“A Problem in the Therian Community” by Miushra; April 2021

The system I am part of has been a member of the therian community for many years. Over 15 years in fact. I say this, not to toot my own horn, but to put into context what I’m about to say next:

Whatever we call them or whatever they call themselves: weremythic… mythical therian, theriomythic, fictherian, or just plain fictionkin or therian. There are people who are a part of the therian community whose animality takes some pages out of myth or fiction are a part of the community. They are a part of the therian community. Get. Over. It. Don’t like it? Tough.

Animality is messy. It is instincts. It is being something not human and experiencing that in a day to day way that just sings “animal.” What shape this “animal-ness” can take is vast. The animality of an elephant is very different than the animality of a skink. Yet it is still animality.

Many years ago, back when forums were everywhere, I did a little experiment. I joined a forum alone and I was completely and totally honest about my animality in every respect except one: I never gave the name of my theriotype. Oh, I talked of my felinity, being a prehistoric feline, being a social feline very much unlike any modern feline even lions, on and on and on. I was never challenged. Never judged. I could talk about my slow process of trying to find my species and how many names I had stuck from the list over the years. I could talk of my hunting instincts, my social quirks, etc and everything was good. I never had anyone go out of there way to grill me into the ground. And yet, and yet do you know what happened when I came out as fictionkin?

I don’t think I need to describe, in detail, how that went down. How quickly people who had happily moved along as I told the exact same explanations before suddenly turned suspicious with a few changes of words. Suddenly my felinity wasn’t “animalistic” enough. Nothing was enough. Instincts were not enough. They were tagged with something fictional as the best label out there to describe my species. That was all anyone saw.

Crying out against the treatment of some in the community isn’t about being questioned, it is about being unfairly questioned. Certain kintypes/theriotypes are held to near impossible standard and of high scrutiny at every turn. It matters not how long and how much they have mulled over their experiences; nothing is enough for some in the community.

Because to those people the person they see before them only has “an identity” but is not having an “experience.” Because to allow the fact that animality is vast and… messy is to pull them out of a comfortable bubble where therians are in one corner and otherkin are on the other.

Whatever a person whose animality takes a form beyond strictly of an Earthly animal calls themselves (therian, fictionkin, weremythic, theriomythic, fictherian…) their animality is not diminished because of the form their animality takes. It is still animality.

To play a values game based on arbitrary or minor differences, seems quite a human thing to do at the end of the day.

Me, I just want to talk about my instincts to run down prey with other cheetah-like felines and then after eating my fill find a place to lounge for a while. Talk of not understanding human social conventions. I just want to talk about my animality, my felinity.

Any therians who want lay claim to the therian community and say who is and is not a therian based on their own biases, as if it is their territory alone, are in for a rude awakening as I ignore their pathetic piss marks.

-Miushra