Sly and Silly

Drawing animals and learning as I go

[vindoodlesfoxes]

Hi, you can call me Vin (she/they)! :3

This blog is mostly for my animal-related doodles and drawings.

Dms are open to talk about anything related to my posts and beyond. Just don't be mean. Besides that, I'm happy to chat and make friends!

Tags:

vindoodles - my art

vinbarks - sharing thoughts about things

[canines-crown]

Ears? Flattened.

Hackles? Raised.

Teeth? Bared in confusion.

Tail? Tucked.

Overall vibe?

Well let's just say... Scareyd 😰

[ferncloud]

[runewerewolf]

recognition

(a poem about recognizing another therian)

((based off my friend and i))

they tilt their head

when the wind shifts.

they pause mid-sentence

when the moonlight hits the floor

just right.

they don’t say

“i’m a wolf”—

but you feel it

in the way they scan the room

like they’re mapping

an escape route.

they flinch

at loud noises

but laugh

when lightning cracks.

they linger in forests

just a little too long

and come back

with leaves tangled in their thoughts.

their silence

isn’t emptiness—

it’s listening

for something

the rest of the world

forgot how to hear.

they smile with their eyes

and their teeth.

they don’t mind the mess.

they find beauty

in bare feet,

muddy rivers,

unfinished thoughts.

they say things like—

i feel most alive in the rain

or

i don’t know why, but i just had to run

or

do you ever miss something

you’ve never had?

and when you say

yes.

they look at you

like they’ve just found

home.

[runewerewolf]

Therian Coookbook Update!

Hi guys! Thank you for the overwhelming support and positive feedback on this project! I’m finishing up the final touches to the pages right now, but it’s been so fun to work on. I used a name generator to help with some of the names (inspired by the content, though), and others are written. Here are some of the recipe names as a sneaky peek:

The Howl and The Hearth: A Therian Cookbook

Venison and Wild Rice Stew

Moss & Stone Salad

Sweet Birch Oat Cakes

Lunar Forage Bark

Story Circle Spiced Cider

Howler’s Jerky Medley

and more!

[vindoodlesfoxes]

Currently agitated because there's a guest staying at my house someone's invading my territory, and they keep wanting to help with chores they're threatening my dominance.

[hasuyawwn]

another set of stickers, inspired by an exchange of greetings between a friend and me on weekdays during work hours, regardless of if it's monday or 8am..

[pocketsizedking]

i got bored in the mist of trying to sleep last night- finished coloring and shading this morning ehjdhjd i want waffles

[alterhuman-art]

[Image description: Two versions of the same drawing of a human figure with orange hair laying on their stomach in bed. There is a weighed blanket covering their back. Text reads: Our wings sometimes bug us...although, our weighed blanket makes them feel real. In the first image only the phantom outline of two sets of feathered wings can be seen. Artist signature: PocketSizedKing. End description.]

[sealfaring]

Someone stole my pelt.

It wasn't a man that took it from me to steal me as his bride like a traditional selkie story.

It wasn't my mother or my father, trying to hide the truth from me because I came into the world wearing an animal skin.

It wasn't even the doctor who delivered me, trying to make me live a human life because I was some "abomination".

I should have had a pelt, but it never came. My blood, my bones, my very soul seem to cry out for a life I never got the opportunity to live. Born for a pelt I would never wear. A body I could never change into. Something I could only imagine by watching others of my kind, sitting on the docks in communal groups in comfort while I'm "other". The furless, bipedal creature that can't enter the water like they can, watching them with my tiny eyes and hair that sprouts from my head and wearing my funny clothes.

To me, I am them.

To them, I am human.

This fact never killed my instincts. Since I could move, I have wanted to be near water. My infant hands would play with cubes of ice and reach for videos on the old TV screen of oceans and pools and water spraying from broken pipes with a smile on my face. I couldn't keep my hands out of the duck ponds and city fountains once I was able to walk. Then, when I could swim, seemingly no one could take me out of the pool. Even a near drowning experience only made me frustrated, wanting to learn how to swim better so I could go under the water next time.

One year, I found the show H2O: Just Add Water, and I was mesmerized. The idea of being able to visit some magical moon pool and suddenly be able to stay in the sea, swimming effortlessly with a tail I could conjure up at any time was a dream come true. My unrestricted internet access led me down the wormhole of "real spells online", and I was wearing a necklace everyday blessed under some full moon and drinking salty water from a jar every day. I could cry and cry and cry all day when I never developed a single scale, never got a selkie pelt, and couldn't go under the water the way I wanted to.

I can't explain it. I don't know why I am the way I am, but clearly something about me was misplaced when I was born. My wiring, my soul, something innate is meant to be off the land. My hands feel webbed and like they're missing claws. My teeth feel too short compared to what I seem to know they should be. I always want salmon and tuna and trout, yet will never be able to take a bite of any of them. I was born in a dry place, as if trying to keep me away on purpose. I don't know anyone in my life who doesn't think of me as some sort of water being, comparing me often to seals, otters, mermaids, water birds, and yet I feel so much like a selkie who has been forcibly trapped in a house, being told to forget who I am, to not look for the pelt, to not dip my toes in the tides.

It's unfair. I was robbed. Someone took my pelt, and there's nothing I can do about that. But it will never stop me from trying to get as close as possible to living how I was meant to. It won't stop me from walking into the freezing waters at the marina. From digging through sand with my bare hands. From eating every shellfish that crosses my path. From immersing myself, clothes and all, into the running river hidden away behind the trees. From walking the halls with a fur blanket draped around my shoulders, dragging along the artifical floors while I pretend they're sand and rock. From visiting my kind in the wild, even if they look back at me and cannot see what I feel. I'll be waiting forever to get in the water, but I have done what I can by moving towards the coast and out of the mountainous alpine desert.

Nothing will take my spirit from me, even when everything else has been stripped away.

A selkie is a selkie, even without her pelt.

[sealfaring]

It took me 7 years to figure out my theriotype. Here's what I learned.

Hi everyone,

I've been in and out of the community for a few years now and during that time, I've had to do a lot of introspection and stablizing. I'm an adult now at 23 and have been questioning my alterhuman identity since I was around 15 years old, but knew I was "other" since I was very small. Here are some little points of wisdom I'd like to give to people who are new, confused, have been questioning for a while, or whatever else they might be feeling or experiencing.

1. Identity is often impermanent. You will change a lot, especially if you are a kid or teenager. This is to be expected. Don't be surprised if you're often confused or unsure about yourself. Even as an adult, I still question my label and I expect that from myself. I just question it less so than before and feel more firm in how I see myself. Let yourself try a million labels and test the waters a thousand times if it's going to help you feel sure of yourself. Gender, hobbies, therianthropy, all of it is allowed to be tested, dropped, changed as needed. Just be wise about it and meaningful. It can take years before you even begin to settle down at all in some cases. You may even consider things you wouldn't have considered before with experience, i.e. going to places you've never been able to go before. And please, don't be afraid of questioning the "common" theriotypes! We're a minority of individuals in the world as it is, you can identify as a wolf, cat, or dog if you feel it best suits you at the time!

2. Being an adult will change your experience. You will probably go from being very animalistic to being less so. It will be in the background of your life, but you will still experience it. It will just be different now. It may even seemingly fade away all together for a time (human life is stressful after all), but it is common for things to ebb and flow. Don't expect to experience every possible feeling, shift, or even high intensity animality 24/7 like you may have as a young kid or young teen.

3. Your therianthropy might go away with time or you might realize that the term doesn't suit you anymore. That's okay. You weren't an impostor or a fake, your experience was still genuine. Let yourself be honest with yourself. You also cannot fake something you are not actively faking. You would know if you're faking what you're feeling because it would be intentional, and it could also come back. Regardless of the outcome, don't fret on what might or will happen, focus on the present and now. How you feel in the now is more important than the future sometimes.

4. Social media is not the end game of therianthropy. Living your therianthropy is. Not everyone will approve of you, and the amount of followers and comments you have don't dictate your validity. Don't fall into the trap of being a certain way to please others. You are meant to explore yourself, not put on a facade to entertain everyone else. Don't scramble for a label just so you have a "role" in this community, and you don't need to post every single thing if you don't want to. You have a role in this community even if you're looking at the whole spectrum of animals and honestly, I love following people who question things anyways. Anyone who considers you a fraud for it or puts you down isn't worth your time or energy. A label of any kind isn't worth crying over or feeling like your value or opinion is dependent on it, especially online.

5. Not everyone has your best intentions at heart. This is self explanatory. Be careful about who you tell about your therianthropy, and especially be careful about people taking advantage of your therianthropy to hurt you. This is especially true online where anyone can lie about their real intentions.

6. How you see yourself comes above all else. You are human too, at least biologically. Not everything you experience will be a theriotype thing, and your experience doesn't need to be perfect. When I was growing up, research down to the fine details meant everything. Now, I identify as what feels right and makes me feel complete. I am not perfect in what I identify as, and I never will be. I am an animal having a human experience. It is to be expected that I will experience lots of things, including empathy, odd cravings, and weird reactions. Focus on what soothes you, what you expect when you look in the mirror, and the overarching way you feel in life. Look at your shifts, look at how you feel in various situations, etc. Research helps, but in the end, it's your label(s). You could even not be a therian at all, you could be a spirit of some kind or a fantasy creature etc. Keep your horizons wide and your doors open.

7. Psychological and spiritual therianthropy are both equally valid. One is not more "real" as an experience than the other since it's a belief and an experience as a whole. Your therianthropy could be caused by a mental illness or be related to neurodivergence, but that's fine. You're still a therian, whether you believe it's because your soul is an animal or because your mind is one or both. Even if your therianthropy disappears one day, the experience is still valuable and is real to yourself (which is who it matters to the most).

8. Therianthropy is a spectrum. Some people are deeply animal and never waiver, never lose their traits, and are perpetually the "perfect example" of their theriotype (note: social media makes them seem this way!!). Others feel it very lightly and may have no shifts at all and experience their therianthropy in a more gentle, symbolic way. Both of those and everything in between is real.

9. Being otherhearted is just as valid as being a therian, and can still be just as important. Identifying WITH something can easily be as impactful as identifying as something, and can have important meaning that's worth being appreciated. I've been rodentkith my entire life because of the wild mice that I watched growing up, and those have a deep, explainable history to me. I talk about it just as much, and it impacted my life drastically even if I don't currently identify AS a mouse. It's okay to even just be otherhearted and nothing else.

10. My final point: just be genuine about it. Be gentle with yourself. Be kind. Be safe. Remember to live your experience offline too, and remember that everything you see online is idyllic and romantic. You are going on your journey in the way that is meant for you, and no one else can tell you who or what you are. You can trust yourself, and even if you're "wrong", you weren't wrong for considering something. Walk on your path, and expect that stumbling now and then is just part of the hike. You've got this.

[Reposted from my Reddit if this seems familiar to some critters!]

[redbaronn-deactivated20250625]

Dragonkin is a spectrum

[alterhuman-art]

[Image description: A line with one end labelled Yipee and the other end labelled Splendid. On the yipee end is a head shot sketch of a cartoonish dragon with a large goofy smile and their tongue sticking out. On the splendid side is a head shot sketch of the same dragon, but very detailed and realistic. The background is a solid gray. Artist signature: Salton. End description.]

[clinical-space-podcast]

Reblog if your art project has not, does not, and never will make use of generative ai at any point in your creative process.

[barley-beak]

I feel my Púca identity the strongest.

Constant phantom shifts that remind me that I’m trapped in a human body with no way out.

[alterhuman-art]

[Image description: Pen sketch on lined paper of a humanoid puca with goat-like features hunching forward with chains around their wrists. Their head is peeking up out of their hands and tears are visible streaming down their cheeks. Text reads: Do you hear me? You lost her! You've trapped her in a human body! She'll go mad! End description.]

[questions-within-questions]

Being a ranger I spend a lot of time alone in the wilderness for hours in the company of one of four co workers.

One such worker for the purpose of this post we shall refer to as Dave.

Dave is a very quiet man. He confesses that if conversation happens too quickly and for too long he gets tired so we often work in silence. He's very polite and good natured but it's obvious that he would happily live and work alone for the rest of his life given the option.

He's very much in the previous generation of ranger, a practical man in his fourties or fifties happy to be kept physically busy for a day and then be sent home with some pay. I had to show him how to use a work issued smart phone.

Meanwhile the rest of the team is made up of the current generation of rangers; openly nurodivergent queer women in their twenties or thirties who work this job because it's the only setting where we can vaguely look sane.

So Dave sticks out a bit. It's really nice when he opens up though because he's an impulsive individual when left to his own devices and has plenty of stories to tell if the mood takes him. I really like working with Dave.

Anyway, one day we've got a job that takes a three hour hike to get to and early on the topic of deer comes up.

I hadn't realised this was the first time we had discussed deer, but blatantly it was. Dave's entire demeanour changes, there's a bit of passion in his voice, but it's also hushed as if he's talking about something sacred.

"Deer are my favourite animal." He says.

I'm also eager to hear Dave talk about himself, so I encourage him to say more.

"I'd love to be a deer myself."

And more

"If a genie offered me the opportunity to become a deer I'd take it. I wouldn't even stop to ask what the price was."

And more

"Sometimes I feel like I'm a deer having a dream about being a human.*

And there I am, a long time commuter to the therian/otherkin community keeping up the encouraging face of someone being politely interested, knowing that this man is straight up a therian with no frame of reference.

And I decided that I wouldn't push the subject outside of the bounds of what Dave is comfortable with, I wouldn't try to teach him the terms "Therian" or "Otherkin" but absolutely I would talk with this man as if he's a deer.

And it's a bit magical really. He's an impulsive individual so I have to talk him out of some risky choices every so often and "this is why deer like you keep getting stuck in fences" has become this magical phrase that allows him to step down from a mistake with a bit of a smile on his face.

[feliraeth]

foxhearted flag ;

alt foxhearted flag that reflects our experiences.

[id: three flags with five stripes that gradient from off-white yellow to orange. the middle flag has the otherhearted symbol on it in white. end id.]

requested by ; no one :3

tagging @radiomogai @daybreakthing @local-maneater @feliraeth-archive

[vindoodlesfoxes]

A nice dream