So thanks to this image I discovered a whole new world where people identify as a plant....



So I feel like this brings a whole new perspective to me! I'm not sure I understand but I think it's very interesting (and a bit cool too) .

From what I've read it's species dysmorphia where people truly feel like a different species. What do you guys think? Will chime in more later when not on phone .

The Tumblr post might be invoking Poe's Law.

That said, while I'm not a Jungian psychologist, I'm quite a fan. A lot of what goes on in our minds are symbols. We personify the planets into wandering deities (Mercury, Venus, Mars--all Roman deities, and were thought so by early astronomers, hence the naming. I picked that up from an episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos.)

We personify animals with fables, deify animals with totems, even aspire to take on animalistic characteristics as with berserker warriors and ulfhedinn warriors (which respective refer to bears and wolves, and this might echo somewhat with sports team logos/mascots if team members even nascently identify as the animal of choice), werewolves and kitsune.

We personify plants into philanthropists and dryads:



(Dude, you are trying to marry a tree! She's just not that into you!)

And, in doing so, we activate some trait within ourselves that we then identify as planetary, bestial, or arboreal.

We remain fully human, but the language some people adopt for human experience becomes foreign as they delve deeper into the symbols...so, I try not to interfere until that very attitude begins to interfere.

I don't like cut flowers, either. They're just not as useful as potted herbs, and I do try to be intuitively sensitive to plants with shmooshed-up roots because they don't grow properly. Every living thing can under-perform in conditions unsuitable to them. If the way that somebody else notices that is articulated by, "I know because I am a plant" then I'd still try to see what they really mean rather than take it literally, and try to meet them where they are in the symbolic language that they speak.

Wow that song was amazing! I love it!!

I can't stop listening to it. Do you know more like this?!

Bunny (12:23am Fri, Aug  8, 2014)

Wow that song was amazing! I love it!!

Bunny (03:00am Sat, Aug  9, 2014)

I can't stop listening to it. Do you know more like this?!

Erutan's debut album can be found on Loudr and Bandcamp. Will o' The Wisp is my favorite song on the album! (That has words, that is. Raindancer, the sort of choral/instrumental/sound-effects arrangement that gives the album its title, is my favorite instrumental.)

I also like quite a few tracks from Emilie Autumn's Enchant era, before she got all goth rocker. "What If" and "Across the Sky" are what I'd recommend from there.

The former might actually be relevant to the topic, actually, so...

I'm happy to be the one to say that curiousplantkin was a troll blog, and the owner came out and admitted it herself, though there was heavy speculation even before she did.

There are actually people who identify as plants, though, just... most of them probably don't go screaming it to the world like so many young adults seem to be doing these days.

There's a lot of stuff like this going on on tumblr right now, and sometimes it's hard to tell who's serious and who isn't, though for the most part, constant mentions of PTSD from hate mail and self-diagnosed serious medical conditions are a huge tell-tale.

Was that tumblr post serious? I actually can't tell haha. I'm not quite sure there is evidence enough to support plants as being sentient beings. Anyways, I heard somewhere that plankton (along with a very small list of other living things) are actually half plant, half animal. Which I think is really cool, in a way, it almost makes them genetically superior. I could be wrong though, anyone feel free to chime in if they know better than I.

Aww that makes me so sad that it was a trollblog .

Are you saying those who actually have it end up with PTSD sort of deal or that those who don't have it do? I'd think if you were doing it in fun people's hatemail wouldn't affect you so much.

Personally, I feel that anyone and everyone's identity is totally valid, regardless of how silly it may seem to me.

Most otherkin actually do not feel that they're a different species or meant to be a different species. Their kintype is simply something that's part of their identity, or sometimes even something they believe they were in a past life.

Unfortunately, due to troll blogs on Tumblr and other social media, a lot of people seem to think that every otherkin being is absolutely outrageous and thinks they're actually a wolf in disguise (which certainly isn't something I'd even frown upon - it's no one else's business - but is looked at as pretty strange through the lens of the societal norm) and so a lot of people think it's silly.

What do you mean by "part of their identity" as opposed to believing they are another species?

Not wa-very here, but I'll chime in with basically if somebody's -kin identity gets in the way of their being functional human beings in society, then they've got a problem that they're turning into a problem for other people. A person can be free to think of their soul as a rose or whatever, hey, even should be free to do so. But when they're filling out the census, they're human; when they're pursuing an education and career, they're human; dieting, banking, using language...etcetera. So, that -kin self becomes a part. Oak Tree isn't a race or a profession, and our bodies aren't autotrophic, so--there's the interaction with the rest of the world that turns the kin self into a part.

Right so all I am hearing from that is that it's fantasy based on a feeling of "connection" with a certain thing/species.