Jarandhel's Tumblr

owl-epsilon:

my theriotypes are from reincarnation. my fictive types, i feel, are not. 

I wish there were a clean way to split this into a separate thread on tumblr.  Anyway, question - if you don’t attribute your fictive types to reincarnation, what do you attribute them to?

cruelfeline:

And I’m putting it under a cut because lord knows y’all don’t care about this.  But it is cathartic for me, so TA DA.

Also, I’m going to actually tag it.  Because I feel like living dangerously.

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rabidwolfie:

So much information. Had to take some time to read over this one carefully. A lot to think about. But that’s what makes these kinds of things interesting!

Heh, yeah.  Sorry for the delay in replying again, I’ve been working two jobs and trying to move without the benefit of having a car, so things have been hectic around here.  And I wanted to give this post a thoughtful reply, not just something slapped out in ten minutes or so.

For starters, you sound like you have some interesting stories to tell and I’d be happy to hear them some time in the (hopefully) near future. My opinions may or mat not change at that point.

Heh, it’s overused at this point but I rather like a quote from The Matrix Reloaded:

Commander Lock: Dammit, Morpheus. Not everyone believes what you believe.
Morpheus: My beliefs do not require them to.

My question about past-life memories were two separate (technically 3 but anyway) questions that I should have worded better. “How do you suppose memories from a past life are carried into a new life?” What mechanisms or process do you personally think takes place to allow this? I ask out of sheer curiosity. WHY do you think this takes place? Whether or not there’s a higher reason for it/divine plan/whatever or is it from extreme trauma making it imprint on whatever constitutes a soul? Why would memories of another time be transferred? This subject alone could be talked about for days I imagine so I won’t go into it too deeply here, but it does fascinate me.

I don’t claim any special knowledge as to the mechanisms or processes.  My personal theory is that there are lives which touch us deeply enough to leave an “imprint”, “impression”, or “echo” in our souls (though I use these terms metaphorically rather than literally) though I don’t think it needs to be trauma that causes such an imprint.  I have memories that are traumatic, and others that are quite the reverse.  Emotional content does seem to play a role, though… I don’t really have memories that I would describe as “neutral”.  As for why memories of another time would be transferred, my guess would be for the same reason as we retain memories of earlier periods in our present lives: it affords us the ability to learn, from our successes and from our mistakes.  Whether that’s the result of some spiritual equivalent of biological evolution or the result of some higher power/plan, I have no idea.

In my belief system I do believe that everything living (no idea if bacteria is truly alive or not) has what I’m going to call a soul for sake of convenience. The soul is not autonomous and mostly acts as an information gatherer. All memories, personality, and what-not is believed to be wiped out upon death. And by that I mean non resuscitative. What happens next is long, complicated and not really nessecary so I’ll save that for a future conversation IF interested, and if not, no problem. But I bring it up because I don’t really understand at this point how such information as experiences and personality can be carried over beyond the death of the individual.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on this, yes.  Personally, it sounds very strange to me to attribute information gathering to the soul and then suppose that physical death would put an end to that information.

I also want to mention that you said when you talked to several other people you’d never met previously, your memories matched “to a significant degree”. Were there other details that did not match? As that might be indicative of something else as well.

I said to a significant degree because there were things that one of us remembered that the other did not.  In some cases this was simply because one of us was present for the events remembered and the other was not.  In others, the cause is less certain: for instance, Arhuaine and several of the others who remembered Alorya had memories of a land to the west of ours with specific attributes.  None of what was discussed in connection to that land rang a bell for me.  It may be the case that I never went there, or it may be the case that I simply haven’t hit upon something that would trigger those memories.  I’m not sure.

Again, going by a general example, completely unrelated people can have similar thought patterns. I got an email once where it was a list of things to do and then it gave the answer. The only part I remember out of 20 or so questions was “Without thinking about it, name the first vegetable that comes to mind.” I wish I could remember the answer. I THINK it was carrot, but I could be wrong. This was years ago and my memory is terrible.

Whatever the answer was, it was correct for both mom and myself. I sent the email to several friends of mine who I had never met in person, and all but one of them said that every single answer was the same. (Now that vegi question is going to bug me until I remember what it was)

I was not related to the person who wrote the email, nor had I ever met them, it was one of those chain-letter types. I was not related to any of my friends who I sent it to, and yet all but ONE out of all of us came up with the same exact answers as the email that none of us had seen before. (Maybe it was cabbage) We had similar thought patterns despite all being from different backgrounds and locations. And as I used to prefer the company of those older than myself most of the time because I got bored quickly with my peers, they also had diverse ages.

There are, certainly, types of questions that people tend to answer similarly.  And yes, carrot is the most likely followed by celery.  That’s really not the kind of thing I’m talking about, though.  Simple answers certainly can be obtained through sheer coincidence across anyone who is a member of Western culture (someone from asia, on the other hand, is significantly less likely to answer carrots or celery as the first vegetable they think of).  But complex descriptions of culture, people, places, events, cuisine, etc?  That seems far less likely.

One of the things I remember that others had independently remembered as well is the “blue plate special” (metaphorically) at a particular tavern. We’ve remembered the same location for the tavern relative to other landmarks, we’ve remembered the food being served in a hollowed out loaf of bread, we’ve remembered a barley-like grain forming the bulk of it along with other vegetables we were unable to individually identify and meat (possibly venison) in a thick gravy-like sauce.  We remember it being eaten with wooden spoons carved in a very particular shape.  That’s a lot of detail that all corresponds.  It’s a lot more than just “carrots”.  And while yes, the list you mentioned was more than just carrots as well, it was all things that individually were likely to be the #1 answer for each question.  That’s not the case with this.

For the schizophrenic analogy, I don’t know if I personally would be suspicious if three or more saw the same hallucinations unless they were the EXACT same without deviation. From what I’ve read, many share similar hallucinations. Not the same but very similar. This is thought to be caused by the location of the brain that is being affected. Of course it’s not hugely well understood yet and I don’t keep completely up to date on these things like I should. But to my personal understanding, by stimulating certain parts of the brain, thoughts, emotions, memories and even actions are controllable to a certain degree.

As I understand it, general themes are similar but specific details are generally not.  Religious themes, conspiracies, surveillance, etc.  But one schizophrenic will believe that they are a saint, while another will believe they are Jesus Christ, and another will believe they are the antichrist.  One schizophrenic will believe they are being x-rayed as they walk down the street while another will believe satellites are listening into their thoughts.

Back for a moment to your elfin (is that the right word?) memories. The fact that you share these with other people that were previously complete strangers. Did any of you share relatively similar interests, like particular fiction, read the same book, watched the same movie, etc that could lead to coming to similar conclusions? Maybe all of you talked to the same person some time in the past who shared ideas who was since forgotten and the connection never made?

There’s a bit of debate as to the right word to use.  Some people prefer elfin, I personally prefer elven.  As for your other questions - I’d say our interests were broadly similar, but not identical.  Arhuaine was a huge fan of Bablyon 5.  I’d liked it, but hadn’t seen nearly as much as she had.  We both liked the X-Men, though I think I was more of a fan than she was - I’d read more of the comics as a child.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  There was overlap in our media preferences, but not an exact match.  Many things she’d seen or read I had not, and vice versa.  And to the best of my knowledge, there were not any books specifically about elves that we both held in common save the Lord of the Rings trilogy itself.  And, frankly, I don’t see how simply having similar tastes in media could lead to identical recollection when the things recalled do not match the media in question.  Tolkien never involved winged horses or shape-shifting, for instance, while our memories do include them.  And no, I don’t believe we all spoke to the same person in the past prior to remembering these things, though we ended up being friends with many of the same people after joining the community.

If the suggestion is that somehow, through having a similar taste in media, we independently synthesized said media into an identical mixture down to names, places, events, cultural elements, etc then again I would frankly find that more miraculous than simply remembering another life.  Even people intentionally writing fan-fiction, with a shared canon, don’t tend to have their derivative works agree to that extent.

When I ask all these questions, it’s not that I disbelieve you when you say you’ve already asked them, it’s that I wasn’t there when you asked, so I don’t know what questions were or were not gone over, nor what the answers were, so I apologize if I’m going over anything you’re tired of talking about.

No need to apologize - I pointed out that you were unlikely to ask any questions I hadn’t already considered not to forestall you from asking them but to explain why it might seem like I have an answer ready for each of them.

(via rabidwerewolfie)

silveth:

I can’t speak for otherkin on DW, but as the owner (salfarro and I co-mod, but in LJ terms I am literally the owner) of otherkin on LJ, I can tell you that I don’t have a problem with experiental/sharing type posts there - although fictionkin should probably be prepared to be challenged. (That comm is not intended as an “anything goes” kind of safe space. There are also fictionkin comms on LJ, but as I am not a member of that segment of things I can’t tell you what are the best places.)

The fictionkin community largely took off on LJ before tumblr was ever around.  There have been a number of groups there for fictionkin, many of which are now defunct, but there are some that are still active:

http://embodied-past.livejournal.com/profile
http://from-fiction.livejournal.com/profile

This is a list I’ve created of all the active community blogs I know about on LJ and DW: http://anotherwiki.dreamhart.org/wiki/List_of_Active_Otherkin_Blogs

I’ve started adding tumblr, but that section is very much a work in progress as there is no convenient way to search for shared/submission-based otherkin blogs on tumblr that I’ve found nor to get much information about the blog itself (owner, date created, number of posts, etc).

There’s a similar listing for mailing lists: http://anotherwiki.dreamhart.org/wiki/List_of_Active_Otherkin_Mailing_Lists

Forums will be the next group I tackle, but for now there’s a preliminary list of them here: http://dreamhart.org/links/#otherkin-forums

genuineferalswagger:

goblingrrl:

It’s like the fucking Na’avi kin all over again. Hmm, don’t hear much from those people anymore.

Whatever did happen to the Na’vi-kin? It is kind of weird that you don’t see them now, which kind of makes me wonder…

The people running the Na’vi-kin communities came out publicly as trolls, that’s what happened.

rabidwolfie:

YAY!! Finally an intelligent debate!

*grin* Likewise. :)

Likewise, you bring up some very valid points and I shall attempt to address them all. If I miss anything, I apologize, please feel free to point it out. I will also say that not knowing your exact situation, nor am I asking for details, anything I say and any example I give will be of a general nature rather than directed specifically at you. My fault for not also saying this previously.

Heh, no need for all the disclaimers with me.  I’m not easy to offend unless you’re trying, and I don’t mind sharing more specifics about my own situation though there are certain things I would prefer not discussing publicly.  If we tread near any of those, I’ll say so.

Starting with shared memories. Again, not being familiar with your situation (although that does sound intriguing), just in a general sense, if someone told me that they shared memories about specific places or events with complete strangers, I would be interested.

That has been the case, for me.  Focusing just on my elven memories for a moment, I found five people who were previously strangers to me who shared memories of the same people, places, culture, and events.  More if you count multiples individually, but I suppose that’s a separate debate.  Three of these were in England and were significantly older than myself - I was closer to their daughters age than to their own age.  Another was in North Carolina and was four years older than myself.  The last was in Maryland and if memory serves is slightly older than me but I don’t recall exactly how old.  I myself was born and raised in southern New Jersey.  We never had any contact prior, and most of our communication was via the Internet so there was little chance of any form of cold-reading intentional or otherwise.  Yet our memories matched, to a significant degree.

I would first want to rule out similarities by chance. For example, two people dream of the garden of eden and the tree of life has cherries for fruit. Neither of these people particularly care for cherries. One day they meet and just happen to talk about this dream and are amazed at this detail. A myth is born.

Well, cherries are very common, in all parts of the world and through diverse backgrounds as well as cherry flavoring. Both of them could have seen the same or a separate item that was then, by the sheer happenstance of chance, was then tossed into a dream. (I’m not even saying they had the dream on the same night). Chance is unpredictable and uncontrollable, so it’s typically ignored in most of these cases.

I understand and agree with you on this.  It’s actually something I’ve ranted about in the past in the otherkin community when someone comes in asking “does anyone remember the white city?” without any further details.  On modern Earth alone there are multiple cities called “The White City”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_City  It’s literally impossible to provide a meaningful answer to that question, and I’m always annoyed by the number of otherkin who will jump in to such conversations to say that yes they remember the white city too before that’s pointed out to them.

In my own case, however, it’s more than just incidental details that were shared.  For the elven memories alone, there was a mailing lis where we posted 417 messages about the things we remembered about Alorya, and the list itself was predated by a private email conversation carbon copied between multiple people for roughly six months.  Usually with several reply-chains each day.  And quite lengthy ones as well - it was, at times, split into several threads for the simple fact that it got too long for our email clients to handle.  I have difficulty accepting that degree of agreement could occur by coincidence.

You also bring up telepathy. This is something I have almost no understanding of but I love to study the phenomenon. I am not psychic. I never claim to be one unless it’s a joke. I have never personally met anyone who is, although I do believe it is potentially possible.

However, people that know me in person will often believe I have psychic abilities, no matter HOW many times I say I don’t, because they don’t understand how I work. I can tell moods, I can finish sentences, I can discern a lie, and often I can tell what people are thinking even when they don’t say a word. Now someone observing me doing this on a daily basis with no other explanation could easily come to the conclusion that I DO have some sort of extra-sensory abilities. The truth is, I know how most people work.

I read body language that most people only notice on a subconscious level, and despite everyone’s unique differences, most of them fall into easily recognizable patterns which can lead to educated guesses about thoughts, motives, mood, etc. Nothing supernatural actually takes place. And while I am not counting out telepathy completely as a cause for anything (although it would take a hell of a lot to convince me of it) the subconscious is also more powerful than a lot of people think.

What you’re describing sounds to me like a form of cold-reading.  I won’t say it’s impossible, but it’s very difficult to cold-read well over the internet.  Most of the cues which would guide a cold-reader simply aren’t there.  

You hear, see and feel things that you tend to disregard or block out consciously, but everyone is still affected by their subconscious. Advertisers and politicians use this to their advantage often. We can not rule this out for general cases of such things as memory recall or shared experiences.

Personally, I find the idea that I have sufficient shared subconscious inputs with individuals from different age groups, genders, even generations and nationalities to independently produce a coherent narrative of the same people, places, culture, and events rather more fantastic than the idea that I simply shared a past life with them.  

I don’t know much about the other two so I’ll leave it at that. As for wish fulfillment. This is MOSTLY pointing at people who claim to be anime characters or really unrealistic things (winged tiger example again) that they wish were true, but yeah, this can indeed apply to almost anyone.

My two fictionkin lives are anime characters.  No, I’m not going to say which ones.  And my headmate, Alaereth, while not a tiger is a winged anthropomorphic cat who I affectionately term a “kittyfae”.  In the case of the anime lives, I can confidently state that I would not have chosen to be either one.  a) I don’t like the two people I remember being. b) If I were reading the media as fiction, there are other characters I would connect with much more strongly than the ones I remember being.  Hell, in either fiction I prefer the main characters to my own character. c) I’m not really a fan of the fictions themselves.  As for Alaereth, he’s really not the sort of feline I’d want to be - I’ve never pictured myself as an anthro housecat, I’d much prefer to be an anthro cougar, and if I was going for a winged look I would have chosen almost any sort of wings other than faerie wings which have never appealed to me.

The short version being, sometimes your “wish” is granted in a roundabout way that can be more mentally or environmentally convenient.

(DISCLAIMER: I do not in any way speak for ALL furries, merely myself)

While I think I understand what you’re getting at here, I still don’t find it to be the case in my own experience or with the majority of otherkin and fictionkin I know.  

I also want to touch on “the memory is rather reliable”. I wish mine was. It’s horrible. I can remember an incident from when I was in preschool involving Halloween cupcakes. Ask me where I just set my pen five minutes ago, and I really couldn’t tell you.

That’s actually my point, though, and what I meant when I said memory is rather reliable but not perfect.  Yes, people are apt to forget things.  People are apt to mix things up.  But if I ask you where you set your pen five minutes ago, you aren’t going to remember an elaborate trip to the planet Beta-Five-Seven where you shoved your pen into the eye socket of a Denebrian squid.  

However, there’s more than that. People who use “memory recovery” often get completely fabricated memories that may not even be fused. Memory implantation and manipulation is not well studied but well heard of.

“The researchers show that positive and negative false memories about a childhood experience can be indeed implanted and that, once implanted, they may have very real consequences in changing our behavior, and the way we think and feel about the experience. This is why the whole concept of recovering “forgotten” memories of your childhood is so fraught with danger. Memory is not like a video recorder, recording every moment of our lives in accurate detail. It is a murky, complex system that can be manipulated, as this research shows.” - http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/04/03/how-easily-is-your-memory-manipulated/

I remember watching a movie once years ago about a girl who had nightmares, so her parents took her to a therapist. Suddenly the girl was remembering all manner of completely fabricated things that may or may not been planted by the therapist, including her parents holding secret satanic rituals, sacrifices, torture, and although it was heavily investigated, not even the smallest scrap of evidence for any of it was ever found.

Except all of this, including the post by psychcentral, relies on hypnotic techniques of memory recovery.  I, and those whom I have shared memories with, don’t engage in that practice as a rule.  No, not even recovering memories through meditation.  For us, memory recall has had more in common with the flashbacks experienced by people with PTSD - something, be it a sight or a sound or a smell, will trigger a flashback wherein the event is relived.  Sometimes this will be one brief scene, a literal flash of memory.  Other times, one memory will trigger another and another - what I term a “memory flood”.

This is not the case with all otherkin - I’ve known people who have been in the community for years who have only vague dreams to point to as memories.  Others do in fact engage in hypnotic regression or meditative past-life recovery techniques.  I’m wary of either method - the former because sometimes a dream is just a dream and a cigar is just a cigar, the latter for the tendency to create or implant false memories.  The flashbacks, on the other hand, simply happen.  I’m not in an altered state of any kind.

When enough of certain endorphins are released into the brain, we hallucinate, and the hallucinations can also be mistaken for something much more real than they really are. People suffering from schizophrenia suffer through many hallucinations. They hear voices, they see monsters and shadows, they can have terrible paranoia, and to them it can be completely real. It could easily be rationalized that they are getting a glimpse into another dimension, but it is much more LOGICAL that they are simply experiencing chemical imbalances in the brain.

I agree, it is.  On the other hand, if you had three or more schizophrenics who didn’t know each other and with varied backgrounds independently reporting identical hallucinations, I personally would think there might be something more going on.  ”One time is chance, two times is a coincidence, three times is suspicious…”

The brain itself (no, I am not a student of medicine or psychology, I just like reading about things that interest me) is a very powerful and mysterious organ that we do not yet fully understand. However modern medicine is finding out more and more. Much like religion, the more we find out how things work, the more these answers replace the previous mysticism. And while I do believe in something like reincarnation, I am more than willing to stop believing it if something else makes more sense.

Same here.  For me, reincarnation appears to make the most sense.

As for past life memories, why would you have memories? What would be the purpose of them? Is there really NO other possible answer? A shared thought pattern, subliminal messaging, subconscious signals?

I’m not sure “why” is a useful question in the form you’re using it.  It’s like asking “why” is there gravity?  Not how is there gravity, as in the mechanism for it, but the reason for gravity to exist; the purpose it serves.  That presupposes there to be a purpose for a given phenomena, which implies there must be a sentient force guiding that phenomena with a plan.

IF there must be a why, in this sense, I might guess that it would have to do with learning from the past much like our memories of this life allow us to do.  I do note that for myself, and others whom I have shared past life memories with and find credible, certain patterns seem to repeat between lives.  Remembering previous lives may provide a way to break certain unwanted cycles.

As for the other possibilities, I’ve considered them.  I find the idea of a shared thought pattern to this extent between this many people who have never met, are not of the same age, do not have substantially similar life experiences or tastes in media, and not even of the same nationality to be extremely unlikely.  I would consider that more miraculous than us having simply shared a past life, as it would require vastly more factors to converge.  Subliminal messaging or subconscious signals I find unlikely over a purely textual medium like email or instant messenger, which is where most of my conversations regarding shared memories have taken place.  

Again, not knowing your story, these are simply vague questions and assertions I would ask of anyone in your position, none of this is aimed specifically at you. Personally, I believe that not everything the mind and body tells you can always be believed. Therefore EVERYTHING should be questioned, even your own thoughts and emotions, and everything else ruled out completely before moving to the next step of supernatural.

I completely agree, and you haven’t asked anything I haven’t thought of myself or been asked before.  I’m not offended to be asked this stuff, and if you actually came up with a hypothesis that seemed to fit the facts better than past-life memories of another world in a universe that operates by different physical laws then I would be forced to give it serious consideration.  Though, frankly, after 13 years I think I’ve already considered most of the alternative hypotheses that are compatible with known science.  And even some of the ones, like telepathy and the collective subconscious, that are only compatible with fringe science.

I apologize if I got too wordy, I have a bad habit of rambling. Did I leave anything important out?

No need to apologize. :)  And not that I can think of, no.  Did I?  I trimmed a few sections for length, but I think I addressed all your points.

(via rabidwerewolfie)

lady-labyrinthia:

I’m just being a curious little bugger right now, and want to ask a question.

Do you, personally, classify Fictionkin as Otherkin? Or, better yet, do you believe the claims of Fictionkin to be legit?

I’m not saying if I do or don’t or any of that. Just curious.

Much love!<3

-Calico

As for whether or not fictionkin, by definition, are otherkin?  Yes, I think they are. Even the human ones: one of the earliest otakukin in the otherkin community, the group which originated the concept of fictionkin/mediakin, claimed to be Yusuke Urameshi from Yu Yu Hakusho.

As for whether their claims are legitimate? Some fictionkin yes.  I count myself among these, though I’m not public about the two fictionkin lives I remember.  Others, no.  I find many people jump on the bandwagon with regard to claiming they are popular media figures, and in many cases this seems to be attention-seeking behavior.  Ultimately, I judge based on the individual and their behavior as well as how consistent their stated beliefs are both internally and with known facts.  

This is my approach with non-fictional otherkin as well.  For instance: I would be highly skeptical of an otherkin claiming to remember an agrarian society which was also nomadic, as this lacks consistency with any known agrarian society and would not logically follow from the agrarian social model.  

swanblood:

Wait, so… saying that trolls are funny until they start sending death threats (which suggests they’re NOT funny if they send death threats, anyway), means you only have your self to blame if someone actually attempts to run you over with a car?

In what universe??

Try *actually* reading what I’ve said.  He only has himself to blame for the continued trolling, *not* for the attempt on his life. (Though he was rather stupid to have given out so much personal information about himself online that allowed people to target him IRL in the first place.)  With regard to the attempt to run him down and the in-person “kill yourself” stuff at his workplace, he should go to the police.  As I’ve said multiple times.  

Reading comprehension: you’re doing it wrong.