Pendulum readings for yourself are fine. They can’t replace long, hard introspection, but they’re fine as a supplement. The problem is with people asking others for pendulum readings. A pendulum works through you; you can’t read a pendulum for other people and you can’t ask other people to read a pendulum for you. That’s not how they work.
There is overlap as both parts of your identity impact your whole self-image, but I don’t feel qualified to answer your question beyond that, sorry. I’m still going through a long and confusing questioning process wrt gender, myself, and I’d rather hand this ask over to someone who’s more sure in their gender identity. Anyone reading this is more than welcome to give their answer!
Nope! There isn’t one single trait that can determine whether you’re otherkin or not, as otherkinity is about all your combined nonhuman experiences. So shifting is not necessary : )
No one’s here to police what you do and say when you’re around friends. But it’s a different story when you’re in a public space where people who may not know about otherkinity, or who may already have a negative view of it, can hear you.
For people new to the community, it teaches them the wrong terminology. On Amino I’ve seen kids who had never heard the term ‘otherkin’ before. They thought ‘kinnie’ was the actual word, that ‘kinning’ was common, accepted terminology, and that - likely because of what that word implies - you choose your kintypes. This isn’t a good thing.
Likewise, antikin will use posts about ‘kinning’ as ‘evidence’ that otherkinity is nothing but a joke.
Again, what you do and say in your friend groups isn’t what I’m here to critique. As long as you all know that kinning and kinnie are just jokes, and you don’t spread misinformation.
Supernumerary phantom limbs aren’t that difficult to force forth, in my experience. You know that feeling when you’ve been wearing a watch or a necklace or a backpack for a really long time and then remove it, and you can still feel it? It’s called stimulus adaptation, but I jokingly call it phantom watches/backpacks/etc., as the sensation is so similar. If you recognize that feeling, you’ll recognize when you’ve ph-shifted.
If you’ve never induced a shift before, it’s probably best to start off with something small, just to get the hang of it. Close your eyes and let your preferred hand hang off the edge of wherever you’re sitting. Make sure it doesn’t receive any tactile stimuli. Then, in your mind, picture your hand transforming into something that more resembles your kintype. In this case - just because I wanted to make sure the method works - , I imagined fur growing on the back of my hand, my palm and fingers turning into paw pads, and my nails turning into claws (because gnolls are more humanoid and thus a lot easier to shift into than bison are).
The feeling usually disappears as soon as I start stimulating/using the shifted body part again, but once in a while it lingers just long enough to become annoying - typing when your brain is convinced that you’ve got paws or hooves is a hassle!
If you’re having trouble shifting a certain body part, you could try the aforementioned stimulus adaptation as a way to force shifts, like wearing a headband for a couple of days to simulate ears/horns, compression socks for paws/hooves, or, if you’re bold, wearing a tail to simulate having one. Simple things like that can really aid in the process.
Hope this helped, and good luck with the shifting!
Anyone who feels like they are on some level a non-human animal and who didn’t choose to feel that way can decide to take on the monikor ‘therian’.
If you feel like you’re not wholly human, start by looking at why that might be. Maybe your body doesn’t feel right or maybe your get urges to act in an animalistic way or maybe your inner image of yourself is different from what you actually look like. Maybe you feel really uncomfortable in a human society. Maybe your astral form or your soul or your energy is an animal. Maybe it’s something else entirely.
It can take a while to figure out and you may come to the wrong conclusion a couple of times. I thought I was a maned wolf from age 14-17 because I simultaneously had bison and gnoll shifts that I couldn’t seperate from each other. It’s not always an easy journey.
Keeping a journal usually helps people. Just write down whatever nonhuman things you experience and try to narrow it down. If you feel scales or claws or a fuzzy tail, you can already exclude a lot of species. Don’t be afraid to publically post your experiences and ask people if they know any animals like that. I realized I was a gnoll because I kept posting about my phantom/mental shifts, which someone eventually suggested might be gnollish.
That’s about what I’ve got. Feel free to look through my ‘new otherkin’ or ‘new therian’ tags from back when I had a somewhat consistent tagging system.
They basically are.
While there’s no official definition of otherhearted/otherkith, the commonly accepted one is “a strong identification with a specific species.” The official description of synpath is “a tidy name for something you identify with on several levels, which could be a concept that resonates really strongly with you, an animal or mythological creature you feel you act like, or a person or character you share a lot of common behaviors with, among other things.”
The person who coined synpath (@stirdrawsandreblaws) adressed this issue in an FAQ: “Isn’t having a synpath the same as being animal/other-hearted?
Sort of. I created synpath before I was made aware animal-hearted and other-hearted were terms. As synpath refers to something you resonate with and animal/other-hearted is a personal identity, there is no conflict between them and one or both may be used at the same time if desired.”
When it comes to words, however, I usually take the common usage over Word of God, and ‘synpath’ is used to describe a personal identity as well as a concept that simply resonates with you. In other words, though the intended meaning was different than that of ‘otherhearted’, they can be used as synonyms for one-another.
Personally, I use ‘otherhearted’ when referring to species/objects/concepts and ‘synpath’ when referring to specific characters.
Be patient. Don’t rush it, but don’t completely stop looking either. Keeping a journal and jotting down all your nonhuman feelings/traits/memories/etc. can really help get an overview of why exactly you’re otherkin and can make it easier to determine your kintype(s). If you’re ever in doubt about anything, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t think 3 days of introspection is enough; it takes longer than that to confirm a kintype (how long, though, is in the end up to you). That’s pretty much my standard answer to this. c:
I see where you’re coming from, but I disagree. The identification doesn’t have to be in full and it certainly shouldn’t be physical, but you need to identify as something other than human in order to be otherkin. If it’s just a connection, it’s just a connection. Describing it that way underestimates just how strong the identification is for some people.
Again, I understand where you’re coming from, and I think the way you describe it is along the lines of how I feel my bison theriotype. But weak or not, it’s still something that I identify as and something with which identifying helps me make sense of whatever feelings I have that don’t fit into a traditionally human narrative.
I don’t know if your identity is primaily psychological or spiritual. If it’s the latter, I’m afraid I can’t help you much. If it’s the forme,r it really boils down to whether you find it helpful to describe yourself as canon-divergent, both in terms of your own relationship with your kintype and in how you communicate with other people about your kintype.
The process itself isn’t much different than figuring out a kintype. ‘Just’ take not of the nonhuman traits you have and see how they stack up with what you believe to be your source. Maybe keeping a list of differences and matches will help keeping track of it.
But yeah, I’d say it’s really just up to you whether you find some solace in labelling yourself a canon-divergent Alolan Ninetales or if it’s more comfortable to describe yourself as an ice kitsune.
I’m still a little too tired to find further reading for you, sorry, but you might like this post by Jes http://jeshire.tumblr.com/post/148154421080/
I’m sorry you feel that way about your theriotype, Anon. It can’t be all that fun… Whether you’re a wolf or a lion or some other ‘common’ kind of therian, I hope you’ll find some way to accept yourself.
I know there’s a pretty big element of flashyness in the online otherkin community, but please don’t let that fool you into thinking you’re less interesting or that you need an uncommon kintype to be interesting. All this brouhaha isn’t about anything except finding yourself and accepting yourself.
Whether your inner self is a common gray wolf or an obscure crustacean from 500mya, shouldn’t matter because it’s you and you just won’t ever be truly content unless you accept yourself for what you are. You can’t go around wishing you were someone or something else.
I’m sorry if this comes off harsher than intended, cause I really do sympathize with what you’re feeling. Try seeing this as a loving admonishing❤️❤️️
No reason to apologize. Simply being canon-divergent means that your kintype is divergent from the established canon, and you figure out whether you are or aren’t as you go along. Whenever you get a memory or sensation or shift, etc., you can stack it up against your source material and see how it compares.
For example, in the current editions of D&D, gnolls are shown to have digitigrade legs, whereas the gnolls of my canon are plantigrade. They’re also usually depicted as around 6ft tall, where my ‘gnolls’ are about a foot shorter.
Being canon-divergent doesn’t really affect your perception of yourself or your identity more than being canon-conforming (is that the word? I just made up that word) does. It only means that you might have to do a bit more explanation when you talk to other ‘kin about your experiences.
No question is stupid! I can guarantee that if you have a question, there’s bound to be a bunch of other people wondering the exact same thing.
Now, I put this ask off for a bit because I wasn’t sure how best to word it but… When it comes to being otherkin or a therian the behavior of your species when not filtered through the lens of human experiences, don’t matter all that much. Of course there are subconscious biases (I’m positively biased towards any and all people with ungulate kintypes, for example), but at the end of the day we’re all biologically human and have been socialized as humans.
So if you and your friend have arguments, they’re unlikely to stem from your kintypes, unless you’re both hung up on thinking about how you ‘shouldn’t be compatible.’ There’s no reason your kintypes should be an issue here. Look out for more mundane causes of arguments and tension, such as stress from school or family life.
Your kintypes affect your personalities, of course, but they shouldn’t (and probably can’t) do so beyond the natural variety of human personality. A deer and a fox in human bodies can very much be friends. c:
Yes, I think you should be open about all your kintypes. If someone is petty enough to send you hate over your actions in a past life, especially actions that you regret, they aren’t worth your time, and you can just block them. Repressing a kintype is not helpful and, as you said, it can make you feel very bad to deny such an integral part of yourself. Acknowledging would be the best thing to do in my opinion.
Sorry for being so aggressive about my response. I assumed you were one of the people involved in the recent disagreement, mocking the intent and tone of my post. A good reminder of how assuming makes and ass of you and me, haha.
I think the fear of making any comparison between the two (being otherkin and being trans, to reiterate) stems from 1) the risk of trivializing trans narratives, as you pointed out and 2) the risk of bringing vitriol towards the otherkin community. Both are valid fears, and I usually try my damned hardest not to bring up casual comparisons between the two concepts in public.
The controversy that this week’s drama all arose from, though, wasn’t about a person insisting that the two were universally similar. They just wrote about their own experiences with gender dysphoria and species dysphoria, making a point about how, to them personally, relieving one was as important as relieving the other. Some people took this way out of proportion and seemed to think that they were saying attempts to relieve species dysphoria were always as important as attempts to relieve gender dysphoria.
I’m afraid I can’t answer your original question perfectly right now. Work and drama has exhausted me. But I think this post gives a pretty good overview of the whole issue: http://akhila.feralscribes.org/2013/on-the-appropriation-of-trans-narratives-by-therianthropes/
They’re all synonyms (and unnecessary ones at that, if you ask me). There have always been people who differentiated between their primary, secondary, tertiary, etc. kintypes, but they usually do so because they discovered them at different times or because some kintypes present themselves stronger. I used to refer to my gnoll kintype as my secondary ‘type, though, for personal reasons, I only really do so now when talking about how I discovered my kintypes. It’s not unusual to make a distinction like that.
So the issue here isn’t really that people have a hierarchy of sorts for their kintypes, but rather the terminology they use around that hierarchy. When people make a distinction between ‘kintype’ and ‘literally me’, they’re implying that their kintype isn’t something they really identify as (i.e., that it isn’t even a kintype).
I think it boils down to two things: Lack of knowledge and lack of courage or commitment.
For the first point, a good chunk of people with long kin lists with many categories of importance often just have the wrong idea about what it means to be otherkin. Often they’ve received the definition of ‘otherhearted’ instead, or they’ve been told that a kintype is simply something you were in a past life and not something you still are.
For the second point, I fear some people might be trying to distance themselves from their kintypes for fear of judgement. I’ve seen a number of kids who genuinely seemed to be otherkin but didn’t feel comfortable outright saying “I’m X-kin, I identify as X.” And honestly, I get that. Committing to a newly discovered identity can be tough. But simply shoving forcing it away and keeping a distance to it will only bring grief.
As always, education and encouragement is the key here.
Honestly, I don’t think it will be too different from figuring out a spiritual/otherwise metaphysical kintype.
But I do have some tips, though you’ve gotta keep in mind that I come from ‘therian traditions,’ so to speak, which can have a slightly different focus than a lot of ‘non-therian traditions.’ (I feel like it’s a little arbitrary to draw lines between therianthropy and non-therian otherkinity, but there are differences, as detailed in [this post]).
I also have a quite… loose, I guess you could say… relationship with the whole process of questioning whether a trait is really non-human or not. To me, it’s kind of a chicken-or-egg thing; it doesn’t really matter when the outcome is the same. In other words, if it contributes to you feeling non-human, it counts as a non-human trait in my book.
First tip: Don’t rush it. Be prepared to wait months or possibly even a year or two to be sure about your kintype. Give yourself as much time as you need to get to know yourself. Don’t overthink it, but let it slip to the back of your mind. If it’s psychological, meditation kan only get you so far.
Second tip: Keep a journal (or have some way) to write down whatever traits you notice that match whatever you’re questioning or simply doesn’t match any known kintype. It helps you keep track of your experiences and get your thoughts out so you don’t end up walking in circles around the same three subjects.
Third tip: Don’t be afraid to ask for help. When I was still trying to pin-point the kintype that I now know is a gnoll, I’d regularly post about it on my blog, which in turn encouraged people to send in suggestions. This also has the added bonus of being a pretty good talking point in discussions with anti-kin, as it’s clear from my blog history that the kintype was present before I knew what a gnoll even was (here are links to the posts in question just because I think it’s neat [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]).
So yeah. Patience, journaling, and asking for help when necessary. That’s what I have to offer.
I recommend suppressing your shifts if they cause distress. I have a tendency to get mental shifts while at work, and I’ve found that something as simple as doing math in your head or thinking hard about school work and other decidedly human things helps keep the shift at bay.
Not to my knowledge, no. It’s normal for both kintypes and heartedtypes to have varying degrees of intensity as well as presenting themselves differently, but they can usually be sorted into one category or the other. You can do like some people on tumblr do and rank your ‘types in order of intensity? Or, if you feel like no established term really fits you, you can propose your own?
Hope this helps!
They are very real, but they’re in no way ‘bad members’ or malicious. They’re misinformed, perhaps a bit naïve, and, more often than not, new to the community. Fluffy ‘kin deserve all the same respect and decency with which you would treat any other person. But we also owe it to the rest of the community to give them a kind (if sometimes stern) explanation of what they might’ve misunderstood about otherkinity and how this all works.
Pushing people away from perhaps the only community they can fully relate to helps absolutely no one, but neither does ignoring fluff. It’s about finding the balance between acceptance and education.
The Elf Queen’s Daughters and The Silver Elves have letters dating back to the mid-70s and can trace their group’s origins back to circa 1970. An elvenkin going by the name R’ykandar Korra’ti would later, either inspired by this group or encouraged by them (the timeline is unclear), create the mailing list ‘Elfinkind Digest’ for elves and other nonhumans.
It was in this list that the term ‘otherkind’, later shortened to ‘otherkin’ was first used in 1990. Torin/Darren Stalder is usually credited as having coined it, though no one, not even him, is 100% sure who was the first to use it. When asked to comment on why he used the term, Torin simply stated that “I got tired of typing elf/dragon/orc/etc.-kin and just used otherkin. It was convenience and practicality. […] There wasn’t actual intent to form a new word; just shorthand.”
So the community itself can be traced back to the 70s but the term ‘otherkin’ is from the 90s.
If you’re interested in the early history of the otherkin community, check out The Otherkin Timeline by Orion Scribner.
Sure! I experience a lot of ‘hearted-ish feelings for bovines that are similar in size and shape to bison. The feeling is not quite as strong as that for my unicorn heartedtype, so I usually don’t call gaurs and fighting bulls my heartedtypes. But the feeling is a very similar, and in other people it could well be strong enough to qualify as otherhearted experiences!
Think about it - it would make sense for you to strongly relate to species that are similar. I don’t think I’ve met a human who doesn’t relate a lot to other great apes (even if some of them cross right into the uncanny valley for a lot of people). If your kintype is a specific species of dragon, other dragons would likely seem like your kin (no pun intended).
If you can find a spiritual way to explain it I don’t see why not. All spiritualities in existence today had to be invented/discovered at some point. There’s nothing wrong with building up whatever belief system best works for you.
You’re the front-runner of most, if not all current vocal anti-kin. Though you claim that you want to ‘help kinnies,’ and you try to hide behind the fact that you’ve been the mod of a help blog, you can not deny that only-on-tomblr was founded on nothing but malice and your current attitude is a facade to seem like less of a bad person. In your own words “anyone can seem nice until they shit on people.”
You’ve shown time and time again that you have no regards for the feelings of those who are happily otherkin and only care for the ones who want to quit the community. You blatantly ignore and block those who correct the misinformation you spread, no matter if the correction is directed at you, the post itself, or one of your followers.
Despite all your ‘don’t harass kinnies’ and ‘leave kinnies alone’ virtue signaling, your vocal contempt for us is making assholes feel like it’s perfectly acceptable to personally tell us to go fuck ourselves on an almost daily basis. This sudden change of attitude you’re showing is an insult to those who’ve been targeted by you and your followers.
You’re selfish, despise being corrected, believe you know more than actual mental health professionals, and worst of all, you’re one of those people who, when told that you’re wrong, instead of taking some of it to heart, compromising, or even just considering that there might be something to the criticism, will flat-out deny it all and try to argue that you’re right anyways. The behavior I’ve seen from you has been no different than that of the people who’ve made my life a living hell (even if I hesitate to call them outright abusers), and I don’t have a lick of patience for that.
Kindly take your faux sincerity and shove it where the sun don’t shine.
Acceptable? Yeah, I guess. But I wouldn’t really recommend it. In a full berserker shift you might end up breaking some of your things or, in case you don’t live alone, might have a hard time suppressing the shift when your roommates get back home. If you feel like you and your surroundings will be safe I don’t see why not. But I don’t exactly encourage it.
An otherkin is someone who identifies as nonhuman while a therian (shot for ‘therianthrope’) specifically identifies as an animal. This is usually taken to mean an earthly animal like a dog or a dinosaur, but can also refer to mythical feral animals like dogs with wings (though most of those prefer the term 'theriomythic’).
'Otherkin’ is usually used as an umbrella term under which 'therian’ us a subset. But since the otherkin community developed in a few mailing lists back in the 70s-90s, the therian community developed on the Akt.Horror.Werewolves GeoCities site in the 90s (in other words, the both appeared independently of each other), some therians prefer to only call themselves therian, distancing themselves from the wider otherkin community.
Welcome to the wacky world of otherkin history!
That’s a pretty weird debate to be having. You are your kintype. Your kintype is not a separate entity from you. The only sorta gray area I can think of is with multiple systems where your system member has another species identity than you, but even so, you and your system member are still different people.
It’s a bit difficult to find posts about this that go in-depth but I found a few:
- “Kintypes Versus Headmates/Polykin Versus Multiples” by House of Chimeras
- “Polykin are not Multiple” by House of Chimeras/liongoatsnake
- “Shifting and Fronting” by fromfiction
- Therian Nation on naming kintypes
- This is a discourse post but several of the replies explain the difference between kintypes and totems and spirit guides
Hope some of this helps!
The earliest written records of the elvenkind community date back to 1972, though it is believed that the actual beginning might’ve been in the late 60s. Though the word ‘otherkind’ (later shortened to ‘otherkin’) first appeared in 1990, the elvenkind community is, by pretty much everyone, considered the beginning of the modern day otherkin community. You can read all about this in Orion Scribner’s otherkin timeline. c:
Sure it is! There are no strict criteria on how you’re supposed to feel nonhuman, as long as you feel like you’re nonhuman right now. c:
It’s a little uncommon, but by no means unheard of. Most people don’t have their favorite animal/creature/character as their kintype. For many, however, upon awakening, their kintype quickly becomes one of their faves. Though this is the norm, there are plenty of people who never grow fond of their kintype, which I understand. After all, it’s just a trait, like being blonde or American.
Just like there are human misanthropists, there are otherkin who dislike, or at least don’t care much for, their kintypes. You don’t have to love your kintype in order for it to be a kintype.
Well, I’d say just start off with putting words on what exactly makes you feel nonhuman. That’s the only universal thing being otherkin is about, after all. Meditation can and has helped a lot of people discover their kintype(s), but personally, I haven’t felt the need for it.
More important than what you were in a past life or in the astral plane is what you are in your day-to-day, if you ask me. What instinctual reactions you have to things, what you feel your body or surroundings should be, what urges you want to act on but can’t, etc. All the things that make you you, but don’t really fit into a regular human narrative.
I know quite a few people will disagree, though, and you should never take the advice of a single person as the be-all and end-all. So ask around and see what others have to say. :)
I’m ‘lucky’ that both my ‘types present themselves in a very easy to picture way. I mainly experience phantom shifts, dysphoria, and a nonhuman body image, so pin-pointing a species for me was as easy as describing my nonhuman indicators. I know the shape the horns I’m supposed to have, the size of my hump, and so on, so, looking at photos of bison, I can with no problem say that they match a yearling bull. Coupled with the homesickness I feel towards thin, grassy forests, I assume I was/am a wood bison.
I had basically the same experience with my gnoll kintype, except that I couldn’t find it on my own despite regularly playing d&d. A kind anon suggested gnolls and they match all my non-bison ph-shifts, dysphoria, and even mental shifts.
Yep! There is nothing that excludes you from both being a vampire and ‘kin. In fact, I can’t think of any alterhuman identities that can’t function in tandem with others.
Though I struggle to understand the experience of being void/galaxykin, and believe a lot of the people who identify as such have misunderstood what being otherkin is all about, I won’t rule out the possibility of some of them being legitimate in their self-identification. By animistic beliefs, everything, including non-sentient objects, has a soul of sorts. By some spiritualities, everything has an energy.
It’s not that weird to imagine that someone could come to the conclusion that their soul is part star or that their energy resonates with a void, considering we already accept those concepts with animals and fictional characters. I, at least, would feel like a hypocrite if I ruled someone else’s spiritual/ontological/psychological experiences out just because I didn’t understand it.
To be fair, kinphobic-moose, yet another anti-kin blog, just came out as strongly anti religion, even calling religious people pitiful and regurgitating some straight up Leninist rhetoric. I’m just baffled that a human in our current day and age would uncritically repeat ideas from 1900 in all seriousness. To quote them directly: “at the end of the day, i really want nothing more than to see these poor people released from religion, so we as the human race might proceed into the future unhindered by delusional bronze age beliefs.”
I also remember a thing with only-on-tumblr a while back where someone (I think it was one of the AKC mods?) pointed out that every single one of their arguments could be used against modern pagan groups - something that angered one of their mods greatly as he(?) was a pagan himself.
But yes, for the most part, they seem to give religions, and even other subcultures and identity phenomena, a free pass. When someone who happens to be otherkin acts in a bad way, they use it against our entire community. When someone who happens to belong to any other spirituality/subculture/ontological ideal does something bad, they treat it as just a bad apple.
I fully believe they started out attacking otherkin only because we’re weird, and then later convinced themselves that we’re harmful, so they wouldn’t have to feel bad about essentially being high school mean girls.