Someone please tell me that these people don’t actually they literally *are *these other creatures, and it’s just some kind of (still weird and creepy) symbolic or spiritual thing to them.
To be on the safe side, always assume the craziest version is the correct one.
Also, being symbolically a fire drake isn’t nearly as cool as really being one.
You can most definitely be a descendent of the elemental world without identifying with a certain species.
Human arrogance, as usual, wont allow the thought that there may be another life form that may be smarter than us. We haven’t even discovered all the species on our own planet/plane! What makes you think you know and can fit comfortably inside the basic dragon/tinkerbell stereotype?
I believe there was a time when the unseen world and our world co-existed peacefully. And (egads!) interbred. t’s not so much a matter of reincarnation but bloodline. In other words you probably weren’t reincarnated from your previous life as an elf. It’s more lkely you have Fae blood runnng through your veins much the same way as other DNA from grandma.
Although I have no problem wth the theory of Otherkin I personally don’t think I have any but sympathetic ties. Unfortunately, in too many cases (and possibly your internet friend’s) it’s just a shock thing…
But don’t discount it out of hand. There’s a lot we don’t know about, well, a lot…
I’m a Time Lord otherkin.
Snakes, for one.
“You LOOK human.”
“No, YOU look TimeLord. WE came first.”
Are there other sapient lifeforms around? Not inconceivable. Would be a pleasant surprise. But why want to be them? And why should I suppose the dragons and elves and dolphins and animal guides and astral-plane travelers and aliens would be any superior in smarts or morality?
I knew a guy who claimed he was a Dragon, and that he went through periodic ‘reboots’ and ‘changes’. As I learned over time, what was really happening was that he had monstrous high blood pressure and was likely having mini-strokes and seizures. (He would talk about passing out and waking up with no memories, and it slowly coming back to him.)
I tried to warn him, I tried to get him to seek medical help. But he would have none of it. The greatest insult I ever made to him, one which helped along our enstrangement, was to call him…“Human”.
And then of course, one day he was found dead of a heart attack.
Because he ignored his medical conditions and the repeated warning signs. Because he had ignored my warnings. Because he had convinced himself he was physiologically becoming something greater.
So you’ll have to excuse me if I see such things as nothing more than a mental illness.
Absolutely and clinically insane.
A close friend of mine was chatting with a girl who identified as otherkin some years ago, and when she asked about whether he ever felt drawn to those beliefs, he told her he was half dragon and half marshmallow: self roasting!
I don’t think she thought it was funny.
I sort of assumed that the beginning of belief in otherkin-ness was a feeling of isolation and alienation, and the animals or mythical beings or fictional characters they glommed onto happened after. The otherkin who believe they’re actually Pokemon characters or whatever seem particularly weird to me.
It sounds to me like your friend needs the false-consensus bias to feel legitimated. She thinks many people feel the way she does, even if they aren’t aware of it. By extending the rules of who can be otherkin, more people can be like her and she appears less crazy.
Whether the majority of other otherkins agree with her doesn’t really matter. Her strategy is probably successful in making her feel better about her own problems/insanity.
I don’t understand this, even though I agree this sounds like a likely hypothesis. I would think that otherkins would want to keep their numbers low, because the whole concept of “otherkin” only makes sense if it’s rare and special. If everyone is “otherkin”, then what does it mean to be “human”? What is the point of living life as a human, if no one identifies as such?
Who says firedrakes don’t exist? I can make one any time. It’s easy. Just get a male duck, douse it with gasoline, and strike a match.
Though why someone would want to identify with a burning, presumably dead, aquatic fowl of the opposite gender is beyond me.
QUACK!
I think partially in being aware of your “otherkinness” you can be special, and also in what otherkin you are.
Rowanchilde, upthread, believes we humans and “the unseen world” once interbred. Presumably, that would mean many people are otherkin without realising. Rowanchilde is special, because he/she realises this.
I also think it might be that to the OP’s friend, it’s important that people she cares about are similar to her. The way you [general you] sometimes think if the people you care about only really understood/knew the facts they would share your political position. Because someone you love can only be a good, special person like you, right?
In the end, if it really is just you, then you’re crazy. If it’s actually normal, then you’re still special because you are more aware.
Just the way I see…
That’s kindof what I thought as well. I don’t know that she’s new to identifying, she’s just a little more enthusiastic about it than others I have encountered in passing. And the “spiritual” thing is more her trying to make sense of how I can be creative and enjoy fiction about unworldly things, but don’t actually believe in any of them, or in anything religious. In her considered opinion 
I am repressing all of my impulses towards the divine by my suspicious and pragmatic nature, and the pressure is causing it to spill out into my reading tastes and creative spark.
I agree with **gracer **here, but only with the bolded parts, not the italicized parts, unless you’re counting other people’s opinions of her/otherkin.
But thinking on it, that analogy to the political/religious views does hold a lot of weight - she likes me, she feels like she’s supposed to be ‘helping’ me in some metaphysical sense, and so perhaps she feels more freedom to help me figure out where I belong than she would a random existential stranger on the street.
Sadly for her, it isn’t going to stick, but at least I feel a little more confident in pushing her off because I don’t think I’m a hydra or an oliphaunt or a whathaveyou.
(I am going to tell her the jokes about the firedrake and the self-roasting otherkin - she’ll think they’re funny.)
Divorced American living in England? Much-younger husband married her in order to rescue her from having to go back to the US upon her visitor’s visa’s expiration, later divorced her in order to go rescue a younger needy princess he’d met in World of Warcraft? Reiki practitioner and poetess?
If that fits, the Puss’n’Boots head hanging from my car’s rearview mirror was a present from her. I haven’t talked to her for about ten years, though.
Have you tried not being otherkin?
I know I’m just a big ol’ skeptic, but it sounds to me a lot like an extension of every kid who burns inside with the knowledge that s/he is Harry Potter or equivalent, special, unique, chosen, not of this world. Any day now Hagrid will appear to confirm it. in the meantime, you hug that knowledge to yourself, and as you get older and nobody shows up to show you that were, in fact, Neo or Jesus or Buffy or whatever, you either shrug it off and talk Trek on the internet or dig in harder and find a new explanation - otherkin!
Maybe I’m crazy, but I’d make a bet that DNA analysis would show that she’s pure human.
I’d also make a bet that psychological analysis would show that she’s pure nutbag.
The few otherkin I’ve met online did not think they were physically the creature in question, but that they had the soul of said creature, trapped in a human body. So it’s beyond simply identifying with them, but not to the level of actual delusions about physical reality.
They seemed less like crazy people and more like people with very odd spiritual beliefs.
Or reading too much Andre Norton…