A reflection on alternative identities

[eclective]

But then, I strongly feel that when it comes to it, Otherkin don't really have that much room to talk about fic'kin, and furries don't really have that much room to talk about Otherkin. When it comes down to it, it's all variations on "I see something of myself/something that clicks with me/something that feels right to me in X, and that helps me

Comments

[prophetic]

So here's me, having to google "otherkin" at the beginning of reading this . . . and then being like "Whoa, um, what?" . . . and then reading on to the "I am a dragon because-" part and suddenly understanding.

This thing you talk about here--

something trickier to grasp, in parts allegorical but also more significant, more central than a metaphor--makes so much sense, and I totally see how that kind of truth and identity would be at play in a person identifying closely as something--otherkin, fic'kin, anything really. That feeling of "I see myself

[eclective]

Oh, go right ahead, certainly. I'm quite touched that I could have explained this in a way that makes sense to someone who didn't understand the concept previously... I tend to assume I'm writing for an audience who's familiar with the culture when I write these sorts of things, and sort of forget that there are people on my friends list who've never encountered the concepts before. But you always seemed like someone who'd never be too bothered by the concepts involved. I'm glad to see my intuitions held true.

and some things are not literally true but, despite that, are still true, and are in fact often truer than the literal things.

Aye. As per Dream of the Sandman, "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten." That quote is one I've always liked because it resonates strongly with the above concept for me... and that concept's sort of one I live every day of my life, in some way or another.

Incidentally, was this anything

Woo, tangent.

[luinied]

[link]

Mrm, I wish they would not refer to the Big Bang as a myth. That rather flies in the face of the logos vs. mythos distinction (yes, I'm stealing someone else's words from another recent thread) that seems to be the intended goal.

Re: Woo, tangent.

[eclective]

I don't know that I would put it down to wilful depiction of the event as a myth in the face of scientific evidence, but either a lack of awareness that the theory had been canonised (I mean, I didn't know that), an admittance that even with advanced technology we cannot make absolute statements about the nature of the universe or how things came to be until we really know everything about how it works and how those pieces fit together (a theory I subcribe to - for example, I think evolution and such are extremely likely, but if a new theory came along that explained things even better I would probably change my mind), or a subjectivist reflection on the fact that all explanations of things are stories that we tell ourselves about the world and so everything is mythic in a sense.

[heron61]

That makes a great deal of sense and I know a number of people to whom it applies. My own situation is much more on the order of - I had a couple of non-human things show up in my head (one invited, one simply appearing, but not in any way unwanted) and exist in a sort of mid-continuum multiple sort of arrangement with me. OTOH, I also recognize that my own situation is fairly unique, and even for me there has always been something resonant in the way that you describe about reptiles and reptilian humanoids.

[frameacloud]

"... but something trickier to grasp, in parts allegorical but also more significant, more central than a metaphor: I am a dragon because when I look at the idea of dragon, something very core about it clicks with me and reminds me of me."

Yes. That is more how it is for me, and I suspect that is how it is for many otherkin, therians, fictionkin, and furries. It is difficult to talk about because that core feeling is not something so nameable, so defined of borders, as other possible explanations are, such as the behavioral and metaphysical ones you pointed out. Surprisingly enough, those can seem shallow and narrow, compared to the deeper sense of recognition. A person can list dragon-like traits of behavior all day long, and so that's what a lot of people go ahead and do, but how the Dragon archetype simply clicks with a person's sense of self is a nonverbal association that is hard to describe at all.

"Also, anyone notice that LJ seems to have brought back the Deleted Username Strikethrough, replacing the Boldface that followed

[luinied]

I thought a strike-through meant "deleted," and boldface meant "deleted and purged."

Nope. Previously it was all strike-through, then, at some point and without explanation, it went boldface and non-linked. Now it's back to strike-through, again without explanation. The first change happened around one of the later rounds of misguided mass-suspensions.

[eclective]

It is difficult to talk about because that core feeling is not something so nameable, so defined of borders, as other possible explanations are, such as the behavioral and metaphysical ones you pointed out. Surprisingly enough, those can seem shallow and narrow, compared to the deeper sense of recognition.

Yes, and yes. The deeper sense of recognition is by far the part that matters most to me; probably the only part that matters at all, ultimately. Yet it's the trickiest to pin down in words or to get others to understand, which is I think why it's talked about less. Yet without that heart of the experience, what makes it the experience it is is gone; and so communities find it hard to feel connected or get much meaningful out of discussing it, only dancing around the superficial topics, and outsiders find it difficult to understand why this could possibly be relevant to anyone.

[sethrenn]

Probably the best term we've heard for how all these types of subjective experiences work-- otherkin, fictivity, bla bla etc-- is "unverifiable personal gnosis." We used to say "subjective experience" a lot, specifically with regards to multiplicity, and that's probably more understandable to the general public, but a lot of us really liked the "unverifiable personal gnosis" term. Regardless of what you ever might be able to prove or want to prove, or if you even care, about the literality of it, it's the personal emotional/spiritual/mythic/etc framework that makes sense of *your* life for you and helps you to live it better. You can't prove it anywhere that it can be measured or physically quantified, but on some level, because it makes sense of you and your life and the world, "I am a dragon" is a true statement. (Or "I am (insert whatever)"-- fill in the blank with whatever serves as a given person's UPG

[luna_manar]

Don't know how welcome my opinion is, but

[seika]

I guess the world in general doesn't value anything that you can't sell, fuck or shoot with. So it makes sense, from that standpoint, that people need for the things that are important to them to be "real".

I think the problem is the conflation of "real" with "concrete, physical, present in some way that defies the laws of physics, etc". There is a subtle difference between people who think things are "real" in that those things have reality to and impact on them, and people who say "this is real" and mean that they are e.g. physically going to turn into a dragon or lived as one physically in a past life or something. However, most people in our society don't want to value that the former can be real for that person without that person's believing that that thing is concrete, physical, tangible. (Unless it's something that's socially acceptable to be non-concrete or abstract, like Jesus or justice.)

[eclective]

I think if people are making your friendship conditional on the fact that you don't believe in the literal supernatural reality of such things, that's a little unfair. I suppose it's not that different from friends who won't accept you if you don't share their religion, though.

As far as I'm concerned, this:

I understand that, and even if you told me that this past life that you supposedly had was a made-up story, I would not treat it as if it were any less important than a "real" past life, as long as you let me know that it was that meaningful to you.is the absolute most I feel I can expect from anyone: that they treat what's meaningful to me as meaningful to me, and accept that the impact it has on me is real. That does not absolve me of responsibility for my actions nor demand a supernatural explanation