#and that wasn't a therian thing

[little-pup-pip]

If it hasn’t been asked, if you could do a therian Bear mood board?

Definitely!!

[midwinterwings]

RULES OF BEING OTHERKIN #1

Being authentic and true to yourself is the only way you are 'supposed to be/act like' (insert entity). If anyone else disagrees it only tells you about them.

[canines-crown]

My new tail arrived ⋆˙⟡♡

I love it so much aaaa😭💖

[2pen2wildfire]

A very annoying interaction that I have quite often is that my family will be having a conversation and use incorrect terminology about a people group they don't belong to, and my online ass will politely correct them. They'll then debate me about it as if I made up the words myself instead of gaining information from the people group in question, and when I pull out my phone to google the correct terminology (and inevitably google agrees with me), they'll brush it off with "well we always said [incorrect thing] back in the 90s, that's clearly a very new word", with the implication that I'm stupid and overly sensitive and I should just let them say what they want. Like. I thought you were open to learning.

[fennthetalkingdog]

You know, being a dog has given me such a different way of looking back at my past experiences and finally letting myself let go of the idea that I might've been the problem. Like sure, it helps to look back and realize that however strangely you acted as a kid, you were just a kid, and the way others acted around you and to you contributed just as much to how you reacted and saw yourself. But it just hits different to be like, some of the way I acted was never a me problem. I was just acting like myself, like a dog.

Like, for me specifically, it feels so much better just to blame my excitability and my struggle figuring out how much was too much on me being a happy little puppy or me not being used to reading human cues yet. Of course I didn't pay attention to human facial cues; I didn't know I needed to yet because I was still prepared to read head tilts and shifts in ear positions. And of course I didn't understand those cues' meanings even when I happened to see them because dogs have different body language. I've been learning how humans work and trying to blend in a little over the years, but that's not because I missed any rulebook of how humans work. It's because I was never given one because I'm a dog, not a person.

[wawhii]

Some rambling in the tags

[kyntypes]

I remember seeing so many younger therians say that they were born with their nonhuman identity, mostly in efforts to seem more valid. What was that about?

"You can only be born a therian"

"You can't be a therian because of trauma, you're just a copinglink if it happened after trauma"

"Real therians are born this way"

Like I beg your pardon??? My otherkin identities weren't always there, I'm literally a machine and a building, but those came WAYYY later in my life. I wasn't born as either of those things. It just happened at random, same with me being born as a maned wolf with hoary bat DNA, it just happened. I didn't choose any of that, but it doesn't matter if I did or not, it just happened. Sometimes identity just changes out of nowhere.

[talks-with-the-void]

Fluid kintypes - identity doesn't need to be static

I used to be a wolf, once. Not in a past-life sense, but in a therian sense - I was a wolf therian and then I wasn't. Sounds weird to you? I'm not surprised!

Something that I have repeatedly been told by other therians and otherkin is "you are what you are and if you find out you are something else - well, then you never were the first thing at all." Especially when I joined the community several years ago, I saw this statement everywhere. But let me tell you: it's not true. I had several different kintypes over the years (side note: we are plural and for the sake of this post I am simplifying some internal structure things. if you want the complicated details, feel free to ask! /gen), started as a wolf therian, then I was a cryptid, a dinosaur, a dragon and some kind of monster. Now I am Khhanivore (from Love, Death and Robots) and Mewtu (from Pokemon, Mewtu is the German spelling) - and a raptor kintype is coming back. (I am also a werewolf, but that's not a kintype, that's just Purely Me And My Whole Essence)

"Okay Istasha, but isn't that just questioning or maybe flickertypes?", you might ask. Fair point, but no.

I honestly never really questioned my kintypes - if I truly question something, it turns out to either be a hearttype or Nothing at All. As for kintypes, I just know - all of us just know what we are, it's like chilling and one day, suddenly, one of us is like "oh, I am a horse. alright, carry on" and that's it. Our kintypes stay with us for several months at least, theoretically they could stay forever but tend to change along the way - which brings me to the next point. They aren't flickertypes either. We only really get fictionflickers and sometimes animalflickers and those are extremely short and always tied to media we are currently consuming - they feel, technically, like kintypes to me. For example, if I watch a lot of Supernatural, I sometimes get an intense feeling of belonging there, of being a non-canon character, of being part of the story, etc. I am this non-canon character in that moment, I might even get pseudo-memories or shifts, but as soon as I don't engage with that show too much again, it instantly fades.

Our kintypes don't work like that. Take my re-emerging dinosaur kintype as an example. I was walking somewhere a few days ago and suddenly had a pahntom sensation in my legs and feet and in the same moment I knew "ah shit, new kintype". I gave it a day because maaayyybe it's nothing? But deep down I already knew what was going on, so I have an Utahraptor kintype now. I am this. I identify as this through and through and it feels like I've always been this way. But it wasn't - a week ago I wasn't a dinosaur and now I am. I did not choose it, I did not engage with any dinosaur media at all, it just happened.

My kintypes have always been changing and trust me when I say I had a complete identity crisis when my wolf kintype first went away. But over the years Ive learned to accepot it - my identy is not static, it never was and it never will be and that's okay!

It doesn't make my kintypes less important or less real and it also doesn't mean I never was a wolf. I was. And then I wasn't.

I honestly think it is so, so damaging to still have this "kintypes are static"-sentient floating around in the community, because that's simply not true for all of us. For me, it honestly even makes more sense this way. Our brain has always been unstable, I lacked a true identity for so long. We grew up with untreated BPD andf although the symptoms are 95% under my control now (read: it's in remission), our brain still has a ton of habits from that time, like clinging onto different things to try and form an identity, to try and fill the void where a person should be. And the fact that the void is filled now, that I finally am enough of a person to fill it, this habit never changed. Our brain still randomly grabs things and makes them one of us, leading to fluid kintypes.

Let me end this with saying: being wrong about a kintype is fine. Figuring out you are X instaed of Y and never were Y is fine. But it is also fine to be X today and Y tomorrow.

I think I've said this before but I'll say it again: we, as a community, need to take our identities less and more serious at the same time. Let's stop the gatekeeping and policing others, let's stop overanalyzing ourselves so much. Let's stop looking for rules and asking "is it possible to be this?" over and over again - because the answer is yes. There are literally no rules as to how, why and what you can be. In order to be otherkin you need to do exactly one thing: identify as The Thing in question. Nothing else. On the other hand, we need to kindly educate those who confuse identify as and identify with, we need to kindly educate young therians who "choose their theriotypes", we need to make sure we are not watered down to being "a fun thing you can do".

I sometimes feel like the focus and effort of this community is in good faith but in the wrong place - static kintypes is one of them.

There are no limits. Be who you are today and if you are something else tomorrow, be that then. <3

[dinocanid]

The voluntary/involuntary debate (-is making me lose my mind)

I don't see anyone saying this, but something being missed in the whole "therianthropy (and otherkinity) is completely involuntary!" conversation is that so much of the argument is overcorrection, and it's being treated as a binary when the lines are all grey. Which makes the constant back and forth feel very tiring.

First: context

10-ish years ago (even today in some crotchety circles), therianthropy-focused spaces were chomping at the bit to "weed out the fluff" due to the surrounding alt culture at the time (teen wolves) and the release of a few documentaries that many considered quite cringe-y and embarrassing. They went "oh god, we can't be associate with those weird people" and, while that wasn't the only contributor to the gatekeeping and grilling culture at the time, it was a significant one. So any new therians hoping to join communities were often grilled the hell out of, because people wanted to check if they were ""real"" therians and not those "fluffy teen werewolves" on TV. Therianthropy wasn't a game or a trend, it's a part of you, which is true. But "it's not a game" got bastardized into "it's involuntary" due to overcorrection and a lack of preserving nuance. Regardless if you think you were born a therian or if someone goes "I really want to be a [nonhuman animal]" and starts to embrace that identity, that's still therianthropy. "I want to be this, therefore I'm going to be this, and I am this" is still therianthropy.

This problem isn't unique to therianthropy either, "otherkinity must be involuntary" is also a result of overcorrection, more specifically due to the ableism and damage kinnie culture has done to the fictionkin community. Dragonheart Collective wrote a concise essay on this, so I will link that [right here] rather than repeat things, other than I have noticed "voluntary" be conflated with "kinnie" when it should not be. "Being kin isn't just relating to or liking something" got bastardized into "otherkinity is involuntary" by the community. Regardless if you think you were born otherkin or if someone goes "I really want to be a [character or nonhuman creature]" and starts to embrace that identity, that's still otherkinity "I want to be this, therefore I'm going to be this, and I am this" is still otherkinity.

Second: nuance.

No, involuntary doesn't inherently mean "it's a game". What counts as voluntary or involuntary is so blurry that a common conclusion can rarely even be reached on what it means. Things that have been seen considered voluntary:

Noticing the identity and choosing to embrace it versus shove it down and dismiss it

Waking up one day

Really wanting to be something and deciding to embrace it, versus dismissing it

Was born with the identity but picks and chooses which parts they prefer to focus on and explore

etc. along the above lines

And these are all perfectly fine ways of experiencing therianthropy and otherkinity, people have been having experiences like that for years. This is completely normal and nothing new and it's so tiring seeing people point fingers at places that these things didn't even come from, like TikTok.

"But what about linking then?"

This debate is much older than "-linking" terminology, which in and of itself is a product of this very debate. People made new words because so many were arguing if someone's identity is real if it originates in a particular way. This doesn't change how "-link" terminology should be used today, but it is worth noting that those are perfectly normal ways to experience otherkinity and therianthropy even if these other terms exist. It means you can use whichever personally feels best to you. It does not mean that people need to be shoved out of the non-link labels.

[narcissist-culture-is]

Here's some positivity for all the narcissists out there!

I love you narcissistic poc!

I love you black narcissists!

I love you brown narcissists!

I love you Asian narcissists!

I love you indigenous/native narcissists!

I love you narcissists of every ethnicity!

I love you queer narcissists!

I love you trans narcissists!

I love you ace/aro-spec narcissists!

I love you narcissists that use neopronouns and xenogenders!

I love you narcissists with niche/obscure/"confusing"/contradictory/incredibly specific identities!

I love you narcissistic therians!

I love you narcissistic otherkin/fictionkin/kinfolk!

I love you narcissists with multiple disorders/mental illnesses!

I love you narcissists with physical disabilities!

I love you narcissists who have a hard time speaking/typing/putting things into words!

I love you plural narcissists!

I love you narcissistic systems!

I love you narcissistic tulpas!

I love you narcissists with addictions!

I love you narcissists who feel like their trauma wasn't "real" or "bad enough"!

I love you narcissists who were recently diagnosed!

I love you self-dx narcissists!

I love you narcissists who are always left out of positivity posts!

I love you EVERY narcissist in the world! 💜

[tigergirltail]

TIGER HRT CHAPTER 4 - MONTH 3 - GROWING PAINS

First - Prev - Next

Everything hurts.

I started noticing it about two weeks after my first dose. It felt like a dull headache at first, but over the next month it spread to pretty much my entire body.

I had to start working from home, and eventually it got bad enough that I could only put in a few hours of work each day. My boss is a reasonable enough guy, but he wasn't going to pay a full time salary for part time hours, so I had to take a salary cut.

Luckily, my partner is around to take care of daily errands, not to mention being there to reassure and comfort me when the pain gets bad. They've been thinking about seeing if Lindwurm HRT is a thing, but they don't want to get the process started until I'm in the clear and can take care of myself again.

Gods I love them.

The reason the pain is happening, as best I can tell, is that my skeletal structure is already changing. I've gotten at least an inch taller, and my face has been reshaping into a feline muzzle. My teeth are getting sharper, and I'm developing proper fangs. I also noticed a little while ago that my fingernails and toenails had receded into their respective digits, which sucks for two reasons - I can't paint fingernails I don't have, and they are sore as HELL when I put any amount of pressure on them. I have to be REALLY careful with how I type to not inflict agony on myself. I'm also feeling my tail growing in, and even if it hurts, it's euphoric as HELL. A tail was always the part I wanted most out of this.

It's weird, the skeletal changes weren't supposed to happen this early. I've been trying to reach Dr. Erian about it, but he's constantly busy, probably because of the sudden surge of people looking for Humanity Removal Therapy.

Other than that, I've been getting areas of white and black fur coming in - mostly on my arms and legs, but a little bit on my face and ears - ears that are gradually reshaping and migrating. Nothing to report on hearing sensitivity, but I think my night vision is getting better.

I did a little bit of looking around for anyone with similar pain experiences. I got my hopes up when I found a girl, Antonina, who had a painful experience with Cat HRT, but it turns out it's because she took the rumoured Fifteen Minute version. She described the pain as "like bathing in an active volcano".

It leaves me wondering whether I would have preferred a 15-minute lava bath over a months-long full-body headache.

I ended up reaching out to her anyway, just because I wanted to know what I was in for in the endgame and feline HRT is rarer than I thought it would be. Sounds like the prey drive is the real deal - she keeps feeling the urge to bite this one girl who's on mouse HRT.

We've been spending some time comparing notes and getting to know each other. It's nice to know someone else who's going through this thing, even if our experiences aren't exactly one-to-one.

I also talked to my mother for the first time in nearly a year. I went No Contact with her a while back because she was only getting more obnoxious and combative about me being trans, but I figured changing my species is a big enough deal that I should keep her in the loop.

Besides, my savings had nearly dried up and I needed to ask her for money.

It… did not go well. She hadn't heard of therian HRT before, and once I explained it, she started panicking about how I'm "mutilating my body" with "untested treatments". I think I also heard her cry something about how her "son" is "killing himself", which is just multiple layers of insensitive.

At least she sent me some money. Hopefully it'll be enough to last until my transformation stops being agonizing and I can go back to work, and then I can go right back to pretending my family doesn't exist.

At roughly the three-month mark, I have a check-in video call with Dr. Erian. From the moment his face appears on screen, though, I can tell something is wrong. He seems… older, somehow.

"Hello, Miss Alexis.", he offers. He sounds tired. Sorrowful, even.

"Hey, doc." I have to ask about it. "Everything okay? You seem a bit tired."

"Nothing to worry about Miss Alexis, just the ordinary stresses of daily life."

Liar. I know I'm not entitled to details of your personal life, much less your professional secrets, but I know when something is eating at someone.

"…Does the word 'crossroads' mean anything to you, Miss Alexis?"

Huh? That came a bit out of left field. "I've… heard some other therian HRT patients use the term, but I don't know much of the details. Something about a point of no return?"

"Something of the sort." He lowers his head and seems to go from sorrowful to downright grim. "There will come a time, Miss Alexis, when you will have to make a very important decision in your care, and I ask that you do so with great consideration for the consequences."

I recoil a little in my seat. "Yeah… Of course I will. Any decision I make, even reaching out to you in the first place, I don't take it lightly."

"Good… That's good." His demeanor shifts back to his stoic, clinical self. I don't know what just happened, but he went somewhere for a moment there.

"Now then, I did receive your messages, I apologize for not getting back to you. You mentioned you were experiencing persistent and debilitating whole-body soreness?"

"Yeah. I can't even leave the apartment most days, it hurts so much."

"Odd… You are taking the treatment as directed, yes?"

"Of course. One tablespoon a week, just like it says on the bottle."

I see his eyes twitch behind his glasses. Did I say something wrong?

"…Teaspoon."

I cock my head to the side. "Say again?"

"You mean one TEASPOON a week, yes?"

I feel my heart sink. The dark smear on the dosage information… I could have sworn it said '1 tbsp/week'.

"…Could you hold on a second please?" I mute the mic and call out to my partner to bring the bottle of tiger HRT over. When they do, I unmute and hold it up to the webcam. I hear Dr. Erian take a sharp intake of breath as he notices the obscured instructions.

I set the bottle aside and the two of us share an awkward silence.

"So…", I begin. "…How bad is it?"

"The good news", he offers slowly, "is that you have only been taking three times the prescribed dose. An increased dose imbalances the growth rate of the different parts of your body, hence your pain and persistent weakness, but it could have been much worse."

I think back to the so-called Fifteen Minute version, and Antonina's description of it - like bathing in an active volcano.

Dr. Erian continues. "Assuming you return to a CORRECT dose, your growth rates will gradually level out over the course of the next month or so. It is my medical opinion that you should maintain a low-activity lifestyle until then, but you will eventually be able to return to your typical activity level, and you will also find that the physical effects become more… consistent."

"That's… reassuring. Thank you, doctor." I pause. Something I noticed a little while ago has been weighing on my mind. "There's one thing, though - do the treatments have… I guess you'd call them restorative or regenerative effects? I've noticed some old wounds aren't there anymore."

The doctor clicks his pen and brings up his notepad. "Interesting. Do go on, Miss Alexis."

"Well… I used to get lower back pain from a car crash injury I got a little over a year ago, but I haven't noticed it at all lately. Pretty much the only part that DOESN'T hurt… There also used to be some marks on my arm from a cat biting me when I was little." I give a slight smile. "The cat's name was Tiger, go figure."

Dr. Erian is writing the whole time I'm talking. "Yes, that is to be expected. Minor persistent injuries will fade over time as your body re-forms itself to a new baseline, even severe chronic symptoms may fade. If there are no other concerns…"

"Just one… Most of the other therian HRT patients I've talked to have gotten their meds as pills, so what's with the potion bottle?"

Dr. Erian pauses, and adjusts his glasses nervously, as if he's been caught out on something he doesn't want to admit to. "Well… advances in the field are occurring rapidly, and you are one of the more recent patients, so a more… streamlined option was available to you. I took the liberty of choosing the most compatible option based on your medical records, and that bottle is it."

"Okay… But what's IN it?"

"The active ingredients are antihominidone, which is your humanity-blocker, and a specialized formula of felistrogen, infused with white tiger genetic material. The rest of the fluid is a suspension used to dilute the effects, without which you would be looking at a short, but excruciating and potentially lethal process."

The Fifteen Minute version, I think to myself. I'm taking diluted Fifteen Minute meds. There's no WAY this isn't experimental, and I'M the experiment. I despise saying it, but maybe my mother was right to worry.

"But I'm afraid I really do have to go, Miss Alexis, my next appointment is waiting."

"G-gotcha. See ya, doctor."

---

Special thanks to @paintedbytosia for letting me write her in, and shoutout to @megamoonerjenny for coming up with 'antihominidone'

[i-am-trans-gwender]

My therian realization

(Was going to wait until I had the vocab figured out. Instead I'm making this while it's fresh in my mind. If you know the words to describe my identity please tell me.)

If you read my post on me coming out as a furry some if this will be familiar but I'll try to not repeat myself much.

I've mentioned on my Tumblr how my transphobic parents comparing me being trans to furries identifying as animals. (Furry and therian are not the same but my parents don't know that) gave me a dislike of therians and furries because I thought if it weren't for them I could convince my parents to accept me.

I made a post saying I didn't like animal hrt and asked for non animal hrt trans comics. It WASN'T the intent of the post but I was told it sounded like i thought people shouldn't make animal hrt comics.

I deleted the post and made a second post saying I'm not a furry but I wish gene slicing allowed people to be there fursonas irl so that I could be a catgirl. The post was supposed to be a sorry. I was told I was a furry in denial. I realized I was a furry and now I love animal hrt.

I realized my dislike of furries and therians was stupid. I'd rather be on there side then try to appeal to my parents who hate me.

I started liking therian posts under the assumption they were furry posts. Then Tumblr recommended me posts that were undeniably therian posts that I related to.

I talked to some therians and self reflected on my identity.

My identity: I don't have species dysphoria. I don't mind being perceived as human. I just don't feel human. I wish I could shape shift into animals both humanoid and non humanoid. My default form would be a humanoid bat that's also a vampire. I like acting in an animalistic way.

I'm sorry for every bad thing I said about furries and therians. I was blinded by the idea of getting acceptance where I would never get it (explanation not an excuse)

[yippee-boi09]

Another big alarm wee woo

Guess who came back? Them! (This is the same person who had the "chokeanddiebitch" blog which was deactivated) I usually wouldn't post about someone I've blocked and reported but this person is pathetic... and annoying... in full honesty I was on the toilet, taking the fattest shit of my life when I got this???

I was planning on answering it but I saw the username and the gears clicked when I checked their page... "HOLY SHIT I GOTTA SHOW EVERYONE THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID LMAO" is what I thought and I laughed as the turds fell from my butthole... like the turds they're spewing out of their mouth and into my asks and everyone else's life lmao. Anyways, they're still being hateful, rude, spiteful, and... made their blog lbgt friendly??? Yeah they're trying this thing where they try and separate trans people with neopronouns and affiliate agere and petre with a fetish???? Even though just a week ago they were spewing homophonic nonsense??? Yeah lmao it wasn't working so I reported and blocked them... if you see this blog, DO NOT INTERACT, YOU'RE FANNING THE FLAME THAT WILL NOT BE PUT OUT BY OTHER'S WILL. Simply block and report them like I did... also since they seemed to see my blog post about them being reported, Imma dedicate this next part for when/if they come back...

Haaaiiii!!! Hello! How are you? Shitty? Great! What's your problem? Don't wanna hear it lmao, you don't hear out psychologists and professionals and every other person with their brain still attached who tell you neopronouns and furries and age regression is fine... you think I'm therian now cuz I'm a furry, right? No, I'm not a therian, I'm a human being with surprisingly thick skin but zero tolerance for your behavior. Think I'm a neopronoun user? Sorta, I mainly use He/Him (but am fine with anything but she/her) and I'm transmasc! I'm a trans guy... just a guy... you said you like trans people, right? I'm one of them! I'm also aroace! So no fetishy content here! I'm strictly sfw except for gore art! And horror stuff! I don't see why you'd hate me... hmm? Oh? What's that? You- you think I'm fat? Okay??? And??? What's your point with that? You simply put yourself under the spotlight once again and can have you taken down AGAIN. It's gonna happen again and again as long as you keep trying to platform yourself on my blog... you're really bad at this hate thing... I hadn't thought about you at all until you sent me the strange ask... thanks for the heads up! See you on your next blog... or never!

Okay that's over, to anyone who's harassed by this asshole, my condolences, don't worry about this person... Block and report them! They are not mentally stable and need to get off of social media! Stay alert!

Edit: I should mention that this is the last time I'm calling out this guy, they don't deserve more attention then they're getting and I don't want to dedicate my blog to this stuff...

[theretherian]

Intersection of transgender and alterhuman affirmation

So I've been identifying as trans-nonbinary since about 2017, and bird therian since June 2022 (and as alterhuman since before that).

With being transgender, I never particularly felt dysphoric about my identity or body, and I've felt the same about being a bird. I don't particularly care one way or another, it's just a fact about me and my body is my body and it does body things, and my identity (or identities) is my identity and does identity things. They may overlap presentation-wise, but they don't really impact anything more or less than, say, my identity as "person with [x] interests." Interestingly, my autism actually caused me more dysphoria than anything else, not due to my actual body but my sensory problems with how clothes fit on me.

But last summer I got top surgery (for a multitude of reasons, such as the previously mentioned autism and nonbinary) (also specifically I opted out of grafts with it, which I do think is notable in a way i will get to in a sec). And obviously the gender euphoria from it was great - I still get all giddy-smiley every time I think about it or just remember that my chest is flat now and I love it lots and lots - but I noticed something interesting with it as well. Specifically that having a completely flat/smooth chest is also really euphoric as a bird. I didn't expect that, but I guess it makes sense on some level - birds obviously aren't mammals, and having the mammalian extra bits is somewhat incongruent with that. It wasn't causing me distress, but no longer having that makes my bird brain really happy on a similar level to my gender euphoria.

Idk, i just find it interesting ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ top surgery euphoria x4 combo or something.

[wolfthelittlefang]

Non-humans, what led you to realizing you weren't human? What labels do you currently use to express your non-humanity (if any), and what exactly do you currently identify as?

I'll go first!

(Due to the fact that we as a system share memories due to the lack of blackouts/complete amnesia and are for the most part collectively non-human I, Wolf, will be speaking for us all collectively.)

As a child, from the moment we were able to form a sense of self, we knew we weren't human. We always had that feeling that there was something different about us, something nobody around us would ever understand. So we stayed quiet about it. Why would we ever talk about something that nobody would ever truly understand. Well, that's what we thought for the next 13-ish years of our life. When we first discovered alter-humanity it was through Therianthropy tiktok in 2021 (yes, I know, not the best source of information.) and we started identifying by tiktok's definition of a therian because we thought that's all we needed to know at the time. Just having a "special connection" to animals felt good enough at the time. It wasn't exactly how we felt, but it was "good enough" we thought. Something that we could tell people and they might actually understand. Around a month passed of this situation before we decided to actually do our own research (finally!). And we discovered that Therianthropy actually meant identifying as some non-human animal to some level. We felt like we'd been heard, like we could finally be accepted by a community of others just like us. And that's how it was for about a year. After a year had passed since my discovery of the true definition of Therianthropy, I decided to make my first Therian pack (which was open to all sorts of Therians). This is actually where I met my current best friend, Calix. I'm not gonna go through every detail of what happened during the era of this pack but what I will say is there was some drama and we had to do the right thing which resulted in the loss of my "pack" entirely. But in the end, I realized who my pack truly was (Calix). Sure, maybe it was a small pack but it felt like home to me. An amount of time had passed since then and I became more knowledgeable of the Non-Human community through my Wolf friend, Calix. A lot of things happened but so far along my journey I have discovered more and more about non-humanity then when I started out. Most of my knowledge is accredited to Calix. At some point, he discovered the term "Transspecies" and eventually "Holothere" A.K.A. physical non human, which are two terms we now use as a part of our identity (most of us anyways).

All of the labels we currently use include Therian, otherkin, Holothere, Transspecies, and Non-Human canine (specifically a dog/wolf/werewolf).

At the moment, most of us identify as some type of canine.

What about you? Tell me your story, friend :)

[words-of-wolf]

Having some Thoughts once more.

Specifically thinking about self-policing identity. Obviously policing others is a huge issue in the alterhuman and adjacent communities, but setting up my soap box here to talk about how we internalise the need to police identity.

Putting a cut here because god do I need to stop writing these walls of text that people then have to scroll past for eternity even if they're not interested in reading it asjdkhjksah !!

When I was a teen, I saw otherkin and therians self-policing and I respected them. I thought they were really strong for doing that; I thought it was necessary, and that the only way we could ever be accepted as a community is if we leaned hard into minimising our experiences, making things "palatable". It wasn't a conscious belief, but it was very present.

So that's what I emulated. Any discussion of my experiences, or my feelings, usually would get a lot of reassurances sprinkled in there: "this is just my beliefs", "it's okay if you don't believe this too", "I know this sounds far-fetched", "this is just my internal identity".

I thought that made me sound reasonable and respectable. Maybe it even did.

But nowadays, I see people doing this kind of thing - minimising their experiences, adding disclaimers, policing themselves - and mostly it just makes me feel sad for them. Not in a condescending way, cause I've been there, I know how it feels to believe you've gotta make yourself sound "reasonable" to be respected. But I don't feel respect for that attitude, it just makes me sad.

And now, I'm here growing into a version of myself where I finally start to feel like I'm an adult, and I finally start to feel like I'm myself in a way unhindered by that constant fear and self-regulation, and I can see plain as day how much the self-policing doesn't actually work.

Cause you could present the weirdest, most outlandish identity possible to someone, but if you don't make a big deal out of it they probably won't either. Casual but unapologetic is, I think, the best way to go. You don't always have to hide yourself. (Obviously, take time to judge your situation first, but, same goes for most things outside of "the norm").

But presenting yourself as some vulnerable thing who has to placate any aggression before it even happens - well, that just makes people uncomfortable, and the mean ones will single you out as a target for it more than they'd do with someone who's just kinda "whatever" about the whole situation.

And the same thing goes for if you have an identity that feels weird by alterhuman standards, y'know? Chill but unapologetic will get you far. You'll feel more comfortable in yourself, too. Cause when everything you say is minimised, you can start to internalise that too - and it can make you feel like embracing your identity wholeheartedly is a bad thing, or like your own perception of self should have the same uncertainty to it that your descriptions of it do.

I think... the desire and impulse to self-police and minimise is not something you can just "switch off". But I hope reading this can get the ball rolling for those of you out there who struggle with this in the same way I did!

You don't need to police yourself. You don't need to censor yourself.

Doing this doesn't help the community, and it doesn't increase our standing and validity in the eyes of people on the outside. At best, it does nothing; at worst, it makes us seem uncertain, nervous, and an easy target.

And doing this hurts yourself. It affects things in ways that are hard to even see, but take it from someone who's experienced it: these feelings can pierce so, so deep.

You don't need to apologise for who you are. I don't care how "weird" your identity or experiences are - it's you, it's who you are, nobody can touch that. And if you're genuine about it, people will accept you for it, and sometimes gravitate towards you, even; particularly the others who feel the same way, who are the "weird ones" among the weirdos.

Cause when you're unapologetic, when you're genuine in a way that's not flavoured by fear, you kinda... become a safe space. You create an atmosphere around you that gives other people permission to do the same. To just be themselves, without the uncertainty and fear.

And that's really special! It's important.