I know I’ve not been very active on Tumblr lately but that is going to change soon. I have some stories that I want to get out and hopefully that will happen by thte end of the week.
Right now though, I need some help. My family is going through some very tough times and I am hoping that, perhaps, some of you may be able to help.
I’m not asking that you donate, I understand that not everyone can but if you can get the word around, that would be utterly amazing.
So, this is a little gesture I want to make to the Tumblr community, and it requires nothing from you but a reblog and some big dreams. Read on!
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So tonight, I made 30 paper stars with a wish written inside each one. Some of the wishes are ones that are likely to come true soon, some that are…
the-tabularium asked*beams* Oh, thank you so, so much! I really appreciate this. Although I may occasionally slow on my posting, I doubt I will ever stop. I’m usually telling stories to *so9meone*, even if it’s just myself. So that means there will always be something to put up here.
Anonymous askedThank you for this. I needed something to get me writing again and this was perfect. I do hope you don’t mind what I did with this prompt. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this lovely idea.
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Sometimes he wondered if he can feel, if a creature like him can be capable of emotions, of longing in your chest, of craving the touch of another, of needing to be close to someone.
He wonders because he has no brain to think of these things, has no heart to beat against his chest and ache so fiercely when someone he misses is gone. He has no body, no hands, no feet, no mouth in which to kiss someone with.
But he still feels, still yearns and longs and needs and craves.
He can’t explain it, can’t understand how it works but he knows these things, knows that his emotions are true, despite having such a fickle existence. He is nothing more than dust in the air, smoke in the wind. He is light and barely there, a ghost of the man he had been.
And who was that, anyway? Who was the man he had been? He doesn’t even remember anymore. He just knows he still has feelings, emotions that plague him, desires that will not let him relax at night (for he doesn’t actually sleep, just lets himself drift through the air aimlessly).
But then someone strikes a match, someone he thinks he doesn’t know but someone who, when he sees them, it makes his non-existent heart race, his formless hands clench up and his barely-there body yearn to be something more, to be something solid and visible and able to touch.
They strike up a cigarette, take a puff and let the smoke around them curl and dance. He watches, floored for a moment before he moves, manipulating the air around them, turning smoke into ghostly hands that run through their hair, that rest on their shoulders, that brush against thier face.
And in this moment, in this strange, secret moment, he feels better, feels almost whole again. He doesn’t feel like a ghost or a shade. He doesn’t feel like a shadow but something more, something like a creature of flesh and bone.
So he follows them, those lonely smokers. He finds himself stalking them in the night, waiting for them to light another cigarette, which they always do.
And he is there for them, wrapping smoke-made hands around their shoulders, touching them, caressing them with the very breath they breath.
It’s not perfect, not what he wants, but it’s something more than what he had. It’s a gift, a treasure from whatever gods might still be out there.
And every time he smells a match, every time tobacco or cloves come across his path, the heart that he can’t possibly have starts to quicken just a little.
And suddenly I feel like I’m mourning, like I’ve lost something dear to me and I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s missing but I feel it in my chest, that loss, that ache, that knowing that something isn’t htere anymore, that you can never go back to it.
Somewhere something is missing and I feel it, I know it and I can’t do anything about it.
People died this month, people in my family. People died and I don’t remeber them but I think I still feel their loss, or I feel my mother’s mourning over them. I don’t know. I just know that I feel so confused and aching and tired and lonely and like the world will never be right again. Like…like whatever’s been taken away from me will never come back and that, becuae of this, the world is broken.
I don’t know why, I hope it’s just my mother’s loss, I hope I’m just picking up on her emotions.
Because if I’m mourning, I’d like to know why, I’d like to realize what it is I’ve lost.
Today is a tired day, a day of lo9w light, a day for whispers and the company of anything that doesn’t speak using words.
I’m tired, so tired.
I want stories but I don’t want words. I want…I want stories told with touch, I want stories told by music. I want stories told by the sound of drums.
I wish i could tell these stories myself, make them so i can listen and feel and revel in them later but I don’t have the energy or the skill to do it.
The person who I was refering to has degenerative disc disease. She’s tried holding down jobs before and can’t. Another person can’t because of mental issues. I don’t think I could because of mental and physical issues. All of us have reasons for wanting this, maybe you don’t and that’s fine but don’t assume that we’re just whining.
If you can’t hold down a job because of mental and physical issues, how do you suppose you’ll be able to run a shelter for others? That is a full-time job. As for the various issues you’ve listed, none of those sounds like they’re caused by being otherkin. And there are resources that already exist to help people in the positions you’re describing. What would be gained by an explicitly otherkin shelter?
But gathers are only once a month/every other month/whatever. Sometimes transport doesn’t work out. Sometimes you don’t have the mental or physical energy to deal with it that day, sometimes you just can’t make it. It’s not fair that we are restricted to just those times. We should be able to have a place to go to
“It’s not fair”… to quote Labyrinth, you say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is. If you can’t make it to a gather, hold a meetup. It doesn’t take much planning, just getting your friends together at a coffee shop or restaurant. If I wanted to, I could have a meetup going within an hour just by tweeting and facebooking to local kin and seeing who wanted to hang out. Granted, I’m in the DC metro area so I have an advantage of a large pool of kin to draw from. If you’re somewhere where that doesn’t exist, creating a “shelter” isn’t really going to help unless you can provide transportation and financial support for any of the kin who come to you from out of the area. If you can’t hold down a job, I’m guessing that’s not very likely.
I have nothing against humans, I’m dating a human, mmost of my friends have human. My favorite artists and writers are probably human. Humans create wonderful things and I don’t think that just becuase I want an organization, means that I am anti-human.
Thinking you need an organization to shelter you from the human world sounds pretty anti-human to me. ”I have friends who are humans” or not.
It just means I want the same things that other beings have. You’re right about minorities not being victims but they do have organizations, the blind, the Hispanic, the deaf. Some of them have schools, some of them have meetups, they have scholarships and they have community houses. I’m just saying that I think otherkin deserve at least that.
The blind and deaf both have them. Other people might have them as well, I just have had no reason to be informed. Just because we don’t know about them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
To what end, exactly? What would otherkin need with a school, a scholarship, or a “community house”? We’ve already got meetups.
Organizations? What would a serious otherkin organization do? There have been attempts at otherkin organizations in the past which haven’t worked out well at all. There’s a reason why I mentioned safe houses and the war with humans meme. That was espoused by one of the last otherkin organizations who wanted to do “otherkin outreach, support, and education”.
It wouldn’t be just me working on this. The whole reason I mentioned it in the first place was to gauge interest and see who would be willing to help set something up. It would be a group effort, something people can gather together and say ‘Yes, I had some part in this’.
I completely admit that I could not do this by myself but the point isn’t to do it by myself, the point is to create something with people for people.
The problem with getting my friends together is that they are all over the country. I don’t have many friends n the state and the ones that I do have are human and I haven’t told them that I am otherkin yet. They aren’t very close friends, they’re people that I’ve meant through the kink community and only see them through the few gathers I have managed to go to but again, getting to gathers and having the mental energy to deal with them doesn’t often happen for me, so I* haven’t gotten the chance to get close enough to them where I feel comfortable telling the that I am otherkin.
My partner lives about an hour away from me and it takes three hours on busses and they don’t have the money to come and see me when I need them all the time. This isn’t something I expect them to do, I’m not saying they should be at my beck and call but sometimes you need more than support online and having something that some people can go to would be nice. At least to me.
As for where I would set it up, I probably would not do it in my area, I would do research fist and see where there seems to be a large population of otherkin. I would see if there’s interest there for a physical place for them to go to and, if there is, I would start trying to see what I could do. I would start talking to people and seeing what they think should be done and where I should go from that point after I have the research.
It’s not anti-human to want a place to call your own, it’s normal. Again, I feel like you’re holding the word shelter against me when I flat out said that I wasn’t sure that was the word I was looking for, I thought it was but as I’ve mentioned, I’ve not gotten much sleep in the last few days, so my brain is a bit rattled and not working correctly. Outreach program might have been better, community center may ahve been better. There have been suggestions for better words and I am open and willing to accept them.
It’s more than obvious that you have a problem with this idea and that’s fine, you are entitled to yoru opinion, I just think that, if I gave this a go, it could be different than what’s been established in the past. I was just trying to think of something that I thought people could benefit from and use. I’m not trying to be anti-human, I’m not trying to create a revolution, I leave that to other people, I’m just trying to create a safe space where pe9ople can take off the masks they wear and be themselves for a while. That’s it, that’s all. I’m sorry if you interpreted it as anything else but that’s all I want.
I am perfectly willing to admit that maybe ‘shelter’ wasn’t the right word, maybe I should have said community center. At the same time, I think it very much would have been a shelter and no, I don’t think it would ahve just been for runaways. All the people that inspired this? All the people that made me want to start this? Are over twenty one and one of them is over thirty.
If they’re over 21, and especially if they’re 30, and looking for a shelter because they’re otherkin, I’d genuinely have to ask why. Are they still living at home with their parents? Are they incapable of holding down a job, getting an apartment, and living their own lives? What is it, exactly, that they need sheltering from at that age simply due to being otherkin? What’s keeping them from being functional? Because that needs to be addressed, not used as an excuse to shelter and coddle them.
I still maintain that those people need places to go, maybe not shelters but communites outside of the internet, physical spaces that will let them come and exist as themselves, however that may be.
Those are called meetups and gathers, and the community does have them. If there’s not one in their area, it’s not a whole lot of work to start one. Pick a restaurant, advertise that you’re going to hold it, make a reservation for a few more people than RSVPed just in case, and don’t make fools out of yourself in public. Don’t nonconsensually involve others in your spirituality. Keep your conversation private between yourselves and don’t try to go in costume or whatever. It’s that simple.
Your life may not have been fair, life as a whole may not be fair but it’s important not to give up, it’s absolutely necessary not to give up trying.
No one’s saying to give up or to give up trying. I’m saying you need to learn to deal with life being unfair, not run for a “shelter”. Otherkin aren’t being oppressed. We’re not victims. We don’t need shelters.
I’m sorry that you have, I[m sorry that you feel that way but I don’t and I still think it’s a decent idea, even if it’[s just one in one city at first. You never know who might get inspired to start up a nonhuman organization of thier own when they can see that it can be accomplished.
And here we go with nonhuman organizations. I wonder how long “shelter” will take to evolve into “safe houses”?
What gets accomplished by this stuff is an increase in the us-vs-them mentality, the idea that humans are persecuting us, oppressing us, or generally out to get us. That feeds into other paranoia like the idea that there’s going to be some coming future war between otherkin and humans. It never leads to good ends.
And, by the way, there are resources and shelter-type community places for the blind. i know because I spent my summers there until I was out of highschool. The only reason I don’t use those resources now is a personal reason but they do exist.
Ok, one group out of all the groups I listed has their own shelter-type places, apparently. And the others? My point was that all minorities do not have or need “shelters”.
The person who I was refering to has degenerative disc disease. She’s tried holding down jobs before and can’t. Another person can’t because of mental issues. I don’t think I could because of mental and physical issues. All of us have reasons for wanting this, maybe you don’t and that’s fine but don’t assume that we’re just whining.
But gathers are only once a month/every other month/whatever. Sometimes transport doesn’t work out. Sometimes you don’t have the mental or physical energy to deal with it that day, sometimes you just can’t make it. It’s not fair that we are restricted to just those times. We should be able to have a place to go to
I have nothing against humans, I’m dating a human, mmost of my friends have human. My favorite artists and writers are probably human. Humans create wonderful things and I don’t think that just becuase I want an organization, means that I am anti-human. It just means I want the same things that other beings have. You’re right about minorities not being victims but they do have organizations, the blind, the Hispanic, the deaf. Some of them have schools, some of them have meetups, they have scholarships and they have community houses. I’m just saying that I think otherkin deserve at least that.
The blind and deaf both have them. Other people might have them as well, I just have had no reason to be informed. Just because we don’t know about them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Ignoring everything else, maybe the idea being pitched here is more of a community center than a shelter?
Well, that would rely on enough otherkin being inside a single community that such a community center could serve them. Outside of a handful of hot spots…
Like I said, everyone who is the inspiration for this idea is over twenty one physically. I don’t see why people think that it would just be children who need these places.
But yes, something, anything would be better than nothing. Groups, gathrs, community centers that spread in the big cities. I just want to see change and I see no reason why I can’t believe in that.
(Source: tolivealifeinflame)
Ignoring everything else, maybe the idea being pitched here is more of a community center than a shelter?
Well, that would rely on enough otherkin being inside a single community that such a community center could serve them. Outside of a handful of hot spots like the DC…
I am perfectly willing to admit that maybe ‘shelter’ wasn’t the right word, maybe I should have said community center. At the same time, I think it very much would have been a shelter and no, I don’t think it would ahve just been for runaways. All the people that inspired this? All the people that made me want to start this? Are over twenty one and one of them is over thirty.
I still maintain that those people need places to go, maybe not shelters but communites outside of the internet, physical spaces that will let them come and exist as themselves, however that may be. Your life may not have been fair, life as a whole may not be fair but it’s important not to give up, it’s absolutely necessary not to give up trying.
I’m sorry that you have, I[m sorry that you feel that way but I don’t and I still think it’s a decent idea, even if it’[s just one in one city at first. You never know who might get inspired to start up a nonhuman organization of thier own when they can see that it can be accomplished.
And, by the way, there are resources and shelter-type community places for the blind. i know because I spent my summers there until I was out of highschool. The only reason I don’t use those resources now is a personal reason but they do exist.
And I know you’ve said other things but my brain is lagging and I’m sorry I can’t make a better argument but I thought I would get that much out.
(Source: tolivealifeinflame)
