Red Hair of the Dog
20 February 2012 03:55 pmDate 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
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