Anomaly.Monster
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Age Incongruence

Age Incongruent is a general term for when age doesn't match up to the way it's experienced by one's physical age. It's not system-exclusive term, and it's also not a term that's widely used outside of the system and is mainly used by us because of a lack of alternatives that fit our needs well enough. Chronosian is too microlabel-heavy in the sense that's all you'll find and trans-age is... trans-age. Because of that, note that all of the terminology on this page is how it's used in our system and doesn't reflect common terms used by other communities like this.

This can include system-related phenomena and simply being older or younger within the system. It can also include experiences related to death, mental illness and neurodivergence, or various forms of regression.

Within the system, this can be used one of a few ways:

  • To describe someone who consistently doesn't align with the body age, like a System Little.
  • To describe someone who experiences an age that does not exactly line up with their headspace body age.
  • Temporary abnormal age phenomena, such as Age Regression.

    Age Incongruent Experiences

    There are a number of age incongruent experiences, which are divided in our notes into Age States, Age Titles, and Aging.

    Age States

    Age States refers to specific states of being at a certain age. Most of these are homebrew terminology, which usually have a common term outside of it.
Name/Link Description Alternate Terms
Age-Ambiguous Age is indistinct or obscured. Agevague
Age-Cycling Age is experienced as a looping sequence. Ageloop
Ageless Being without an age. Achronal
Claudia Someone in a system who appears as a child with the mentality of an adult.
Eternal-Age Remaining at the same age forever. Eternage, Everkid/Everage, Permakid
Flux-Age Age is experienced as changing. Age Slider
Mimic Age Age copies the ones that the entity is around. Mirror Age
Many-Age One experiences being more than one age at once.
Multistate-Age Age is experienced as more than one distinct state that are gone between.
Paradoxage Age described as being in a paradox state or with age being altered by headspace paradoxes, usually fitting more than one label.
Species-Age An age tied to being of a certain species, such as an immortal species or an age that ages slowly.

*Italics is used on terms that originate from outside the system

Many of these can be combined or spelled differently to create different titles. For example, you can call yourself an eternal boy, paradox girl, multistate puppy, etc. Most headmates identify differently and different headspace communities have different common terms.

Age Titles

Age Title refers to the title of a specific age experience rather than the age state itself.

Name/Link Description Alternate Terms
Tandum Age Headmate Someone who is a younger/older version of another headmate, whether by subsystem or Tandum Headmates.
System Little Someone who is a child within the system. Syskid
Trauma Age An age connected to trauma.

Coming soon

Aging

Aging refers to the process of aging itself. This can be related to something like a Temporal Personal. Pretty much all of these are self explanatory.

Name/Link Description
Fast Aging Aging faster than a human
Slow Aging Aging slower than a human
Sporadic Aging Aging jumps around/is random.
Unaging One does not experience aging.

Causes

Notice: This section is a work in progress.

Age incongruence in general can be caused by a number of things, ranging from system-exclusive to able to be experienced by anyone, or from simply forming in the system as a certain age to having complex psychological reasons.

Death and Body Attachment

Death and experiencing attachment to the Body OS are both common reasons for being age incongruence. This most often happens when one is at a younger age than the physical body when either of these events occur, and they experience an extreme level of attachment. It's also common with those who have fused with the body OS.

Trauma and Exotrauma

Trauma is another common reason both within the system and with the outerworld.

PTSD is usually brought up with Age Regression in particular, but never aging or aging odd due to trauma has also been recorded.

Neurodivergence

Neurodivergence is another reason for age regression or feeling like a younger age.