#physical shapeshifters

[pshiftcultureis]

i feel like a lot of shifters need to talk to other shifters about how they found out about their species because sometimes "i shifted and i was just this," doesn't always help and not all shifters can shift/have the right environment to.

it's difficult because a lot of shifters rely on their dreams and visions, and consistently don't know what or who they are because all of our history has gone kaput - and so have our ways to connect with ourselves.

-🔮☀️

Yesss exactlyyyy!!

We will be honest with you we have a few tips we actually want to give because we hate to see this info degrade away. So, this is the rare occasion we will respond with information rather than just tags ♡♡

First of all what you are as a species shifting-wise is usually not discovered through shifting into said animal. We have never shifted into our animal as of now and there was a few ways we found what we were. A lot of shifters we know followed a similar path.

One tip we saw floating around was your species could be based on *where you live*. So, if you live in the americas theres a chance you could be anything native to america.

Another is choosing an animal that gives you the "this feels right / this feels like me" vibes and allowing yourself to experience that animal fully as if you are that animal (since you are questioning theres no way to know, you know?) So you research it, mental shift with it, feel phantoms, meditate with it, connect with it... etc. Pay attention as to how YOU feel being this animal. And we dont even mean like "oh this is a trial run this may not be for me"... just allow yourself to confirm it and explore it for awhile. If its not right, move on!

Keep allowing yourself to sniff around and settle, chase feelings and be okay with confusion for awhile, because honestly you may be pulled a bunch of directions regarding this. Just remember, its finding that other part of YOURSELF, not what others want you to be or what you think would be cool.

(I didnt want to be the feline i am now in the past! I wanted wings, i wanted to have a pack, i wanted to be cool, ill be honest lol.)

With mental shifting, you can do this with any animal or creature. Meditation-wise, you just close your eyes and vividly imagine yourself in first pov as the creature you chose and explore the world the creature lives in. Assign sounds, tastes, feelings, basically be fully immersed. If you want to take a more traditional route its always helpful to do this a handful of times and record how it felt, how you felt, what it did for you, afterwards the general vibe, etc.

A lot of older guides say you have to do this a lot and "fully mental shift" -- we personally believe that this process is a form of solidifying the other half of yourself into a consciously recognised part of you, as we all tend to hide anything that isnt human.

There is a huge culture back then of immersing yourself into the possibility of you being an animal -- basically degrading the older beliefs that "you are only human" and "shifting is impossible" fed to us by society. Which was like little things, such as changing your room to be more of your habitat, researching, writing affirmations (ex: "i am a wolf"), keeping a log of your shifts, and analysing your doubts to later take them apart.

Regarding what you have said that shifters only experience their forms through dreams or visions, this isnt true either for a lot of shifters. Usually shifters have dreams and visions.... after... theyve discovered their forms, although its not impossible to have visions or dreams.

Overall, we would recommend researching and following what feels right to you, even if you have no shifts or a faint clue of what you could possibly be. We didnt have any at all actually, we had deeply repressed our feline self to the point where it never happened.

We have also seen people telling newbies to look back at their past or their ancestry to figure it out, but we find this to be very shaky and apply to anything. Rarely does someone have access to family history, including regarding the supernatural, and what you do in the past is too hard to pinpoint to a root cause until many years after you are no longer in the discovery phase.

We hope that this was helpful to any in the discovery phase of their journey! Its actually pretty similar to the therian community, albeit a more rudimentary way of doing it.

And please document your journey, its super easy to forget those first few months / years of this path, and it can be very helpful to have a record as such.

Take care ♡

[your-therian-parent-says]

pro tip its legal to make a den in your room out of blankets and pillows and plushies and sleep in it

it also costs zero dollars to hide in the darkness of your newly built den and make unsettling noises to ward off intruders

[filurig]

OK I WENT AND SCANNED THE ZINE I MADE AND... here are most of the pages - so every middle "spread" has one left and right page on the back of it and then a bigger pic once its unfolded, but didnt include every side for every larger spread.

this basically explores a bit of folke and adrian's relationship - adrian, the Creature, ends up finding folke's brother's recently deceased corpse and imitates his appearence, the only real way for a basilisk in their world to learn to shapeshift into something.

So their relationship is a bit complicated. but also, it ends up eventually settling into something that isnt only full of bitterness...

[fumifooms]

do you happen to have that page that talks about the beauty standards of each race?

Yeah sure. While scavenging pics for this I found this neat reddit compilation & chart & theory talk too. I had um, way more to say than I anticipated (I know you only wanted the one page. I have nothing to say for myself. Like most topics in Dunmeshi things snowball because they’re so interconnected. Mercy…) so, many races and observations are only mentioned near the bottom.

Beauty standards and race in Dungeon Meshi

Not pictured there’s also how elven society is harsh on visibly disabled people, and how the demon took away Mithrun’s silver eyes and ears to take away his pride. There’s also how Senshi might have fit in with the orcs more easily because of the dwarven wide body shape, and how they tend to have more body hair too I suppose. In the extra on orcs we see Senshi living with the orcs and he gets judged because of the hierarchy rather than his looks.

What is fashionable also differs from culture to culture, and there’s how tattoos only seem common with elves, though dwarves and others do also sometimes have some. They seem to not raise much brows, which makes sense since for many essentially they’re for professional (magical) purposes especially with elves. Gender roles also differ in type and importance, but generally they are similar to irl ones for the races we see. Elven society seems to be the least gendered, which would be an unsurprising logical outcome of having lesser sexual dimorphism aka they look more androgynous. Comparing fashions and gender roles and how they affect beauty standards would be a whole other compilation and conversation. Kui has great worldbuilding partially because she’s got such a good grasp on sociopolitics and geopolitics. History affects cultures and beauty standards greatly. Kui’s oneshot Distant Utopia was very eye opening on her way to worldbuild and the consideration she gives these things, I do really recommend reading it.

Out of the big 5, we know the least about gnomes, but their sheet does say both culture and region are similar to dwarves’ and they end up being confused together often, so we can imagine the beauty standards are similar to dwarves’ as well.

I wanted to touch on this in a post eventually, but how one daydream hour page said half-foots tended to be curvaceous like in the artwork below puzzled me for a long time, all the half-foot characters we see during canon are rather slender and lanky after all, Chil’s succubi also being more curvy than plump. Economics are for sure a factor in that I imagine, the half-foots characters we see are all implied to be some flavor of poor or malnourished, as are half-foots depicted as empoverished oppressed minorities in general. Even comparing the artwork with the half-foot sheet’s depicted average half-foot, the ones on the left seem bigger. Wouldn’t it make sense though, if unlike dwarves half-foots don’t have similar naturally wide bodies, yet due to idolizing dwarves they work towards having a similar body shape/type to emulate them?

It’s said half-foots tend to stick to pretty ethnically homogeneous regions (aka half-foots-only communities) unless they move to the big city with ambition to try and make it big (like Chilchuck and his wife & kids did), and that’s interesting imo because then that would mean that in a ton of half-foot communities, they rarely see or interact with dwarves whom they try to emulate. Of course, one thing about beauty standards is that when they get adopted, at one point it stops being "this is how dwarves look and so this is how half-foots should look" and just becomes "this is how half-foots should look", most people feel as though beauty standards aren’t learned but innate, so I figure the half-foots wouldn’t have any problem still seeking dwarvish traits when there are no dwarves around.

There’s also stuff you can glean here and there if you want to extrapolate more. Like how in the race swap artworks, Mickbell is only smiling in the dwarf portrait, and Rin’s elven portrait looks very close to her elven one- Rin who is stated to be beautiful in her profile blurb. Benichidori’s extra does teach us tallmen can definitely have harsh beauty standards, but also since the text portrays her as very dysmorphic that’s likely reflected in her thoughts to a much more intense degree than is common, not an accurate strict baseline to go off. Ah, Kabru’s blue eyes are also why he and his mother lived a rough life in Kabru’s hometown, but that seems to be regional. Good post here on the topic of Kabru’s blue eyes and ties to irl history. There’s a lot to be said about Kabru being a man that in many ways is close to elven beauty standards, and how that might have affected or been affected by his upbringing with elves + his persona as someone that can effortlessly charm most people. Marcille’s section here in this essay also goes into Marcille’s struggles to fit in with the ideal image of an elf.

Looking human

Also notable are beastkins and demihumans: Demihumans are all dehumanized which makes people treat them worse. So if you differ from the visual idea of "human" (an in-world subjective categorization just as much as demihuman is) most people do judge you negatively. Elves and dwarves get to fight about which type of human is considered the prettiest, but demihumans are below tallmen and half-foots, they are considered as simply below the beauty contest, incompatible with it.

Onis are perhaps the demihuman people we know of with the least cultural influence on the dunmeshi world, and with the least intensely different appearance than other demihumans—they seem to be technically categorized as human to people not from the eastern archipelago?— but even them are treated as lesser than human, treated as beasts to slain for reputation points or useful strength to have around and command. It’s said their "magnificient horns" and fangs are often shaven off when the oni lives in tallman towns, so you could easily make the argument that onis are denied the right to have their own beauty standards, having to conform to other people’s and going through mutilation to take away features they might otherwise have taken pride in. Inutade was bought by the Nakamotos from a dangerous sumo fighting ring that got one of Inutade’s tooth broken on her first and only fight, and kept as a low ranking servant ever since. Remember when I said different fashions existed in dunmeshi and how those could also affect beauty standards? Like the elves, if you look at the portraits pages which include a lot of characters that aren’t in the story you can see distinct cultures within the same races, for example one young elf is bald which is in sharp contrast with the usual elven long luscious hairstyles, and that’s especially true for onis I think. Maybe not only from different regions but different eras as well… They have a bit of population in the very north of the western continent, so I like to think some of the ogres live in very cold, maybe even subarctic or arctic conditions. The point I’m getting at here is that within a race, culture/ethnicity like with Kabru will also influence them it isn’t just tallmen as a whole, different communities will have differing beauty standards. The oni history blurb and third row first collumn portrait remind me of Mongolia (which historically was a lot of different nomadic communities with different cultural identities as well. Something something, the oni empire experienced a decline and then tallmen overpowered them, and now they’re governed and split apart by stronger social classes & slavers and the richness of culture was hurt for it especially if they have no real community left of their own), but obviously many of them are dressed and look rather japanese, makes sense considering living in/close to Wa, and first row second collumn portrait reminds me of ainus which again would be logical considering geographical placement, though I’m far from an expert. Interestingly, ainus are indigenous people both in Japan and Russia- Perhaps the northern western continent ogres are meant to be closer to Russia than Canada like I imagined? Ok tangent over.

The kobold sheet says they’re especially sought after as slaves because they’re "adorable", but locally in the western continent they’re repeatedly said to be seen more as ferocious and dangerous. The dehumanization is most apparent in the first comic below. The language barrier and conflicts no doubt worsen this by a lot, but I think it’d be hard to deny that their canine appearance makes the dehumanization worse. "They’re ferocious beasts, they’re demihumans, they can’t be communicated with". Most characters in Dungeon Meshi’s world are desensitized to slavery and most characters are prejudiced one way or another. Point being, kobolds are fully removed from human beauty standards, but no doubt for kobolds, other kobolds are more beautiful than humans are. They’re assumed to be an uncivilized bunch, but just like any other people they like to adorn themselves with nice clothes and jewelry and keep themselves clean and groomed; they too take care of their appearance and take pride in it.

And the orcs! This one we have the most contact with in canon, with not only there being foreigner characters from the ethnicity or hearsay of their homelands and culture but full on contact with a community. We get to see up close what they’re like and what they think, and of course in turn they’re our introduction to how demihumans are harshly looked down upon and seen as inferior, less human and thus less worth valuing and less dignified. It’s text that orcs are ugly to most humans and humans are ugly to most orcs. Since I judged they didn’t need accompanying explanation the pictures showing this are in the pictures dump at the top.

God forbid you sell vegetables to orcs my god- but then again they do basically mandate adventurers to kill any orcs they come across so yeah the world isn’t above that even a little bit.

So yes, my main point here is simply that orcs are yet another evidence of the physical ideal of "human" being an important beauty standard for human societies globally.

Izutsumi is our glimpse at how beastkins are treated in the world, and in Wa at least that’s ending up being caged and mistreated as part of a freak show. Izutsumi hates her appearance and wishes she could leave the feline part of herself behind to only be human. Interestingly, not that we have a lot of info on them so this is very much a take with a grain of salt situation, but there seems to be less stigma around artificial beastmen, those who can shapeshift at will. The main difference is of course appearance, that most of the time they simply look like average tattooed humans. Artificially creating humans is an illegal practice, and no doubt it’s not well regarded, but being able to hide that makes them less likely to be discriminated at any moment, or even just discriminated less intensely. Again, looking human is important, not only for belonging but for safety’s sake. Beauty standards rule the world with harsh hands.

Mermaids and fishmen

Ok we’re done now right? Right-! But wait… Wait…! Mermaids and fishmen are said to be demihumans too, special separate cases to the main three demihuman species however, which is also represented by how mermaids and fishmen both are in the Adventurer’s Bible chapter Monsters meanwhile ogres, kobolds and orcs are in the chapter World. They’re an interesting topic because they directly tackle this topic, not only in a meta way for the readers but also making characters themselves struggle to quantify their humanity with the goal of knowing wether they should be eaten or not, especially Chilchuck. Chilchuck’s "is it really just a matter of feelings?" mini arc.

The party asking themselves "Should we eat this?" is very common, and often they end up playing a little loose on morality, like eating the red dragon’s meat despite it having digested Falin. Not unsimilarly Marcille freaks out a little over the vegetables they harvested having been grown with fertilizer, aka largely human poo. Half of the motivation of "should we eat this perhaps sentient creature" is out of consideration and compassion, but more strongly and more often, the characters struggle with a sense of taboo at eating something too closely related to humans. Even, feel uncomfortable because of the deepseated impression that eating it would dirty them in some way. Cannibalism is an interesting and relevant topic in many ways, but what I want to mention is how there’s the more or less universal belief that committing cannibalism inherently taints you as a person and turns you more monstrous, morally but also literally depending on some myths such as w*ndigos and onis in some cases, like in Touge Oni. Marcille and Izutsumi both express a fear of eating monsters turning them monstrous. Maybe this is part of what Laios was hoping for, honestly. There are two fears here, if eating a demihuman monster constitutes as cannibalism or not, and so, will eating it taint you because it’s a human, or will eating it taint you because it’s a monster? You are what you eat, until it’s a little too literal. You morally are the means by which you get your food, and you physically are the result of your nutrition. Dungeon meshi manages to mix an exploration of humanity with the theme of food because our relationship to food is very deep and complex, psychological as much as physiological.

In the end, the characters sort of shrug and accept that they’ll never quite understand the world of mermaids and fishmen and how they operate, and what that means about them. Laios is the one always challenging these notions other characters take for granted, it’s not obvious to Laios why people are softer on mammals than other animals and plants, it’s not obvious to Laios why people would be afraid of eating a monster just because it’s a monster, it’s not obvious to Laios why some food is gross to Marcille but not fish testicles, it’s not obvious to Laios why you should immediately regard orcs and kobolds badly.

"Cows are probably closer to humans [aka closer to being human] than fishmen, though they’re clearly intelligent", dehumanization to lessen empathy towards them to be able to eat them. Meanwhile, mermaids seemingly have a less noticeable "civilization" or intelligence, they hunt in groups like fishmen, but they don’t use tools and such, they feel more primal and similarly instinct driven, and yet… Do they attract sympathy more? Mammals, humans, is it because of their nature or because of their appearance?

Both the nature and appearance of fish are ones people don’t typically sympathize with. "Fish don’t feel pain", "goldfish only have 5 seconds of memory", "it’s okay to keep fish in completely empty bowls too small for them until they die from it", so many lies and misconceptions exist that make people less considerate of them. The average lifespan of a goldfish is 10-15 years, the record is 43, but they’re not seen as lives that really matter, so a lot of goldfish die in a few weeks of bad aquarium conditions. There’s a lot of research on animals evolving to look cute and appealing to make some predators want to kill them less and parents want to care for them more, including humans. First good google research result gave me this credible short article on the topic. In Chilchuck’s weighing wether a fishman is far enough from being human or not to eat, "face is 100% fish" is his biggest argument for it being more acceptable. The face, the most important thing for empathy and recognition. The face, the decapitated fishman one that falls into his hands next chapter.

To quote @room-surprise: "Chilchuck can't explain why it's wrong to eat the merpeople, even though it's NOT complicated. But the problem is Chilchuck would have to accept and acknowledge that the merpeople might be people? And that's outside of the worldview he passively believes, so he can't just say that, because he doesn't think that's true. But that IS why he "feels" it's wrong. And it's all you'd need to say for Laios to understand! But it would require acknowledging that maybe the way they're treating and talking about the merpeople is wrong."

The idea of Chil not being able to grapple with how maybe some monsters are more humans than they seem, him who had been an advocate of half-foots rights, half-foots who get undermined and treated as inconsequential sacrifices… Grappling with how he could relate to the merpeople’s situation almost, and pulling away because it’s so existentially horrifying. I do not want to see myself into an hostile fish-faced warrior I can’t communicate with. In a way this also relates to Chilchuck being the only party member who doesn’t see Izutsumi as a cat in the relationship chart, the only one to treat her with full human dignity. He knows the struggle to be taken seriously, he knows being infantilized and he knows what it’s like to be treated as less than human.

Below, you will see Chilchuck draws the line of where they become not okay to eat as when "they already look like mermaids". Above, there’s speculation that the algae hair is partly to mimic "the mermaids’ beautiful female form". Is it because mermaids are their enemies and the ambiguity might give them extra seconds to attack or flee? Is it to trick adventurers instead? It’s striking to me that this is what works, with the adventurers. Sure the fishmen are intelligent, but explicitly here, what makes them no longer acceptable prey to Chilchuck is that they look close enough to a mermaid, close enough to human. Mermaids who of course themselves have this form to entice and seduce and charm the adventurers they prey on. Chilchuck considers the intelligence due to the tridents, but most of his internal debate centers around their appearance, and the image of a fishman skewered sickens him. The power of mimicry… Mimic being a beautiful human woman. Mimic being cute, babies being wired to make us feel protective and softened. Half-foots, sometimes pretending to be children for scams or help or avoiding trouble.

The mermaids are only concerned by their differences and not their similarities, and have no trouble treating the fishmen as food rather than peers. To an outside perspective like us, the audience, all these categorization of "more human" and "less human" between onis and orcs and elves and tallmen etc seem stupid and unfounded, but to the people living in Dungeon Meshi’s world, elves may as well be mermaids while onis are fishmen, not alike at all, unworthy of empathy and thus fine to eat.

Ultimately, Dungeon Meshi promotes unity. It’s about seeking to understand the unknown and the misunderstood, the dehumanized and the inhuman. It shows the good that comes from seeking to understand what you do not, even when that’s one another.

[virtuallucan]

got my custom collar today!! although, the leather on the collar the tag came with was kinda cheap feeling. so i moved the tag to my white collar !!! i love it ^_^

[rustedleopard]

Chujin's opinion of Starlo is that he is an immature loudmouth who only grew physically beyond middle/high school. He's a reckless moron that has no regard for the fact that he is poisoning the minds of monsterkind with his admiration for human culture. He thinks that Starlo's desire to bring a slice of the Underground is a waste of time and that if Starlo REALLY wanted to help monsterkind's situation, he'd try to figure out methods to escape the Underground instead of finding escapism in a pale imitation of the Surface. He is unable to conceive why Starlo even likes humans except out of some twisted, Stockholm Syndrome-esque fawning over monsterkinds' captors.

(Deep deep deep deep deep down, Chujin knows that Starlo is a kind person who doesn't have bad intentions. And, he can begrudgingly admit that if the Wild East prevents some monsters from falling into despair, (which is a death sentence for a monster,) then it does some good. But you'd basically have to dislocate his shoulder from twisting his arm so hard if you want Chujin to admit this.)

Starlo's opinion of Chujin is that he is some above-it-all asshole. He insists that he remained civil and respectful of Chujin ever since Chujin and Ceroba started dating and he started to get tangentially involved in Starlo's life, yet all Chujin's done is scoff at him for following his dreams. Chujin must think he's soooooooo great being some smarty-pants scientist instead of a nobody farmer/sheriff like he is and that's why he looks down on Starlo, what a snob! And as for Chujin's belief that all humans are evil? Greatly exaggerated! If humans were such wicked things, why would the westerns they make show such relatable concepts like justice and freedom and how cool revolvers are? Starlo's just trying to inject some fun into the Underground and distract everyone from how dire things are getting and Chujin has a massive stick up his ass about it.

(Deep deep deep deep deep down, Starlo knows that Chujin is a kind person who only wants the best for everyone. Chujin is beloved by Ceroba and the Sunnyside family and other residents of the Underground for a reason. The fact that he's such an admirable person drives him a bit nuts, because Starlo knows that he would never be able to measure up to him. It's no wonder that Ceroba fell for him so quickly. How could he ever compare? And as for Chujin's opinion on humans? While he strongly disagrees with Chujin's outright hatred, he does recognize that some humans can be dangerous.)

I would say that Chujin and Starlo would bitch at each other like two Southern belles backhand complimenting each other, except I feel like Starlo lacks the subtlety to be able to dish out those sorts of insults, let alone pick up on them. Instead, they'd try to be silent in each other's presence out of respect for Ceroba. It's a........... very tense silence, to say the least....

[skittishmutt]

I don't know what I am and that stresses me out! I enjoy putting labels on myself even if they are one day wrong, I like being able to pull up a page and be like "These are my identities, they explain everything about me!" But I can't do that because I don't know If I'm just a normal teenage nonhuman, A physical alterhuman, transpecies or some other term?

I've been doing loads of research because I need that label I need to update my pages and be like yes! An identity! I'm so cool! Look at my identity! Buttt I cannot figure out what and I'm scared I'll have to coin something because then nobody will even know wtf that is. Sigh

Maybe I'm just speciesqueer... I highkey like the sound of the term.. I'll see what I can come up with.

[koirankusema666]

Image credit - Small-spotted Genet

I've discovered this new kintype after some various shifts and researching, and it's kind of a big deal because it seems more of an universal kintype for the whole system instead of just an alter-specific one.

As a shapeshifter, it can sometimes be frustrating not to have a solid form to identify as. As cool as it is to change shape frequently, and even though there's nothing wrong with being fluid, it can become rather disorienting and lacking in a foundation creates some issues. For us it was hard to figure out but eventually the whole body and mind seemed to agree that this animal is something we all identify as strongly as a collective. I don't know if this makes sense, but I've heard of shapeshifters "choosing" a base form, and so, I choose the small spotted genet. Perhaps it will some day change, but this feels right, this feels safe and it brings me a lot of joy to shift into a genet. Not only do I look like this even when my identities blur, the lifestyle of the animal matches with mine as well. This doesn't take any of my other identities away however; Piski is still just as much a vulture, Edward is still a dog and so on.

I'm kind of curious to know about other uncommon theriotypes now. I wish there was some kind of a community for us uncommon and rare animals!

[eldritchbean-shapeshifter]

Making a playlist & looking for suggestions.

Reblog or comment with music/songs that have Eldritch Vibes plz & thx

[wildcardsystem]

Might turn into a rant but here we go I guess

Ever since learning what therianthropy and alterhumanity is all the way back when I was like 15 or 16, I finally had the words to describe what I am and immediately had the feeling and audible thought of "I am a wolf, this is me." And that still is a very big part of my identity. But something in the back of my mind always lurks, and I avoid it a lot. It's there, sometimes forgotten but still there. And it's the topic of potentially being a shapeshifter kin.

I wanted absolutely nothing to do with being a shapeshifter from the very start, feeling like that was too "over powered" and since it's not physically possible then I cannot be that thing, really only daydreaming about morphing into a specific creatures or suddenly having specific appendages (wings, horns, tail, etc.) usually in times of need or during heavy emotional states. But also the whole "if you think you can turn into your kin type then you're mentally ill and should seek help" scared me away from even the thought of it for a very long time.

I'm older now, and trying to figure out my identity all over again. So now I'm maybe wondering if that IS a possibility for me. I still don't know how I feel about the idea, I don't think I like it much at the moment, but I'm more open to it nowadays at least.

If anyone else has ever experienced something similar or any shapeshifter kin have any stories of their own about learning and accepting their identity, please feel free to share. I'd like to maybe not push away something that could be a part of who I am, but also maybe give some other's that are also questioning their own identities a bit of encouragement and/or some stories to help them feel less alone. /gen /pos

[clowncaraz-journal]

if you're a reader and like reading about shapeshifters but aren't too fond on the constant romance or need a mature sci-fantasy without the heavy edge, you can read my fins above novels (or the ongoing prequel).

theyre all $1 or free so knock yourself out, plus it's centered around aquatic creatures and I thought my cetacean friends on here might like too.

it features a mixed cast of characters that have clashing personalities, identities, beliefs and goals from book one - allowing the story to progress over time. Almost 70% of the books take place in water.

I do follow a belief I call FEDI though, which stands for Fictional Exploration of the Dangerous and Immoral. I don't enjoy writing about assault and murder but exploring and creating a fictional setting where said characters with altered rules can battle it out allows me to show readers my creativity beyond "and she was murdered." Beware my books are not for everyone for a reason and it may trigger people.

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

Imagine the internet discourse, gatekeeping, drama, and DNIs in a setting with (common, innate) superpowers

like "DNI: people with emotion affecting powers (idc what you say you're a manipulative abuser), people who support relationships between powered and non-powered people (toxic power imbalance!!), people who think mind-speaking is enough to qualify as telepathic (its not, you have no idea what it's like to deal with REAL telepathy) people with wings who call themselves angels (you're literally not), people with ability stealing, copying, or nullifying powers (no explanation needed), people who claim their powers have been changed or swapped in any way (that's impossible), people who's power involve fears and desires (get out of people's heads creep), people who think super strength or regeneration alone count as super powers (that's just having a healthy body, you're normal)," etc etc etc

[virtuallucan]

rating nonhuman identity terms… yaayy

THERIAN > 1/10. honestly not the biggest fan of this term; i only use it for reach.

ALTERHUMAN > 5/10, doesn’t fully describe what i am, as i do not believe i am half human or an “altered” human, i am just not human.

NONHUMAN > 10/10. perfect term for me, it is what i am :3

HOLOTHERE > 9/10. same as the last term, although it doesn’t really encapsulate the same feeling as “nonhuman.”

TRANSSPECIES > 10/10. although i do not fully identify as this, it just feels right.

HUMAN > 0/10. this term is simply not for me.

OTHERKIN > 6/10. it’s alright, i guess.

[KINTYPE NAME]-KIN > 3/10. same as the “therian” term, i only use it for reach. it just doesn’t feel right to me to use.

[KINTYPE NAME] > 100/10. pleasepleaseplease refer to me as what i am. makes me feel happy

[androdragynous]

oh to be a creature whose natural state is to be what it isn't. so cheated by the fact I've only got one shape to work with here

[aphelion-alifer]

keep being mad if physical nonhumans bother you <3

this post wasn't triggered by anything I saw, but there's a lot of misconceptions and hatred and misinformation or misunderstanding towards those who are physically nonhuman and deal with the struggles of bodily being a creature in some way. and you know what, if physical nonhumanity makes you mad, keep being mad. we've always existed, we've always been here. if the reality of physical shifting or limb growing makes you mad, be mad. your emotions aren't going to change us, your opinions don't matter. we're all equal, no one is better than the other. get a mf grip and stay in your lane. it doesn't matter if you're a "tiktok therian", a clinical lycanthrope/zoanthrope, a spiritual or psychological therian, a physical therian, a limb grower, physical shifter, mythical/physical nonhuman - WE ARE ALL ONE IN THE SAME AND HAVE BEEN CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH. we all have unique struggles and experiences relating to nonhumanity. you are not superior because you think physical nonhumanity only exists within delusions (news flash - half of the time it's not) and you are not superior because you think that younger nonhumans or therians or "tiktok therians" are cringe. thank you 💅

[aran-morinorea]

Science gremlin requesting more Donating Blood! I am so curious what's going through Celebrimbor's head right now! Also I want whatever they have in terms of being able to do things without waiting *two months* for routine permits. Not that they're doing... A anyone approaching routine.

Celebrimbor’s motives will remain a mystery for Some Time 😇

If this concoction causes problems and Annatar has to get rid of this fána he's going to stab Celebrimbor. Non-lethally, but still. He likes this one. It's gorgeous. The hair alone took him months of refining.