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@paws-gone-wild
Intro Post
hello! An arctic wolf with a blog. Im not technically therian but I use the label and share similar circles
(main blog: blackshuckles) Here is my strawpage! and my nonhuman national park blog
Shuck - he/it - mentally a wolf, and physically a wolf too
Wolf holothere (maybe label?). I am also dragonhearted so expect the occasional dragon posting
Current pfp link user box Link
I dont like living with humans and the way they force that life on me. I have never had that skin, and my blood has always been with my kin.
This is a safe space for others with the so called clinical lycanthropy and zoanthropy. Because I remember when that was frowned on or seen as a lesser creature for it.
When really we are valid, and have been around for as long as life has been around. We're your kin in other fur and blood.
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.
it’s frustrating to see this happen. i understand people’s want to be taken seriously, but some people’s use i feel is damaging to both therianthropy and holothere/physically nonhuman/etc.
because some people perceive holothere etc as “more serious” it leads to accusations that we think we are better than therians, when most of us really don’t feel that way.
i also feel overtime that holothere etc have lost meaning too. because there is the perception that therianthropy is “less serious,” people who would have called themselves therians a few years ago now find themselves in physically-identifying-spaces when their identities are not physical? it makes it harder to use the words as originally defined.
i do think the adoption of holothere instead of therian is out of an earnest feeling of wanting to connect with others, and definitely has to do with the commodification therianthropy has been experiencing. however i think the solution is not to migrate to holothere, because that continues to perceive therianthropy as lesser and misconstrues the meaning of holothere. i don’t have a meaningful suggestion, but i think archives like yours (+other blogs’) are a good start. i also like that people are starting to post therian informational content on youtube again. i can only hope that through digital preservation and dissemination of information that this issue subsides!
TLDR the devaluing of therian(thropy) flattens both experiences, and pits us against each other. how can we fix this?
I think back to this post from Baumarius on Zoesthesia and the discussion I saw on Tumblr and TG about it. I know that this was spurred on by the therian community in China, and while I do not know enough about it to really have a solid opinion, I do generally agree with the sentiment and think it's a worthy endeavor.
Many of the points brought up are about knowing when to leave a sinking ship. And I get it! I do get it. There are some situations where you need to move on and find somewhere else. Sometimes things are a lost cause, and you just have to move on from it.
I remember back with the "clcz exodus" there was a ton of talk about how the appropriation (?) of physical nonhuman terms and labels just made it significantly harder for them to exist in the community. I don't know how accepting many of us actually are of the physical nonhumans as they were these days, part of me thinks that any wide-spread acceptance of them is because "normal" nonhuman experiences have just been renamed and reapplied to the physical definition. Causing for the previous groups to leave that label behind in search of other words to use. There is still a lot of saneism directed towards their experiences, it's just not specifically towards physical nonhumans as a group (mostly). If they grow close to the larger nonhuman community again, I'm sure those new words will meet a similar fate.
I've had a few conversations recently with some folks about the differences between physical nonhuman, transspecies, and holothere. there seems to be little to no general consensus on how or why these three groups are separate. any differences i proposed were shot down. ultimately is just came down to preference, which is a vague and unhelpful thing. this wasn't an aggressive conversation or anything, we were just chatting. and i'm not sure entirely where this fits in to everything, but i'm sure it has its place.
I'm mostly reiterating what you've already said. It's just a hard thing to talk about and navigate around without seemingly shitting on people doing their best to connect with others. No one is doing any of this on purpose. And whatever will eventually happen with "therian" as a term will take time. Physical nonhumanity is a much smaller part of the community, so I think that change was able to happen more rapidly. There are many factors in this that may impact the outcome. Who knows. I have no real way to combat any of this, I don't really think there is an answer anywhere, ha! I think we just need to do our best to be kind and interrogate what terms we use and why. We all clearly care deeply about the community and want to make sure it stays a safe place, it's just hard to figure out how to do that.
I do think much of the acceptance of physical experiences has not been so much the experiences that used to be discussed in physical spaces becoming accepted as an evolution of how the term is used and by whom rather than the range of acceptable experiences growing. There has been a significant commidification of the broader therian identity which brings it to focus on masks, quads, aesthetic, and consumption - both of media and goods as well demanding a full understanding of identity but for many devoid of the introspection and for many spirituality that used to define much of the community. I think for many people, they have suddenly found themselves in community that no longer reflects how they experience things and so seek towards more extreme terms because for these more intense experiences are seen as more valid rather than simply different (while ironically these experiences have historically been treated by the wider community often as invalid or even dangerous). I have over the past few years recieved quite a few messages from people asking if their experiences count as physical or asking for help to identify their species and if it is phsyical off vague information. I think there has been a signficant migration into physical spaces as more and more people use non-literal understandings to define themselves in this manner.
The irony is these terms and communities existed to haven those that often had no meaningful place within the broader therian community. We, in turn, find ourselves often displaced from our terms and communities as others come to our terms hoping to find community, and I think for many strengthen the belief in their own legitimacy of their identity and experience. It has been a consistant pattern that our terms steadily become taken, watered down, and used for another tag spam of therian. There have been points that some of us have formed groups in order to discuss concepts to form a new term - but as discussions would go on it became pretty clear that it was not so feasible to construct a new term that was meaningfully different from existing terms and would not become in time simply another term that would become watered down and used as metaphor or inevitably be met with criticism of elitism like "actually nonhuman" or "literally nonhuman". In the end we had dropped the concept to try to create a new term to consolidate around it. This has though really left many of us without community as we are not tolerable within the spaces we helped make. For myself I find that I have largely had to retreat to insular spaces of a couple discords and personal messaging to a few I am close to. I have found myself largely denied community and meaningfully have only the clinical zoanthropy tag to find others, but even that is often misused or set for discourse about our existance, that simply there is no place for us.
Subtle gear for nonhumans
A lot of gear suggestions aren't conducive with workplace or school dress codes, might be unsafe for some, or just aren't everyone's style. Here’s some ideas for understated nonhuman expression that's not just "wear a graphic print".
If this post inspires you to buy anything, please shop secondhand where you can!
CLOTHING
Fabric choices - Animal print or fur isn't the only option! Focus on which textures you associate with your ‘types. Maybe you like heavier fabrics like wool or leather, wrapping you in a protective layer. Maybe you enjoy the lightweight feel of silks and linen that flutter in the wind. Maybe the structure of sturdy denim feels like a chassis. What feels right against your skin?
Cut - This refers to the shape or style of a garment. What silhouettes read as your ‘types? Maybe you want to add bulk via a boxy blazer with shoulder pads. Maybe sleek, straight cut trousers or a pencil skirt is more you. Look up cuts of jeans if you're new to this and want to start somewhere!
Socks - Maybe they're full on novelty socks, maybe they've got hoof prints on the underside. Fun and subtle!
Shoes - Big platforms or steel toe boots might remind you of hooves, or running shoes can keep you nimble and quiet on your toes. From an aesthetic standpoint, pay attention to the colour and textures. Maybe a brown suede reminds you of your paws, maybe metal hardware reminds you of your shell.
ACCESSORIES
Watches - These could be subtle, with just a strap colour your associate with your ‘type, or a full on statement piece that looks like alien technology. I picked mine because it reminds me of a cat collar.
Cat collar bracelets - Speaking of, these just look like leather bracelets and are a hell of a lot subtler than wearing a dog collar!
Glasses frames - Does the shape of your frames feel insectoid? Round and owl like? Qquare and boxy? How do they transform the shape of your face? Of course, a relevant colour or pattern is also an option!
Pins & Brooches - These could be colourful enamel pins or small simple vintage brooches. Wear them on your clothes or bags.
Belts - This can be a great place to introduce heavier textures like reptile skin or suede, or you can go the opposite direction and use fabric or rope. A statement buckle can be a fun addition if you want to get a bit flashier!
TL;DR Thinks about these two things: what feels right in a sensory way (good textures, lines up with phantom shifts) and what looks right to you (colours, patterns, how fabric sits on your body).
A coyote (Canis latrans) relaxes on a sunny hillside in California, USA
by Robin Gwen Agarwal
This might be kind of a hot take but I feel like the community has shifted away from identifying as animals to identifying with animals. I'm not a big fan of how many folks don't understand their own species behavior or know a lot about their species, it has led to me feeling very isolated around other canines due to how many of them don't present their species behavior (or even understand a single thing about how packs or canine behavior even works)
This is just my own personal take, but it feels weird to try to socialize with most folks in the community because most of the time its seen as "taking it too far" when you actually act as your species. (coughcough wolves are not friendly social creatures to strangers and can actually be quite shy, and growling is not always a form of aggression, on a similar note a wagging tail isn't always a sign of friendliness either)
Now, this isn't to say that those who don't show behaviors like their species are "faking it" (because thats a whole load of shit), it just feels like the community has gotten a lot more anthropomorphized (or humanized) from when I first discovered it
My suspicion is that this is exactly why more and more people who don't seem to actually physically identify as their theriotype have been using labels like "holothere". A lot of mainstream "therian" content has gotten focused on activities/aesthetics that aren't inherent to therianthropy– like masks and quads– so people who have intense animal instincts and phantom shifts (which are very normal and common!) feel alienated and need to assert that, no, they're really an animal. Which has lead to terms like "physical therian" getting watered down and misused.
The TikTok "therian" culture seems like it's largely to blame for this, but it's also a side effect of people moving from forums to public social media platforms. It isn't really possible to post on social media about genuinely "weird" experiences without the risk of bad actors seeing it and harassing you, so people (intentionally or not) downplay or cute-ify their experiences to make them more palatable for a public audience. It's part of the same trend as people self-censoring swears when there isn't actually any evidence that that has any effect– there's been an increasing push toward toning down anything someone might find objectionable, to the point where I don't think most people realize they're doing it. And people doing that leads to outsiders seeing "therian" stuff and going "that looks like fun! I want to do that!" because there aren't any immediately available resources to explain to them that therianthropy isn't a roleplaying trend– which is how we've ended up with people on TikTok saying stuff like "therians don't really think they're animals".
People co-opting community terms, toning them down, and calling the original community "taking it too far" happened already with fictionkin, and it seems like therians are next. The best thing we can do is to just hold the line, correct misinformation, and keep being loudly authentic.
EDIT: And to be clear I am the number one encourager of having fun and being silly with your theriotype! I do it constantly! There's just a difference between that and having fun with the aesthetic of an animal you don't actually know much about. If you identify as something it's a baseline respect to yourself and to that animal to know basic facts about it. It's also a baseline level of respect to accept that others in the community will experience therianthropy differently than you.
Thinking about this more, and I feel like this is also the result of an overcorrection in response to the old grilling/fakeclaiming culture that used to define the therian community. People used to oppressively gatekeep therianthropy and most of us got sick of it, but because of that community history I think a lot of people now have the idea that encouraging someone to do more introspection or suggesting that they might be misattributing their experiences to the wrong animal/creature is "invalidating" someone's identity instead of a good-faith attempt to help them feel more self-actualized and confident.
The whole questioning process seems to have fallen by the wayside in a lot of places, so you get people who, for example, feel a canine-shaped tail or a connection to werewolves and immediately go "I'm a wolf!" without considering other options, and nobody encourages them to question that assumption because they're worried about coming across as gatekeeping– even though that person would be happier and more secure in their identity if they took the time to introspect and learn about other animals before settling on something.
"You can be whatever you want forever" is a mostly true statement, but self-discovery is a long and personal process, and I absolutely believe that other people asking you (polite, good-faith) questions like "so why do you think you're X and not Y?" is a helpful bordering on necessary part of that process. Helping people figure out what they are used to be half of what we socialized about in the community! It's how we shared experiences and bonded and welcomed people! But I feel like now, asking questions like "you seem to act a lot like a dog, so what lead you to identify as a wolf and not another type of canid?" is often seen as rude or as an attempt to invalidate that person's identity. And it shouldn't be! Answering questions like that is how other people learn about what therianthropy is like for you, and if you're secure in your identity being asked these things won't make you feel defensive or invalidated, they'll make you excited to talk about your experiences with others. "I express my wolf theriotype in a doglike way because I was raised by humans like dogs are" is a perfectly valid and interesting answer to that question, for example.
Too much questioning is bad, but so is too little questioning. I would love to see more introspection posts by newer, questioning community members. Seeing and helping other people do self-discovery used to be my favorite part of being here!
Doghuman - Suggestions open! A flag made for everyone who identifies as doghuman! This means that youre part human & part dog. Its a gender neutral version & umbrella term for dogboy, doggirl & dogboygirl See this post for otherkin definition
me!!!!! doghuman doggirl :]
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werewof
Timber wolf By: S. Wayman From: Wild, Wild World of Animals: Bears and Other Carnivores 1976
🌘🌗🌕🌓🌒 wolf
"A wolf paw print in bison blood from this morning in Yellowstone. From one of the members of the Junction Butte pack"
source
purple vile
Oil Pastel art from.. Ssseptember?
i genuinely miss having a pack. and i know that’s so typical to say. but i do.
and when i say a pack, i mean a pack. folks often try to recreate packs in human societies by having a few really close friends. but a few is not a pack. i miss my PACK, dozens of wolves i was close-knit with. i want a living situation where 10+ of my closest loved ones and i live together, see each other every day, love each other platonically. i feel like these days the only option for living with many other people is having lots of children, but i want that kind of bond with other adults i know. like a wolf pack.
maybe that’s why miscecanis and a/b/o in general has appealed to me so much. so often they describe pack houses. i want that so bad
