Hound Of Heaven

I can't help but notice there are millions of new terms being coined every week, because what we already have is clearly unsatisfactory for many. And the differences between a of the popular labels are very blurred and overlap a bunch, sometimes to the point of being functionally the same! For example the element of choice for otherkin however small, especially for the psychologically inclined, means you could be fretting about whether you're kin or otherhearted or otherlink or something else entirely. When it shouldn't matter that much. And with the more popular labels comes an implied hierarchy with classic otherkin/therian being at the top, and its cousins being lower down.

Classic otherkin especially, need to adhere to a particular narrative. Or else they're "delegated" to being hearted or something. To fit in. So increasingly I and some others have been thinking of ourselves as being "animal people", just animal people (replace animal with anything else that fits, fairy etc), a species first approach if you will. There are endless backstories and reasonings for why we are the way we are, but the result is the same. It allows for greater personalisation when you're like "I'm an x-person, and this is how". If your identity straddles the line between involuntary and voluntary, or if it was a sudden thing in your 30s rather than childhood, there's no pressure to pick a term and adhere to its norms. You're an individual and no less a real x-person than someone who has been struggling with something they've had no say in since toddlerhood. I'm a bonobo person, therian is the most convenient wordage but my backstory doesn't really tell you whether I really mean it, only how I got here. I don't always conform to the expected narrative.