three genders in a wenchcoat

step by constant step she has vanquished our doubts

tonight our dragon incinerated hers wholesale

frequent sentiment amid the lamentations: "this place made me a better person."

no exception here. and it's not really the lack of numbers and whatnot... it's the community who self-selected to a site like this one, the lived values which made this the first place we have ever felt genuinely safe exposing every part of ourself. our darkest shame, our rambling explorations of plurality, the therian identity we've carried since before that label existed but always anticipated a mob of gatekeepers if we claimed it. Akhra, Lenestre and Rhiannon were first named and expressed as fursonas in the 90s, but even that community has limits to the degree of open weirdness it'll celebrate rather than merely permit. here? we're surrounded by systems and critters and critter systems. it didn't feel like putting things out there, it felt like joining the party and that is an incredible, magical difference.

in short, cohost made us realize that transition was only the first of many steps in living openly as our entire self; and it provided favorable terrain to actually get there.

three weeks ago we spent an evening at the bar with @atonal440; one of several since meeting here in early April and discovering we were co-local. we realized, he knows the system individually from #onhere... why not talk individually? 🦡 chatted for an hour, then 🐲 for another hour. 🍯 left the bar and walked with him until our paths split. we've talked quite a bit about how this evening led us to the novel experience of Having a Boyfriend, but it was huge in another way too: this was the first time we ever openly, explicitly, not dressed up as fictional roleplay, spoke face-to-face as individuals, separately named and recognized. the joy and freedom of that was enough that we decided to fully come out as plural to the offline world as well; all our friends and family know now. cohost did that. we can think of no other catalyst that might have ushered us to this point.

the shutters may be closing, but thousands will remember this space and what it enabled. its presence will echo through our futures and it will live piecemeal in the lessons we carry and share forward. maybe, if we're lucky, it will live again more cohesively in some other new place that gets made down the line. and it hardly matters if that one only survives this unworthy world for a few years too: it will do so much good in so little time.

can't believe these fools spent near half a century not indulging the joy of wing flexes. it was always right there! they just never bothered to try! good thing we got me combed out — 🐲

i feel that there are some artists whose relationship with humans is much the same as a furry artist’s relationship with animals. that is to say, the artist admires these creatures, finds within them enormous aesthetic and tactile potential, and seeks to express themselves through that potential: but you could hardly argue that the end result of this process is a literal depiction of the creature in question. it’s, you know, a beautiful chimera, possessive of whatever aesthetic qualities of the source material the artist finds emotionally resonant.

when the source material is a non-human animal we call this “furry art”; when it’s a human we don’t really have a particular word for it. maybe you could argue that this is simply cartooning, though i’m not totally convinced.

most of my favorite cartoon art of animals that are ostensibly humans is by furries. furries fucking own: they just Get the concept of Embodiment. furries latch on to all the things that would rule about having a particular kind of body. furries know exactly what’s to like about having fur, or a huge tail, or a snoot and perky ears, or whatever. Embodiment! when that same lens is applied to the human animal, the resulting art often carries that same feeling. that feeling of, like, “this artist knows why this shape would be cool to be.” maybe what results isn’t a literal depiction of a human any more than any given anthro can be called a literal depiction of a fox: it’s a beautiful chimera inviting you to play in the space of Embodiment.

anyway that’s how i’ve been thinking about drawing lately. thanks furries. i love you

oh what a lovely thought

this is exactly the sense in which I use ΘΔ.