If you're a therian or otherkin or, maybe there's another term I don't know about, I wanna hear what defines that for you! My understanding of it seems to be a little different from how I personally feel about my identity, but perhaps I just don't have an accurate impression. so ye, I am curious c: (I'm also not that knowledgeable about some things so you may have to bear with some silly ignorance)
- Doe/Doe
- en.pronouns.page/@Kirobsi
Kiwi! I make art of various kinds and ramble sometimes c:
I tend to be rather insular
You must log in to comment.
in reply to @Kirobsi's post:
I'm just not human and more specifically an Irken and Umbreon. This is important enough to who I am that I want to let people know but I'm also individualistic enough that I don't like terms like fictive that put me being in a system as the center point of that identity. I also resonate with otherkin and especially fictionkin community history enough that I prefer that label to just nonhuman, but I actually prefer the term therian a bit more because of the animal associations and because of how I'll typically refer to myself as an animal. The reason I don't use it as much is because of community drama both with gatekeeping and how... weirdly anti-endogenic the therian community is (harold, you believe you're the soul of a wolf in a human body, more than one animal crammed into a body for reasons other than grade-a medically recognized trauma isn't that weird)
I'm not quite sure what you're saying from "anti-endogenic" on >.< oop nevermind I looked up 'anti-endogenic' and I understand that now. before I'd only done 'endogenic' and was confused lol,
but yeah I guess I should provide a little bit of context for why I posted this. There's a lot of identity euphoria for me in being a deer as opposed to a human, it's what my pronouns are based on and it just kinda feels right. More recently someone offered the perspective that I'm literally a deer in the same way that a trans person is their gender, and that made me feel better about myself while also making me step back to consider if maybe I'm not as far from these concepts as I thought. So now like, two months later, I'm getting around to asking about it publicly o,o probably in the worst way possible but oh well lol, I don't wanna go posting in twitter hashtags or on a subreddit anyway.
What makes me feel distinct is that it feels more like a furry thing? Like I have this representation of myself - a fursona, really - which makes me feel nice, but it's not like it's an actual deer. It's anthropomorphic. I really like the idea of having a lil tail, and it'd be cool to have better ears than these weird things. But I dunno if it's quite 'there'. Maybe that's the gatekeeping you mentioned lol,, I don't know. I suppose I don't necessarily have a desire to label myself as therian/otherkin/etc. but I'm still curious if I fundamentally fall under that umbrella. Given that, I don't feel gatekept at all even if that is happening, because I'm kinda just looking for a tour rather than residence, in regards to these labels.
yeah unfortunately plural community terms are almost never made with searchability in mind
That sounds a lot like potentially otherkin/therian to me, while the community doesn't focus on dysphoria/euphoria as much as transgender communities do, that's still a very common experience. You might actually also be interested in trans-species as a concept since it usually involves a lot more physical nonhumanity and there's a fair few who overlap with transgender or transhumanism.
You could also be kin to your fursona or like me have your fursona represent your species but you're not actually bipedal. The gatekeeping I brought up more had to do with how some people are deadset on insisting that therian is only earthen animals with nothing outside of that but its been getting corrected more as of late.
The labels I think should be open to you if you want to try them on and hang around in the community to see if it feels right, otherwise there's nothing wrong with not wanting to label it or preferring to still just say furry for it
umm uhh,,, I am bipedal! unless you meant to type quadrupedal but made a mistake o,o
A quick search of "trans-species" brought up some right wing asshats' videos, a vice article that 404'd, and some stuff that I'm not actually sure is related. If you have any suggestions, I'd look into it! Else, I'm not too sure how.
Either way, thank you for the comments!! c:
Oh I see! I wasn't sure if you meant you were like a quadruped deer but draw yourself bipedal, since that's what I do personally haha
Shit, I didn't realize that it became that bad to look up now. I'll try to see if I can find any essays if you'd like but it's possible some of it's gone down
My essence - essential form -- is not human, but I'm in a human existence. this essence is moreover a potential, one that can't be fully actualized. You can think of an acorn that never gets planted, or another seed planted in the wrong soil. still, the potential tries to actualize in whatever way it can, in a human life and culture, so that a very limited development becomes possible. obviously, anything from body/mind modifications, other virtualities accessible through art practice, neoshamanism, dream incubation, VR, the furry community etc. can help.
now, since in our lives we experience not our form but privation of form, there is a sense that some great evil has befallen us. But this is only in the limited perspective of a separated soul or consciousness. in the greater conception of beings taken collectively and as a whole, their collective potentiality is to be like God, and thus must overcome all conflicts and disharmonies between them in apocatastasis. In order that such overcoming may proceed there needs to develop a sympathy between beings across species. One way is through liminal beings such as ourselves for which our actualization is trans-species. Such may explain, in the form of a theodicy, why even though our lives may be painful, we can find fulfillment once we recognize our role in the greater fulfillment of the whole.
Margery Cornwell-Robinson's essay "Retying: I Return to the Animals", published first in the pagan Green Egg magazine in 1974, then again in a Christian Quaker magazine (1983), explores these ideas. https://www.friendsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/emember/downloads/1983/HC12-50742.pdf As does Buck Young's essay "An historical overview..." http://www.eristic.net/fey/info/buckyoung.php, written for Greenpeace then adopted by the early Otherkin community.