The VICE Guide to Voting - Otherkin

The deciding day of the 2012 election draws near, and as a politically undecided man-dolphin, you're not sure where to cast your vote. Where do the candidates stand on the right to life for demonkin? Where will the sanguinarians align on gay marriage? What say the right and left on punishment for otherkin-hunting Saviors of the Dammed, which, to be clear, is not a real group of people? It's a complicated world, and you may have a fake tail, but you also have a very real vote. So smooth your invisible wings, close the invisible door to the invisible apartment you don't share with your uncle, and focus your elemental soul on this guide.

ENVIRONMENT & ENERGY

You're attuned to nature, not only because the park is the best place for a good LARP, but also because your dysphoric energy pulls, like sweet oil, from a terrestrial source. Obama has run enough oil pipeline to circle the planet once, while Romney claims that's not enough until the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is pumping hot crude into our nation's hungry, hungry hippo mouths. But what happens when you believe that you are an actual hungry hungry hippo, on the inside, and you're charging across Canadian wasteland and trumpeting your amphibious song when you stumble upon that fat pipeline itself? You would try to mate with the pipeline, risking physical and figurative harm. Your picture would get on the internet, again, for humping another thing, again. Better go with Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is actively fighting the sexy pipe and also wants to save your national parks. ROMNEY: 0 OBAMA: 0 STEIN: 1

WEB & CYBERCRIME

The web, which, for the purpose of this argument we will refer to as "the Best Buy behind the mall," is both a typical career path and a common meeting place for otherkin, angelkin, therians and the like. Romney is in favor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which gives the Best Buy behind the mall the power to share with the government facts about your private online information. That includes your visits to the Otherkin Alliance, Otherkin.com's "Dreams and Visions" subforum, and Nocturnus Online's "Make Me a Vampire" subforum, the only place at the Best Buy behind the mall where you can post the request to be turned into a vampire by a vampire who happens to be on the internet. Obama vows to veto CISPA if it hits his desk. Methinks he was turned by a wench in a darker age. ROMNEY: 0 OBAMA: 1 STEIN: 0

CIVIL RIGHTS

As an otherkin, you take the language of oppression from actual subjugated groups and use it to talk about being a secret centaur. Unfortunately for the whole outsider argument, any persecution you have experienced comes mainly from the fact that you have chosen a bullshit way to live your life. The grand scheme against otherkin is entirely fabricated: Theodore Roosevelt was not actually a Savior of the Dammed attacking Spanish otherkin villages; Charlemagne was not a vampire hunter. Fortunately, otherkin can find real affinity with Romney here. The man plays up the fact that his impossibly wealthy father was born in Mexico, implying a life of hardship and conflict not unlike what generations of brave otherkin faced during the Thousand Year Elven Holocaust. In reality, George Romney was coddled in the Mormon colonies, and otherkin were not truly the largest casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg. Extra credit goes to Romney for his commitment to the fantasy: everyone loves a good story, even if it's not true. ROMNEY: 1.5 OBAMA: 0 STEIN: 0

FINAL TALLY: ROMNEY: 1.5 OBAMA: 1 STEIN: 1

It's a tight score with an unsurprising outcome: Otherkin favor the underdog, particularly if that underdog keeps a sexy bitch like Todd Akin beside him on the podium. Romney is a real threat to net neutrality, the environment, and a normal human's concept of civil rights. But he's also the kind of guy who, with a little more free time, could populate an entire Wiki with his theories on the shiftless losers comprising the 47 percent. We get the sense that most members of the GOP, with their ability to weave a narrative, would be clutch at a standard LARP campaign. Can you imagine Bill O'Reilly, stripped to the waist, his voice cracking in a desperate war whoop as he hefts a foam hammer and rushes headlong into a Sunday afternoon battlefield of craft-store chainmaille? The poets will sing his battle cry. This horse race goes to ROMNEY.

@GrayAmelia