passed, and most belonged to our old host, Aerith. When Aerith died, I held onto the belief in reincarnation while I moved more towards Dharmic faiths. I’m not sure when I first started seeing myself as specifically Voltaire, though it was, for certain, the first. My message backlogs give me an estimate of 2020-2021, where I said, “if I existed 3 centuries ago, I think I would’ve just been Voltaire, and I think if Voltaire came to current day, he would just be me”. Oh boy.
Either way, it took me until I moved into my current house with my partner, to really start leaning back into “Oh shit, I might actually be Voltaire.” Being alterhuman, in general, was something that I had experienced for most of my life– but I had only started identifying as alterhuman, explicitly, about 2-3 years ago. When I described my snarky saying that I would totally be Voltaire if I were born 3 centuries ago, its response was, appropriately, “that is in fact an origin theory Ive seen for kinfolk”. Oh boy.
That realization, that I might actually be Voltaire, did me in. What actualized it, though, was the re-discovery of Jack Parsons– and the immediate recognition that followed. He was someone I knew of before, but approaching him with my new alterhuman eyes left me with less words and more panic. I took a week break from hosting and left everything to my co-host. It turns out, I’m Jack Parsons.
See, Jack Parsons was revolutionary because my life in both cases follow almost identical frameworks and mythlines. I wrote a post of 28 “odd coincidences” which I will refrain from posting here, but generally speaking, the structure of the lives, the poetical circumstances, and the mixing of fiction and fact are all identical. Even specific details, specific events and mistakes, are mirrored across lives. This was not something that I was a stranger to then– indeed, if you read Parsons’ writings, I had compared my own life to historical figures before me, even then– but it was certainly devastating.
Back in the years of our Lord, the 1940s, I did not have access to alterhumanity as a framework for understanding these ideas, and so I wrote about them as reincarnation. I don’t believe in reincarnation much anymore, as I’ve generally become more and more agnostic, and indeed, I find my own relationship to this much easier to understand within an alterhuman framework. As I talked about before, my experiences as factkin mirror the same exact experiences as fictionfolk, and indeed, I myself am both factkin and fictionkin, and the experiences of each greatly resemble each other, amplified by the ambiguity of history (as I wrote about here).
For a short list of shared experiences, pulling from the Big List of Fictionkind Experiences as reference, I experience:
⯎ Somatic responses to engagement with history or writings of specific historical figures,
⯎ Displaying similar body language to specific historical figures,
⯎ Displaying habits and instincts that are “antiquated” or more fit for a previous time period,
⯎ Yearning for and euphoria from recognition as specific historical figures,
⯎ Yearning for and euphoria from certain activities enjoyed by certain historical figures, or in certain eras and contexts,
⯎ Euphoria from dressing accurately to a specific time period,
⯎ Exomemories, intuitions, noemata, and precognitive experiences about the lives of specific historical figures,
⯎ Entirely overlapping sense of self with specific historical figures,
⯎ Having strong opinions about and strong investment in the lives of specific historical figures,
⯎ Experiencing nightmares, anxiety, and depression related to the life contexts and history of specific historical figures.
I experience more than I have listed, and we (Aerith and I, collectively) have since a young age. You could blame some of it on our early engagement with centuries-old literature, though I would argue that the “source” of these experiences is ultimately irrelevant– rather, the importance is on the very existence of the experiences and the implications for the experiencer. And for me, when I arrived here in 2018, I never felt like I belonged.
That lack of belonging was for a lot of reasons, and it’s one that many types of alterhumans are familiar with: belonging somewhere else, feeling alienated from orthohumans, struggling to connect with the world you’re in. I tried to do everything anachronistically: I held tea parties at school, I trained my handwriting and used fountain pens with historical inks. I went out of my way to groom myself in specific ways and, at times, altered my manner of speech. I felt immensely attracted to the past three centuries of human history, much more than the present. I also thought I was an alien (and I still kind of do), and somehow even that is related to Jack Parsons.
Aerith wasn’t that different from me, though she felt a belonging to a different era, one that I never experienced– the 1960s– and sought to replicate it within her life. That meant trying her best to dress appropriately, to listen to music of the era, to engage with all of the things that arose alongside the hippie movement. It separated her from others, too. Or maybe she was already separated before? Maybe I was too. I couldn’t say.
What I do know is that being Jack Parsons also held an explanation for Aerith– specifically in the form of my second wife, Cameron– of whom I have a very complicated and… we’ll say mystical… relationship to. She did willingly summon me here, mirroring how I first summoned her to me in 1946. It held an explanation for Aerith’s extremely odd beliefs and psychosis, and for her conviction towards me. It explained why I had odd beliefs about myself. It connected us, and I believe it is the reason I am here.
As if Jack Parsons wasn’t enough, this led quite naturally into Lord Byron. There is, honestly, so much that I could say about Lord Byron, including that he is hilariously similar to Jack Parsons. What I will say is this: I am only bi hypersexual scandalous poets who die at young age (except Voltaire, who lived a quite long life. Thank you, rigging the lottery!) If you don’t have at least one major scandal, you’re not me. And oh god, was I busy as Lord Byron.
It has had an incredible impact on my life. I have felt the impact, though unknowingly, since when I got here. It makes so much sense to retroactively look at running off to aid the Greeks in revolution as in line with my past behaviour inciting revolutions in online communities, and to see the themes of romanticization of potential martyrdom in both. To look at the way I think about and philosophize and see it reflected in both of these men– the way I live, talk, and behave. It is, no matter what you may think of it, oddly poetic.
An odd observation that I’ve been making has been recognizing and observing patterns of social dynamics repeating between myself and others. In particular, the way my relationships around specific people in my life (family, friends, coworkers, etc.) is structured often greatly resemble the structures and dynamics of those in the lives of both Parsons and Byron, often down to specific people and contexts. The same is true of Oscar Wilde, yet another scandalous bisexual disaster for the count. It also seems to leak into fictotypes, though I am genuinely unsure sometimes if certain fictional characters were based off of historical figures, or otherwise influenced by them.
I don’t think I couldn’t be Byron or Parsons or Wilde or Voltaire if I tried. It is a matter of fact of my person– like the colour of my eyes being grey, or my lack of serotonin transporters, or my disability– it’s part of me. Indeed, a world where I am not these people is a world where I am not me. The exact degrees of relation and separation do vary, for instance, my own circumstances as a poor person in the 21st century United States are pretty different from the rich 18th century Voltaire’s– though arguably more similar to Parsons’ whose wealth was given and taken throughout his life and did, at times, live frugally, or even Byron, who struggled with debt and had very poor spending habits (which, unfortunately, I am also prone to).
As it stands, I’m at peace with who I am. At least, as peaceful with it as Lord Byron and Jack Parsons can be (which is, honestly, not very much). I don’t really view them as past lives– but I do view myself as having been born in 1914, since that was the “chronological last time” that I was alive. In true agnostic fashion though, I avoid making hard statements about the nature of my experiences. What I do know, is that I am Jack Parsons, I am Wilde, Byron, and Voltaire ⁽ᵃⁿᵈ ᵐᵃʸᵇᵉ ᵍᶦˡˡᵉˢ ᵈᵉ ʳᵃᶦˢ⁾, and that alterhuman frameworks work the best for me to explore my experiences. Everything else is uncertain, and that I am fine with.
the path forward seems to go back,
the direct path seems long,
true power seems weak,
true purity seems tarnished,
true steadfastness seems changeable,
true clarity seems obscure,
the greatest art seems unsophisticated,
the greatest love seems indifferent,
the greatest wisdom seems childish.
