Configurations 2: Part 3, The Furry Fetish and Otherkin

I'm trying to beat the gloom here, so let me talk about what has to be the most ridiculous part of my own personal beliefs, and that is that I actually dig - Otherkin. The Otherkin movement - as far as I know - is maybe 8 or 9 years old. There isn't any book on the market about the topic.

Most Otherkin-afficiandoes are what is called a, "furry," meaning that they have a fetish surrounding an animal of some sort. Usually it will be a fetish for some kind of animal suit or an animal-plushie of some kind. In general, the Otherkins I have met have not seemed to be the malignant type of fetishist. The malignant type of fetishist is definitely the most common type of fetishist. It is the 'Net and you can't know for sure. However, these people are definitely oddballs, pretty silly in many ways, but they seem to be basically okay - and that seems to be about average.

The basic idea with Otherkin is that most people, or everyone, has a deep attachment with some animal, and that as an Otherkin, you are an animal in human form. I may have written something somewhere else about this, but it may have been on a forum, and who knows? So many Otherkin might see themselves as a sort of mythical form of that animal - the Japanese kitsune for example - which was a malignant fox-spirit. The Japanese feared foxes because they were quite cunning and hard to trap, and could kill livestock or a small child, and so the kitsune figure developed.

The Otherkin movement is one of my tribes, and I'm not a fetishist really. I am pretty 'nilla about sexuality today. A nice, voluptuous curve and some 'nilla is all that eroticism is today to me in - so many ways. Sure, the Clive Barker books and so on - but really. That is real.

So if we haven't done it, let us now do our dog myth from the Hopi tradition. Part of this is that the Native Americans saw an animal as having a ruling spirit with a certain character. For dogs, that was called, "Dog."

So the Great Spirit hunts all over his creation, looking for the wisest and best animal who is in his creation. He finds Dog, humble and wise and sincere. He offers to Dog that he give him the greatest gift of his spirit. Dog tells the Great Spirit that he is too humble for the gift. "So then who should have it?", the Great Spirit asks Dog. "Why don't you give your greatest gift to the worst animal in creation, which is you know who?" the dog replies. "You know who?" - is man and woman.

So let us finish off with Gwyd the fool. My absolute favorite animal is a snake. I've been around a lot of snakes - animals in this case - and they are very interesting animals to me, and I feel a kinship with them. They are very aloof, and very sneaky, "most cunning of all the animals," is not purely religion. In general, what I've seen is that constricting snakes are more aggressive, and also that smaller snakes are more aggressive.

Also, snakes get very aggressive and stinky when they are molting, and just before, and right after - they molt. They eat next to nothing, and they are an inactive animal that mostly sleeps. They love to blissfully lie on a rock and sunbathe when they sense no predators in their territory. They live in a very large number of different geographies.

My favorite snake is called the Lachesis Melanochephala. I've gotten all the tags and things right now, and it took a lot of research to do it. They are commonly called either, the "Great Copperhead," or the "Bushmaster Copperhead." The first name is because they are the largest American copperhead snake. The second name is because they live in the Andean mountains in Chile, and they warren in the clay beneath the small amount of shrubbery in that area.

The Lachesis is also a diamond-back copperhead, one of the very few. The copperhead is a viper-species found only in the Americas. The common North American-copperhead is a plenty-dangerous snake, and they live all over the place in North America. The Lachesis is dangerous, but it is mostly large and sluggish. It would really prefer to just go back into the warren underneath its shrub - even if it is being toyed with and it is angry.

The basic lifestyle for the Lachesis is to be inactive for long periods, then to go out and eat some mountain mice or rats, eat a little brush for its gullet, sun itself some, and then go back into its warren for another inactive period. Like many reptiles, the Lachesis lives for a lengthy lifespan, but that is about all this snake ever does. It is large, but it doesn't eat very large prey. All vipers are quite territorial, and the Lachesis is no exception - but its territory is usually a couple hundred yards-square. A very humble clay-crawler of a snake.

Alright, so just to finish off, I guess the way to put it is that I see "Snake," as a spirit who rules over snake animals, to be one of my own ruling spirits, and I also feel a real deep kinship with that Lachesis Melanocephala. I imagine sometimes that my, "rutts," are from a genaeology founded by serpents. Even for me that is wild, and I imagine it sometimes, and other times - it is simply nothing but silliness. It is one of my personal myths, and it is something I love.

My two other favorite animals, just to finish up, are the Brown-Necked Raven, and the Andean Condor. Both are also homely animals. Ravens are a great deal like crows, but they are a larger and solitary bird. They mostly eat carrion. The Brown-Necked Raven has this tufted brown-mane against the usual raven-black feathers.

Vultures and condors are ugly, disease-infested carrion eaters, but they have these incredible spiked wings and they are majestic in flight. The European vulture and the American condor are nearly entirely different, but they are usually classified in the same broad family. Condors are far less aggressive, and they are far better at flying. They have a huge wing-span, and spend most of their lives in flight. They fly their territory, eating next to nothing, until they find some carrion to eat. Condors are also a very solitary bird.

Also - this is such a funny image - if a condor has won a big find, its stomach is too full for it to fly. Like any flying bird, it can't walk too well. When a human is around, Condors get scared, and they can't fly off in this state, so this majestically-flying, disease-infested carrion-eater will attempt to hobble away from the human. It is worse than that. You should hear how vultures and condors keep their feet cool in desert sun as they eat their finds. I won't go into it. Animals are great.

Alright, I need to call my Dad, and we will see what the day brings. Lay-tah.