☀️ What's up! My name's Poppy :D Certified otherkind since the Hell Year (2016) and fictionkind since the Plague Year (2019)☀️
☀️ bison therian ☀️ gnollkind ☀️
☀️ben 10 fictionkind ☀️ unicornhearted ☀️
☀️ spiderhearted ☀️ tarzanhearted☀️
☀️website☀️
☀️carrd☀️
☀️ rae pronouns are preferred, he and she pronouns are accepted with open arms☀️
I’m one of those people who likes being educated on practically everything, so can someone explain to me the difference between a Therian and an Otherkin?
Denotatively (ie, in terms of strictly the definitions):
Therian = someone who identifies as an animal (sometimes you'll see this defined as earthen animals only, but this is historically not necessarily part of the label - if it's animalistic, it qualifies)
Otherkin = someone who identifies as nonhuman (be that animal, plant, sapient nonhuman people, object, concept, etc.)
Connotatively (ie, in terms of associations and cultural nuances), there are some cultural distinctions as well. The therian and otherkin communities actually arose completely independently, and only later started interacting so closely that in many ways they've nearly merged.
The otherkin community originates from a few separate groups of elves, namely the Silver Elves and the Elf Queen's Daughters, both of whom originate somewhere in the 1970s (exact dates often difficult to pin down) and which then led to the Elfinkind Digest, a mailing list originally intended for elves but which quickly expanded to other nonhuman beings, within which the term otherkind (which would rapidly become otherkin, as far as I can tell due to typographical errors that accidentally got preserved in the lexicon) was coined to avoid the inconvenience of having to write elfin-/dragon-/orc-/hobbit-/etc-kind constantly within the Digest. The influence of these groups and communities has meant the otherkin community has always had heavy influence from New Age and neo-pagan philosophies, and has always leaned toward spiritual explanations - though certainly never exclusively.
The therian community, on the other hand, originates from a messaging board called alt.horror.werewolves, often abbreviated to AHWW within the therian community these days, in the early 1990s. While this messaging board was originally a fansite for werewolves, at a certain point people started turning up who felt themselves to be (were)wolves under the skin, and gradually that kind of discussion took over much of the board. (Not just wolves, either - some of the earliest weres I remember seeing in logs include a bat and, of course, the now-famous werePontiac.) If you've ever seen animal-people, particularly older ones, calling themselves weres instead of/in addition to therians, this is why - that was the original word we used for the concept. Culturally speaking, the therian community has always been very focused on the concept of shifts because of these origins - it is, if I'm not mistaken, where the otherkin community adopted that terminology from. The therian community also tends to be more focused on the animality of being non-human - which is why these days that's usually used as the primary distinction between otherkinity and therianthropy.
Ultimately, there's a lot of overlap, but there are also a lot of reasons why someone might want to use one word or the other even if both could theoretically apply to them denotatively.
isekai anime where the fantasy character from a game dies and gets reincarnated into the real world inside the body of a depressed teenager and at first they treat it like a regular isekai before one day they wake up and realize the original teenager is in control of the body again, they cant do anything, and the teenager can actually talk to them and turns out there are like 20 other fictional characters that got isekai'd into this one teenagers body. and it never explicity states what its about but youre picking up what im putting down right
Fictionkind awakening is like getting a bunch of Slumdog Millionaire flashbacks of a life you never realized was yours. Fictive awakening is like if an elf got run over by a cart and was isekaied into this world.
reblog thread!! Everyone who wants to partecipate will share the date of their awakening (as specific or as generic as they feel comfortable) by reblogging to this post!
If we're going to go with a general answer here, because there's definitely been different stages, as far as the initial realization? Sometime around 2001. If you want to start when things got a little more specific thats about 2005.
If we want to talk about fictionkin specifically, 2015.
This is too far in the past now for me to be able to pinpoint a specific day and it was more of a gradual "oh you mean that's a thing? you know, that really makes some sense..." I was searching for stuff about "dark elves" (nb, I am not one, that just happened to lead down a path) in late 1997 and I discovered otherkin email discussion lists in the first half of 1998. I think I first turned up on the wyldefae list between April and June of 1998. (I never got any archives of that list, so I can't be sure now.) For larfs, to pick a specific day, I like to say it was Beltane 1998, but that's basically me making shit up.
(Maybe bonus points for having been subscribed to the Silver Elves' paper letters earlier in the 90s, which I had had a similar reaction to seeing their listing in the back of Drawing Down the Moon: "You mean there's really elves???" but although clearly there was something subconscious going on, I wasn't aware of the meaning of it yet.)
Aquatic is an umbrella term for people whose species live or spend much of their time in water. The common experience of being an aquatic cr
Aquatic is an umbrella term for people whose species live or spend much of their time in water. The common experience of being an aquatic creature living on land draws together many people with animal identities, but also mermaids and other mythical humanoids.
A "calling" towards bodies of water or the act of swimming is one of the most common experiences reported by aquatics.
Aquatics frequently report phantom sensations that align with their phenotype. These include fins, scales and gills. Many aquatics describe the feeling of gills in particular detail.
Do you know whether there's a conception among therians or otherkin of how daydreaming can play a role? I'm a frequent daydreamer (not maladaptive) and sometimes I take forms and live lives as my theriotypes in my daydreams. It's almost like a kind of shift, but one that exists outside the concrete reality surrounding me, in distant fabricated realities instead. In a way daydreaming allows me to explore forms and personality traits in an imaginary setting, as well as have animal experiences I will never get to have in real life. My system's nonconventional headspace also exists as a daydream and I can take whatever nonhuman form I like there.
I don't need this to be personally validated or anything, I'm just curious whether there's a precedent for this being discussed in the therian or otherkin communities. I saw a handful of "types of shift" and similar lists when I first joined the therian community, but it's been years since and I can't remember whether daydreaming was mentioned in any such informational pages. You seem to know a lot of things, so I figured I'd toss this to you. :)
- 💙Blue
I can't say it's the most common experience, but it's by no means unheard of either. A lot of therians and otherkind are prone to creating paracosms in my experience (myself included) and sometimes they involve therio-/kintypes.
How much control do you have over your daydreams? I experience more or less involuntary 'daydream' flashes related to my gnoll kintype and my Ben 10 fictotype. I described it like this in my Ben awakening essay:
No, the most pervasive trait had to be the "parallel life flashes." I'm not sure what else to call them. They felt different from daydreams, somehow. More spontaneous and out of my control. And a lot more tangible. They've since become one of the hallmarks of my fictionkinity. They present themselves as flashbacks: For a less than a second, it'll feel like I'm "back" to living my life as Ben, then, before I can fully grasp what happened, it's over. Like an out-of-body experience (or, rather, an into-my-mindscape experience, since I believe all of this originates in my own psyche). I always get the sense that these flashes are somehow current, as opposed to being past or future. Perhaps because of their dream-like qualities, I often "just know" many details of what's going on in these flashes, just like I knew the alien in my awakening dream was older than time, despite her not telling me. Dreams (nightly or daily) are just like that. I just know that my life as Ben is happening parallel to my life as Poppy.
I never knew what to call those either.
I supposed you could just call yours daydream shifts if you want to? It gets the point across, if nothing else.
as the maladaptive daydreamer otherkin ever (/silly) all of this deeply interests me & I find a lot of interest in the subject. Though unfortunately despite my attempts to search and dig- I rarely see Therians and otherkin discussing daydreaming or maladaptive daydreaming as a tool/symptom of their alterhumanity or nonhumanity. To build off of poppy however- I think daydreaming is actually a bit more common of a tool than the community at large may realize??
I personally theorize this is in part due to how little maladaptive daydreamers may realize what they’re doing what they are- I’ve seen some people talk about mental shifts in the past that sound A LOT like maladaptive daydreaming. And for a long time when I was younger & early on into my otherkin journey- I had no idea what my dreams were so it was like I was slipping into a completely different world or mindset to self soothe or leave my humanity for a bit. I only caught on to something happening or became “aware” of my dreaming when my mom began to notice my pacing behaviors. It led me down an internet rabbit hole of research.
But with maladaptive daydreaming not being a recognized disorder & more often only being considered a psychological condition in its most “severe” or disruptive cases gives me the idea that a lot of people still simply don’t know about it. It’s just not talked about a lot.
This isn’t to say all shifts are secretly daydreaming or anything, this is just to say I’ve seen some shifts described in a way that sound very very similar to my own “shifts” that I recognize as daydreaming- and because I know I wasn’t always aware of what they were, they used to feel and appear very very differently to me.
‘or in other words- I think it’s a lil more common than it appears, but it’s rarely described as daydreaming explicitly
Inky Paws is a nonhuman anthology zine for original fiction writings by nonhumans and alterhumans about nonhumanity, alterhumanity, and similar, related themes.
This zine is primarily literature focused, but will also be open to more illustrative methods of story-telling such as comics. The zine’s focus is on fictional pieces that are centered around nonhumanity, alterhumanity, therianthropy, and similar (see Submission Guidelines section for more details).
And more! If you're unsure, just ask! Seriously, please just ask. I promise I would 10000% love to hear about your idea even if you're unsure about submitting it, there is no such thing as a bad idea and I cannot stress this enough.
How to participate:
You can submit your pieces in this Google Form!
OR
Email invisibleotherkin(@)gmail(.)com with your submission, and please title the email "Inky Paws Zine #4 Submission". With your submission, please include:
The piece's title or name,
A name or pen name to attribute the piece to,
Any content warnings that you feel are necessary for the piece,
Any social media handle or personal website you’d like to be published alongside your name with the piece (optional), and
Any relevant author notes or author biographical information (optional).
Anonymous pieces are also welcome.
Once submissions have been collected and the deadline has passed, these submissions will be put into the zine and it will be posted online as a free PDF. Submissions are due by November 30th, 2026.
Please see the Submission Guidelines, and Submission FAQ, below cut.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Each individual may contribute up to 3 accepted submissions to be published in Inky Paws; individuals within systems may each submit 3 pieces, that is to say 3 pieces per systemmate/headmate/preferred term.
Comics and similar multi-part pieces count as one submission altogether: if you submit a single story that has been divided into two sub-stories for dramatic emphasis, or if you submit 10 pages of a single-story comic, or if you submit a written piece of fiction and an accompanying image that you drew or otherwise created to go along with it, that would still only count as one piece.
Submissions must fit the thematic criteria of:
Being explicitly about or based on nonhumans, otherkin, therianthropes, fictionkin, alterhumans, or similar groups, or;
Having strong themes or describing experiences strongly reminiscent of or related to nonhumans, otherkin, therianthropes, fictionkin, alterhumans, or similar such as (but not limited to):
Characters experiencing nonhumanity or alterhumanity as being a part of themselves/their identity,
Characters experiencing anything similar to a shift (including physical shifting),
Characters struggling with (emotionally, socially, or otherwise) being both human and nonhuman or alterhuman in some way,
Characters having a past-life as something nonhuman or alterhuman that strongly still impacts their current life, or
Characters desiring to be nonhuman or have nonhuman attributes.
TL;DR - Your submissions have to relate to or be about alterhumans or nonhumans in some way, shape, or form.
Written submissions must not exceed 7500 words, and must also use a reader-friendly font with a text size of or exceeding 16 pt.
For stories that use multiple different fonts, such as pieces meant to imitate newspapers and similar, every effort will be made to preserve the general "feel" of your piece but fonts may not be transferred over 1:1 due to potential conflicts with font copyright, readability, and overarching zine style.
Multi-part image submissions must not exceed 10 pages in length, and must also use a reader-friendly font with a text size of or exceeding 16 pt if they include text. Images larger than 8.5 x 11in. will be scaled down to an appropriate size; please take that into account when creating and submitting your images. It is also recommended that images be vertical or square in their orientation.
Written submissions should be submitted as a .docx file. Images and mixed media pieces should be submitted as either .jpg or .png files.
All submitted pieces should be your own work. Individuals caught plagiarizing or using AI within their submissions will be barred from participating in Inky Paws, including in any potential future volumes.
SUBMISSION FAQ:
Q: Where will this zine be hosted?
A: The zine will be hosted for free download on Itch.io, where issues 1, 2, and 3 of the zine are already hosted.
Q: What is the cap on submissions?
A: At this time, we are not looking to accept more than roughly 25 submissions at most, in order to keep numbers and expectations manageable.
Q: Can I update my application after submitting?
A: Yes, so long as the updates are submitted before the submission deadline!
Q: What is your policy on content moderation and content warnings?
A: If you feel your piece needs content warnings, please include them in the submission, as we are hoping to include relevant content warnings and maturity ratings alongside all pieces. We are at this time accepting pieces of all tones and ratings.
With that said, It should be noted that any items submitted with soapboxing intent and anti-nonhuman, anti-alterhuman, anti-fictionkin, or similar leans are largely not welcome, as this is a zine geared towards all aforementioned groups and then some.
Q: Can I submit an in-progress draft or sketch? Can I claim a spot in the zine before sending in my submission?
A: We are not currently accepting WIP pieces for submission at this time, though feel free to send us your WIP if you have questions related to its future submission. We also cannot reserve or guarantee a spot in the zine pre-submission, regardless of any existing drafts or WIPs.
Q: Can I submit a piece of fanfiction?
A: While we've now accepted pieces of fanfiction in the past, we tend to prefer to leave them out for legal reasons. If you submit a piece of obvious fanfiction, please know that it may be significantly more likely to be rejected from the zine and that, if the piece is accepted, the piece may be removed without warning from the zine later on if DMCA or legal issues arise. We strongly advise that individuals who wish to write something inspired by fiction make it non-obvious to the outside reader where the inspiration is being taken from.
Q: Can I submit something I've created in the past?
A: You can submit something you've created in the past, but please try to avoid submitting anything that you've published previously and is currently publicly accessible. For example, if the story you want to submit has already been featured in a different anthology, please don't submit it to Inky Paws! We want to encourage people to create new pieces, or to put the spotlight on pieces that haven't previously had the opportunity to be published.
Q: What is the projected timeline for this project?
A: Submissions will close by November 30th of 2026. The publish date of the zine depends on submission amount and size of submissions; in an ideal world, we hope to have the zine published by December, before year's end.
Q: Can I rescind my submission?
A: As long as you request to rescind your submission before the submission deadline, yes. After the deadline passes and the formatting and work towards publishing begins, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to remove your work from the zine due to time constraints and potential formatting issues. Please take this into account before submitting.
Q: Will there be any physical copies of this zine?
A: Due to cost restraints and a lack of printing experience on the part of the zine organizers, we have no physical copies of this zine planned for print. You are, however, welcome to download and print copies of the zine for personal use.
Q: Who are the organizers of this zine? Where can I reach out to ask further questions?
A: Who-is-Page and Noel Sol of the Sol System are organizing this zine. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, or concerns to invisibleotherkin(@)gmail(.)com, or you can always message us on Tumblr at Who-is-Page.
It looks like Inky Paws' Google Forms submission folder was maxed out late last night because of some especially large submissions; I've expanded the folder space allotted to it, so it should be working again! If for any reason the form doesn't work in the future, please email your submissions instead.
An upcoming anniversary in the otherkin community: On July 9, 2012, the word “otherkin” will have been coined 22 years ago. It was coined in the Elfinkind Digest, a mailing list which is active to this day. On that date in 1990, one participant, Torin, used the word “otherkin” as a variation on the earlier word “otherkind.” Both phrases were casually improvised as an abbreviated way of referring to people who identify as other kinds of creatures.
(Source: Elfinkind Digest #71. The archive of this document is still extant, and I have read it. Thanks to the mailing list moderator R’ykandar Korra’ti for making this primary source available to me while I was researching our community’s history book, the Otherkin Timeline. Thanks to Torin for permission to share this information.)
Right now, the word “otherkin” is nearly 22 years old. That means that any otherkin who are currently in their teens weren’t even born until after the word had been coined. There are lots of otherkin who have considered themselves to be otherkin, of a kind, even years before the word had been coined. Detractors sometimes claim that otherkin is merely a passing fad popular among youth, but this is evidently not the case.
Any thoughts on the significance of this passage of time? Where were you at, as an otherkin, 22 years ago? Anybody want to make plans for the 9th, to set it aside as a day for thinking about otherkin things? Maybe a party for reminiscing, maybe even with costumes and artistic “glamour-bombs”?
This year, the word “otherkin” recently turned 32 years old on July 9, 2022.
The top post in this thread from 2012 is where I first proposed observing it as Otherkin Day, unless if anyone can find earlier references to that. The original post is gone, so I was grateful to find this particular post had been archived on someone else’s blog.
And so did the word otherkind, being otherkin’s elder sibling by a a few months.
I’ve now got a page on my website titled A Brief(ish) History of the Word “Otherkind” based on my reading of the contemporary Elfinkind Digest, which talks a bit about the coining, trends in usage, whether it included elves at first, and whether it included animal folk (today’s therians).
Do you know whether there's a conception among therians or otherkin of how daydreaming can play a role? I'm a frequent daydreamer (not maladaptive) and sometimes I take forms and live lives as my theriotypes in my daydreams. It's almost like a kind of shift, but one that exists outside the concrete reality surrounding me, in distant fabricated realities instead. In a way daydreaming allows me to explore forms and personality traits in an imaginary setting, as well as have animal experiences I will never get to have in real life. My system's nonconventional headspace also exists as a daydream and I can take whatever nonhuman form I like there.
I don't need this to be personally validated or anything, I'm just curious whether there's a precedent for this being discussed in the therian or otherkin communities. I saw a handful of "types of shift" and similar lists when I first joined the therian community, but it's been years since and I can't remember whether daydreaming was mentioned in any such informational pages. You seem to know a lot of things, so I figured I'd toss this to you. :)
- 💙Blue
I can't say it's the most common experience, but it's by no means unheard of either. A lot of therians and otherkind are prone to creating paracosms in my experience (myself included) and sometimes they involve therio-/kintypes.
How much control do you have over your daydreams? I experience more or less involuntary 'daydream' flashes related to my gnoll kintype and my Ben 10 fictotype. I described it like this in my Ben awakening essay:
No, the most pervasive trait had to be the "parallel life flashes." I'm not sure what else to call them. They felt different from daydreams, somehow. More spontaneous and out of my control. And a lot more tangible. They've since become one of the hallmarks of my fictionkinity. They present themselves as flashbacks: For a less than a second, it'll feel like I'm "back" to living my life as Ben, then, before I can fully grasp what happened, it's over. Like an out-of-body experience (or, rather, an into-my-mindscape experience, since I believe all of this originates in my own psyche). I always get the sense that these flashes are somehow current, as opposed to being past or future. Perhaps because of their dream-like qualities, I often "just know" many details of what's going on in these flashes, just like I knew the alien in my awakening dream was older than time, despite her not telling me. Dreams (nightly or daily) are just like that. I just know that my life as Ben is happening parallel to my life as Poppy.
I never knew what to call those either.
I supposed you could just call yours daydream shifts if you want to? It gets the point across, if nothing else.
every time I see someone who's like "im too old to be fictionfolk why haven't I aged out of this yet it's been years... it's for kids......." im like. this is why I need to be fictional even louder
im 27 ive identified as fictional since I was around 15 !!! and it hasn't died off. in fact it interacts with my life in so many ways as an adult!!!!! i hate calling myself "older fictionfolk" but when people younger than me talk about aging out of their personal identity im like. no you don't have to!!!!!!!!!!!!! you can be you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i need to get louder and even more fictional. you can be a grown ass adult and fictionfolk it's awesome narancia jojo with 3 college degrees
hey! to the people commenting and saying i’m stuck in my internet activism brain i quite literally wasn’t being hostile or mean at all! i even understand why you’d say what u said and agree, i just politely said that it was reminiscent of someone telling a disabled person that they’re happy they aren’t in their shoes, it can come across as insensitive. you didn’t say anything wrong, and i’m not mad at you. i wish people wouldn’t immediately jump to calling names or calling me dramatic when all i was doing was giving you my thoughts on the post you publicly posted on the public website, not that i thought you did anything wrong. sorry
I didn't see anything wrong with your ask either. This whole thing is mountains out of molehills.
We thought your post was fine. As a system... pregnancy would be trickier for us to navigate, (though we have discussed this previously) that just is a thing.
It didnt sound like you were saying plurality is an inconvenience, more so that it would come with more challenges. Which is different imo.
Idk, i can see how they might turn it, but i also understand your point.
It's already complex enough as is, considering my fluid gender and species. What if I'm a man on the day I give birth? I'll probably have more pressing issues at hand, but it wouldn't help. A pregnancy can always get more complicated x.x
Just your friendly neighborhood bison @aestherians - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
