call me zen or zendere · transspecies · Procellariidae seabird · he/it/bird
last updated: 06/05/2025 (mm/dd/year)

if i look back, i am lost

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@zendere
call me zen or zendere · transspecies · Procellariidae seabird · he/it/bird
last updated: 06/05/2025 (mm/dd/year)
— admitting something to myself
I know I'm not human, that much is certain, but... am I really a bird? physically. I don't think so, and it's scary.
I thought I was a macaw, and I definitely still am in some way (probably a kintype), but I think it was instead just me trying to repress what I know deep down is true.
because... because what I truly, deep down, know I am, is a narwhal.
yes, I know, "another cetacean who believes they were turned into a human shape???"
yes.
I've tried repressing it for a long time, tried to hide behind different kintypes and identities, but it always comes back to this. I even know when I was given to my human family.
I don't know how I'm like this or why, but I know I'm a narwhal. my whole childhood I wished to be a mermaid, to live in the ocean, to merge my legs into a fin. I tried everything I could, every spell I found on the internet, every potion, every ritual, but of course nothing worked. I gave up on my dream as I grew up, and now I'm even scared of deep water, but that longing stayed deep inside of me.
gods it's... it's scary to admit this in a post. I know someone will think "you said you were a macaw two days ago! so you were lying?!" and "another cetacean? you're making it up at this point." and I can't do anything but ask of those people to just. just leave if you think I'm making it up to "jump on the trend" of physical cetaceans.
it's been a LONG time since I figured this out, since I realized, but these people have made me suppress it. suppress this part of me. suppress what I know is true to the point my mind latched onto other, more "believable", identities to hide it.
so. this is it. this is what I am, who I am. my username is staying the same though, I refuse to give this one up and I still am a bird, just in a different way.
thank you for reading.
(to lighten the mood, take a shot every time I say the word "know" in this post)(/j please don't)
I tend to interact a lot with the cetacean community, specially because I'm a seabird and I like to be in contact with other marine animals.
There's no shame in being a cetacean. If you feel comfortable describing yourself like that, the only shame is the one coming from those who try to fakeclaim.
Identities change and it's okay to acknowledge that. You can't be something forever,, even forever will change someday.
I can't offer you much but my support. Know we birds still like you very much and I am certain the cetaceans do as well <3
(All versions below cut, feel free to add different backgrounds using the transparents)
THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL I LOVE THIS DRAWING SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU JUICE!!! 🩵🩵🩵🩵
the terror amc ⚓︎ for ashley
oh hey , wingsday approach - may 15th !
since 2003 , as start by easalle and silverie from livejournal ;D
'Wear' Are Your Wings?! Calling all winged creatures! The first annual "'Wear' Are Your Wings" Holiday is nearly upon us! Birds, Dragons, Faeries, Angels, Bags, Bats and all that flutter and flitter, spread your wings and soar with pride! Thursday, May 15th, 2003!! Wear your wings! Buy or make your own, if you don't have any at home to wear. Wear them no matter what you are doing. A good idea is to wear a pair small enough to not be too intrusive. Note: Wings and Cars don't mix. Walking and Biking are environmentally better anyway! Make more wings to hand out to others if they haven't got their own. Use paper, feathers, foam, and fabric. Be creative! Attach them with safety pins, tape, Velcro or something else! Go out in the world and hand out your wings to everyone you meet! Spread the joy of magic and dreams! Don't forget to wear your wings too! Wear your wings with pride and joy! Spread the love and beauty of fairy magic! Have fun and love life!
of course , short notice at this point to come up with full pair of wearable wings ... but maybe still some fun ideas to express wings !
Hey Zen, it’s Juice. I’m making a banner with all the birds here on tumblr, and I was wondering if you wanted to be included.
@juice-wings
Thank you so much for inviting me Juice!! I really appreciate that!
Yes, I want to be included in this ^^
Awesome! If you have any specific photos you want me to base the colors on I can do that if you send ‘em over, I’ll get started on the line art!
Reblogging some refs to make it easier for you! You don't need to copy them or to make it 100% the same. These are just to serve as references!
I have this drawing I made a while ago:
And some other photos (that I got from wikipedia + birds of the world)
If you need any more, feel free to contact me!
Hey Zen, it’s Juice. I’m making a banner with all the birds here on tumblr, and I was wondering if you wanted to be included.
@juice-wings
Thank you so much for inviting me Juice!! I really appreciate that!
Yes, I want to be included in this ^^
Thissss close to blocking the canine therian tag. Obviously I love canines and they are a huge part of why this community exists, but I’m just tired of seeing things I can in no way relate to.
I don’t have paws, I don’t have fur or a mussel, I don’t feel a prey drive, I don’t long to run on all fours.
I just get annoyed with how they’ve taken over my entire feed. Yes, sometimes they have genuinely insightful things to say, and I want to listen to that. I just can’t relate to anything they say unless it’s a profound thought about the community.
Again, I love my canine followers, I love my wolf dog partner, i think canine therians deserve to have their voices heard in our community. My problem is that they drown out the rest of ours.
I can say the same tbh. Host's a dog, but even she isn't handling the canine kin tags very well. Most experiences there are also therian-exclusive, something she isn't;
gatekeeping is in no way good, but creating safe spaces for those who aren't heard properly in the community is increasingly necessary. I don't even think that's gatekeeping
absolute no hate for canine creatures in this community, but o lord it's very tiring sometimes
^ me showing yall my new pretty feathers ^
avian culture is wanting top surgery even when i feel relatively feminine,, those thangs do Not belong on a crow
There’s so many body mods I yearn for 😔
oo is there an avian culture ask thingy now ?? How cool !!!
forget about touching grass, i need to touch THE SEA I NEED TO GO INTO THE WATER I NEED TO DIVE INTO THE SEA!!!!!!!!!!!!
If I had my skin...
I need to draw myself some more
ultimately we all have to quit our jobs and walk into the sea
Where did all the orca and cetacean clinical zoanthropes come from? Genuinely?? What happened? There were *zero* cetacean nonhumans in general. Now there’s 2852102 orca clinical zoanthropes claiming they were all a lab experiment turned human when a calf and essentially having the same backstory? How does that work?
🌌
I was going to ignore this or just leave a comment but I think it does have something useful worth to share and teach and highlight a continuous problem of the "community."
Most of us have been around for quite a few years, but were either isolated from therian spaces or had to play an excessive game of doublebookkeeping that made our existances in those spaces unpleasant and so often would simply not engage in the community as there was no space for us.
The simple answer for why there are "so many" of us now is community - not the therian community but having each other. Two years ago I returned to tumblr mostly for the purpose of documenting my project to return to the water. In that I have been very vocal about how the community treats those like me and have for the last decade or so. I would meet Sonar and from then Sigrún. There being someone else there with similar experience meant that others felt they had a space they could exist and be understood even if the wider community was poor to them. It is not surprising really a small community would form off of our shared experiences. It happens with many species or experiences in the community - one person starts sharing their experience with a niche species and others who did not talk about it before feel safe to do so and for a bit there is a boom in that community as people have community for the first time before it eventually stabilises. It is worth to note as well that zoanthropes tend to have a few common explanation for how or why they are in a human body of which belief of experimentation is one of the most common - in the case of cetaceans there are not stories like werewolves that would give reason for a genetic belief and so it is not surprising many would share a common belief of their origin though each one interprets things differently.
The thing is though there really are not that many of us - only a handful really, somewhere 4-6 when you account for multiplicity and sideblogs. Compare that to how large the therian and adjacent communities are as a whole. I do not know exact numbers, but popular therian posts on tumblr get thousands of interactions, the otherkind and therian subreddits (which are generally pretty terrible) have 20k combined weekly users, Therian Territory has almost 65k subscribers. This does not include even things like tiktok or other platforms people engage with content on. Schizo-spectrum and those with psychotic affect disorders make up something like 1% of the population. Even if clinical zoanthropy is considered a rare or uncommon symptom (though literature notes this is a case of underidentifying and underreporting) by the nature of the animal identity and transformation it would be significantly overrepresented in the community compared to general population, it is something we should expect there to be multiple dozens or hundreds of zoanthropes across the community. But instead people have this repeated issue that a half dozen cetaceans across various species (though admittedly more concentrated toward orca) find each others experiences relatable.
The community does genuinely and continuously have a severe problem with ablism and the inability to perform any sort of self-assessment while ironically congratulating themselves on their acceptance and diversity. Instead the community should be asking why are zoanthropes so underrepresented that there are maybe a dozen of us on tumblr which tends to be the most tolerating of us. It is not difficult to realise that zoanthropes are not treated well by the community and are often demanded to doublebookkeep, shunned out of an zealotrous fear of pshifters, or our experiences written off and discarded. This ask, and many others like it, really only goes to show how many think about zoanthropes and the idea that a small tight-knit community of them around a very shared experience exists as some crazy impossibility, and in doing so only reinforces the conditions that mean there are so few zoanthropes in the community which leads to that our small pod endures despite that standing out even more.
~ Kala
hey !! As a member of the alterhuman and nonhuman communities I do believe that we have a lot of problems with representativeness, specially of non-canines. But the thing is:
Don't blame it on them. It's not their fault that they want to share their experiences. It's their fault when they cross tag posts with non-canine tags, talk about their experiences and say that they're "universal" and exclude other species in the community twisting their experiences with exclusion in those communities.
Raising awareness is fundamental, but we also need to raise each other's voices. Reblog that folk's experiences and tag it properly. Make a post talking about how that one creature's blog is amazing and everyone should check it out. Highlight your mutuals that are underrated and shadowbanned by the algorithm. Help your fellow creatures too !! You're important in this !!! Hating won't do anything but create problems.
I didn't truly understand the cyclic nature of therian discourse that peers were discussing until now.
Now that the puppyposting and anti-canine discourse has mostly blown over, I've seen a few posts targeting therians in the name of "other labels exist." We are, once again, attacking the identities of folks of whom are doing nothing, rather than facing the real issues.
If you believe otherlink is being ignored, go after those attempting to dissolve the term into therianthropy and speak for the structure of the definitions. The biggest threat to 'link identities is "that's what a therian is, why do we need another useless label?"
If you dislike the way humanoid 'kins are being underrepresented, give folks a nudge when something is lacking recognition (e.g., an alterhuman post assuming everyone is nonhuman). Bring awareness to it where needed rather than going after therians.
Reblog smaller label coinings, contribute to alterhuman glossaries, post about a different label per week, share your experiences with lesser known terms, advocate for upholding definitions so they aren't absorbed by therianthropy, and so on.
You can make changes that do not broadly target and attack the core identities of many folks. Yes, it's frustrating and a valid issue, but just as every few other posts being "I hate canines, I want more non-canine content" was hurtful and ruining their movement, so is "therians are so self-centric, other labels exist." Doing this will likely only create backlash that backfires, such as the puppyposting discourse encouraging folks to resist and keep posting meme/short content.
↑↑ !!
Don't attack individuals. Report the problem, create awareness and support those who are underrated.
if you hate canines, keep it to yourself. If you want to create awareness on how canines' experiences are labeled as "universal" when that's not the case for a lot of us, for example, create awareness instead of attacking certain canines about that.
Being a hater only contributes to the problem. Raise awareness, not fights.