@areon

I'm proud of this post. In hindsight, the first one was a clusterfuck and I should've taken more time to think about it carefully and let my anger fade first.

Now I managed to express my views way better and even with a positive message in the end: that, to me, you don't need to "be" an animal on a deeper level in order to be allowed to feel more comfortable as a different creature. :areonHappy:

How I handle my desire to be an animal and why current internet communities aren't the right answer for everyone.

Check out the previous entry for full context: icy.wyvern.rip/notes/aa9wj6h05xb0tw8f

In short: I always felt that I needed to have a different body, to experience what it feels like and being perceived as a creature rather than a human. I have no further explanation, nor do I need one because as far as I'm concerned, they only obstruct the truth. This also means that I don't consider myself to be an animal on any level.

Over the years, I automatically adopted strategies to handle these feelings. One of them is my online identity. The internet has this magical property that your physical existence loses its usual significance so everyone's mental image of you is entirely dependent on how you choose to present yourself. Some simply stay themselves, while others like me use it as a form of roleplay where they "become" something else — in my case, a creature which represents me more genuinely than my physical self does. I use him as avatar and write posts in line with his personality and behavior, and everyone treats me accordingly. I never lose awareness of the fact that I'm a human sitting in front of a computer, but part of me can still forget about it and be Volpeon.

Another strategy which plays nicely into the first one is my art. Coming up with characters is a great way to explore this desire: Once I have a rough idea in my head, I have to think about all the details to give it a shape and to see if existing as that creature would satisfy my desire. I don't just go for good aesthetics; I also want to create characters with a plausible anatomy and which don't violate physics.
For instance, Volpeon is a wyvern specifically because this the most plausible species of a flying dragon that could exist in our world. And Areon is modelled after werewolves because a hunched over stance works best with digitigrade feet. I spend a lot of time thinking about my characters and never stop making revisions to them.

Of course, I also thought about joining communities to find other people who share this kind of experience. You would think I'd be part of the therian community or similar ones that exist today, but the only group I do feel compatible with is in fact furries.

Participating in the therian community is a mixture of being your character, but also being the person behind it who talks about labels, symbols, rituals and so on. It turns out that I actually don't like being confronted with the latter all the time because they emphasize how everyone is, fundamentally, still human or at the very least different from regular animals. The majority of the time I'm on the internet, I'm Volpeon — a wyvern, or as of recently a werewolf-like creature. A creature who wouldn't be concerned with the things therians are since he is the theoretical outcome of having this desire fulfilled. It simply wouldn't make any sense.
And yet, mainstream discourse about therianthropy is dictated by the idea that everybody is an animal at all times. This contradiction means the therian community — whose purpose is to bring people together to talk about their experiences — is weakening its own ability to have these exact discussions because the members are unwilling to suspend their belief for even a moment. What remains is a subculture about gestures that don't mean anything to me or may in fact be painful to those who don't subscribe to this handling of their animal identity. An example I like to bring up for the latter are statements acting like being an animal is a trivial matter and you're silly for not seeing it. To them, this is supposed to be a positive message; to me, it only causes a jolt of hurt because being an animal is unattainable for me. This is why I don't feel comfortable in most therian-centric spaces.

Furries, on the other hand, are less complicated: You create a character who represents you, and from that point you are them. There's no requirement to "be" an animal on a deeper level and show it all the time through gestures, nor is it necessary as far as I'm concerned in order to accept that people may feel more comfortable as a different creature. I'm one of them, after all!
I don't necessarily like everything about furries. I'm not even interested in fursuits and most anthropomorphic characters. But their concept of a fursona is essentially a mirror of my own handling of my identity and that speaks to me.

#volpeonWrites

@catraxx I get that entirely. :areonHug:

I think what helped isn't specifically the act of recognizing reality, but rather picking up drawing as a means to process my feelings. Volpeon and Areon aren't just cool characters, they're vehicles through which I can experience being something else. I have to think about how they move, what it feels like, how they behave, etc in so much detail. It can be painful, but to me it helps more than it hurts.

I think I'm done with editing. Sorry if that resulted in many notifications. :areonFlat:

@Zulikath Thank you, you managed to describe the issue way better than I did. I think you're absolutely right, the core of it is that people find comfort in an answer and then refuse to take any risk losing it. This is why they stop looking, and also why they reject new answers when confronted with them (what I called "the truth"). I updated my post with a better explanation

An interesting observation I made while running this account, and even way before, is that whenever I write about my views, people tend to assume that I must be unhappy all the time.

If you're one of them, please consider the following scenario:
Let's say you don't believe in any gods, because nothing about them makes sense to you, and consequentially decided to not participate in religions. You talk with other people about your views.
To someone of, say, Christian belief, your explanations will feel no different than mine about my animal identity feel to you. If you don't believe in God, how could you possibly be happy? You have no paradise to look forward to, no benevolent being to guide you and absolve you from your sins. You must clearly be misguided and need to be shown that God is the answer for true happiness.

I have always been very introspective. There's a constant part of me who observes my own existence and analyzes anything I do and think. I'm in a never-ending process of revising my views in the face of new insights, even if it means to give up a comfortable answer in favor of another one more aligned with my values.
To outsiders, this can be hard to comprehend. I want to be an animal, and right there is a way that allows me to "be" one. Why wouldn't I just accept it?
Long ago, I tried to become part of the therian community. I adopted their concepts and even had memories of moments that could've been shifts. And yet, it didn't work out because I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I was making things up and lying to myself. Modern therianthropy is different, but all that has changed is that I now can't relate with it for other reasons. How could I possibly be happy if I rejected my values and pretended everything was fine?

In facing myself with brutal honesty, I'm staying true to myself. In recent years, I attained a profound sense of stability I never experienced before which has also positively affected my mental health. My negative feelings didn't vanish or became duller, but rather my understanding of them improved and that allows me to handle them better. I've never been further away from misery than today.

#volpeonWrites

#volpeonWrites

I think this is a good tag to use for my longer posts. I'm kicking it off with an overview about the big topic I mentioned in the pinned post: the desire to be an animal and what it means to me.

I always have a hard time writing about my personal development throughout my life. It was, and still is, a constant and never-ending process without clear boundaries, "awakenings" or grand realizations, but rather small changes which accumulate over time. It doesn't help that reflecting on your past also means reinterpreting it with your current mind and effectively changing it unintentionally.

As a child at around kindergarten age, I often imagined being a bird with as much detail as I could. It was just a normal memory for me — until I grew suspicious of why I wanted to be an animal so badly. Could it have been an early sign that my soul was that of an animal and I ended up in this body on accident? I held this belief for a while, inspired by all the fantasy novels I had been reading at that point. Then I learned about therianthropy and the meaning of those memories changed. Could it have been a shift? Oh damn, there were quite a few of these now that I'm thinking about it!

It's easy to color your understanding of yourself without even realizing. I had shifts because they were the common experience among therians. I talked about myself with language carefully chosen to evoke the idea that an external force made me feel this way, that I was "supposed to be" an animal rather than "wanted to be." I followed self-imposed rules and subconsciously acted to convince not just others but also myself of the validity of my experiences.
About 5 years ago, I started to see what I was doing and got rid of all the layers I had built around my identity. I decided to only look at the truth itself and not allow myself to get distracted by arbitrary ideas. I want to understand the world and myself with absolute clarity.

The truth is that some of my earliest memories are imaginations of being a bird, and later on other animals. I am drawn to the idea of possessing a non-human body and experiencing life as a different creature. I want to know what it feels like to have fur, a muzzle, paws, wings, to fly or to walk on digitigrade legs, to move around with a body with completely different proportions and senses and capabilities. I want to be perceived as a creature that isn't a human. I want it so badly.
Beyond that, there is no deeper meaning or purpose, and there doesn't need to be. This is the answer I have reached.

I could copy the pinned post from the old account, but it isn't Winter and my mood is much better, so that would feel a bit weird.

The reason I created this account was to talk about topics I'd like to keep out of my main account. This does also include more personal ones, but it can be anything that simply doesn't feel like it belongs there. That's why I call this a "bonus account" rather than a "personal alt" and why I won't restrict followers. I want to allow people to find my posts and read them without my approval.

One thing I explicitly try to post about here every once in a while are topics related to my desire to be an animal. I felt this way for my whole life, and so of course it's a significant part of who I am today. I want to talk about my identity and my self exploration using characters and art, and I also want to share my views to related topics openly and honestly.
As those of you who followed my old account know, my views don't necessarily agree with those propagated in online spaces related to therianthropy etc, but I will never try to force them on others.

I'll try to find the big posts from the original account and post them here again after some cleanup. I'll also add a hashtag like #volpeon_(topic) to each of them.

@anthropy I quickly checked some followers and it looks like they're following the new account as well. I guess some servers just create the new follow relationships without clearing the old ones?

I didn't look at the number prior to migrating

@volpi: 83 followers
@areon: 226 followers

Wait what

This account was previously @volpi . Check it out for older posts.