Hi my name is oldwolf and I would like to ask: what rules does your pack have? And where is your pack located?
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my 'pack' is really just my friends and family. And my dog . I live in a really boring town, with no other therians. No spiritual groups, no wiccans, no psychic vamps, nothing. In fact as i am not even sure i am a therian, I just sort of view my little group as a pack. no rules specifically
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I don't have a pack; you will probably find that many therians either can't find a pack or don't want to be in one. I certainly wouldn't be up for hanging with a group of strangers just because they said they were a 'pack' of therians.
The only pack I really have is a sort of 'mental' pack which comes from being a wolf therian - although even that is subject to change all the time as people come into and out of my life. At the moment that 'mental pack' contains relatively few people and I have discovered I'm happier that way; trusting too many people is really a recipe for disaster.
You're asking a moot question too to be honest - a lot of people answering with a set of 'pack rules' are likely to be 'teen werewolves' who are only in it because they think it's cool and rebellious. But I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of therians won't be in a pack, and those that are probably don't have very strict rules.
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ShadyHowl wrote:
I don't have a pack; you will probably find that many therians either can't find a pack or don't want to be in one. I certainly wouldn't be up for hanging with a group of strangers just because they said they were a 'pack' of therians.
The only pack I really have is a sort of 'mental' pack which comes from being a wolf therian - although even that is subject to change all the time as people come into and out of my life. At the moment that 'mental pack' contains relatively few people and I have discovered I'm happier that way; trusting too many people is really a recipe for disaster.
You're asking a moot question too to be honest - a lot of people answering with a set of 'pack rules' are likely to be 'teen werewolves' who are only in it because they think it's cool and rebellious. But I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of therians won't be in a pack, and those that are probably don't have very strict rules.
AH HA HA HA HA.....freaking "teen werewolves" give me a break....those kids give Wolves like is a BAD name....
And, I kind of agree....I would like to actually physically meet another Wolf like me...but I also live in a boring town...full of rude drunks. But I agree that I'm not just goin to be-friend anyone who claims to be Wolf...there's a lot of things that they'd have to tlk to me about.
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Only pack I have are my three dogs. Only thing I ask of them is to be nice and listen to my commands loyally. Pretty simple. I wish I had a pack here in Wisconsin but I guess there aren't that many of us here willing to come out of the bush to form one.
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(Wow, I'm suprised no one commented on here about their pack, just people saying they do't have a pack.)
My pack has about 20 members (I personally kinda hope that number will go down a little) and we are a pack over the internet, since we're too young to move anywhere yet. (No we're not "teen werewolves", I don't like those people either, I feel that I am and always have been a wolf on the inside, none of my packmates are roleplayers or people that just think they need to label themselves an animal. We are true wolves and dragons and such.) I don't think we really have any set rules, but we kicked out some members for being inactive or getting in trouble. There was a liar in our pack named Blaze and he's probably gone now. We basically just don't want any liars or any type of trouble-makers in our pack. There used to be a perv and player named Ven, who is probably also a liar, and thank Mother Earth he's gone.
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One rule, if any at all: And it not be stupid, Do as thou wilt.
Strangely enough, as a hedonist, a follower of Plato's concept of The Good, and a Deist, that's actually pretty much what I follow with my own personal morals.
Edit: of course, part of the better point here is that you don't need a pack, packs don't need rules, and they don't need anyone like an Alpha to make or enforce them. In short, don't worry about it.
Last edited by SherlawkDragon (2012-02-25 19:58:29)
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Rules are silly.. but so are "Online Packs".. I don't believe that a functional and loving pack can be formed online when its rarely formed through years of physical communications between wolf therians..
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yotin wrote:
Rules are silly.. but so are "Online Packs".. I don't believe that a functional and loving pack can be formed online when its rarely formed through years of physical communications between wolf therians..
Yep, I agree....."Online Packs" are just a waste of time. We Wolves are social creatures and we need that physical contact, so a bunch of words on a screen won't fulfill that need we have. Plus the young bloods that are just becoming aware, need a lot of guidance, and I can promise you that they need more then just a "forum pack"
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Yeah. That's what worries me. What they're getting on some of these forums - even well known, established forums, is pretty bad stuff.
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well.. considering the number of people who role-play and/or troll on these forums its not very surprising..
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WolfVanZandt wrote:
Yeah. That's what worries me. What they're getting on some of these forums - even well known, established forums, is pretty bad stuff.
In what way do you consider that a threat? Btw, the link to your website is dead.
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Hmmm.....It opened alright for me. It's....
http://theriantimeline.com
It's a threat because, when Weres need information about Weres, they need it about Weres, not about people who think they're Weres (or not) and just want a place they can feel like an expert on matters. Bad information (such as "ammonia and clorox makes a good cleaner", to take a more general example) can hurt you.
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WolfVanZandt wrote:
Hmmm.....It opened alright for me. It's....
http://theriantimeline.com
It's a threat because, when Weres need information about Weres, they need it about Weres, not about people who think they're Weres (or not) and just want a place they can feel like an expert on matters. Bad information (such as "ammonia and clorox makes a good cleaner", to take a more general example) can hurt you.
Interesting. The link next to your name didn't work for me but the one you posted did. Probably something on my end though. I agree that information can be innacurate or dangerous, but in my experience on AHWW it seemed that there was a mind set that if you wern't a Real Were[tm], you must be either a role player or troll. Case in point: Jure Sah aka DustWolf. He was ridiculed from the get-go because he made some audacious claims: physical shifts, and sex with animals. While I'm not advocating a belief in so-called "p-shifting", or bestiality, his experience while differing from perhaps the rest of the few people still posting there was, in my opinion, valid. And here's where it gets sticky; I think that in seeking a wider acceptance from the mundane world some weres have tried to get an accepted boilerplate veiw that one must subscribe to in order to "fit in". I reject that. Reality is subjective in nature. Especially with regard to something that resists scientific measurement and analysis. So to me: all veiwpoints have some validity. And the last thing I want to do is browbeat some poor kid with a bullet point list telling them why their feelings are invalid, or worse; rediculous.
No offense
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Reality is neither subjective or objective - those are psychological terms. If you look at nature as a subject, then it's subjective; if you look at it as an object, then it's objective. In point of fact, it's just "out there". If you mean that reality accommodates itself to our thoughts and desires, too much happens to people that they would rather didn't happen for that to be a possibility. Nature really doesn't care what we think; re hurricanes like Katrina.
"Good" rollplayers will emulate the discussions going on in a forum. They will watch for a while and when they pick up on the timbre of the conversation they will then try to fit in, but unless they have lived as a Were, they're still not going to know what they're talking about when they talk about therianthropy and the advice they give (and many of them end up giving lots of advice because they all want to be experts).
Another problem is that we need to interact with the larger human community, but the image they get of Weres when they go onto a Were site will be corrupted by all the nonWeres on there.
I don't browbeat people but I might well confront them about their claims or probe them about their beliefs.
My emphasis has been for the Were community to move into Real Life. It was understandable that we started on the Internet but we're not an Internet phenomenon. We exist offline. My first emphasis was offline meetings - Howls. I think that's served its purpose. There are Were communities forming all over the place from small "werehouses" to large Were communities. Offline, you get a chance to see what Weres "look like" and then the online roleplayers become fairly evident. Also you don't see many of the posers offline. It looks as though they tend to be an online phenomenon.
There are actually a lot of problems with nonWeres making the claim that they're Were. The ones above are the major ones. But there are others. It trivializes the life experiences of people who have lived with it from birth. I've heard people argue like bears that taking on other ethnic groups' folkways and lifestyles is a bad thing to do but the same people have no problem at all with nonWeres appropriating Were lifestyles (I actually don't but claiming to be Were when you're not in a context where it would be difficult to detect goes way beyond that.)
Again, it's just not healthy for people to live their lives in fantasy.
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I'd say reality is personally subjective but consensually less so. And its origins are philosophical, not psychological which developed as a science much later. I wont address the issues you brought up in defense which have nothing to do with my core assertion: an individuals self-assesment of his own "wereness" is by its own nature valid. And as far as winning over the 'Human Community"? Thats an excercise in futility dependent upon the larger culture one finds onself in. Native American culture? Sure, their traditions explain it via the "skinwalker" concept. You're fighting a pop-culture iconography based on what hollywood has presented to us in America, and Europe. Things are changing, slowly. I prefer the "heroic" version of the were mythos as opposed to the common veiw of a simple minded raging monster.
Oh, and I didn't mean *you* specifically with the "browbeating" comment. Its just that I find it irritating to see a preconcieved metric applied to folks who claim to be were-anything. I don't think theres a 'one-size-fits-all' when it comes to our feeble attempts to understand what seems to be a commonality.
As far as offline vs online communication: I think you're raising the bar a bit high here. My reasoning: as a society, people are moving more towards a digital connectivity due to financial pressures, time management pressures and the demands of work. Its a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to skype than it is to fly off to somewhere to do some face time. Further, look at kids nowadays. When you see a bunch of them hanging out they're all staring at screens! "Who are you talking to?"
"Oh, that guy at that table over there."
We're evolving in a lot of ways. Btw, Ive gotten a better sense of where you're coming from after perusing your website
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Perception of reality (not reality) is subjective.
I didn't take offense. I was just explaining my stance on your question as to why I considered it a threat.
We're going in ways that don't work. There's no such thing as a cybercommunity. I agree that we're moving toward a digitally connected society. That's pretty scary. We're already way too separated from nature (and from reality). that's just one more nail in our coffin. What you're calling "evolving" is domestication. Domesticated colonies are biological dead ends. Just because the species is moving in a particular direction doesn't make it good. Lemmings move in a single direction also. Of course, it does serve to thin out the population - maybe it is good news after all.
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It would be nice to meet an irl community once in a while, but lack of money and transportation forbids it. I do however have a friend 30 miles away whose therian and I meet him occasionally.
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lupinealchemist wrote:
It would be nice to meet an irl community once in a while, but lack of money and transportation forbids it. I do however have a friend 30 miles away whose therian and I meet him occasionally.
My point exactly. If its more than a two hour drive its just not going to happen.
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Snuhwolf wrote:
lupinealchemist wrote:
It would be nice to meet an irl community once in a while, but lack of money and transportation forbids it. I do however have a friend 30 miles away whose therian and I meet him occasionally.
My point exactly. If its more than a two hour drive its just not going to happen.
I do however agree that irl contact is a lot more reliable in information than online, but what can you do?
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The nearest Therian contact for me is at least 3 1/2 hours away. The Howl is about a 4 hour drive. My closest Therian friends live about 7 and 26 hours drive away.
I know that there are very young people and people who have disabilities that have very limited range of travel but as you get older, you make your own opportunities and if you want something bad enough, you find a way.
One may be satisfied with contacts on the Internet but there is no substitute for real life interaction. And there is no Internet community - unless you count cyberentities. Real humans can't "commune" via the Internet - you don't even have a way of actually identifying the people you interact with.
One Therian friend who lives close by is a blessing.
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You seem to have some trust issues. Thats where the ability to vouch for someone comes in. I could invoke the names of some better known weres in my instance. If you doubt my veracity, ask these gentlemen: Wanderer Werewolf of Texas, and Smash, of California. Oh, and my cousin is Kamatu, from New Jersey. Might be an indication of some genetic cause for wereness. It seems a bit ironic to dismiss the very medium which we're using right now. Another thought: we're way off topic here. Care to tell me why you came to the conclusion you did concerning your own self-identification? I'm not in any way suggesting you're not what you claim to be. I'm just interested in a more succinct version than that which is on your website.
Last edited by Snuhwolf (2012-07-31 12:47:27)
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The best "indicator" I have ever heard concerning therianthropy is that, when you hear about it, your life suddenly makes sense. What I am is pervasive (just like being human pervades a human's life) and it's difficult to give a full exposition of why you identify as you do. I have a phantom body. I have many physical commonalities with other Weres I know in real life. I dream as a wolf or a werewolf. I am very uncomfortable in the company of Mainstreamers (primarily because of the life games that are so natural to them) and I have always been very comfortable (to the point of relief) in the company of other Weres. And on and on.
I honestly don't doubt that you are what you say you are (nor would it surprise me if you weren't). I'm actually talking about the Internet, not you. I've heard of Smash and Kamatu, and, I think, Wanderer, but I don't know them. The problem is that, even if I were to ask them about you, you (the person I'm conversing with right now), might not even be the Snuhwolf that they know. I would feel much more certain about you if you were someone I knew offline. You would then take on a more "solid" reality for me.
The bigger problem would be that, regardless of what I know about you from the Internet, the kinds of interaction needed for community building - interpersonal bonds, require the kind of physical interaction that doesn't happen over the Internet - nonverbal interaction and interpersonal work.
But you are correct. I don't trust the Internet. Humanity has domesticated themselves to their technology and their technology is no where reliable enough to relegate the survival of the human race to it. I don't dismiss the Internet as a resource - it's just not community. It's good for what it's good for. But it's a long shot from the kind of connection to nature that most Weres I know make a centerpiece of their lives. It's the very antithesis of nature. If you're living in the Internet, you are absolutely not living in nature. Technology is good but only if you keep firmly in mind the dangers inherent in it.
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I tend to take people at 'face value' until such time as I deem necessary to rescind my trust. And I extend that to online relationships. Mainly because I try and maintain contact with people for long periods of time. I'm really suprized you hav'nt crossed paths with Smash. My impression from your website is that you've been involved with weres online for quite a while. Heres an article he wrote about 'howls'.
http://www.lycanthrope.net/index.php?op … atest-news
The more I think about it, I seem to remember you posting a few times on AHWW. Don't you have some buisness relationship with a campground? I'm probably mistaken though.
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