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

[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 in the wake of LJ's mass questionable-journals-deleting spree?"

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

[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.