Scales and Wanderlust

context: i caused some confusion because of the way i talked about ‘kinnies’ and otherkin in this post. i personally consider them entirely different groups, and am referring to entirely different groups when i use those terms. i’m not talking about objective fact or even widely agreed upon opinion here, this is just how i’ve been treating things.

there are a group of people whose alterhuman experience goes something like this:

they consider themselves kin to something when they like or relate to it enough that they feel motivated to say ‘that’s me’.

they call this kinning; it’s a verb, because the choice to make an identity out of those feelings is important to them. despite past wank about ‘problematic’ kins these days it seems like most people agree that you can’t ‘drop’ kins completely willy-nilly.

many of them still believe in having a past or other life as their kin. some are interested in recovering memories or reconnecting with specific people they experience(d) that life with.

many of them have a lot of kins. some like to organize them in terms of most to least strongly felt.

many of them still use shifting language! i was surprised to see this, but apparently this is a big factor in the above – primary kins might be there all the time, whereas shifts to minor kins might only be felt when exposed to their source.

and most if not all of them greatly enjoy producing moodboards, small bits of free verse, and other kinds of low-energy creative expression related to them.

we all know about this group. we want to talk about this group as its own thing. what do we call them? we call them kinnies, because that’s what they call themselves. (i also use ‘kins’ and ‘kinning’ to further reinforce that we’re talking about This Particular Group, again because that’s the language they’ve chosen)

i mean, it’s not that simple, because as jeshire very fairly pointed out, some people do think that’s just The Word for all otherkin experiences. some people know it isn’t, but use it ironically, sarcastically, or jokingly between friends. it’s ambiguous enough that people aren’t interpreting what i’m saying the way i intended them to. it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to look at my writing and think i’m mislead, or that i’m being ironic.

It appears that, whatever “kinnies” are experiencing, is at least somewhat persistent. Some people seem to leave the whole thing behind but enough time has passed with the same general community being around that the only option that appears to be left is to open up a dialogue as a distinctive community/experience and share what we know about our experiences with each other. Or, hell, just leave each other alone if it comes to that.

Forcing someone to adopt an ideology about alterhumanity that does not match their experiences just... isn’t going to get anyone anywhere and only serves to stir tensions, so I think I’m coming around to the idea of having a far more extensive network of alterhumanity than what I was originally introduced to years ago. It’s becoming a little more clear to me that whatever kinnies experience can easily be its own thing. It’s also becoming more clear to me that labels really are not this mandatory thing; at the end of the day if you’re not misrepresenting someone else or goin’ out of your way to obfuscate someone else’s experience or homogenize it, does it really matter? Someone’s different experiences do not diminish my own. People can be wildly different or come from different backgrounds and still have something in common.

A reading in real life can cost anywhere from $20 to $100, depending on how in-depth the session is. They are emotionally and physically draining on a reader, regardless of how big or small the reading is. You can get spiritually burnt out quickly.