🎵 Been thinking about my kintypes, especially in light of all the stuff going around about voluntary vs involuntary otherkin and therians. Yes, I do think if the identity is something you actively choose all the time, that's a linktype, not a kintype. And that's fine. Otherlinkers are valid and part of our alterhuman community. But if it's something you don't choose - especially if it's just there, ingrained into your identity - whether you originally chose it or not, that's a kintype.
I've been questioning my own kintypes a lot. I'm a Canadian timber wolf, an African golden wolf, a coastal gryphon, and a kiko kitsune. There are vastly varying levels of choice involved in this.
To start with the completely involuntary, kitsune. I'm not just a fox, I am genuinely of the mythical variety. My body type is a big factor here, in that I'm built more like the statues you see outside shrines and I have five tails. I get strong phantom shifts with all of my kintypes and can therefore describe them pretty well. This particular kintype is not just involuntary, but against my will. I don't want to be this. I do not want this. I'm working on accepting it - because it's not going anywhere and ignoring it doesn't work - but I do not want to be this. For a variety of reasons. But I'm stuck with it.
My wolves are... complicated. It took me over 10 years to work out what sort of wolf I was because I thought I was just one. But the weird combination of phantom shifts and exomemories kept me from figuring out which one and I eventually let go of that question until I became active in the community again. I've been questioning them since realizing I'm a system, though. We have a wolf extranth, a coyote extranth, and another wolf therian in the system. I've felt sort of disconnected from my lupine identity because of all that and because of the questioning about whether my wolf theriotypes are real or a result of my sysmates. The timber wolf, which is the largest subspecies of grey wolf, could conceivably be attributed to Seer, who is a fictional - and particularly large - species of grey wolf. Likewise, the golden wolf could be attributed to Coyote Kid, as I did kinsider coyote while trying to figure out my second theriotype. At the end of the day, though, I've been a wolf all my life and it’s the first identity I associated with nonhumanity and therianthropy. It's part of me and part of who I am, even if sometimes I question that.
My gryphon is no less complicated, but for different reasons. When I first awoke as a gryphon, I did not want to be one. I was a wolf and had identified as a wolf therian for several years. And back then polykin were met with intense skepticism and the therian and otherkin communities were fairly separate. You were one or the other, you were not both. And my gryphon definitely fits more into otherkin. Even theriomythic doesn't work, as we weren't feral. But over time I got more comfortable with my gryphon and with being polykin and being both therian and otherkin, though I always (and still do, to an extent) considered myself a therian first. Lately, though, with how much I've been questioning my wolf theriotypes, I've kind of clung to my gryphon. No one else in here is a gryphon or even anything close to one. I've always been a wolf first and a gryphon second, including in internal sense of self, but with everything going on... I appear as a gryphon in headspace. I have a lot of really strong gryphon shifts, too. And I've kind of come to think of myself as a gryphon first and a wolf second. I didn't choose this identity, but I think that both consciously and unconscious I've chosen to make it my primary nonhuman identity.
