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by Caitlin

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Upstairs

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"I want to be a dragon."

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Precious Realm 💫 Illustration for Kaenraeobscuro. Absolutely enchanting piece to work on 💜

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"Empathy is what makes us human" Dawg you caught me I'm secretly a platypus

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ASPD - Reduced To Being Subhuman

Do you know whats its like to be categorically excluded from being human?

Do you know how it feels to know, that no matter how much you work on yourself, no matter what you do, no matter how much you contain your urges and no matter how desperately you try to belong, your entire fucking species has already decided that you are not a part of them?

Its rejection on an uncomprehensible scale. A repetitive slap in the face at every corner. Barely being permitted to walk among them and never more than that.

Fake promises of letting you in, while never stopping to cast you out. Demands of your action and care, while keeping the possibility of actually doing it out of your reach. Its fucked.

"What seperates humans from other animals, is their ability to form deep bonds with others, work together on a big scale, feel deep empathy and care for one another and go against ones survival instinct to protect others out of love"

"If you don't feel empathy, you're not human"

"Art is what connects people, the deeply embedded emotions in it, that can only be felt and understood, if you have what it takes to be human. The ability to feel with others"

"The most important thing for humans is connection and community. Caring about each other, feeling for each other and not having any intentions to harm others"

"Those who harm others are sick and don't belong. They're not human, cus if they were, their empathy and guilt and morals would prevent them from doing it"

If the core of being a human is to feel with others, to care, to connect, to subscribe to morals and to experience all of these things on the regular, that suggests, that those who do not feel that and cannot do that, aren't human.

This would only be an assumption, if it wasn't fucking proven to us in every goddamn moment of our existence.

The world is full of the insistence that without empathy, without connection, without morals, you're not human. It starts with music and books circling around the concept and ends with people using a lack of empathy as an explanation for any depraved thing they can think of.

Its impossible to exist, to consume, to live, without being assaulted by lines and images that question your very right to exist and be a member of this species.

If your love isn't an emotional care for others, its not human.

If your friendship isn't based on deep emotional connection, its not human.

If your care isn't based on genuine distress at seeing the other upset/in pain, its not human.

If your activism isn't based on being emotionally appalled and angry and distressed about what you're seeing, its not human.

If your actions aren't based on morals that are important to you, they're not human.

If you cannot understand art and do not feel moved by books and songs and movies, you're not human.

If you wouldn't go out of your way to save others, you're not human.

If your apology isn't motivated by genuine remorse, its not human.

If your behavior change isn't motivated by genuine care and guilt, its not human.

Not human. Not human. Not human. Never fucking human.

Do you know that they call those who they perceive as not human? Monsters. Sick. Deranged. Insane.

Do you know what things they classify as monstrous and sick and deranged and insane?

• not feeling empathy

• not feeling remorse

• being aggressive

• feeling pleasure at other peoples suffering

• feeling pleasure at your own suffering

• making reckless impulsive decisions

• living in a different reality

• being able to handle and look at topics they find morally wrong

• being obsessed instead of feeling love

• lying and being manipulative

• breaking laws

• not thinking about other people's safety/health

• being self obsessed or grandiose

• mood swings/erractic mood

• and basically every other symptom of all the mh conditions

Its not just behaviors that could cause harm, that make you a monster in their eyes. Its your brain. Its who you are. You will never actually be human in their eyes, because you lack everything they require in order to see you as human.

They make that clear by defining healthy relationships with these human qualities.

They make that clear by having them be part of job descriptions.

They make that clear by having them as community guidelines and rules.

They make that clear by inserting them into laws and judging you based on them in court.

They make that clear by defining their prosocial society based on them.

Without the human qualities, you will never be their equal. You will never get to experience what they do, you can always just watch from the outside and imagine what it might be like.

They make fake promises, telling you, that if only you went to therapy, if only you changed, if only you took those meds, if only you just followed what they told...you would finally get to be human.

But no. They may pretend. They may accept the show you put on as barely passing, but their requirements will not change and you're still not meeting them. You're tolerated, not accepted.

And they still don't want you there. If they did, they wouldn't make therapy so hard to access, they wouldn't continue spreading the stigma in psych lectures, they wouldn't continue refusing you treatment, they wouldn't continue telling you that you're destined for prison, they wouldn't demand for the d*ath pentalty to be brought back for people like you.

If they truly wanted you there, they would change the requirements for what makes you a human being. They don't.

So you do the only thing that is left for you. Your only option.

You find comfort in sickness. You make yourself at home in your deranged insane mind. You embrace the monster.

You adjust to being aggressive first and anything else later. You grow comfortable with the demons in your brain suggesting violent ideas. You get used to your fascination with the morbid and wrong. You learn to tolerate the loneliness and absence of others and your own emotions. You grow okay with recklessly and impulsively ruining your and other peoples lifes every now and then.

You embrace who you are and maybe you push the boundaries and delve deeper into the sickness of your own mind. Cuddling up under blankets of new levels of violence. Resting on added defenses and removing yourself further and further from other peoples idea of what and who you should be.

It doesn't always stop the longing. You might still catch yourself desperately hoping that maybe you can change, maybe you will get to experience those things as deeply and humanely as others do. You might grow frustrated and angry with yourself when you can't. You might lie in anguish, tossing and turning while your brain throws insults at you and repeats how much of a failure you are for being subhuman, not wanted, not perfect.

But maybe the longing becomes less. Maybe you don't need to be angry with yourself quite as often. Maybe you can be understood by other monsters, by others who are sick and insane and deranged. Maybe you can finally talk freely about your thoughts and your emotions and your urges.

Maybe you didn't need to be human afterall. Maybe being a monster is enough.

first posted on my instagram (same @)

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Important PSA:

If you live in or around the wilderness, regardless of if you're a therian or not, it is your responsibility to take care of the wildlife by preventing unjust harm. This means picking up netting, old fishing line, anything an animal could get trapped and die in. It's good to pick up other trash as well, but if you're going to do anything at all, netting is your top priority.

I've had to untangle bullfrogs from plastic netting like what I picked up today. My family has had to unwrap groundhogs from cloth netting. I've seen water snakes wrapped up and choked to death by fishing line. Whatever is discarded or washed down in the wilderness will catch and harm animals existing in their natural environments.

Always pick it up, comb through for any trapped animals, then take it back to your house and throw it away/recycle it.

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Reblog if you're not human

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this is another coveted Vesper Is Nosy Poll, im not planning on doing anything with this just wanna see

reblog for sample size and feel free to share your experiences/opinions!! :D

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I don't belong in a house 24/7.

This is where I am supposed to be

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hey sorry it's just that i don't think i'm very good at being a person. thanks for letting me try with you, anyway.

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"Why are you a therian?" Maybe because I've been dehumanized so much it became a part of me? Maybe because of bullying? Maybe because of trauma????

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“Humans are inherently selfish--" Then why do so many cultures value hospitality, to the point of dictating it in their religions? Why is it so common for hosts to offer their visitors their best food, and as much of it as they can? At some point, multiple cultures decided that they knew what it felt like to be alone and vulnerable, and promised each other to never let those who stay with them feel that way. That doesn't sound very "inherently selfish" to me.

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Im havin such a hard time makin Therian & Otherkin friends, i have no idea who’s ok with messaging & inbox rambles & who isn’t!

So if you’re a Therian or Otherkin & you’re ok with critters invading your inbox and/or DMing you, reblog this post or drop a comment!

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Ooo I love making playlists!! I like your music taste 👀

I also have a couple buggy song suggestions!

Earwigs In My Brain - The Meteors

Outliars and Hyppocrates: a fun fact about apples - Will Wood

Spring Bottom - Cosmo Sheldrake

Contorted Figures - Arigto

Tarrare - DRTW

Pipopapipo - Dewey Martino

They're mostly kinda subjective (I like a lot of lyricless music), but they give me some of those both creepy crawly and dirt/nature vibes!

Niche Kin(type) Appreciation Challenge.

2. Make a playlist for your kin(type).

It's so hard to find songs that are even vaguely the vibe. Hopefully I can add more to this later, I desperately need more centipede-vibed (or bug/insect/etc) songs. I'm also open to suggestions perchance...

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HI Y'ALL. Remember when I said I was getting these actually made by someone. Wellll....

These things are Very cool. They stay on my fingers very well, and have a nice weight to them! They are also able to scratch shit up very nicely. It's hard to see in the gif since I had to compress it (and also didn't want to make too much noise in my dorm lmao), but they are very effective. I've been told they should hold fairly sturdy (within reason) when climbing and such as well.

If y'all want some of your own, the guy I commissioned has an email set up at smokingdragonforge@yahoo.com !!

I will also get some more pictures once I get the chance to visit my woods back at home B)

Dude I need claws SO bad. Except I need prosthetics to be really sturdy, so I can actually like. Use them for shit. Like I wanna be able to wear them to help me climb or claw at stuff or whatever I need them for. But people only make like plastic or foam or resin claws. It's not STRONG enough. I need like. IRON claws. STEEL claws. Claws I can climb trees and rock faces with. Claws that could kill a man if I wanted them to. It's a fucking TRAGEDY these aren't a thing, and I swear to God I'm about to learn metalworking just so I can make myself a suitable set.

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some affirmations for all my fellow dragons