a-minke-whales-tale - Tumblr blog

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instructional booklet for basal and listless ceteceans feeling like looking for porpoise

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I often wish I could have a little calf of my own. I love seeing the mother down below. Happy mother and calf.

Beautiful diving whale

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A helpful reference

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Monofin Shape

Since the current monofin I have is unfortunately not suitable for me due to the shape of my feet. I will have to create a new one, this is something I did plan to do eventually though it was not my expectation to do it so soon.

Using OpenRocket I have created a rough design. This program does not well calculate stability in non axisymmetric systems so I have used three fins in this example in both the flippers and flukes, though obviously in a suit version this would not be the case.

In such a design the total suit would be roughly 3000 millimeters in length with my arms in the flippers (the forward fins). My width currently is roughly 380mm, though this may evolve as my body does, which stays fairly constant to my thighs narrowing to around 280mm at the ankles. Also due to the thickness of my arms, the base of my flippers will likely have to be around 120mm thick.

This does conform fairly closely to the shape of a minke body. In this example my flippers are a bit too long, flukes a bit too big. These could probably be explained some amount by genetic variation or something. Though it should be noted that this whale I am comparing against is a dwarf minke whale, and not a common minke whale, which I believe is still the same species but a different subspecies. Unfortunately great pictures of north atlantic common minke whales seem to not be available outside of breaching pictures. The main difference in the planforms between my rough approximation is that the tail would not narrow at a quite enough rate.

In addition this, human bodies are broad and flat (though I do at the moment have a substantial stomach, thanks antipsychotics), but this will matter particularly in the tail/peduncle. In order to allow sufficient moment to perform a dolphin kick the skin cannot be particularly thick and so in that area will form a generally wide flat area rather than a narrow rather vertical orientation in the peduncle.

How then does this current concept compare with the monofin I currently own. The current monofin is roughly 800mm long and a similar width.

Her size is roughly the same. This current loose model stands roughly 800mm long and roughly 1000mm wide. The shape however is considerably different. The new concept would stand on a peduncle instead of this rough triangle shape.

This will create some differences in behaviour. This monofin due to the thinness throughout the fin flows well and continues the undulating movement, thus making it really quite easy to use. The Dol-Fin is closer to the design I wish to produce. This part does requite much more technique from the hips than the current monofin, but I am a whale and I dont think I really swim with my knees regardless kicking with only my knees really didnt make sense to me when I swim with a monofin. But there is a notable difference between my concept and the Dol-Fin, namely that mine will sit on a peduncle rather than being directly attached. Provided then the peduncle has sufficient flexibility it should continue my movements as I swim essentially extending the dolphin kick wave of my body.

How to actually construct and design the fin will be the next topic of discussion. I will probably write on that either later tonight or tomorrow.

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Antipsychotic Rationing

Back in December I started rationing my antipsychotics. Just a small amount going from 8mg to 6mg. The humans were not consistent at getting me my meds and I had burned through a buffer of antipsychotics medication. But they keep doing it. Not having it ready or available, having to get it each month instead of every few months. They've burned through my buffer again, and it is just really hard to trust that they will actually always have my medicines, and they wont help me to build up a new buffer.

I do not trust the humans already, and I do not like my medicine, but I know it helps to keep my body human and let me be useful to the humans. I do not like my medicine but if I do not take it I hurt very badly and rapidly become lizard again covered in scales. When I run out of medicine it is very bad and I do not want to hurt and I do not want to be locked away in the hospital again.

I have had to further ration my medicine to 4mg, I cannot trust the humans to make sure they always have pills so I do not hurt. It has been a few days since I reduced my dose. So far I have not noticed any further effects; I am sick though so some of the symptoms may be from the reduction. When I reduced to six mg I did have hallucinations return through, just little ones, plus some encounters with spirits which the humans would probably call a big hallucination. Each month I do this I build up two weeks of buffer. If I can manage for a year then I would have six months of buffer which I would be comfortable with.

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Zoanthropy

I miss the times back when I was a lizard. I miss my scales, my tail, my flicking tongue. I miss skittering on all fours. I miss being silent, vocalizations are still quite uncomfortable. At times, and despite it being the topic of many nightmares, and a constant fear of an inevitable damnation, I miss the hospitals. When I could not always understand human language, how the humans would handle me since we had effectively no way to communicate the more detailed things humans want. I might have looked like a human to them, but to me I did not. And to the humans I could not be interacted with as most humans are. I was animal in human shaped body.

The humans of course took that away. It was inconvenient for them. I was not useful. They tried to destroy the lizard. Put me on those awful medicines that twisted me into a human so I can be useful to them. I will not ever be tolerated as a lizard, I have to play a human for them, be useful to them, so hopefully they do not hurt me.

Maybe someday I can be lizard again. And even when it is time to leave my life on my own and be locked away in a hospital again, maybe it will not be so bad. Maybe somehow I can be lizard again.

And for a little bit maybe I can escape the humans as a whale. A little time to swim free. I will never really be able to escape human captivity. I will never be a candidate for "wild release". And it is hard to imagine the humans would ever tolerate me as an animal like I was. Just try to be useful to the humans and maybe things will be okay.

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This is the ideal male body. You may not like it but this is peak performance. (Also basically the ideal female body since minke are not particularly dimorphic except some mammary slits)

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Here it finally is, the full cetacean eye colour info sheet! A long time coming, and an even longer time in the making. I hope that all you cetacean eye curious people will find this one as fascinating as the killer whale eye colour post. It’s a wild world out there! 

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I relate to this some as well. The sea is rarely so clear, the ground always close that prevents you from really getting to a depth that is comfortable and natural to swim at, walls trap you on the sides instead of infinite blue, your body doesnt hold its breath well enough (yet) that by the time you do get to the bottom where it is comfortable to swim you very soon have to come back up for air, and as you do you must contort your body as your blowholes are not at the top of your head shielded by a little ridge but low on your face, pointing downwards into the water, your form is inefficient, full of friction against the water.

not a lot of merfolk on here talk abt how unfulfilling it is to swim in pools, to me at least, its never deep enough, the waters too clear, the chlorine stings my eyes too much.

Of course I don't live near a beach, (i.e, dont live in a walking/short drive distance from the beach. I live about 3 hours away from one.) But its always so unfulfilling to swim in pools to me, a part of it being just in a human body, the other part is that i feel trapped where i should belong.

(also to me, i love swimming in lakes, so thats much better. But i dont live near too many lakes, either.)

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Bad feet and whale tails

I ordered a larger monofin from mermaid lucia, and it is longer but not wider, so it manages to be both too long and too narrow at the same time. It might be worse even than the previous fin. I will go to the shop or something to try to get something wider I can force into the pocket to attempt to stretch it. Unfortunately though, I think commercial fins may simply not be an option. I guess this should not have been a surprise given the struggle I have in getting properly fitting shoes my whole life because no one believes people with wide feet exist. Still it is extremely frustrating especially I have now put around 600 euro into this nonsense and honestly still cannot swim.

I did plan to make my own whale flukes through the whole process, though admittedly I figured it would be another year before I tried to make my own flukes. So now I guess I have to try to figure out how to do that sooner than I was hoping.

Ugh

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I have schizophrenia, and among the symptoms I had was clinical zooanthropy, the more generalized form of clinical lycanthropy. I would turn into an asian water monitor lizard. From my view it was extremely real, the way your body can change in such a moment. The shifts I have now really cannot compare to the intensity, and fear, in such a moment.

It took me a long time, even while in the therian community, to accept the label therian, or feel I was allowed to call myself a therian. In my mind I lacked that spiritual or psychological connection and really was simply mad, a lunatic who believed she was an animal.

I do call myself therian now, and thanks to the gift from a spirit I can even really shift again since the medicine stole that from me and locked my body human, but often when talking about those experiences, and even I have done it here, I feel compelled to put things in context or in reference to that schizophrenia. The experience being a lizard I feel the need to endlessly preface that I "understand it was not physical", that with spirits I used to see that I "know" they were hallucinations, and I have difficulty even discussing more recent encounters with spirits because I have to acknowledge them as not real, because to do so otherwise would only invite the ire of the humans as I would be "delusional".

There are many many ways to experience therianthropy, it is a deeply personal experience, and there is no true correct way to experience therianthropy. Given some theories regarding the evolutionary development of schizophrenia as important in early human spirituality and the prevalence of therianthropic beliefs and transformation in "primitive" belief systems. It is possible that "psychotic" people have been therians possibly before even the existence of homo sapiens sapiens (schizophrenia 60.000-200.000YA, homo sapiens sapiens 90.000-160.000YA). We should not view psychosis or clinical lycanthropy/zooanthropy as an incorrect way of experiencing therianthropy, but simply one of many ways of experiencing this wonderful phenomenon.

This is a bit of an unhappy post regarding our communtiy & tiktok.

Whilst scrolling on my FYP, I came across a video in which a therian was talking about 'lycanthropy', as they worded it. It essentially was something like "Is your therianthropy showing too many signs of lycanthropy?" and then the next slide said "Get help as fast as you can!"

While misinformed and just downright odd, that's not what got me.

The caption said "Therianthropy should NEVER show signs of lycanthropy." There weren't many comments, but the few that were there were clearly young members of our communtiy being TERRIFIED of the idea. "I get prey drive sometimes, but it's not bad.. (that's lycanthropy..)"

Obviously I won't post screenshots because they're identifying and this user is potentially just misinformed.

Not only is this kind of thing incorrect and scaring newly awakened beings, it's also erasing an ENTIRE part if our community and placing further stigma on, for example, endels and psychotic beings who identify with the therian label. It's 'othering' those who experience strong instincts and animalistic urges. It's downright seperating an already small community.

What about those of us who physically identify as animals? What about those of us who feel nonphysically, but still wish to call themselves that animal? Tearing apart an already small and othered community just because YOU don't feel that way and then spreading misinformation is downright wrong and harmful.

This rhetoric needs to stop. It's not helping anyone. We all belong here. We all have our rightful place in this community, whether it's more aligned with the human side or the animal side. We all belong, no matter how you experience your otherkinity or therianthropy.

We're a community. Act like it. Don't cast out your physically identifying or otherwise nonhuman siblings like this.

All of us, physically identifying or not, see what you're doing. We see the erasure and we will not stand for that.

if i got something wrong in this post, please feel free to correct me. reblogs and additions to this are more than welcome

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Hydrodynamic Stability

One thing I am particularly interested in is this idea of hydrodynamic stability. That is as a cetacean swims, is the center of pressure, the point through which all hydrodynamic forces can be said to act, behind our center of mass. This would make us inherently stable. It is likely that this is the case as without it anytime we were not actively steering we would become upset, turn sideways, and effectively stop. This would be very inefficient especially migrating, but it would allow for significantly increased maneuverability. Delphinidae in particular tend to have large dorsal fins which are further up on the body compared to minke, fin, and brydes whales, the only mysticetes with proper dorsal fins. This would make sense as rorquals, which the three above belong to, tend to lunge feed and so do not require the speed or accuracy of the dolphins and porpoises.

I was curious about the ability to model this simply. There are a number of programs which can calculate the center of pressure, among them open rocket. However when simulated the center of pressure is always forward of the center of mass, making the system unstable.

There are a couple parts to this though. This program does not well allow differentiation between center of pressure points on the horizontal axis versus the vertical. If the number of fins on the aft is increased to four, thus allowing equal stability in both horizontal and vertical direction, the center of pressure is comfortably aft of the center of gravity.

There are of course limitations to this program, the most basic of which is whales do not have a circular cross section, this is especially true in the peduncle of the whale. Our bodies are instead taller than they are thin which cannot really effectively be simulated here.

However, just looking at the shape of the flukes then, how do minke whales help balance this? One thing to note is when actively traveling, the flippers are normally held at 45 degrees or even lower. This helps provide additional control on that horizontal axis.

(Both are dwarf minke whales but it remains the same either way)

I find it unlikely that whales would not be stable in both axis, or at least at a marginal level of stability. However what this does mean, is that understanding stability of whales, will require a higher level of detail than circular approximations. Since my long term goal is to build a minke suit which would allow me to swim as one, it also means that understanding the stability is quite important and how to approach it for sizing my own flukes and dorsal fin.

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It isn't, or at least I do not think it is. I got it through a company called Mermaid Lucia. Overall it is pretty nice though not ideal for my poorly shaped feet. At some point I wish to make my own, ones that look like minke flukes.

It has been a two weeks now since I was finally able to swim with my monofin. It was an incredible experience. The fin is extremely easy to use and becomes essentially one with your body as you swim hardly different than if I actually had flukes. When in the water my arms disappear away into flippers and I do become just whale. It is wonderful.

Downside is that my feet are very wide and my right foot especially is very thick and this means that wearing the monofin for long is actually very painful. I have tried to stretch it but to little success. I can probably wear it for 20 minutes before the pain gets too much. But I have ordered a larger monofin I can swim with so I can be whale and swim free. I also have a wetsuit yet coming so I can swim in the sea here!

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Intro Post

Ahoj! I am a minke-whale and water-monitor therian residing in the Netherlands. I have schizophrenia among other things. I will mostly talk about whale things here. I like whales.

I am friendly if you want to say hi! *trills*

She/her I guess. I always forget about pronouns. Though they or it is fine. And if you are referring to me as a whale even he would be alright. Not like 99% of humans could tell the difference.

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It has been a two weeks now since I was finally able to swim with my monofin. It was an incredible experience. The fin is extremely easy to use and becomes essentially one with your body as you swim hardly different than if I actually had flukes. When in the water my arms disappear away into flippers and I do become just whale. It is wonderful.

Downside is that my feet are very wide and my right foot especially is very thick and this means that wearing the monofin for long is actually very painful. I have tried to stretch it but to little success. I can probably wear it for 20 minutes before the pain gets too much. But I have ordered a larger monofin I can swim with so I can be whale and swim free. I also have a wetsuit yet coming so I can swim in the sea here!