For the record, I do NOT identify as an otherkin. I feel the label implies a certain amount of material-realism and an approach to identity that assumes some element of the "kin" identity is objective and somehow "real."

But... I don't think ANY part of identity is real. I'm a pretty radical skeptic there, influenced by drinking too much Mahayana Buddhism and post-structuralist philosophy in college, not to mention the scraps of cogsci I've picked up. From where I'm sitting, this stuff is ALL "added in post," so to speak. Identity, like will, is an illusion brains slap on us to keep us tied together.

That was actually a big reason I started the postfurry thing. Once upon a time, there was a huge war on USENET between the furry "fans" and the furry "lifestylers." (What was that I was sayin' a few toots ago, about the Red Queen's Race?)

And honesty... I didn't like either side's approach. Most people on *both* sides were nice people, but the people who were normative about "Furry Is Just A Goddamn Hobby" were narrow-minded pseudo-rationalist jerks. They were the sort of people who (literally, this was a real conversation) thought that skydivers and people who got visible tattoos were almost as "crazy" as lifestylers, because anything that risked your career, health, or finances was literally insane.

And I tried to flee to the "lifestyler" side, but it seemed like they were far more interested in creating emotional support cliques than actually *discussing* the wild philosophical implications of what they believe. They took an approach of "Yes! Yes, of COURSE you're a fox!" and supported each other totally uncritically, and their quiet hostility and indifference when I tried to raise serious, respectful questions about that— and about what "real" actually MEANS— drove me off.

Honestly? Really honestly? I feel the same way about my friends' statements like "I'm really, really truly a $SPECIES" or "I know deep down my soul is really from $WORLD" that I do about Anthracite doing sigil magic and stuff. My own personal belief is that it has ~0% *direct* impact on the actual physical, noumenal world... and 100% potential impact on the ACTUAL thing humans call the "real" world, because that's mostly a fake symbolic overly over an imperceptible cloud of atoms and superstrings and neurons and shit that WE WILL NEVER SEE ANYHOW, and constantly forget even our tiny glimpses of.

So, yeah. Um... you're probably not "really" a fox. You're probably not "really" from the Magical Realm of Zikkizots. But that's okay, because that person you thought you were before you were those things was ALSO totally fake. You have no idea what you "actually" are, because your brain just... doesn't work that way. You would go mad.

Isn't that reassuring? *big old friendly and totally not reassuring tiger grin*

@zebratron2084 I mean, to me, it's very much a matter of layers of realness in the end (which I tried to get at in my post last night, while admittedly also pretty drunk and redrafting things several times to avoid going full Pepe Silvia on y'all); identity and free will are about as real as money is, or borders, or really pretty much any other meaning we've assigned to the constellations of matter and energy we encounter in our daily lives. They aren't real in the sense of having a distinct set of atoms bound to them, but in the sense of having a greater impact on the way we experience and interact with the world? In making a noticeable difference in the way the overall timeline goes, however subtly? Yeah, they're real as fuck. We're capable of experiencing reality on a level beyond simply locating particular sets of atoms that may be useful in continuing our existence; we can dream shit up from whole cloth, and build what we dream up in those weird meat brains of ours in the real world, be that physically or simply through sharing those abstract experiences with others.

And frankly, that's real enough to me.