Been thinkin'... Part One.
Mar. 30th, 2007 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ferineRemember my questions regarding therians, otherkin, the importance of nature to the individual, and what roles books play in awakening the individual or even "making" her or him into whatever subject the book is espousing?
It took some time to formulate my reply. Pardon digressions that may occur. Without further ado, away we go:
According to many people who use the moniker otherkin, the descriptive has been bandied about on-line since the early '90s as an umbrella term encompassing animal folk (therians, Weres) and mythicals (dragons, unicorns, vampires, fey, so on and so forth). Essentially, anyone who spiritually, symbolically, mentally, or even physically feels in sync with something inhuman, extra-dimensional, or out of time, and all other imaginative possibilities one can muster.
Curiously, I hadn't heard of otherkin until 2003, a year after joining LJ. A late computer-bloomer, I hadn't forayed into the net frontier until 1993-ish. My first and only on-line community exposures were the Usenet newsgroups alt.horror.werewolves and alt.gothic. I glanced at a few pagan ones, but they were too large and drama-filled to entice me. During my three year stay on A.H.Ww, I never saw the word otherkin. None of my friends or I used it, and I don't recall it being used by anyone I knew of or read. I left A.H.Ww shortly after 1997, for reference.
I am, however, schooled in the use of the umbrella term: my neuromuscular disease, Friedreich's Ataxia, along with forty other progressive neurological/neuromuscular disorders, is shelved beneath the umbrella of Muscular Dystrophy. This is good for funding research and aid for necessary equipment. Many of the disorders lumped under the MD umbrella don't resemble what most people think of upon hearing the term Muscular Dystrophy -- profoundly crippled, weak, and knocking on death's door. Hence my dislike of boxes, be they verbal, literary, or ideological. Veering back to the topic above, of terms: That said, like most others, I invent my own pet names and terms for myself that feel right to me, that reflect myself in a plain and simple way: animal folk. Animal person. One can ask for more detail if one wants it, and that to me is of key importance; opening the doors of dialog, of communication, rather than relying on convoluted terms or sweeping generalized umbrella terms to introduce oneself as.
Not that I consider the use of labels confining or a bad thing, continuing on a slightly different yet related tangent. To proclaim oneself as One Thing, and only that thing, seems constrictive and isolating. To use as many labels as reflective to who we are as individuals communicates honestly. Thus I'm an animal person, writer, dreamer, pagan, disabled, lesbian, gothy-type, environmentally-aware, humorous, down-to-earth, liberal person among other things.
I don't consider myself otherkin, but if others do it doesn't bother me. Use the moniker you're comfortable using. I find myself distant from the umbrella, a raindrop far from, in that my being doesn't resonate with the majority under that crowded dry spot. Instinctively skeptical hackles bristle when confronted with those claiming mythical connections. This, coming from an animal person? Laughable, yet true never-the-less. I'm not one to readily suspend disbelief on-line; I don't believe one can "read auras" or "energy" digitally from someone they've never met in person. I'm willing to accept what's true in person, face to face. I've met and been roommates with two people in the past, one an elf, and one a leprechaun, and they just were. It sounds silly to say, but they made such claims and that was that. Their behavior, attitude, and appearance left no room for doubt; and, such revelations weren't the sole of their existence, merely an aspect of it, an aside. "By the way...".
I'm open-minded, more so in the flesh than on-line. On-line people often pass off well-crafted personas as their true selves, as well as blustering with bravado or ferocity courtesy of the security of relative anonymity.
(to be continued in the morning...)
It took some time to formulate my reply. Pardon digressions that may occur. Without further ado, away we go:
According to many people who use the moniker otherkin, the descriptive has been bandied about on-line since the early '90s as an umbrella term encompassing animal folk (therians, Weres) and mythicals (dragons, unicorns, vampires, fey, so on and so forth). Essentially, anyone who spiritually, symbolically, mentally, or even physically feels in sync with something inhuman, extra-dimensional, or out of time, and all other imaginative possibilities one can muster.
Curiously, I hadn't heard of otherkin until 2003, a year after joining LJ. A late computer-bloomer, I hadn't forayed into the net frontier until 1993-ish. My first and only on-line community exposures were the Usenet newsgroups alt.horror.werewolves and alt.gothic. I glanced at a few pagan ones, but they were too large and drama-filled to entice me. During my three year stay on A.H.Ww, I never saw the word otherkin. None of my friends or I used it, and I don't recall it being used by anyone I knew of or read. I left A.H.Ww shortly after 1997, for reference.
I am, however, schooled in the use of the umbrella term: my neuromuscular disease, Friedreich's Ataxia, along with forty other progressive neurological/neuromuscular disorders, is shelved beneath the umbrella of Muscular Dystrophy. This is good for funding research and aid for necessary equipment. Many of the disorders lumped under the MD umbrella don't resemble what most people think of upon hearing the term Muscular Dystrophy -- profoundly crippled, weak, and knocking on death's door. Hence my dislike of boxes, be they verbal, literary, or ideological. Veering back to the topic above, of terms: That said, like most others, I invent my own pet names and terms for myself that feel right to me, that reflect myself in a plain and simple way: animal folk. Animal person. One can ask for more detail if one wants it, and that to me is of key importance; opening the doors of dialog, of communication, rather than relying on convoluted terms or sweeping generalized umbrella terms to introduce oneself as.
Not that I consider the use of labels confining or a bad thing, continuing on a slightly different yet related tangent. To proclaim oneself as One Thing, and only that thing, seems constrictive and isolating. To use as many labels as reflective to who we are as individuals communicates honestly. Thus I'm an animal person, writer, dreamer, pagan, disabled, lesbian, gothy-type, environmentally-aware, humorous, down-to-earth, liberal person among other things.
I don't consider myself otherkin, but if others do it doesn't bother me. Use the moniker you're comfortable using. I find myself distant from the umbrella, a raindrop far from, in that my being doesn't resonate with the majority under that crowded dry spot. Instinctively skeptical hackles bristle when confronted with those claiming mythical connections. This, coming from an animal person? Laughable, yet true never-the-less. I'm not one to readily suspend disbelief on-line; I don't believe one can "read auras" or "energy" digitally from someone they've never met in person. I'm willing to accept what's true in person, face to face. I've met and been roommates with two people in the past, one an elf, and one a leprechaun, and they just were. It sounds silly to say, but they made such claims and that was that. Their behavior, attitude, and appearance left no room for doubt; and, such revelations weren't the sole of their existence, merely an aspect of it, an aside. "By the way...".
I'm open-minded, more so in the flesh than on-line. On-line people often pass off well-crafted personas as their true selves, as well as blustering with bravado or ferocity courtesy of the security of relative anonymity.
(to be continued in the morning...)
