The Fictionkin-specific FAQ has been updated! Feel free to reblog and spread it around.

I want an honest response here, so i’m putting this in the tag. Please name at least one adult, or even child who is Otherkin or Fictionkin that has never been on this website or came in contact with people on this site.

I’m still waiting for an answer, I also asked this question about a year ago and got no responce. So is there none? Woah, are you telling me that otherkins and fictionkins exist ONLY on tumblr, a problematic website comparable to 4chan?!

A lot of the otherkin boards on other websites have people that might fall into those categories. The reason why it is so hard to name specific people though is that you are asking the tumblr community to find people that have never interacted with the tumblr community.

They do exist though and I would suggest going on other websites to find them. Otherkin exist on many other websites and you can definitely find more of them if you look. Here is a whole group of deviantart otherkin for example.

DeviantART doesn’t exactly fit what im looking for here, since most tumblr users have a deviantart. Plus, noone takes that site seriously. I’m talking “real life” people, like parents, teachers, celebrities, some guy you met on the street. I want actual proof that they exist outside of the internet.

People on the internet exist outside of the internet, and are people you would meet on the street. People meet me on the street, and I have a Tumblr account. There are parents and teachers, and even, yeegads, celebrities, with Tumblr accounts. Your criteria continue to be strangely irrational.

Otherkin communities meet up offline. I have been to some of these meet ups personally. There are fairly large meets that go back many many years. That you are not aware of this is due to your own lack of research, not any implication that it doesn’t exist.

Otherkin was named the official term in the 1970s, which we’ve said about 10095746 times, and last time I checked, tumblr hasn’t been around that long. Why do haters never learn?

No, it was not.  The term “otherkin” was coined online on April 18, 1990 by Torin on the Elfinkind Digest, not in the 70s.  The offline elven communities that were around in the 70s (Elf Queen’s Daughters, Silver Elves, etc.) did not use that term.

Regarding phantom limbs

Content warnings: medical treatments, pain, physical problems, surgery, genital mention, weird brain stuff. 

Several folks have asked me about the phrase “phantom limbs,” which was used in my old Theri There comics. Some animal people (called therianthropes or therians) have experiences that they call phantom limbs, where they feel as if they have tails or other non-human body shapes. I told about the basics of it in this comic, and this post will make more sense if you read that first. When I made that comic in 2005, the only name therians gave to that experience of theirs was “phantom limbs.” Readers were concerned that it might be wrong to use that name for that experience, because it might be inaccurate to use the same name as the phenomenon experienced by amputees.

Before I made that comic, I had researched enough about the phenomenon to know that it can be strange or even painful. There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered about why it happens, how it works, and how to treat it. 

The big problem with treatment– and this reveals a lot about what phantom limbs are– is that pain medicine can’t stop phantom limb pain. You can’t put anesthesia in a foot that isn’t there. It’s thought that the brain makes phantom limb pain because it can’t understand that the limb is gone, so it assumes that the limb is just numb or something. The pain is the brain’s way of trying to remind you to move and fix the limb. One of the only kinds of treatments that helps is called “mirror box therapy,” which uses an optical illusion to help the brain figure out that the limb is gone, so that it can stop sending pain signals. Brains are just weird about pain! There are a lot of strange things that happen with phantom limbs. 

Phantom sensations are experienced by a lot more people than just amputees. There are people who have all their limbs, but in response to paralysis, they feel an extra phantom limb. Experiments found that you can induce phantom limbs in people whose physical limbs are all okay. Brain scans showed they weren’t just saying it, they were really feeling it. Some transgender people feel phantom body parts that match how they feel their body should be. Transgender people are a lot less likely than cisgender people to have phantom sensations after having surgery on those parts. It seems like that happens based on whether a person feels like that really was a part of their body, and something they miss. 

In the 1990s and 2000s, the phrase “phantom limb” was used by therians who believed the origin of the phenomenon was spiritual, as well as by therians who thought the origin might be a psychological or neurological condition. Later on, therians became concerned that it might be offensive or incorrect to call it that. They came up with some other names for it, such as “astral limbs,” or “otherlimbs.” 

The problem with “astral limbs” is that it means that one believes in a specific higher level of existence (the astral plane), where a spiritual part of a person (the astral body) resides. A lot of therians who experience phantom limbs don’t believe in the astral plane.

I see nothing wrong with the word “otherlimbs,” except that it’s generally trouble to make up new jargon for things that already have names in English. Then only insiders understand what you’re talking about, and it makes a communication barrier between insiders and outsiders. Standard English is best, unless if you’ve got a really good reason to change it, in which case, go for it. Maybe this is a good reason.

I don’t think that the phantom limbs experienced by therians are really different from those experienced by other kinds of folks. I’ve talked to transgender and disabled therians who experience both kinds of sensations, and they say these feel the same. Therian phantom sensations don’t feel different than those felt as part of a transgender or disabled experience. It’s strange for therians to feel the sensation of a tail when they weren’t born with one, but people have felt phantom sensations of body parts they weren’t born with, either, such as third arms or different genitals. Phantom sensations don’t just happen from the loss of a body part, they’re a weird experience that our brains create as they try to make sense of our bodies.

I’m in favor of calling this therian experience by the name “phantom limbs,” since is most likely just a particular kind of phantom limb just as experienced by amputees, paralyzed people, and transgender people, and not a wholly different and unrelated phenomenon. As far as I can tell, it’s correct to call it by that name. If you really want to differentiate between them, though, and you don’t feel okay about calling the therian one “phantom limbs,” then call it “otherlimbs,” not “astral limbs.”

Identity policing and the “special snowflake” accusation.

I keep seeing people accuse asexuals, gender-nonconforming people, otherkin, and literally every other kind of people who use unusual identity labels as “attention-seeking” and as “special snowflakes.”

Here’s what I don’t get. Who do you think is showering these people with attention? Who do you think considers these people special? Who are you dissuading from “encouraging” these people by calling them “special snowflakes?” Identifying as otherkin has not made anyone think I’m more special than they thought I was before I told them I was otherkin. Identifying as a gray-asexual lesbian has not made anyone think I was special either. Both have gotten me a fair amount of hate for supposedly wanting to be special, but neither have gotten me the royal treatment you seem think we’ll get unless you put your foot down.

If an asexual demiromantic person shows up on an asexual forum, literally no one is going to treat him like he’s special. Instead, they’ll just be like “okay, cool, thanks for sharing.” If a deity-kin shows up on an otherkin forum, nobody’s going to start worshipping that person or thinking she’s the most special person who ever lived. Instead, they’ll just be like “okay, cool, you’ll fit in with the other twenty people who identify as gods. Have fun!”

On the other hand, if a panromantic asexual demiboy tries to talk about his identity to “regular folk” or even your average queer people, he’ll likely be told that his identity is fake and be treated badly for having it. Other asexuals will treat him like everyone else, and non-asexuals/non-supporters will treat him like he’s worthless. Otherkin rarely get treated like they’re special or awesome or better than other people if they tell non-otherkin about their identities, and when they tell fellow otherkin how they identify, they’re again just treated like everyone else.

These identities aren’t about specialness. Actually, I feel a little sick every time I see a post about people’s identities that has the word “special” or “special snowflake” in it.

Here’s why I identify as a gray asexual lesbian. I realized I liked women at sixteen. Imagine struggling for years to accept that you prefer women over men only to try to have relationships and realize that the vast majority of people want things like kissing and sex that are just major turn-offs for you. You try thinking of this as a psychological problem, but your psychologist says there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re just uninterested in something a lot of other people like. He tells you there’s no medical way to force someone to want something they don’t want and sends you on your way. Later, you find out about asexuality, but your girlfriend screams at you for considering that identity because you do experience attraction, you just don’t experience it very often. When you do experience it, it’s intense, but it rarely leads you to actually want to have sex. For a while, you start telling people “hi, I’m a lesbian who isn’t interested in kissing or sex except that some part of me almost sort of kind of in some abstract way wants the idea of sex but not the fact of it; this isn’t an issue of readiness because I’ve felt ready-ish to do things and tried them only to have them just…not feel natural or right at all. Still, my romantic feelings for women are very different from the friendship feelings I have for men, and I want that to be respected.” Jeez, that’s a lot of explaining for one person’s orientation. You eventually start saying “I’m asexual,” which leads people to think that you’re also aromantic (which is wrong) and that you don’t experience attraction at all. You do experience attraction, but not enough to make sense of sex. You try saying you have a low sex-drive, but it’s not a sex-drive issue as you’re able to masturbate almost daily with no issue, you just don’t feel sexual attraction to other people often enough for it to count. So, you start telling people “I’m almost asexual-ish, but not quite.” Then, you find out there’s a word for that. It’s “gray asexual.” You also find out that there are a growing number of lesbians who accept asexual and gray asexuals within the identity label and have no problem with you saying you belong.

“I’m a gray asexual lesbian” actually makes me feel like less of an attention-hog than I felt like when I was stuck saying “I feel like a lesbian but am technically asexual except when I’m not. I really want a girlfriend, but I don’t want most kinds of physical intimacy.” It’s a short way for me to make my point and stop talking rather than having to go on for paragraphs explaining and justifying myself. In short, I don’t want to call a ton of attention to my orientation. I don’t expect anyone to think I’m special for being a gray asexual lesbian. In fact, I wish I were just a normal lesbian or even straight…all the time. It isn’t exactly fun or easy having a unique and badly understood orientation.

Saying “I’m a gray-asexual lesbian” (for me) is similar to saying “I’m a sober straight woman.” It’s a way of saying “I’m interested in dating people like you, but here’s something important you might want to know before you consider it.” Some people would hate being in a romantic relationship with someone they couldn’t share a glass of wine with. Other people wouldn’t enjoy relationships with people they couldn’t reliably have sex with. That’s all that means. Granted, some asexuals do like sex, they just don’t feel sexual attraction. These asexuals might choose to have sex with people they have non-sexual but romantic feelings for. 

Please stop assuming that just because someone is identifying in a way that you’re not used to seeing, they’re just doing it to seem special.

Please stop assuming that if a word is being used in a way you’re not used to seeing it used, it must be because the person has decided “normal” labels don’t “sound special enough.”

Well put, as always.

Fictionkin who claim to be the only legitimate version of that character/person make me sick tbh

Like if you’re kin and say “Im the ONLY Captain Kirk, everyone else is fake and no one can be Kirk except me because I’m Kirk!” (There’s probably a reason this tends to only show up in fictionkin and not fictives too.) Do you know how self centered you sound? Do you know how selfish that claim is? Do you know how many other Kirks are going to see that and feel sick to their stomachs and maybe have a breakdown?

Do you realize how harmful and disgusting you’re being when you say you’re the ONLY person allowed to identify as a thing? Do you know how much you sound exactly like a primary schooler who hasn’t gotten their way in a make believe game?

did you know that mentally ill people exist? and they can often feel, since they are a character, that anyone else who claims that they are that character is a doppelganger and cannot possibly be them? do you understand how terrified you would feel if someone who looked exactly like you walked into a room? and then people started treating them like they were you? thats what many fictionkin feel when they see doubles, and they say those things (“im the only one”) to try and calm themselves down, often because they sent into dissociation?

did you know that not all mental illnesses can work together? someone who dissociates when they see doubles cannot physically handle being nice and kind and loving towards a double. thats not how it works. yes, attacking other fictionkin and tagging your “im the only one” posts (in the character or fictionkin tags) is wrong, and shouldnt be excused by mental illness, but what youre doing here right now is not only making everyone you seem to be defending feel like shit, but youre also infantalizing mentally ill people (”you sound like a primary schooler”). youre also throwing people who are selfish because of mental illness under the bus, like boy howdy was this an ableist post.

and honestly its not uncommon for neurotypical people to also feel uncomfortable when someone shares a name with them, or too many similarities (same state/interests/facial features/etc.), so to feel uncomfortable around doubles, that doesnt sound strange at all. i dont understand the constant need for people to attack people for this.

No one’s pretending. There’s reasons why people identify as otherkin and fictionkin, I’d suggest taking the time to learn about them before you open your mouth on the subject.

I don’t identify as otherkin and fictionkin to specifically cope with mental illness, however one of my otherkin identities is a very useful coping skill for the stress and anxiety I experience as a result of my illnesses. If you’re really looking for an explanation, here it is. My dragon kintype can be a coping tool for stress - connecting to this part of me is useful for helping me maintain my cool and not become overstressed. This may entail just thinking about this kintype, drawing it out, envisioning it - it helps. You could say it’s a grounding technique, a recommended coping skill. Since this coping mechanism for me is in no way detrimental, I have no reason to throw away something which has helped me so. I couldn’t get rid of it anyways, considering it’s an integral part of me.

If you think otherkin is that harmful to the human psyche, you probably don’t know much about it. The identity itself is not harmful in the least and is in no way comparable to the real shit I’ve experienced as a person with mental illness and psychosis.

Also keep in mind not everyone has the privilege to be able to see or talk to a psychiatric professional.

You keep saying it would make mental illness much worse, but you should probably elaborate how.

It also shouldn’t be assumed that psychiatric “professionals” are the experts on literally everything or that they are helpful to literally every person in every circumstance. If you are lucky enough to benefit from available therapies and medications, that’s something to be grateful for, but it’s not okay to look down on people who aren’t. Also, some coping-kin also go to therapy/take medication. It’s not an either/or.

why can’t you otherkin/fictionkin/fictives rp instead of believing you are such character? It’s healthier while being fun? Or do you just want to shoot me for saying this? 

1. Because there is no “instead”. RPing is nothing more than a fun activity SOME ‘kin and fictives, like SOME non-kin and singlets, engage in; it doesn’t change the fact that people identify as a hawk, unicorn, Harry Potter, etc. They can’t just up and change it.

2. Otherkin and fictionkin =/= fictives. Fictives are a documented phenomena within psychiatry. Which isn’t to say ‘kin aren’t a “real thing”, they are, but people who are anal as fuck about “actual medical conditions” might want to take note.

3. Surprisingly, you can be otherkin, fictionkin, and/or a fictive AND be healthy! It is NOT necessarily a symptom of anything “wrong”.

4. Also surprisingly, it’s not about “fun”. You can have fun with your identity, you can have fun while being who you are, but it’s not something people “pick up” in order to “have fun”.

5. I don’t want to shoot you. I want you to actually do some research on these topics, and become an understanding, educated individual.

You can “refuse to know anyone who follows these beliefs“, as you said in another post, but maybe you should learn about these “beliefs” and people first.

I don’t think anyone who believes identifying as Harry Potter isn’t a choice is perfectly healthy.

Right. Well.

What do you want me to say? Good for you?

It’s not a subject that affects you. At all. And unless you’re a mental health professional… and even then… What you think 100% does not matter here. Do these people and their beliefs qualify them for a disorder specifically because of their beliefs? Maybe yes, maybe no. Probably no. And if they do, surprise, they still can’t help it, so the OP is STILL useless.

Nonetheless, many people with these beliefs aren’t going to qualify as disordered just because of these beliefs, so yes. The belief, in and of itself, isn’t unhealthy… even if you don’t think so. I don’t think being Mormon or an anti-feminist is healthy, but people can be and are those things while still being medically and psychologically average.

“I don’t think they’re sane” is not a valid argument, and doesn’t change the fact that plenty of people who identify in the ways listed above are not impaired by their identification.

Guess all those trolls who shout “go see a psychiatrist” will have to find another thing to do with their life now that an actual doctor chimed in and sunk their ableist garbage ship.

THANK YOU.

P.S. Being otherkin =/= clinical lycanthropy. Generally speaking, clinical lycanthropy involves the actual delusion that you are physically a non-human animal or are transforming into one. While some otherkin may experience delusions or may find that their kin identities are affected by delusions, the majority of otherkin know they are physically human and do not doubt that any more than someone who lived a past life in Egypt doubts that he’s American now.

@ other kin: can someone explain to me how that works like you feel like you are an animal? Or?

My kin type isn’t an animal, so I can’t speak to that experience, but I can explain at least my own experience of being otherkin.

For starters, all of us know that we are 100% physically human. If you ever encounter someone who doesn’t realize that, chances are good that they’re either trolling or dealing with some psychological problems. It’s not really my place to say. However, many of us have spiritual beliefs or unique ways of understanding our own psychology that draw us to certain non-human beings. Many of us believe in past lives and remember living past lives as specific non-human beings. If someone identifies just as strongly with a past life as they do with this one (if not more strongly), they might say they’re wolf-kin. It means they are physically human now, but they spiritually identify as a wolf. Those who astrally project (this is an experience where you separate your consciousness from your body) may perceive their astral bodies (the forms they take out of body) as non-human. Some otherkin just have a sense of spiritually belonging to a different species and don’t necessarily have a specific way of explaining that feeling.

Having an astral self that is separate or different from your physical self, remembering past lives, and carrying over identity traits from past lives are not unique experiences to otherkin. Many people remember past lives or practice astral projection, but otherkin are likely in the minority among people who do this.

A few otherkin feel like non-humans and believe their minds work differently from most human minds. In short, these people believe that their neurological makeup is producing the wolf-like experience, but because they are still in control and do not feel harmed by that experience, they do not consider it a disorder.

Some people also identify as “coping-kin.” This is a bit more controversial because some coping-kin do not literally believe they are a specific non-human and instead identify with a character or a non-human being they consider a role model in order to cope with stress or with a mental disorder.

I wonder how many Otherkin on this site are gonna get to their late 20′s, hit the real world, realise they are human, and forever feel the kind of embarrassment the rest of us feel about Neopets when we look back at our involvement in it

Except…a lot of otherkin on this site are actually in their late twenties or later. The first people to use the term “otherkin” actually started doing so in the 70s, and I have heard that many of them are still around.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say that we’re going to “realize we’re human.” My guess is that you’re basing that statement off of what our physical (non-spiritual) bodies look like. We all know that in that sense, we are human. However, many of us believe we lived non-human past lives and still see those lives as important to our identities. I know there are also otherkin who believe that souls have species or defined shapes/forms and that their souls are not human-shaped. A growing number of otherkin do not believe they are physically or spiritually non-human. They simply feel like non-human animals and describe themselves as mentally being fox-like or wolf-like to help others understand them better. This is different from playing pretend because most otherkin spend a great deal of time figuring out what fits them and what makes the most sense. Since being otherkin is a part of many peoples’ spiritual beliefs, it is no more appropriate to blanketly label us mentally ill for thinking we are spiritually non-human than it is to label people mentally ill for thinking Jesus rose from the dead, gods influence people’s lives, or that a deity or guardian angel can give you messages about how to live your life.

I will say, however, that just like people can have delusions focused on religious miracles or horrors, people can also have delusions related to being otherkin. In some cases, the delusions aren’t hurting them and can play out naturally without much interference. In other cases, more help is needed. It is pretty difficult to tell online.

If you ever come across someone who does not realize they are physically human, chances are good that that person is either a troll or is dealing with a delusion. There is a disorder called clinical lycanthropy that makes people think they are animals or that they are transforming into animals. A clinical lycanthrope would be unlikely to ID as otherkin because clinical lycanthropes generally don’t identify as animals spiritually or mentally. Instead, they fear that they are being “taken over” by animals or that they are involuntarily transforming. Believe it or not, the one time I saw someone talking about how he was being “taken over” by his feral, wolf-like nature, about five different otherkin showed up telling the kid to seek psychological help. This wasn’t being said maliciously; people were genuinely worried. If a person understands that her body is human and that she needs to treat her body like a human body, she’s probably doing okay.

As for the “you’re gonna look back and feel silly” thing, so what? Just like some 14-year-old Christians hit college and go “I don’t really believe this” and other 14-year-old Christians go on to become ministers, some otherkin eventually stop believing they have non-human spirits or minds. Others continue to believe in it for their whole lives. Changing what you believe in doesn’t have to be some humiliating “I was such a weird kid” moment. It can be as simple as “this is what I thought with this information, and now I’m thinking differently.”

P.S.

The “real world” does not really care if you identify as non-human. At my old job, there was a guy who chatted about his past life all the time. People listened to him and were nice and supportive about it. That isn’t every workplace situation by a long-shot, but it does happen. Even if people at your job don’t want to hear about your spiritual beliefs, it’s not like your community is going to vanish the second you turn 28.

The real world strikes again.

Anti-Otherkin: What are you going to do out in the real world, where nobody wants to hear about your otherkin stuff?

Otherkin: Um…talk about my other interests at work and continue talking about otherkin with my online friends and other people who share my beliefs?  

FAQ (via otherkinfaq)

“Headmate” is literally just another synonym. The ISST-D guidelines acknowledge that:

If you wouldn’t say any of those words are a sign of faking, don’t say it of “headmate”. Sure, headmate might have more bad seeds around it, but given that there are literally people diagnosed with DID on this site who use the term ‘headmate’, uhhh…

Also you are entirely wrong about fictives lmao.

Helpful Links

Some links outside of tumblr that might be of aid to you. There are only a few, and they’re only what I’ve found. I’d suggest digging around yourself. Google is a very useful tool.

Project Shift (Mainly for therians, but useful for otherkin too) This is a couple years old, but a really great source. It has a ton of useful articles and resources.

Project Shift - Finding Your Species (written for therians, useful for everyone) This is extremely helpful when trying to find your theriotype or your kintype. It might not work for everyone, but it is written for both spiritual and psychological otherkin/therians, which is something that is hard to find.

Absurdism (Therians, specifically felines) The articles were written by a leopard therian between 2004-2009.

Birds Of A Feather (birdkin/bird therians) Similar to Project-Shift in that is a great source with a lot of articles and resources. It has really helped me out while I have been questioning if I am a bird therian.

The Werelist Forums (Therians mainly, but also used by otherkin) One of the few forums that are still active. A great community with a lot of threads that have been very helpful. Most of these you can only see if you are a member, though I suggest lurking around for a bit first. The main site is down, so the home button doesn’t work, but this has little effect on the forums.

F: To those of you who post hate in the tags and/or generally disrespect otherkin: May I have your attention for a moment? 

Alright, so I know Otherkin/Therian can be a really strange and hard to understand identity for a lot of people, but that is no excuse to harass us.

I’m sure most of you have experienced some sort of ridicule in your lives and know what it’s like to have someone else reject or belittle you for something that you consider to be an integral part of your identity. It sucks to have someone else beat you down for something that you can’t change about yourself, especially if the person in question is just doing it because they don’t understand you.

Otherkin/Therians do not identify as animals/”mythical” creatures/etc. for fun. You are not an otherkin because you like certain animals/mythical creatures/etc. You are not an otherkin because you think you act like a certain animal/mythical creature/etc. You are an otherkin because you have done a lot of soul searching/meditating/whatever you feel is right and realised that at your core, in your soul, at the very centre of your being; you are at least partially nonhuman. This is called “Awakening”, and can take as long or as short a time as it needs to depending on the individual in question. Every otherkin has gone through some sort of Awakening, whether they realise it or not. After an otherkin has Awakened, some (including myself) will have recalled memories of their past lives and/or have the ability to spiritually sense or physically feel the body parts that their human bodies do not possess (x,x). In short, we truly believe ourselves to be nonhuman, either through reincarnation or some other incomprehensible error in the cosmos. Regardless of whether or not you believe it, we do. It’s not something we just choose to be to seem special or something. Even if you straight up think it’s bullshit, think about this. Would you make fun of someone like a Christian or a Muslim for their beliefs?

As stated above, we truly believe we are not human, and we have ample reasons to believe this. Some of you seem to think the otherkin identity is harmful to those who deal with gender identity struggles. It isn’t. In case you were unaware, being trans/nonbinary is not even remotely related to being otherkin. The former is an issue of not identifying with the gender you were assigned by society/your biology/what have you, while otherkin is believing yourself to not be human on a metaphysical level. We aren’t trying to make fun of trans/nonbinary folk, in fact there are a fair number of otherkin that are also trans/nonbinary (the mods of this blog are examples of such). However, the two do not go hand-in-hand. They’re two entirely separate issues that have nothing in common aside from the base principal of “my body does not match x.” Don’t throw a completely unrelated identity under the bus to promote your own. You’re only feeding the perception that it’s alright to make fun of people for believing that they’re different than you.

Going off of the previous point, harassment of otherkin usually centres around the idea that Otherkin are actually just crazy and therefore have no merit and should be ridiculed because “look at those lunatics over there”. Stop it. Just stop. I’m not going to sit here and explain the concept of ableism to you because it’s been done already, but what you’re doing when you harass otherkin like that is inherently ableist. Even if you ignore everything I’ve previously stated about treating us with basic human decency, you’re still ridiculing a group of people because you think they have some type of mental disorder and you need to stop. On a related note; if you justify your harassment by saying something like “They aren’t human, so I don’t have to treat them like humans,” I’m going to have to ask you to take a huge step back and think about what you just said. 

It’s true that the Otherkin/Therian community contains a lot of toxic and harmful individuals. There’s a lot of infighting. It’s not really a great place to be sometimes. But there are toxic people in every community. Though the Otherkin/Therian community tends to have a higher concentration of them, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good individuals in it as well. Just like with every community on the Internet or outside of it, you have to be careful who you interact with. Some may just want to manipulate you, but that doesn’t mean everyone is like that. I’m not telling you to not be wary, I’m telling you to not be prejudiced.

There are some people who are not otherkin, but they pretend to be. I really don’t want to spend too much time on this section, but to sum it up there’s a clear difference between 1) someone who actually identifies as nonhuman, 2) someone who is exploring their identity, 3) someone who is just pretending to be nonhuman because they have nothing better to do, and 4) someone who made a troll blog. There are people who exist in all four of these categories. Sometimes the difference between some of them may not be as readily noticeable as you may like. Don’t try to put everyone in the community into one category. Just pay attention and you’ll be able to tell the difference. And regarding point number 4; if you go on someone’s blog and see something like a list of genders that includes entirely contradictory things, or a kintype that seems absolutely, utterly ridiculous (Pico from Boku no Pico, for example) the blog you’re looking at is more than likely not serious. 

Regardless of what I’ve said so far, some of you may think we’re crazy. That’s understandable, kinfolk aren’t something you encounter all that often in daily human life. Some of us question ourselves too. Some of us don’t. Either way, at the end of the day, we know we’re not human. Speaking from my own experiences, I know I’m not human because the memories I have are too real for me. The ethereal limbs that I feel are far too vivid. Whether or not you think that’s a load of bullshit or not, these things are important to me. I believe in them with all my heart, and frankly I don’t think believing in them affects my stability on this planet. I still go about my daily life just like you do, and you wouldn’t know the difference unless I pulled you aside and said, “Hey, I’m not human.” You think it’s dangerous that we “live in a different reality” than you do, but we don’t. We simply have different beliefs, sometimes we have different issues than the ones you face. That doesn’t make us any better or worse than you. It just means we’re different.

I can’t speak for everyone here, and feel free to add things to this post that I may have missed (or correct anything that I got wrong), but I think we’d all be quite happy if the rest of you could at least attempt to understand us and stop harassing us. We may not be human, but we still deserve the same basic respect that you give those who are human.

Thanks for listening!