A Dragon's timeline
I'm not sure why I have chosen to do this, but, despite having some second thoughts about the privacy aspect of this, something tells me it's important to do so.
It's been a few decades since first entering this community, and Otherkin.net was my first interaction with it. I still remember how happy it made me to find others from my country and how convenient and grateful I was for the fact you could put in an email adres or something to get in touch with another 'Kin.
A lot has happened since then, and a lot has been lost to the internet. But I have decided to recreate my personal online presence in the hopes that if someone I've lost since then, can find me again.
October 2005:
Awakening
June 2006:
Creation of my original Otherkin.net account under the name Shaza. I immediately started sending emails to the clawful of Dutch and Belgium members on the website.
August 2006:
Creation of my LiveJournal account (Otherkin-shaza.livejournal.com)
Creation of a Freewebs website that hosted my Dragonkin experiences and memories called “To Our Real World” (http://www.freewebs.com/theotherkinworld/)
The first physical meeting happened between Dutch and Belgium Otherkin before school started again.
October 2006:
Creation of the 'World of Otherkin' forum to bring together more Dutch and Belgium Otherkin. (https://web.archive.org/web/20070217132137/http://worldofotherkin.forumup.nl/). The forum seemed to redirect to the website www.otherkins.org.
A lot of meetings happened over the next months. We would choose a city to meet up (anywhere in The Netherlands or Belgium) and just hang out together, walk somewhere, usually have dinner and then head home again. A lot of one on one meetings also happened once we knew how close everyone lived.
5 August 2007:
Creation of the “OurOtherReflection” forum, a continuation of the previous forum. (https://web.archive.org/web/20130923021014/http://otherreflection.multiforum.nl/viewtopic.php?t=129&start=15&sid=8878190495cd1c7c54780de91b07bf7a&mforum=otherreflection)
October 2007:
Creation of my DeviantArt account IceDragonLord (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://icedragonlord.deviantart.com/*), later renamed to Zwartice (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://zwartice.deviantart.com/*)
Early 2008:
I joined GNH (https://www.deviantart.com/gratuitousnonhumanty) and became very active in their chatroom. A lot of those connections became part of my daily interactions on MSN and Skype.
Early 2011:
I got an email from a Swedish channel asking for an interview and maybe even coming over to film me. Apparently they found my email on the Otherkin.net website and found my story interesting. I gave them some answers but did decline being interviewed. Later it turned out to be that now famous Channel 5 TV series called Outsiders and in particular the episode about the furry fandom, aired on October 4th 2011, which included a Therian.
April 2011:
I deleted my Otherkin.net account. I can't remember why, but maybe it had to do with being approached by the News Station, or maybe it was the feeling of not needing it anymore. I had found a group of Otherkin, offline and online.
June 2015:
The Our Other Reflection forum was deleted. It also ended the Belgium and Dutch Otherkin community as a whole. Personal contact did continue on Skype, but eventually that too ended.
I also decided to focus more on this life and more or less left the community as a whole.
January 2017:
Deletion of my DeviantArt account after deciding to burn any bridges that were left over.
May 2022:
My Discord account (created in 2017) was used to join the Otherkin community again. Otherkin.net was the first server.
Current year:
Still active on Discord, namely but not limited to: Otherkin.net, Eurokin, The Celestial Spire, Mythcord, Dragonkin.eu
I am currently in a 2 Dutch/Belgium servers, and it makes me happy to see there has been a massive growth in community.
Attending online conventions: Othercon, Shining Hearth, The Draconic Summit.
Attending physical meet-ups with other Dragonkin through: https://dragonkin.eu
8 comments
Thanks for sharing this! I love hearing how the community has changed over time, and it always makes me happy to hear about meetups :^]
Thanks! This is just a very tiny, personal, slice, but since coming back I have seen how much the community has evolved and changed as a whole, and for the better! Funnily enough the Covid pandemic has helped by bringing out the yearning for Alterhumans to meet in real life again over here, so at least something positive has come from it. I'm eager to see how we will keep evolving as a whole. The gradual rise to being more known (and hopefully accepted) among the mainstream will be an interesting one.
That's funny, in many ways it feels the opposite on this side, COVID killed off a lot of real-world meetups and they've largely been replaced by virtual meetups and gathers that persist to this day. Physical meetups are much fewer and further between than they once were. I'm thinking about trying to start one up again locally, but so far I haven't gotten much interest from the feelers I've been putting out. May do it anyway. "If you build it, they will come."
Interesting! Over here the consensus has become “We were forced to do everything online, so now we take the opportunity to catch up on those years and do as much offline as possible.”
The amount of meetings in the past years that I’ve seen has grown significantly. The earlier mentioned Dutch and Belgium Therian servers have multiple meets of different lengths (including summercamps and such) throughout the year, and the Dragonkin community has been having multiple meets ranging from a weekend to a week as well., with bigger and longer meetups planned in the next years.
Maybe those in your vicinity need some more prodding to come loose and leave their screen.
I’m from the Netherlands, (too). I would love to be put in the direction of those servers!
Nice to see! I’ll gladly help.
Out of these I’m mostly active in Eurokin: https://disboard.org/nl/server/1107031522428588164
Dutch Alterhumans: https://discord.gg/CWQ9Ud4NRw
Belgian & Dutch Therians; https://discord.gg/cr4QueAD3f
It's so cool to read about the history of the community and see what repeats / what evolves overtime! Would you say there is a large population of alterhumans / otherkin in the Netherlands?
Despite the small size of our countries, I’m inclined to say yes. There is an surprising amount of Alterhumans in just about any shape or form, but they are hard to find. I think most of us, since we grow up hearing and speaking English so much, just disappear into the international groups.
The fact that we were able to bring together a group of +/- 10 Otherkin in the late 00’s was already surprising for me. The NL/BE discord servers now see 100+ with regular organized meet-ups. And this increase of members of the community is steadily growing everywhere, not just in these localized servers.
It’s fascinating to watch this community as a whole grow to the point where interacting with each other on the internet isn’t enough and show ourselves in the real world as well.
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