hehe dragons

Cyzul ⛤⁷⎇ (he/they/it) dragonkin, coyoteman, and things

[wasteofprotons]

a little known fact about some dragons is that they are so warm not because they are full of fire but because they are full of love

[theonlyren]

Dysmorphia

🎨 @flowersnax

[gone-fish-mode]

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.

[thetadelta]

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.

[thetadelta]

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.

[spiderqueenpc]

the same worry

[the-otherspace]

It's a secret to everybody.

[alterhuman-art]

[Image description: Sketch of a sweating human figure with short hair and a beard wearing a hat, sweater and several nose piercings. There's a faint outline of leathery wings and a serpentine tail tipped with a fluff of fur. Text inside of a thought bubble reads, "They don't know that I'm a gay bigender dragon..." End description.]

[heartattackinblackdye]

worm therian trying to soft launch their alterhumanity to their partner: would you still love me if, hypothetically,

[were-nuki]

A drawing I just made :3

Based on true events xd

[liondrakes]

Being a transspecies horse added a new pet peeve that I didn’t previously have: people who say “(insert non-canine animal species here) are just dogs/puppies/etc!”. No. Horses aren’t just “big dogs”. I feel like this comparison exists because dogs (and sometimes cats) are the only animals people bother to care about.

[beastlybardou]

Even as someone who /is/ a canine this attitude pisses me off. I, as a werewolf, am not just a big puppy or monster puppy. Wolves are a different beast entirely, and I am a grown man. That's not even touching on people calling bats "sky puppies" etc. Just the other day I was talking to a fox therian friend who was telling me how annoyed she gets about foxes being called "weird cats" instead of being allowed to be foxes, and her raccoon therian partner talking about how derogatory "trash panda" feels to sher.

Just let animals be the animal they are. Not everything is a dog/cat/other simple cute thing you learned about in 2nd grade, and you need to learn to care about and appreciate them too.

[dragongirlfluff]

shaking myself after preening and leaving feathers all over your dash

[beast-named-cyzul]

happy appreciate a dragon day! I bought myself cake

[zarvasystem]

[mothernaturenetwork]

Coyote finds old dog toy, acts like a puppy A photographer spotted a coyote as it trotted into her yard and explored a toy left in the snow. What she managed to capture on camera is the beauty of play.

[beast-named-cyzul]

I love dyeing my maine and painting my claws, vary bird of paradise, but like dragon

[wistful-goddess-deactivated2026]

Dragonkin, How old is your dragonself?

0-5 yrs

6-15 yrs

16-25 yrs

26-50 yrs

51-100 yrs

101-200 yrs

201-400 yrs

401-600 yrs

601-800 yrs

801-1000 yrs

1000+ yrs

Unsure

Voting ended onNov 13, 2025

Recently I discovered I was a baby wvyern, so I'm curious to see the ages of other dragonkin!

Please reblog this so it reaches more dragons! Thx!

[lamppostisposting]

walking normally:

feels bad

weird

“normal"

slower

walking on toes:

feels great

comfortable

stable

faster

creature

[kitsorin]

does tumblr fuck with my shitty 10 minute doodle of delphox tf forcemasc ?

[hemipenal-system]

i like it when dragons have clothes and accessories and jewelry

[hemipenal-system]

dragon getting all dolled up for a fancy event and giving herself new horn piercings with a drill and wearing a bunch of fancy sashes and cloaks and painting big colorful swirls on her scales