houseofchimeras: (Lunatani - Self)
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
houseofchimeras: (Default)
Date First Written: February 2012

This essay is meant to be a walk-through ways to perfect your visualization skills of animal forms if you feel you are having trouble. Not everyone visualizes the same way (or in the case of people with dæmons - projects) the same way is at all, but this is meant to be helpful for people who would like to project a little easier or in more detail. It starts with very basic shapes and ideas and moves on up into more and more complex shapes. May it be somewhat helpful in projecting your dæmon better. 

First, start off with the bare-bones basics - basic shapes. They are much easier to visualize then the complex framework of even the simplest of animals. First start off by visualizing a basic geometrical shape like a triangle or a square. Begin with your eyes closed and image one in front of you. Some people finding visualizing to the blank insides of their eyelids easier at first than trying to see onto things as complex as the world around us, so try these first few experiences with just your eyed closed. If you have trouble seeing the shape in your mind as clearly as you would like - look at a picture of a basic shape for several seconds and then immanently close your eyes and try to visualize one afterward.  Try extending the time between looking at the reference and then trying to visualize it.

Next, try making the shape of your choice bigger like its coming closer to you and then make it smaller likes its moving away from you. If this is difficult don’t worry. Practice makes perfect. Again, if you’re having trouble with this, find or draw an image of a shape on a piece a paper and look at it for some time; moving your head closer and farther away to give the effect, and then close your eyes again and try again. Try and remember what you just saw. Then try and do this without a reference on hand.

After you are comfortable with this shape try moving it around rather than just backwards and forwards. Move it side to side, and then have it move left or right while moving towards or away from you. Try rotating and spinning this two- dimensional shape around and around, and other more complex motions. The more you practice, the more likely it will become second nature to you and from that the easier things can become down the road, so don’t be afraid to dwell on certain levels of complexity until it comes much more second nature to you.

Once this becomes easy, try a three-dimensional version of a shape - a pyramid rather than a triangle, a box rather than a square, etc. Again, still with your eyes closed, have it move forward and backward and then side to side and then all around and spin it. If you have trouble look up an image of the three-dimensional shape or even a video of the shape moving around if you can. Again try and really test yourself with this basic shape and see how well you can see it moving around all around you.

Next, its now time to try all these with your eyes open. Try visualizing these shapes against both stationary backgrounds and active backgrounds. Stationary backgrounds and when you yourself are stationary is often the easiest, while on the other hand moving and active backgrounds while you yourself are in motion are often the hardest. If an active background is too difficult, try a simpler and calmer background and then work yourself up to more active ones. First try and just see first a two-dimensional then a three-dimensional shape around you while you are sitting and what is around you is unmoving. Next try, seeing these shapes on a moving background such as while in a car visualize them zooming by outside or along the car. Finally move on to you moving and the shapes moving with you. 

Now, lets move on to actual animal bodies.

First, find a picture of an animal you are comfortable with - one you know well already like a dog or cat, and/or one you and your daemon seems naturally like for a good start. Look at the image for moment, memorizing the details and take special note of the joints. Close your eyes and replicate the still image in as good of detail as you can. Feel free to go over this exercise with the same image or multiple images of the same animal until you are comfortable with how it looks. Next see these images with your eyes open.

Next, find an image of the animal you have been working with that is in full and showing all of its body (if you haven’t already been using one) and try imagining that same body in the same pose in front of you - cutting out the background around the animal in the image you are using. Don’t try and move anything, simply try and see the image in as best you can in front of you.

If it is important to you  (for some people it isn’t) - try and make the size of the visualized animal in front of you about the same as the animal in real life, even if that means looking up the physical animal’s size and using a tap measure (I’ve had to do it!). Practice your skills now with other little details of realism you care to try your hand at - projected shadows to boot, lighting and shading, etc while the visualized image is not moving.
      
Next, try and find a video clip of the animal you’ve been using/taking. (If you cannot find a video of your exact animal or can’t find one which will work for you try and pick the next closest animal form you can find). Study the animal’s movements in the clip. Watch the joints and gate of the animal. Next project that in front of you replicating the same movements. Find more videos until you are comfortable and think you have the basic anatomy of the animal down.

Now try  free style, but never feel afraid to look up video or image references like crazy t help you see better.

Projecting the shape of an animal in motion is most difficult while moving and while one is having to focus anything else but just only projecting one’s dæmon. To make this easier, its best to try and become comfortable with visualizing outside of these more taxing situations. Become comfortable with projecting while not trying to think of multiple things at once or doing other daily tasks which require a lot of attention (like driving, working, etc). projecting during more mentally taxing times of the day tends to become a bit easier when you don’t have to really think as hard about seeing your dæmon.
  
Finally, if you come upon a form which doesn’t seem to flow right while projecting, try going through the second half of these experiences as you see fit to help make the projection feel more natural and be easier to you. Sometimes the mind just doesn’t seem to work right for projecting and needs a refresher on what a form looks like.   

For advice on visualizing and “seeing” things more clearly we also recommend these webpages - 5 Weeks to Developing The Magic of Visualisation and Visualize: How to improve your visualization skills among other websites which give tips for toward clearer visualization because - while a number of really helpful visualization techniques which might be helpful to daemians are actually meant for people of the occult, New Age, or neopagan side of life - using the steps to help improve and refine projection can be easily done for anyone interested.

Best of luck!

- Lunatani
houseofchimeras: (Lunatani - Self)
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

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