rebellum asked: Wait whats the difference between otherkin and kinnies?

context: i caused some confusion because of the way i talked about ‘kinnies’ and otherkin in this post. i personally consider them entirely different groups, and am referring to entirely different groups when i use those terms. i’m not talking about objective fact or even widely agreed upon opinion here, this is just how i’ve been treating things.

there are a group of people whose alterhuman experience goes something like this:

• they consider themselves kin to something when they like or relate to it enough that they feel motivated to say ‘that’s me’.
• they call this kinning; it’s a verb, because the choice to make an identity out of those feelings is important to them. despite past wank about ‘problematic’ kins these days it seems like most people agree that you can’t ‘drop’ kins completely willy-nilly.
• many of them still believe in having a past or other life as their kin. some are interested in recovering memories or reconnecting with specific people they experience(d) that life with.
• many of them have a lot of kins. some like to organize them in terms of most to least strongly felt.
• many of them still use shifting language! i was surprised to see this, but apparently this is a big factor in the above – primary kins might be there all the time, whereas shifts to minor kins might only be felt when exposed to their source.
• and most if not all of them greatly enjoy producing moodboards, small bits of free verse, and other kinds of low-energy creative expression related to them.

we all know about this group. we want to talk about this group as its own thing. what do we call them? we call them kinnies, because that’s what they call themselves. (i also use ‘kins’ and ‘kinning’ to further reinforce that we’re talking about This Particular Group, again because that’s the language they’ve chosen)

i mean, it’s not that simple, because as jeshire very fairly pointed out, some people do think that’s just The Word for all otherkin experiences. some people know it isn’t, but use it ironically, sarcastically, or jokingly between friends. it’s ambiguous enough that people aren’t interpreting what i’m saying the way i intended them to. it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to look at my writing and think i’m mislead, or that i’m being ironic.

…i don’t necessarily think that it’d work, but i do wonder if there’d be less friction if we all actively made this distinction. like, 'isn’t otherkin when you relate really heavily to something?’ 'oh no, you’re thinking of kinnies, related but different subculture.’ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ food for thought?