cen·taur: (noun) \ˈsen-ˌtȯr\

You can reply whenever you like. I'm sure I'll see it. Take care.

Hello hello! It’s very nice to be back (and to see you again)!

It’s funny, it’s been years and years since I first watched Rebels. I actually never watched the last season, which I am hoping to rectify soon! But I do think I remember what you’re talking about - the Bendu, and that kind of strange manifestation of the Force. 

When I first watched the show, I remember just kind of immediately disliking the Bendu I can’t remember why for the life of me, but I assume I’ll find out soon enough once I actually get there in my rewatch. 

... I actually just searched up “Bendu” on my main blog and found about thirteen different posts complaining about him and detailing why I didn’t like him, and really kind of refreshed my memory omg. And it’s not because I dislike the mystical aspects of the Force! In the Clone Wars animated series, one of my favorite arcs is the Mortis arc which is frankly even more weird! I love the stranger and more complicated stories about the Force, because they make me think harder than the rest - it’s always a mix of “Was that real?” and “That seems like total bull.” and “Oh son of a bitch everything’s real” 

But I’m incapable of being succinct when it comes to talking about the more mystical, difficult to believe aspects of the Force - so if you’ll bear with me, I’d like to put the rest of this under a cut for everyone’s sake.

I think I read the Thrawn books when they came out and that was the last time I’ve thought of them. There was only one part of them which stood out and I can’t find any reference to it in the Star Wars wiki pages. That is, I thought (imagined?) that it was Mara who demonstrated to Luke that she was non-violent and while she used the Force, it was never in the ways of the Jedi or the Sith. Her demonstration was to use the Force to literally make herself disappear (not just invisible) and then returned. That power was never used again in the story, but it’s been so long since I read it, I can’t tell you now if that was Mara or in those books, or somewhere else. Searches on that brought up nothing, so maybe you know the passage, or can tell me that I’m imagining it ;-)

Yeah, Bendu was weird, but then there were also the witches who made Darth Maul and his brother Sauvage. How do they fit into the energy of the Force? It’s never really explained. Good explanation about Light and Dark not mixing. I accept that is simply the way of things for that mythology, even as I have different ideas about other ‘forces’ such as magic. But those ideas have been molded by years of reading various spiritual thoughts on similar energies.

Your insight about the history of the Jedi also brings up parallels to other stories, and how energies people use to manipulate their surroundings often has “forbidden knowledge”. Yet none seem to do further research not only into why it’s forbidden, but why it would work the way it does to make it forbidden. Understanding on a complete level, or at least a deeper level, can also help to defend against any ill effects, or even to thwart its use by others.

Seeing how the Jedi had this huge store of knowledge like a library in Coruscant and yet it didn’t seem to get much use always seemed such a waste to me. You’d think that there would be Force Researchers attempting to discern its very essence and scope of ability all of the time. Maybe there were such individuals, but we never saw them in the shows, movies, or books. Not a very exciting form of career to feature in most stories.

One thing which has always made me wonder is that on the whole, the Otherkin community just doesn’t have many in it who have obscure identities (besides those who are alien, cosmic, or obscure within the therian communities). I have met just one person who identified as a character from classical fiction (Oliver Twist). Considering just how much fiction humans have created in our world throughout time, there have to be more. But, where are they?

The only reasons which come to mind are that people either don’t know they are something called Otherkin, or they have gotten the wrong idea about the concept and it’s been dismissed. I have no answers on how either of those things can be addressed. It’s something that the Otherkin community is constantly attempting to improve.

My two kintypes can be traced to old literature and myths: Centaur, being a basic part of Greek mythology, and Djinni, tracing back almost as far to the folktales of the Persians and Arabs. At the same time, my Djinni kintype has roots in a 20th century bit of fiction called I Dream of Jeannie.

I know that community, too, and have never seen any of the fans within it professing anything akin to Otherkin as any of the characters. Again, I wonder how many of that community are indeed Otherkin and identify as Jeannie, Tony, Roger, Dr. Bellows, etc. It’s not a question I would propose to them, though. I’ll just have to see if any are around at all in other forums/social media. That’s one reason I’m posting to Tumblr; talking about Otherkin won’t be automatically construed as “taking fandom just too far” as I would expect from Jeannie fans (I know that community all too well).

Now, I do admit that my kintypes are ‘old’ or based on ‘old’ media, and have almost no connection to so much of the Otherkin community which has huge numbers of people with identities related to modern media (be it stories or produced visual media). I can fully understand why that is. Obscure old media is just that, obscure, not read, not perused, ignored, dismissed, and all too often because “it’s old!”

It’s a gap between lived experience and genre convention.  Sitcoms, by their nature, don’t perfectly mimic real life.  For instance, as a result of being designed for comedy, sitcoms so often downplay or leave out altogether the less funny emotions that make up our lived experiences.  Maybe it’s more difficult to recognize ourselves in media where every problem can be neatly fixed in 20 minutes and where the characters don’t seem to feel things like grief, trauma, etc.

They might be able to describe an amorphous, foggy longing or scattered bits of what someone looked like, but how many people would be able to take a vague description and point them to the right source material when the odds are low that they would know it either?

Like two of my kintypes I’ve never seen portrayed…anywhere. At all. Not myth, not media. Everything I have for them is built from the ground up connecting dots that I don’t really know whether they actually connect or not.

Cringy comparisons alert, I like to compare it to my lived experience as having ASD or being trans. Before I had exposure to those realities and gained the language to express my experiences I had no way to talk about those parts of my identity except for the misery of not being understood, of being an outsider with no roots and no sense of community.

Like a dear friend of mine that I met through work many years ago, talking to me about feeling like she has memories of fighting and dying at Waterloo, but as soon as the suggestion of past lives come up she gets flighty and changes the subject.

That’s a good point and observation, too. Although I think many people would still be apprehensive to admit to being Otherkin even before we gained our problems with young people distorting the meaning. It would still be perceived as too weird of a concept to accept.

Now, they might be more accepting of it if a mental health doctor suggested it. Because that’s an official authority. I know from experience trying to get my parents to accept even simple healthy ideas that until they hear it from a health authority, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

One interesting fact about all of this is that many people are dropping religion these days, though that doesn’t automatically mean they are becoming atheists. I don’t know how big New Age thought is anymore as I don’t pay attention to it like I used to do, but even then it was always growing.

no, actually, being otherkin is not “just for fun”.

it’s a fundamental disidentification with humanity in some way/to some degree, for whatever a person’s reasons are (it varies by individual).

people who only “kin for fun” are misusing a term that means something else—and has always meant something else, since its inception—and are most likely not actually kin. (but i will not discount the possibility that some are actually kin and haven’t fully explored that yet, obviously.)

being kin is harmless. but it’s not “just for fun”. we can have fun with it, of course, but it’s identity. and dismissing someone’s identity as just something they do for fun is rude at best.

and as a trans nonhuman, let me give this example—you can have fun with being trans, but wearing nail polish/skirts/vests/ties for fun doesn’t make you trans. you can have fun with being kin, but liking or relating to a character or creature and roleplaying them/using them as your online mask for fun doesn’t make you kin. those things are totally fine, and not harmful or anything, but they are still different from being trans or kin even if they may appear similar on the surface sometimes.

(and i am not equating being kin and being trans, btw; it’s just a useful example for the sake of furthering understanding. and again, i am both of those things.)

One thing I do wonder about those who ‘kin’ for fun is do they then also feel phantom limbs/bodies? Do they feel the extreme longing for that life? Do they feel out of place in their human life?

One thing which has always made me wonder is that on the whole, the Otherkin community just doesn’t have many in it who have obscure identities (besides those who are alien, cosmic, or obscure within the therian communities). I have met just one person who identified as a character from classical fiction (Oliver Twist). Considering just how much fiction humans have created in our world throughout time, there have to be more. But, where are they?

The only reasons which come to mind are that people either don’t know they are something called Otherkin, or they have gotten the wrong idea about the concept and it’s been dismissed. I have no answers on how either of those things can be addressed. It’s something that the Otherkin community is constantly attempting to improve.

My two kintypes can be traced to old literature and myths: Centaur, being a basic part of Greek mythology, and Djinni, tracing back almost as far to the folktales of the Persians and Arabs. At the same time, my Djinni kintype has roots in a 20th century bit of fiction called I Dream of Jeannie.

I know that community, too, and have never seen any of the fans within it professing anything akin to Otherkin as any of the characters. Again, I wonder how many of that community are indeed Otherkin and identify as Jeannie, Tony, Roger, Dr. Bellows, etc. It’s not a question I would propose to them, though. I’ll just have to see if any are around at all in other forums/social media. That’s one reason I’m posting to Tumblr; talking about Otherkin won’t be automatically construed as “taking fandom just too far” as I would expect from Jeannie fans (I know that community all too well).

Now, I do admit that my kintypes are ‘old’ or based on ‘old’ media, and have almost no connection to so much of the Otherkin community which has huge numbers of people with identities related to modern media (be it stories or produced visual media). I can fully understand why that is. Obscure old media is just that, obscure, not read, not perused, ignored, dismissed, and all too often because “it’s old!”

It’s a gap between lived experience and genre convention.  Sitcoms, by their nature, don’t perfectly mimic real life.  For instance, as a result of being designed for comedy, sitcoms so often downplay or leave out altogether the less funny emotions that make up our lived experiences.  Maybe it’s more difficult to recognize ourselves in media where every problem can be neatly fixed in 20 minutes and where the characters don’t seem to feel things like grief, trauma, etc.

They might be able to describe an amorphous, foggy longing or scattered bits of what someone looked like, but how many people would be able to take a vague description and point them to the right source material when the odds are low that they would know it either?

Like two of my kintypes I’ve never seen portrayed…anywhere. At all. Not myth, not media. Everything I have for them is built from the ground up connecting dots that I don’t really know whether they actually connect or not.

Cringy comparisons alert, I like to compare it to my lived experience as having ASD or being trans. Before I had exposure to those realities and gained the language to express my experiences I had no way to talk about those parts of my identity except for the misery of not being understood, of being an outsider with no roots and no sense of community.

Like a dear friend of mine that I met through work many years ago, talking to me about feeling like she has memories of fighting and dying at Waterloo, but as soon as the suggestion of past lives come up she gets flighty and changes the subject.

That’s a good point and observation, too. Although I think many people would still be apprehensive to admit to being Otherkin even before we gained our problems with young people distorting the meaning. It would still be perceived as too weird of a concept to accept.

Now, they might be more accepting of it if a mental health doctor suggested it. Because that’s an official authority. I know from experience trying to get my parents to accept even simple healthy ideas that until they hear it from a health authority, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

One interesting fact about all of this is that many people are dropping religion these days, though that doesn’t automatically mean they are becoming atheists. I don’t know how big New Age thought is anymore as I don’t pay attention to it like I used to do, but even then it was always growing.

One thing which has always made me wonder is that on the whole, the Otherkin community just doesn’t have many in it who have obscure identities (besides those who are alien, cosmic, or obscure within the therian communities). I have met just one person who identified as a character from classical fiction (Oliver Twist). Considering just how much fiction humans have created in our world throughout time, there have to be more. But, where are they?

The only reasons which come to mind are that people either don’t know they are something called Otherkin, or they have gotten the wrong idea about the concept and it’s been dismissed. I have no answers on how either of those things can be addressed. It’s something that the Otherkin community is constantly attempting to improve.

My two kintypes can be traced to old literature and myths: Centaur, being a basic part of Greek mythology, and Djinni, tracing back almost as far to the folktales of the Persians and Arabs. At the same time, my Djinni kintype has roots in a 20th century bit of fiction called I Dream of Jeannie.

I know that community, too, and have never seen any of the fans within it professing anything akin to Otherkin as any of the characters. Again, I wonder how many of that community are indeed Otherkin and identify as Jeannie, Tony, Roger, Dr. Bellows, etc. It’s not a question I would propose to them, though. I’ll just have to see if any are around at all in other forums/social media. That’s one reason I’m posting to Tumblr; talking about Otherkin won’t be automatically construed as “taking fandom just too far” as I would expect from Jeannie fans (I know that community all too well).

Now, I do admit that my kintypes are ‘old’ or based on ‘old’ media, and have almost no connection to so much of the Otherkin community which has huge numbers of people with identities related to modern media (be it stories or produced visual media). I can fully understand why that is. Obscure old media is just that, obscure, not read, not perused, ignored, dismissed, and all too often because “it’s old!”

It’s a gap between lived experience and genre convention.  Sitcoms, by their nature, don’t perfectly mimic real life.  For instance, as a result of being designed for comedy, sitcoms so often downplay or leave out altogether the less funny emotions that make up our lived experiences.  Maybe it’s more difficult to recognize ourselves in media where every problem can be neatly fixed in 20 minutes and where the characters don’t seem to feel things like grief, trauma, etc.

They might be able to describe an amorphous, foggy longing or scattered bits of what someone looked like, but how many people would be able to take a vague description and point them to the right source material when the odds are low that they would know it either?

Like two of my kintypes I’ve never seen portrayed…anywhere. At all. Not myth, not media. Everything I have for them is built from the ground up connecting dots that I don’t really know whether they actually connect or not.

Cringy comparisons alert, I like to compare it to my lived experience as having ASD or being trans. Before I had exposure to those realities and gained the language to express my experiences I had no way to talk about those parts of my identity except for the misery of not being understood, of being an outsider with no roots and no sense of community.

Like a dear friend of mine that I met through work many years ago, talking to me about feeling like she has memories of fighting and dying at Waterloo, but as soon as the suggestion of past lives come up she gets flighty and changes the subject.

That’s a good point and observation, too. Although I think many people would still be apprehensive to admit to being Otherkin even before we gained our problems with young people distorting the meaning. It would still be perceived as too weird of a concept to accept.

Now, they might be more accepting of it if a mental health doctor suggested it. Because that’s an official authority. I know from experience trying to get my parents to accept even simple healthy ideas that until they hear it from a health authority, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

One thing which has always made me wonder is that on the whole, the Otherkin community just doesn’t have many in it who have obscure identities (besides those who are alien, cosmic, or obscure within the therian communities). I have met just one person who identified as a character from classical fiction (Oliver Twist). Considering just how much fiction humans have created in our world throughout time, there have to be more. But, where are they?

The only reasons which come to mind are that people either don’t know they are something called Otherkin, or they have gotten the wrong idea about the concept and it’s been dismissed. I have no answers on how either of those things can be addressed. It’s something that the Otherkin community is constantly attempting to improve.

My two kintypes can be traced to old literature and myths: Centaur, being a basic part of Greek mythology, and Djinni, tracing back almost as far to the folktales of the Persians and Arabs. At the same time, my Djinni kintype has roots in a 20th century bit of fiction called I Dream of Jeannie.

I know that community, too, and have never seen any of the fans within it professing anything akin to Otherkin as any of the characters. Again, I wonder how many of that community are indeed Otherkin and identify as Jeannie, Tony, Roger, Dr. Bellows, etc. It’s not a question I would propose to them, though. I’ll just have to see if any are around at all in other forums/social media. That’s one reason I’m posting to Tumblr; talking about Otherkin won’t be automatically construed as “taking fandom just too far” as I would expect from Jeannie fans (I know that community all too well).

Now, I do admit that my kintypes are ‘old’ or based on ‘old’ media, and have almost no connection to so much of the Otherkin community which has huge numbers of people with identities related to modern media (be it stories or produced visual media). I can fully understand why that is. Obscure old media is just that, obscure, not read, not perused, ignored, dismissed, and all too often because “it’s old!”

It’s a gap between lived experience and genre convention.  Sitcoms, by their nature, don’t perfectly mimic real life.  For instance, as a result of being designed for comedy, sitcoms so often downplay or leave out altogether the less funny emotions that make up our lived experiences.  Maybe it’s more difficult to recognize ourselves in media where every problem can be neatly fixed in 20 minutes and where the characters don’t seem to feel things like grief, trauma, etc.

I suppose if I had been mentally and spiritually evolved enough back in the 1970s I might have seriously sought out information on Otherkin. Yet even when I did get online, I never got onto the newsgroups, which was where the Otherkin community at that time congregated. There would have been even less usable information outside of those groups for me to read and develop any kind of idea about my personal experiences being related to Otherkin. Even so, it took many years of being online and reading oodles of New Age and other spiritual materials to even be able to accept that I had internal identities, and when that happened, it was Centaur first. The decision that my feelings related to the Djinni kintype came only after even more introspection.

I think one reason I didn’t make the connection was because of the video game graphics, which depending on when it came out, werent really realistic. It took looking into the story and into the artwork and cinematics to make a connection, which looked much more realistic than the game play. At the start, I was also really against the possibility of being from there as well, so part of my obliviousness could have also been due to denial and a terrible lack of self awareness. Because in hind sight, how was I so oblivious?? The signs were seriously everywhere.

It took having to connect the pieces of things I felt and experienced throughout my life and comparing it to what I’ve learned about the source once I looked into it. The feelings were also really repressed at first, so that didn’t help either.

Welcome to Texas Alterhumans! This is a 15+ server for any kind of alterhuman located in the state of Texas. Therians, otherkin, endels, systems, and nonhumans alike are all welcomed here as long as you're from the state of Texas.

Features:

Friendly open minded staff

Self assignable roles

The ability to assign yourself any color you want

Pluralkit

A verification system to ensure our safety from trolls

Quick and simple rules

An adults only area that is not visible to minors (this isn't just for NSFW content, though there is a channel for that, its also just a place for the grown ups to hang out together)

Channels covering a variety of topics, from general chatter to alterhumanity to hobbies and more

I feel that one downside to how scattered and internet based our community is is that we don't have much of a sense of local community. I would like to do my part in changing that by making this server a fun place to meet other alterhumans within the state. Over the course of my time in the community one of the main complaints that I have heard is "I don't know any alterhumans that live close by, I don't think there are any" and thats how I have felt too. Hopefully this will help some of you see that there are others around! You aren't alone.

This is a brand new server and the first one I've ever made on my own, so feel free to suggest anything when you're in! Also feel free to reblog this post if you'd like, I would really appreciate it.

Invite link:

One thing which has always made me wonder is that on the whole, the Otherkin community just doesn’t have many in it who have obscure identities (besides those who are alien, cosmic, or obscure within the therian communities). I have met just one person who identified as a character from classical fiction (Oliver Twist). Considering just how much fiction humans have created in our world throughout time, there have to be more. But, where are they?

The only reasons which come to mind are that people either don’t know they are something called Otherkin, or they have gotten the wrong idea about the concept and it’s been dismissed. I have no answers on how either of those things can be addressed. It’s something that the Otherkin community is constantly attempting to improve.

My two kintypes can be traced to old literature and myths: Centaur, being a basic part of Greek mythology, and Djinni, tracing back almost as far to the folktales of the Persians and Arabs. At the same time, my Djinni kintype has roots in a 20th century bit of fiction called I Dream of Jeannie.

I know that community, too, and have never seen any of the fans within it professing anything akin to Otherkin as any of the characters. Again, I wonder how many of that community are indeed Otherkin and identify as Jeannie, Tony, Roger, Dr. Bellows, etc. It’s not a question I would propose to them, though. I’ll just have to see if any are around at all in other forums/social media. That’s one reason I’m posting to Tumblr; talking about Otherkin won’t be automatically construed as “taking fandom just too far” as I would expect from Jeannie fans (I know that community all too well).

Now, I do admit that my kintypes are ‘old’ or based on ‘old’ media, and have almost no connection to so much of the Otherkin community which has huge numbers of people with identities related to modern media (be it stories or produced visual media). I can fully understand why that is. Obscure old media is just that, obscure, not read, not perused, ignored, dismissed, and all too often because “it’s old!”

It’s a gap between lived experience and genre convention.  Sitcoms, by their nature, don’t perfectly mimic real life.  For instance, as a result of being designed for comedy, sitcoms so often downplay or leave out altogether the less funny emotions that make up our lived experiences.  Maybe it’s more difficult to recognize ourselves in media where every problem can be neatly fixed in 20 minutes and where the characters don’t seem to feel things like grief, trauma, etc.

They might be able to describe an amorphous, foggy longing or scattered bits of what someone looked like, but how many people would be able to take a vague description and point them to the right source material when the odds are low that they would know it either?

Like two of my kintypes I’ve never seen portrayed…anywhere. At all. Not myth, not media. Everything I have for them is built from the ground up connecting dots that I don’t really know whether they actually connect or not.

Cringy comparisons alert, I like to compare it to my lived experience as having ASD or being trans. Before I had exposure to those realities and gained the language to express my experiences I had no way to talk about those parts of my identity except for the misery of not being understood, of being an outsider with no roots and no sense of community.

One thing which has always made me wonder is that on the whole, the Otherkin community just doesn’t have many in it who have obscure identities (besides those who are alien, cosmic, or obscure within the therian communities). I have met just one person who identified as a character from classical fiction (Oliver Twist). Considering just how much fiction humans have created in our world throughout time, there have to be more. But, where are they?

The only reasons which come to mind are that people either don’t know they are something called Otherkin, or they have gotten the wrong idea about the concept and it’s been dismissed. I have no answers on how either of those things can be addressed. It’s something that the Otherkin community is constantly attempting to improve.

My two kintypes can be traced to old literature and myths: Centaur, being a basic part of Greek mythology, and Djinni, tracing back almost as far to the folktales of the Persians and Arabs. At the same time, my Djinni kintype has roots in a 20th century bit of fiction called I Dream of Jeannie.

I know that community, too, and have never seen any of the fans within it professing anything akin to Otherkin as any of the characters. Again, I wonder how many of that community are indeed Otherkin and identify as Jeannie, Tony, Roger, Dr. Bellows, etc. It’s not a question I would propose to them, though. I’ll just have to see if any are around at all in other forums/social media. That’s one reason I’m posting to Tumblr; talking about Otherkin won’t be automatically construed as “taking fandom just too far” as I would expect from Jeannie fans (I know that community all too well).

Now, I do admit that my kintypes are ‘old’ or based on ‘old’ media, and have almost no connection to so much of the Otherkin community which has huge numbers of people with identities related to modern media (be it stories or produced visual media). I can fully understand why that is. Obscure old media is just that, obscure, not read, not perused, ignored, dismissed, and all too often because “it’s old!”

- Beast Complex (Ako)

- Space Ace (Kimberly, but my brain combined her with a maned wolf, so it is a weird blend of two identities)

- That one fairy tale that is a rabbit trying to marry a girl (I’m the girl there, no official name)

- Alice: Madness Returns (Alice)

I know half of those examples are practically new in comparison to an arcade cabinet from the 80s and a Germanic fairy tale. But, I wanted to make a point that not all obscure sources are old. I’m just as likely to meet another Ako as I am to meet another Kimberly, unfortunately.

I think why you don’t see more of those identities is for a few reasons:

- Exposure to sources

I’d say that I’m lucky to have heard of Space Ace a few years ago. I heard about it through a youtube video review, and then later on bought it on Steam. It’s a game I had never heard anyone speak about up until that point. It’s a pretty unique arcade game- animated by the Don Bluth studio, which was a rarity.

Point being, some sources just get lost to time. Some of that is due to efforts not able to preserve it, and others just being forgotten. Other times, people don’t seek out something that isn’t popular or well-known, which dooms it further.

- Efforts to save sources (such as them no longer becoming available for purchase or found) are not common

I probably have this view due to being Alice. Right now, the American McGee Alice games are hard to find and difficult to purchase, and as such are in danger of not being able to be preserved in a playable form. Other sources have likely had this happen to them already, and projects such as ToonTown Rewritten would greatly combat this. However, not all fanbases are big enough or are dedicated enough to do this. There’s probably been a ton of sources that have fallen to this fate already over the years.

I wouldn’t say that old media is ignored- it is just in danger of potentially being forgotten if not preserved. A lot of people don’t know about Space Ace, but the best I can do is educate people.

We are out here, it’s just hard to find us unless a fanbase gets a revival. /hj

But, here’s another aspect to take into consideration: there are millions of animation fans out there (because that includes people who like animated movies, not just the fans who like to talk animation). Those who know of Don Bluth and like his style have looked at everything he’s done, other than movies like “The Secret of NIMH” and “An American Tail”. That’s another large fanbase being exposed to fictional material and who knows where that can take a mind.

Granted, younger people are less likely to look up old material, but there are people of all ages in the Otherkin community. We have lived through the time-periods that many currently newish Otherkin would call ‘old’. And there are plenty of members in the community who are in their 40s. The ages above that do drop precipitously, but having us in the community does expose more to the ‘old’ media. I can’t tell you how much stuff I’ve found on The Internet Archive as well.

To me, it’s basic curiosity. Maybe that’s not common, yet I just don’t feel we can say that the old or retro media is truly being forgotten. Plenty of people work hard to archive it for all to enjoy again later. Have a look on any streaming service, and other than stuff that’s really obscure (like the original kinescopes of the British Quatermass series) you can find almost anything from any time period. It just takes a little curiosity and patience (because pacing is often slower than it is today).

One thing which has always made me wonder is that on the whole, the Otherkin community just doesn’t have many in it who have obscure identities (besides those who are alien, cosmic, or obscure within the therian communities). I have met just one person who identified as a character from classical fiction (Oliver Twist). Considering just how much fiction humans have created in our world throughout time, there have to be more. But, where are they?

The only reasons which come to mind are that people either don’t know they are something called Otherkin, or they have gotten the wrong idea about the concept and it’s been dismissed. I have no answers on how either of those things can be addressed. It’s something that the Otherkin community is constantly attempting to improve.

My two kintypes can be traced to old literature and myths: Centaur, being a basic part of Greek mythology, and Djinni, tracing back almost as far to the folktales of the Persians and Arabs. At the same time, my Djinni kintype has roots in a 20th century bit of fiction called I Dream of Jeannie.

I know that community, too, and have never seen any of the fans within it professing anything akin to Otherkin as any of the characters. Again, I wonder how many of that community are indeed Otherkin and identify as Jeannie, Tony, Roger, Dr. Bellows, etc. It’s not a question I would propose to them, though. I’ll just have to see if any are around at all in other forums/social media. That’s one reason I’m posting to Tumblr; talking about Otherkin won’t be automatically construed as “taking fandom just too far” as I would expect from Jeannie fans (I know that community all too well).

Now, I do admit that my kintypes are ‘old’ or based on ‘old’ media, and have almost no connection to so much of the Otherkin community which has huge numbers of people with identities related to modern media (be it stories or produced visual media). I can fully understand why that is. Obscure old media is just that, obscure, not read, not perused, ignored, dismissed, and all too often because “it’s old!”

It’s a gap between lived experience and genre convention.  Sitcoms, by their nature, don’t perfectly mimic real life.  For instance, as a result of being designed for comedy, sitcoms so often downplay or leave out altogether the less funny emotions that make up our lived experiences.  Maybe it’s more difficult to recognize ourselves in media where every problem can be neatly fixed in 20 minutes and where the characters don’t seem to feel things like grief, trauma, etc.

They might be able to describe an amorphous, foggy longing or scattered bits of what someone looked like, but how many people would be able to take a vague description and point them to the right source material when the odds are low that they would know it either?

Like two of my kintypes I’ve never seen portrayed…anywhere. At all. Not myth, not media. Everything I have for them is built from the ground up connecting dots that I don’t really know whether they actually connect or not.

Cringy comparisons alert, I like to compare it to my lived experience as having ASD or being trans. Before I had exposure to those realities and gained the language to express my experiences I had no way to talk about those parts of my identity except for the misery of not being understood, of being an outsider with no roots and no sense of community.