The Chimeras' Log

Date First Written: February 2012; Last Updated: October 2012

Adlet. Kind of a weird word that is suppose to mean of a quiet literal half man and half dog creature from Inuit folklore. Upper body of a man, lower body of a dog. Adlet being a creature of Inuit folklore and so never possibly ever existing in anyway not to mention they are humanoid to boot, one would think I would feel most at home with the otherkin community of all the various kintypes and topics. Yet… I’ve always enjoyed the therian community more than the otherkin community though and felt more closely related to their experiences. I agree with more of the focus of interest of in the therian community more than the otherkin community, since every community has a culture unique to them and the therian and otherkin community still have a slightly twinge of differing community set-ups. Mostly because I don’t think of myself as being mythical as my experiences are so… dog-like really. 

I don’t identify with the stereotypes associated with being otherkin of a non-therianthropic sort. How my identity presents is actually more like the stereotypes for therians thru and thru really. I’m very animalistic with how my identity ticks and runs. While, I believe I am nonhuman because of something to do with my soul but I don’t actively believe or think about in astral planes or dimensions, and I have no past life memories to talk about. I also can’t talk about the folklore around what I label myself to be because there is so little about them and they don‘t really interest me much. The folklore of the adlet is one thing, but that is not ‘me.’ I am not a story or a past experience, I am canine like creature with a human body. I’ve seen how sometimes dragon and gryphon people can get away with calling themselves therian specifically rather than just general being otherkin due how their identity presents and/or feel more comfortable and familiar around therian communities than general otherkin ones. I am similar to that really, though it pains me sometimes that I can’t be afforded the same consideration. They see my humanoid looking form and scoff at the idea of me ever experiencing anything to the due they do. Sometimes I do think I would call myself an adlet therian if I could get away with it, but in the measure all of us in our system are more ‘therianthropic’ then some therians like to stereotype the rest of otherkin to be. 

I think if I hadn’t been born as part of a multiple system, I might have very easily mistaken myself some kind of a sled dog or maybe a feral dog therian. A lot of my experiences and habits are very dog-like. Without our innerworld, I wouldn’t have known so much about my nonhumanness near as well from the start. I would have had to work much more on my experiences and feelings to find out what I am, rather than going on my innerworld body plus my experiences and go forward and try and find a name for what I am. Even then, it wasn’t easy since our innerworld has a lot of flexibility in what we can do and what we look like until we decide the exacts at which point things settle down.

I identify with sled dogs as I am basically a feral sled dog with a more humanoid upper body. An adlet looks human-ish from the top up and so they do a few things human-like buts its not without the dog-ish looks on top of dog-like things right in there. Some kind of sled dog might not be my theriotype to me, but I identify with sled dogs through my kintype. That body type, mannerisms and behaviors, fur coat, and natural breed origins - sings for me I guess you could say. Not as I am one of them but like they are cousins to me. I identify with their vaguely lupine features, but not with the wholly wildness of actual wolves. Actual wild canines seem too serious and fully wild while I feel more puppy-like, laidback, and sort of domesticated. Something in-between the needs and desires for nature and the comfortableness with some urbanization of mankind.

Unlike a number of others in our system, my natural nonhuman mentality doesn’t loose complete critical and complex thinking when I slip away from the influence of our human body and brain. The thought process are really different though. A lot of more abstract ideas like math or numbers beyond counting with just a quick look, language beyond the most basic phrases, ideas of worrying about the far past or far future, and such go out the window but I don’t loose total loss of some higher thinking like self-awareness, critical thinking skills like cause and effect, and such. I guess, even if I wasn’t otherkin that wouldn’t be to surprising since studies show different species of nonhuman animals have different forms of thinking. I actually want to speak in growls, whines, hisses, and clicking-like yips along with using body language heavily. In our innerworld, even though my mouth is human-like I can’t speak a human tongue even there - only make the sounds and body language you might hear from a canine. My head and chest might be humanoid, but internally its like my vocal cords are still canine. Both in our innerworld and by my instincts I use or want to use sounds not words. Sounds that are mostly dog-like, and what human-ish words I could get out would unusually sound more along the tones of those dogs you see in videos that can ’speak’ - only one or two gruffs or howls that sound like a word or phrase. An reflex to use my body to communicate but in ‘standard’ ways. I do use hands for communications but not in the same way - like when I point rather than using a finger I use more like my whole arm or my head. Head stilts and posturing most people around me don’t get the message, and they don’t get why I reactively make so many ’strange’ sounds. In our system, I’m as dependant on our mental link to get worded meaning across to others in our system as anyone else.

I think the only big thing I don’t get that I know Mist Weaver, Earth Listener, Spiridon, and Pantairin get is the mental weirdness over walking upright rather than on all four. Talking about the whole range of the human foot is something I do have mental weirdness but only Pantairin and Spiridon seems to share this kind of discomfort with me. Unlike them my kin can naturally walk upright however my anatomy is still like a dog’s. Sometimes I think it throws me off more while controlling our human body because its so similar in that one way with still one big difference. With them going from there awareness of their innerworld body to our human one the difference is so over welling they’ve learned to reorient themselves after. For me, it sneaks up on me and catch myself trying to walk digitigrade or tumbling over our own feet because they stick out so much more from what I’m used to.

My phantom limbs focus on my most nonhuman traits. Whenever I front I get the felling of my large pointed ears on my head and from my waist down the feeling of the rest of me with a lot of focus on my tail and legs from the calf down to my toes. I also get feelings of  pawpads with thick dull claws on my hand, my canine teeth in my otherwise human mouth, and wisps of fur along my elbows and down my back, but they’re not that common. Maybe just every once in a while. No matter what is the phantom they are always very vivid whereas others’ phantom experiences may or may not be as strong.  My tail wags all the time and ears twitch with every thought - the phantom going along with what I‘m doing inworld. A weird mix of traits that are ’humanoid’ and ’dog’ naturally all in one.

I’m at home away from urban living. In folklore, adlet were spoken of from the tribes found in the northern part of North America but I actually don’t like the cold that much. Course, not all of the Northern lands is nothing but ice and snow so much out of the year. I love snow and romping in it but I don’t like the cold or being cold, maybe because our human body does have fur like I‘m used too. I still prefer cool to the hot summer though. I don’t do well in summer heat. I like forests and plains. The sounds of heavy urbanization drains me down and it takes natural places to recharge me back up. 

I have a hunting instinct of sorts but its not as developed as how it is for Zedjeb, Earth Listener, and everyone else. Kind of like how a domestic dog sometimes chases and hunts; a lot of my instincts focus first on the chase but not as much for the final kill as strongly as others. Movement and animals talking off running can trigger me into wanting to chase but my instinct for the final takedown isn’t as fully formed where as Zeoriel and a lot of the others in our system have the full instinct to down the prey and eating of the kill. Smaller animals when they start moving is what really catches my eye, while larger and standing still not as much. 

I love running. The faster the better. Its sad that the human body can’t run as fast as I could. It tires to easily too. Its actually saddening and even a little weird because it does so fast. I want to go but I can’t. Everyone in our system often tease me about how much like to do on “walks.” I do really. I love strolls or going to the park or other more natural areas. Its so stereotypical for a dog, but I love it nonetheless.

So being an adlet but with a human body is a bit strange. I act like a dog and generally look like a dog though one that has been made to look kind of humanoid up top. In my dreams and my shifts it really shows. I think of wandering about shorelines with a pack trying to hunt down something to eat. The idea of snow, something not so nice to hunt in I’m sure, but still exciting to see none the less. Like some kind of dog born semi-feral but know lives domestically. You get to enjoy things you likely would not have enjoyed at all if you had been your theriotype. I can enjoy the idea of hunting and romping around now. In some ways maybe growing up human but identify as adlet has ‘tamed’ me for sure in that respect in how I treat my canine tendencies and behaviors. Softened me up a bit in how I react to the world.  

So I don’t consider myself that much different from dog therians. I’m not one, I’m still an adlet; but I can identify with what dog therians say and experience. I identify with them more than any kind of grouping of otherkin I can really think of or have seen. So humanoid I might be but not human-like in how I want to think or act. I might have a humanoid body from the waist-up but I still have dog legs from the waist down. I’m still not human but I’m also not a dog, but I feel and want to behave more like a canine then I ever have a human. So I side with dog therians a tad more. 

- Lunatani

Date First Written: January 2012

Being humanoid in form doesn’t make someone anymore ‘human’ than other otherkin. Visual similarities aside there is often, for some kintypes, little resemblance otherwise between ‘human’ and a creature that is ‘humanoid but still nonhuman’ once you think about it. An angel might stereotypically look like just a human with wings, but that doesn’t make them so nor is a faun just like a human because they happen to look human from the waist-up more or less. The same is true for elves, mermaids, fae, and other possible kintypes that look human-like either just a little bit or lot more. They are still not human, and the otherkin who identity as any of them are not any less of an otherkin for it. Similar doesn’t make same as.

Even otherkin that are rather humanoid can have their own experiences with phantom limbs that don‘t fit a human template, natural instincts and longings not ‘normal’ for humans, mental dissonance from human behavior or society, a desire for nature in some form or another, and basically everything else more bestial otherkin and therians can and do experience. That feeling/sense of not being human, of not being in the right body, the sense of being ‘other,’ experiences ‘normal’ humans don’t seem to have - is still there. Just because someone’s kintype is more humanoid doesn’t automatically mean their otherkinness is necessarily any easier than someone whose kintype is not as humanoid in the least.
 
These more humanoid in kintype otherkin are often seemingly seen as more ‘human-like’ not only in appearance but also behavior then other otherkin sometimes. But a person can’t look at a person’s kintype and assume how their nonhuman identity effects them personally let alone what experiences such an identity does to them. Just because a person’s kintype looks humanoid doesn’t mean their kintype acts human or have instincts or mindsets not exactly or at all like something human. Some otherkin like mermaids, harpies, or fauns might even have experiences one might except from the animals their kintype has apparent traits of (phantom limbs, desires and longs for the outdoors, certain instincts and drives, and so on); while otherkin like dryads might experience things unlike any terrestrial animal (including humans). For other otherkin the difference has a lot more to do with the world around them then their physical body. A stereotype of this might be the elves, who pick-up on cultural and society differences more, or at that’s what I’ve seen from my perceptive. Then again, some humanoid otherkin might not. Some otherkin might not deal with or experience anything as dramatically or strikingly as others might, but even people of the same kintype can have very different experiences.

I’ve personally seen various forms of humanoid otherkin criticism or magnetization from other otherkin and also from a number of therians as well. It comes in shades from just not thinking they have as much to contribute or can’t understand the problems ‘less human’ otherkin face to outright criticism that they are of varying degrees of posers or people wrapped up in fantasies.

I’m not human. My body might be fairly humanoid from the waist up but the similarities end there. The lower half of me is most definitely not human. Humans don’t have sharp teeth, big animal-like pointed ears, and certainly not a furry tail or legs like a dog. That certainly isn’t human at all. That is just my nonhuman appearance, not to mention my nonhuman experiences. The siren’s call away from human society and into any place more fitting for the word ’wilderness’ telling in me. Some of my behavioral quirks are to want to whine, growl, hiss, snarl, yip, and all sorts of other noises that want to slip out if would let them. When fronting, I almost always get phantom legs over our physical human ones, plus my phantom ears and little tail are hard to miss. I also get my own brand of a kind of mental shift but they seem to be a bit different from how most therians seem experience them. They have a similar in animistic instinctive drive and reaction but I don’t loose the complex thinking of something more human-like even when they are very intense.

In the end, the biggest and most important similarity and connection a humanoid otherkin and a bestial otherkin have in common is that neither of them identity as being human or look at the world like a human does necessarily. Kintype appearances run all over the place and experiences even with the ’same kintype’ can have huge differences. That is why otherkin have come together in one for or another over the past few decades - to share experiences and stories, talk about the amusing things in life, share coping mechanisms, and then some. We identity as nonhuman and that is some commonality that can be certainly talked about.

- Lunatani