Radiant Obscurities (RO) is a project & site (on Sonverrid.org–same domain as my personal site) for content, mainly writings, about personal animality & the experience of “being animal” from therians, otherkin, & other alterhumans, but for animal types that are uncommon or rare in those communities.
The ultimate goal of this project is to help others with experiences of being animal realize & feel that *they are not alone*. I want that more than anything else from this project.
The site will be maintained by myself, Sonne, rather than content being uploaded directly by other content creators.
Website Link: here.
Discord Link: here.
Submission Page: here. (May not work in Tumblr app but should work in browser)
It is easier to say what kind of content wouldn’t fit rather than what will, but generally common therio-/‘kintypes, such as felines, canines, dragons, & angels, are not the aim of this project because they are easier to find. However, exceptions to this rule of thumb may occur (for example, a type of dragon or canine-like creature that is rare in these communities). If you are unsure at all, feel free to ask here or message me & I will let you know if I feel it fits. If I decline it, it’s not personal, I’m just trying to keep focused of the aim & theme for this project/site.
Forms of content accepted are writings (poetry, prose, essays, musings, etc.) & possibly artwork. Other forms of content may be accepted, too, depending on what you all show interest in seeing or submitting. However, mood/aesthetic boards, selfies, & memes, as well as content that is not your own will not be accepted & I may add to this list at any time.
**Please keep content PG-13 (I want to keep it accessible to a wider audience). Expletives are okay in the content but don’t be offensive or prejudice.
Submissions can be the actual content or links to the content. You can use the suggested tags when submitting or alternatively write those tags in your post if you don’t want them to appear in the given Tumblr tags.
Permissions & Usage of Content:
By submitting content to me/Radiant Obscurities you are granting permission for me to repost that content on the official Radiant Obscurities (RO) website. However, if at any point you want to revoke that permission & have the content removed from the RO website, you have to contact me with that request so that I can fulfill it. I do not intend to post the content elsewhere beyond stating the title, author, & brief description of the content.
I added writings on: being a roadrunner, selkie, & velociraptor, along with a writing on being junco-hearted.
I was going to add one by @paracosmic-gt called "Compound Eyes" but I can't seem to find it to add to the site, as I don't remember where or how I came across it =/.
I added writings on: being a roadrunner, selkie, & velociraptor, along with a writing on being junco-hearted.
I was going to add one by @paracosmic-gt called "Compound Eyes" but I can't seem to find it to add to the site, as I don't remember where or how I came across it =/.
I think I have an interesting disconnect between being otherkin and being otherhearted. I see people who feel as though the two terms are nearly indistinguishable, and for some reason it's not like that for me! There's a clear line between them in my brain, and I wanna journal about my personal experience with that.
I'm a velociraptor, velociraptor therian, raptorkin, raptorkind, a prehistoric bird, a wereraptor. I use those words interchangeably, since they all convey the proper information: I'm a raptor. I also strongly identify as human. I have two species, equal in value, and they fluctuate in intensity - in my daily life, I'm content to see myself as human, and my raptor side is almost a separate creature entirely, but not quite. It's a median headmate, an important part of me, and also different from me. We are the same until we are not.
And I'm not raptorhearted, even when I'm only partly identifying as a raptor, when I'm feeling more human. I don't identify with raptors, with the traits humans have given them or with their reconstructed biology - I don't feel a sense of belonging, or home, or love for their species in a way that's beyond what I feel for other animals. Raptors are, for some strange reason, not very special to me. I just happen to be one.
Even when I'm not a raptor, when I'm a human with a raptor side and raptor instincts, I don't relate to my raptor brain - that's why I separate it from me! I don't feel a sense of familiarity with it, beyond the familiarity of being it and knowing how it works from being it.
Other raptors aren't inherently family to me. I'll call them cousins, as an affectionate shorthand, because they're like me and not quite the same, but I don't feel a sense of caring for them simply because they're raptors. I feel familiar with them because they're like me - I enjoy seeing how much we're alike, what ways we might differ! But I don't deeply care about them, in the same way someone who's raptorhearted might.
Here, for contrast, let me tell you about how I experience being fictionhearted with a particular canon, and why I'm confident in calling that a hearttype.
My heartcanon, the fictional canon which I'm connected with, is a personally-created alternate universe of the video game Detroit: Become Human, which I've named Detroit, Machina. I've named it, given it a different title, because it's so fundamentally important to me and feels so different from the original source from which it was derived that calling DBH in general my heartcanon feels painfully wrong.
I don't identify as any character from Machina. I identify with the beats of the story, with the characters and their struggles, with the joys and failures and everything about creating it. I say I have a heartcanon because I could tell someone about it as a story, as a fanfic, and it would not convey the depth of how this story is embedded into my psyche. I would not be the same person if I hadn't written about it for years of my life, put pieces of myself into it. I'm not fictionkind, I'm not anyone in this story, but the story is an integral part of me anyway. I have such strong feelings about it that I don't know how to put it to words, and I don't feel comfortable trying in a public post. It's important to me. If you told me I could never talk about Machina again, I would crumble to ash.
Contrast that with being a raptor. If you were to tell me I could never have any piece of dinosaur paraphernalia ever again, I would shrug. They're cute, sure, but I don't care about raptors that intensely. I would be just as disappointed if you said I couldn't ever have any cat paraphernalia, and I'm not a cat in any alterhuman sense.
Basically - I don't care about raptors in such a strong, personally intense way that they've changed who I am. I am a raptor, and that's changed who I am, and that doesn't mean I necessarily love them. And that's perfectly okay.
So I was at Othercon 2024 this past weekend - and like many who attended, I came out the other side with a new piece of my identity to chew over. This essay is me chewing over my thoughts on archaeosapience, as it connects to my velociraptor paleotheriotype, and why I genuinely don’t feel like I fit the label.
One of the panels I attended and thoroughly enjoyed was “Not Humans, Still People: How Inhumanity Interacts with Personhood,” by Goratrix bani Tremere of the Draconic Wizard Workshop and Chaiya Askari-Vykos of the Treehouse System. During the panel, Goratrix and Chaiya argue that personhood is different from humanity, defining personhood as, essentially, sapience - the ability to understand oneself, to make rational choices, to comprehend the world in not only physical ways, but also the abstract and symbolic. All humans are people, but not all people are humans - nonhuman personhood is experienced by many, many alterhumans, and this is an important distinction to keep in mind.
Another panel I adored, presented by Sivaan of Candlekeep, was “Archaeosapience: To Awaken as Ancient in a Modern Age,” in which he discusses the label and the intricacies of his own experience as an archaeosapien. Once again, nonhuman sapience is a key feature here - as Sivaan writes in xyr coining essay, “[t]he “sapience” in archaeosapience exclusively refers to our awareness of our existence as ancient beings,” as opposed to an inherent connection with the species Homo sapiens. Archaeosapience does not require one to be human.
An archaeosapien is defined as “an individual whose alterhuman or nonhuman identity is intrinsically rooted in prehistory, antiquity or mythic accounts of history.” And funnily enough, here lies my personal disconnect with the term, even though I identify as a velociraptor - a prehistoric animal well known to be extinct. To experience archaeosapience requires personhood, requires sapience, an understanding of oneself as an ancient being. And this is one thing that my theriotype utterly lacks.
Now, I’m not saying that I lack sapience. I am a person, one who reads and writes and learns about the world around me. I also identify as human, separate but intertwined with my personhood, and my humanity is as important to me as my animality. Both of these core parts of myself contribute to where I stand today - as a prehistoric animal person who is, somehow, completely at home in modernity.
Throughout this essay, I’m going to refer to my raptor self in the third person - it thinks this, it wants that. I separate myself from my theriotype in this way because I do not feel like I’m myself in a mental shift. My raptorial mind is not a person, but an animal. It is incapable of understanding abstract concepts or philosophical thought, living in the physical world where it gets food, water, rest, shelter, and enrichment. This does not make it any lesser than my sapient mind - it does mean that it has a different way of understanding the world.
My raptor brain, the instinctual animal side, does not feel like it’s an animal from another era. It doesn’t even know what time is, beyond the regular cycles of day and night. It doesn’t understand common features of modern human society, like computers or elevators or money - not because those things didn’t exist back in prehistoric Asia, 75 million years ago, but because it’s an animal. I could be a gecko from the modern day and still feel the same mentally shifted apathy and confusion about the things I need to live day to day as a human being. The raptor doesn’t know or care about its status as a long-extinct relic, because as far as it’s concerned, it is alive and well, healthy and fed and comfortable in a house with people it knows.
In fact, my raptor brain doesn’t even feel attached to a habitat. Early on in my awakening, as someone who knows where velociraptors used to live in the spacetime continuum, I felt a sort of connection with deserts - I’d look at them and think, that’s like the place my species lived! This was the part of me who’s a person, putting a label to a place that I’ve never been, thinking fondly of it despite never having lived there.
The part of me that’s not a person, that knows nothing but pavement and grass and many-walled shelters keeping out the wind, looks at the desert and bristles with distaste. It doesn’t like the idea of being somewhere it doesn’t know, with sand and scorching sun and no food it knows how to catch. It knows its home territory, a place with cooling wooden floorboards and a comfortable nest of mattress and blankets and a cache of good food that never runs out, and it likes its territory. It doesn’t like the desert or understand the significance of it. It can’t comprehend the idea of wilderness enough to miss it. It doesn’t want to be wild and free, it wants to live in a building with air conditioning and clean freshwater from the sink.
As you can see, my raptor self is perfectly content to be a modern animal. How about my human self, the part of me that can think about my theriotype and know that it’s a prehistoric animal? Do I long for ancient deserts, grieve and yearn for a world I never experienced because I know it might have once been home?
Well… no. I don’t. For better or worse, my humanity feels inexorably linked to modernity, to cities, to technology. I can’t go anywhere or do anything without running into electronics. I use the internet every day of my life to learn, entertain, engage with the world around me. I couldn’t imagine living a life where I didn’t have it. There’s no disconnect from the modern day for me, no longing for the past - only the sense that I’m right where I want to be.
As a person, I’m content with where I am today. As an animal, a raptor can’t yearn for a time it has never lived.
The nonhuman community has a habit of only discussing and focusing on therianthropic identities, but I'd like to share how prevalent my rodent kithtype is in my life and to me (sometimes in ways more important than my theriotype).
Growing up, I was often left to my own devices due to a dad that came home late and a mother who could care less for my existence. My activity of choice was being in the yard from the moment I woke up until the moment it was dinner time. Laying on the concrete one summer day, I heard rustling in the window well which would unknowingly change my life.
On hands and knees, I moved towards the well and peered in, where my eyes met a scared mouse's beady black ones. It couldn't get out of the well it had fallen into and would surely die. My parents didn't like rodents, so I tip toed into the basement and got a long poled duster and a roll of duct tape. I put the duct tape along the slick pole and dropped it down into the well which the mouse quickly gripped onto and skittered up. It hopped off and, while I expected it to bolt immediately, it didn't. It stared at me for a moment standing on its hindlegs before finally leaving, and that would be the end of a mouse saving saga... Or so I thought.
The next day, a mouse was moving under the wooden step on the patio. Seed by seed, grass blade by grass blade, the mouse I affectionately named Mr. Kibbles would make a home poetically at the entrance of my own human home. I tossed out scraps of food, a cap full of water, fluffy bits of fabric or hair, and soon enough, Mr. Kibbles brought a Mrs. Kibbles.
Seemingly in a few weeks, I had gone from saving one mouse from the well to saving several mice which all lived throughout the rocks and dirt. Even as a kid, I had the intelligence to cover the well and so I did. All was well and my parents didn't mind, until one made it into the basement one day. That's when the mouse traps started, but I was cunning. I'd sneak the mouse traps into the trash when no one looked. If more appeared, I'd sabotage them by breaking them apart. My parents loathed me, but I was persistent and knew how to exhaust them. If I had to, I'd go into the basement and open the spider web infested well window and reach my hand in, grabbing mice myself and putting them in a box to bring back outside. It all began there that for once, I felt I had a family. A real one, even if it did no providing for me... Sort of.
Mice provided me life skills applicable to an abusive home. I observed every survival skill these mice had to offer. How to sneak and move quietly. How to store food. How to hide. How to make a safe den. How to hide weakness. How to turn a trashed box into a home and scraps into a meal. The rats in cities showed me how to thrive in a heavily populated environment. Capybaras showed me how to relax and enjoy life. Hamsters showed me the domestic side of rodenthood, of living in an artificial world and remain enriched. The squirrels showed me a world above the ground. Even in movies, rodents took a precedence in my mind and taught me things. Ratatouille taught me how to cook and I became quite good at it. Arrietty, who reminded me so much of a mouse, showed me how to be small and resourceful in a world that felt bigger than me. The Tale of Desperaux helped me be myself and Willard was incredibly relatable.
My biggest life teachers and what really raised me were often rodents of many, many kinds. The "pests" and "scum" that mice and rats are seen as taught me how to be seen as good for nothing, and yet survive. Even thrive. As an adult, the skills and lifestyle of rodenthood still helps me stay happy. I still love cooking and learned how to essentially be a chef because of Ratatouille, so I am always eating well no matter what I have. I can identify dangerous people because I analyze who moves like a predator and who moves like a mouse. You will find cups shaped like flower heads in my cabinet as an homage to my family of a million individuals, each unique even in a colony. I also feel that I am more compassionate because I could find such great value in something so small and unwanted by the majority, and yet I am capable of standing up for myself just as the mouse who stands off with the cat.
At times, I consider if I identify myself as rodent or if rodent is merely my imprinted family, but I value them no less regardless. If you have a kithtype, definitely share it with the community as they can be just as important, if not more so, than even a kintype.
OP, would you be okay if I added this to Radiant Obscurities? It's a site about experiences of personal animality, including kithtypes, if you didn't already know :3.
A short form post about my cameo as a Filarial worm, a type of nematode, posted on Dreamwidth.
It's interesting, I've only ever seen the experience of a tapeworm, in term of real animals, but I've seen the concept of parasitic spirits a bit more in nonhuman spaces. Sunabi was such a creature, and I may make a twin post to mine describing their experience, but right now I don't feel like diving into something with quite that much baggage for me.
[Essay] MissingNo Therian: An Exploration in Identity, Labels, and the Fictotherian Experience
We've seen a few posts of people wanting more personal essays in the community, so I thought I would write this and crosspost it to Tumblr.
-Rex
I am a MissingNo. My exact form is one that's been fluid throughout my life, with Kabutops and Aerodactyl fossil forms having preference, but occasionally switching to the Lavender Town Ghost.
I identify as a Pokemon therian or Poketherian for my species - or fictotherian for a broad term. This identification is one which can confuse people - after all, therianthropy is more traditionally associated with animals, and I identify as Pokemon that isn't real. My species only exists in four games that are well over two decades old and is a failsafe the game spits out. Why should I identify as a therian?
Despite how strange it can seem, I still prefer therian over other labels such as otherkin and fictionkin. My therian identity is deeply intertwined with my hyperempathy, created by a bias of my animality, comes from viewing a MissingNo as a type of animal, and from experiencing common therian traits.
Therian over otherkin, fictionkin, or fictive
Some may be saying "why don't you call yourself fictionkin?" or even "Isn't otherkin for mythical species, while therian is for earthen species?" To address the later point, there have been better written essays dispelling this. I would highly recommend Therian: Dispelling the Earthen Animal Myth by The River System for a well written and researched essay.
To address the former point, it is personal preference. I did use "otherkin" for years and still do identify as both otherkin and fictionkin, but the term "therian" is more in alignment to how I experience identity. I am an animal, I experience shifts, and I experience instincts.
I don't perceive MissingNo as sapient on the level of elves or some dragons. For me, being a MissingNo is also a "real" thing, as tangible as a dog, bird, or dragon. I don't consider myself glitchkin despite being a glitch, nor conceptkin. I am like the theriomythics who label themselves for being an animalstic gryphon or phoenix.
When it comes Fictionkin and fictive, to me they can be too focused on identifying yourself in the framework of being a character, which I'm not. I'm not a creepypasta character anymore than one of the Hypno species would be. I still do identify as fictional - I can comfortably identify as "fictherian" or my preference "fictotherian" (Which comes from "fictotype". I believe I started this term usage - since when I started using it, I could find no results to it, but I did use it in forum posts, Discord servers, and other methods).
Fictive falls under a similar problem - but with slightly more alienation. While the term is open to me, my identity history makes me feel out of place in a community of walk-ins and introjects when it was one that developed later in life.
How I became a MissingNo and the grip of hyperempathy
My identity as a MissingNo came later in life. I began existing in my system as a canine pup - which I know from behaviors and mannerisms that I later connected to me in the present, and genuinely expressing feeling like a dog as a child. Years later, I identified this species as a manned wolf.
Then at around the age of ten, my identity shifted to a glitch Pokemon. What at least contributed to it was developing a special interest in Glitch Pokemon around this time. This combined with our natural hyper-empathy and perhaps being conceptum to subconsciously alter my identity over time.
These interpretations can cause me to be out of place. While I still love glitch Pokemon and I am fascinated by them, I rarely find anyone who also has an intense interest and fascination while having this level of hyperempathy - even if I encounter others who have some alterhuman or even gender or sexuality connection to glitch Pokemon. Almost uncontrollably do I see glitch Pokemon as genuine Pokemon. I might grow attached to certain Pokemon in the way I would a pet.
The overall psychological influence means that this identity comes down to personal interpretations and personification. I'm not a natural animal and you cannot read about me in a textbook or find any bits of lore within the games, but rather, I am an animal that came from the mind of a mentally ill person.
MissingNo the animal
What defines "animal" varies. Humans are biologically animals and primates, but not all humans identify with those terms, with some taking offense to it. To someone with hyperempathy, a stuffed animal may be as much of an animal as a living one, or even a car might be a type of animal to certain minds. This connection is what makes me feel a MissingNo can be a type of animal.
Additionally, Pokemon are their world's equivalent of animals, and this is how most of my system views Pokemon due to one of our deepest parallel life connections being a humanlike Mewtwo. This sentiment is also one I've seen many Poketherians have. In the world of our origin, we are animals. For another essay on a similar experience, I'd highly recommend "The Fire Burns Bright" by Jasper, an Alolan Marrowak therian.
Within the contexts of the games and many interpretations - including my own - MissingNo is also a bird. It is one of few Pokemon which use this glitch beta typing. Being a bird can be equally as much a part of it and I'd consider birds as a paralleltype and one where I may confidently call myself a bird. Albeit a very odd bird.
The wolf and animal bias in my core
In addition to the bird of the MissingNo, the manned wolf at my heart is still important to my identity. It's in between otherhearted and therian on a sliding scale, and I identify it more as manned wolf-hearted for convenience, but it's closer to "kinth". I don't know why I am or was a manned wolf, but it doesn't quite matter to me either way. What matters is that there is the manned wolf.
To me it feels as if despite my core being or "soul", my mind became a MissingNo while the core remained the same. To my soul, a MissingNo is a type of dog. Then, to my mind, a manned wolf is a type of Pokemon. Both of these identities came about and exist in harmony rather than opposition.
Another comparison that the heart and soul makes is being "feral". Glitch entities in video games to me are almost like an animal which can't be domesticated. They may act fine, but every so often you'll encounter something that reminds you that at their core, they're wild. MissingNo still scrambles sprites and Hall of Fame data - and you can't have a "normal" experience with it. MissingNo is to Pokemon as a wolf is to a dog.
The instincts that made me tear apart playsets when playing house pretending to be a dog are still present in the instincts that make me want to tear apart meat when I eat it.
The Experience of a MissingNo Animal
I fit into many traditional therianthropy experiences and unto a hybrid canine/avian experience - just perhaps with more twists towards the bizarre.
I am a contherian when it comes to mental shifting and almost always feeling like an animal. However, I do experience phantom shifts. I get the sensations of skeletal fangs, claws, and a body that's far heavier and taller than my tiny, human form. Though the bizarre comes when during these shifts, I don't feel like I have skin and much of my body feels transparent, I feel like I should be able to stick my hand through my lower jaw.
I feel the sense of freedom and flight when I ride a bike downhill. For a few minutes when I bike, I can imagine myself flying. I sit in rivers and ponds among the wading birds feeling like I belong. I treat the chicks and chickens we raise like a part of my flock.
I still want to hunt. Sometimes I need to fight my instincts to recognize chicks as flockmates and not food. I like to eat wildly and I like to taste blood and fat in my food. When I eat, I feel like like the blood should dribble through my skinless jaw bone. Skeletal claws should be typing this essay instead of fleshy human fingers.
Conclusion
I am an animal, and despite doubts, I am a therian.
This label fits my experiences better than the alternatives. I don't feel as much alienation or out of place compared to other communities even though my species isn't an "animal" in the traditional sense. Hyperempathy has created this experience for me in that I feel more comfortable saying I am an animal than I am from fiction.
My center being is animal and always has been, it's just how its presented through my life has shifted. The animal instincts have only developed as my species has.
It is my hope that more unusual therians might come forth and be encouraged to examine their experiences - and for both earthen therians and potential theriomythics or fictotherians to explore what exactly "animal" means to them. I want others to also examine where their mind's biases may lead them, how that can impact their identity, and use it to feel more at peace in what the heart wants.
[Essay] MissingNo Therian: An Exploration in Identity, Labels, and the Fictotherian Experience
We've seen a few posts of people wanting more personal essays in the community, so I thought I would write this and crosspost it to Tumblr.
-Rex
I am a MissingNo. My exact form is one that's been fluid throughout my life, with Kabutops and Aerodactyl fossil forms having preference, but occasionally switching to the Lavender Town Ghost.
I identify as a Pokemon therian or Poketherian for my species - or fictotherian for a broad term. This identification is one which can confuse people - after all, therianthropy is more traditionally associated with animals, and I identify as Pokemon that isn't real. My species only exists in four games that are well over two decades old and is a failsafe the game spits out. Why should I identify as a therian?
Despite how strange it can seem, I still prefer therian over other labels such as otherkin and fictionkin. My therian identity is deeply intertwined with my hyperempathy, created by a bias of my animality, comes from viewing a MissingNo as a type of animal, and from experiencing common therian traits.
Therian over otherkin, fictionkin, or fictive
Some may be saying "why don't you call yourself fictionkin?" or even "Isn't otherkin for mythical species, while therian is for earthen species?" To address the later point, there have been better written essays dispelling this. I would highly recommend Therian: Dispelling the Earthen Animal Myth by The River System for a well written and researched essay.
To address the former point, it is personal preference. I did use "otherkin" for years and still do identify as both otherkin and fictionkin, but the term "therian" is more in alignment to how I experience identity. I am an animal, I experience shifts, and I experience instincts.
I don't perceive MissingNo as sapient on the level of elves or some dragons. For me, being a MissingNo is also a "real" thing, as tangible as a dog, bird, or dragon. I don't consider myself glitchkin despite being a glitch, nor conceptkin. I am like the theriomythics who label themselves for being an animalstic gryphon or phoenix.
When it comes Fictionkin and fictive, to me they can be too focused on identifying yourself in the framework of being a character, which I'm not. I'm not a creepypasta character anymore than one of the Hypno species would be. I still do identify as fictional - I can comfortably identify as "fictherian" or my preference "fictotherian" (Which comes from "fictotype". I believe I started this term usage - since when I started using it, I could find no results to it, but I did use it in forum posts, Discord servers, and other methods).
Fictive falls under a similar problem - but with slightly more alienation. While the term is open to me, my identity history makes me feel out of place in a community of walk-ins and introjects when it was one that developed later in life.
How I became a MissingNo and the grip of hyperempathy
My identity as a MissingNo came later in life. I began existing in my system as a canine pup - which I know from behaviors and mannerisms that I later connected to me in the present, and genuinely expressing feeling like a dog as a child. Years later, I identified this species as a manned wolf.
Then at around the age of ten, my identity shifted to a glitch Pokemon. What at least contributed to it was developing a special interest in Glitch Pokemon around this time. This combined with our natural hyper-empathy and perhaps being conceptum to subconsciously alter my identity over time.
These interpretations can cause me to be out of place. While I still love glitch Pokemon and I am fascinated by them, I rarely find anyone who also has an intense interest and fascination while having this level of hyperempathy - even if I encounter others who have some alterhuman or even gender or sexuality connection to glitch Pokemon. Almost uncontrollably do I see glitch Pokemon as genuine Pokemon. I might grow attached to certain Pokemon in the way I would a pet.
The overall psychological influence means that this identity comes down to personal interpretations and personification. I'm not a natural animal and you cannot read about me in a textbook or find any bits of lore within the games, but rather, I am an animal that came from the mind of a mentally ill person.
MissingNo the animal
What defines "animal" varies. Humans are biologically animals and primates, but not all humans identify with those terms, with some taking offense to it. To someone with hyperempathy, a stuffed animal may be as much of an animal as a living one, or even a car might be a type of animal to certain minds. This connection is what makes me feel a MissingNo can be a type of animal.
Additionally, Pokemon are their world's equivalent of animals, and this is how most of my system views Pokemon due to one of our deepest parallel life connections being a humanlike Mewtwo. This sentiment is also one I've seen many Poketherians have. In the world of our origin, we are animals. For another essay on a similar experience, I'd highly recommend "The Fire Burns Bright" by Jasper, an Alolan Marrowak therian.
Within the contexts of the games and many interpretations - including my own - MissingNo is also a bird. It is one of few Pokemon which use this glitch beta typing. Being a bird can be equally as much a part of it and I'd consider birds as a paralleltype and one where I may confidently call myself a bird. Albeit a very odd bird.
The wolf and animal bias in my core
In addition to the bird of the MissingNo, the manned wolf at my heart is still important to my identity. It's in between otherhearted and therian on a sliding scale, and I identify it more as manned wolf-hearted for convenience, but it's closer to "kinth". I don't know why I am or was a manned wolf, but it doesn't quite matter to me either way. What matters is that there is the manned wolf.
To me it feels as if despite my core being or "soul", my mind became a MissingNo while the core remained the same. To my soul, a MissingNo is a type of dog. Then, to my mind, a manned wolf is a type of Pokemon. Both of these identities came about and exist in harmony rather than opposition.
Another comparison that the heart and soul makes is being "feral". Glitch entities in video games to me are almost like an animal which can't be domesticated. They may act fine, but every so often you'll encounter something that reminds you that at their core, they're wild. MissingNo still scrambles sprites and Hall of Fame data - and you can't have a "normal" experience with it. MissingNo is to Pokemon as a wolf is to a dog.
The instincts that made me tear apart playsets when playing house pretending to be a dog are still present in the instincts that make me want to tear apart meat when I eat it.
The Experience of a MissingNo Animal
I fit into many traditional therianthropy experiences and unto a hybrid canine/avian experience - just perhaps with more twists towards the bizarre.
I am a contherian when it comes to mental shifting and almost always feeling like an animal. However, I do experience phantom shifts. I get the sensations of skeletal fangs, claws, and a body that's far heavier and taller than my tiny, human form. Though the bizarre comes when during these shifts, I don't feel like I have skin and much of my body feels transparent, I feel like I should be able to stick my hand through my lower jaw.
I feel the sense of freedom and flight when I ride a bike downhill. For a few minutes when I bike, I can imagine myself flying. I sit in rivers and ponds among the wading birds feeling like I belong. I treat the chicks and chickens we raise like a part of my flock.
I still want to hunt. Sometimes I need to fight my instincts to recognize chicks as flockmates and not food. I like to eat wildly and I like to taste blood and fat in my food. When I eat, I feel like like the blood should dribble through my skinless jaw bone. Skeletal claws should be typing this essay instead of fleshy human fingers.
Conclusion
I am an animal, and despite doubts, I am a therian.
This label fits my experiences better than the alternatives. I don't feel as much alienation or out of place compared to other communities even though my species isn't an "animal" in the traditional sense. Hyperempathy has created this experience for me in that I feel more comfortable saying I am an animal than I am from fiction.
My center being is animal and always has been, it's just how its presented through my life has shifted. The animal instincts have only developed as my species has.
It is my hope that more unusual therians might come forth and be encouraged to examine their experiences - and for both earthen therians and potential theriomythics or fictotherians to explore what exactly "animal" means to them. I want others to also examine where their mind's biases may lead them, how that can impact their identity, and use it to feel more at peace in what the heart wants.
I get shifts daily, usually the combination phantom and mental kind where the talons come associated with their own set of instincts but they come and go. The phantom beak never really goes. I feel it every day almost 24/7. It starts between my eyes, above the bridge of my nose where my forehead begins. White-tailed sea eagles have a long, deep, and quite massive beak, larger than any other eagle's beak aside from of course the gigantic Stellar's Sea Eagle. The beak was one of those diagnostic devices I used to narrow down on species - the huge talons and killing-with-feet instincts were consistent with large birds of prey but the way I picked between hawk and eagle was the beak (the other stuff fell into place later - preferred habitats, flying quirks, The Fish Thing, etc). I'd look at any hawk or even a golden eagle and that beak starts too low and is too curved, it doesn't project straight out like a hatchet. The entire front of my head is beak.
During particularly intense moments when I become aware of it, I can't change my facial expression. Not quite resting bitch face but more of a blankness, no nose lips mouth cheeks eyebrows etc only eyes that move. I move close to things and I feel like my beak should intersect or clip through and it's uncomfortable. When I shake my head I feel like there should be extra weight or inertia, not just empty air.
Now here's the part where I go "and it's all in my head" because, well, yeah. It is all in my head. I'm autistic and I think of the concept of 'masking' very literally, as in a physical mask going over my face to cover up the blunted facial expressions that my brain has chosen to perceive as a beak. So it feels like a mask going on almost on top of a mask (if we can call the beak that).
One of my life dreams is to get one of those hyper-realistic bird masks/hinged resin fursuit heads and just wear it at home the whole time.
May I add this to Radiant Obscurities, a site about experiences in being animal of uncommon 'types? If yes, let me know what name you want to go by. Thank you for sharing this.
The word "migration" conjures images of geese trekking Southward in winter, or monarchs flying up North to breed, driven by an internal compass and a genetic map.
Bison migrations do not work like that.
It's true, bison migrate, but we don't follow a map or a compass. We have migration routes, passed down by memory, through generations, but these routes are cultural, not biological, and they are adaptable.
We used to migrate in herds of millions, split into bands of a few thousands, which yet again split into 'clans' of just a few dozen. Each clan was led by an old and wise leader who had survived the migration before, and remembered the route, or at least the general direction. The books say our clan leaders were matriarchs, but my instincts say they were of either sex, as long as they were experienced, deliberate, and sympathetic. (Perhaps the difference is in calf-bearing bands vs bachelor bands; the former being matriarchal and the latter patriarchal?)
A band of clans, or even a single clan, may roam alone for much of the year, but the bison's neverending wandering would always, eventually, unite it with the others, in a gathering of millions. Not a pilgrimage toward a destination, but a gathering at a meeting-point that was gradually defined over millions of migrations until all the bands and clans had overlapping travel routes.
What, then, drives us to roam, if not an internal compass, map, calendar, or clock?
The one thing that drives all animals to move: Hunger.
We go where our stomachs take us. When a group has grazed an area clear, we move on to the next, only settling until we have yet again grazed it down to the soil. And by the time we have circled our migration route, the wheel of the year has turned, and the grazed-down lands have once again grown green and plentiful.
The herds of millions would only roam the land for a few weeks prior to the mating season, before once again splitting into bands and clans. During this herd formation, dozens of thousands would die, but there is strength in numbers, and where a lone clan of 50 may have suffered during this trek, by joining together with other clans, they could emerge from the migration stronger than before. Three clans of 50 may lose a few members, but they can join each other, forming a band of 100, and flourish until the next great herd forms.
The time of the great herd was also a time for bachelors to seek a harem. Bachelor bands would follow calf-bearing bands around, and when they settled down, the bulls would fight each other for mating rights and do their best to woo the cows. And in the next summer, their calves would witness their first great herd.
But that was long ago. I can still feel it in my bones, the urge to follow my nose, and keep roaming from grazing ground to grazing ground. It's in my lungs and marrow and soul.
But it was long ago.
Scientists recently discovered that the Yellowstone 'herd,' the largest bison band in the world, a mere 6000 individuals... scientists 'discovered' that these bison migrate from valley to hill with the seasons, and that this miniature model of a migration affects the vegetation of the park. The bison within me could have told them that.
What an injustice my race's history is, to be reduced from several herds of millions, migrating across the entire continent in ancestral routes, to a few scattered bands of thousands, migrating from valley to hill.
Bison migrations will never again work the way they did, not as long as we are contained to parks and zoos. We are living museum pieces, performing facsimile migrations for excited scientists, who are eager to explain why we do what we do.
But I don't need them to explain it to me. We do what we do because we have no compass or genetic map that forces us to migrate a certain route.
We do what we do because our migration routes are adaptable.
Still... I wonder if our clan leaders can recall the old routes.
Sources:
Frank Gilbert Roe (1972) "The North American Buffalo" 2nd edition
Ernest Thompson Seton (1909) "Life-histories of northern animals"
I dreamt of absolution one night. A deep sleep’s vindicating fantasy of breaking the shackles that humanity locks. A human cannot do what a hawk can -- not physically, not spiritually. Of course a human cannot fly. But a human also cannot hunt. It cannot kill. It cannot yield to the animal urge within. It cannot truly be free. It must confine its deepest urges -- those urges everyone has. That’s what I always thought, at least. I thought that because I thought I was human.
I soared above the dusky orange desert landscape. I had a purpose in this dream, I knew, and somewhere to be, but I couldn’t see any necessity with the sun in my eyes. In some ways I knew this was a dream, and that my being a bird was not my waking state. It was an opportunity. I had longed to hunt my whole life. Was I really going to ignore this chance?
I saw a large grey rodent below. Upon waking up I researched and found out it was probably a California ground squirrel, the southernmost extent of which just barely overlaps with the range of Harris's hawks. But in my dream I was just an animal, and my prey was just an animal too. I can never replicate the feeling of catching it, this I know. But it was like liberation. Even in my dream animal brain, I knew this was something I had wanted through my whole life -- a fantasy that aches the way one only can when you know it can never come to pass. The images were detailed. My beak was a part of my body. Clumps of fur thrown to the side. Grey and scarlet. My senses are often vivid in my dreams. The sense of taste is no exception.
I woke up feeling like my human form, my vestibular sense, and my mundane life were mirrored 180 degrees in Photoshop.
I dreamt of absolution one night. A sleepless night’s vindicating fantasy of breaking the shackles that humanity locks. A human cannot do what a wolverine can.
We had been moving furniture from a storage unit to the new house all night and I was exhausted. Then the shift. Suddenly I was alert and so intense. Deer were out and about in the fading light. Images flashed in my head of chasing after them and bringing them down in the woods -- tearing into them. I was almost feverish. I could feel their hot flesh, bones of the neck snapping in my teeth, so brilliantly, redly vivid in my head like it was a waking dream. My temples were pounding. I stopped being able to follow the conversation. I had stopped understanding spoken human language. I stood in the grass and stared into the dark treeline. I had sharp teeth and tearing claws and I wanted to use them. To submit to the animal drive. To disappear into the green and black and song of the night, that rising swirl of music and color and scent that whirls and shapes together in the mind into one sublime chromasonic painting.
I awoke by falling asleep, letting the wolverine disappear into the whispering light of the sturgeon supermoon. I had no dreams that night. Only silent dark.
A human cannot yield to the animal within. It does not need to. It has none. But I am not human. I do need to. I do not have an animal deep inside that wants: I am the animal, I am the thing who wants, I am the beast who must confine itself. When I was younger I felt grotesque. I was too many species, none of them Homo sapiens. I didn’t know how it was possible, only that it had to be. I felt like Mary Shelley’s classic monster. I read books about mice, and rabbits, and bats, and they all told me I was a hideous thing for the urges I had -- that predators like me were evil. Not simply bowing to the blueprint that evolution wrote in their DNA. And I knew that’s what I was. Before I knew anything else, before I knew the word therian, before I knew that sometimes something that appears human on the outside can be something else internally, I knew I was a carnivore.
We realize what we are when we're young, don't we? We can tell we’re not human. We see the way we’re talked about in the children’s books we read. We know we’re not human because we internalize it. We feel hurt by it. And we cannot explain why. We don’t have the language. I didn’t know there were others -- I thought it was just me. I said I was “part animal.” I tried to explain how many animals I was. When I got too old to play pretend, I got quiet. I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk about it, but it couldn’t stop me from feeling it.
When I was younger I felt alone and I felt broken. Broken into too many pieces. Now things are different.
I soar above the dusky orange desert. I stalk through snow-laden pines. I dive into turbulent water. I swoop through ocean currents. I am the inconstant of form. I am the sharp of tooth. I am the keen of eye. I am the hunters. I am the monster named Cento. I am the creature known as Many.
Sonne's Edit:
What animal(s) do you want me to say you are on the website @stillflight? Also, thanks for the submission ^_^
Hey y’all!!
Haven’t used this account much -yet- so imma start beeg with a long text about my experience of being a female spooder (therian) and a female hooman. Simultaneously.
Yeeeah both.
To explain “what am I” in a simple way and give some context for the following text I’ll explain it quickly and simply.
I do identify both as a human and as a spider but although I’m both and they are two separate things, I experience it more as a gradient between one and the other and I move up and down that gradient. I don’t remember feeling fully human ever since before questioning my identity, and I haven’t ever felt *fully* spider either, it’s always at least a 99% something 1% the other. And where I am on that scale shows on shifts of many types as well as how I look in our headspace (I’m part of a plural system), and in general how I view myself and how I feel about myself, etc, which includes gender identity too. I am NOT a hybrid, I am just both at once.
So, I’m a female, that’s something I thought I had clear from the start, but the more I accepted, learned, and experienced about my non-human identity, I noticed that my idea of femininity was starting to blur. To the point of even considering being nonbinary, genderfluid, or similar.
And here I am not talking about what society considers feminine or what concept of femininity I apply to others or me or what’s right or wrong about all that. I’m talking about how the idea of me being a female -which I knew and know as true- didn’t always feel like it matched with my experience of my own gender.
Since I was a female, thought about myself as a female, and constantly experienced being a female -for the short while until I realized I was not only a human- I assumed that as a stable thing, but the more I learned about myself, the more it started to make less sense.
Spoiler alert: Tho always a female, I experience it differently depending on how spider or how human I am! Well… kinda.
It took me a long while to figure it out, but now I’m going to try to put it into words. Keep in mind that explaining something like this is… hard to say the least (try and put your gender into words, it’ll be fun they said). So probably I’m gonna do wacky comparisons, generalizations, and so on with which I do not intend to disrespect anything or anyone, and if I do, I am actually sorry.
The hardest part I believe is to put my most human femininity in words, but it doesn’t feel that important to go in-depth into that, so let’s say that it’s very… cliché, or stereotypical, as u wish. Chest, long hair, long lashes… That kinda thing.
But the more spider I am, the more genderless I feel (comparing here with the gender experience of our agender headmate). The more spider I am the more I feel I “lack” gender. Now shape-wise/visually (on headspace) it’s hard to tell what is due to gender stuff or what is due to spider-like anatomy stuff or where do I draw the line -if there’s even a line, at this point…- but the truth is, the more spider I feel the less physical feminine attributes I exhibit and same with behavior. Now, I can’t really explain how I move or gesticulate when mostly human, but we can say that the general public would agree to call it feminine -for better or for worse-, end even that slowly fades away the more spider I feel, which all together almost led me to think of myself as non-binary or genderfluid, but what stopped me is that that didn’t fit. Regardless of that apparent lack of gender I still thought of myself as a female.
And believe me, I did lots of introspection to see if it was hidden transphobia, something bleeding from another headmate or something related to another headmate, something self-imposed, imposed accidentally by others, or some other things like that. And tho remnants of my creation may have had something to do with how I ended up like this, the truth is what I’m now is what I am and that’s a female, so the only answer is that it was just the way I experience my femininity when mostly feeling like a spider.
Which ultimately makes sense since an arthropod couldn’t have that strong of a sense of gender. Or maybe identity at all (tbh, I lack research there).
Another thing I have yet to mention is the fact that the more spider I am the more meaningless that my own gender feels. This of course doesn’t change the fact that I am a female, but it does decrease the importance that I give to it. Let’s say that the more human I am, the more likely I am to state my gender and/or pronouns when I introduce myself, and the more spider I am, the more likely I am to forget it and/or say it the last or later in the conversation.
Still, all these experiences that seem more comparable to some point on the non-binary/trans spectrum are something that I can still call feminine with how it applies to me.
Now, the weird thingie -yep, the weird thing is still to come-; for me, there’s not a single way of being, for example, 50/50 spider-human. That 50/50 can express in plenty of ways, and the same goes with gender. It’s not exactly “the more spider I feel, the less feminine attributes and behavior I have”. Although it works for explaining, the truth is that although it is linked, is not a direct correlation.
Also, me saying percentages here is just to explain easily. In my daily life, it’s vaguer like “Oh I feel very human/spider now” or so on. Not numbers. Regardless of how spider or human I am, I’m still me. And still feeling like me, it’s hard to point out differences on how different “this” from “that” is me. Gender-wise it’s the same. Unless someone mentions it or I go check, I won’t feel the “lack” or “presence” of gender, since it will always be me, Ninette, and regardless of everything, a female.
Bonus: I’m not that two-dimensional, of course, maaaany other things relate to my gender and my non-humanity, but if I didn’t isolate these two things to explain I could be writing a thesis here, and no thanks.
I was wondering if I could add this writing to Radiant Obscurities, a website for writings about being uncommon animal 'types? It was nice to read something about being a spider :).
Question! I take it that a Charmander from the Mystery Dungeon world and an anthro tiger who lived the equivalent of a modern-day life, aren't animal enough? Not accusing or anything, just wanted to ask. c: I love this idea and would consider all five of my 'types fairly obscure, but probably not animal enough, unfortunately. There's the two I mentioned, and then three that are humans. (I'm fictionkind) Cheers, anyhow! c: - Alex
If you feel that neither of those two 'types are particularly 'animalistic' and instead are more 'sapient' then they probably won't fit well on Radiant Obscurities. Though if you feel either/both are more animalistic let me know. Thank you for asking :).
