It hurts to see so much hate on Tumblr..
People are different. Some have a spiritual connection with animals, some are in the LGBTQ community, some are hermits, etc etc etc.
There’s no need for hate. I personally am a pansexual, female agnostic theist that identifies as a wolf therian. I’m different, and that’s okay. I’m not hurting anyone. I don’t lash out at someone for not believing what I believe. Why should you?
The world would be a much better place if people weren’t so hateful. Also, if you’re going to argue with someone and try to tell them what they believe, AT LEAST do your homework. Bitching about something that you know little to nothing about or are misinformed about makes you look like an even bigger idiot.
Ideas for prosthetics
I have a costume tail, like a lot of furries do (I don’t like the idea of having a real tail tied around my waist, to me it’d be like a human with only one arm strapping another human’s arm onto where theirs should be it’s just creepy), and ears, but a limp faux tail just isn’t anywhere near the same as the real thing. So I am to try and make therian prosthetics, since any form of surgery’s a long long way off still.
I’m working on the design for a fur mantle type thing that works like a hood, covers the shoulders, and runs a ways down the back.
I’m also researching and playing around with designs for stilts for me arms. I’ve tried using the parkour method of moving on all fours, but I’m very long legged, so it’s just too difficult a movement to keep up for long, and it feels unnatural. So stilts for my arms would help me move around on all fours more easily.
My mate is using some of the skills he learned in high school robotics to think up how to make a tail that attaches to, and works as an extension of one’s spine. Following the curve of it, with some kind of gyros or wires to continue the movement where the human tailbone ends.
These are all ideas and in the research, or design/drafting phase, but I feel like even just working on these projects makes me hopeful that I can make my body look and feel more right and more more naturally. If I’m lucky, a day will come when I can glean some of the brain wave technology and implement them into my prosthetics so I’ll be able to more accurately move my tail by being in various mental states instead of just physical movements. And it’d be amazing if I could fix a mechanism into my hood/cowl that allowed me to raise the fur their like raised hackles.
Oh, how I love the ideas part of inventing these things. The shelling out money for materials bit, not so much though. :P
Information post: Otherkin and therians Terms deffinitions and community.
Otherkin are people who in one way or another feel nonhuman. This can be a spiritual belief, typically involving reincarnation and the possibility that we were something not human in a past life. This life left a strong enough impression on the spirit/soul that those feelings/memories followed us into this human life.
others think it may be psychological, possibly based in some kind of traumatic event or just odd development.
Despite identifying with something nonhuman we are fully aware that we are currently/physically human and must live human lives and abide by the laws of human society.
So, in conclusion, otherkin is a personal belief about ones self that may either be spiritual or psychological.
Links and resources:
http://main.otherkinalliance.org/articles/general-otherkin/ <—-List of articles about the topic of otherkin in general, what we are, why ect.
http://main.otherkinalliance.org/faq/about-otherkin/ <—- Otherkin FAQ
http://dreamhart.org/category/newbie-info/ <—- Newbie info. Contains another FAQ, the working deffinition of otherkin, what an awakening is ect
http://dreamhart.org/category/otherkin/otherkin-community/ <—- List of articles dealing with the community itself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therianthropy <—- Wiki entry on Therianthropy and and its various different applications in different cultures.
* http://www.wulfhowl.com/therianthrope-definition/ <—- What is Therianthropy? Current deffinition being used by the Therian community From WulfHowl.
* http://www.wulfhowl.com/terms-definitions/ <—- Terms and deffinitions used in both the otherkin and therian communities including the different types of shifts.
*For some reason the above two likes ( terms and deffinitions and What is Therianthropy? Are not working no matter how I try to fix them. However if you copy and paste the URL into your browser it will take you to the correct article)
http://www.wulfhowl.com/category/comm/ <—- Articles about the community in general.
That should be enough for now. If anyone has a specific question that is not answered in one of the links provided please feel free to message me. Anon is also on if you wish to ask without revealing who you are.
Tumblr.jpg
BDSM Triskelion and Otherkin Star Logo WIP by Mokusei_Kaze, 2008.
Northern VA Otherkin Meetup Accomplished!
Well, two of the folks who were supposed to show ended up not making it, but we had a last-minute addition that more than made up for their absence, and totally made being on tumblr worthwhile. I’m not going to single her out unless she wants to identify herself, but you know who you are and you’re awesome. :)
So this came up on my dash yesterday. This little baby is know as Argentavis magnificens (wikipage when you click the picture ). It’s the largest bird to ever take flight.
It’s suppose to have had a weight of 70-78kg and a wingspan of roughly 7m.
This is the size of wings you need to lift a human being off the ground.
I want all people who were whining about species reassignment surgery a little while back to take a good hard look at that. This is the wingsize we’re talking about. This is what you’d carry around. This is why it’s not going to happen, period.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3001309/biohackers-and-diy-cyborgs-clone-silicon-valley-innovation
Biohackers And DIY Cyborgs Clone Silicon Valley Innovation
A new breed of hobbyists, scientists, and entrepreneurs are working on echolocation implants, brain-controlled software programs, and even cybernetic rats. Their experiments will change the future of tech.
In basements, garages, startup spaces, and university laboratories, DIY researchers, scientists, programmers, and neurologists are collaborating on brain interfaces that can control video games with human thoughts. They’re growing flesh that’s augmented with transistors and implanting Bluetooth sensors under their own living skin to send vital signs to mobile phones. They’re growing in vitro edible “steaks” and leather without using living beings. They’re even helping severely disabled individuals “speak” using only their brainwaves. And most of them still consider this a hobby.
The grinders (DIY cybernetics enthusiasts) and their comrades in arms—biohackers working on improving human source code, quantified self enthusiasts who arm themselves with constant bodily data feeds, and independent DIY biotechnology enthusiasts—are moonlighting for now in basements, shared spaces, and makeshift labs. But they’re ultimately aiming to change the world. Think of how bionic legs like those belonging to Oscar Pistoriusand cochlear implants that let the deaf hear have changed everyday life for so many people. Then multiply that by a million. A million people. And millions of dollars.
Not only has the new wave of do-it-yourself (DIY) cybernetics moved well beyond science fiction, it’s going to cause a business boom in the not-too-distant future.
West Coast biohackers and grinders were the pioneers of this tech-driven, California brand of utopianism. They’ve taken a big-tent approach to their goal of hacking humanity: Paleo diets and meditation are just as likely to figure into things as cybernetic finger implants or controlling computer apps with brainwaves. For biohackers everywhere, augmentation of humanity itself—whether through technology or more traditional methods—is the primary goal. Common conversation points include DIY cyborgs, the quantified self, and diet- and meditation-based improvement movements like Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof Executive or crowdsourced health projects like CureTogether.
But a growing community on the East Coast—in greater New York, Boston, and Pittsburgh—is synthesizing Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial DNA for its unique innovation model. Experimentation and science here is not only an exercise in advancing humanity through tech but is often is applied toward creating viable cybernetic products for the market.
In New York City, biohackers are united by the extremely active Biohackers NYC Meetup group and several startups, incubators, and workspaces scattered across the outer boroughs.
When the Biohackers NYC group was founded in early 2012, “It was because most biohacker movements started on West Coast, and the East Coast was lagging behind. I lamented the lack of this on the East Coast,” group founder and psychiatrist Lydia Fazzio tells Fast Company. “Our intent was to cover the spectrum of biohacking from manipulating non-human genomes to also the body and the mind. It’s a holistic approach to the meaning of biohacking, whether technology or nutrition. However you get there, we all have the innate potential to be an optimal functioning human in society. Our question is: How do we get there?”
In Brooklyn, a small “community biolab” called Genspace is home to approximately a dozen DIY biology experimenters whose work often involves the fusion of the living and the electronic. Classes are offered to the public in synthetic biology, which engineers living organisms as if they were biological machines.
A workshop recently held at Genspace, Crude Control, showed how in-vitro meat and leather could be created via tissue engineering, and it explored the possibility of creating semi-living “products” from them. Although the Genspace workshop was for educational purposes, similar technologies are already being monetized elsewhere—Peter Thiel recently sank six figures into a startup that will make 3-D printed in vitro meat commercially available.
The teacher at the Crude Control workshop, Oron Catts, walked participants through “basic tissue culture and tissue engineering protocols, including developing some DIY tools and isolating cells from a bone we got from a local butcher.” Some of Catts’ previous projects include bioengineering a steak from pre-natal sheep cells (in his words, “steak grown from an animal that was not yet born”) and victimless leather grown from cell lines.Just a few hours up I-95 at Harvard University, researchers have created the world’s first “cyborg flesh.” The university’s Lieber Research Group, led by Charles Lieber, has successfully created rat flesh that is seamlessly melded with a network of wires and transistors that monitor the individual behavior of each cell.
Lieber’s groundbreaking research integrated electrically active scaffolds into rat cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells. Incredibly small wires and transistors were embedded in scaffolding made with collagen and wires; using the cybernetic tissue, researchers could keep track of the minute behavior of cells during drug reactions. Harvard’s experiment is far more than just the weird science of creating cybernetic rats, though. In the future, projects built on this technology could be used to do away with animal or human testing for drugs, and to create cybernetic implants to repair damaged hearts.Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, Grindhouse Wetwares is an Internet-based collective of programmers, engineers, and scientists dedicated to “augmenting humanity using safe, affordable, open-source technology.” Many of Grindhouse’s members are currently based in Pittsburgh, which has become an impromptu nexus for DIY cybernetics enthusiasts. The organization’s current project is a literal —a cap with attached electrodes that stimulates the brain with electricity. Users are zapped with direct current via the electrodes, which allegedly engage certain brain states depending on placement.
Grindhouse has a business model that recalls that of early Silicon Valley companies like the original Apple of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. The collective intentionally makes project plans available via Creative Commons licenses; customers can either pay Grindhouse to build their devices or they can make it at home for free.
Other projects from Grindhouse take the merger of human and machine even further. TheBottlenose is a device which transforms sonar, UV, Wi-Fi, or thermal information into a magnetic field that the user can then feel. End users can either receive an impromptu cybernetic implant in their finger or wear a haptic version of the device. Both the implanted version and the worn-on-body version physically stimulate the user when they walk past, say, a microwave or a wireless router. Much like the Thinking Cap, a Bottlenose can be constructed at home using the organization’s free schematics, or implants/wearable field detectors can be purchased online.
Another project, the Heleed, is a cybernetic medical tracking device. Users implant the Bic lighter-sized device in their body, which then automatically sends biomedical information to the Internet via a Bluetooth interface. The strictly experimental Heleed can also be programmed to display health warnings—sent to the recipient via an Android app—on the user’s skin with LED lights.Heleed is expected to be released to the public in time for the holiday season. Grindhouse’s Lucas Dimoveo told Fast Company that the device currently records body temperature, heart rate, and time. Future versions will have additional sensors added; “the goal is to have your implant text your phone with health factoids like ‘Did you know that when you are on Jamaica Avenue between Van Wyck and Francis Lewis your blood pressure increases ___ mmHg?’” This end goal is not very dissimilar from several non-cybernetic products now making it to market, such as GPS-integrated asthma inhalers.
These implants have substantial real-life effects. Dimoveo described a few:
“In the lab one of our older laptops stopped working—sometimes it would recharge and other times it wouldn’t. It took [Grindhouse experimenters] Tim Cannon and Shawn Sarver all of five seconds to figure out what was going on just by running their hands from the extension cord up the power brick to the computer itself. The wire was giving off a field, but not the battery (which sadly meant I needed to get a new computer). There is no way I would have figured out the problem that fast.“Our artist, Mike Seeler, has larger than average magnet implants in both hands. Traveling through New York City is a very different experience for the both of us. He is constantly discovering magnetic fields pouring out of the street, the subway, the bus, and buildings. He has even had a few dreams including his magnetic sense.”
“The only drawback to the magnet implant is that interacting with mundane machinery can cause people to recoil in shock at how much power is running through a wire or machine. I’ve seen a few people on the team walk by a live soldering station and recoil in surprise. An audible response to the effect of ‘whoa’ is usually uttered, along with a concerned look. Real emotional responses can be triggered by this implant.”
Biohackers first came into the public consciousness thanks to an August 2012 article on tech website The Verge, where author Ben Popper had one of Grindhouse’s cybernetic magnetic implants surgically placed in his thumb. The implant, made from the rare earth metal neodymium, allowed Popper to feel magnetic fields.
DIY cybernetics and the informal merger of human with machine attracts both professionals and dedicated hobbyists with unrelated day jobs. Two popular message boards, and DIYbio(which deals with the larger field of DIY biotechnology labs), serve as meeting points for researchers in the field. At BioArt Laboratories, a Dutch organization featured on DIYbio, art and music are made using cell cultures and biological materials. Meanwhile, users on biohack.me are contemplating the possibilities of subdermal bone conduction headphones and echolocation implants.
One of the biggest boom areas for the DIY cybernetics community is controlling software and applications with brain waves. Crucially, it is the one technology for which we currently have robust development tools and a price point which allows hobbyists to easily experiment. Brain-computer interfaces are increasingly commonplace; in their most common commercial incarnation, users control computer software—most frequently games or simple applications—with brainwave-reading electrodes.Upstate New York is home to one of the best known brain-computer interface systems out there. BCI2000 was developed at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health in Albany in order to create a framework for computer software to understand input from human brainwaves. Using BCI2000, developers have been able to create projects such as a blink-input computer typing system for the disabled and even brainwave-controlled robots. At the Wadsworth Center itself, research efforts on BCI are primarily focused on creating new communication methods for the severely disabled.
There is an undeniable science fiction factor to the idea of DIY cybernetics such as Ekso’s robotic exoskeleton for paraplegics. However, one important thing has to be remembered: Man and machine have been merging for a long time. Cochlear implants and bionic legs are just the latest in a long list of human augmentation that ranges from pacemakers to eyeglasses.
These technologies aren’t just for the future either; they’re being monetized and put to market on a mass scale today. Austrian firm g.tec released a product for patients with motor disabilities that lets them spell words using their brainwaves. Using the product, users who have severe difficulty communicating otherwise can attain a spelling rate of 5 to 10 letters per minute.
Two new consumer products also let ordinary folks—that is, ordinary folks with some money to burn—turn themselves into temporary cyborgs. Neurosky’s MindWave Mobile is a $130 brainwave-reading device for Android and iOS platforms. With the headset-like Bluetooth device, users can play simple proprietary games via their brainwaves—with no hand or gesture input required. Eight apps are included, such as shooters and “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style interactive movies. Rival firm Emotiv markets a brainwave-reading headset compatible with both proprietary games and standard PC games that retails for $299.Crucially, both Emotiv and Neurosky make software development kits (SDKs) and APIs available to outside content producers. Both firms make the possibility of creating brain-controlled software more or less as simple as building an Android app. In other words, 20 or 30 years from now, we’ll likely look back on the biohacker and grinder communities like we currently look back on Silicon Valley of the early to mid 1970s or Stanford or Harvard in the ’90s, places and times when dedicated hobbyists and small businesspeople built homebrewed computers and software in garages and dorm rooms—and founded companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook.
For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twi
The Two Big Issues with Cis Kin Comparing Being Trans and Being Otherkin
To preface this post, I’d like to make clear that I do not have the same issue with trans kin making this comparison as I do with cis kin. This is my opinion, and it is mine alone. This post does not represent the views of the entire trans or trans kin community, though some points are based on what others have already pointed out. My opinions are subject to change and are coloured by my experiences as a trans being and as a member of the otherkin community.
This is not meant as an attack on anyone, nor is it meant to silence anyone.
Finally, the examples listed below are not specific or specific to certain beings, so please do not argue that Y never said that. That is not the purpose of this post.
Strange feelings and scaredness… help may be required
Okay for those of you who followed me for other stuff and haven’t seen any of my therianthropy posts feel free to not read this- you’ll either get disturbed or think I’m crazy. Sorry about that!
————————
Anyways, I have been feeling weird lately. Like really weird. The weirdest I have ever felt in my life. A few weeks ago I started to wake up every single night at 1 or 2 am for no reason. I felt really scared and panicked for no reason either- like a feeling of dread and extreme fear. I have no idea why though- I have my ideas but there doesn’t seem to be any reason for these weird panic attacks. They started going away but I fear they are coming back. I woke up at exactly 2:22 am last night and felt scared out of my wits and shaky. I thought of waking up my parents but it would be pointless and annoying to them. And it isn’t a bad dream I can’t remember- as soon as I try going back to sleep the fear returns usually stronger than before.
I feel perfectly fine in the morning even happy but at night these stupid anxiety attacks keep occurring. It feels like I don’t wanna be in my room. Could it be a curse or demons? Or just nerves? I have no clue really. I’ve tried praying and reading my bible but then I just feel more worked up than before. It always used to help in the past…
One idea I have is that the attacks are linked to my therianthropy. I hadn’t listened to this one song for awhile thinking it may have caused the scaredness. Stupid sounding right? Well, last night I listened to that song and woke up feeling scared and like I was dreading something. What on earth is going on?
Whenever I have thought about or felt like a wolf before it has never affected me. No anxiety attacks. No intense fear. Just lately it seems like whenever I think about shape shifting or trying to I get the shivers than feel really troubled and can’t sleep at night.
I have also have had dreams lately- one last week and then one three days ago followed by another dream the next night. The first one was a dream of me wandering around for some reason. I was howling and could howl just like a wolf. I was so overjoyed that I began to bark. My bark was perfect. Just like a canine bark- not a feeble human attempt like usual. The second dream was of me being near a wolf pack and deciding to live there for some reason. Again in this dream I could howl and bark perfectly. I howled to the wolves and a few of them acknowledged me. Then later on in the dream I went to a friend’s house. Now this wasn’t just any friend’s house- this was Rain’s house. Rain was a lovely alpha wolf I knew on DA from about February to June. She deactivated her account for reasons unknown and we haven’t talked since.
Anyways, I went into Rain’s house and it was abandoned. I lay down forlornly and thought ‘So many wolves have been going missing lately why is this?’ The house was covered in dust and seemed to be abandoned for quite awhile.
The third dream was another dream about me howling and barking perfectly again.
Why? Why is the howling and barking reoccuring? I and still in my human form but have the voice of a wolf… does this mean something? And what about the panic attacks I think are linked to my therianthropy?
Sorry for such a long post- I need help and needed to explain and get that off of my chest. It still doesn’t make sense to me…
CONTENT WARNING - MASTURBATION, TMI.
So I had an extremely strange experience (for me) last night.
While I was masturbating, normally at and around orgasm, I kept shapeshifting, having mental shifts that came thick and fast. I never shift normally - I just have this near-constant feeling of two, three, four bodies interlaid around each other - and I certainly never feel like half of the animals I shifted into. I could feel the human body very distantly, but the body map kept changing so one moment I would feel like a small thing and due to the size not feel like I was in my legs, or I’d move my hand and the arm would be thin and end in a hoof. I don’t remember everything I shifted into (for obvious reasons) but I know there was a deer and a beaver. I am a seabird and a cat. Normally. Weird…
Hesitant about publishing this, but I figure it’s always good to share experiences.
Sareth is a 23 year old artist and stay-at-home-mom. She is bisexual and transgendered (male identified) with no plans on transitioning. As this is the case pronouns are not an issue and Sareth will often use female pronouns out of habit ( though does not object to male pronouns)
She grew up on Lake Erie in Pennsylvania with her grandparents in a fairly conservative Catholic household though began exploring Wicca at the age of ten and officially transitioned over to paganism at sixteen. Her family never had particularly much money, and did not join the land of the internet on a regular basis until her second semester of college.
Sareth attended college from 07-09 majoring in painting and minoring in writing, eventually dropping out due to money constraints. After which she held a number of ok to absolutely awful jobs.
In November of last year she and her SO moved in together after a rough patch of life. In march Sareth gave birth to their son and will be returning to work at an independent media distribution office after a six month maternity leave.
In regards to being otherkin, for Sareth it is a spiritual belief. It does not come before her day to day responsibilities, nor does it particularly effect her all that much, other then odd days where she might be a bit more daydreamy then usual.
Sareth currently lives with her SO, son and their derpy cat.
If you have questions or comments for this person you can contact them at their main blog http://roguesareth.tumblr.com/
Kusari is a 20 year old being who just got a first job working at McDonald’s, and is enjoying things there so far. The chance to interact with the public at last is really helpful in teaching social skills and providing food for though.
He is a pansexual, polyamourous, FtM transgender being who’s lived in Connecticut all of his life. Except for the summers in years past when he went to visit his grandparents for roughly 6 weeks. In WI. he enjoyed going on walks and squirrel hunts on the 55 acres of lands, picking wild raspberries/blackberries on the trail, swimming in the lake off the dock, riding on the pontoon boat, and going to Wilderness Walk to see the critters.
Kusari is a licensed hunter and has been hunting with his father from a young age. As in, under 10. He hopes one day to become a master falconer. That style of hunting, he feels, is better suited to him, though gun hunting is also his passion.
He also wants to pursue glassblowing and zoology. These hobbies have interested him for many years now. Another long-running interest is Chillingham Castle, which he hopes to visit. In the long run he hopes to live in Canada.
Bleach is his favorite program. Being in the fandom has made him multiple friends, like Lily and Rish. Both of them do not discriminate against him because of his identity. For this he is so very grateful.
Kusari’s identity is Demonkin, but it is a bit confusing, so you’ll see him refer to himself as a Burd. Being Kin inspires him to write and roleplay with his best friend Steel. It also connects him to other Nonhumans online that he can engage in intelligent discussion with.
Contact him at http://raijuu.tumblr.com/ if you’d like. Or at http://visoredtayra.tumblr.com/ too.
