Here she blows, that second post of this evening. And, dang, there's still stuff that I'd meant to write about but couldn't fit in. I'll go over it briefly here: more Dreamtime stuff, some other realm that leaks out into reality and causes creatures to become their legendary/mythological equivalents? Such as, foxes become genuine kitsune, tapirs become baku (the difference of which I discussed here,) that kind of thing and heck, people become Windigo. Yaay windigo. (or their Australian wild dog equivalent, win-dingo. Which I'm seriously considering being a genuine thing in this universe.)
Also, this being the 1990s and all, data mining Usenet for heat on supernatural activity. Which has been a plan all along as a major plot point, but hasn't needed to be brought up till now.
I think that's all the backstory needed in order to set up this post.
tangent re: Otherkin
There's a difference between Otherkin and Therianthropes- most people (seem to) use the terms interchangeably (though, ha, to the concept that most people "use the terms" in the first place,) but I believe there is a difference. What that difference is, I've got no clue-- it's more impenetrable than the UK/Britain issue. But I believe there still is a difference.
Otherkin (specifically, "other" kin, as opposed to normal kin like elves) were started in 1990, coined in the Elfinkind Digest which was a mailing list spinoff from the Usenet board alt.pagan; Therians were started based off of a discussion regarding genuinely being werewolves, on the Usenet board alt.horror.werewolves in 1992. Totally a different Usenet board, two whole years apart, and that means there's a difference between the two?
I think so.
ahh! real werewolves
That, the first appearance of "real life" werewolves, I'd like to get into, anyway. I've mentioned before how our popular conception of werewolves is really recent- not quite as recent as our popular conception of zombies, but still within living memory: the whole full moon thing first appearing in 1943's Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. Zombies of course, what, 1968, Romero's Night of the Living Dead? but I think that's different enough from "classical" zombies to warrant counting as a different "race" of beings entirely. (To wit: real zombies really exist(ed). Let that soak in for a minute.) But, modern werewolves are just enough like classical werewolves for me to think, they're the same thing, somethin' hinky's going on with that, and why would there be this shift, what would be a good in-universe justification that could tie into the storyline, I mean.
That reminds me of a story, as I've got in my Mythology Wednesday entry today on my other blog. Lycaon was the first werewolf, right? Changed by Zeus into a wolf/wolfman rather than let his son Arcas be given up as a grisly human sacrifice, it probably makes sense in context. Here comes the science; circumstances that led up to Arcas's near-immolation involve his mother transforming into a bear, and where have I heard that one before...
regarding Australian Aboriginal mythology
The Dreamtime, in traditional Australian Aboriginal beliefs, has, for lack of a better term, different "canon" depending on geographical location (which positively murdered me on my mission trying to do research on Australian mythology.) If they say such-and-such a thing about the Adam and Eve figures in one geographical section of the Outback, then that's the way it really happened, for that section. A different geographical location could have wholly different beliefs about it, and those wouldn't conflict at all. Is the way I understand it. Naturally, it's confusing, but it's a good enough working definition for my purposes. (Ultimately, for the Mythological Characters spreadsheet list, I just put down the figures that everyone had a version of, like the Rainbow Serpent, and just left that as good. If you were at all curious.)
alternate dreamtime timelines
This could actually be pretty alright for us here, in dealing with the precise way that time spent in the Dreamtime (in TTDECBA) alters the reality of the present, a time travel of sorts to a past that never existed. Myths are geographical; depending on the indigenous belief system of your local area, you would step into a totally different myth when attempting to access the Dreamtime. Maybe Book 2 does deal with Madrid and all that, but either way 1992 in this timeline needs to deal with this: transformation into bears dealing with the creation of strigoi, as it (turns out/will turn out) in Madrid; entering into the wrong bear-transformation myth though, and (accidentally?) altering it so that Arcas doesn't get turned into a bear alongside his mother, like the "original" myth claimed; turning it inadvertently into the myth as we have it in our world, which ends in Lycaon becoming the world's first wolfman.
The board alt.horror.werewolves was started to discuss werewolves, but within a year of its founding people started claiming to be werewolves. In TTDECBA, that was Agent Moone's doing, the real world responding immediately to the past being altered as if it had been that way all along.
Trippy.
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