im like if a boy was a doll or a bug or a girl or some other thing
So, I made myself a VRChat avatar! I wanted to do something non-humanoid, but still reasonable to pose and gesture for with my arms, and a little bird is perfect for that. As this was my first time ever touching Blender or VRChat's Unity APIs, I'm honestly impressed I got it working as well as I did.
I took it for a spin in a group meetup last night, though, and holy shit did it really hit me just how perfect this thing is for me in ways I couldn't quite articulate at the time. Real Therian Epiphany kinda stuff. I became way more sociable, more engaged with people around me, and more attentive to them and what they were saying. It wasn't until after sleeping on it and spending most of the day today thinking about it that I figured out just what part of this made it so euphoric and energizing for me.
It's because I didn't have hands.
Whenever I'm talking with someone, I'm always cognizant of my hands. They feel invasive, like they're these weird interloping things that if I don't dedicate conscious effort into controlling will start doing weird and uncomfortable things and start grabbing my attention anyway. It makes me very self-conscious and reserved in conversation, and this is no different in VR where I keep fidgeting with my avatar's hands and making weird and unintentional gestures that are incredibly distracting.
But last night, when I just had wings with no visible fingers but was still able to be animated and emotive with my "arms," I found myself free from that for the first time in my life. I was fully engaged with the people in front of me in a pseudo-physical setting, able to just be myself without concern or distraction.
A friend of mine suggested it might be some manner of Body Integrity Identity Disorder if my reaction to being hand-less was so strong, and I'm honestly not sure what to think about that. Because I don't actually dislike having hands. They are very good tools and I do a lot of good and fun things with them. However, they do feel like they're "separate" from me. Like the moment I stop using them for something they just start doing their own thing to occupy themselves or acting like needy animals that want my attention. So, I don't want to get rid of my hands, but I just wish I was more able to, like, put them away when they're not in use?
Alas, that is something I'll only ever be able to experience in VR. Where I get to be my excited and animated birdy self, waving and flapping and folding my wings without having to worry about what those weird bundles of fiddly digits are doing. Real life socialization is going to remain woefully smothered by their presence. But at least I have one place to exist in a more comfortable form. That's one more place than I had before.
