[Originally created for "Water Under the Bridge", newsletter of the Incipient Canton of the Broken Bridge (Brooklyn, NY S.C.A. chapter), never published.]
Universe
Posts from across the community. New members are part of the Universe too — the dust and gas of the Nebula simply obscure them from view until they reach a certain luminosity. When they graduate, everything they have written shines through here.
It seems like no matter what subculture you're a part of, there's always somebody who's supposedly stranger. Lots of folks think Otherkin are pretty weird - but even some Otherkin think that Mediakin (a.k.a. Otakukin or Otakin) are beyond unusual.
I was in wonder watching the Lord of the Rings last night. I had gone with my fiancee and a mutual friend. *sigh* It was just....wonderful. Rather than critique the movie, I will highlight my opinion on how the elves were portrayed, from the perspective of a reincarnate elf. Overall, I think the movie was really well done in all aspects (save the missing Tom Bombadil, minor point).
It's been questioned, fought over, and clichéd to the point of making me nauseous, so here are my not-so-definitive thoughts on the nature of "light" and "dark" and their place in the grand scheme.
Otherkin is a lie. An effective, tidy, comfortable lie, but a lie nonetheless.
One of the biggest criticisms of the Otherkin community, both within and without, is the proliferation of what my friend Rialian refers to as "identitykin". These are people for whom being Otherkin revolves primarily around the identity itself, rather than the application of that identity (and numerous other factors) to everyday life. Identitykin are one of the reasons why the phenomenon of being Other is often mistaken as just another attempt to "be special".
The other day I read an online comic, Theri There, about Otherkin. In it, the artist depicted different types of otherkin doing various activities that reflected their nature. An angelkin worked in a soup kitchen, a bird therian flew a hangglider, etc. In the last panel the artist showed two therians, who said that once in a while they growled when no one was around. That entire comic depicted what I perceive to be a problem of identity for Otherkin.
Feel like you're non-human, but having a hard time putting the "kin" in Otherkin? Exhaust these avenues.
This is a challenge for me. I do not consider myself much of a writer. I am dragon. How is that for a great start? How does it feel? Awkward sometimes. It is a feeling of connectedness with the flows. The flows are energy fields that surround everything. For example, the Force in Star Wars. I can feel the form of a great serpent - in fact there are even times I can see it. I find my actions reflect that of having greater size or bulk. When I "put on the dragon" (a term I use for being draconic) I feel very old. Not as in years, but in time. My head will swing around on a long neck as I turn to look at something. It will feel very large and long. My eyes will feel as though the bridge of my nose has grown and I am looking down the length of it to see. My chest expands and the lungs are audible and loud in my ears. There have been a few times I have grumbled and the chest rumbled, vibrating right up to my ears.
In terms of the online otherkin community I am pretty old. I was around ten years ago when R'ykandar posted to alt.pagan about the Elfinkind Digest, the very first and for a long time, the only mailing list for elves and associated people. I remember when the term "otherkin" was coined, because it was obvious that there were more than just elfkin around. I state this for context, not to claim any sort of seniority.
Ed: Every so often when talking about becoming aware, someone expresses the opinion that things have become, in some ways, too easy for newcomers to the otherkin scene. At which point someone asks, why should they be hard, what's wrong with helping others...
This site generally gets refered to as Otherkin.net (or even abbreviated to OKN).
Which is a useful shorthand, but the site does have a full name that seems to get neglected
or pass unnoticed most of the time. This is not just Otherkin.net, it is
Otherkin.net: Harmony & Discord.
[Ed: This was originally a soc.religion.paganism post (thus the creation date).
I belive the outside perspective is a useful one. You may also wish to read Shadow of Myth which touches on the same
subject.]
Author's note: This is an excerpt from the current draft of my book, A Field Guide to Otherkin. It's still a work in progress, but it is scheduled for publication in the first half of 2007. I've already contracted it through Immanion Press, who published my first book, Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic (May 2006).
Author's note: This is an excerpt from the current draft of my book, A Field Guide to Otherkin. It's still a work in progress, but it is scheduled for publication in the first half of 2007. I've already contracted it through Immanion Press, who published my first book, Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic (May 2006).
All through our lives, we create our own identities.
Sometimes, society imposes identities on us as well. At home,
in school, in the playground, in the workplace - we have our own
personal identities. Within us, we also have our core identities, the
Selves we know most intimately. Close to our skin.
If you've read the previous entry, you'll notice something. Aside
from the fact that it reflects having been written at close
to 2am after some insomnia. Yes, if you read over all that,
and think about it for a moment or two, youll realize I
didnt really define dragons at all. Not in the sense of a
category. Traits (which all dragons may or may not have) were
thrown out as a sampling, but it yields no cohesive picture,
no line to separate dragons from everything else. Vexingly,
there are also things which are not dragons which fit the
traits given better than most dragons do.
"So how do you define a dragon?" I was asked.
To all those who think magic, majik, majick, however it's spelled this
week, is dead here on Earth...
Welcome back to Otherkin.net, now under new management. I think the new site is pretty much functional at this point. Old content is being re-added as time permits, and certain articles are being selected to be featured. New content is, of course, welcome. Archives of the site are, once again, available through archive.org at the link below.
Otherkin.net If you haven\'t been here before and are wondering what this is about, you might wish to start with the \"What are otherkin?\" page.