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.
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