Therian Problems - Blog Posts

Interested about if any other critters out there have had experiences with medications impacting shifts in some capacity!

For me, I get hella dog cameo mental shifts when Im on my adhd meds lmao. I have absolutely no idea why, but it's kinda cool ig. Arf arf.

I felt the first twinge of migratory instincts yesterday.

There wasn't anything particularly significant about the day. It was a bit warmer than it had been the previous week, the temperature jumping from low 30s up into mid 50s. It was drizzling and most of the snow has melted by now, but one could hardly say it was spring weather just yet. But regardless, some voice inside me started its quiet whisper "it's time to get going".

Ive had these instincts for years now, long before I ever realized I was a therian, much less a wildebeest specifically. They've grown more intense as I've gotten older, as is the case with most of my alterhuman tendencies, though they've become less overwhelming since Ive graduated high school and haven't been cooped up inside 7 hours a day.

Biological wildebeest are kind of constantly on the move, always following the rains, though the real spectacle of their travel actually does begin around this time of year, although season-wise it's nearly autumn for them rather than the start of spring like it is for us up here. They begin to migrate northwest, but interestingly my instinct always, without fail, guides me southeast, down towards Florida. I guess in some way that makes sense, we're both heading towards the same general region just with different starting points.

As spring blooms further here in the U.S, I know my instincts will get stronger and stronger, they always do. I'll crave the travel to warmer, wetter climates, encouraged by downpours and claps of thunder in the distance. My soul will scream at me to pack a small bag and just start walking, I never want to travel exclusively by car or plane, walking is what feels most natural. Trekking alongside what should be thousands and thousands of others who look, feel, and sound exactly like me, lost in a faceless herd.

It's beyond frustrating to long for a nomadic lifestyle in a society that all but demands a sedentary one. School, jobs, relationships, none of those things are built to properly survive a season of walking/hitchhiking across the country, at least not without serious fore-planning. Maybe one day I'll make it happen, hopefully I will, but it likely wont be for many years. I have too much going on right now. Until then I'll continue wishing I could just drop everything and head southeast the second I hear that whisper.

Putting myself back out into the dating scene has reminded me of how scary the thought of coming out as nonhuman to others can be, and the thought of having to come out to a human partner has been giving me a decent bit of anxiety.

It's easy with friends, most just accept that there's something a little "not human" about me, whether that comes from being a furry or just a general vibe, they get it. I don't have to actually sit down and explain exactly what I am to them unless I really really want to. But it's different with a partner, someone I want to be in a serious long term relationship with. It isn't something I could just casually neglect to tell them, at least not forever. I've always been bad at hiding things about myself from others, having to keep my therianthropy a secret from someone Im in a serious relationship with would be next to impossible, not to mention emotionally exhausting. I would want them to know and embrace it, but I can't pretend like there isn't a possibility that wont happen. Coming out to partners in the past hasn't gone quite the way Ive would have liked, nothing bad, but it just ended up feeling like an unspoken taboo between us and it kinda made me feel like shit. Like it was something that they loved me in spite of.

Ideally I'd love to be with another alterhuman, but obviously that more than halves my available options which are already small to begin with on account of the whole being gay thing. Idk it just stresses me out, I wish I could feel comfortable being my full self around someone else, animal and all, but I don't think Im ever going to find someone who isn't a little weirded out by it unfortunately.

Otherlink is valid, "chosen therians" are not.

The definition of therianthropy is that it must be involuntary on some level. That's literally like, the basic principle the identity is founded upon. I am absolutely not one for label policing, but that is main core experience of therianthropy. Saying you're "chosen therian" is the equivalent of saying you're "chosen transgender" or "chosen neurodivergent", and what exactly does that start to sound an awful lot like?

cough cough transid cough

"Chosen therians" are super not welcome here lol, please stop misusing our terminology to make yourself feel like part of a community you have no experience truly being part of. I promise you being otherlink is just as awesome.

Sincerely, a therian and otherlinker <3

( p.s. I would also just like to throw it out there that the inventor of the term "chosen therian" ((cwaligo / dxq.therian)) is a 22 year old who owns a discord server full of predominantly 11-15 year olds who frequently romanticize and give each other tips on how to self harm and develop eating disorders, I wish I was kidding, I was briefly in it and reported a solid ten accounts for being under 13 and/or promoting dangerous behaviors before I got banned. So uh yeah.)

Physical therians are valid,

Chosen therians are valid,

Mentally ill therians are valid,

Delusional therians are valid,

Traumatized therians are valid,

And all of you need to SHUT THE FUCK UP about them before I start making blocklists of your pathetic asses.

Im gonna say smth that a lot of yall aren't gonna like but whatever Im tired of nobody talking about it.

The therian community's obsession with zoos is stunting a lot of the cultural growth that we could be having rn.

Soooo many of us are so goddamn busy with trying to prove that we're not zoos or accusing each other of being zoos or shouting from every rooftop available that we're different than zoos, when we could be doing so many more productive things.

You wanna keep potentially dangerous individuals out of the community, I understand that, really I do. But do you wanna know how many animals are saved from abuse by us dogpiling (no pun intended) on someone who incorporates their nonhumanity into kink? Or who speaks honestly about genitalia dysphoria, or instincts to court members of the species they identify as? Or hell, who even acknowledges that there is an overlap between therianthropy and zoo attraction? Zero.

It doesn't really protect anyone, all it does is prevent us from speaking honestly about our experiences, diving into the nitty gritty of what it actually means to be an animal living as and among humans, out of fear that something we told to someone in confidence is going to end up in a google doc next week. No, wanting to have nonhuman body parts does not automatically make you attracted to biological animals. No, being attracted to alterhumans over humans does not automatically make you attracted to biological animals. No, wishing you had a nonhuman family does not automatically make you attracted to biological animals. The only thing that makes you attracted to biological animals is being attracted to biological animals. It truly is not rocket science.

I haven't seen it be as much of an issue here on Tumblr because I guess there's overall less mob mentality and beings are more capable of using critical thinking skills, it's just been frustrating watching so many of the younger/newer members of the community turn into the "crucify zoos at any and all costs" club and trying to strong arm all forms of animalistic sexual expression out of the community to avoid any possible association with zoos from outsiders (spoiler alert: you could sanitize the entire community to the point of chemical burns and uneducated doorknobs would still swear up and down that every last one of us are zoos)

hey so like literally tell me why i casually talking with one of my friends earlier today after class, and out of nowhere she started telling me about tumblr therians and werewolves, and how she had to explain to her sister one time what a therian was because she accidentally interacted with one our posts and it flooded her dash with therian content

WHILE I WAS WEARING MY THETA DELTA NECKLACE

deadass just stood there like

"damn that's so crazy lmao"

jumpscared bruh

I had a super vivid dream last night about Wolfbloods/being a Wolfblood and it's been making me ridiculously dysphoric all day.

Honestly, the worst part isn't even my lack of non-human biology or physical traits. Yes it hurts not having my paws and my tail and not being able to shift under the full moon, don't get me wrong that causes plenty of dysphoria on its own.

But the worst part for me is knowing that if Wolfblood's were actually real they'd most likely look down on me and see me as some kind of fanatical poser, rather than one of them. Idk why it bothers me so much, they're not real so it shouldn't matter. But it really does get under my skin. I hate that I'd have no way to truly prove that I'm like them, if at the very least on the inside.

And maybe I'd feel better if I was able to study and learn more about Wolfbloods and their culture, get a sense of what it's like to actually live as one. But there's so little canonical information about what Wolfblood society is like, their history, their customs. Anything that is explicitly stated or shown in the show tends to be vague or brief, so Im just kind of left trying to piece together a puzzle that's missing most of its parts. It almost feels like Im the last of a species in a way, picking through the ruins of what others left behind. It just saddens me to know how utterly disconnected I am from where I feel like I belong and that there's nothing I can do about it. There's a scene in season 2 (i think) where a character loses her nonhuman abilities, and she longingly watches from a hillside as her pack shifts under the full moon while she's forced to remain in her human form, and every time I watch it I cant help but see myself in it on such an intense level.

Idk do any other otherkin/fictionkin ever feel like this? Does anyone have recommendations for how to cope with it, or more specifically if there's any more extensive Wolfblood lore out there somewhere?

My daily schedule according to anti-kin mfs

3am: get up to aggressively bark and howl at the moon for 2 hours, waking all of my neighbors up in the process

6am: make myself a well rounded breakfast consisting exclusively of raw deer meat

6:30am: scream and cry for half an hour because my mom is forcing me to go to school and wolves CLEARLY do not go to school. my life is hell

7am: throw all of my deodorant in the trash because it blocks my natural 💫 𝓅𝒽ℯ𝓇ℯ𝓂ℴ𝓃ℯ𝓈💫

8am: arrive at school wearing my fav buttplug tail and galaxy wolf shirt

8:30am: have a vague memory of having graduated high school already, but that cant be true because no therian is older than 16 so here i am

9am: yell at my classmates for calling me a human and tell them that they're being therianphobic, and that im going to cancel them on twitter and make sure they never get jobs

9:30am: enter psychosis

10am: angrily email the school board for the 8th time this week because they won't put litter boxes in the bathrooms for me which is therianphobic oppression

10:30am: sit alone in a corner and growl/hiss at any humans who get too close to me

11am: enter psychosis

12pm: single handedly regress the trans rights movement by 10 years

1:30pm: refuse to sit in a chair for class and instead perch up on a desk. teacher threatens to kick me out, tragically i am forced to comply

2:30pm: cast a spell on one of my religious classmates as i leave school using my evil devil anti-human anti-christian magic

3pm: more raw deer meat omnomnomnom

5pm: enter psychosis

5:30pm: burn a picture of charles darwin in my trashcan because i hate all of that therianphonic science and biology nonsense. you can't tell me what to do CHARLES

6pm: enter psychosis

7pm: enter psychosis

8pm: i curl up in my nest of roadkill bones and sheets that haven't been washed in 3 months and gently fall asleep <3

After all these years living in my bipedal body you'd think i would have gotten used to walking upright by now, but no i definitely have not.

It's honestly still such a weird feeling, everything about it just feels so foreign and uncomfortable. Not like, literally physically something is wrong (I do suffer semi frequent back pain, though that's entirely unrelated), but there's no doubt in my mind that my brain is wired to be operating a quadrupedal body, not bipedal. Being upright 24/7 goes against my instincts so intensely, it's one of the main reasons I first realized I was a therian.

Even in my current body, with my short neck and weak arms, it still feels more natural and normal to move on all fours than it does to move on two. It's like there's emergency alarms constantly going off in the back of my brain telling me that something isn't right, almost like that sinking feeling you get when you realize you're seriously injured. It's so jarring.

In a perfect world, I would love to be able to regularly move around using a combination of quadrobics and bipedal movements, kind of like alexias.films over on instagram if you know her. Maybe one of these days i'll work up the nerve to do public quads, there's so many cool places around my city id love to practice at

Just in case anyone still has any doubts that the "anti-therian packers" argument is at least partially based in transphobia, this is a real, dead serious statement one of my (ex) mutuals made about why minors potentially having access to species affirming gear is wrong.

Like.

I legit don't even know what to say. This is genuinely so upsetting and concerning to hear from someone with a platform in a community meant to be accepting towards all types of individuals.

Not only is this a super inaccurate and invalidating way to think about nonhuman/transspecies identities, but it's also blatantly anti-transgender rhetoric. Replace the word "transspecies" with "transgender", and you have lines straight out of a speech given by a conservative politician about why queer books need to be banned in schools. The fact that they knew what they were saying was similar enough to transphobia that it was going to catch my attention is even more concerning, because it shows that they are capable of recognizing the similarities in their mindset but are simply choosing to ignore it.

I was a transspecies child. I knew there was something innately canine about me years before I even began to question my gender or sexuality. And I wish I had had the language to describe what it was that I was experiencing, instead of thinking I was going crazy for not feeling human.

Mark my damn words, we are going to start seeing a LOT more of this kind of thinking in the next few years (probably even months) and it's only going to get more aggressive, so if I were you guys I'd start putting petty differences aside and start banding the fuck together to help each other and our transgender human friends and family out.

having a prey species theriotype that hasnt been deemed cute or desirable by humans (especially if they also happen to be a keystone species) really sucks sometimes because it's like "im in a really shifty mood rn, let me go look at some pictures or watch some documentaries about my theriotype to feel more in touch with it! :3" and then it's just

*theriotype being hunted*

*theriotype being mutilated by predators*

*theriotype being eaten alive*

*theriotype starving*

*theriotype carcasses*

*theriotype baby drowning*

*theriotype infected with disease*

*theriotype with half of face ripped off*

the amount of therians and "supporters" ive seen lately trying to claim that "therians don't identify as animals" is genuinely concerning

like actually how did misinformation spread get this bad ?? that is the entire fucking point of therianthropy what are you talking about my dog in christ

yes, i identify as an animal. no, not in an ironic or metaphorical or satirical or for funsies way. i am an animal. i am a therianthrope. stop watering down our labels so that you can appeal to judgmental humans who don't give a shit about us i am begging you

Being a lesbian and nonhuman at the same time feels.. strange.

Because, like, human girls are these absolutely stunning, almost unreal beings. They're beautiful beyond words, the kind of beauty that can only ever be conveyed through the careful plucking of guitar strings, or through a vibrant splash of paint against barren canvases. They hold the stars in their eyes and flecks of gold in their hair, as if the forces of the cosmos themselves hand crafted their forms. They're soft and gentle and warm, but also strong and fierce and an unbelievable force to be reckoned with. Once when I was young, I got caught outside during a tropical hurricane and was almost lifted into the air by the winds; that is the closest thing I can compare to the feeling of falling for a girl. They are everything that a human being should be and more.

And then, there I am. A beast. This.. thing that stalks the woods in the darkest hours of the night, with dirt coated matted fur and piercing amber gaze, unseen and uncomprehended by man. Constant yearning, hunger. For flesh, for bloodlust, for isolation and freedom, to be feared, to be whispered about in hushed tales around a withering campfire. The creature in the forest, didn't you hear? If it catches you alone on a full moon it will peel your skin away from your body with fangs the size of your palms. Stay close. Your measly pocket knife won't do much in its wake I fear. A wild, snarling thing that flinches beneath humanity's touch and rejects their "civility" in favor of the murmuring creek that sings old and long forgotten hymns to the ancient mountains above.

I know when they look at me they see one of them, a human with soft skin and kind eyes, a human who smiles at them and perhaps offers a passing compliment, a human who always tries to coax the timid street cat and watchfully steps around sidewalk slugs. A human. But that is not what I am, at least not in the way that they are. And when I look back at them, with my green eyes that I wished glowed amber, I can't help but wonder "How could someone so divinely human find companionship with something so desperately unhuman as me? How long until you realize the humanoid body you see before you is merely a flawed disguise? Will you still grasp my hand with fond affection when it warps into a mangled paw?"

might start referring to myself as a therianthrope, rather than just therian. it really bothers me how much the word therian has come to be associated with gear and quadrobics and being "a tiktok thing", but at the same time it feels wrong to just abandon the word altogether given it's history in the community, so maybe this is a good compromise?

born to howl at the full moon every month, forced to not get animal control called on me by the neighbors

my favorite thing is when 2 therians whoes theriotypes are normally sworn enemies are just absolute besties irl

currently wishing i had a therian friend who lived close to me so i could have someone to do quadrobics with whenever i get the zoomies

me: I do not have a horse theriotype, im sure of it this time, i just happen to really like horses

*listens to one song off the Spirit: Stallion of The Cimarron soundtrack*

FUCK

one day very soon therianthropy/nonhuman identities are gonna hit mainstream and i can tell you right now it is NOT gonna be pretty

throwback to that time I was writing a college essay about institutionalized misogyny in western society and (as a joke) wrote "on the other paw" instead of "on the other hand", and forgot to change it before i submitted it

"therians know we're 100% human <3"

*explodes you with my brain*

the internal conflict between wanting to have a meat free diet bc of high empathy for animals / the environment, but also having theriotypes that instinctively crave meat 24/7 is so so real