You can call me Ven! I'm in my late 20s and have identified as an alien for over 15 years!
I'm part of the staff for Nonhuman Notions!
Here are my other socials!
I have no DNI other than I don't touch discourse with a 10ft pole. I have my own opinions, but a lot of what I believe boils down to showing kindness, compassion, and consideration towards others.
People who post discourse, are bigoted, or just plain mean will be either blocked or ignored. People who identify as trans-ID (trans-intersex, trans-disorder, etc., not transspecies) will be blocked.
Minors can follow this blog, but will not be followed back since my main account is 18+.
More About Me!
About me!
My biggest interests are Star Trek, Gravity Falls, Outer Wilds, House MD, Subnautica, various forms of art, cooking, and metal music. I will gladly talk your ear off about any of these things.
I'm a big metalhead and listen almost exclusively to all kinds of metal, but mostly doom, death, sludge, and black metal. Electronic music is my go-to when I need a break from metal music.
About my species!
My species is called the Jevari! We are a bipedal, semi-aquatic, omnivorous species that average around 7ft tall. Our bodies feature digitigrade legs, two opposable thumbs per hand, four eyes, and short fur that come in a variety of neutral tones and patterns.
Since our planet is mostly covered in water, our diet mainly consists of sea life, both animal and vegetation. Food is generally prepared raw, dried, or fermented since we don't need to cook most of what we eat.
Our species is built on community, with whole towns or neighborhoods raising the kelangi (children) communally and working together to provide for everyone. It is expected to help those in your community family. You help make food for everyone, you help fix nets, you help teach the kelangi to swim, etc. This sense of community family is why most of our species does not actually travel in space, eventhough we are capable.
My system members!
@psychicalmedia - Sal, my fellow co-host!
@becomeundeath - Theseus (warning for anatomical gore and talk of death, since they handle our Cotards the most)
@golden636 - Gyro!
@gcrsmu - Bill and Ford, our persecutor and protector
I've been seeing a lot of confusion about the distinction between some commonly-used terms, so here's a refresher!
Therian/Therianthrope: Someone who is a nonhuman animal or animal-like creature in some way. Any therian may identify as either fully nonhuman or as both human and nonhuman.
Physical Therian: A therian who feels that their physical body is not human*. Many physical therians experience their bodies as being nonhuman due to delusions and/or hallucinations (e.g. clinical zoanthropy), but others have a physical identity due to beliefs about their personal origin (e.g. that they have nonhuman ancestry, or were born nonhuman and shapeshifted into a human at a young age).
Holothere/Holotheric Therian: A physical therian who also identifies as nonhuman in all other ways, such as mentally and spiritually, and does not identify as human in any way.
Transspecies: Someone who is nonhuman in some way and feels that those experiences fit a trans narrative, usually either due to being both nonhuman and transgender and seeing those experiences as similar or inseparable and/or due to a desire to "transition" toward nonhumanity in some way (such as socially or through body modification). Some transspecies people use it as their only label, but many use it as a modifier (e.g. "transspecies therian"). This term is entirely unrelated to tr*nsID identities and existed long before that community formed.
Phantom Shift: Feeling the presence of limbs or features (such as a tail or feathers) that do not exist in physical reality. A person having a phantom shift may "see" those body parts in their minds eye, but will know that they aren't physically there. Phantom body parts may react to physical reality and give sensory feedback, but they cannot physically interact with anything and often pass through objects like a ghost. Phantom shifts are a common experience for all types of therians. Some therians feel the presence of phantom parts 24/7, while others only feel them occasionally. Not all therians experience phantom shifts, however, and not everyone who has phantom shifts is a therian.
Physical Shift: Feeling and/or seeing one's bodily features literally, physically change. Physical shifts are typically experienced by people who have hallucinations, and have never been documented to occur in consensus reality. That is, physical changes are experienced in someone's subjective (personal) reality and cannot be seen or measured by other people.
*Note: While it has become common for people to use metaphorical explanations like "I'm a bird so this is a bird's body" as a reason for identifying as a physical therian, the term "physical therian" was originally intended to represent the marginalized sub-community of therians who identify as literally physically nonhuman. If you are someone who identifies as a physical therian in a metaphorical way I'm not telling you to stop, but do please consider your reasons for doing so (physical identity is not more intense, serious, or "real" than other kinds!) and please be respectful of the therians who created this label. See the last reblog of this post for more info about how this trend has affected the physical therian community.
i will always be a fan of people describing themselves however they want, do not take this as me shitting on any label in any way.
i do think that it is very telling how i see a lot of folks saying that they have "outgrown" the therian label and taken up holothere instead, saying that it feels more real and legitimate.
something about it wigs me out. and i think that it has to do with perceived seriousness and a bid for legitimacy. linguistic shift is normal and expected, it's not like this is really avoidable. but the difference between holothere and therian is not the same as therianthropy vs. therianism.
therianthropy vs. therianism is really just people using the wrong term. it's not intentional. it's what happens when "therianthrope" has been shortened so much that the original tenses and forms of the word are just forgotten. it's an arguably pretty normal linguistical shift. im a little annoyed by it, mind you. "therianthrope" and "therianthropy" are some kickass words that I think should be used more. but i can't really be shocked or even upset that it's happened.
holothere is different. while the coining of the word + the way many use it can be very genuine, there is undoubtedly a growing population that uses it because of its perceived to be more serious than therian. it's adopted as a way to been seen as a more legitimate identity. and i can't really be mad at that, either. to say that therian has lost some of its.... idk.... power? due to it being picked up by certain demographics is not wrong. like there is nothing in the reasoning or the desire that is bad or wrong with any of this.
but it does make me a bit squemish, I think? Because it introduces therianthropy as something lesser within the community. You have an internal conflict with legitimacy, here. And it's based off the label you use. In the past, the community has negotiated legitimacy through grilling. And I am not calling for a return to grilling, I don't think it was a great thing, but... it is something I'm noticing.
How we are changing the way we assert our identity's seriousness is now based off of the initial words we use, as opposed to the understanding of that word.
I could talk more about this. as I said before, this is not an attempt to convince anyone to stop using holothere. I know it has a lot of differences to it and it's deeper to most people. I'm not going to sit here and try to combat this very natural shift in behavior. This is just something I've noticed in the way people talk about the term. It's 7:51 am, I have a final exam at 8:00. So I will be going now. But I would love to hear if anyone has more thoughts on this. I will probably come back around and amend some of what I've said here, I've only been thinking about this topic specifically for like. 15 mins. Give me a day and I'll figure out how to say this a better way.
Personally my biggest issue with the holothere thing is that it's based largely on misinformation– people appear to be using it because they think that experiences like intense phantom and mental shifts mean they're a physical therian, which is emphatically not the case. I think the very vague definition of holothere ("nonhuman in every way") is partially to blame for this, because newcomers to the community with intense experiences read that and go "of course that's me, I'm not human at all", but the "every way" explicitly incudes the belief that one's physical body is literally nonhuman. Physical identity isn't "I feel limbs that aren't there" or "I conceptualize myself as nonhuman" (which are standard therian experiences), it's "I literally have a nonhuman body right now".
Physical identity has recently usurped spiritual identity as the "most real" in people's mental hierarchy, so there's a social pressure to say you have a physical identity even if you don't– and it's easy to use phantom shifts to justify that if you're coming from TikTok and don't know that most therians have them, or if you feel like you won't be taken seriously otherwise. It's watered down both therian and holothere/physical therian as terms because the difference between them has been reduced to Vibes when there is actually a very specific distinction (the "physical" part is literal).
As I've said before, the current situation with therianthropy is very reminiscent of what happened with fictionkin in the 2010's, and if things go the same way (which they likely will, online trends die out but communities persevere even if they get fragmented) we are not going to lose the legitimacy of "therian" as a term, and we should be fighting to make sure it stays a serious, well-defined word– not abandoning it because we're worried about being associated with roleplayers on TikTok. We will always be associated with roleplayers and furries by outsiders, if it was avoidable we'd have figured out how by now.
Oh the other thing I wanted to say about this is that stuff like "linguistic shift is normal" only applies if the people in question are the ones responsible for the change! Currently what's happening is that the word therian is being appropriated by people outside the community, which is entirely different from if therians themselves suddenly decided to water down their own term.
"Language changes" was actually one of the biggest arguments KFFers used to justify their appropriation of the word "otherkin", and I'm not about to let people think that ceding a decades-old community to a social media trend is a reasonable and justified thing to do.
The language is ours, it only changes if we want it to.
I wanted to do a little art project for the community, bringing a focus on unity
So I’m hoping to do a couple separate drawing of me and other beings who wish to participate,
So otherkins/therians/fictionkin/hearted/links/holotheres/ and any others let me know if you want me to draw a little duo drawing of us together! Feel free to message me with a ref of what you want!
It might take me a bit and I’m not sure how many I will do but if you have interest don’t be shy!
Tentatively back! We work a lot of hours, but we're settling into a new job and new place! Our new place is a 25-ish minute walk from a beach, so expect some pictures in the future!
Did you know that you can make fake 3D pixel art in Blender by just like turning anti-aliasing off?? And pixelizing post-effects? Sounds super simple but it took me forever to figure it out.
I'm not dead I promise! Theseus has been fronting the most so he's been very active but I'm still around! He's just been taking the reins for a bit. I've mostly been around on discord instead of talking here (oops)
fish is a minor npc from my dnd campaign. she is a nixie who appears as a school of fish underwater, and humanoid on land.
this mini diorama is made of clear & blue plastic sheets and 3d printed fish. the plastic box is empty inside; the fish are all glued to each other and to the top of the box.
