Blossoms after Winter

[jarandhel]

Three years ago, I wrote an essay entitled "Change is Coming". In it, I talked about the otherkin community changing, and about how we needed to work in order to bring about a beneficial change. On the whole it was met fairly positively, but I was also told by several people that it felt hopeless. That they were only one person, and that it was nearly impossible to significantly influence the community at this point with so many conflicting voices present in it. I disagreed, and have been working over the years to exert my own influence on the community in small but, I believe, important ways. Hoping that others will adopt my ideas and allow them to spread.

It looks like it's working...

Comments

[jolantru.livejournal.com]

Cool. :)

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Yeah. :)

[lupabitch.livejournal.com]

See, I thought "Kin to the Other" was absolutely brilliant. I think part of the effectiveness of transmission is that you aren't dogmatic about things; you merely make good suggestions in a sensible manner.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* I'm not that concerned by the assertion that some people see it as "holier than thou" (which I suspect may have been a private opinion by the author, but really doesn't matter either way)... from my point of view, the important aspect of the link is the fact that my reformulation is being used "in the wild", so to speak. And the evidence seems to be mounting that it is: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070207080733AAAwDOy

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

Congrats Jarin--you Have, Indeed, Made It :D

(And in all seriousness, it's good that the meme is getting out :D)

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Shoot, we knew that when I got my own Encyclopedia Dramatica entry linked directly from the Otherkin entry. ;-)

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

Change is happening. The flake factor has gone down, and the quality of folks has gone up. Those of us who have been in the community a long time are growing older and maturing, and Rialian has done and continues to do quality control, ejecting those who need to be ejected and making asshats unwelcome.

I can only speak for my local area, but the changes I've seen since 1998 are very good indeed.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'd entirely agree, though I hope that is the direction it will go in, given enough time. For my part, I still see the flake factor as pretty high, even if some of those flakes have "flaked" off into subcommunities of their own. And unfortunately, so have a lot of the better older folks. I will say that we seem to be attracting a good crop of new people, generally, so I'm hopeful that the latter trend will reverse itself as we reach a critical mass of quality individuals. I'll also grant the growing older part, and in some cases maturing. In some cases, unfortunately, the opposite seems to be happening. There are a few people I once considered very high quality who I now consider flakes, and it's not because I reconsidered things in retrospect it's because they actually have changed over the years. Haven't figured out what's causing that just yet, but I am giving it thought.

As for Ri, I love him and I think he's done some great work over the years. But he only polices his lists and his gathers, not the community at large. (As it should be.) I think he's made a larger contribution to the community at large by contributing his ideas, his point of view, and influencing the choices others make through his words and actions. I would hope that more people start to take that as an example.

[lyssabard.livejournal.com]

Fantastic essay. Just what I needed to read.


--I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
Job 30:29 KJB

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

*grins* Glad you liked. :)