breaking: the princess has been replaced by a giant red feathery wyrm. when pressed for comments, she responded “SKREEEEAAAAA” and bit the reporter’s face off
My dragon xenofiction book discord is having its 5th anniversary! It's got 2000+ people, like 50 authors, and a ton of therians/otherkin, so if you like reading books like Wings of Fire and want more dragon content, check it out!
My dragon xenofiction book discord is having its 5th anniversary! It's got 2000+ people, like 50 authors, and a ton of therians/otherkin, so if you like reading books like Wings of Fire and want more dragon content, check it out!
Sometimes it’s weird being a draconic with a mostly psychological identity. I know I’m a dragon, the fire-breathing blue-scaled type with two wings and four legs, but what exactly a dragon is, even within this category, varies a lot depending on who you ask. There are a wide variety of draconic archetypes: feral non-speaking animalistic dragons; evil gold-hoarding human-devouring dragons; wise magical solitary dragons; and dragons who are just like normal humans in scaly suits. Since I have minimal past life memories if any, the way I figure out what sort of dragon I am (am, as even if I was a dragon in a past life, my draconity is what I experience now) is by gut feeling. Some parts of these draconic archetypes feel right to me, like that’s what I am, and others feel wrong. Sometimes this involves looking at my own personality, instincts, and behaviors and comparing, although this can be troublesome as some of these are possibly symptoms of mental health issues I have, and we all know that mundane issues shouldn’t be attributed to one’s draconity.
As a dragon, every representation I see of myself is filtered through legend or media. I’m able to look to Earth animal behavior too, but just as dragons are physically described as a mix of different Earth animals, so may we be in our nature. A lot of times, I and other dragons I’ve met have ended up using fiction as a way to explore our own identities, to look at (and often read) about dragons, and ask what they get right or wrong, and use that to figure out who we are. And sometimes, this process of feeling out what is right or wrong can be weird. I can feel that multiple conflicting archetypes are the right ones, or can have what feels right change over time. This raises a lot of questions about myself that I’m still exploring. If multiple archetypes are right, does that mean that I’m a fusion of them? Perhaps just as I change, what sort of dragon I am changes with me?
In some way, this seems a little bit silly. I am who I am, regardless of archetypes. Still, I feel like that’s too reductive an answer. I think that I who I am has been influenced by these archetypes somewhat over time. The relationship I had with them a decade ago isn’t the same one I have with them now: I can look at old writings I had about how dragons are actually peaceful and just misunderstood, which contrasts with how I feel far more animality and even perhaps “evil” now. Is it just that I embraced the dark and violent parts of my draconity, of myself that were always there? Or have I changed over time? I think it’s probably some of both.
An alternative is to accept all of these archetypes, to accept that they are all an inherent part of my draconity, even if sometimes they conflict with each other and if I experience instincts and have behaviors that don’t always make sense together (whether spiritual or psychological or both in origin). Perhaps they could be caused by different past lives as different dragons, but even so, this is my experience now, and who I am now is not one of separate kintypes but one of a singular draconity. I myself encompass multiple draconic archetypes and different conflicting natures, but as a one dragon.
Being psychological* otherkin, the concept of having a specific type of dragon that I am doesn’t always make sense for me. While I know that I’m a dragon, and a lot of my general features I’ve figured out from noemata (even if they sometimes conflict with each other), there are certain aspects of my draconity which I don’t know in that way. This includes details of physical features, along with some species-related instincts or behaviors. In many cases I don’t think these are things I have yet to figure out - I just don’t think that inherent knowledge exists.
Because of that, I’ve occasionally instead created parts of my draconity and what I consider to be my dragon species (in a sense, filling in the blanks). As an example, I write fiction with dragon characters, and sometimes don’t have an intuitive sense of what the correct body language for a situation should be. In these cases, I’ve often taken inspiration from canine, feline, or even human body language for my writing. Interestingly, because I write using my own dragon species as inspiration, this ends up changing my own species. What wasn’t there before becomes created knowledge that affects my own behaviors or appearance.
This isn’t noemata, which is inherent knowledge about one’s kintype and isn’t chosen. Discussing a bit on the Otherconnect discord, this doesn’t seem to be an experience that’s specific to me. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t any terminology for it, and I think that it might be useful to create some (with ideas below). The idea behind this is to have a word that represents “knowledge about one’s type”, but that could be of voluntarily created origin, or possibly quoilintary or mixed-voluntary. Here I specifically used the word “type” because I don’t think this experience (nor noema) is limited to just otherkin, and that it can apply to otherhearted or otherlinkers.
Just listing out a few of the ideas for a word to describe it that were discussed:
-Aspect could be used to be any sort of knowledge about one’s type, with whether it’s involuntary or voluntary being a modified. For example, “an involuntary/inherent aspect” would mean the same thing as a noema.
-Linkstory or linkcanon could be used for specifically voluntary knowledge.
-Insight could be used to mean any sort of knowledge about one’s type, with kinsight and linksight being the (in)voluntary versions.
*Although I have things that I’m considering could be memories, I still consider myself psychological in nature. Even if my draconity was caused by a previous life, I see my identity as the dragon I am in my current life, which might differ from a previous species or have been formed by aspects of this life.
@who-is-page and @frameacloud's panel at Othercon has gotten me thinking about writing essays about my own alterhuman experience... I was thinking maybe I should write something about why I write fiction, and how that relates to my own identity. But thinking about that made me realize that one of the reasons I write is because I identify as a fictional self-insert character that I created when I was a hatchling in make-believe games. Like, that's the way I view myself - not as a generic blue dragon, but as that specific character. Additionally, given that many of those games were based loosely in books I've read, it means that my identity is based in fiction as well. Though I don't identify as him, my name is even based on a fictional character's!
I've never really thought about calling myself fictionkin before now. When I joined the otherkin community initially, I had some bad reactions to talking about my identity in that way. And then some more bad reactions. My identity as a dragon is involuntary; I couldn't change it if I tried (and I have), and it isn't something I intentionally made into an identity. It's a bit of why I never really got why everyone insisted strongly on the distinction between otherkin and otherlinkers. Though I'm not opposed to the idea, I don't feel like my fictional identity was made by me channeling a past life either, which felt like it was the acceptable explanation for this back in 2016. Otherwise, creating a kintype wasn't "allowed."
For a while, I felt like I separated my identity into a dragon otherkin aspect, where I was just "a dragon", and had character me on the side as a fun thing - what I considered my "kinsona". But I think this is a false dichotomy. The two aren't really separable; who I am as a dragon was created through books and play. It wasn't really until @aestherians's posts in early 2021 - five years after I found the otherkin community - that I felt that the community had finally decided that the definitional line between kintype and linktype, voluntary and involuntary, didn't have to be such a strict line after all. (I'd been arguing that "involuntary identity" shouldn't be a part of the definition of otherkin for four years by that point, so yes, I'm still both smug and salty.)
So, though I didn't expect this to lead to me coining a new term when I started out writing out this post, I've decided to do it. I'm not sure if anyone except me is going to use it, but I think creating it as a concept gives it both a bit of legitimacy and permanence. I hope it will be of use to someone else, and if anyone else shares a similar experience, I welcome them to talk about it in more detail - at some point now, I think I definitely should describe mine.
Imagithrope - An alterhuman whose identity was created and/or formed, wholly or partially, through some form of imaginative play. This can include fantasy play, roleplay (tabletop, text, live action, etc), fanfiction, writing, art, and more.
as isolating as it is being an alterhuman in adulthood I like that I get to be one of those adults that is proof to people it’s not always a phase and it’s okay to be yourself
@who-is-page and @frameacloud's panel at Othercon has gotten me thinking about writing essays about my own alterhuman experience... I was thinking maybe I should write something about why I write fiction, and how that relates to my own identity. But thinking about that made me realize that one of the reasons I write is because I identify as a fictional self-insert character that I created when I was a hatchling in make-believe games. Like, that's the way I view myself - not as a generic blue dragon, but as that specific character. Additionally, given that many of those games were based loosely in books I've read, it means that my identity is based in fiction as well. Though I don't identify as him, my name is even based on a fictional character's!
I've never really thought about calling myself fictionkin before now. When I joined the otherkin community initially, I had some bad reactions to talking about my identity in that way. And then some more bad reactions. My identity as a dragon is involuntary; I couldn't change it if I tried (and I have), and it isn't something I intentionally made into an identity. It's a bit of why I never really got why everyone insisted strongly on the distinction between otherkin and otherlinkers. Though I'm not opposed to the idea, I don't feel like my fictional identity was made by me channeling a past life either, which felt like it was the acceptable explanation for this back in 2016. Otherwise, creating a kintype wasn't "allowed."
For a while, I felt like I separated my identity into a dragon otherkin aspect, where I was just "a dragon", and had character me on the side as a fun thing - what I considered my "kinsona". But I think this is a false dichotomy. The two aren't really separable; who I am as a dragon was created through books and play. It wasn't really until @aestherians's posts in early 2021 - five years after I found the otherkin community - that I felt that the community had finally decided that the definitional line between kintype and linktype, voluntary and involuntary, didn't have to be such a strict line after all. (I'd been arguing that "involuntary identity" shouldn't be a part of the definition of otherkin for four years by that point, so yes, I'm still both smug and salty.)
So, though I didn't expect this to lead to me coining a new term when I started out writing out this post, I've decided to do it. I'm not sure if anyone except me is going to use it, but I think creating it as a concept gives it both a bit of legitimacy and permanence. I hope it will be of use to someone else, and if anyone else shares a similar experience, I welcome them to talk about it in more detail - at some point now, I think I definitely should describe mine.
Imagithrope - An alterhuman whose identity was created and/or formed, wholly or partially, through some form of imaginative play. This can include fantasy play, roleplay (tabletop, text, live action, etc), fanfiction, writing, art, and more.
Hi hi, it's Vince from the previous ask again. I just also wanted to ask if it's fine for me to make a flag for the term ' created knowledge ' and the other terms like ' aspect ', if I have time that is.
Hi hi! For some context, I'm Vince (he/him), a Fictionflicker and Clicker (but definitely questioning). I'm a liomogai coiner too.
I've read your post about created knowledge (link directs you back to the post) and I just want to ask if there's a definition for created knowledge (which is ironic because the definition I presume is knowledge that's created) and if the terms in the post such as ' aspect ' are subterms of it.
Thank you! And please don't rush your response, take your time. ^_^
I don't think anything was ever settled on or that any of the terms discussed in that post ever came into common usage. If you're looking for an identity term, I coined imagithrope not that long after, and I think a few people use that still.
Therianthropy Day is on the first full moon of November each year. This year, it will be on Wednesday, November 5, 2025. According to NASA, this will happen to be a supermoon, which means it might be slightly brighter than usual.
Why that date, and what is the history of that holiday?
Therianthropy Day commemorates the first Howl, which was held 31 years ago in November 1994. A Howl is when therians meet up together in person. That was a year after the first therians started to meet up together online in November 1993. Therians first proposed commemorating it as a holiday on that date in 1996, in a conversation thread you can still see here. Based on that history, in 2016, Muninn the Raven proposed observing it as Therianthropy Day, though the first posts and community poll about it attracted little attention. I think the holiday finally really caught on in 2021, when I first saw many therians posting on social media about fun things they were doing for it.
What are therians, anyway?
If therianthropy is a new idea to you, or you want to explain it to others who are unfamiliar with it, this essay is a quick and easy introduction to it. It’s available in several languages, and the project welcomes more translations!
Learn more about our history by reading the Timeline of the Therian Community written by our community historian @liongoatsnake
What can we do for Therianthropy Day?
Therians have been celebrating it by wearing gear (for example, a necklace with the therian symbol, a tail, or clothes with pictures of their species), meeting up with their therian friends, and howling at the moon. (If you're meeting in person for the first time, stay safe!)
If you're not so open about your therianthropy, you can indulge in some quiet reflection by yourself with a guided meditation and self care.
Enjoy more than 40 games, zines, and other creations about therianthropy from this hand-curated itch.io collection.
Put on some jams that the Alterhuman Music blog tagged as therian, many composed by self-described therian musicians.
Cook a recipe inspired by what your species of animal side would eat. (Even if you're not a dragon, I recommend this presentation as an introduction to this practice because of the advice about how to adapt the sometimes strange foods that you may find species-affirming so that they'll be safe and delicious!)
Create something about your therianthropy! Draw a comic, write a zine, compose a song, design a game, craft some gear, use whatever creative medium you like. Everyone in our community takes part in creating it, it's all very much about DIY and self-expression.
Are there days for other sorts of alterhumans too?
There are. Alterhuman Day commemorates when Lio of the Crossroads System coined that word on September 26, 2014. Otherkin Day is on July 9, commemorating when the word was coined in 1990, though the word’s origin is a little more complicated than that. Plural Pride Day is the third Saturday of July, and Plural Acceptance Week is that week.
Goodreads has a list of dragon xenofiction books here: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/160587.Dragon_PoV_Xenofiction
Off that list, I'd personally strongly recommend the Age of Fire series (particularly the first three books - it did go a little off the rails in the last three) for dragon xenofiction; Dragon Champion in particular really hits that "not quite animal, but very nonhuman and animalistic person" vibe. Definitely CW for violence (including child death (both human and dragon) and the POV character eating humans), along with other things, but they're very good books.
Haven't read Raven Quest in over a decade, but I remember it as an awesome raven xenofiction (featuring wolves). The usual content warnings figure - animal death, eating dead animals, animals fighting violently. The only noteworthy scene that made me squeamish was one in which a raven dislocates his wing and they have to pull it until it pops back into the socket. Animals also get captured by humans at multiple points.
Mildly annoyed at the trend of people... Forgetting that many of the strong experiences one can feel about alterhumanity are historically very very common in otherkin and therianthrope? This is not... Beef toward anyone, in fact this popped up bc I checked in on a non anglophone alt-h server, but god. Like speed round. As a note this is gonna be more therian linguo heavy just bc I'm very tired, a therianthrope, and mostly was in therian spaces so it's what I default to but a lot of those are applicable to otherkin n fictionkin.
"can phantom shifts feel like physically shapeshifting"
-> yeah this was an experience talked about not uncommonly on forums. A lot of therianthropes expressed the feeling of "a pelt under your skin begging to breach out" or feeling limbs push out against their skin as the phantom shift took place. Sure a lot of people also feel very mild phantom shifts. Both exist. But this experience is in fact a phantom shift experience. We called ourselves "weres" for a reason. Seems more common in people who distinctly see themselves as werecreatures, but this is not abnormal for a phantom shift, although preferably you should do a doctor check if you feel pain (also an experience ppl talked about, but it's not usually thought of as "normal" just bc. Well that's kinda bad and may hide an injury or whatever so it's better to check mundane reasons first. But painful shifts seem to exist you should just be very very certain nothing else could be causing it).
"I can't turn off being an animal / I can't stop my instincts at inconvenient times / I don't feel suited for human society"
-> this one always surprises me when it's presented as bizarre for otherkin/therians. That was like... A baseline therian experience. Yeah no a lot of us can't either. Usually the difference is that this feeling is at an all time high when in situations where you are constantly pressured to "human" correctly, socialize and have no breaks to wild it out, which corresponds a lot to The Entire Duration Of School and is therefore a more common complaint amongst teenagers than adults. It gets a bit easier as an adult sometimes if you're lucky to have opportunities that let you manage your life around instincts and such, although sometimes, well, you gotta play by societies rules to survive n it stays hard. Also a commonly reported experience. You do learn! But some people are better at hiding instincts than other, some instincts are easier to hide than other, etc.
"I have shifts I cannot control under very intense emotions"
-> "Berserker shift" is a controversial term due to a variety of reasons that span the usual "that's too weird, don't talk about that", the fact you're still responsible for what you do while shifty, or just bc it sounds kinda... Edgy, from a first glance, but it IS a term from our history and a lot of people do report the experience of going fully animalistic if freaked out enough. Sometimes alongside extremely strong phantom shifts as described in the first point! I've heard of people who had complete verbal shutdown and could neither speak nor understand speech, could not walk on two legs, reacted with growling spitting and biting, just the whole thing. I think this experience is a bit harder to find mostly because it's... Very vulnerable, usually. It tends to require less than pleasant conditions, and tends to be very vilified, so not talked about much, but very much something that is recorded.
Transhumanism, species transition and body mods overall
-> I'm not gonna talk much about this one bc I've said a lot in other posts, but there's a reason trans species and therianthropy are super intertwined and it's... Because a lot of therianthropes did historically attempt to transition or at least modify their body and surroundings to their best capacities. The idea that therianthropes, as a rule, mostly do not attempt to modify their bodies seems to me very incorrect.
"I feel a strong, almost supernatural drive toward nature / I feel in my bones I am nonhuman / I believed I could physically shift during most of my life under the right conditions"
-> This one is going to be a bit hard for me. As a result of having psychosis, I have kind of a mental block over thinking too much about it in regards to myself. It's also I think A Major way ppl seem to be confirming physical nonhumanity, so like, you do you, I'm not Telling you anything about yourself. However I do want to note that these feelings aren't particularly rare amongst nonhumans overall. A reason why so many therianthropes got in toxic groups that promised being able to go back to one's true form was... Because a lot of us are deeply convinced in some way or another that if things align juuuuust right maybe just maybe we'll have our bodies again. It's not hard to. Understand why an entire community defined by being in the wrong body would have this trait. A lot of us felt a strong drive toward nature, a feeling of being displaced amongst humans, a lot of us attempted to physically shift.
"I wish I could have my species's offsprings / I feel dysphoria over my sexual functions / I have sexual drives that align with being weird fetishes in a human society"
-> this one is more getting erased due to puritanism I think but yeah no for a lot of nonhumans it. Does not stop magically under the belt. And it's not a problem unless any theriform animal is involved. Yes even if it's kinda nasty to think about. I will however note for the first point "no theriform animal is involved" kinda still goes, please do not adopt animals, especially exotic animals, under the impression that you can parent them as a theriform animal could? It CAN be possible to raise a theriform animal in a way that would satisfy parental instincts if you're trained for it, but we're not special. We got raised by humans, we don't magically understand our species better than people trained for it. Very imprinted animals commonly make poor parents.
"I remember my past life / I communicate with my animal self spiritually / other spiritual experiences"
-> this one is such a surprise to me to see so uncommon now. Spirituality used to be a cornerstone of otherkin and therian spaces and it's kinda wild to me to see it's so rare now. So yeah no that's very much a thing. I don't think I've seen someone soul search for their "true name" in ages, when that was everywhere on old spirituality inclined forums. I can't speak much on this bc I am not a spiritual therianthrope + point about psychosis made before but I've seen parallel lives, I've seen past lives, I've seen future lives, I've seen misplaced souls, I've seen having a chat with your theriotype as a representation of your soul... Awakening seemed to have a meaning of the... Spiritual event of your soul kinda ripping to reveal your inner self for a while, a singular event in which you start remembering. Was very common on an old french forum over here. Not sure if that was as common in English ones. A lot of people's nonhumanity was not as based on shifts and instincts as on uncovering that hidden self through spiritual means, memories, and such.
Weird Shit Happens Around Me ("I can't digest things a human should digest in accordance to my species, ppl have noted my nonhuman traits as if they could see my invisible limbs, animals react weird to me, etc")
-> noooooted in the past but I think these have always been subject to doubt to be fair. Like you can find records of stuff like that quite easily, but also its very hard to prove in any way, shape or form. So that's a reason it's not in the basics of nonhumanity. But yeah historically a lot of otherkin/therianthropes have claimed Weird Shit Happens. Not rly my case so can't speak on it.
And I think I've mentioned what I had in my brain but this is just to remind ppl like... The therianthrope who wears a mask for fun and is only mildly inconvenienced by their animality is not really a representation of the community historically. Weve always been pretty fucking intense and pretty fucking weird. Chances are, if you are experiencing a very weird thing, it's not particularly a disqualifier of therianthropy or otherkin historically. Not that people might not give you shit about it! Pretty much all the points here, while not uncommon reported experiences, ARE in fact also things I've seen ppl be antagonistic about in the community. Which to be clear is stupid. But yeah it doesn't mean you're wrong, it means they don't realize the extent of our experiences.
see i just want to be a part of a p-shifting group that does rituals in the woods at night to make ourselves physically transform and talks about awtok is after us and how the veil is going to fall and we'll all assume our true forms, but like, in a fun and healthy way that doesn't lead to a cult. i think that would complete me. is that too much to ask?
I’m gonna be honest, I saw your post about grilling on my dash and genuinely thought you were talking about like, food grilling and not a alterhumanity community term.
oh I'm a dragon I do that all the time
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