The sound of wings instead of words

she/fey

[rues-alterhuman-things]

Hello! You can call me Rue here, and I’m an overhuman!

This will be my alterhuman side-“shouting into the void”-blog, where I go through bouts of shyness and post very sporadically.

‘Types:

🪽Avian hybrid/pterohuman otherlink

💜Tallulah (QSMP) memoryless fictionkin

💧Avatar (TMA) archetrope

📖UNDERTALE otherhearted/talehearted

I’m also a dæmian! My dæ is Mandira (shei/they) <3 Hello! I speak in pink

[rues-alterhuman-things]

So, a couple years ago, I got sort-of Fixated on neopronouns for a couple months, and that eventually transitioned into being sort-of Fixated on xenogenders for a few months. Nothing out of the ordinary there, sometimes your brain latches onto a thing for a little while and you come out the other side with some cool new pronouns. While I was there, though, due to all the cross-pollination between your gender not being human and literally not being human, I found myself in the alterhuman community.

The top posts in their tags didn’t really speak to me in any meaningful way; I knew About therians and otherkin at that point, I knew I wasn’t one of them, and scrolling through the tags just made me more sure of it. But I liked to check on my sister community sometimes anyway, y’know?

Around that time, I started rewatching a show from my childhood, and started making connections. I felt weird about the main character. Could I be fictionfolk about her???

It turned out to be just a synpath/simile in the end, but the point is that looking into that was what first led me to the concept of otherlinking. A linktype of my character never did stick either, but, one day, while swinging on the swingset outside, imagining wings on my back, flapping back and forth, I had a thought: I’ve always, on some odd level, wanted wings. Birdpeople, avians, hybrids, whatever you call them—I’ve always thought they were so cool-mesmerizing-desirable to the point I started avoiding media that had them because I was (irrationally) worried I’d start yearning too much. What if I ‘linked them? The thought didn’t feel wrong or bad, so, that day, I decided to Become.

That day was April 30, 2024, and over two years later, I am still pteranlink (/avianlink/hybridlink/…there isn’t really a perfect word for it, lol). But that begs the question—what happens when you have a linktype for two years?

It kinda just feels like a weak kintype, as it turns out.

Or at least, that’s how it is for me. I’ve been watching our community from the rafters for what feels like quite a while now, and I’ve still never quite been able to feel like I understand you yet. I don’t really have any instincts; I have to learn about and emulate them myself, although stars does it feel good when I do. I’ve never been able to predict the seasons, or whatever it is you do when you start itching to molt or migrate, although I suppose that a) neither of the species I’ve been are migratory, and b) I also keep forgetting that I’m just a hybrid, not a full bird, and whether we can do that depends on one’s specific lore. And as much as I want to—and I really do want to—I’ve never been able to just seamlessly be my linktype, the way others seem to be. In fact, I’ve had kind of a weird… flicker? Going on? Recently, a switch in my brain just flipped for no reason and now I sometimes(??) feel, involuntarily, like a full-on bird therian(?). It’s weird. I need more data on it. Point is, one of the first feelings that stood out to me from that whole experience was how… pointless my entire two year old ‘link felt in comparison. Maybe I just did it wrong, but if ‘linking is often a process of “fake it ‘til you make it’, I kind of wonder whether I ever left that stage.

That’s not to say it’s all been for naught, though—I really have always wanted to be pteran, in the way I imagine a lot of people do; the way children wish they were mermaids, kind of, and ‘linking has more or less filled that void. If I stopped, if my ‘link was torn out of my hands, it would feel like a loss, and my life would be just that little bit worse for it.

And it has been integrated into my identity, a little bit. I could probably get myself in a mental shift if I wanted to. I’ve had partial phantom wings since I started ‘linking—mostly voluntary, but some spontaneous ones, and it always feels good when that happens. Emulating nesting or other behaviors, while not innate, does give me zings of euphoria. I’ve recently felt myself switching from feeling jealousy, when I see art of humans (or human-ishes) with wings, to an “I have wings, too!”

Some of these things sprung up (or were already here) from the start, some of them took (or are taking) quite a while to hammer in. I can tell you this because I’ve had this linktype for two years. I’ve tried my hand at ‘linking other things, beings, and characters before, though, both ID-as and ID-with, and none of them have stuck for more than a couple months—my pterantype still persists as my only linktype. And taking a moment to detour, looking back, the thing that killed all but one of them was hesitation. Is this a good choice? Does it feel right? Will it do me harm in the long run? Am I good enough for it? I just kept going back and forth until there was nowhere for the ‘link to prosper, and I forgot about it and/or gave up.

The one that didn’t have this problem was a specific character, q!Pomme, but I decided to break it off when I discovered I already had a fictotype in the same source that did what I was trying to do with the linktype. (That linktype is also the only one of my ID-as ‘types that my daemon and I shared, since we deliberately built it together. Just a little interesting note.)

I do also want to quickly highlight one of the reasons I mentioned for hesitating, though—“am I good enough?”

I think one thing that’s held me back while ‘linking is low self esteem. I think my linktype is very, well, cool, and desirable to be; contrasted with myself, here, who isn’t “cool enough” to be this thing she wants to be; undeserving of the identity, even if fey put in the effort to build it feirself. That combined with the lack of hesitation when deciding to ‘link for the first time makes me sometimes wonder if this would’ve been a kintype after all if I didn’t think like this, but at the same time… eh. Just throwing that out there.

Now that we’re back to my pteranlink, when I first established it, I didn’t have a particular species of bird in mind; I just knew I wanted to be (was?) half-bird, in the sense that it gave me wings on my back—incapable of flight, although I didn’t care too much about flying—and tail feathers and talons and some other feathers dotted on my skin. After a few months, though, I knew I had to pick something because of how Not Anywhere I was going. So, after some Wikipedia wandering, I chose the Eurasian magpie, since they looked cool (no, seriously, look at them, they’re so pretty) and our behaviors kind of lined up.

And it worked. I was part-magpie for a year, until one day when it slowly dawned on me that, however connected I was to the species when I chose it, I wasn’t really feeling it anymore. Luckily, linktypes are malleable, so, after some thinking (I was feeling really drawn to birds of prey, for some reason), I decided to switch to the barn owl, which I felt a lot more immediately comfortable as.

That was the second big-ish change I made to the ‘link, and the first felt somewhat more out of my control. I had just woken up from a… dream? Nightmare? Which took place in the deep ocean. I have an irrational fear of the stuff (specifically whales, which weren’t really in the dream but which I started thinking about upon waking), but what made me feel better then was thinking about going back to the surface and flying away. It felt so right, so that was when I decided to revise being flightless—screw physics, I can fly, why not.

There is… one other thing, though? I’m kind of not sure of anything about it. Whenever I think about my linktype, one idea that often comes to mind is this parallel dimension where everything is the same, except all humans are animal hybrids—like me, Sweet Tooth-style, kind of, although the omega/misceverse also comes to mind as a comparison—and it sometimes feels more than anything like I’m… factlinking myself, from that dimension, rather than a species. It’s weird. I don’t really know what to make of it, or if it will ever be an important thing.

Finally, it… it genuinely didn’t even occur to me to talk about what I did/do to ‘link my ‘type while writing this until now. I’m not sure why, but I can talk about that now.

I don’t remember the day very clearly, but I can only assume it was that initial, sealing decision to ‘link that really Did The Thing in the first place. After that, it was phantom limbs, which I began establishing via thinking about them really hard until I kinda felt them. My wings are still not as vivid as I want them to be, but they’ve shown up on “instinct” multiple times now, so I can only hope that that’s promising (shoutout to my daemon, btw; shei occasionally takes a human form to preen/pet them and I feel melty just thinking about it). Linguistic changes also helped quite a bit; to this day, simply thinking of my bed as my nest or brushing my hair as preening can get me in a shifty mood. Being up high also helps to get in the mood; then it’s just a matter of.. doing all that consistently until the rest of you gets the memo.

So, that’s what happens when you have a linktype for two years—or at least, what happened to me; I feel like a lot of other ‘linkers had more experiences similar to otherkin/therians, for seemingly a multitude of reasons, but idk, man. If you came to this post for advice, I guess mine would be to not hesitate; to take your new self and run with it, as far as you can, and to be patient. Maybe you’re like me and it’ll take a long time to get out of the “faking” stage, but maybe that’s okay. If it’s something you really want to be, you’ll get there eventually.

[butterfly-and-moth-species]

Hyparpax aurora

Hyparpax aurora - Pink prominent

Family: Notodontidae

[itsapup]

We need to spread otherlink and transspecies propaganda NOW. I see so many post where someone is like “I want to identify as a fox ^_^” and everyone is like “NO. Therianthropy is not voluntary, you POSER! You’re just otherpaw!” Hey. You can willingly be an animal. You know that right? Therianthropy isn’t the only form of being an alterhuman. We should educate people on labels they can use instead of assuming they are malicious.

[rues-alterhuman-things]

Help why do I suddenly feel the urge to become a full-on bird

[weare-foxes]

”SPECIES TRANSITION”

(full thread below)

[i-am-a-fish]

don't be mean to yourself that's you

[sable-dream]

Y'all ever ignore your daemon and then 2 hours later realize they were right and sit there like

[dogwithglasses]

Sometimes I wonder about the nonhumans who say they don’t want to be called a person. Imo “person” does not imply humanness except to anthropocentrics who can’t see things other than humans as having personhood. I’m a wolf and I’m also a person. My wolfness does not take away my personhood; my being a person doesn’t mean I’m not a wolf. It feels like a very anthropocentric worldview to see “person” and read “human.”

And. I wouldn’t say this to someone actively telling me not to call them a person, but: if you’re not a person then you don’t have the agency to decide what you are or aren’t called. Right? Is personhood not our individual sovereignty? Personhood is our agency, our possession of rights, our consciousness. If you don’t have that then do you have the right to say you aren’t a person? To me saying “I’m not a person” reads as saying “i am not the kind of thing that gets to decide what kind of thing it is”

I’m ALSO very curious about the demographics of nonhumans who say they aren’t people. How many are white, able bodied, and/or neurotypical? I feel like a good amount are probably at least one of those things and that probably is affecting their view of the word “person” and what it might be like to not be a person

[leathercollar]

Re: Demographics

Being Jewish, you would have to rend personhood from my cold, dead jaws. Being a nonhuman person is a core aspect of my alterhumanity and perception of Self as a whole.

[thetadelta]

[Image ID: Screenshot of text reading "For human people, see Human. For other uses, see Person (disambiguation)." End ID]

[aestherians]

To me it's like saying "wolves don't use computers." I mean, most don't but evidently some do. Most bison don't have personhood, but this one does, and that doesn't make me any less of a bison.

[16-14]

as a vaporeon your only mission in life is to slap your biiiiiiiig damn tail and splash around

[16-14]

as a flareon your only mission in life around is to be fluffy and have an awesome attack stat

[16-14]

as a jolteon your only mission in life is to run around super fuckin fast and be spikey and cool

[16-14]

as an umbreon your only mission on life is to glow and lurch around and go "rrrreaerrr" and stare at stuff with your red eyes

[16-14]

as an espeon your only mission in life is to hear a whole lotta stuff with your big ears and make stuff float and bask in the sun

[16-14]

as a leafeon your only mission in life is to have dope defenses and go around in forests and be cool and green

[16-14]

as a glaceon your only mission in life is to walk around graciously in the cold and lay comfortably in the snow

[16-14]

as a sylveon your only mission in life is to go around joyously and hold onto stuff with your big ribbons and go "(whistling sound)"

[16-14]

as an eevee

evui

[cherishedverses]

how does stuff like dæmonism and dragonwork work? Like how to you create them and stuff

[rues-alterhuman-things]

Well I don’t know much about dragonwork, but speaking as a dæmian; what worked for me was simply internally calling to out my mind, “hello?”, and then Mandira was kind of just, there. Afaik, that seems to be the most common way people find their dæmon(s).

If that doesn’t work, I have heard of people creating their dæmon(s), and that’s a perfectly valid way to have/be a dæmon, but again, I don’t think it’s too common, and I don’t know much about it.

[hadoriel]

Stupidly specific poll but I'm curious because I was super active on TDF in 2007 and 2010 and seen how the daemonism community has changed over time:

Regarding yourself and daemonism; which do you consider a larger factor?

Identity categorization (or totemism)

Pluralism (or other separate identities)

Neither (What other factor - I'm honestly curious?)

Both (Prefer if you can pick, but understand if not)

Voting ended onMay 11

For context, 'identity categorization' is like the original Dark Materials books, wherein people have souls in the shape of an animal for reasons relating to their personality. So this is closer to things like MBTI, D&D alignment systems, ennegram, personality quizzes etc. 'Pluralism' is what I see a lot more of today, at least here on Tumblr in the daemonism tag, and is about the concept of being more than one entity inhabiting a single body. Pluralism was mostly not an idea in the daemonism community at any point I was active in it, so I don't know how or when it became what I mostly see these days. I know Tulpas were a fad in the mid 2010s, and that there was overlap with daemonism, and I see Tulpas still come up in plural discussions... But I'm not plural, so I don't know the extent of the effect. I pretty much only know when 4chan was obsessed with them some time ago

Anyways, GENUINELY curious! It's not an easy topic to look into because it's so super niche, but if anyone can point me to a timeline on how the community evolved from last I was active in it fifteen years ago (ough), that'd be neat too O:

[god-kings-of-the-abyssal-zone]

Fandom blogger that keeps using the word "kin" yet whose roleplaying is s bit too earnest to just be messing around? They should just use otherhearted.

Tiktok therian with full mask and quads who says their "not an animal"? They should just use otherhearted.

Someone unsure of being otherkin but their experiences are almost always primarily euphoria? They should just use otherhearted.

There's a pattern emerging here I sense...

[fishcup]

Which nest would you choose?

[daemonism-101]

Daemonism Terminology

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Daemon Pronouns]

Semi-plural pronouns originating for daemons. Adding an "i" at the end of a pronoun was how it started, but it does not always flow well with existing pronouns. So, it is often used in combination with standard pronouns.

(ex. "Hei really loves his new form. Wei think it fits us both well, and I think it is cute, but I won't tell him that.")

*Semi-plural daemon pronouns have fallen out of common use within the community, with traditional and neopronouns being more common.

[Original Pronouns]

Hei

Equivalent of "he". Used in combination with him/his/himself

Shei

Equivalent of "She". Used in combination with her/hers/herself

Wei

Used when referring to yourself and your daemon. Replaces "we". Used in combination with us/ours/ourselves

[Expanded Pronouns]

(A demonstration on how to adapt existing pronouns to semi-plural daemon pronouns.)

Hei/Heim/Heis/Heimself

Equivalent of he/him/his/himself

Shei/Heir/Heirs/Heirself

Equivalent of she/her/hers/herself

Thei/Theim/Theirs/Theimself

Equivalent of they/them/theirs/themself

Vei/Veir/Veirs/Veirself

Equivalent of ve/ver/vers/verself

Xei/ Xeim/ Xeirs / Xeimself

Equivalent of xe/xem/xers/xemself

Zei/ Zeim/ Zeirs/ Zeirself

Equivalent of ze/zem/zers/zerself

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Basics | Daemon Specific | Form Basics | Form Specifics | Form Types | Form Finding | Pronouns | Uncommon Terms

[otherhearted-culture-is]

Otherhearted resources masterpost

This post will be updated over time. It covers basic information, community history, symbology, community writings, and more.

Otherheartedness 101

Otherhearted | Otherkin Wiki

Otherhearted | Through Time and Space (by Azaphaer)

Otherheartedness, Synpaths and Hearthomes – A Quick Rundown by Interstellar (PDF version)

A Basic Guide to Otherhearted Terms

-

Community history

Early Themes in the Animal-hearted Scene by atlas-of-mossland

A History of the Term Animal-Hearted by House of Chimeras

Identifying "With" by Aestherians (On etymology & related terms.)

'Alterhuman' coining post (2014)

'Hearthic' coining post (2022)

-

Symbology

Symbol by Aestherians (Proposed in 2017 & voted on by the community. Diamond represents the "other" within our hearts.)

♥♦ | ♡♢ - Unicode versions (for bios, display names, etc.)

Flags:

Otherhearted flag [Creator and year of proposal to be added.]

Otherhearted flag by yours truly (Proposed in 2021. Stripe meanings here.)

Hearthic flag by Lepidoptera Choir (Proposed in 2022.)

-

Questioning help

A Short Guide for Questioning a Hearttype by Corv

Typical experiences for different forms of alterhumanity by Aestherians

Questions for questioning fictionfolk by Aestherians

Less "obvious" signs of fictionheartedness & fictionkinity

A Difference Between Synpaths and Otherhearted? by froghearted

-

Personal essays

Otherhearted | Alterhuman Archive (Large collection; also includes other writings & discussions)

Personal essays tag

-

Misc.

General 'Heartedness Survey results (Conducted by Corv in 2021)

No Place Like Home: On Hearthomes - Panel by Rani (Othercon 2024)

Fictionkin Vs Fictionhearted - Panel by Daski (Othercon 2020)

Otherhearted ask game by froghearted

Alterhuman Dictionary | Beyond Humanity

[a-dragons-journal]

i dont "kin for fun" but through tiktok i found out about the whole kin for fun vs actual otherkin... situation ig? im having a really hard time taking it seriously... maybe im just burnt out and bitter from dealing with the worlds current events, and maybe its because on tiktok the only people i saw mad about it were white people, but you're the most reasonable person ive seen talking about it (a lot of other posts have this odd tone that 12 year olds on tiktok saying kin is the worlds greatest opression and it weirds me out) so ig my question is just... why exactly does this matter? why does it matter enough to post about and care about and not just ignore? /gen

Hey! I don’t blame you for being a bit weirded out by it, we’re a weird subculture and we’re well aware of it! xD I appreciate you taking the time to actually look into it past your first knee-jerk reaction, especially considering burnout and the state of things.

I’m not totally sure if you’re asking why otherkinity matters or why the “kin for fun” being wrong matters, so I’ll answer both - they’re pretty well tied together anyway.

The short version:

Otherkinity is an identity. It’s who we are, we can’t choose to pick it up or put it down, and it comes with struggles - though no, ‘kin are not systematically oppressed (though we are pretty badly bullied and, at this point, pushed out of our own words and spaces).

What people calling roleplay/relating to/projecting onto characters “kinning for fun” does is steal our words, make them meaningless, and in doing so, make it difficult or impossible for us to find each other. If someone says “I kin [x],” I no longer know whether they mean “I am [x] on an intrinsic level” or “haha I relate to this character a lot”. I no longer know whether they actually share my experiences or if they’re going to turn on me and call me “crazy” as soon as they realize I’m not exaggerating or joking or roleplaying. It’s done massive harm to the community as a whole because it’s become difficult to tell whether someone is actually ‘kin or if they’ve misunderstood the whole thing - and because antikin rhetoric, which I’m seeing more and more in KFF spaces, hurts far more when it’s coming from inside what you thought was a community space than when it’s coming from self-labeled “antikin.”

There are other words for roleplaying and relating to and projecting onto characters. Hell, there are words for strongly identifying with-but-not-as characters/things, though usually KFF people don’t even seem serious enough for those to fit in my experience. I’m really not sure why these people are so determined to steal and misuse our words, words that were specifically created to mean something else, when they already have their own and are just refusing to use them. (Or, hell, if you don’t feel like those fit, make your own. We did. It’s your turn to put in the work. (General you, not you-the-anon, of course.))

An analogy, if that still doesn’t quite land for you:

Consider, for a moment, the transgender community. I am aware this is a dangerous thing to say, but bear with me. Obvious CW for hypothetical transphobia up ahead is obvious.

Consider if you were part of the trans community (I don’t know if you are or not), having finally found a word to explain why you feel the way you do about yourself, why your experiences don’t seem to match up with those of everyone else around you. Having found a community, a home, full of other people like you, people you never would have met if not for words like “transgender” and “gender dysphoria/euphoria” that were created specifically to describe your experiences.

Now consider if people suddenly stumbled across your community for the first time who were not trans themselves. They see community jokes and lighthearted posts out of context, because Tumblr and Twitter aren’t exactly conducive to making sure people find the Transgender 101 information posts first. They don’t bother to do further research, assuming they understand: ah, these people like to crossdress! They like to pretend they’re a different gender! This seems like a fun hobby, I want in!

They begin to post things like this. They post photos of them crossdressing and caption them “hi, I’m [name], and I trans men!” and things of the like. Suddenly the concept of “transing for fun” seems to be everywhere - and it’s not at all what being trans actually is, but these people either don’t know or don’t care. When actual trans people try to politely correct them, they’re accused of “gatekeeping” - and to be clear, this is not “nonbinary people aren’t real,” it’s “transgender means you identify as a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, and you’re self-identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% and telling us this is just a fun hobby for you, therefore you’re not trans, you’re crossdressing or doing drag or being GNC. That’s fine, but it’s not being trans - you have other words to describe that, use those.”

(Yes, I am aware these things have a history with the trans community - please just ignore that for the sake of the analogy and bear with me on the slightly simplified version of this. “Kinning for fun” does not have that same history with the otherkin community.)

...And then the response to those attempted corrections, in some corners, turns into “wait, you ACTUALLY think you’re another gender? idk that sounds pretty unhealthy, maybe you should see a psychologist or something :\” and “you’re taking this too seriously.”

I imagine, in this hypothetical scenario, you’d also be pretty fuckin peeved.

(Obviously, in this hypothetical scenario, systematic transphobia would be an issue as well, which isn’t the case for otherkin - again, you’re gonna have to bear with me on the simplification for sake of analogy there.)

(EDIT: this is not an anti-MOGAI/exclusionist argument, this is “you’re literally telling me you don’t fit the definition,” explanation on that here)

The long version, which is probably still worth reading if you have the time and energy:

Otherkinity is... pretty core to who I am, who we as a group of individuals are. We live with being otherkin on a daily basis. Many of us spent a long time feeling different and disconnected and not understanding why until we found the otherkin community. Even people like me, who don’t share that experience and still had social connection - I’ve still had to live with weird differences that I had to learn to mask when necessary; instincts that don’t line up with human society well, feeling body parts that weren’t there and that no one else ever seemed to have, things that other kids grew out of because it was just make-believe for them and I... didn’t, because it was never make-believe for me to begin with. Oh, sure, I played make-believe too - I played warrior cats and house and all those things with the other kids, but there were things that weren’t play-pretend for me too. I didn’t have an explanation for it for a long time - it was just how I was, I was weird, and fortunately for me personally I was okay with that (many of those with species dysphoria or more trouble connecting with humans have more problems from that than I did).

And then I found the word “otherkin.” And suddenly everything fell into place, and I had an explanation for the things I’d been experiencing, and there were other people like me. Something I’d assumed didn’t exist. I found others who shared my unique experiences, who were talking about how to cope with the instinct to growl or snap jaws at people instead of expressing annoyance in a human way instead of just saying “that’s weird, don’t do that”, who were talking about dealing with phantom wings and tails, who understood me. I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t broken, I was exactly what one would expect from a dragon living in human skin. I found an explanation for myself. I found a home.

That is why otherkinity matters - it is who we are, it’s not something we can walk away from (certainly not most of us, anyway), and it’s something many of us need the support of the community to help deal with on a daily basis. Being a nonhuman in human society isn’t always easy, but it’s not something we can just magically stop being - it’s core to who we are, we (generally) didn’t choose to be this way, and we (generally) can’t choose to stop. Which is fine - the vast majority of us can cope with it just fine, with a little advice and help and space to be our authentic selves in. We found each other, we built this community from the ground up to make a space and words to make finding each other easier - or possible at all.

Thus we come to the second half of our story.

It was only a couple of years ago that the “kin for fun” trend started getting big. It had existed before that, of course, but it only started going mainstream two, maybe three years ago, from what I can tell. Suddenly people were treating “kin” like it meant relating to, projecting onto, roleplaying as, or just really really liking a character or thing - not being that thing, which is what it actually means. Not long after that, it became hard to tell whether someone saying “I kin this” meant they were that thing, that they were actually part of our community - or that they really really liked that thing and either didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered to learn that that wasn’t the case for us.

Not long after that, it became relatively commonplace to hear phrases like “otherkin are ruining kinning!!” and “you’re taking this too seriously” and “idk, if it’s that serious for you that sounds unhealthy. maybe you should get some help :\” (all directly quoted, or as exactly quoted as I can remember, from things KFF people have said to me or people I know).

It is a special kind of hell, I think, to be told “you’re taking this too seriously, that’s unhealthy” by people who are taking words created to describe your experiences, not theirs, and misusing them to mean something that you do for fun on a weekend instead of something that’s intrinsic to your being.

Perhaps more importantly, like I’ve said, it’s making it almost impossible to know whether someone who says “I kin [x]” is actually ‘kin or if they’re misusing our words to mean something else entirely. The entire point of words is to communicate ideas, and once you start misusing words to mean something totally different than what they actually mean, that communication falls apart and suddenly we might as well not have those words at all. Especially when the community is small enough and obscure enough that we’re starting to be outnumbered by the misinformation. We’re being run out of our own words, words we created to describe our experiences specifically - because we’re a small community that the wider internet can easily drown out by sheer numbers of people who either don’t know any better or don’t care to learn.

That’s the harm it does - the harm it is doing, right now. That’s why it’s important enough to post about. That’s why it matters - because we’re fighting desperately to hang onto our own words so that others like us can actually find us. Because we’re seeing young nonhumans go “this isn’t a kin, I actually am this” and screaming “No, I’m so sorry that this is what the misinformation has done to you, that’s exactly what otherkin means, you have a place here, please don’t let these non-’kin misusing our words drive you away from the very community you’re looking for and that you belong in.” Because we can’t even communicate effectively about our own experiences anymore except in semi-closed spaces like Discord servers and forums (and the number of Discord servers overrun with KFF people is absurd).

......This got very long. Hopefully it at least explained why it matters so much to me and others a bit better ^^; Thanks for hearing me out, and thank you again for looking into this beyond your initial knee-jerk reaction - I really do appreciate it.

(For further reading, if that text wall didn’t blow you out of the water completely, I recommend my “kin for fun” tag, which has more posts like this in both short and long form.)