tidal-pine - Tumblr blog

[tidal-pine]

December 21st, 2023 marks the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere - making it the shortest day of the year, and causing shadows to be cast at their longest due to the sun’s low position in the sky

[tidal-pine]

on identity, healing the inner child, fursonas, and cringe culture

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“Cringe culture is dead”= No one should cringe at me for my interests

“I am cringe but I am free”= People are GOING to cringe at me for my interests but I am choosing to be happy regardless

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YES 100% this!!

therian culture is wiggling your foot because you dont have a tail to wah

.

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Been questioning mink as theriotype for a WHILE now and I'm at 99% to confirming it it feels. I've questioned stoats for a while too last year and pine martens come pretty close too. But every time I try to research and connect with this mystery theriotype, I always end up at minks

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no, you don’t need to wear your mask/tail to school.

i wish young nonhumans didn’t feel compelled to be ‘out’ at school, especially when it’s a dangerous environment. i keep seeing posts along the lines of “wore my tail/mask to school! people berated/teased/put their hands on me, but it’s ok”.

no, it’s not.

like.. i understand a mask or a tail can be a very validating thing for some people. and i’m not saying NO ONE should wear them at schools. but i just keep watching this mounting trend of young therians insinuating you need some physical accessory or to do quads to be a ‘real’ nonhuman. and then it leads to things like this and it makes me incredibly sad.

i’d known i was alterhuman since late elementary school, actually. it’s a huge part of my life even now, years after graduation. there wasn’t a reason for it to be brought up, so i never did. it was a closely guarded secret to me, but it didn’t feel like a weight i was carrying. i always thought “no one needs to know i’m an animal if it jeopardizes my safety. so, oh well”.

“but, how will people know that i’m an animal?”

they probably will. they probably already do.

i was the designated ‘animal’ person my entire school career despite not ever handling animals in front of anyone. if there were pets, lost wild animals (baby rabbits, birds, lizards), or sometimes even loose livestock that got onto campus, it was always me who had to go tend to them.

everyone wanted me in their group in environmental science. if a project called for animal illustrations, the same thing would happen. it was certainly weird because i was also a ‘weird kid’ and not especially desired to be around outside of that, lol. but i was never harassed for it. it made me feel very validated, actually.

i had fun during gym running and fiercely destroying the opposing team in field hockey. i taught everyone which plants were okay to forage (and we snacked on them when we had to sit on the lower field for practice). every day i was hyperaware of the limbs i had that weren’t quite there. friends noticed my ears twitch and my nose wiggle at certain stimuli. i felt nice walking on two legs. i felt nice because i felt animal and i didn’t have to prove it to anyone.

really like… just do what makes you happy. i admire the bravery it takes to so earnestly wear your identity on your sleeve like that. that’s very impressive. however, there is NO obligation to do anything like that if you understand that there will be a reaction that poses a threat to you.

i want our kids to be safe, too. you don’t have to feel dysphoria over being discreet. sometimes it’s the safest option. and sometimes, that can be really fun, too.

study everything you can about your ‘type. wikipedia and animalia are good resources. ramble about them to anyone who will listen. jokingly refer to yourself as one in friend spaces. wear discreet clothes that remind you of your ‘type. find a nice private place outside where you can run and explore and look at plants and smell the air and feel like yourself. but by no means do you have to prove yourself. you know you.

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I don’t know if this is a non human or autistic thing or both but I wish that I could use animalistic body language because I don’t know how to use human body language to communicate what I want.

When I’m happy I want to be able to have a straight face but wag my tail and when I’m realllyy happy I can thump my tail and smile and really really really happy I get the zoomies and run around and yip. When I’m sad or scared I whine and my ears go flat to my head, I get smaller and protect my body. If I feel like myself or those I love are in danger I can get big and bark loud and show my teeth. If someone is talking to me I can turn my ears to them and I don’t have to somehow understand how to use all the muscles in my face to convey the exact thing I mean. I don’t know how to convey exactly what I want or use this body it’s all so confusing.

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Yeah I'm not either

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Can we PLEASE stop using the terms "rare theriotype" or "common theriotype" it's completely useless and it also probably makes other therians with common theriotypes feel bad. It's like "oh my gosh look a beaver therian!" And then there's "oh..a fox therian. Cool." WE'RE ALL SPECIAL AND RARE IN OUR OWN WAYS! and no matter what. We're all non-humans together.

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i love playing with dogs on the ground and play bowing and actually feeling like im one of them

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Man.. I wanna be able to purr and growl and grunt and bark and make all those wonderful sound other creatures make

Stupid human vocal cords

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GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY I FEEL FANTASTIC

Uncommon therians + otherkin should like totally interact with this so I can go

WOAH A _____ INTERACTED WITH MY LIL TUMBLR POST!!!!! THATS SO COOL!!!!!!!

I love seeing all the different creatures on here :3

Common ones too!!! I'm a hyena and a doggo, so i fall on the common side lolz theres like 17 of us yeens here on tumblr

All the doggos and wolfies and yotes can awoo together

And I say hello to all the cattos and compliment your pretty colors and patterns and soft pawbs

And I stare at fellow yeens nervously with love because I haven't been a wild yeen in a very long time and i want them to like me

And I smile and wag my tail at the foxxos and ask if they wan play

And I lay down and wag my tail at deers bc I dont wan be threatening

And I stare at dragons and angels with anxiety questioning if I am allowed to speak to such a beautiful creature

And I vibrate at sheeps and goats struggling to not ask to herd them

And I sniff bunnies and opossums and groundhogs and other rodent friendos because I wanna know about your lil guy adventures

And I stare at that one peepy on here with sheer joy because I never saw a talkin peepy before

And I politely bring bears some berries or fish in request for friendship

And I say hello to horsies and wonder why that zebra had no stripes

And I wag my tail really really hard at cattle and say hello moomoo frens

I LOVE YOU ALL WAAAAA

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how to become a therian

❌️Wear masks

❌️Do quadrobics

❌️Pretend to be your favourite animal

❌️Shift through guided meditation

✅️Identify as an animal

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Specific shout out

Shout out to therians that have pots

Shout out to therians who get light headed or faint easy

Shout out to therians who are amputated

Shout out to therians who can't wear masks because they wear glasses

Shout out to therians that have unique theriotypes and no one understands how they feel

I see you, and you're valid ᰔᩚ

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just this feeling, excited to sail on the northern sea this year.

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silly grey wolf requested by 🌿🐾 anon !

requests aren’t open , i just forgot behe x9

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Reclaiming "Female" Through Therianthropy

This is my submission for the "My Gender is Not Human" zine. Here, I discuss how I realized I was not transgender because of my therianthropy and I hope that maybe someone else may relate and understand themselves in a new way. ♡

If you want to wait to read this until the Zine is released, then do not continue past the "keep reading" portion. Otherwise, enjoy!

PS: If this interests you, I'd strongly advise playing Shelter 2 (where I got the photo below from) as it relates a lot to my own experience.

CW: Body issues, misogyny

Can you imagine the scent of the velvet fuzz of a newborn animal? The experience of a dark den now filled with new life, life that hasn't even opened its eyes yet to the winter world just outside? Can you imagine the tiredness yet sheer love and comfort of having your children welcomed into the world, witnessed only by you and the Earth’s soil?

It's something I often dream of, and it's that very experience that made me realize that I am not transgender. It's funny because in this community, it feels as though the majority of individuals here are transgender and that experience ties closely into their nonhumanity. For me, the opposite occurred. I had a top surgery letter in my hand after years of feeling “not quite right” in my body or in how people perceived me. I had every reason to feel this way and to want this, even if it felt imperfect. Looking back, I remember how I got to this point.

“Be skinnier any way you can, it’ll make you prettier” they’d say as they, themselves, were ironically obese and I loved them no less for it.

“Grow your hair long and change your clothes, you’ll look more like a lady.” A projection rooted in the ideals of someone who reads far too much Jane Austen.

“Women should be subservient and provide endlessly, or they’re selfish.”

Dread set in every time I filled someone’s coffee or plate of food due to expectation or demand. Everytime the topic of how I looked in a dress or how my hair wasn’t as long as someone else wanted. The disappointment of my family when they learned I had dated other women in the past and their relief when I dated one man. The eyerolls and my teacher’s discouragement when I expressed an interest in physics or chemistry. Even my finance degree was achieved through apparent luck despite graduating top of my class. Every “right” I accomplished was met with a “wrong” in some new category. The very things that made men impressive made me disobedient. I starved myself to look a little nicer to strangers, cried in bed after being talked down to at work, slept away all of my sorrows in a curled up ball. Humanity didn’t take kindly to me.

It frustrated me, and combined with my general lack of identity at the time along with diagnosed CPTSD, it was easy to relate to the plight that transgender individuals experienced. Surely that had to be me, but the label and being perceived as something besides female never clicked entirely. I figured that I may just have mild gender dysphoria instead, but for the first time, I really deep dived into what it meant to identify as a gender as everyone was needing urgent, permanent decisions to be made on my end. Around this time, I took on my first mammal label which was a feline. Ironically, cats are often the first animals to be associated with femininity and to be mistreated because of it.

I wanted motherhood, but I wanted my own kittens to rear more than I felt like I wanted to raise a human infant after spending time in a daycare and at a cat shelter. I didn’t want my breasts, but not because I wasn’t a girl, that’s just how other animals are. Perfume was a method to mark the rooms I had been in, not for elegance. I still felt so female, yet I didn’t see another way out besides transitioning until it occurred to me: what if I didn’t have to be a “woman”, and instead, I could simply be female the way animals are female? 

There were so many women like me such as in Brave, Princess Mononoke, Poor Things, or Wolf Children. The women who strayed from polite society to walk their own paths and stuck to their own desires. Even my own cat was female and yet held her chin so high and demanded when she would or would not be held. This realization was the first time I found myself feeling feral freedom and uninhibited beauty in the way I was. I was going to be the woman that rolls in the dirt, who is unapologetically beautiful in her own way, who chases after whatever her wild heart desires. I am not transgender, but I am not entirely a woman. I am an animal, and I am female in all of its unbridled ways.

Shedding my domestic cat label, I have taken up the title of bobcat. With it, I swear on my name that I will bite the hand of any who wish to tame or domesticate me ever again. I have been released out of the crate and back into the wilderness where I belong, and I shall never look back down the mountain. I feel the moss beneath my paws, the cold breeze kissing my nose, the smell of rain soaked woods and wildflowers. Ravens cry as I run on four legs towards the peak, released at last from the grips of mankind. I feel the warmth of a life suddenly worth living, growing along with the hair I now reclaim as my own fur without shame or expectation. I am home at the summit of my own world.

My spirit runs wild, and she is female.