What if there was a book about otherkin?

[frameacloud]

Theri There comic for July 3, 2006. Thanks for sticking with me, folks. :)

[Edit 2017-04-03: Updated link.]

Comments

[kalanco.livejournal.com]

3 words: This is Good. I liked your portrayal of all the differing views and the like, particularly the elf's total dislike of it, and the wolf(that is a wolf, right?) and gryphon's changeableness over it. /character analysis.

I'd thought that a book would about otherkin would be rather interesting if released. Now, I'm not so sure...

If I had to take a bet, I'm pretty sure that it'd being the 2nd down, far right(the one with the sale sign).

[frameacloud]

The gryphon isn't exactly changeable... rather, the hypothetical book is changeable. This particular episode doesn't portray a chronological sequence, just a series of different possibilities. In one instance, the book turned out to be pretty good, and the gryphon is able to use the book as common ground to help explain herself to a friend who has read it. In a different instance, the book has done such an embarassingly awful job describing therianthropes and otherkin that the gryphon doesn't want to be associated with it, so she tells her friend that she's not like that. The same goes for the wolf's various portrayed reactions... he's not being changeable about the same book, he's actually reacting to different variations of possibilities for the hypothetical therianthropy book. The book might stink, or it might be lovable, or it might be gibberish without any connection to therianthropy at all.

We're used to seeing comics as a chronological sequence, so I wasn't sure if a series of random possibilities would be come across intuitively, rather than being perceived as a chronological sequence even when it isn't one.

I thought the wolf guy in today's comic was a wolf, but he looks different from the other-- more realistic-- wolf characters who've appeared in Theri There. So far, they've appeared as quadrupeds with specifically lupine markings. This new guy appeared only as a canine-headed human with plainer colors, and he didn't seem to want to appear as anything else throughout this comic episode. Maybe he's a cynocephalus.

Sorry if too many of the panels represent worries... these represent common views moreso than my own. I'm not quite as uptight as some of these characters. I'm looking forward to any books about otherkin that I can find... anything that sends a message of “you're not alone” to otherkin and therians who haven't stumbled across like-minded others online. Anything that can help us explain ourselves to other people and gather together information. I even look forward to seeing the wince-inducing books, though in a different way.

As I said, there are already some books that mention otherkin... for the most part, they are doing just like the book in the seventh panel, with the sale sign: they're gathering dust and cobwebs, and scarcely anyone's heard of them. With a couple of them, that's probably for the best. (Ouch!) Some of them set off other reactions as shown, but on a smaller scale. For the most part, the books in question haven't made a big impact so far.