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I know alot of people who are furries and mers, so I have been wondering this same thing myself.
i wouldn't say related, but i would say they're similar; but only in the way that all the alternative communities are. mer, furry, vampire, fae, anime, weeaboo, they're all communities with similarities but not necessarily related.
I've been around 11 years and I'd say for the most part they are different and don't cross over. But that being said, there are always individuals who enjoy both and of course there are similar aspects. Some people get offended when mermaiding it called furry or cosplay. I don't know why lol.
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I think it depends on the individual in either the mer community or furry community. Like you said, people have varying degrees of interest, and there are people who will take things to the extreme side of the spectrum into “alien territory”. Overall, this website’s population has a feel for enjoying swimming, caring for the environment and ocean conservation, performing in costume to entertain children and families, connecting with the Mermaid as a symbolic meaning and representation of who they are in real life (Trans community), and connecting with their inner child’s imagination because they’re never too old to dress up, and they can escape from reality for a bit (another form of escapism from reality would be playing video games, for example). All of that is perfectly fine and normal by a lot of people’s standards.
However, some people, who may not even be registered on MerNetwork, will have more magical, otherworldly thoughts. I’d say that individuals in the mer community and furry community start to look more and more similar to one another when they breach Otherkin territory. This is species dysphoria where people believe they’re not fully human or believe they have the soul of an animal or mythical being. They may report having past life experiences as an extraterrestrial or dragon or feel phantom sensations of robot armor clinking as they move around if they think they’re a robot. These individuals have their own community, the Otherkin community. The Otherkin furries would be more like werewolves or other animals. There aren’t many self-identified merpeople in the Otherkin community; they kind of have their own community, but they’re very similar to each other at this point. You’ll notice a lot of pre-teens and teenagers playing around with that and dabbling into witchcraft like mermaid spells, meditation, and shape shifting. The shape shifting technique was borrowed from the werewolf community and adapted to suit mermaids. If you look up “mermaid shifting”, you’ll see all sorts of websites created by young girls that address this so-called technique to literally become half-fish. You’ll also learn about Kissing Midnight, a witchy young girl who introduced all this, and you might find mentions of a forum website, that no longer exists, called thesirenscove.com that was created by a witchy girl whose mermaid name was Iridessa. She is the same age as me now, 24. I used to follow her on Instagram, and I was a member of that site as a teen. That website was full of young girls (and the rare guy) who thought they had past life connections to Lemuria or Atlantis or Telos, and they made pods that communicated with each other on Facebook, the Kik app, or their own pod website.
I had a huge imagination as a teen and dabbled into all sorts of things, so of course I know about all this. I didn’t call myself an Otherkin, but I was definitely asking some far out questions as a teenager who was trying to discover her identity. I’ve outgrown this teen phase and have my head firmly planted in reality. Even so, I’m still a spiritually-minded person. I’ve become a member of this more grounded site because I have an unusual amount of dreams where I’m a mermaid, there being mermaids apart from me, or about the water element. I guess the mermaid thing somehow stuck. I remember first trying out mermaid spells as an 11 or 12-year-old before I discovered shifting and thesirenscove.com, so this mythological being had always been in my life. I don’t dream about being a mermaid every night, but these dreams are sort of frequent. These dreams just happen while I live my day-to-day life, so it’s not like I’m constantly thinking about and obsessing over mermaids. I actually drifted away from mermaid stuff for several years. When I drifted away from witchcraft and mermaids during that time, in the beginning random strangers would compliment me, saying I looked like a mermaid or a fairy without me saying anything about it first. I believe that was the Law of Attraction in effect. Otherwise, why would a stranger tell me I looked like a mermaid? I wasn’t decked out in seashells or anything. I think the energy I created and surrounded myself with over the years still clung to me. Those specific compliments were a bit painful and tempting for me to revert to my old ways, but then they eventually stopped happening. I’d still get the odd dream, though. My dreams finally inspired me to sign up on this site. Before I signed up on MerNetwork, mermaid dreams were plaguing me like crazy. I want to own a tail to bring my dreams into reality a bit, to feel a fraction of how I feel in my dreams.
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I'm not a furry so I don't think I could accurately answer this question from that angle. What I know about furries is very limited. I don't know how much the otherkin and furry communities overlap, either.
One thing that I think sets our community apart from the furry community (not in a negative way), is the functionality of our tails. Most of us have a tail that is swimmable/usable in water. Like a piece of sports equipment. I'm not aware of a fursuit that allows some kind of extended physical use, but maybe one exists? Maybe there's a fursuit out there that allows the wearer to run faster?
I did notice that a great many fursonas are odd/unnatural colors and/or species combinations. I think that happens in the merfolk community too - unnatural colors, shapes and other combinations. There seems to be some overlap there! Like how there isn't a living highlighter-colored wolf out there, and likewise there's no real fish that has butterfly wings for fins, but both of those things exist in both communities.
An interesting topic to think about!
Hello. I agree it is a interesting topic. Well I only know one furry person a friend of a friend I had met two or maybe three times so i'm in no way expert in furry community even more so because that guy was very discrete about that part of himself, seems like he had a fear of people laughing at him if he explained himself too much because he was a furry and a therian of the same animal (therian is he said to me a term for people like otherkin but of normal earth animals everybody agrees on their existence) so i guess they may be an overlap in communities of furries and merfolk but it seems to me like a distant one but maybe i'm wrong.
Still i see some similarities like various degrees of identification with beings which aren't fully humans that goes from enjoying
cosplay to people who in their view of the world thinks they are that beings be it because of neopaganism or old cultural beliefs, some tendency of both communities to attract people not in gender and sexuality norms and it seems judging by their productions that in both communities they are lot of creative people with a taste for imaginative stuff out of the ordinary for one reason or another of whom at least for the ones i personally hear express themselves in various web media quite a few tends to be big geek enjoying sci-fi and fantasy a lot, that and the thing you say about the taste for unnatural colors...it's kinda punkish and their is something a bit like a "counterculture" feeling that to me at least feel like it's in the atmosphere of the stuff both communities produces. That's was my 50cents on this question.
Ah, “therian”! I forgot that term. I had been using “werewolf” as a substitute. Therianthropy is very, very fascinating and very, very ancient. :) I think your post was spot on and the best post.
I’m amazed and appreciative of everyone’s respectful wording in their posts. You all reply maturely. Despite this site’s community being full of relatively respectful, non-judgmental people from all over the world with a mishmash (and spectrum) of beliefs and non-beliefs, I wrote my post with a slight fear of being judged because I used to hang out with a bunch of Pagan mermaid girls on Kik in the past and got a small taste of Otherkin ideas. I’ve been called weird or unique all my life. I was a very cringey teenager. I’m still a weirdo, but I’m more grounded than I used to be.
I understand your therian friend’s reservations about other’s reactions toward him in an insensitive, critical, or mocking way. If I were in his shoes, I would also keep my ideas to myself or be extremely low-key and vague if I mentioned anything. It’s about being afraid of what other people think and just trying to outwardly blend in with the crowd to evolutionarily survive.
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Ah i don't know for the other members especially since i'm quite new here but as for me at least i think that not a thing to be that much ashamed about i mean teenagers having weird ideas and acting a bit crazy feel like teenagers being teenagers that not exactly breaking news. That being said most mature pagan/otherkin are not that fluffy bunny anymore. The way you phrase it just sound like you got older. That being said even if they still exist which i'm not so sure about because at least as i've heard that trend seemed to be dying out, young girls thinking they may grow a real mermaid fish tail with kitchen-made magic potion may not be very grounded in reality but as far as i heard most of the times their belief are more a way of dreaming like kids love to believe in Santa Claus and does not hurt anyone they may be ridiculous but hey having fun while looking stupid is kinda synonymous with adolescence in my book. At least that was the best way my own adolescence could be summed up. I can't guarantee I and others members will always try and manage to be respectful but i think most of us will do our best even with people who have the most marginal world views.
Interesting, that a bit off-topic but Deviant Art never stop amazing me so many places for underground communities most even i probably never heard about and so many talented artists on that website. Well then ok so they thinks we can be called furries here then? Ok why not, maybe most of us just do not think about it because furries comes from fur and sea creatures don't have fur for most of them but the way you said it that make sense. I don't know if i would feel furry myself because i know next to nothing about furry community besides if we call ourselves part of it but if some merfolk want to be called furries and other furries agree to welcome them in their community i have no objection and i can't think of anyone who would have one.
I definitely see some similarities. When I learned more about the furry community I thought "Hey, this is a lot like the mer community!", lol. What stands out is the identity aspect, people use mersonas or fursonas to create alternate identities for themselves, kind of someone they'd like to be.
Oh please do NOT try to act like kissingmidnight wasn't a complete fool and screwing with everyone's head. You really think that girl was actually physically shifting into a mermaid. I was on 43things since 2005, I hear all and see all and by god I started the werewolf bullcrap on that site. Every single mermaid there acting like they could grow mermaid tails (especially the mermaid princesses and the girl who stole her dads money to meet them) are nothing but jokes and hopefully have realized they wasted their teen years doing this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Calisai
As for furs and mers, yes there is absolutely some furs who are mers and mers who are furs, myself included but I don't believe either community has any sort of significant relation or overlap.
I agree; they were loony toons. I heard that the trend has died. I’m glad. :lol: Also, it’s cool to find another member on this site who’s aware of this. I’ve never been on 43things, only knew about it from some other people referencing it. I think the only good thing that came out of Kissing Midnight was discovering Celtic Woman’s music. Gorgeous singing!Quote:
Originally Posted by Trade Winds
I found this forum because of the furry community. Before I discovered my feelings, I met my fiance who is a furry. The way she describes it is that it feel like part of your soul is Frome something else. That was when I realized my feelings about being a mermaid. I don't know how, but I do feel like a part of me is mermaid.
It sounds outlandish, but there is a possibility of it actually being that way.
Science still doesn't understand the soul. We know that it's facilitated by the brain because you can lose your arm and you're still you. We don't know what happens to souls when a body dies. I'd there an afterlife? Does the soul just die off? Or, does it get reincarnated?
Reincarnation would assume that somewhere out there are biological mer-folk. We haven't explored our own oceans 100% yet, but the chance of it being on this planet are basically none. Then there's the multiverse theory, and that with an infinite universe, there are infinite possibilities, so everything that could possibly happen, even outside of our laws of physics (because other multiverses may have their own unique set) can and does happen... somewhere.
Part of being grounded in reality is being open to possibilities, open to new understandings of the world as they are discovered. It doesn't matter how outlandish it meet feel, that doesn't mean it's not possible.
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