To Dream, Perchance To Soar: a new otherkin novel

[avianthrophile.livejournal.com]

Trigger warnings: none.

Guest reporter Avia/Tsu here, updating with a couple of news posts with waywind's permission.

To Dream, Perchance To Soar is the first published novel by Ashlyn Nafina, known to the otherkin community as ccfeathers. Ashlyn has been writing since childhood, creating a number of stories for her friends inside the community, and this was not her first long story, but, it is her first that had been written and edited for publishing, with the hope that it will reach the otherkin community as well as others who might identify with the metaphor of the story.

Set in an alternate France, the story stars Parisian girl Aile Molyneaux, who has always known she was not complete without wings. When a strange aurora opens in the sky above her home city, and alien visitors, nicknamed les volants ("the flying ones") by the local people, arrive bringing tales of another world, all she can think about is the possibility that magic is really real... and that means she might too be able to become one of les volants.

But transformation is just the beginning of her story, because les volants, known as Ka'aulele in their own musical and magical language, see transformation as more than just a one-time thing. It shapes you and changes you in spiritual ways. And though Aile does not realise it, her desire to transform placed her in the center of a much bigger quest for change... maybe, related to the reason the Ka'aulele are there at all.

The story is deliberately designed to be sympathetic to the feelings of otherkin, while being at the same time an enjoyable spiritual adventure story for young adults and older.

To Dream, Perchance to Soar, nicknamed by its author as "Soar", is 412 pages long and $14.99 in print, available from Lulu (see Sources). An ebook version should be available in about one week from the author's website (see Sources).

Sources

1. http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/to-dream-perchance-to-soar/18725370
2. http://nafina.com/soar/

Swedish newspaper posts otherkin hate joke on their official blog, community suggests protest

[avianthrophile.livejournal.com]

Trigger warnings: joke involving killing children, mocking of otherkin.

After a recent documentary on Swedish TV channel 5 which included interviews with a big cat therian, the idea of "species-change surgery" as a joke apparently has spread around the Swedish blog community.

This ended with a blog belonging to the editorial staff of the “Young people” part of the local Swedish paper Norrköpings Tidningar (NT), posting an article joking about what might happen if species change was possible. It includes a disturbing mention of killing your grandchildren for being different, translated to English here by Swedish member of the otherkin community, Susitar:

I will not be that old, gray and grumpy old woman who harbours contempt and anger towards my grandchild when he acknowledges that he or she during the greater part of his life felt out of place as a human being, but however, has developed a great desire to be an anteater. No, I won’t shake my head or faint. I’ll just sit there, smile, be responsive and serve my grandchild army ants containing a dash of arsenic.

(Bold by Susitar)

Arsenic is a fatal poison.

Susitar is arguing that this is not a responsible thing for the newspaper to do, and gives two contact email addresses to contact the newspaper to complain, webben@nt.se and ungnt@nt.se. The newspaper understands Swedish and English.

Sources

1. http://www.nt.se/bloggar/bloggentry.aspx?blogg=6327692&entry=7242097
2. http://kinspeak.tumblr.com/post/13901940007/funny-joke-about-poisoning-therians-otherkin