Unusual Types of Otherkin | Miscellaneous | Forums

I edited your post to fix the link.  HTML only works if you click on the HTML button and bring up the HTML view.

technobushi said:

You must also consider how many people claiming to be the more popular types of otherkin are either faking it, bullshitting, or deluding themselves.  The numbers may end up being smaller than they look, but fuck if I’m qualified to tell which is which (though, that said, it’s fairly easy to pick out the ones that seem content to live in their fantasyworlds.

That’s the thing, though… some of the types which should be popular aren’t, even among the fakers.  Take centaurs, I’ve seen tons of people who wish they were centaurs online.  I’ve seen zero people claiming to be centaur otherkin, even after media events which should have popularized them further such as the Narnia movie or some of the Harry Potter movies or the Percy Jackson movie or even things like Hercules and Xena.  I’ve seen tons of people claiming to be kitsune and oni otherkin, but I could probably count on one hand the inugami or the bakaneko, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a tanuki otherkin.  Something just seems odd about that.

Do gryphons count?  I suspect they’d be much like satyrs.  Most of the alleged “gryphonkin” I’ve seen online either frequent therianthropy boards more, or are odd combinations of creatures (a goose and a saluki being one of the more unusual combinations) not even remotely documented in mythologies containing gryphons.  Then you must also consider whether or not gryphons are really composite beings, or simply SEEN and described as such by humans, who had no other point of reference.  A real-life example of this was the seahorse.  Earlier peoples didn’t see it as a fish, but more a combination of a horse and a serpent, or a dragon.

Apart from the obvious handful we both know, the only gryphons I’ve really come across were the Gryphon Guild, and that seemed to be more for enthusiasts than gryphon kin necessarily.  Maybe they do hang out more on the therianthropy boards.  Any centaurs or satyrs over there?  

Also, there are the Vanara, a race of monkey-like humans or sentient monkeys with exceptional strength and cunning.  In the East, monkeys were the “berserkers”, as they possessed strength beyond their weight and size (for example, a full grown female Rhesus macaque can kill a large dog and hospitalize a full-grown human male).  Even the vanara are said to live with, or have been birthed from, bears (though there is no proven east/west connection, it is an interesting correlary nonetheless).  Although I do not consider myself blood-related to the vanara, at one point in my past, from what I can vaguely recall, I was raised from birth by vanaras, and became physiologically and behaviorally imprinted to them (developing enhanced canines, a long tail, and bear-like claws).

Now that is an unusual type of otherkin.  I doubt most people in the community would even be familiar with the mythology that comes from.

As for goblins…well, goblins aren’t glamorous and pretty enough.  Duh.

Well, I have run into one.  Just one.  But if that were the reason, I’d think we’d be getting fewer Oni overall… they’re not exactly pretty either, are they?

Oh, also, if movies were all it took to create popular otherkin types, shouldn’t we have seen some hobbits by now?

The Doctor said:

Perhaps contact with the community of Others in other countries would provide some useful information insofar as your question is concerned. It would seem reasonable for the number of tanuki Others (for example) to be so low as to be non-existent in North America, but perhaps not so much in Japan.

I'd find it more reasonable if North America didn't seem to have so many kitsune Others.  Why are they here, but not other representatives of their mythological system (for lack of a better term)?

 

Do you refer to the rumors of closer-to-human-than-lemur lemur Others originating from Vietnam and Singapore?

I'm not actually familiar with those rumors.

Bah.  I want my real text editor.

If you go to your profile, you can select between several different editors (and the selection options are now visible finally).  One of them's plaintext even.

The Doctor said:

How many are there? I know know of one (system).

Well, let's see… Otherkin.net's directory lists 24 kitsune, 20 of which are based in North America (the other four being based in Germany, the UK, the Ukraine, and 1 unspecified).  I also know of two others (one in New York and one in California) who claim to be kitsune who aren't on that list.  I'm betting Mitsukami know of more.  There's also a yahoo group that calls itself “A mailing list for kitsune, and kitsune lovers, and discussions of kitsune.” with 106 members, though like many otherkin groups on yahoo it seems to have been overrun by spam.  It looks like it moved to a forum, but either the forum is defunct or it's having server problems at the moment.  

The number could also climb much higher if you count fox therians as kitsune, depends on what you consider the line between the two.  So, maybe not a ton in proportion to the rest of the community, but definitely a lot compared to the zero tanuki otherkin in North America.  

I found it – thank you!

You're welcome!

Arethinn said:

Two kitsune came to MythiCalia in 2007, named Alynna and Samui. (Amusingly enough, I seem to recall sighting foxes creeping around the campsite that time, which hasn't occurred other times that I remember; mostly raccoons, which are extremely common.)

Alynna is the California one I knew of.  Sie's also the one that ran the yahoogroup I mentioned, and the kitsuhana forum… which appears not to be defunct after all, looks like it was just having server problems.  That forum lists 165 members currently.

The number could also climb much higher if you count fox therians as kitsune, depends on what you consider the line between the two.

Personally I wouldn't, but then I'm not on the inside of such a debate.

Well, as far as I know the word kitsune in japanese just means fox-spirit, and it's hard to argue that a fox therian fits that definition.  From what I know of the folklore, even the multi-tailed magical kitsune started out as regular foxes and grew additional tails after having lived for a certain period of time (generally 100 years).  Of course, I am not an expert on this subject, and I'm quite sure that the twins will correct me if I've gotten any of this wrong.