Otherkin?

Biscuit said:
It makes me angry that people ignore the amazing things around them and instead pretend to be the reincarnated souls of intelligent dragons. I wish people would explore what is actually here and not throw open the gates to these bizarre fantasies. I like dogs, a lot. I will not live without dogs in my house, I will do anything for a dog, I do not think I am a dog.

tim minchin's storm usually calms me down:D
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This might come as a surprise, but we do have lives outside our identities.. most of us, anyway. It is not like our entire grasp of existing in the universe just utterly disappears.
 
Aridas said:
I'd... disagree, a little. I may be projecting, but generally, it didn't seem to be out of a desire to be different, though there likely were those, but to find similar people. Personally, being gay and raised in a somewhat fundamental Christian manner and actually believing in it with the accompanying mental gymnastics, high end autistic, and likely a few other things left me feeling different from the start, not actually trying or desiring to be different. When I was a part of otherkin communities, specifically dragon ones, I had found an outlet that certainly left me feeling less alienated from others and one that provided a convenient explanation for why I was different when I didn't understand why I was different most of the time.
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I've thought about that a lot, myself. When I was in college one of my anthropology professors who specialized in magical belief systems (Dr. Stevens) once explained how he was at some New Age group meeting and everyone was making ridiculous and even contradictory claims about pyramid power or some such thing and that it wasn't the beliefs that mattered... it was just something that bound their community together socially and gave them that social experience they weren't getting elsewhere.
 
Is this what's going on when someone gets body mods to mimic an animal?
 
marplots said:
Is this what's going on when someone gets body mods to mimic an animal?
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Not always:

Tom hadn't collected a single tattoo in all his years in military service, including the navy, but he became "Mr Leppard" - his real name is Woodbridge - as a way of making cash. He chose the spots not because of any particular interest in cats, but because they were easy for a tattoo artist to do. The money he earned from his appearance helped fund his isolated existence.

"I would get an income from being the most tattooed man in the world, and would be photographed for the Guinness Book of Records, or featured on TV. I had a spare set of dentures, shaped like fangs, that I'd put in for the publicity shots. But it was a necessary evil to supplement my income support, or latterly my pension. It's not something I enjoyed."
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http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/oct/28/scotland

Stalking Cat seems more of a possible candidate (my bold):

Because they were easiest to arrange, Stalking Cat began his transformation by getting tattoos.[5] Initially he had fish-scale tattoos on his arms and legs due to a connection he felt with aquatic species like porpoises.[4] Years later he got tiger stripes tattooed on his face, and, as a result, "got more in touch with (his) totem and who (he really was)".
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http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Stalking_Cat
 
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Moronic_Laughter said:
As far as I've been aware most people who do that are not otherkin or therian.
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Would you consider modifications if they would give you attributes that mirrored your inner self? I don't necessarily mean visible mods, but something like enhanced hearing, smell or the ability to see in low light.
 
I would get modifications to improve my senses just because I'd want to enhance my senses, I don't think they would make me feel more draconic. I'm still waiting for the v4c Visian ICL to get FDA approval.
 
Moronic_Laughter said:
I would get modifications to improve my senses just because I'd want to enhance my senses, I don't think they would make me feel more draconic. I'm still waiting for the v4c Visian ICL to get FDA approval.
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My mistake. I had you confused with the wolf.

Wanna buy a flamethrower?
 
Lol, I did have the opportunity (well, technically I do still have the opportunity) to learn professional fire dancing and fire eating and breathing but I know I'd seriously injure myself with that. My ability to spit a fine stream of flammable liquid without dribbling or inhaling it is pretty much non-existent, and I am not much of a dancer!
 
Welcome, Susitar and Moronic_Laughter! :w2:

I'm enjoying reading your very interesting posts.


Susitar said:
While perhaps an actual wolf would do "human" things, like try to walk on his hind legs, I doubt he would create a human identity because of that.
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I'm pretty sure I've heard dog owners swear their dog thinks it's human. :)

Do you have a dog?
 
A question for Susitar and Moronic_Laughter,

There seems to be a pattern of people only identifying with really cool animals and creatures and not unusual or less respected ones. In your experience, does anybody think they are a nautilus or a pillbug or a sea cucumber or an earthworm or a flea or a mosquito or a trilobite or a sand dollar or something?
 
Scopedog said:
A question for Susitar and Moronic_Laughter,

There seems to be a pattern of people only identifying with really cool animals and creatures and not unusual or less respected ones. In your experience, does anybody think they are a nautilus or a pillbug or a sea cucumber or an earthworm or a flea or a mosquito or a trilobite or a sand dollar or something?
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You brought this up earlier and it's a good question. It reminds me of new-agey types who discover their "past lives", and how everybody was always some ancient Egyptian priestess or Atlantean sorcerer or Roman courtier; nobody was ever some crapsack Sumerian mud farmer or Greek pottery-maker or Victorian English chimney-sweeper.
 
marplots said:
Would you consider modifications if they would give you attributes that mirrored your inner self? I don't necessarily mean visible mods, but something like enhanced hearing, smell or the ability to see in low light.
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Umm... Just as a general matter, I would think that most people wouldn't mind non-visible modifications to themselves that significantly increased their abilities.

marplots said:
My mistake. I had you confused with the wolf.

Wanna buy a flamethrower?
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As another dragon otherkin, for what that's worth, while I like fire quite a bit, I never did associate "my" dragonself with breathing fire.
 
Scopedog said:
A question for Susitar and Moronic_Laughter,

There seems to be a pattern of people only identifying with really cool animals and creatures and not unusual or less respected ones. In your experience, does anybody think they are a nautilus or a pillbug or a sea cucumber or an earthworm or a flea or a mosquito or a trilobite or a sand dollar or something?
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Define really cool? Either way, this was mentioned before.

catsmate1 said:
I know one who identifies with snails.
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There's a tendency to identify with the loosely defined "cooler" animals, but not all do so.
 
Another question for the therians, furries, and otherkin in the thread,

Do you suppose you'd still think you were this other creature even if you'd never heard of it in your entire life? Alternatively, Is it possible that the creature feelings or traits you have are actually for some other creature you'll never hear of in your entire life but the creature you associate yourself with may just be the closest approximation that feels right? For example, maybe you have the feelings or traits of some creature from ancient human ancestry because your brain includes prominent features of those ancient brains. So maybe you're like some sort of hunting, howling ape or rodent-like mammal, or fire-breating, scaly, damsel-kidnapping, knight-killing mammal but since you have no idea about this creature in your family tree you just adopted the closest analog you're familiar with like a wolf or a dragon.
 
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Scopedog said:
Do you suppose you'd still think you were this other creature even if you'd never heard of it in your entire life?
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That's really, really hard to tell on a relevant level. I'd likely not have been calling myself a "dragon in disguise", certainly, before encountering other otherkin.

Scopedog said:
Alternatively, Is it possible that the creature feelings or traits you have are actually for some other creature you'll never hear of in your entire life but the creature you associate yourself with may just be the closest approximation that feels right? For example, maybe you have the feelings or traits of some creature from ancient human ancestry because your brain includes prominent features of those ancient brains.
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Again, it's quite certainly possible. It's not really a question that can be answered with any more certainty than that, by its very nature, though. There are a number of possible completely mundane reasons for why, after all.

Scopedog said:
So maybe you're like some sort of hunting, howling ape or rodent-like mammal, or fire-breating, scaly, damsel-kidnapping, knight-killing mammal but since you have no idea about this creature in your family tree you just adopted the closest analog you're familiar with like a wolf.
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Heh. For reference, again, I wouldn't claim that the form of dragon that I identified with was fire-breathing. Nor would I claim that it ever had any urges to kidnap anyone, male or female, or to kill knights. To be quite honest, if, I suppose, inexact, it always felt like it was not really associated with humans at all, other than me. It was quite certainly scaly, though.
 
Checkmite said:
You brought this up earlier and it's a good question. It reminds me of new-agey types who discover their "past lives", and how everybody was always some ancient Egyptian priestess or Atlantean sorcerer or Roman courtier; nobody was ever some crapsack Sumerian mud farmer or Greek pottery-maker or Victorian English chimney-sweeper.
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Maybe there was just more upward mobility back then.
 
These descriptions remind me of a handful of psychiatric issues concerning people's urges/impulses and relationships to their own bodies, like body dysmorphic disorder (dysmorphia), body integrity identity disorder, xenomelia, identity crisis, whatever that one is called in which somebody thinks (s)he is a particular other (real or imagined) person, transgenderism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Tourette Syndrome. If your symptoms happen to be close enough to your mental model of some other kind of being (including other people as well as other species), then you describe them in terms of comparison to that other kind of being. If the symptoms don't seem to be particularly close to any other concept you can name, then you describe them some other way.
 
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